I Couldn't Think of Anywhere Else to Post This...
Recently I have come across this list of "Ten Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher". It's being distributed by creationists (mostly in the US), and even though professional biologists have refuted these claims (http://pharyngula.org/
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To try to answer each of the 10 questions point by point would actually be opposing my general world view regarding science and religion. I'll explain.
I once had a college professor of Geology say at the beginning of his course that 50% of what he will be teaching is wrong, and that 50% was right. He just didn't know which was which. In other words, in a few years or a few hundred years, our understanding of the subject may evolve and much of what we believe today will be disproved or at the very least replaced by an expanded or altogether different theory of, say, plate tectonics or quantum mechanics...
This was the first instance in my life as a student interested in science that I was not spoon-fed what I might call righteous scientific dogma. No one previously had said, "this could be wrong". My chemistry teacher in high school showed me the tinker toys and said, "this is the structure of an atom." And it wasn't until I saw the movie "Mindwalk" that I was introduced to other theories, i.e. that atoms are mostly empty space, etc...
There have been many forums on religion and science, and I recently listened to a radio discussion on the matter. They stated that 40% of scientists are self-identified as "religious" and believe that religion and science are not antithetical. In fact, I remember that one scientist stated that "science describes and religion explains". Another stated that "science explains and religion gives meaning." The often-quoted words by Albert Einstein support this-- "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
So it may not be quite 99.9 percent certain that a given biologist would agree with the refutations to the 10 questions. I might argue that the questions are worded such that it presupposes that science is wrong. They are blatantly meant to be antagonistic. However, the scientific answers presuppose that the world view of creation is wrong, which to me, seems just as dogmatic and hostile. I think there are a large number of biologists, or rather scientists in general, who believe that science and religion need not be opposing forces.
Now I may be wrong, but I recall that many years ago, I would have SWORN that I had heard SOMEWHERE that the Pope HIMSELF had said that he believes that "God created man through evolution". Woah. That was huge. But it may have just been a rumour I heard. Kids are not studying fossil records in Sunday school.
I think that science vs religion is a false dilemma, that the two need not be antagonistic, that much of religion is based on faith that cannot be disproved by science so there is no conflict. I think those that have the best "glasses" are those that do not support dogma on either side, but can perhaps find where religion and science intersect and converge.
To be clear, the focus of MY faith, MurphyMagick (haha), is unclear. :) However, it is based on how finely tuned nature and the universe are such that science can assume that, for example, the force of gravity and the structure of atoms have always been consistent. In order for scientific data to be valid, we make such assumptions on faith, and I believe in these things. Even slight variances in the strength of gravity or other "given" constants that scientists have so much faith in would not support intelligent life as we know it. So, I also believe in a creator, or at the very least, I believe that it is not irrational to believe in a creator which put into motion these finely tuned constants such that we could live.
That's enough (too much?) philosophy and intellectualism for one night. Thank you for bringing it up!
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About the Pope - yeah, John Paul II said that, but now that Benedict is in I'm quite sure he has publicly stated that he doesn't agree. But I'm not sure what the official position of the Catholic church is.
Many, many people have espoused the "Science explains, Religion gives meaning" theory, but the problem with that is in science, we simply CANNOT invoke any supernatural forces to explain things - then it's not science.
Saying that parts of what we know today is wrong simply because it COULD be disproven is probably true, but more often this is in augmentation of theories, not a complete paradigm shift. For example, in biology, The Great Chain of Being theory was replaced with Lamarck's "Evolution by Acquired Characters" theory, which was replaced by Darwin's Natural Selection. Then, once scientists discovered the genetics work done by Gregor Mendel, they combined the two and created Neo-Darwinism, or "The Modern Synthesis". Work is still being done in regards to evolution and origin of life, and I'm of the mind that any progresses that are made will not be a radical shift, but augmention by slight changes.
"Scientific Dogma"...hmm. I hear that word alot. Everyone seems to think that once scientists figure something out, that's it, that's the end, it's the truth, and no one can ever know better.
This simply isn't the case; science changes all the time. If one scientists suddenly disproves a theory or finds an an alternate explanation, he's going to publish it ASAP because it means he's got the upper hand in the research. Scientists are pretty fierce - they'll do whatever they can to prove someone else wrong if they think they're wrong. However, when things have been proven RIGHT again and again, the act of disproving becomes harder. In the case of the study of evolution, it's less a study into disproving it and more a study into making what we know about it more complete. This Scientific Dogma does not exist (in most scientists, anyway).
One of the reasons for the confusion is that Creationists are using what is taught to high schoolers to try and point out the flaws in the theory. The problem is, high schoolers are TEENAGERS, and they are not taught everying 100% as it is. In most cases, it is VERY simplified, and in some cases it's even old and outdated (if the curriculum hasn't changed or they are using old textbooks). This is similar to your Chem teacher - those models he showed you ARE the approximate structure of atoms - just shown in a VERY stylized way. They are in fact mostly empty space, but if you could see their entire structure, they're parts would correspond to those approximate shapes. My high school Chem teacher did in fact tell us this.
Yeah, many scientists are in some way religious, but they do not bring that faith into the science they do; as I mentioned before, if you invoke the supernatural, it isn't science, because it can't be proven.
SO just because some biologists admit to having religious faith DOES NOT mean they deny the facts of evolution; they would in fact agree, and if they didn't, they wouldn't be good biologists. See what I mean? They might have small quibbles that I got something slightly wrong, but anything they might add would be better, more updated information than I have, and thus improve my arguments.
(continued in next comment)
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Religion and science CAN infact converge, but I do not believe that many religions in existence today can provide the proper beliefs for this convergence. Science disproves the account of Genesis in the bible - that's a pretty big thing. I think that Intelligent Design (basically a new form of Deism) could be more on the mark - that a creational force set things in motion and then it proceeded as science says it does.
Those people who deny such things as common ancestry, speciation, etc are simply ignoring a large body of scientific evidence, and thus do not agree with science. That's fine, I don't care; but if they disagree I would rather they do so quietly, and let science do its job. The only thing many creationists are doing is skewing the public perception of science. One of the problems in this debate is that people do not actually know what science is or does, and many creationists are only furthering this misunderstanding.
So you can see why I might thing some people have better glasses than others. They're still PARTLY right, but not AS right as others. I know it sounds like a stupid distinction, but I firmly believe that those who deny such large bodies of evidence simply are ignorant.
Even slight variances in the strength of gravity or other "given" constants that scientists have so much faith in would not support intelligent life as we know it.
Oh, for sure - there was a guy that I read about who made a book about 10 numbers; if any one of those ten numbers were off by the slighest amount, life would not exist. They were things like gravity, the attractional force between a proton and an electron, etc...and its very hard to see how all of those could come about by chance. But that's talking about the creation of the UNIVERSE, which is immensely hard to explain. In my mind, when we start talking about the creation of life on Earth, that we can more adaquately explain.
Okay, I'm done now too. Thanks for the comment. :)
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