ID v. Evo-Devo Spreads Out to Cover the Globe

[Corlyss_D]

In the beginning
Apr 19th 2007 | ISTANBUL, MOSCOW AND ROME
From The Economist print edition

The debate over creation and evolution, once most conspicuous in America, is fast going global

THE “Atlas of Creation” runs to 770 pages and is lavishly illustrated with photographs of fossils and living animals, interlaced with quotations from the Koran. Its author claims to prove not only the falsehood of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, but the links between “Darwinism” and such diverse evils as communism, fascism and terrorism. In recent weeks the “Atlas de la Création” has been arriving unsolicited and free of charge at schools and universities across French-speaking Europe. It is the latest sign of a revolt against the theories of Darwin, on which virtually the whole of modern biology is based, that is gathering momentum in many parts of the world.

The mass distribution of a French version of the “Atlas” (already published in English and Turkish) typifies the style of an Istanbul publishing house whose sole business is the dissemination, in many languages, of scores of works by a single author, a charismatic but controversial Turkish preacher who writes as Harun Yahya but is really called Adnan Oktar. According to a Turkish scientist who now lives in America, the movement founded by Mr Oktar is “powerful, global and very well financed”. Translations of Mr Oktar's work into tongues like Arabic, Urdu and Bahasa Indonesia have ensured a large following in Muslim countries.

In his native Turkey there are many people, including devout Muslims, who feel uncomfortable about the 51-year-old Mr Oktar's strong appeal to young women and his political sympathies for the nationalist right. But across the Muslim world he seems to be riding high. Many of the most popular Islamic websites refer readers to his vast canon.

In the more prosperous parts of the historically Christian world, Mr Oktar's flamboyant style would be unappealing, even to religious believers. Among mainstream Catholics and liberal Protestants, clerical pronouncements on creation and evolution are often couched in careful—and for many people, almost impenetrable—theological language. For example, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the world's 80m Anglicans, has dismissed literal readings of the Creation story in Genesis as a “category mistake”. But no such highbrow reticence holds back the more zealous Christian movements in the developing world, where the strongest religious medicine seems to go down best.

In Kenya, for example, there is a bitter controversy over plans to put on display the most complete skeleton of a prehistoric human being ever found, a figure known as Turkana Boy—along with a collection of fossils, some of which may be as much as 200m years old. Bishop Boniface Adoyo, an evangelical leader who claims to speak for 35 denominations and 10m believers, has denounced the proposed exhibit, asserting that: “I did not evolve from Turkana Boy or anything like it.”

Richard Leakey, the palaeontologist who unearthed both the skeleton and the fossils in northern Kenya, is adamant that the show must go on. “Whether the bishop likes it or not, Turkana Boy is a distant relation of his,” Mr Leakey has insisted. Local Catholics have backed him.

Rows over religion and reason are also raging in Russia. In recent weeks the Russian Orthodox Church has backed a family in St Petersburg who (unsuccessfully) sued the education authorities for teaching only about evolution to explain the origins of life. Plunging into deep scientific waters, a spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchate, Father Vsevolod Chaplin, said Darwin's theory of evolution was “based on pretty strained argumentation”—and that physical evidence cited in its support “can never prove that one biological species can evolve into another.”

A much more nuanced critique, not of Darwin himself but of secular world-views based on Darwin's ideas, has been advanced by Pope Benedict XVI, the conservative Bavarian who assumed the most powerful office in the Christian world two years ago. The pope marked his 80th birthday this week by publishing a book on Jesus Christ. But for Vatican-watchers, an equally important event was the issue in German, a few days earlier, of a book in which the pontiff and several key advisers expound their views on the emergence of the universe and life. While avoiding the cruder arguments that have been used to challenge Darwin's theories, the pope asserts that evolution cannot be conclusively proved; and that the manner in which life developed was indicative of a “divine reason” which could not be discerned by scientific methods alone.

Both in his previous role as the chief enforcer of Catholic doctrine and since his enthronement, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has made clear his profound belief that man has a unique, God-given role in the animal kingdom; and that a divine creator has an ongoing role in sustaining the universe, something far more than just “lighting the blue touch paper” for the Big Bang, the event that scientists think set the universe in motion.

Yesterday America, today the world

As these examples from around the world show, the debate over creation, evolution and religion is rapidly going global. Until recently, all the hottest public arguments had taken place in the United States, where school boards in many districts and states tried to restrict the teaching of Darwin's idea that life in its myriad forms evolved through a natural process of adaptation to changing conditions.

Darwin-bashers in America suffered a body-blow in December 2005, when a judge—striking down the policies of a district school board in Pennsylvania—delivered a 139-page verdict that delved deeply into questions about the origin of life and tore apart the case made by the “intelligent design” camp: the idea that some features of the natural world can be explained only by the direct intervention of a ingenious creator.

Intelligent design, the judge found, was a religious theory, not a scientific one—and its teaching in schools violated the constitution, which bars the establishment of any religion. One point advanced in favour of intelligent design—the “irreducible complexity” of some living things—was purportedly scientific, but it was not well-founded, the judge ruled. Proponents of intelligent design were also dishonest in saying that where there were gaps in evolutionary theory, their own view was the only alternative, according to the judge.

The Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which has spearheaded the American campaign to counter-balance the teaching of evolution, artfully distanced itself from the Pennsylvania case, saying the local school board had gone too far in mixing intelligent design with a more overtly religious doctrine of “creationism”. But the verdict made it much harder for school boards in other parts of America to mandate curbs on the teaching of evolution, as many have tried to do—to the horror of most professional scientists.

Whatever the defeats they have suffered on home ground, American foes of Darwin seem to be gaining influence elsewhere. In February several luminaries of the anti-evolution movement in the United States went to Istanbul for a grand conference where Darwin's ideas were roundly denounced. The organiser of the gathering was a Turkish Muslim author and columnist, Mustafa Akyol, who forged strong American connections during a fellowship at the Discovery Institute.

To the dismay of some Americans and the delight of others, Mr Akyol was invited to give evidence (against Darwin's ideas) at hearings held by the Kansas school board in 2005 on how science should be taught. Mr Akyol, an advocate of reconciliation between Muslims and the West who is much in demand at conferences on the future of Islam, is careful to distinguish his position from that of the extravagant publishing venture in his home city. “They make some valid criticisms of Darwinism, but I disagree with most of their other views,” insists the young author, whose other favourite cause is the compatibility between Islam and Western liberal ideals, including human rights and capitalism. But a multi-layered anti-Darwin movement has certainly brought about a climate in Turkey and other Muslim countries that makes sure challenges to evolution theory, be they sophisticated or crude, are often well received.

America's arguments over evolution are also being followed closely in Brazil, where—as the pope will find when he visits the country next month—various forms of evangelicalism and Pentecostalism are advancing rapidly at the expense of the majority Catholic faith. Samuel Rodovalho, an activist in Brazil's Pentecostal church, puts it simply: “We are convinced that the story of Genesis is right, and we take heart from the fact that in North America the teaching of evolution in schools has been challenged.”

Even in the United States, defenders of evolution teaching do not see their battle as won. There was widespread dismay in their ranks in February when John McCain, a Republican presidential candidate, accepted an invitation (albeit to talk about geopolitics, not science) from the Discovery Institute. And some opponents of intelligent design are still recovering from their shock at reading in the New York Times a commentary written, partly at the prompting of the Discovery Institute, by the pope's close friend, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna.

In his July 2005 article the cardinal seemed to challenge what most scientists would see as axiomatic—the idea that natural selection is an adequate explanation for the diversity and complexity of life in all its forms. Within days, the pope and his advisers found they had new interlocutors. Lawrence Krauss, an American physicist in the front-line of courtroom battles over education, fired off a letter to the Vatican urging a clarification. An agnostic Jew who insists that evolution neither disproves nor affirms any particular faith, Mr Krauss recruited as co-signatories two American biologists who were also devout Catholics. Around the same time, another Catholic voice was raised in support of evolution, that of Father George Coyne, a Jesuit astronomer who until last year was head of the Vatican observatory in Rome. Mr Krauss reckons his missive helped to nudge the Catholic authorities into clarifying their view and insisting that they did still accept natural selection as a scientific theory.

But that was not the end of the story. Catholic physicists, biologists and astronomers (like Father Coyne) insisted that there was no reason to revise their view that intelligent design is bad science. And they expressed concern (as the Christian philosopher Augustine did in the 4th century) that if the Christian church teaches things about the physical world which are manifestly false, then everything else the church teaches might be discredited too. But there is also a feeling among Pope Benedict's senior advisers that in rejecting intelligent design as it is understood in America they must not go too far in endorsing the idea that Darwinian evolution says all that needs to be, or can be, said about how the world came to be.

The net result has been the emergence of two distinct camps among the Catholic pundits who aspire to influence the pope. In one there are people such as Father Coyne, who believe (like the agnostic Mr Krauss) that physics and metaphysics can and should be separated. From his new base at a parish in North Carolina, Father Coyne insists strongly on the integrity of science—“natural phenomena have natural causes”—and he is as firm as any secular biologist in asserting that every year the theory of evolution is consolidated with fresh evidence.

In the second camp are those, including some high up in the Vatican bureaucracy, who feel that Catholic scientists like Father Coyne have gone too far in accepting the world-view of their secular colleagues. This camp stresses that Darwinian science should not seduce people into believing that man evolved purely as the result of a process of random selection. While rejecting American-style intelligent design, some authoritative Catholic thinkers claim to see God's hand in “convergence”: the apparent fact that, as they put it, similar processes and structures are present in organisms that have evolved separately.

As an example of Catholic thinking that is relatively critical of science-based views of the world, take Father Joseph Fessio, the provost of Ave Maria University in Florida and a participant in a seminar on creation and evolution which led to the new book with papal input. As Father Fessio observes, Catholics accept three different ways of learning about reality: empirical observation, direct revelations from God and, between those two categories, “natural philosophy”—the ability of human reason to discern divine reason in the created universe. That is not quite intelligent design, but it does sound similar. The mainly Protestant heritage of the United States may be one reason why the idea of “natural philosophy” is poorly understood by American thinkers, Father Fessio playfully suggests. (Another problem the Vatican may face is that Orthodox Christian theologians, as well as Catholic mystics, are wary of “natural philosophy”: they insist that mystical communion with God is radically different from observation or speculation by the human brain.)

The evolution of the anti-evolutionists

Whatever they think about science, there is one crucial problem that all Christian thinkers about creation must wrestle with: the status of the human being in relation to other creatures, and the whole universe. There is no reading of Christianity which does not assert the belief that mankind, while part of the animal kingdom, has a unique vocation and potential to enhance the rest of creation, or else to destroy it. This point has been especially emphasised by Pope Benedict's interlocutors in the Orthodox church, such as its senior prelate Patriarch Bartholomew I, who has been nudging the Vatican to take a stronger line on man's effect on the environment and climate change.

For Father Coyne, belief in man's unique status is entirely consistent with an evolutionary view of life. “The fact we are at the end of this marvellous process is something that glorifies us,” he says.

But Benedict XVI apparently wants to lay down an even stronger line on the status of man as a species produced by divine ordinance, not just random selection. “Man is the only creature on earth that God willed for his own sake,” says a document issued under Pope John Paul II and approved by the then Cardinal Ratzinger.

What is not quite clear is whether the current pope accepts the “Chinese wall” that his old scientific adviser, Father Coyne, has struggled to preserve between physics and metaphysics. It is in the name of this Chinese wall that Father Coyne and other Catholic scientists have been able to make common cause with agnostics, like Mr Krauss, in defence of the scientific method. What the Jesuit astronomer and his secular friends all share is the belief that people who agree about physics can differ about metaphysics or religion.

Critics like Father Fessio would retort that their problem was not with the Chinese wall—but with an attempt to tear it down by scientists whose position is both Darwinist and anti-religious: in other words, with those who believe that scientific observation of the universe leaves no room at all for religious belief. (Some scientists and philosophers go further, dismissing religion itself as a phenomenon brought about by man's evolutionary needs.)

The new book quoting Pope Benedict's contributions to last year's seminar shows him doing his best to pick his way through these arguments: accepting that scientific descriptions of the universe are valid as far as they go, while insisting that they are ultimately incomplete as a way of explaining how things came to be. On those points, he seems to share the “anti-Darwinist” position of Father Fessio; but he also agrees with Father Coyne that a “God of the gaps” theory—which uses a deity to fill in the real or imagined holes in evolutionary science—is too small-minded. Only a handful of the world's 2 billion Christians will be able to make sense of his intricate intellectual arguments, and there is a risk that simplistic reporting and faulty interpretation of his ideas could create the impression that the pope has deserted to the ranks of the outright anti-evolutionists; he has done no such thing, his advisers insist.

Not that the advocates of intelligent design or outright creationists are in need of anyone's endorsement. Their ideas are flourishing and their numbers growing. As Mr Krauss has caustically argued, the anti-evolution movement is itself a prime example of evolution and adaptability—defeated in one arena, it will resurface elsewhere. His ally Father Coyne, the devoted star-gazer, is one of the relatively few boffins who have managed to expound with equal passion both their scientific views and their religious beliefs. He writes with breathless excitement about “the dance of the fertile universe, a ballet with three ballerinas: chance, necessity and fertility.” Whether they are atheists or theists, other supporters of Darwin's ideas on natural selection will have to inspire as well as inform if they are to compete with their growing army of foes.

http://www.economist.com/world/displays ... id=9036706

[Harvested Sorrow]

Well, perhaps the people who think religious fanaticism is only a problem in the US will begin to wake up now if more and more people are denying reality to that great of an extent.

[Corlyss_D]

Well, perhaps the people who think religious fanaticism is only a problem in the US will begin to wake up now if more and more people are denying reality to that great of an extent.

I see it less as a problem of fanaticism, at least with Americans, and more of a struggle over the cultural bone of who has a right to tell others, particularly in the South, what to believe.

[Harvested Sorrow]

There's a big difference between being told what to believe and denying reality when all the evidence is staring you in the face.

Of course, the south always has had problems being told what to believe and do when it comes to any sort of progression or the use of science.

That aside, it's definitely a case of fanaticism. Not wanting to be told what to believe is one thing, attempting to get something removed from the curriculum so NO ONE can learn because a person doesn't happen to like it is different...or even worse, attempting to inject a massive lie into the school curriculum by trying to make something like intelligent design into a 'scientific theory'. It takes fanaticism to want to brainwash EVERYONE'S kids into believing that crap.

[anasazi]

Well, perhaps the people who think religious fanaticism is only a problem in the US will begin to wake up now if more and more people are denying reality to that great of an extent.

I see it less as a problem of fanaticism, at least with Americans, and more of a struggle over the cultural bone of who has a right to tell others, particularly in the South, what to believe.

Why "in the South"? Are we so special down here? Can't we take a bit of science just like anybody else? I hate the thought that Southerners are kind of thought of more and more as American Sunni's. We don't need a wall.

[Teresa B]

But there is also a feeling among Pope Benedict's senior advisers that in rejecting intelligent design as it is understood in America they must not go too far in endorsing the idea that Darwinian evolution says all that needs to be, or can be, said about how the world came to be.

Why "too far?" No scientist ever contended that Darwinian theory explains everything about how the world came to be. The only thing addressed by Darwin's theory is the evolution of living species.

In the second camp are those, including some high up in the Vatican bureaucracy, who feel that Catholic scientists like Father Coyne have gone too far in accepting the world-view of their secular colleagues. This camp stresses that Darwinian science should not seduce people into believing that man evolved purely as the result of a process of random selection.

Again, "gone too far" seems to me a response based on a need to stick with religious doctrine rather than accept scientific fact. The comment about Man and "random selection" reveals two fundamental misunderstandings of evolutionary theory: One, that evolution applies to every living being except "Man" who was somehow specially created, and Two, that natural selection is random.

For Father Coyne, belief in man's unique status is entirely consistent with an evolutionary view of life. “The fact we are at the end of this marvellous process is something that glorifies us,” he says.

Again, even the priest who would teach Darwinian theory cherry-picks the facts he's willing to believe, and ignores the other facts. Humans are not the "end" of the process. Evolution has no teleological "end".

Every one of the arguments in this article is specious, as "science" was not in the picture when these religious texts were written. Why must we try futilely to fit religious doctrine with science as more facts are learned? This just results in the distortion of actual science, and/or an evolutionary straw man who gets knocked down as a result of an incomplete understanding of Darwinian theory.

Unfortunately, it seems most religions are not amenable to changes in doctrine based on new knowledge, so it becomes necessary to deny the knowledge in order to cling to the belief system (to varying degrees, and seemingly increasing globally). Therein lies the insoluble conflict.

(Note: I am not denying the value of studying religious texts, or the moral truths revealed by spiritual reflection.)

Teresa

[Corlyss_D]

I see it less as a problem of fanaticism, at least with Americans, and more of a struggle over the cultural bone of who has a right to tell others, particularly in the South, what to believe.

Why "in the South"? Are we so special down here? Can't we take a bit of science just like anybody else? I hate the thought that Southerners are kind of thought of more and more as American Sunni's. We don't need a wall.

Well, it would be hard to deny the Bible-Belt-iness of this hardy perennial. It is almost always framed in the context of "who has a right to tell me what my kids should be taught?" It almost always plays out in the schools, ever since the Scopes trial of the mid 20s. It is almost always cast as "us locals" against "them troublemaking outsiders." As I've said countless times . . . oh, wait, you probably weren't here for those rounds. My position is this: if learning about evolutionary development mattered to daily life or successfully earning a living, Southerners who resist the teaching of evolution would abandon their resistance: they are pragmatic and not foolish. But since it doesn't have any impact on the daily lives of anyone working outside the biological sciences, and most people anywhere are not thus occupied, it becomes a struggle over mythology for bragging rights. Southerners can stand their mythology up against any effete Yankee mythology you care to trot out. The year, the day, the very hour that knowledge of evoloutionary development becomes critical to repairing a car, preparing an nourishing meal, or managing a financial portfolio, the Southerners will cease their resistance and embrace it as though they had never thought otherwise. I have been denounced for such a utilitarian view of one of the universe's great mysteries, but there it is. The debate is pointless except for the agnostic cosmopolitican internationalists' obsessive need to compel their rural religious neighbors to bend the knee to the former's superior intellect and political will.

[Brendan]

(Note: I am not denying the value of studying religious texts, or the moral truths revealed by spiritual reflection.)

Teresa

How about the physical and psychological benefits of meditation and prayer? Not faith healing, but when my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, the first thing they did for her was teach her meditation, which she recognized as contemplation in the Christian tradition.

How about the evolution of religious thought and experience in the human brain? It seems to me, the way the mind has evolved is highly conducive to religious thought and experience. The problem with much of the teaching of evolution today is the default (and rather ignorant) pseudo-religion of atheism it drags along with it. Dawkins as the poister-boy of the evo crowd is of negative worth, his polemic is so bigotted and ignorant.

Teach science as science and religion as religion, I say. Teaching atheism as alternate religion (or that no religion is the only reasonable choice on offer) is not without its own issues.

One way of determining whether an ideology conforms to the category of “religion” is to see whether it collides directly with religious dogmas. Imagine the following statements being made in the public school system by teachers who hold sectarian religious beliefs.

• A Jew states that Jesus was not the Son of God and the miracles attributed to him in the New Testament never occurred.
• A Hindu stated that it is not true that there is but one God, Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.
• A Buddhist states that there is no divine creator who governs the universe.
• A Taoist states that the Jews are not God’s chosen people and he did not enter a unique covenant with them.
• A Christian refutes the existence of reincarnation and karma.
• A Muslim refutes the possibility of achieving salvation by one’s own efforts, without believing in God.

In the United States it is illegal to make any of the above assertions, or their opposites, in a public classroom even if the teachers in question do not promote the rest of their own religious beliefs or teach their creed as a unified whole. Advocates of scientific materialism, however, make all the above claims, explicitly or implicitly, in public classrooms and promote their own belief system as a coherent, integrated ideology.
Wallace, B. Alan – Contemplative Science [Columbia, 2007, p 45-46, emphasis his]

[Teresa B]

Corlyss, I get your point about pragmatism, and indeed, you can repair a car perfectly well without understanding Darwinian theory. But as for the teaching of science in public school, it seems to me more important that religion not be substituted. Who knows which kids will end up going to med school or becoming scientists? How can they compete if they have no concept of the underpinnings of biology?

Brendan, I agree with you about the power of contemplation, and it is reasonable that the human brain may have evolved with a tendency toward spiritual beliefs. Once early humans developed sufficient brain power, they would naturally start to wonder about phenomena that were unexplained. Also, would they not possibly gain a sense of security with a belief in a powerful higher being? There may have been survival advantages to such belief systems.

I also agree that the false equating of atheism with scientific knowledge is a bad trend. It puts science in an undeserved bad light, and fosters the wrongheaded belief that scentists are amoral. (Many scientists are agnostic, meaning they don't think the existence of God is provable in any scientific manner.) Atheism as represented by Dawkins is singularly unhelpful. He is as dogmatic and intolerant as those he criticizes.

Teresa

[jbuck919]

Exactly what does the "devo" in "evo-devo" stand for? I've never heard this term except here and from Corlyss. The last I heard, devolution was a concept from science fiction.

One of the ironies in trying to lend intellectual respectability to ID is that it is perfectly possible to put an interpretation on it that is completely non-interventional. The problem is, the more non-interventional it becomes, the more arbitrary, unnecessary, and repugnant to reason it becomes, and beyond that, people with committed religious views are not particularly interested in being subtle about this. If even the pope and his likely successor, the current Archbishop of Vienna, with all their fancy modern Germanic humanistic education and erudition, think that specific interventions are a requirement, then there is little hope for the ordinary zhlub whose education never even brought such notions into consideration. That is the reality that science is fighting in this matter, not the dismissable imbecile who thinks that the dinosaur fossils were set in the ground along with all the other rocks 6000 years ago.

[Brendan]

Exactly what does the "devo" in "evo-devo" stand for? I've never heard this term except here and from Corlyss. The last I heard, devolution was a concept from science fiction.

One of the ironies in trying to lend intellectual respectability to ID is that it is perfectly possible to put an interpretation on it that is completely non-interventional. The problem is, the more non-interventional it becomes, the more arbitrary, unnecessary, and repugnant to reason it becomes, and beyond that, people with committed religious views are not particularly interested in being subtle about this. If even the pope and his likely successor, the current Archbishop of Vienna, with all their fancy modern Germanic humanistic education and erudition, think that specific interventions are a requirement, then there is little hope for the ordinary zhlub whose education never even brought such notions into consideration. That is the reality that science is fighting in this matter, not the dismissable imbecile who thinks that the dinosaur fossils were set in the ground along with all the other rocks 6000 years ago.

Which seems to assume that ID is the only possible religious (and in particular Christian) point of view regarding the matter. Ain't necessarily so, as the song goes.

[Corlyss_D]

Exactly what does the "devo" in "evo-devo" stand for?

Evolutionary development. It's a . . . come se dice . . . nickname.

[Corlyss_D]

Teresa, we've gone rounds on this before. We don't agree on how necessary it is for future non-scientists to know squat about evo-devo. I'll alert the media that yet again our negotiations have broken down.

[Teresa B]

Teresa, we've gone rounds on this before. We don't agree on how necessary it is for future non-scientists to know squat about evo-devo. I'll alert the media that yet again our negotiations have broken down.

In the interest of a harmonious tune emerging, I will say, I agree with you that it isn't so necessary for future non-scientists to have knowledge of evo-devo. But is it a good idea to actively teach 'em stuff that ain't so? (Just a question )

Teresa

[Harvested Sorrow]

(Note: I am not denying the value of studying religious texts, or the moral truths revealed by spiritual reflection.)

Teresa

How about the physical and psychological benefits of meditation and prayer? Not faith healing, but when my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, the first thing they did for her was teach her meditation, which she recognized as contemplation in the Christian tradition.

I've seen studies that show that meditation has benefits, but none that show that prayer has any benefits beyond those of any other stress relief method. That aside, I think it rather intellectually dishonest to tie meditation to religious belief (if this is what you were trying to do, the rest of the post makes it seem so) since it can be practiced by anyone with or without any given beliefs.

The problem with much of the teaching of evolution today is the default (and rather ignorant) pseudo-religion of atheism it drags along with it.

Wow, I'm not sure what to say. Firstly, there is no way anyone can reasonably claim that evolution 'drags atheism along with it'. All it does is show how human beings and the animals currently on Earth came to be. You can be a theist and not reject evolution. Many members of this board are proof of that. Also, please, do not refer to atheism as a 'psuedo-religion'. It is a lack of belief in a deity or deities, nothing less and nothing more. The lack of one particular belief does not make for a religion. Now, if you were speaking of atheistic religions such as Theravada Buddhism or LaVeyan Satanism (or one of the many other atheistic religions) that would have made some sense....but I think it would have been rather insulting to refer to either as a psuedo-religion as they quite clearly fit the bill of religions.

Also, how is atheism 'ignorant'?

Dawkins as the poister-boy of the evo crowd is of negative worth, his polemic is so bigotted and ignorant.

Your entire post is one long polemical rant and has shown extensive ignorance at the beginning (claiming evolution and atheism are tied together and that atheism is a psuedo-religion) and you dare to speak of him in such a manner? Hypocrisy is in the air. Also, while he certainly can be polemical when the situation calls for it, he can also hold a reasonable, rational debate that doesn't involve all the fireworks, and he's certainly not bigoted.

Teach science as science and religion as religion, I say.

Wow, we agree on something, at least.

Teaching atheism as alternate religion (or that no religion is the only reasonable choice on offer) is not without its own issues.

...And then you go kill it with this. The teaching of evolution in no way respresents the teaching of atheism 'as an alternate religion'.

One way of determining whether an ideology conforms to the category of “religion” is to see whether it collides directly with religious dogmas. Imagine the following statements being made in the public school system by teachers who hold sectarian religious beliefs.

• A Jew states that Jesus was not the Son of God and the miracles attributed to him in the New Testament never occurred.
• A Hindu stated that it is not true that there is but one God, Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.
• A Buddhist states that there is no divine creator who governs the universe.
• A Taoist states that the Jews are not God’s chosen people and he did not enter a unique covenant with them.
• A Christian refutes the existence of reincarnation and karma.
• A Muslim refutes the possibility of achieving salvation by one’s own efforts, without believing in God.

In the United States it is illegal to make any of the above assertions, or their opposites, in a public classroom even if the teachers in question do not promote the rest of their own religious beliefs or teach their creed as a unified whole. Advocates of scientific materialism, however, make all the above claims, explicitly or implicitly, in public classrooms and promote their own belief system as a coherent, integrated ideology.
Wallace, B. Alan – Contemplative Science [Columbia, 2007, p 45-46, emphasis his]

This goes back to the claim that teaching evolution is somehow teaching atheism, which is clearly false, so I see no reason to go into detail refuting this.

[Corlyss_D]

But is it a good idea to actively teach 'em stuff that ain't so? (Just a question )

Well, now, honestly, how much of ID can you state with any confidence you know factually to be untrue? For the same reason we believers can't prove that it is true, you non-believers can't prove that it isn't true. By ID I mean the strictly limited idea that some "consciousness" appears to be responsible for creation.

I really truly don't give a rip about the elements of the debate precisely because the resolution of the debate is of little real consequence to the future of the US. Historical and social untruths that are actively taught in schools today are far more dangerous to the body politic and the future of the country than whether students learn ID or evo-devo.

[Teresa B]

But is it a good idea to actively teach 'em stuff that ain't so? (Just a question )

Well, now, honestly, how much of ID can you state with any confidence you know positively to be untrue? For the same reason we believers can't prove that it is true, you non-believers can't prove that it isn't true.

I really truly don't give a rip about the elements of the debate precisely because the resolution of the debate is of little real consequence to the future of the US. Historical and social untruths that are actively taught in schools today are far more dangerous to the body politic and the future of the country than whether students learn ID or evo-devo.

Well, you know what? I don't disagree! Untruths actively taught about history are dangerous, and more so than those about evolution, because of the possible direct consequences.

No one can prove ID is false, but that makes it a non-science, since scientific theories must be theoretically falsifiable. There is no reason one can't posit an Intelligence or God, if you will, who has designed the universe to work in the way that it does.

I just think that science as it is understood, without discussion of religious theories, should be taught in public schools, just as it's best to teach the most accurate account of history and social studies rather than some PC revisionist account.

Teresa

[Harvested Sorrow]

It's also notable that those attempting to teach a revisionist account of history are the same people trying to get ID pushed into the school system and get evolution thrown out -- for the very same reasons, at that.

[Teresa B]

Dawkins as the poister-boy of the evo crowd is of negative worth, his polemic is so bigotted and ignorant.

Your entire post is one long polemical rant and has shown extensive ignorance at the beginning (claiming evolution and atheism are tied together and that atheism is a psuedo-religion) and you dare to speak of him in such a manner? Hypocrisy is in the air. Also, while he certainly can be polemical when the situation calls for it, he can also hold a reasonable, rational debate that doesn't involve all the fireworks, and he's certainly not bigoted.

I agree with your comments overall, Harvested, but I have to say, for the most part I think Dawkins, while not "bigoted", tends toward condescension. His arrogance (and I have seen him in action) is off-putting, and unfortunately puts his message in a negative light.

Teresa

[Harvested Sorrow]

I find that when put in a situation where a real exchange of ideas can occur (there was an episode of a Canadian TV show where they actually had a decent 45 minute debate) he does well. I also respect that he prefers multiple people in an exchange of ideas to a one on one debate setting because he feels less polemics occur. However, when backed into a corner, he does tend to lash out rather violently and become rather condescending. Unfortunately, these make for great, short clips for the media to show off when portraying their 'evil atheist' image of him.

I'll see if I can find the YouTube of that show, I was surprised to actually see a decent religious debate of any sort on a TV show. It was also quite hilarious to see the Canadian version of an American religious fundamentalist get knocked on his ass several times by fellow believers...and audience members who weren't officially a part of the debate.

EDIT: Found it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgNIZl8ncmU

[Corlyss_D]

No one can prove ID is false, but that makes it a non-science, since scientific theories must be theoretically falsifiable. There is no reason one can't posit an Intelligence or God, if you will, who has designed the universe to work in the way that it does.

We're in violent agreement again.

[Brendan]

Wow, I'm not sure what to say. Firstly, there is no way anyone can reasonably claim that evolution 'drags atheism along with it'. All it does is show how human beings and the animals currently on Earth came to be. You can be a theist and not reject evolution. Many members of this board are proof of that. Also, please, do not refer to atheism as a 'psuedo-religion'. It is a lack of belief in a deity or deities, nothing less and nothing more. The lack of one particular belief does not make for a religion. Now, if you were speaking of atheistic religions such as Theravada Buddhism or LaVeyan Satanism (or one of the many other atheistic religions) that would have made some sense....but I think it would have been rather insulting to refer to either as a psuedo-religion as they quite clearly fit the bill of religions.

Also, how is atheism 'ignorant'?

Dawkins as the poister-boy of the evo crowd is of negative worth, his polemic is so bigotted and ignorant.

Your entire post is one long polemical rant and has shown extensive ignorance at the beginning (claiming evolution and atheism are tied together and that atheism is a psuedo-religion) and you dare to speak of him in such a manner? Hypocrisy is in the air. Also, while he certainly can be polemical when the situation calls for it, he can also hold a reasonable, rational debate that doesn't involve all the fireworks, and he's certainly not bigoted.

Teach science as science and religion as religion, I say.

Wow, we agree on something, at least.

Teaching atheism as alternate religion (or that no religion is the only reasonable choice on offer) is not without its own issues.

...And then you go kill it with this. The teaching of evolution in no way respresents the teaching of atheism 'as an alternate religion'.

One way of determining whether an ideology conforms to the category of “religion” is to see whether it collides directly with religious dogmas. Imagine the following statements being made in the public school system by teachers who hold sectarian religious beliefs.

• A Jew states that Jesus was not the Son of God and the miracles attributed to him in the New Testament never occurred.
• A Hindu stated that it is not true that there is but one God, Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.
• A Buddhist states that there is no divine creator who governs the universe.
• A Taoist states that the Jews are not God’s chosen people and he did not enter a unique covenant with them.
• A Christian refutes the existence of reincarnation and karma.
• A Muslim refutes the possibility of achieving salvation by one’s own efforts, without believing in God.

In the United States it is illegal to make any of the above assertions, or their opposites, in a public classroom even if the teachers in question do not promote the rest of their own religious beliefs or teach their creed as a unified whole. Advocates of scientific materialism, however, make all the above claims, explicitly or implicitly, in public classrooms and promote their own belief system as a coherent, integrated ideology.
Wallace, B. Alan – Contemplative Science [Columbia, 2007, p 45-46, emphasis his]

This goes back to the claim that teaching evolution is somehow teaching atheism, which is clearly false, so I see no reason to go into detail refuting this.

The teaching of scientific materialism (and I note you wouldn't touch the matter of it making claims that would be illegal for religion to) as alternative to religion is commonplace in classrooms, as noted above. That the teaching of evolution has been debased such that it drags atheism along with it was the point I was making, so much of your rant is simply irrelevant. I do not reject evolution, for instance. The argument for "pseudo-religion" as descriptive for scientific materialism is also part of the quote you avoided. See also When Religion Turns Evil by Charles Kimball, which covers Marxist and scientific materialist beliefs, or the classic I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Norman Geisler & Frank Turek.

Since I consider beliefs to be idolatry (following St Diadochos of Photike), does that make me an atheist too?

Dawkins is famous for being an atheist: his contributions to biology are minimal. All he does he re-write The Blind Watchmaker over and over again.

I do not equate evolution with atheism, but instead regret that it has been reduced to that and the two have become entangled in the popular culture. Do try to get the point before unloading in future.

. . . as has often been noted, the pronouncements of the ultra-Darwinists can shake with a religious fervour. Richard Dawkins is arguably England’s most pious atheist. Their texts ring with high-minded rhetoric and dire warnings – not least of the unmitigated evils of religion – all to reveal the path of simplicity and straight thinking. More than one commentator has noted that ultra-Darwinism has pretensions to a secular religion, but it may be noted that, however heartfelt the practitioners’ feelings, it is also without religious or metaphysical foundations. Notwithstanding the quasi-religious enthusiasms of ultra-Darwinists, their own understanding of theology is a combination of ignorance and derision, philosophically limp, drawing on clichés, and happily fuelled by the idiocies of the so-called scientific creationists. It seldom seems to strike the ultra-Darwinists that theology might have its own richness and subtleties, and might – strange thought – actually tell us things about the world that are not only to our real advantage, but will never be revealed by science. In depicting the religious instinct as a mixture of irrational fundamentalism and wish-fulfilment they seem to be simply unaware that theology is not the domain of pop-eyed flat-earthers.
Morris, Simon Conway — Life’s Solution – Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe [Cambridge 2003 pp315-316]

Mr Conway-Morris is an actual, working evolutionary biologist and considered the world's expert on the Burgess Shale.

[Teresa B]

Brendan, your criticism of Dawkins has validity, but I have a hard time thinking that anything but a minority of evolutionary scientists is busy building a straw man out of Theology and knocking it down with simplistic arguments.

The British biologist you cite, Simon Conway Morris, is more arrogant and condescending even than Dawkins. He is not considered the "World's Expert" on the Burgess shale except perhaps by himself, he writes poorly (read his "The Crucible of Creation", for example), and his arguments are full of mean personal attacks against those with whom he disagrees.

I reviewed "Crucible," Conway Morris's take on his Burgess Shale work (which I don't deny was seminal lab work) some years ago for the Tampa Tribune. I compared it with (and I emphasize) my friend S.J. Gould's previous book, "Wonderful Life," also an interpretation of the Burgess fossils. In "WL" Gould had portrayed Conway Morris as one of the "heroes" of the book--his fossil work was treated in a very favorable light. In return, Conway Morris, several years later, effectively pretended he had not originally shared Gould's interpretation (he had), but now dismissed Gould with nasty personal attacks.

I know, I had a preference for Gould--but my quibble with Conway Morris is not for developing a different opinion than Gould--more power to him. (In fact, despite his poor writing and relatively weak arguments, I tend to agree on many of his points.) It is for his extremely arrogant, dismissive attitude. People who do that are, IMHO, best dismissed themselves when it comes to their little rants about other scientists.

Teresa

[Corlyss_D]

I have a hard time thinking that anything but a minority of evolutionary scientists is busy building a straw man out of Theology and knocking it down with simplistic arguments.

I'm inclined to agree with you: this is a small cottage industry. But because the handful of spokesmen are relied upon so heavily by the secularist culture warriors, they tend to represent secularism run amok for the people of faith culture warriors. Just as the self-appointed Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Gary Bauer represent people of faith trending to fanaticism for the secularists. Both sides gain supporters and $$ from taking the most extreme of the opposition as representative of their numbers, when in fact they might not be.

[Teresa B]

I have a hard time thinking that anything but a minority of evolutionary scientists is busy building a straw man out of Theology and knocking it down with simplistic arguments.

I'm inclined to agree with you: this is a small cottage industry. But because the handful of spokesmen are relied upon so heavily by the secularist culture warriors, they tend to represent secularism run amok for the people of faith culture warriors. Just as the self-appointed Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Gary Bauer represent people of faith trending to fanaticism for the secularists. Both sides gain supporters and $$ from taking the most extreme of the opposition as representative of their numbers, when in fact they might not be.

Again we concur!
Teresa

[Corlyss_D]

Again we concur! Teresa

We're going to have to stop this. It will tarnish our respective reputations.

[Agnes Selby]

Again we concur! Teresa

We're going to have to stop this. It will tarnish our respective reputations.

--------------

I am so glad that the two of you have found a little spot on which to agree.

I have read this thread with interest. I strongly believe that religion has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is a scientific fact. Judeo Christian religion is a 2000 year old dogma preceded by a variety of dogmas
created by people without our scientific knowledge. The most alluring is, of course, the Aborigine Dogma - should we base our evolutionary facts on having been created from a stone?

Should some individuals believe in the traditional teachings of the church, well and good. I would, however, object to ID being taught to my grandchildren. If a youngster would prefer science as goal in life,
science based on religious beliefs can play no part in his/hers scientific endeavours.

In any case, religion is an excellent tool to keep generations upon generations in check, controls population growth by the use of the sword
and adheres to tribal beliefs in existence since the beginnings of mankind.

Regards,
Agnes.
-------------------------

[Brendan]

And some folk do not consider philosophically astute theology to be tribal beliefs. That is the simplistic distortion I am objecting to, not the teaching of science or evolution but this distortion of religion our politically correct education system insists upon.

Since Paul Ricoeur’s book, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, it has been commonly understood that if we want to understand religious concepts we have to choose between two distinct modes of interpreting religion in religious studies: the hermeneutics of recollection or the hermeneutics of suspicion. The hermeneutics of recollection is sympathetic to religion, since it assumes that believers are in touch with something real. Its task is to recollect, in the sense of retrieve, this ‘something’ for our age, convinced that there is a message here which we need to heed. The new faith which emerges from this dialectical exercise will be one which has been purged by the fires of criticism. By contrast, the hermeneutics of suspicion denies that there is a divine reality in religion. The very conception of it is said to be product of illusion. The imperative of the intellect is an imperative to be radically suspicious in this context. Since there is nothing real to recollect, or to retrieve, enlightenment consists in rescuing us from religious mystification.
Philips, D.Z. – Religion and the Hermeneutics of Contemplation [Cambridge 1998, p 1]


Philosophical, conceptual elucidation is different from, and wider than, personal appropriation. This has the consequence of opposing that theoretical atheism which claims that all religious beliefs are meaningless. Philosophical contemplation rescues atheism, as much as belief, from distortions of itself. We still need not deny that there are unbelievers who see no sense in religion, and religious believers who see no sense in atheism. An appreciation of the virtues of philosophical contemplation would lead to a different attitude towards such blindness. Just as there is a difference between saying, ‘I do not appreciate chamber music’, and saying, ‘There is nothing in chamber music to appreciate’, so there would be a difference between someone’s saying that they cannot see any sense in either religion or atheism, and the claim that there is no sense in either to be appreciated.

There is a sense in which finding meaning in religious belief or atheism is to have the possibility of belief or unbelief in one. This is not to confess either belief or unbelief. Rather, it is the ability to appreciate how human life can be seen like that. That need not imply that one will see one’s own life in that way, or say ‘Amen’ to it.
Philips, D.Z. – Religion and the Hermeneutics of Contemplation [Cambridge 1998, p 5-6]

The very idea that is is all a matter of mere tribal beliefs vs science is the fallacy I'm arguing against.

[Harvested Sorrow]

I fail to see how the teaching of evolution in schools in ANY way sets up a 'science vs. tribalistic religious view' dichotomy or in some way presumes that religion is of a base, tribal nature.

[Brendan]

I fail to see how the teaching of evolution in schools in ANY way sets up a 'science vs. tribalistic religious view' dichotomy or in some way presumes that religion is of a base, tribal nature.

See the post I was replying to and the quote provided earlier about the statements made by scientifc materialsm that would be illegal for religon to make in the classroom. And it doesn't stop at teaching evolution: over here our teaching of history included software showing Catholics buring heretics, and the sub-title 'heretic' would turn to 'hero' with a mouse-click until parents objected to the pervasive propaganda.

In these parts, the most bittely fought aspect of the Culture Wars in the classroom has been what we call The History Wars. PC 'historians' invented fictitious massacres of natives to show how evil our (Western/Christian) culture was (see The Fabrication of Aboriginal History by Keith Windshuttle). Total disregard for history and scholarship to promote their activist cause and political mindset.

The pervasive anti-Christian bias is so obvious in PC education today (most especially in cultural relativism) that your above statement is simply laughable.

Teaching evolution and science is not the same as the pervasive attitude that religion is the opiate of the masses (Marx had a toothache when he wrote that in a letter, and appreciated the effects) found very commonly in our very radically PC teachers and their unions.

Our political opposition/potential government have their greatest numbers supplied by activists from these teacher's unions.

[Agnes Selby]

I fail to see how the teaching of evolution in schools in ANY way sets up a 'science vs. tribalistic religious view' dichotomy or in some way presumes that religion is of a base, tribal nature.

See the post I was replying to and the quote provided earlier about the statements made by scientifc materialsm that would be illegal for religon to make in the classroom. And it doesn't stop at teaching evolution: over here our teaching of history included software showing Catholics buring heretics, and the sub-title 'heretic' would turn to 'hero' with a mouse-click until parents objected to the pervasive propaganda.

In these parts, the most bittely fought aspect of the Culture Wars in the classroom has been what we call The History Wars. PC 'historians' invented fictitious massacres of natives to show how evil our (Western/Christian) culture was (see The Fabrication of Aboriginal History by Keith Windshuttle). Total disregard for history and scholarship to promote their activist cause and political mindset.

The pervasive anti-Christian bias is so obvious in PC education today (most especially in cultural relativism) that your above statement is simply laughable.

Teaching evolution and science is not the same as the pervasive attitude that religion is the opiate of the masses (Marx had a toothache when he wrote that in a letter, and appreciated the effects) found very commonly in our very radically PC teachers and their unions.

Our political opposition/potential government have their greatest numbers supplied by activists from these teacher's unions.

---------

With due respect to Keith Windshuttle, there were about 5000 Aborigines in Tasmania at the time of the arrival of whites on the island. By 1830
the population had been reduced to seventy-two adult men, three adult women and no children.

It is not only religious differences that cause these murders but an inherent proclivity to destroy anticipated danger. I can well imagine that the Neanderthals suffered a similar fate at the hands of the African invaders who constitute our ancestry. Perhaps the prospect of a warmer cave was enough inducement for murder.

Religious phylosophy gave humanity another reason to kill. To quote Dawkins, " ...with no religion, imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian Partition,
no Israeli/Palestian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as "Christ-killers", no Northern Ireland troubles, no honour killings", etc. To kill in the name of a God is permissible.

With so many religions abounding around the world, can any one religious philosophy claim to be the religion above all others? It breeds nothing but intolerance. This intolerance is today experienced all around the world. Any individual can attack another man's ideas about his own religiosity. A good example:

This letter from the Founder of the Calvary Tabernacle Association in Oklahoma:

"Professor Einstein, I believe that every Christian in America will answer you, 'We will not give up our belief in our God and his son Jesus Christ, but we invite you, if you do not believe in the God of the people of this nation, to go back where you came from".

Einstein's sin was his statement: "I do not believe in a personal God".

As a child in Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia I was often told to go back to Palestine. I had no idea what my persecutors were talking about.


***Just an aside: Dear Brendan, I fervently hope that the Labor Party
run by its Union mates does not win the next Federal elections.

Regards,
Agnes.
------------------

[Harvested Sorrow]

I fail to see how the teaching of evolution in schools in ANY way sets up a 'science vs. tribalistic religious view' dichotomy or in some way presumes that religion is of a base, tribal nature.

See the post I was replying to and the quote provided earlier about the statements made by scientifc materialsm that would be illegal for religon to make in the classroom. And it doesn't stop at teaching evolution: over here our teaching of history included software showing Catholics buring heretics, and the sub-title 'heretic' would turn to 'hero' with a mouse-click until parents objected to the pervasive propaganda.

In these parts, the most bittely fought aspect of the Culture Wars in the classroom has been what we call The History Wars. PC 'historians' invented fictitious massacres of natives to show how evil our (Western/Christian) culture was (see The Fabrication of Aboriginal History by Keith Windshuttle). Total disregard for history and scholarship to promote their activist cause and political mindset.

The pervasive anti-Christian bias is so obvious in PC education today (most especially in cultural relativism) that your above statement is simply laughable.

Teaching evolution and science is not the same as the pervasive attitude that religion is the opiate of the masses (Marx had a toothache when he wrote that in a letter, and appreciated the effects) found very commonly in our very radically PC teachers and their unions.

Our political opposition/potential government have their greatest numbers supplied by activists from these teacher's unions.

There's a difference here:

I live in America, we have a completely different set of culture wars.

The historical revionisim we have going on here, for example, rather than 'inventing massacres' is attempting to claim that 100% of the Founding Fathers were Christians, and that they wished for the US to be a 'Christian Nation' -- a theocracy in other words -- their writings, the separation of church and state, and the Treaty of Tripoli be damned.

It's possible that things are as you say in Australia; I haven't lived there so I wouldn't know.

[Corlyss_D]

The historical revionisim we have going on here, ***is attempting to claim that 100% of the Founding Fathers were Christians, and that they wished for the US to be a 'Christian Nation' -- a theocracy in other words

That's present-mindedness balderdash again.

[Brendan]

The historical revionisim we have going on here, for example, rather than 'inventing massacres' is attempting to claim that 100% of the Founding Fathers were Christians, and that they wished for the US to be a 'Christian Nation' -- a theocracy in other words -- their writings, the separation of church and state, and the Treaty of Tripoli be damned.

It's possible that things are as you say in Australia; I haven't lived there so I wouldn't know.

Is this opinion taught in every school and academy across the nation as the only correct one, factually and 'politically'? Is it the only one to be found in the curriculum, and anyone opposing it find their academic career down the tubes? Somehow, I think not.

But it is also very true that in Australia no one is trying to eliminate evolution from the classroom, so my anger against creationists is somewhat limited by the fact that there simply aren't all that many around here (I have never in my life met one, except online), and are no threat at all to learning, science or religion Down Under.

But back to my rant: replacing learned theology with political correctness is a losing deal, intellectually and culturally, individually and as a society, IMHO. Making the academy the Church of PC - and corrupting science along the way, just check out 'climate change deniers' and such - is one of the major issues I see in the decline of the West. Lysenkoism should provide some measure of historical corrective as to why science and leftist politics should not become entwined, or science rely upon the other.

[Brendan]

Agnes,

No other religious tradition allowed for or encouraged science, nor did scientific thinking emerge in any other religious tradition or culture. I'll stick to science rather than comment on art, literature, music, rule of law, democracy, freedom, equality and the rest of the heritage of Christendom.

While we in the West take the scientific point of view as the standard by which all others are to be judged, it often escapes our attention that the scientific point of view (which I shall deliberately leave undefined for the present) had to fight its way to success through many long battles. Beyond that, modern science, as we know it, failed to materialize in other civilizations of the world (in India, China, and Islam), despite the fact that some of them had great cultural and scientific advantages over the West up until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. That realization ought to encourage us to consider the possibility that the arrival of modern science at its destination in the West was in fact the outcome of a unique combination of cultural and institutional factors that are, in essence, nonscientific. In other words, the riddle of the success of modern science in the West – and its failure in non-Western civilizations – is to be solved by studying the nonscientific domains of culture, that is, law, religion, philosophy, theology, and the like. From such a point of view, the rise of modern science is the result of the development of a civilizationally based culture that was uniquely humanistic in the sense that it tolerated, indeed, protected and promoted those heretical and innovative ideas that ran counter to accepted religious and theological teaching. Conversely, one might say that critical elements of the scientific worldview were surreptitiously encoded in the religious and legal presuppositions of the European West.
Huff, Toby E. – The Rise of Early Modern Science [Cambridge 1993, 2003 p10-11]

Huff (whose work is now considered the standard) documents how Islam and China suppressed scientific thought wherever and whenever it emerged (reminds me of John Tung at Uni complaining "The Chinese didn't invent gunpowder. We invented firework powder"). No other culture even came close.

Huff also points out that these factors, and others, were part of the scholastic community long before the emergence of modern science. It is, indeed, the very method of scholasticism that arose in the medieval universities of Europe. And it was the religious authorities and intellectuals who established both the universities, their paradigm for inquiry and their methods. Tina Stiefel lists the objectives and techniques of the sciences, from the twelfth century onwards:

• That a rational and objective investigation of nature in order to understand its operation is possible and desirable.
• That such an investigation might make use of techniques of mathematics and deductive reasoning.
• That it should use empirical methodology – i.e., evidence based on sense-data, where possible.
• That the seeker for knowledge of nature’s operations (a “scientist”) should proceed methodically and with circumspection.
• That the scientist should eschew all voices of authority, tradition and popular opinion in questions of how nature functions, except to the extent that the information available is rationally verifiable.
• That a scientist must practice systematic doubt and sometimes endure a state of prolonged uncertainty in his disciplined search for an understanding of natural phenomena.
Stiefel, Tina – The Intellectual Revolution in Twelfth Century Europe [Macmillan 1985 p3]

here we see objective rationality as perceived as the only means forward to establish truth in the natural sciences in the West since medieval times, the truth of Scripture being a given back then. But we can also see a philosophical focus on Truth and its pursuit as a moral action: as an institutional, multi-national inquiry open to all humanity (sufficiently educated). A shift from Truth to “sensitivity” means we may convey falsehoods for the sake of niceness.

Huff also points out that Kuhn’s work on the sociology of scientific revolutions only addresses the internal mechanism of paradigm shifts once the scientific paradigm exists and is set in motion. The origin of science itself is outside the paradigm of science, and can be explained culturally only as an intercivilizational discourse, both with other contemporary cultures, such as Islam and China, but also with the ancient sources of so much inspiration that also came about as a result of contact with Islam, and that of the Hellenic culture so revered and tentatively maintained in the West. Kuhnian paradigms may help us understand minor shifts and even major worldviews and cosmic Models of the Cosmos, but the origin of modern scientific thought lies elsewhere.

Thomas Kuhn himself only thought that truly modern science, the full marriage of theory and experiment, the abstract and the applied, only emerged in the nineteenth century. Indeed, the very term scientist didn’t exist until then (1840), and no one much thought that people working on hydraulics and steam engines were doing applied science. They were inventing things and making money. To think of something like journalism or business studies as an academic discipline would have flabbergasted them even more than me.

Technology, until then, was not driven by scientific theory. If anything, it was the other way ’round: people would invent mirrors, or spectacles, or prisms, or printing presses or steam engines and the scientists would explain why the thing worked in theory. The technological revolution of the late nineteenth onwards is the result of theory overtaking and expanding the possibilities of practice.

And it is Theory today, political Theory, that is overturning the objective scholarship of Truth of previous generations in favour of tolerance and sensitivity. Making nice now by distorting truth for political expedience does not lead to eternal peace among nations and people. It lets resentment fester into aggrieved entitlement, instead.

[Agnes Selby]

Dear Brendan,

Thank you for your scholarly reply. I agree with all your points. Neither Mendel nor Darwin thought of themselves as "scientists". Mendel was a priest. Most of the scientific discoveries on which the late 19th and 20th centuries continued to build were begun in religious institutions.

The new "niceties" are products of our own generation and where it will lead we do not yet know. I can tell you quite honestly that I am relieved that none of these "niceties" are practiced at Sydney Grammar, the school our grandson, Nicholas attends. Likewise, none of the private schools our grandchildren attend practice ID but there are some religious schools in Sydney that have adopted the system. This resulted in their poor science results in the HSC last year, according to the universities
admission boards.

It is interesting for me to look back to my own school days at St. Vincent's College, Potts Point where religion and science managed to survive side by side without invading each other's territory.

Regards,
Agnes.
------------------

[Brendan]

Dear Agnes,

Thanks for your kind and thoughtful reply. One of the great ironies to me is how the education unions and teachers so vociferously in favour of public education 'force' parents to spend big $$$ on private education to avoid it. Going from a local in the Western suburbs of Sydney to The Hampton School in London was quite a (pleasant) shock. These guys could speak Latin and were doing maths I hadn't heard of - and I was a regular place-getter in the national public schools mathematics competition here. Hope the old standards still apply there.

Religious Instruction was mandatory there, and I still recall the patience of the man dealing with loud-mouthed Monty-Python-quoting brats back when Dawkins first became popular. His ability to make us think further and deeper remained with me - as did some of the poetry of St John of the Cross and his introuduction to negative theology.

My Father thinks my interest in theology purely contrarian - when everyone was religious back in my youth, I was an atheist; now that society is atheist (at least Down Under) I go against that flow too. When everyone agrees without looking too deeply, I start to get the wiggins. When it becomes part of PC establishment, I revolt.

[Agnes Selby]

Dear Agnes,

Thanks for your kind and thoughtful reply. One of the great ironies to me is how the education unions and teachers so vociferously in favour of public education 'force' parents to spend big $$$ on private education to avoid it. Going from a local in the Western suburbs of Sydney to The Hampton School in London was quite a (pleasant) shock. These guys could speak Latin and were doing maths I hadn't heard of - and I was a regular place-getter in the national public schools mathematics competition here. Hope the old standards still apply there.

Religious Instruction was mandatory there, and I still recall the patience of the man dealing with loud-mouthed Monty-Python-quoting brats back when Dawkins first became popular. His ability to make us think further and deeper remained with me - as did some of the poetry of St John of the Cross and his introuduction to negative theology.

My Father thinks my interest in theology purely contrarian - when everyone was religious back in my youth, I was an atheist; now that society is atheist (at least Down Under) I go against that flow too. When everyone agrees without looking too deeply, I start to get the wiggins. When it becomes part of PC establishment, I revolt.

--------------

Dear Brendan,

Whatever you do, do not succumb to PC. That is when you will stop thinking. And what a pity that would be.

I do not know if the newest trend has reached Canberra yet, but here
in Sydney there are endless complaints about school children getting too much homework. Public school teachers are very much behind the idea of NO HOMEWORK. This to me is an alarming trend. It would, of course, suit the teachers as they would no longer have to correct homework.

As for the English school system, I do not know anything about it.
However, my friend who was doing her doctoral thesis rather late in life, informed me that many of the books she consulted at Oxford during her first try at her doctorate, were no longer to be found in the library at Oxford.

And I suppose you know what is happening at Macquarie University...!

Regards,
Agnes.

[Donald Isler]

Agnes wrote:

"And I suppose you know what is happening at Macquarie University...!"


Oh, Agnes, I thought they had gone out of business by now!

[Agnes Selby]

Agnes wrote:

"And I suppose you know what is happening at Macquarie University...!"


Oh, Agnes, I thought they had gone out of business by now!

-------------

Donald, now they are investigating a Mr. Ma,
the president of the student body. They would like to know what happened to the $100,000 in his care!!!

The witchhunt continues and I suppose it will continue for some time yet.

Regards,
Agnes.
----------------------

[Donald Isler]

With students who do such personal "fund-raising" they may go out of business after all!

[Agnes Selby]

With students who do such personal "fund-raising" they may go out of business after all!

-----------------

According to today's Herald, Mr. Ma is not resigning.

I do not think that Macquarie University will go out of business as many faculties concerned with the Liberal Arts and Arts in general are being replaced by computer science. Computer science attracts students from
overseas and that is where the money is as these students pay for their education. As the new Vice Chancellor is an accountant by profession, he probably knows what he is doing. The fact that in the process he is destroying the university's Liberal Arts programs is besides the point.

Regards,
Agnes.
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