Science isn’t a religion. It requires evidence before belief. Religious people will believe the most ridiculous Sh** in spite of the evidence.
I would hardly call Myers a “science crusader”, and that’s certainly not how his university employer regards his obnoxious stunts. If he was a science crusader, he’d be too busy doing research in his labs, or communicating scientific information to students, to be spending all this time on sophomoric attempts to shock and offend people.
Define "irony."
I am constantly blown away by the arrogance of “scientific atheists”. Their entire theology rests on the assumption that the human mind is capable of comprehending everything in the universe, and, thus, that anything beyond their comprehension must not exist (or there must be some “comprehendable” explanation that they haven’t thought of). This assumption, however, has no empirical scientific basis ... and thus we have the fundamental paradox of “scientific atheism” — their “empirical” faith rests entirely on an assumption with no empirical support.
Second, the entire theology rests additionally on a self-imposed hypocritical sentiment that the statement “There is a God” requires hard proof ... but the statement “There is no God” does not require similar proof.
Science is not a religion — and science doesn’t even conflict with Christianity. To my mind, science is simply God’s way of slowly revealing His miracles in a way we can understand. Atheism, however, is a faith like any other — full of assumptions, non-empirical leaps of faith. Additionally, like many other religions, it apparently has its share of arrogant holier-than-thou followers.
H
It strikes me that a university biologist who has enough spare time to do crap like this has entirely too much spare time on his hands. It also strikes me that a university biologist who has the desire to do crap like this in his spare time rather than stuff that might advance his and our knowledge of the world around us, his fervid protests aside, might not actually be that serious about science in the first place. And finally, it strikes me that PZ Myers and his like on the one hand, and Fred Phelps and his like on the other, are far more alike than either group would or probably should be comfortable with.
Both capitalism, marxism and some other ‘ism’ are claimed to be scientific. They led to various wars and killed more people than ‘religious wars’.
"Ought?"
I don't understand this. The universe and everything in it is one gigantic fluke, and yet we "ought" to do so and so and "ought" to refrain from thus and such? How does one arrive at such a conclusion from this foundation?
Showing that species are going extinct faster now than in the past does not automatically obligate us to any particular behavior.
Other than an Omnipotent Creator, no one can obligate us to do, or refrain from doing, anything that we can and want to.
Data is what it is. Should Geologists sugar coat the fact that there is no evidence of a worldwide deluge for 40 days and 40 nights some few thousands of years ago? Should Biologists sugar coat that we share common ancestry with other primates? Should Astronomers have been cognizant of their mandate to “coexist as peacefully as possible” with religious dogma that put the Earth at the center of the universe?
Once you get involved in that you are doing Apologetics, not Science. Science is what it is, if your religious beliefs contradict readily apparent reality it is your religious beliefs that must be called into question, not reality.
“The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Christian, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.”
Saint Thomas Aquinas
The main difference between Science and Religion, is that Science does not deal with "TRUTH".
Ask any Scientist.
If you look into Myers' rants, you will find that he not immune from acts of faith himself. He calls global warming skeptics "deniers"
If anyone gets tired of the antagonism, this same discussion can be carried on at an ecumenical thread that I opened several weeks ago. The end result is that if any Freeper wants to have a moderated discussion on a particular topic, he can open the thread with the scientism tag (or almost whatever tag he wants) and declare it an ecumenical or even caucus thread.
Should Scientism be considered a religion on Free Republic? [ecumenical thread]
Free Republic ^ | June 30, 2008 | Kevmo
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2038869/posts
Posted on Monday, June 30, 2008 4:44:00 PM by Kevmo
The one sentence troll who, by his own admission, had too much to think, isn’t worth anyone’s time, though, admittedly, he has managed to provoke some excellent posts refuting all of his single sentence shots and contradictions (see ## 15 & 16.)
I'm endlessly amused at the unbridled arrogance with which some scientists criticize religion, when they are so obviously unqualified to comment on the subject.
Lumping the huge diversity of all religion into one, then laying the blame for the worst behaviors of the worth of them onto that all-inclusive lump is absurdly lazy and dishonest.
Such "arguments", and I'm being generous in that description, certainly do nothing to enhance a reader's confidence in the author's capacity for objective reasoning.
And he needs no evidence for his "scientific" ideas.
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"Longer Perspectives" topic. Ordinarily I'd avoid these bloodbaths and flame festivals like the plague that they are, but this one isn't too bad, and, I'm just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
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