——This is a case in which entrenched ideology is self-destructive. ——
Meanwhile on Free Republic, myth trumps science every day
I understand your comment, but have to say that myth trumps truth every day in society, and often science trumps truth. There was recently a publication in Nature in which a guy who was the head of Amgen’s cancer drug development program for many years selected 53 landmark studies in cancer research, from high impact factor journals and high profile labs and had a team of about 100 researchers try to replicate the results of these studies. They could only replicate 6.
When they told one of the researchers they did his experiment 50 times and never got the result he got, that researcher said ‘we did the experiment 6 times, got that result once, and published it’.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/us-science-cancer-idUSBRE82R12P20120328
Bayer did a similar study and found that >2/3rds of the published studies they investigated could not be replicated.
The bottom line, to me, is that no one has a lock on truth, or a right to be arrogant based on self-perceived ‘superior knowledge’. I've had many conversations over the years with scientists who scoff at the idea of God and at religion. I personally find it intellectually shallow to believe that everything exists for no reason, and to summarily dismiss spirituality and faith. This world view is, in fact, its own type of ‘leap of faith’ - faith in the secular. Dogma, including secular dogma, is often the enemy of truth, IMHO.