Monday, January 5, 2009

Worldviews on Parade

This comes from an article about Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana and his "extremism."

Perhaps most disturbing in broad policy terms is his support for teaching intelligent design in public school. Jindal's position on creationism and intelligent design reveals a colossal break with reason that we cannot accommodate again in our elected officials. Bush was a disaster we dare not repeat, but Jindal appears to be nothing but W with Indian ancestry. Denying the validity of evolution is no different than claiming atoms do not exist or that the DNA is not genetic code, or that al Qaeda was in Iraq before our invasion. Jindal's position is untenable.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-schweitzer/the-extremism-of-bobby-ji_b_154883.html
Perhaps a bit of hyperbole??

The author then goes on to add this:

Evolution has been proven beyond any doubt by paleontology, embryology, molecular biology, island biogeography, microbiology and cell physiology. Yet in spite of evolution's unprecedented success in explaining the living world, in spite of the fact that evolution is one of the greatest triumphs of science, creationism and intelligent design have crept into the mainstream of American thought and into public school curricula in several states. . .

Science and religion can never be brought under one roof without sacrificing intellectual honesty. . .

We are told in Genesis that all life, everything that ever existed on earth, was created in six days. Evolution proves that wrong. The fossil record proves that wrong. Evolution in a Petri dish proves that wrong.
He accuses Bobby Jindal of extremism using his own brand of extremism. Yet he tries to sound reasoned and civil with phrases like this:

Science searches for mechanisms and the answer to "how" the universe functions. Religion seeks meaning and the answer to "why" the world is as we know it. . . . The two seek different answers to separate questions using fundamentally and inherently incompatible methods.

Seems like the author might be a speechwriter for outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins <http://richarddawkins.net/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins> in his spare time — so vehemently anti-religious that he doesn't even recognize his own prejudice.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The person you are complaining about is very scientifically literate, which would make him the exact opposite of you.

"evolution is one of the greatest triumphs of science" is correct. If you don't know that then you need to educate yourself.

Science searches for mechanisms and the answer to "how" the universe functions. Religion seeks meaning and the answer to "why" the world is as we know it. . . . The two seek different answers to separate questions using fundamentally and inherently incompatible methods.

Religion might try to answer "why" questions, but so far it has only produced a bunch of wild guesses that have no evidence. Religions have proven again and again to be completely worthless inventions. While religions remain permanently stuck in the Dark Ages, science and only science improves our understanding of life, our planet, and the universe. Science advances human progress while religion just gets in the way.

Eutychus said...

Well Bobxxx, wanting to be scientific, consider Pascal’s Wager. If we choose God and lose, we are in the same circumstances as everyone else. But if we choose God and win, we have gained everything.
Now Bobxx, what probabilities are involved and why not God? God has much more to offer then Dawkins. At least God is systematically consistent.

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