No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Science vs. religion: no contest.

This column, though milder than most examples of atheist-bashing, makes all the standard mistakes when it complains about "evangelical atheists" abusing science and creating false dichotomies.

What the author fails to acknowledge is that religionists want to have it both ways. They want to say that science confirms their beliefs, but when it fails to do so, they complain that science should keep its grubby hands out of their bailiwick.

It's one thing to say that there is some ineffable, indefinable being inhabiting some non-material plane that science can never understand. But if you assert that this being interacts with the material universe, responding to prayers and suspending the laws of physics etc., then you are making a scientific claim that can and should be tested. And if the claim doesn't hold up, then honesty demands that you retract it.

I'm always amused in a way by the frantic efforts of cdesign proponentsists to wrap themselves in the mantle (or cheap tuxedo) of scientific respectability by attempting to force their personal religious beliefs into the science classroom. If they had a single functioning neuron between them, they would realize that not only are they parading their appalling ignorance of science, but they are making a mockery of their religion, and diminishing and demeaning their god. You have to wonder how strong their faith really is if it must be buttressed by such frenzied exercises in power-wielding, indoctrination and intellectual dishonesty.

On a tangential note, another religious talking point I often hear is that religion creates a sense of awe, and science kills it. "How can you look at a sunset or a newborn baby, and not believe in God..." etc. etc. The truth is exactly the opposite. The more science you know, the more awe you feel, but it is the genuine awe of understanding (or at least beginning to understand) rather than the cheap phony awe of ignorance.

When you look up in the sky on a frosty night and know that there are billions of stars in this galaxy, and billions of other galaxies out there, or when you stand on the rim of the Grand Canyon and think about a stream of water slowly and steadily carving out this huge gash in the earth's surface over millions of years, then you experience a much more profound sense of awe than if you close your mind down and wallow in some childish just-so story. "Goddidit, the end" - how can anyone find satisfaction in that, unless they are totally bereft of intellectual curiosity?

The bible says that we were made from dirt, or from the rib of a thing made from dirt. Science tells us that our atoms were forged in the heart of stars! It also tells us that all life on earth is related. I find this incredibly uplifting, while the simple-minded genesis myth is petty and tawdry. And yet the religionists are constantly braying that the scientific picture is depressing and degrading: "We evolved from monkeys, therefore we are nothing but monkeys." This not only smacks of the crude reductionism they constantly accuse us of, it is self-refuting on its face.

If science and religion are in conflict, too bad for religion. The universe is not going to rearrange itself to conform to anyone's ignorance. It's no contest: science wins!