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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (9744)	11/11/2010 2:40:04 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

Untrammeled imagination tends to lead to fantasy. Imagination is necessary but not enough. Religionism based on evidence? My readings suggest otherwise. Religious doctrine is "top down" from a nucleus of supposed communication between man and god[s]. This revealed truth (as it is always called, since it seems hard to check on the verity of the revealed material. Gods have no customer service line) underpins religious tradition - not only in worship but in cosmogony as well. The believer is required to mold his experience of the world to fit the provided template. The Christian version is "creation science" or "intelligent design", and always when you reduce it to first principles, you get "because the Bible says so". Since I believe that the Bible's divine inspiration coefficient is zero, I look elsewhere for the cornerstones of my view of nature. Scientism is an unfortunate result or hybrid that arose when the success of scientific theorizing ran headlong into the strong - for many irresistible - need to have the world explained to its roots. An honest scientist will tell you that science is brilliant at ordering observables, but it isn't suited to answering most of the big philosophical questions. The nearest exception to this, and one to which creationists of all religious stripes take exception, is the surprising degree of insight we have gained into the origin of the physical universe. I consider scientism to be as logically hollow as religious doctrine on the nature of nature. It takes a sort of moral courage to believe that we simply do not know the answers to some of the bigs. That is perfectly consistent with a sober and restrained use of science. It is not permitted within religion. cheers js