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

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (59389)	10/8/2014 2:17:50 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 69300

Thanks for that! What I really enjoyed was the fact that after a few sentences of his voice, I recognised an honest, thoughtful person with the goal of seeking the truth and nothing but! A real joy to listen to! It is clear from his clean responses (no ums or ahs or nervous covers) that he really knows his stuff! Thoughtful responses free of pretense and egotism. But the fact that there is a “great lot of truth” about the myriad flood stories is not new to most of us. David permits us to know that he is not an atheist. But his idea of a possible “god” is no different than mine or Einstein’s—or indeed a whole lot of atheists or agnostics. The fact that it is necessary to handle the strident certainty and irrationality of creationists and their various superstitions with a rather strong hand does not alter the fact that thoughtful and rational people have a deep awe and wonder for our world and everything in it. But those who cannot respect reality and truth and the obvious false claims made by various religious sects cannot pretend to have any true respect for anything outside of their bigotry and ideological racism as it were. "Of course, censors and heretic-hunters were always on the prowl for early students of the natural world whose discoveries were seen as a threat. Most famous was the Spanish Inquisition’s persecution of Galileo for his telescope, which led him to confirm Copernicus’s heretical theory that the Earth was not the center of the universe. “Scholars eager to defend the Bible agreed that Galileo’s findings were absurd,” Montgomery writes. “When he offered doubters a chance to look through his telescope, many either proclaimed it impious to look or denounced Jupiter’s tiny satellites as devilish illusions.” Galileo accompanied his findings with arguments about how to interpret scripture, but the church still insisted his research undermined the entire Christian faith. The irony is that the idea of an Earth-centric universe came, not from the Bible, but from the Greek mathematician, astronomer and geographer Ptolemy. If Montgomery wants to correct religion’s anti-intellectualism, he also wants to unsettle science’s tendency to calcify into orthodoxies of its own. The censors have returned in the past half-century of American history, as 20th-century fundamentalist Christians developed the notion of “biblical inerrancy” and isolated themselves from dialogue with modern science. Montgomery’s account helpfully illustrates what an anomaly these positions are in Christian tradition. Religious thinkers argued against anti-intellectualism as far back as Augustine, who declared that anything humans understood with their “rational faculties” from observing the natural world could be assumed not to contradict scripture. He makes the observation, applicable far beyond geology, that conservative evangelicals often shut themselves out of scientific discourses before breakthroughs were made, leaving them to repackage discredited theories as serious science to credulous believers. The current creationist movement is so detached from reality that it no longer even bothers to address scientific arguments—for several decades now, it has simply dismissed them. Montgomery reserves some of his deepest incredulity for Ken Ham’s Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, though his tone is more shocked than condescending. “As advertised, this natural history museum delivers a unique and unparalleled experience,” he writes. “Even minimal geologic training equips one to see how the material displayed in some of these exhibits contradicts the imperative signage.” ‘The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood’ by David R. Montgomery. 320 pp. W.W. Norton. $27. () "Montgomery’s book is anything but a softening of religion’s deliberate persecution and denial of scientific inquiry, which remains very much with us. But he wants to complicate the picture. Religion has been both the antagonist and the ally of science. It has persecuted “heretics.” But it has also provided imaginative fictions that preserve historical events and provoked intense curiosity about the natural world. If Montgomery wants to correct religion’s anti-intellectualism, he also wants to unsettle science’s potential for calcifying into orthodoxies of its own. That can be done, he shows, by simply looking more closely at the lives and passions of explorers past. It can also be done, Montgomery suggests, by looking at moments where pure reaction—in many cases to theories that sound suspiciously theological—have left scientists standing in the same position as those who insisted Jupiter’s moons in Galileo’s telescope were illusions. When J. Harlen Bretz discovered evidence of catastrophic floods in Washington in the 1920s, he was immediately dismissed by the scientific establishment. After a lifetime of tireless fieldwork, Bretz was able to prove conclusively that a previously undiscovered deep lake had sent floods to carve Washington’s Channeled Scablands. The find led to the discovery of other similar lakes and floods, but was initially disbelieved because it was “geological heresy.” Geology is far from the only discipline to become newly aware of its theological heritage; the much-debated “return of religion” has shown up all across the academy, particularly in the social sciences. Montgomery is an excellent example of how a serious, even sympathetic, engagement with religion need not threaten reason or compromise scientific integrity; in fact, to avoid doing so would be to remain blind to so many of our foundational assumptions and prejudices." Of Course, flood stories link humanity across place and time. Floods are the universal disaster event for all people for the simple reason that water is essential to life and communities have always taken advantage of this reality by living near water.