Important Thinkers
I care about the thinkers of great thoughts in my time. I like reading Edge for this reason.
The latest issue calls for the top 100 great thinkers of our time.
our miracles
with his…
Daniel Gilbert’s article is amazing:
Scientists understand all this piety and faith by assuming that belief in God is one of the many primitive superstitions that human beings are in the process of shedding. God is a myth that has been handed down from one generation of innocents to the next, and science is slowly teaching them to cultivate their skepticism and shed their credulity. As Albert Einstein wrote:
“(I had) a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies. It was a crushing impression. Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude towards the convictions which were alive in any specific social environment — an attitude which has never again left me.” (Autobiographical Notes, 1949)
Einstein’s orgy of freethinking forever changed our understanding of space and time, and the phrase “Religion for Dummies” became, in the view of many scientists, a redundancy.
It’s so interesting in light of the proceedings in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania right now about the controversy over teaching Intelligent Design along with evolution as viable scientific curricula. I’m fascinated by this controversy.
Of course you know which side I take in all this. But dare I say that, from a socially-controlling kind-of sensibility (looking out for the good of mankind by pulling the wool over its eyes, and mankind being happy with that wool), it makes a little sense. Eat the tripe, and love the tripe. Ignorance is bliss.
But if your world is protected by the myth of religion, then so be it. You’re happy. Sure, God pulled a rib from Adam and made Eve. Right. Okay so we don’t really know what image Adam and Eve took. It’s supposed they were multi-cell organisms whereas they could just have easily been single-celled!
Was there really an ark? Two, and only two of each type of animal; even the types that may have been evolving at the time? Wait, what?
Should scientific fact sit in the shadows, nodding its knowing head, and inviting the freethinkers among us to hang out with it, while letting the blissful believers manufacture whatever sort of logic they wish to support their pseudo-science?. Whatever. The history and historiography become one big trivial lump. Who cares? It is the word of God. The bible is the word of God. Evolution is only a theory.
Scientists like the truth.
Believers like their “happy place”.
Should scientists let believers believe their “happy place” to balance the social equilibrium? Is ignorance bliss?
Should Intelligent Design even be recognized?
Creationism is prominent in a recent lawsuit that charges the University of California system with violating the constitutional rights of applicants from Christian schools whose high school coursework is deemed inadequate preparation for college.
Well of course it’s inadequate preparation! A rib becomes a woman? This is supposed to be scientifically proven? What of REAL science? Do these Christian schools teach evolutionism as well as creationism? Is evolution downplayed in favor of “God works in mysterious ways we can’t always explain”? (See what Bob Jones University Press says about their textbooks.)
Now I’m not getting down on Christianity, or any other religion for that matter. Go right ahead and believe in your God. Just don’t deny scientific fact. As Daniel Gilbert put it in his article:
“When people look out on the natural world and declare that there must be a God because all of this could surely not have happened by chance, they are not overestimating the orderly complexity of nature. Rather, they are underestimating the power of chance to produce it.”
