Religious bigotry, was Re: SCIENCE CONFUSION IN THE US.

[Richard Pyle]

> Despite the confusions of both the creationists and Dr. Jones, science and
> religion are separate ways of knowing, and they are ways of knowing
> *different things*. Each loses credibility only when it attempts to answer
> the questions of the other.

Not to belabor this extensive and marginally off-topic thread, but.....

I've not seen many religious attacks against atomic theory or general
relativity, nor have I seen many scientists arguing against the existence of
Heaven (regardless of whether or not they believe in it). The obvious
problems arise when both science and religion claim domain over the same
questions (e.g., origin concepts of life, planet, universe, etc.), yet have
disparate interpretations of the "evidence".  When such conflicts present
themselves, who decides which realm of "knowledge" has proper claim?  The
scary part of the evolution/creationism debate for me is the relatively
recent shift on the part of the creationism side to publicly claim that
"thousands" of scientists have "serious" problems with evolutionary
"theory", and that a great deal of "scientific" evidence supports so-called
"Intelligent Design Theory" (e.g., see
http://abcnews.virage.com/cgi-bin/visearch?user=abc&template=template.html&s
query=%2BVideoAsset:abcnl072700).  In a sense, this is the creationism side
conceding that questions of origin are the domain of science, and then
attempting to maintain that recent scientific discoveries lend more support
to I.D. theory than to evolutionary theory.  Clearly, I've been reading the
wrong journals, because I missed this trend in the recent discoveries......

Aloha,
Rich

Richard L. Pyle
Ichthyology, Bishop Museum
1525 Bernice St., Honolulu, HI 96817
Ph: (808)848-4115, Fax: (808)847-8252
email: deepreef at bishopmuseum.org
The views expressed are those of the author, and not necessarily those of
Bishop Museum.