LOki
06-12-2007, 06:31 PM
<b><a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/coyne07/coyne07_index.html">ENJOY!</a></b>
<blockquote><b><a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/coyne07/coyne07_index.html">Jerry Coyne:</a></b>
<i>"Suppose we asked a group of Presidential candidates if they believed in the existence of atoms, and a third of them said "no"? That would be a truly appalling show of scientific illiteracy, would it not? And all the more shocking coming from those who aspire to run a technologically sophisticated nation."</i></blockquote><blockquote><b><a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/coyne07/coyne07_index.html">Jerry Coyne:</a></b>
<i>"By pretending that evolution is on shaky ground, and asserting that religion can contribute to our understanding of nature, creationists confuse people about the very form and character of scientific evidence. This confusion can only hurt our ability to make rational judgments about important social issues, like global warming, that involve science."</i></blockquote><blockquote><b><a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/coyne07/coyne07_index.html">Jerry Coyne:</a></b>
<i>"Scientific truths are facts agreed on by all observers using scientific methods. The formula for water is H2O, the Earth is 4.6 billion years old, and the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. These are matters that can be verified empirically by any scientist, be she Muslim, Catholic, or Hindu.
But what is "spiritual truth"? It is simply what someone believes to be true, without any need for evidence. One man's spiritual truth is another man's spiritual lie. Jesus may be the son of God to Christians, but not to Muslims. The Inuit creation story begins with a pair of giants who chopped off their daughter's fingers, which became seals, whales, walrus, and salmon. There have been thousands of religions, and thousands of religious "spiritual truths," but many of them conflict with each other, and some of them conflict with science.
Many Americans, for example, have been taught by their religion to believe that the world is less than 10,000 years old. The Inuits are wrong too: whales didn't come from detached digits but from land mammals. And those "spiritual truths" that aren't palpably false are systematically immune to challenge or rational investigation. There is simply no way to find out of them is really "true", just as we can't know which religion, if any, is "true". Is there any need, then, to speak of spiritual truths? Shouldn't we just call them "beliefs based on faith alone?" When "faith does its part," then, what does it contribute to our understanding of the way things are?"</i></blockquote><blockquote><b><a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/coyne07/coyne07_index.html">Jerry Coyne:</a></b>
<i>"This attitude has enormous political—and educational—implications. What happens if scientific truth conflicts with a politician's "spiritual truth"? This is not a theoretical problem, but a real one, as we see in debates about stem-cell research, abortion, genetic engineering, and global warming. Ignorance about evolution may be widespread, but it's not nearly as dangerous as dogmatic certainty about the real world based on faith alone."</i></blockquote>
<blockquote><b><a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/coyne07/coyne07_index.html">Jerry Coyne:</a></b>
<i>"Suppose we asked a group of Presidential candidates if they believed in the existence of atoms, and a third of them said "no"? That would be a truly appalling show of scientific illiteracy, would it not? And all the more shocking coming from those who aspire to run a technologically sophisticated nation."</i></blockquote><blockquote><b><a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/coyne07/coyne07_index.html">Jerry Coyne:</a></b>
<i>"By pretending that evolution is on shaky ground, and asserting that religion can contribute to our understanding of nature, creationists confuse people about the very form and character of scientific evidence. This confusion can only hurt our ability to make rational judgments about important social issues, like global warming, that involve science."</i></blockquote><blockquote><b><a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/coyne07/coyne07_index.html">Jerry Coyne:</a></b>
<i>"Scientific truths are facts agreed on by all observers using scientific methods. The formula for water is H2O, the Earth is 4.6 billion years old, and the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. These are matters that can be verified empirically by any scientist, be she Muslim, Catholic, or Hindu.
But what is "spiritual truth"? It is simply what someone believes to be true, without any need for evidence. One man's spiritual truth is another man's spiritual lie. Jesus may be the son of God to Christians, but not to Muslims. The Inuit creation story begins with a pair of giants who chopped off their daughter's fingers, which became seals, whales, walrus, and salmon. There have been thousands of religions, and thousands of religious "spiritual truths," but many of them conflict with each other, and some of them conflict with science.
Many Americans, for example, have been taught by their religion to believe that the world is less than 10,000 years old. The Inuits are wrong too: whales didn't come from detached digits but from land mammals. And those "spiritual truths" that aren't palpably false are systematically immune to challenge or rational investigation. There is simply no way to find out of them is really "true", just as we can't know which religion, if any, is "true". Is there any need, then, to speak of spiritual truths? Shouldn't we just call them "beliefs based on faith alone?" When "faith does its part," then, what does it contribute to our understanding of the way things are?"</i></blockquote><blockquote><b><a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/coyne07/coyne07_index.html">Jerry Coyne:</a></b>
<i>"This attitude has enormous political—and educational—implications. What happens if scientific truth conflicts with a politician's "spiritual truth"? This is not a theoretical problem, but a real one, as we see in debates about stem-cell research, abortion, genetic engineering, and global warming. Ignorance about evolution may be widespread, but it's not nearly as dangerous as dogmatic certainty about the real world based on faith alone."</i></blockquote>