Politics, Religion & Science .:. grubbykid.com

Politics, Religion & Science

I've had this in the queue for awhile, and finally I'm going to post it before the Crybaby Option is triggered. What I want to draw upon, is how religion affects two (of the three) other competing spheres of life: science and politics (commerce being the last).

Here is an interesting article by Richard Dawkings, discussing science and religion entitled, Snake Oil and Holy Water:

In any case, the belief that religion and science occupy separate magisteria is dishonest. It founders on the undeniable fact that religions still make claims about the world that on analysis turn out to be scientific claims. Moreover, religious apologists try to have it both ways. When talking to intellectuals, they carefully keep off science's turf, safe inside the separate and invulnerable religious magisterium. But when talking to a nonintellectual mass audience, they make wanton use of miracle stories--which are blatant intrusions into scientific territory.

The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the raising of Lazarus, even the Old Testament miracles, all are freely used for religious propaganda, and they are very effective with an audience of unsophisticates and children. Every one of these miracles amounts to a violation of the normal running of the natural world. Theologians should make a choice. You can claim your own magisterium, separate from science's but still deserving of respect. But in that case, you must renounce miracles. Or you can keep your Lourdes and your miracles and enjoy their huge recruiting potential among the uneducated. But then you must kiss goodbye to separate magisteria and your high-minded aspiration to converge with science.

This article by Dawkins dove-tails exceedingly well with an article by Matthew Yglesias:

The natural law thing is key. The best gloss you can put on the natural/supernatural discussion is that science supposes the world to be governed by certain unchanging natural laws such that the world unfolds through a series of causal interactions that are, in principle, predictable. The content of science consists, in part, of exploring what these laws might be, an effort to discern what sorts of laws might explain the available data and, therefore, allow us to make conjectures about what happened in spatio-temporal regions where we have no data, including, of course, the future.

The two articles both deal with supernatural forces, and how to reconcile them with science, but attacking the issues from different angles. How we resolve the natural/supernatural issue, is something I don't want to get into now. However, what is interesting to me, is that Catholicism has a better track-record. in dealing with science than modern Evangelical Protestantism. Yes, yes, for every near-excommunication of Galileo there was a Saint Augustine and a Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Not that Catholicism and many religions as a whole don't continually interfere with science (see cells, stem), but it seems that Catholicism has reconciled itself with the big issues. Namely, evolution and natural selection. Also, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism all have reconciled themselves to evolution and natural selection. It seem plausable (to me) that evolution can exist with a supernatural being - at some point God enters the picture as an origin. I don't know if there are vestiges of Lamarkian "Divine Watchmaker" in this line of thought, but Catholic dogma largely has put evolution aside as a contentious issue.

But not Evangelical Protestants. The groups who are largegly pushing for the eradication of science in the classroom are Evangelical Protestants, and in some cases, Evangelical Catholics (which are another breed of Catholocism). I was always curious why Protestantism, especially of the evangelical flavor, seemed to be at the leading edge of the attack on evolution, natural selection, and science in general.

The only hypothesis I have been able to center on was the arbiter of truth and the path to God. Protestantism lacks a centralized arbiter of right and wrong like Catholocism has in the Pope. Lacking this shield and arbiter, Protestants are well aware of their tenouous connection to "revelaed truth." While Catholics fetisize the Pope, Evengelical Protestants fetisize the Bible. Which is understandable, becuase the Bible is the only unfalible truth when they don't have the "unfalible" Pope.

Personally, as a protestant (Lutheran) I take great umberage about unfailibility of a man; the only unfalible man was Jesus, but this is besides the point, and many wars have already been fought over this point. Protestants lacking a Pope fits me fine: I'm secure in my (if somewhat Gnostic) beliefs and don't need a falible man intepreting the bible which I can do, thank you very much. There are hard times where a Pope would have made things easier, but the power of not having to go through an intermediary (the Pope) to talk to God outweighs this.

This is a larger point: the distance between God in Catholicism and Protestantism (especially the Evangelical flavor) is quite different.

Comments

Jw says:

This is a larger point: the distance between God in Catholicism and Protestantism (especially the Evangelical flavor) is quite different.

Actually, isn't that THE point?

Posted by: Jw at August 15, 2005 1:45 PM #

plemeljr says:

Actually, isn't that THE point?

Well - yes. But not only that they are different, but how interpretations of Truth and Law are delivered and adjudicated are important points, which I guess, flows from the difference in the distance between God and Man.