{"id":44681,"date":"2017-10-24T18:29:17","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T00:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=44681"},"modified":"2017-10-25T10:15:33","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T16:15:33","slug":"science-versus-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/10\/science-versus-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"Science Versus Religion?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A typical scientific laboratory from back around the time when I went to college in the 1880s.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A few more notes from my files:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Modern science, it has been said, has dissolved Christianity just as if, metaphorically speaking, it had been dropped into a vat of nitric acid.\u00a0 \u201cHis doctrine of evolution,\u201d wrote the American atheist Robert Ingersoll (d. 1899) of Charles Darwin, \u201chis doctrine of the survival of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species, has removed in every thinking mind the last vestige of orthodox Christianity.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

D\u2019Holbach, Syst\u00e8me de la Nature<\/em> (1770):<\/span><\/p>\n

An atheist is someone who destroys human chimeras in order to call people back to nature, experience and reason.\u00a0 He is a thinker who, having meditated on matter, its properties and ways of behaving, has no reason to imagine ideal forces, imaginary intelligences or rational beings in order to explain the phenomena of the universe or the operations of nature\u2014which, far from making us know nature better, merely make it capricious, inexplicable and unknowable, useless for human happiness.[2]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

According to many advocates of atheism, it was ignorance of the laws of nature that gave birth to the idea of God, and a deeper knowledge of what makes nature tick will ultimately liberate humanity from false notions about supernatural beings and divine powers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The notion that science and religion are, have always been, and must everlastingly be at war with one another rests a very dubious reading of history.[3]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Cited by McGrath, Twilight, 99. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Cited by Alister McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World<\/em> (New York and London: Doubleday, 2004), 30.<\/span><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> See, for example, Alister McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World<\/em> (New York and London: Doubleday, 2004), 79-83; also Summer of the Gods<\/em>.\u00a0 McGrath is a historian of theology at Oxford University who holds a doctorate in biochemistry.<\/span><\/p>\n

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***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And now for some things that have caught my interest in recent science-related news:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCould Brain Scans Determine Guilt or Innocence in Court?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cRosetta\u2019s Lost Picture From Moments Before It Struck a Comet\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a curious item:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cArchaeologists are mystified by ancient \u2018gates\u2019 in Saudi lava fields:\u00a0Google Earth reveals hundreds of geoglyphs in the desert, possibly 9,000 years old.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Flying, earlier today, from Richmond, Virginia, to New York City, I found myself looking with fascination at the coastline of Virginia and Maryland, with all its complicated bays and inlets, and reflecting on \u201cfractals\u201d and the \u201ccoastline paradox.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 It turns out that the length of such a coastline is, in a sense, almost unknowable. \u00a0Virtually infinite.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The limits of human knowledge are fascinating and, sometimes, surprising.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure how much stock should be placed in such surveys. \u00a0I certainly don\u2019t consider them \u201chard science.\u201d \u00a0But this one certainly seems to suggest that Provo-Orem, the largely \u201cMorgbot\u201d or \u201cMor(m)on\u201d community in \u201cUtard\u201d that my wife and I have adopted as our home may perhaps not be the horrible hell on Earth that some particularly zealous critics of Mormonism<\/a> occasionally seek to portray it as:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThese Are the Happiest Cities in the United States\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And this isn\u2019t exactly science news, either. \u00a0But it comes from the eminent journal Nature<\/em>. \u00a0And, more importantly, it should be widely known. \u00a0Iran continues to act, at least on such occasions, as a lawless nation. \u00a0This case is an outrage:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIranian scholar sentenced to death: Ahmadreza Djalali, a researcher in disaster medicine, has 20 days to appeal against his death sentence.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from New York City,\u00a0New York<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 A few more notes from my files: \u00a0 Modern science, it has been said, has dissolved Christianity just as if, metaphorically speaking, it had been dropped into a vat of nitric acid.\u00a0 \u201cHis doctrine of evolution,\u201d wrote the American atheist Robert Ingersoll (d. 1899) of Charles Darwin, \u201chis doctrine of the survival of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":33507,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nScience Versus Religion?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    A few more notes from my files:   Modern science, it has been said, has dissolved Christianity just as if, metaphorically speaking, it\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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