Uh-oh. Those Catholic creationists had better watch out: the Vatican thinks they’re pagans.
Believing that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.
Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a “destructive myth” had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies.
He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a “kind of paganism” because it harked back to the days of “nature gods” who were responsible for natural events.
Yes, I can see how the major monotheistic religions might take offense at the “God of the Gaps” and Designer gods—they are attempts to shift the deity from the cosmic and the abstract to the mundane and the petty, and also to put those gods in the realm of the testable.
I can’t say that I agree entirely with Consolmagno, though.
“Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism—it’s turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do.”
No, we don’t need religion for that. Atheists can have a conscience, too, and we are aware that there are human limits to what we should do. Too often, religion is used as a justification for doing the inhuman to heretics and unbelievers…and to pagans. It’s a piss-poor substitute for morality, unless you think propping up the obscenely rich or damning people for what they do with their genitals is “morality” (and isn’t that also an awfully petty concern for their majestic deity?).
Do these people even know what ‘superstition’ means? I rather think that putting some baked goods and fermented juices through a ritual to turn it into flesh and blood — in some undefinable ‘spiritual’ sense undetectable to any and all methods of examination — qualifies.
Far away, across the fields
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spell…
He’s absolutely right! A classic example would be that Astrology needs Astronomy in order to properly track the movements of the heavens, ie.- to keep it honest and close to reality. Otherwise horoscopes would be nothing but random ramblings with no actual basis for how the zodiac is affecting one’s life. And we all know how silly and superstitious that would be.
No, we don’t need religion for that.
Of course we don’t. Plato showed that in the Euthrophro, but apparently the only bits of Plato the Church likes to remember are the bits about the soul surviving after death, as opposed to the bits about how the good is good independently of any gods.
The religious commonly say things like “And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do.”
So are these people saying that without religion THEY would have a hard time not raping and pillaging? Is their belief in God all that is keeping them from committing terrible crimes?
I’d love to see a poll of the religious beliefs of violent felons currently doing time in prison. My guess would be that very few of them are atheists.
Wow. So now the Catholic church has the effrontery to insist that the most natural reading of its own creation myth is actually some sort of evil pagan idea.
On the whole, I’m pleased that they’re making honest effort to dissociate themselves from utter tripe. Still, it is a bit annoying that they’d so glibly insist that a laughably bad interpretation of their precious scripture is the only Pious one. And why give your cosmology a morality anyway?
What is truly funny about this is how the RCC substitutes itself for it’s own holy book. Picks and chooses which parts are literal and which are not yet maintains it is always correct.
What they don’t ever seem to address with any degree of competency is the problems THEIR view creates for the religion. It’s far worse IMHO than the literal creationists.
Fundamentalists think that all Catholics are going to hell anyway, so won’t make a ripple there.
Goodness. PZ and his ECS’s continue in their own inimicable (yet eminently replicable) style.
Why don’t you simply make a statement that there is nothing that you and the Catholic Church will ever agree upon and call it good?
Wait. I forgot. It’s to make sure that the PZ Backslapper association still has something to TALK about other tahn invertebrates that has any semblance of meaning and still gets people to comment.
And when the going gets tough, prevent opposing views from being heard so that the ECS’s might be better heard.
Yep. No dogma or unquestioned beliefs here.
Compass,
This blog is the least like an echo chamber I’ve ever seen. If you can’t realize that simply go to any religious forum. Exactly what do you expect people to disagree just to disagree? It’s PZ’s blog for goodness sakes he can write about whatever he finds interesting.
At least your starting to understand. And what dogma did PZ put out there? Can you ever refute is argument without going to the same tired old slock?
Yep. No dogma or unquestioned beliefs here.
And we’re sure you’re especially free of such things. Compass, your sarcasm routine is getting very very old and boring. Plus, you said yourself that coming here day after day and insulting everyone takes a lot out of you. (You’re quite a martyr, evidently.) So, why not, you know, shut the fuck up and go away, since no one here has any use for you?
And please, no tedious sarcastic remarks about ‘echo chambers’. You’re getting very predictable.
The Science Pundit wrote:
“He’s absolutely right! A classic example would be that Astrology needs Astronomy in order to properly track the movements of the heavens, ie.- to keep it honest and close to reality. Otherwise horoscopes would be nothing but random ramblings with no actual basis for how the zodiac is affecting one’s life. And we all know how silly and superstitious that would be.”
And, by the same token, Astronomy needs Astrology in order to have a human side, to know that, just because the stars are remote and seemingly indifferent to our lives, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t still study and care about them in a deeply personal way.
Just a point, Chance.
The Bible does not define the Church, the Church defined the Bible. See the various Councils of Nicea and the Synods of Orange and Carthage. Biblical literalism has been a peculiarly Protestant POV. Gallileo notwithstanding – that was mostly political.
Let’s Just Say (tm from another list), why yes, I AM a fetus-worshiping, anti-death-penalty, Maryolator who teaches that evolutionary biology best explains things like the prostatic urethra and gorillas who know AMESLAN.
compass wrote: Why don’t you simply make a statement that there is nothing that you and the Catholic Church will ever agree upon and call it good?
That wouldn’t be true, you see, since they agree that YEC:s are morons. HTH
Fusilier,
Kinda, The church derives it’s ‘teachings’ from the bible. So yes the RCC has it’s own interpretation of the text. So does every religion. All Christian religions ‘define’ the text as they see it. And biblical literalism can’t be totally passed on to the Protestants who in my view have a much more consistent approach, even if I disagree with elements of it.
The RCC is just as literal in many ways as any Protestant church and in many ways their literalism is worse. They literally believe alot of things but place others in the realm of mythology while pretending science butresses their beliefs. It is dishonest at the core.
They view Genesis as mythology and are critical of Protestants for not doing the same all the while insisting Mary was an eternal virgin. The RCC calling out Protestants for using mythology is simply the pot calling the kettle black.
D:
OK, I’ll bite. How is literalism the most natural reading of the first part of Genesis? I think the most natural reading is that it’s allegory. First off, it’s contradictory. If you try to follow it as a literal explanation, you have God creating man and woman before the seventh day (1:27) then creating man after the seventh day (2:7) and then woman (2:22). Second, religion has never really concerned itself with nailing down precise explanations for natural phenomenon. Instead it prescribes rituals and behaviors.
So the most natural way to approach a sacred text whether it’s the Baghavad Gita or the Gylfaginning is to ask “What does this say about this culture’s view of virtue and the relation between humans and god(s)?” You can reasonably assume that this was also the primary reading expected of the believers of that text.
It’s not as if storytelling is a modern invention. Aesop could tell about the ant and the grasshopper and Plato could write about the allegory of the cave without anyone ever imagining that these referred to actual events. I honestly don’t think that ancient believers were anything as stupid as modern literalists. Clearly, the laws in Exodus and Leviticus were taken seriously and literally considered to be handed down by God, literally under the circumstances described. But I doubt, for instance, that many ever believed in an historical Job. The lesson of the story comes through, and it really doesn’t matter whether it actually happened.
The notion of total biblical inerrancy is not natural in any way. I think it’s more a product of Victorian rationalization tendencies than anything else. Before that time, people might have said they believed the whole Bible was true, but only in the sense that they hadn’t made any serious effort to examine the belief critically. But even the slightest effort reveals inconsistencies, so the only way to support Biblical literalism is to backfill your beliefs with outrageous epicycles. I suspect that nobody ever, ever bothered to do this in pre-Enlightenment times when it was considered good enough to accept a belief on received wisdom from authority and leave it at that.
At least your(sic) starting to understand. And what dogma did PZ put out there? Can you ever refute is(sic) argument without going to the same tired old slock?(sic)
Argument HAS been used. Even in making the simple challenge: “Prove the validity of atheism.”
The ONLY valid argument for the existence of atheism has never -not once- been used in here, by PZ or any of his adherents. Any effort to show that those other arguments in favor of atheism are invalid (they usually all boil down to appeals to naked reason and nothing else, which is insufficient -as any honest scientist ought to know-) are either shouted down with ad hominem responses, disregarded or misrepresented. rrt is a noted exception to this rule in this forum.
As for this: This blog is the least like an echo chamber I’ve ever seen, you have GOT to be kidding me. Heaven can only envision what other sites -left or right- that you visit that makes this site look fair and balanced. We all know that there are myriad examples of echo chambers in every range of discussion. That is no revelation. But to say this is not one of them is either blindness or serial denial.
Oh, goodie. Don’tcha just love to see one superstition spank another? Okay, Brother Consolmagno denounces creationism–that’s good, right? Because it harks “back to the days of ‘nature gods’ who were responsible for natural events.” Boo, hiss! So, what is he saying–I should believe in a nonnature god who is responsible for unnatural events? What’s the difference between that and believing in a nonexistent god who is responsible for nonhappening events?
How about not believing in a nonexistent god who isn’t responsible for nonhappening events? There.
The ONLY valid argument for the existence of atheism
‘The existence of atheism’? Of course atheism exists, compass. Lots of people are atheists. Therefore it exists. Sharp mind you got, there.
has never -not once- been used in here, by PZ or any of his adherents. Any effort to show that those other arguments in favor of atheism are invalid (they usually all boil down to appeals to naked reason and nothing else, which is insufficient -as any honest scientist ought to know
You a scientist, compass? What kind of science do you do?
compass–I’m genuinely curious, now that I actually have someone like you with whom I can interact (I’m an attorney and have to read a lot of complaints from individuals that represent themselves and can’t communicate with them). Do you honestly fashion yourself to be an intelligent person? Do those that socialize with you take you seriously? Do you think that, just because you can string words together, the resultant group of words actually has any value whatsoever in a discussion or argument?
Reading your comments about atheism, reason, logic, etc. is like reading complaints from pro se parties who think they know something about the law. Sure, they can spell legal terms properly, and place them in senteces with citations to cases, but the result means absolutely nothing in the law. I sit and wonder whether these people are at all cognizant of how moronic they are. So, are you compass?
Personally, I find it funny that many here cannot simply accept an ally of convenience and leave it at that. I’m not really sure what good it does to bash Brother Consolmagno. Whatever you think of him, he and others like him would be more likely to work with us than against us in keeping creationism out of the public school curriculum.
I respect everyone’s right to free speech, but I just think that many on this blog have no sense of how to play politics effectively.
PaulC,
I understand your point of view but think you are making it from a modern perspective. Genesis is contradictory because it simply isn’t well thought out or written. It’s also likely to be 2 storytellers. But I think it was clearly meant to convey cave dwellers ideas on how the world came to be. It is a story, but one I feel was meant to be passed along as an explanation.
Thats what makes the RCC position so week. Why did they include it in the bible at all if it’s so ‘mythological’? What is clear is evolution wasn’t part of the thinking and the RCC likes to pretend it all fits into their scheme post hoc.
Compass-
Are you just incapable of understanding a default position? You don’t have to prove something doesn’t exist, you have to prove it does. But you understand this as you worship the FSM.
Yeah your right. Apparently it’s an echo chamber to understand a mundane argument such as you put forth daily is in fact mundane. The very nature of this site is balance against the hordes of drone sites spouting ignorance.
PaulC,
I missed your last post. I agree politically this man would be a good ally. Anyone who accepts evolution as the good science it is, is a friend in that fight. Thats not the point of my discussion. You shouldn’t draw any generalizations from so few words as that contained in a post or 2.
We’re just chatting.:-)
Chance, I’m more inclined to agree with fusilier. The Christian church defined its scriptures (and at the time of the creation of the New Testament canon the Christian sects coalesced into the only Christian church that existed for the next several hundred years, the Roman Catholic), so the church gets to decide how to interpret it. When Protestants decided to embrace individual interpretation, Christian unity gave way to the tens of thousands of denominations we have today. I suppose one could argue, as you did, that Protestants are “consistent”, but their consistency has led to chaos. I’m no longer a practicing Catholic (or, indeed, any kind of Christian other than “lapsed”), but I argue in Axiomatic Catholicism that Christian consistency resides in the hierarchical system whose center is the Vatican. Anything else is rootless and feckless. But I shouldn’t get too excited or dogmatic about it. After all, I’m merely making an argument on behalf of what I feel is the best approach to a belief system that is a bunch of stuff and nonsense.
Ok, compass, I’ll bite. What is “the ONLY valid argument for the existence of atheism”?
Prove the validity of your (presumed) not-believing-in-my-blog-partner’s-[hiney]-gnomes.
What is “the ONLY valid argument for the existence of atheism”?
I assume what is behind Compass’s remarkably incoherent English there is that he is implying that one has to ‘prove’ the validity of atheism (I assume that’s what he means by ‘existence of atheism’), while his own religious beliefs do not require this proof. This would probably mean that either Compass thinks his own special brand of Christianity is simply ‘obviously true’, or, better yet, that he thinks it’s been proven. If so, I’d love to hear what C’s ‘evidence’ for his own faith is.
Chance:
Here’s a summary on the modern Roman Catholic position of biblical inerrancy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_inerrancy
I would agree that the pre-modern view might have been a simpler assertion of truth, but the Catholic position is no weaker than any other religion trying to reconcile its ancient sacred texts with modern knowledge.
While I don’t accept this view, I think literalism is arguably presumptuous to point of blasphemy. The assumption that the Bible is the Word of God doesn’t mean that God wanted to use it to give us an accurate account of the creation of the world any more than he used it to supply a recipe for chocolate brownies (or even the fact that chocolate–a New World crop–existed at all). Knowledge of the world’s origin is interesting, but not that important in a religious sense.
God can tell stories the same way humans can. Personally I don’t see what’s inconsistent about the idea that God could lie. In fact, the Bible has God lying directly to Abraham about the sacrific of Isaac to test his faith. Who’s to say exactly what purpose is to be found in any passage of the Bible. Basically, I just don’t see the big deal. Literalism is clearly contradicted by facts, and it seems to me that it takes a really warped mind to expend much effort trying to make a case for it.
Ok, compass, I’ll bite. What is “the ONLY valid argument for the existence of atheism”?
There is only one? Huh…I thought a perfectly valid argument for atheism was that some educated and thinking people finally realized that the whole invisible uber-being schtick was a load of crap. Seriously…humans have been around for thousands upon thousands upon thousand upon thousands of years and how many gods and goddesses have we gone through?
Here’s an idea: we should try to figure out the number of gods/goddesses/spirits/demons/kami/oni/etc. that humans have discarded throughout history and list them. That would be impressive.
The ONLY valid argument for the existence of atheism has never -not once- been used in here, by PZ or any of his adherents.
Is this it?
Coulter
Because if she exists, there can be no god.
But that doesn’t in any way shape or form mean there interpretation is the correct one. Thats simply an argument from tradition. It seems also the RCC is somewhat circular in it’s thinking here. They use a verse to give credence to them being the true church which the gives them authority to interpret the bible.
I don’t see chaos, I see differing ways to worship within the same religion. And they are remarkably consistent on salvation doctrines.
Rootless? Protestants use the bible as the root. Feckless? c’mon. Your making an assumption that a religion must be consistent to be of value. The mere fact that 10000 sects have adherents who think they ahve a good religion makes that moot.
Your argument boils down to this : Some men wear funny hats and sit in a room. These men know more about God than me(somehow) so I will suppress my own intellect and listen to them.
I find the Protestant view much more internally consistent even if some are retards in terms of science. Al Franken in one of his books lists liberal Protestantism as the greatest religion the world has ever spawned. I think he may be correct.
I believe he thinks the “ONLY valid argument for the existence of atheism” is the argument from the existence of evil. I don’t quite see it — that could also be an argument for a deranged tyrant god.
He’s got it backwards, anyway. We don’t need an argument for atheism: he needs an argument for theism. As the one making the positive claim, the onus is on him to provide evidence.
Consolmagno has implied in his comment that the areligious are not capable of telling right from wrong. Now, when we say, “Hey, we can too!”, you’re telling us we ought to hush up and simply accept the condescension of the Vatican.
I’ll tell you what good it does to bash Consolmagno. We need to combat that dehumanizing assumption of the religious, and sitting down and shutting up won’t accomplish that.
The Vatican’s astronomer wrote:
“Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism–it’s turning God into a nature god….”
This actually seems oddly accurate, given the historical experiment of the Anglican Church (a kind of re-engineered Catholicism). In the 1600-1800’s it methodically advocated its “Natural Theology”, which presumed that a legitimate insight to the mind of God is provided by careful study of His Creations. This study program led to a lot of new and more factual Natural History accumulated by country parsons and others with way too much free time on their hands. It’s this body of knowledge and public awareness which Darwin upended so compellingly with the ORIGIN. With his credible alternative to supernatural Design, Darwin made nature into a self-organizing pagan deity – and the English Church and public understood this!
Protestant religious opinion in America hasn’t included such a influential focus on natural history (its unclear one can do this in a suburban mega-church in Houston or Sacramento or Virginia). U. S. “Creationists” might expect some unintuitive results if they did focus minds more on natural history (even of bacterial flagella) … if only they read church history. And I’d have expected the Vatican to know this history, but the Vatican is large and has many parts…
I am not a Theologian. Apparently the Anglican history goes back to the English theolgian Richard Hooker in 1593 in his TOWARDS AN ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY, a founding document of the then-new Anglican Church, according to Michael Ruse’s 2003 book DARWIN AND DESIGN.
Sounds literal to me.
It is when individuals go around telling people that their actions put a ‘stain’ on an otherwise perfect creation. It seems to me if a religion wants to scare people with imaginary punishment thay better explain why and that requires origin stories.
I agree, which is why I find the RCC pretty amusing and hypocritical. They are as literal as anyone in many facets but because they aren’t on this angle they are critical.
Funny.
PZ:
Where did I tell anybody to hush up?
Chance:
It’s a doctrine of inerrancy, but it doesn’t imply that “what God wanted” to say is in literal correspondence to observable reality.
People who explain to me their entire moral code is based on NOT being punished for their actions until AFTER they die are Scary.
“…And science needs religion in order to have a conscience,…”
Compass, the fact that you come across as a drooling simpleton does not make PZ’s blog an “echo chamber.”
Physician, heal thyself.
I find it funny that compass is calling this blog an “echo chamber” in a thread where Chance and PaulC are having a debate, and where PZ and PaulC are also disagreeing.
Just goes to show how these type of people are so disinclined to actually look for or examine evidence.
I’m not a religious person and I don’t believe in an afterlife. Ironically, while I also won’t stake a claim to being a Christian in the defined and institutional sense of the word, I am content to support the notion that the examples offered by a man (fictional or factual are irrelevant to me) named Jesus can guide us to change. His is the story of a social critic who dissected the fallacies and hypocrisies that permeate the human experience. He did so at great personal risk because I believe “he” saw it as I choose to see it…if one man can elect to pursue and follow “truth”, then he is entitled to believe and expect that all men can do the same.
In doing so, when each individual makes this necessary choice, we will cease pursuing and negotiating for a better, future destiny…and we will finally live heaven on earth. Our destiny is of our own making. I refuse to allow religion, or those who believe it is theirs to define, to remove that destiny from my earthly grasp. In the end, we can choose to be good people that honor humanity without submitting to any religious institutions or doctrines. Attempts to argue that science needs religion to keep it humane are therefore absurd.
read more here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
Thoughttheater,
All I can say is WOW!. That is one of the best posts i’ve seen anywhere on the internet. You expressed yourself very clearly.
Thanks for the thoughts.
PaulC –
“OK, I’ll bite. How is literalism the most natural reading of the first part of Genesis? I think the most natural reading is that it’s allegory…The notion of total biblical inerrancy is not natural in any way. I think it’s more a product of Victorian rationalization tendencies than anything else”
Well, to me it seems plausible that a very natural reading of a string of declarative sentences is, um, what it says. If you think instead that every creation myth on the planet is sophisticated allegory, so that literal reading is merely the second most reasonable reading, so be it. Very possibly, but that’s not my point and I can’t really bring myself to care.
My point was just how intellectually dishonest it is for the Church to suddenly decide that what has historically been its chosen creation myth is a pagan view. Call it allegory or a story for simple people or whatever, but at least own up to it, and admit that it’s your own without gibbering about nature gods or something.
Chance,
Thanks for you kind and generous words. Much appreciated!
Daniel
http://www.thoughttheater.com
Roman Catholic church is really screwed this week. the Vatican is looking into whether couples with HIV should be allowed to use condoms, yet they have ex-communicated two Chinese bishops because it did not have papal consent.
The argument from the existence of evil doesn’t work – you can’t prove that evil exists. You have to *assume* a certain definition of evil including certain phenomena (mass murder, for example) and then show that mass murder exists and deduce that evil exists, or something like that.
But the premise that mass murder is evil is not, itself, rationally derived and cannot be justified by observation. Value judgments lie outside the domain of empiricism. That’s one of the limitations of science and why, while it is a great way to answer empirical questions (what will happen if I do X?), it isn’t applicable to non-empirical ones (is it right for me to do X?).
Rationalists (and other atheists) usually do have a conscience. But that conscience is not necessarily rational – and if it is, it’s rationality that proceeds from different axioms.
compass: If this were genuinely an “echo chamber”, you would either be banned, or wouldn’t have ever existed in the first place; don’t you think it’s fair to characterize your viewpoint as dissenting from PZ’s? The fact that you are able to make that criticism and are not persecuted (note: I did not say “not criticized in turn”) for doing so, in itself, refutes the criticism.
Jormungandr: Depending on what you mean by “discarded”, the list might well be empty. Does having one remaining believer disqualify a mythical being from the list of discarded beliefs? Then I’m not sure even your namesake belongs on it. If there’s one thing harder to kill than cockroaches, it’s belief systems. Usually the most you can do is make them hide in dark corners.
While a generally agree with you thoughttheater, I must as a similarly flawed human take the stance that just because someone “attempted” to lead people to a better world, based on his own interpretation of what would make one, I would be a fool to assume that he a) had the knowledge necessary to adequately assess the consequences of his theories, b) sufficient knowledge of world customs and cultures, many of which he could have known nothing about and c) a fundimental lack of understanding of the basic biological drives that led to both the social structure he fought and the one he advocated, to succeed. History is rife with people like Jesus and Marx, who had utopian idea that “sound” good, but ignore the basic realities of how, and why, humans think and act the way they do. The only functional system is one that sways with the occational punches thrown by the individuals that “fail” to fit into the structure. Societies are like bridges. Build them to sway to little and they break, let them sway too much and they vibrate themselves into the point of failure. We barely understand the stresses that can screw up one person, based on a rough estimate of their personality. Jesus, marx, et al, tried to build bridges with no understanding of the materials, no comprehension of the scale of time needed to succeed and no clue what the existing, never mind new, stresses would be.
The bridges they built collapsed, but society survived by living in the wreckage, until some other fool came along and tried a new design. Only, just as we **still** fail at building new structures, we continue to fail at building new societies. The problem is, when a real bridge falls down, someone looks it over to find out “why”, societies sadly keep being rebuilt using various combinations of historical ideas, with no grasp of the reasons for failure and no desire on the part of those that proclaim themselves as the arbiters of morality and social order *wanting* to learn from the mistakes, never mind ever doing so. Progress when its made is made in spite of such people, and like old world church builders, if it works and doesn’t look offensive to them in some fashion, they adopt it, then claim they knew all along that it worked. When it doesn’t, they more often than not try to rebuild the same unsupported towering columns, defective dome ceilings and fancy pedestrian threatening crenalations and physically impossible arches. And of course, they blame demons and goblins (or atheists and liberals) when the whole ediface collapses.
“Atheists can have a conscience”
And a religion doesn’t need a sky god neither.
How come guys like Compass accuse us of being an echo chamber of dgmatists, but never explain exactly how we are wrong?
Seriously, how the hell are we supposed to figure out what we’re doing wrong if nobody tells us?
PaulC: The reason I criticize even allies is simple – to improve our own position. After all, there’s nobody I agree with all the time, even myself. (Every time I read something old in my writings I find stuff I wish I had said differently.) Now, that is not to say that I feel the need to do so all the time …
George Cauldron: I would say that compass is a presuppositionalist, but it doesn’t appear that he’s thought about it even that much.
Kagehi,
I think that we are actually saying much the same thing. I was going to add my remarks here but they are quite lengthy. If you don’t mind, you can link to them here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
P.S. I have also linked back to this posting so the reader can go back and forth.
I beleive that teaching creationism in science classes is what you get when you mix bad religion together with bad science. When mainstream scientists point out how creationism is bad for science education, we listen, and agree, because we understand. And it seems nice and symmetrical when mainstream religion explains how creationism is bad for religion too.
The sad part is when the scientist goes on to say that he finds all religion offensive; and the religious side proclaims how his religion is essential in order that scientists may restrain themselves from doing something horrible.
That’s one bit of symmetry we could have done without.