Christian Alliance for Progress..Science and Faith are partners

[realFedUp]

http://www.christianalliance.org/site/c.bnKIIQNtEoG/b.592941/k.CB7C/Home.htm?tr=y&auid=1135256

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History is unfolding this week in the small rural county of Dover in Pennsylvania. Here, with the growing political influence of fundamentalist Christians, teachers in public schools were recently mandated by the School Board to read a statement at the beginning of Biology classes that offers skepticism of evolution and introduces "Intelligent Design" as an alternative theory of biological development.

Intelligent Design, the younger brother of Creationism, states that organisms are too complex to be adequately explained by Darwin’s theory of evolution alone and that life required a "helping hand" in order to progress.

While some parents were relieved that their children were being introduced to Intelligent Design, and directed to read more about it in their school library’s copy of "Of Pandas and People", many others were outraged. So outraged that 11 parents are suing the School Board in a case that began Monday in Federal District Court in Harrisburg. Most believe that this case will likely end up in the Supreme Court. The ruling there will set precedence for schools across the country and have an amazingly powerful impact in years to come.

The Christian Alliance for Progress is among those that are outraged. At the heart, this is an issue of separation of church and state. This is about religious fundamentalists becoming ever more emblazoned in their attempts to influence and bring one particular view of religion into the classroom. Evolution is widely accepted as incontrovertible in science communities and faith communities across the world. That it is being so blatantly challenged is yet another sign that our public freedom is being threatened.

[Az]

1. Its ironic really

Science and religion did used to be partners. At the birth of the scientific method religion acted as midwife. The clergy knew of course that their beliefs were right. Science seemed an ideal way to show this. And for a time things worked out ok. That is until science started coming up with explanations that the church didn't like.

Then the trouble began. They had created their own monster. And it set about knocking down the pillars upon which their faith and claims rested.

At first they tried to control it. Pulling the funding of any scientist that disagreed with their position. But the genie was out of the bottle. Science would not be stopped so easily. So they turned to oppression of science. Punishment and even execution for those that spoke against them. Science has its martyrs too.

Eventually social progress brought about the age of reason. Churchs were pushed back from their positions of power. Science blossomed. Enlightenment drove our societies forward. And the churchs sought ways to take back what they once held.

Now our modern day battle continues. Having found that they cannot force their teachings into schools any longer they seek to end run the laws. They dress their beliefs up in lab coats and hope that popular appeal will keep anyone from checking beneith the coats to see if there is any substance of science present.

[realFedUp]

2. What happened to reasoned thinking?

I'll be glad when the snake oil salesmen
lose their charms again.

[Az]

3. The Great Turning Away

Ann Druyan (widow of Carl Sagan) refers to our modern world as the Great Turning Away. A combination of social forces and marketting have given rise to a rejection of reason and science in favor of more emotionally comforting explanations and means of controling our environment.

[Old Mouse]

4. If you review marketing data

(And you should, over two thousand years of non-stop heavily funded research into human behavior, but asking all the wrong questions) you would know that science has, for many, become just as blindly worshiped as religion.
Slap the word "scientists" on a concept and great blocks of the population will accept the validity of a notion without checking what or who the supposed "scientists" were.

I expected this to irritate legitimate researchers, but when I worked with them not only were they ignorant of the concept, that sort of marketing clearly influenced their purchases...

Marketing is.... something else.

[Az]

5. Corporations will use whatever they can

But the process of science demands that it's own work be questioned. It demands it not be worshipped. Your issue is with corporations that will use whatever they can to turn society subservient to themselves.

Science is not a religion because it constantly questions itself and challenges itself. It makes no proclomations of morality.

It is worth noting that corporations do not support the ideals of the scientific method. They will use bad science to try to overturn good science if it is in their interest.

Science has no interest in being blindly followed. But unfortunately the discoveries we have made have lead to ever increasingly complex understandings that it becomes difficult for individuals to follow.

There is a fantastic book I recommend called Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. In it he tells a story of a man he met that was fascinated by the world around him. But because he did not have a proper education in science he had become beholden to much bad science. UFOs, crop circles, psychics and a host of misunderstandings had worked their way into his mind.

The problem is that science does not have an active group within it trying to promote its positions over others. It merely is a process. Meanwhile all manner of fantastic beliefs are actively promoted by groups and institutions. And they will try to usurp and use the word science to their advantage given the chance.

[Old Mouse]

6. I know the book

Sagan should have stuck to non-fiction. But I am a fan of the Order of the Dolphin.

Scientific method had been applied to corporate marketing research. You're thinking of product safety research. I've worked both with neroscientists and generational marketers, and its the same conclusions with different terminology with the sole exception marketing, with an uninterrupted flow of finance, has gone much further with less than noble motivation.

I never meant scientists wanted their science to be the new church, in fact I think they're not only ignorant of the idea, but they also have no control over it at all. think of it more as a blind acceptance of technological progress as represented on television.

[Az]

7. Its more complex than that

It is multifaceted and I would argue unplanned in the largest part. It is mainly society adjusting and adapting to the criteria life currently is throwing at it. Science has become as complex as the things it used to try to answer.

When the answers to the inponderable become sufficiently complex they return to a status of imponderable for the individual. Thus an answer that gives emotional reassurance along with some sort of answer is more readily accepted than a complex scientific answer that does not give any particular emotional reassurance.

[Old Mouse]

8. Hmmm... well said

I mostly agree, but I do think many people believe science will "save" them. From cancer, global warming, spam.

[trotsky]

9. Will religion save us from those things? n/t