Science verses Religion Debate

The following is extracted from a long post by an unknown poster in reply to another poster concerning the subject of "teaching the controversy", ...... teaching religion in the science classrooms.

Thus, I wish to share thee following with you, ........ enjoy.

Dear John,, ……., in my opinion, the very reason why this “debate” between science and theology has regained momentum in the last few decades: the insistence by some in the religious community that acceptance of scientific explanations for natural phenomena requires the same degree of faith as that required to accept theological explanations for the same phenomena.

Disregarding the fact that that reasoning (faith is bad) also seems, ironically, to self-indict the very theological viewpoint that it purports to defend (faith is good), you make an important statement in your opening paragraph. You, like many “teach the controversy” Christians, argue for “intellectual balance” in the classroom by asking: “Is that higher learning, or is that simply imposing a belief system on the audience, regardless of it's validity?”

I realize that you and many others have theological objections to ideas like common biological descent or a 13.7 billion year-old universe. But the point I want to stress is that your objections are based on an a priori assumption that there is another, incontrovertible answer, that being the Biblical one. Now, if you had any evidence in favor of the Biblical perspective on these issues, I would, as a scientist, be open to entertaining them. After all, my interest in science and nature is in finding out exactly why things are the way they are.

I have no interest in wrong answers or voluntarily deluding myself. But you have not provided any evidence that should compel me to abandon the rather imposing amount of evidence that favors the scientific perspective on these issues. Your argument is entirely negative, in that you seem to expect that if you can undermine the scientific evidence by raising objections to its method, that we will, as a result, simply accept the theological argument as the default winner.

But again I stress, unless you actually provide persuasive evidence for the theological argument, simply berating science will not do. Furthermore, your objections to the scientific method of radioisotope dating, for example, are themselves not even sufficient, but I understand that we’ll probably have to agree to disagree on that.

You mentioned that you felt that students and, more importantly, teachers, were having their religious views unfairly silenced when it came to the teaching of biological evolution in the classroom. I would argue, however, that this has more to do with the separation of church and state than it does with anything else. You may object to the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, but the fact remains that it is a hallmark of our Democracy, and I for one think we should be grateful for that.

But even disregarding the unconstitutionality of teaching religious dogma in tax payer-funded schools, we also have to admit that in order for a topic to be factually presented in our schools for educational purposes, we must ensure that it meets evidentiary criteria. And that’s where your Biblical (pardon me, but I’m assuming you’re Christian) argument falls short. There simply is no evidence for anything that the book of Genesis says about the origins of life or the universe. None. By contrast, humans have over the course of several centuries amassed a wealth of information that demonstrates the naturalistic process by which we, and likely the entire universe, have come to be.

Giving “fair time” to creationists in public science classes is nothing but a canard to promote superstitious beliefs in schools. In the same way that we don’t give equal time to Holocaust deniers in history classes or to alchemists in chemistry classes, we shouldn’t start trying to inject a false sense of equality by giving voice to people espousing beliefs that aren’t supported in an way, shape, or form by the data we have available to us.

Bravo.

That was filled with win.