Mmmnn….

Yes, I think Dawrin’s theory was initally ignored until it was realised that it contradicted the bible.

Ah, thanks! I’d heard the term but never knew what natural theology meant. I looked it up.

The slant in my comment of uniting science and religion was to suggest that in actual fact the ‘correct’/best theological views have always produced the goods in terms of investigating the natual world. The islamic world 700 – 1200, christianity 1600 and onwards, and secularism today.

I’m not up with the history of opposition/support for Darwin throughout the years, but I think I recall somewhere seeing/reading/hearing that initially there was little criticism of it?

As for uniting (or at least ‘relating’?) science and religion, I’ve a growing interest in Natural Theology – and I recommend Alistair McGrath on this.

Largely agreed. Surely you agree, though, that there is overlap of religion and science??
If you and I were both religious and living pre 1850s we would both have significant problems with Darwin’s theory, no? Certainly I’d grant you that our interpretations of religion might be ‘wrong’, and that they would be wrong to exactly the degree that they inhibit the truth; science in this case.
However. I put it to you that the awe that a pre 1850s religious person might precipitate into a statement about the origin of life would look very similar to your exhortation in post 4. Both statements would be close to making the move of crystallising and reinforcing the religious doctrines/stances of the day (Discovery institute today?); the very doctrines and stances which, if one is to learn from history, should be questioned.

Wouldn’t it be great to again unite science and religion? I do wonder, though, that they’ve never been split(!)

Sorry bro for taking it out on you personally.

Precisely because they are at different levels, I also reject the notion that religious explanations necessarily impede the progress of science. And in the same vein, I couldn’t agree more that discovering how something works, does not at all take away from its beauty but enriches it! For me (and many others) this is true also not only of beauty but of what Dawkins calls the impulse to attribute it to a Creator. I find science to enrich my beliefs, not emancipate me from them.

And also, whilst a creationist reading all this might feel some ‘shelter’ from me regarding their general belief in a creator, they clearly would not feel any from me regarding their specific belief in a 6-day creation event. So, I don’t really think the purpose of your post (clarifying how evolution ‘works’) has been thwarted or undermined, and I don’t think that they will immediately forget the good points above about the mechanisms of evolution. Having said all this, I am remorseful that you’re frustrated.

Moving on, since you bothered to transcribe the Dawkins quote and comment on it, I will take that to mean that the topic is worth at least some of your time/effort, and post the extended quote I mentioned earlier (which you’ve rightly selected, though I will provide his later sentiments).

I regard it as an enormous privilege to be alive and I regard it as a privilege to be alive especially at the end of the 20th century, beginning of the 21st century, a privilege to be a scientist and therefore to be in a position to understand something of the mystery of existence, why we exist.

I think that religious explanations, although they may have been satisfying for many centuries, are now superseded and outdated. I think moreover that they are petty and parochial, and that the understanding that we can get from science, of all those deep questions that religion once aspired to explain, are now better, more grandly, in a more beautiful, more elegant fashion, explained by science.

I think that when you consider the beauty of the world, and you wonder how it came to be what it is, you’re naturally overwhelmed with a feeling of awe, a feeling of admiration, and you almost feel a desire to worship something. I feel this. I recognise that other scientists such as Carl Sagan feel this. Einstein felt it.

We all of us share a kind of a religious reverence for the beauties of the universe, for the complexity of life, for the sheer magnitude of the cosmos, the sheer magnitude of geological time. And it’s tempting to translate that feeling of awe and worship into a desire to worship some particular thing – a person, an agent. You want to attribute it to a maker, to a creator.

What science has now achieved is an emancipation from that impulse to attribute these things to a creator, and it’s a major emancipation. Because humans have an almost overwhelming desire to think that they’ve explained something by attributing it to a maker.

It was a supreme achievement of the human intellect to realise that there is a better explanation for these things, that these things can come about by purely natural causes.

The scientific enterprise is an active, seeking – an active seeking out of gaps in our knowledge – seeking out of ignorance, so that we can work to plug that ignorance. But religion teaches us to be satisfied with not really understanding.

Every time one of these difficult questions comes up, science says, ‘Right, let’s roll up our sleeves and work on it.’ Religion says, ‘Oh, god did it.’ ‘We don’t need to work on it, god did it. It’s as simple of that.’ …Religion stuntifies the impulse to understand, because religion gives a facile, easy, apparent explanation… and it prevents the further work on the problem.”

Would you agree that religion has overstepped the mark in the past, claiming explanation for many of the facets of the world around us? Explanations which were eventually expunged by modern science?

From my perspective, religion had it coming, and rightly, too. Not for getting it wrong in the first place, but for hanging on in denial so stubbornly so long.
I think the triumph of modern knowledge/science largely owes it’s success to the emancipation from gap-pointing.
Your question at the end of post 4 is exactly that; a gap-pointing question (in Affect), and the motivation behind it, I think, is a philosophy which would -inadvertantly perhaps – stymie further discovery. There is no reason – except the wish for that philosophy to be true – to expect that that information came about by purely ‘natural’ means. In fact, given the history of science, it would be foolish to bet against it. (There are many reasonable hypotheses about how information can ‘increase’)

Sorry that all sounds quite agressive. I do agree with you, though, that it would be amazing to discover how life started. What I wish is that everyone could see the beauty in it even AFTER we discover it just as I wish that everyone could see that the world is MORE beautiful for our discovery of natural selection.

First, a bit of context. He says near the start that he was drawn to science not because he was particularly interested in ‘pressing flowers’ but because of an interest in some of the ‘big questions’ like that of our existence and how we got here.

And now the quote:

I regard it as an enormous privilege to be alive and I regard it as a privilege to be alive especially at the end of the 20th century, beginning of the 21st century, a privilege to be a scientist and therefore to be in a position to understand something of the mystery of existence, why we exist. I think that religious explanations, although they may have been satisfying for many centuries, are now superseded and outdated. I think moreover that they are petty and parochial and that the understanding that we can get from science of all those deep questions that religion once aspired to explain are now better, more grandly, in a more beautiful and elegant fashion explained by science.

The ‘religious’ explanation for how we got here as explained in your Bible and as was understood by everyone who features in the Bible was that man was made from mud and that everything was magicked into existence in six days.

Half of Christianity (only half!!) these days has recognised that this is not literally true and has accepted the truth as revealed by the scientific method as to how we got here.

And, sadly, whenever someone like me tries to put something out there in an effort to clearly explain some of the Christian misconceptions of how evolution works it seems that the people who try to undermine it the most are those in that half of Christianity who apparently agree in the first place!

Any creationist reading this blog post will see my explanation and have a deep feeling of cognitive dissonance at the clear illustration of how evolution is not just a random process. But upon further reading will see your comments about how Dawkins’ tries to use science to replace religion or some such and they’ll immediately forget that there was this naggingly valid argument against their wrong-headed creation beliefs because you, the reasonable Christian, have turned it into a polarised Dawkins-is-bad scenario. I know this is how it works because I’ve been one of those people who’ve sheltered behind the conviction of other, more ‘reasonable’ Christians even when we’ve fundamentally disagreed on a simple matter such as evolution.

As you may imagine I find this extremely frustrating.