* irenic *
2006-11-06 02:57:00 UTC
Nov. 5, 2006
Religion and Science
By Harry T. Cook
Essays appearing on this website from time to time have excoriated the
Religious Right, and in particular its rejection of science in the making of
public policy. The purpose of this essay is to account for its history and
why it must be confronted in defense of science.
As New England emptied out in the 1830s and 1840s and Americans began
to migrate into the new Northwest Territories and the land associated with
the Louisiana Purchase, people left behind their cultural and religious
institutions and ended up in a Little House on the Prairie kind of
situation. Their one-room schools were staffed by the unmarried daughters of
area farmers, who had themselves been educated in the same kinds of schools
by other unmarried daughters in the rudimentary RRRs.
The other stimulus that interrupted the spirit-crushing routine of
crop farming and animal husbandry was twice-a-Sunday attendance at the
little church on the prairie, the minister of which was likely to be some
uneducated opportunist whose only book was a Bible. The results were
predictable.
The farming families heard the old, old story with minimal variation
every Sunday, and the kids learned the three R s. But when the railroad
arrived bringing culture, and when secondary education became more the norm,
adolescents began to study Latin and even Greek and to read history and
literature. Land-grant universities and church-sponsored four-year colleges
sprang up, and some of those who finished the high-school course went on to
them. When they came home for the holidays, they had plenty to tell their
hard-working parents about how out of date their preachers were, and about
the wider world of knowledge to which they were being exposed.
When the kids began to rebel against the repetitive
hell-fire-and-damnation preaching, their under-educated parents went into a
defensive crouch and decided that the old, old story or that Ole Time
Religion was good enough for them, and therewith entrenched fundamentalism
dug in.
Fundamentalism found a willing partner in populist prairie politics
which pitted the hard-scrabble farmer against the railroad and other inroads
of modernism. The religion and the politics fed off one another.
It was one thing for the prairie farmer to hold science at bay when
his water was pumped out of his well by a wind-mill and when his nighttime
illumination was a kerosene lamp and when he was not dependent on a
physician or dentist for health care when, in other words, he was (or
thought he was) self-sufficient. But as society became more urbanized and
modern hygiene and medicine began to conquer the spread of disease,
welcoming science and its works became more attractive.
That at some level entailed the acceptance of Darwin s Theory of
Natural Selection (evolution) and all that flowed from it. Meanwhile, the
prairie preacher was still immured in Genesis and pronounced science and
scientists the enemies of God and good. That presented the farmer even the
partly urbanized one with the awful choice of embracing science and
denying his religion, or resisting science and continuing to embrace his
religion. The Scopes trial in 1925 and all the fuss around it graphically
illustrated that dilemma. So more or less has it gone since then.
The resistance to teaching real science (as in evolution) in public
schools, which obtains in all too many places to this day, poses a danger
not only to the intellectual capital of this nation but to its economic
well-being. In a global economy, investment capital will go to those venues
in which excellence in education is prized.
Science (the word comes from the Latin for knowledge ) is the
intellectual discipline of exploring the natural order for information about
how it works and why. The scientist looks out upon what ever portion of the
natural order which interests him or her, and then begins to gather and
examine relevant pieces of information from it, tries to see how they make
sense together. The scientist sets forth a hypothesis (the idea that
such-and-such a thing may be true) and then, with the information in hand,
goes on to gather even more information. S/he contrives experiments to test
the hypothesis, not in order to prove it but to disprove it.
If the hypothesis holds up after exhaustive testing, and if the
results of the experiments have grown thereby more self-evident, the
scientist has produced a theory. A theory becomes the best available
explanation as to why something or another seems to be true. Other research
and development is based upon that theory, often resulting in its
refinement, improvement or even in its discarding for another theory.
Science is as close to objective pursuit of truth as one can get. The
true scientist tries never to assume something is true without going through
the process accounted for in the preceding paragraph. There is nothing a
scientist loves better than to be able to falsify or disprove his own (or
preferably another scientist s) hypothesis. Science is competitive in a way
similar to the free market. The guy who works hard to build the best
mousetrap for the best price sells more mousetraps. The scientist who labors
in the laboratory to discover the truth about a thing is the one who wins
the grant to do even more research. In either case, the consumer is the
winner.
There can be no substitute for science in the modern world. That is
why it must be defended against those forces that would de-value and debase
it. Neither creationism nor intelligent design qualifies as science because
both begin with an abstract religious doctrine and then cherry-pick and
arrange data to prove its validity. Those who oppose stem-cell research on
the basis that it violates religious law can neither be taken seriously nor
be allowed to interfere with scientists engaged in such research for the
purpose of improving human health and the prolonging of useful and enjoyable
life.
Copyright 2006, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may
not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
http://www.harrytcook.com/essay.html
-- --
Shalom! Rowland Croucher
'It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know
for sure that just ain't so' (Mark Twain)
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/ - 18,200 articles/ 4000 humour
Religion and Science
By Harry T. Cook
Essays appearing on this website from time to time have excoriated the
Religious Right, and in particular its rejection of science in the making of
public policy. The purpose of this essay is to account for its history and
why it must be confronted in defense of science.
As New England emptied out in the 1830s and 1840s and Americans began
to migrate into the new Northwest Territories and the land associated with
the Louisiana Purchase, people left behind their cultural and religious
institutions and ended up in a Little House on the Prairie kind of
situation. Their one-room schools were staffed by the unmarried daughters of
area farmers, who had themselves been educated in the same kinds of schools
by other unmarried daughters in the rudimentary RRRs.
The other stimulus that interrupted the spirit-crushing routine of
crop farming and animal husbandry was twice-a-Sunday attendance at the
little church on the prairie, the minister of which was likely to be some
uneducated opportunist whose only book was a Bible. The results were
predictable.
The farming families heard the old, old story with minimal variation
every Sunday, and the kids learned the three R s. But when the railroad
arrived bringing culture, and when secondary education became more the norm,
adolescents began to study Latin and even Greek and to read history and
literature. Land-grant universities and church-sponsored four-year colleges
sprang up, and some of those who finished the high-school course went on to
them. When they came home for the holidays, they had plenty to tell their
hard-working parents about how out of date their preachers were, and about
the wider world of knowledge to which they were being exposed.
When the kids began to rebel against the repetitive
hell-fire-and-damnation preaching, their under-educated parents went into a
defensive crouch and decided that the old, old story or that Ole Time
Religion was good enough for them, and therewith entrenched fundamentalism
dug in.
Fundamentalism found a willing partner in populist prairie politics
which pitted the hard-scrabble farmer against the railroad and other inroads
of modernism. The religion and the politics fed off one another.
It was one thing for the prairie farmer to hold science at bay when
his water was pumped out of his well by a wind-mill and when his nighttime
illumination was a kerosene lamp and when he was not dependent on a
physician or dentist for health care when, in other words, he was (or
thought he was) self-sufficient. But as society became more urbanized and
modern hygiene and medicine began to conquer the spread of disease,
welcoming science and its works became more attractive.
That at some level entailed the acceptance of Darwin s Theory of
Natural Selection (evolution) and all that flowed from it. Meanwhile, the
prairie preacher was still immured in Genesis and pronounced science and
scientists the enemies of God and good. That presented the farmer even the
partly urbanized one with the awful choice of embracing science and
denying his religion, or resisting science and continuing to embrace his
religion. The Scopes trial in 1925 and all the fuss around it graphically
illustrated that dilemma. So more or less has it gone since then.
The resistance to teaching real science (as in evolution) in public
schools, which obtains in all too many places to this day, poses a danger
not only to the intellectual capital of this nation but to its economic
well-being. In a global economy, investment capital will go to those venues
in which excellence in education is prized.
Science (the word comes from the Latin for knowledge ) is the
intellectual discipline of exploring the natural order for information about
how it works and why. The scientist looks out upon what ever portion of the
natural order which interests him or her, and then begins to gather and
examine relevant pieces of information from it, tries to see how they make
sense together. The scientist sets forth a hypothesis (the idea that
such-and-such a thing may be true) and then, with the information in hand,
goes on to gather even more information. S/he contrives experiments to test
the hypothesis, not in order to prove it but to disprove it.
If the hypothesis holds up after exhaustive testing, and if the
results of the experiments have grown thereby more self-evident, the
scientist has produced a theory. A theory becomes the best available
explanation as to why something or another seems to be true. Other research
and development is based upon that theory, often resulting in its
refinement, improvement or even in its discarding for another theory.
Science is as close to objective pursuit of truth as one can get. The
true scientist tries never to assume something is true without going through
the process accounted for in the preceding paragraph. There is nothing a
scientist loves better than to be able to falsify or disprove his own (or
preferably another scientist s) hypothesis. Science is competitive in a way
similar to the free market. The guy who works hard to build the best
mousetrap for the best price sells more mousetraps. The scientist who labors
in the laboratory to discover the truth about a thing is the one who wins
the grant to do even more research. In either case, the consumer is the
winner.
There can be no substitute for science in the modern world. That is
why it must be defended against those forces that would de-value and debase
it. Neither creationism nor intelligent design qualifies as science because
both begin with an abstract religious doctrine and then cherry-pick and
arrange data to prove its validity. Those who oppose stem-cell research on
the basis that it violates religious law can neither be taken seriously nor
be allowed to interfere with scientists engaged in such research for the
purpose of improving human health and the prolonging of useful and enjoyable
life.
Copyright 2006, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may
not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
http://www.harrytcook.com/essay.html
-- --
Shalom! Rowland Croucher
'It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know
for sure that just ain't so' (Mark Twain)
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/ - 18,200 articles/ 4000 humour