Also in the Times today is an opinion piece by Lawrence Krauss on why the Kansas school board election isn't the end of the fight. He quotes some damning things from the chairman of the school board, and then observes:
A key concern should not be whether Dr. Abrams's religious views have a place in the classroom, but rather how someone whose religious views require a denial of essentially all modern scientific knowledge can be chairman of a state school board.
I have recently been criticized by some for strenuously objecting in print to what I believe are scientifically inappropriate attempts by some scientists to discredit the religious faith of others. However, the age of the earth, and the universe, is no more a matter of religious faith than is the question of whether or not the earth is flat.
It is a matter of overwhelming scientific evidence. To maintain a belief in a 6,000-year-old earth requires a denial of essentially all the results of modern physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology and geology. It is to imply that airplanes and automobiles work by divine magic, rather than by empirically testable laws.
This is exactly right. Like Krauss, I'm not a big fan of railing against any and all religion-- PZ Myers and I have gotten into online arguments about this-- but there's reasonable religion, and then there's total nonsense. Young-earth creationism is the latter, and should be denounced in no uncertain terms.
And, as Krauss reminds us, while creationists no longer have a majority, they're still there on the state school board, and waiting for the next election.
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Thank you.
I think that PZ and the "good science requires destroying all religion" crowd are a part of the problem. They lend some (at least superficial) credence to the claim made by creationists that scientists are trying to destroy religion.
Telling people that they have to give up their faith to accept science because faith is stupid and inconsistent with science does not sound like a very good tactic to me. And, moreover, it's not even true-- vast numbers of perfectly reasonable scientists maintain some sort of religious faith. The message should be that faith can be consistent with reason, but not all teachings of some religions are.
-Rob
I think Rob's point about turning it into a kind of team sport is a valid one.
IMESHO, science as a culture is getting way too fond of "team sports" in which anyone not in your "team" gets blindly convicted of being an idiot, regardless of how much sense they otherwise make.
We have plenty of examples without so much as a hint of a religious organisation involved, where one or several parties object to some point in another's position (e.g. J Harlan Bretz and his Spokan Floods from Lake Missoula) then condemn the entire position & person based on this prejudice, disregarding any actual evidence involved.