Jealousy

The cause of science is truth and religion just doesn't fit in. Atheism and science go hand in hand.

Class won't win the 'battle' or the war. It's perseverance and the guts to stick to the truth. PZ has plenty of both and proves that it doesn't pay to be nice to the crazy Christians who are trying to warp the entire world with their lies. If you think Gould could have won this, why didn't he in his lifetime?

Thats an interesting admission as to your BELIEFS, Rachel, that atheism and science go hand in hand.

As Josh and the gang at KCFS love to maintain for public consumption, there is no necessary relation between atheism and science.

But, thats for public consumption, its not your real agenda, as you have just admitted.

As to why Gould didn't win in his lifetime, it was because he was a lone voice, with all the spew from idealouges like Dawkins and Dennet, he faced set backs at every turn.

And its not a question of just being nice...its about truth.

And the truth is that "science" does not establish atheism...scientific theories are provisional and subject to change and depend on a host of presuppositions.

You seem to have confused methodological naturalism with philosophical naturalism, a distinction Barbara Forrest loved to maintain and in fact testified to under oath at the Dover trial.

After all, your hero Judge Jones ruled in the Kitzmiller decison that evolution in no way denigrated the idea of a creator.

Of course, that was just public concumption, right?

[edited to correct a misidentification of another commenter.]

BA, I'm not going to let arguments from another forum spill over here. As far as I can tell, no one named Robson has commented here, so I corrected that obvious error in your post.

Beyond that, trolling comments about people's heroes or their "real agenda" are inappropriate.

Why don't you address your questions to Rachel, rather than me?

It's true that I think religion and science are orthogonal. But I think religion can walk hand-in-hand with science, as can atheism. There's a worthwhile distinction to be made there.

I think theism and science go hand in hand. I personally believe that science describes the universe as God intends it to be. But this is my personal belief, not some kind of agenda.

Clearly, it all depends on the viewpoint of the individual observer.

I have never claimed to have no agenda. I think we all have a personal agenda, whether we want to admit it or not.

I just pointed out that my statement that "science describes the universe as God intends it to be" is not my agenda, it is my personal belief.

This is another worthwhile distinction to be made.

Science is a tool. Like any tool, it can be put to many purposes, some theistic, some atheistic, many non-theistic and entirely uninterested in those questions.

Jeremy is entirely right to note that it's very worth while to make the distinction between personal beliefs and personal agendas. Not the same thing.