> -----Original Message-----
> From: evolution-owner@udomo3.calvin.edu
> [mailto:evolution-owner@udomo3.calvin.edu]On Behalf Of Chris Cogan
> Sent: Monday, July 05, 1999 4:26 PM
> To: evolution@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: throwing out the baby with the bathwater
>
>
>
> > At 04:34 PM 7/4/99 +0800, you wrote:
> > >Reflectorites
> > >
> > >Someone posted this on another list I am on. It's from M. Scott Peck,
> "The
> > >Road Less Traveled," (1978):
> > >
> > >"Another reason that scientists are so prone to throw out the baby
> > >[religion] with the bath water is that science itself, as I have
> suggested,
> > is a
> > >religion. The neophyte scientist, recently come or converted
> to the world
> > >view of science, can be every bit as fanatical as a Christian
> crusader or
> > >soldier of Allah. This is particularly the case when we have come to
> science
> > >from a culture and home in which belief in God is firmly
> associated with
> > >ignorance, superstition, rigidity and hypocrisy."
>
> Chris
> As it should be, because it IS.
This is a rather naive, condescending, and ignorant view of religious belief
or Christianity broadly construed, Chris. Do you actually believe this, or
are you just trying polemically to turn this into another alt.atheist.flame
list?
> Peck should not be criticizing scientists
> and science, but those darn facts. When I walk down the street and someone
> hands me a pamphlet, I hardly EVER look at it and read, "Accept Einstein
> Into Your Heart and be SAVED!"
This last assertion being apropos how exactly? Sounds like empty rhetoric
to me.
> > I thought this was the weakest part of the book and I wasn't
> even involved
> > in the evolution/creation debate when I read the book in 1979. Then, as
> now,
> > I thought he was dead wrong. There are just too many scientists who are
> > religionists of one kind or another to say that science is
> thowing babies
> or
> > bathwater anywhere. Someone should take Peck to task for
> ignoring nuclear
> > physics in his study of psychology. If he protests that nuclear physics
> has
> > nothing at all to do with pysychology, so what! He's just showing his
> bias!
>
> Chris
> Science can be a religion in the sense that people can try to hold
> "scientific" views on faith, and be dogmatic about them. But I think it
> worth mentioning that science itself cannot be a religion. It is a body of
> knowledge and an empirical method for discovering and validating that
> knowledge and more empirical knowledge.
Actually, Chris, there are numerous senses in which people can take science
as a religion. I can spell this out if you'd like. But, e.g., many secular
humanists take science to be something of a religion; certainly a
replacement -for- religion. E. O. Wilson, e.g., proposed "the evolutionary
myth" as a religion. (Of course, as you may know, the secular humanist
community is deeply divided on whether SH itself is a religion or not;
sometimes they want it to be [for added constitutional protections, and for
mass appeal, e.g.], other times not [also for added constitutional
protections, and so that they can attack religion as a category or belief].)
>
> Saying that science can be a religion is like saying that
> mathematics can be
> a religion. At best, it's misleading. Oftentimes, this kind of
> claim is much
> worse; it is often dishonest. It is often an attempt to make religion seem
> better by making science seem worse.
>
I think your final assertion is true. Can't say the same for the others.
You might want to try your atheological arguments out on the Society of
Christian Philosophers list server. :^> (For those who don't know, it's
also run out of Calvin College. And while most of the folks participating
there are amateurs, the SCP professionally is the largest sub-group of the
American Philosophical Association -- an enormous change from, say, 50 years
ago, when attitudes like Chris' were not only -common- [as they still are
today amongst philosophers] but -typical-.)
John