|
 Serene-Insanity rated 23 months ago - From the page: "In a talk in London a few months ago, Ian McEwan noted that looking back at the mid-70s, "none of us ...would have thought [that] we'd be devoting so much mental space now to confront religion. We thought that matter had long been closed." Indeed, earlier this yea...
|
|
4 Reviews
-
-
- Birks79 rated 9 months ago
-
From the page:
In a talk in London a few months ago, Ian McEwan noted that looking back at the mid-70s, "none of us ...would have thought [that] we'd be devoting so much mental space now to confront religion. We thought that matter had long been closed." Indeed, earlier this year sixteen scientists, all Edge contributors, dropped everything to write authoritative essays for a book published on a crash schedule to rebut the hoax known as "Intelligent Design". One of the most perceptive comments about the book, Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement, was in an Orlando Weekly review:
The worst kind of argument to have, is one with someone who Just Doesn't Get It. The debates that find your well-reasoned points countered with the tautological equivalent of "nuh-uh" or "because, that's why" may not make you feel like you lost the argument, but you certainly don't feel like you won, either. Especially when the topic you're disagreeing on isn't even something that should be up for debate. ...
That's the overriding sense one suspects the writers of the essays in Intelligent Thought were experiencing when they put pen to paper. More than one of them, I'm sure, muttered to himself: "I can't fucking believe I'm having to write this".
("Science vs. Stupid" by Jason Ferguson)
- wilbau rated 9 months ago
- From the page: "They (scientists) reassure the public that religion and science are not at odds with one another, but rather that they represent separate "magisteria," in the words of the formerly alive and even more formerly scrappy Stephen Jay Gould. Nobody is going to ask people to give up their faith, their belief in an everlasting soul accompanied by an immortal memory of every soccer game their kids won, every moment they spent playing fetch with the dog. Nobody is going to mock you for your religious beliefs. "
- TheBlueDuck rated 20 months ago
- "He might have expressed doubts that the self survives the brain, but, oh yes, life goes on, life is bigger, stronger, and better endowed than any Bush in a jumpsuit, and we are part of the wild, tumbling river of life, our molecules were the molecules of dinosaurs and before that of stars, and this is not Bulfinch mythology, this is corroborated reality."
Beautiful.
- Serene-Insanity rated 23 months ago
- From the page: "In a talk in London a few months ago, Ian McEwan noted that looking back at the mid-70s, "none of us ...would have thought [that] we'd be devoting so much mental space now to confront religion. We thought that matter had long been closed." Indeed, earlier this year sixteen scientists, all Edge contributors, dropped everything to write authoritative essays for a book published on a crash schedule to rebut the hoax known as "Intelligent Design". One of the most perceptive comments about the book, Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement, was in an Orlando Weekly review:
The worst kind of argument to have, is one with someone who Just Doesn't Get It. The debates that find your well-reasoned points countered with the tautological equivalent of "nuh-uh" or "because, that's why" may not make you feel like you lost the argument, but you certainly don't feel like you won, either. Especially when the topic you're disagreeing on isn't even something that should be up for debate. ...
That's the overriding sense one suspects the writers of the essays in Intelligent Thought were experiencing when they put pen to paper. More than one of them, I'm sure, muttered to himself: "I can't fucking believe I'm having to write this".
("Science vs. Stupid" by Jason Ferguson)"
In the course of reporting a book on the scientific canon and pestering hundreds of researchers at the nation's great universities about what they see as the essential vitamins and minerals of literacy in their particular disciplines, I have been hammered into a kind of twinkle-eyed cartoon coma by one recurring message. Whether they are biologists, geologists, physicists, chemists, astronomers, or engineers, virtually all my sources topped their list of what they wish people understood about science with a plug for Darwin's dandy idea. Would you please tell the public, they implored, that evolution is for real? Would you please explain that the evidence for it is overwhelming and that an appreciation of evolution serves as the bedrock of our understanding of all life on this planet?
|
