Monday, September 19, 2005
Who's Religious?
This NYTimes oped is just annoying. It is ostenably about how the Daili Lama grasps science so much better than all us utterly superstitious Christians.
The "defense of science" that this article proports to offer stinks of weak science. Science, above all things is about data. If one must resort to such language and tone, then obviously the data is insufficient as to be convincing. People such as this are not so much pro-science as they are anti-religion. I, for one, am tired of them.
It's been a brutal season in the culture wars with both the White House and a prominent Catholic cardinal speaking out in favor of creationist superstition, while public schools and even natural history museums shy away from teaching evolutionary science. When I picked up the Dalai Lama's new book, "The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality," I feared that His Holiness, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, was adding to the confusion between reason and faith.The contempt of religion in general that seeps from that paragraph is almost frightening. What's more, it belies a certain religious adherence to the precepts of science. It illustrates the same lack of open-mindedness that religious figures are so often accused of.
The "defense of science" that this article proports to offer stinks of weak science. Science, above all things is about data. If one must resort to such language and tone, then obviously the data is insufficient as to be convincing. People such as this are not so much pro-science as they are anti-religion. I, for one, am tired of them.
