[ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook

[Russell Wallace]

On 5/4/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
>
> And what about my examples of golden tablets from Moroni, Muhummad
> rising to heaven on a winged horse, virgin births, the whole lot?


As I said earlier, I am not defending the idea that all the events described
in the Bible and other religious texts should be regarded as having
literally occured; the way I got into this discussion was noticing you
making the quite stunning remark that you favored fundamentalism of all
sides over rational moderation.

Yes and no.  I concur that the west has perhaps committed suicide
> by abadoning its religion. But the source of its strength---open inquiry
> also perhaps laid the seeds of its ruin.


Open inquiry is a freedom. It's up to us what use we make of it. If we use
it to destroy the basis of continued life, well then it will cease to exist
when we do. But we have free will; we can choose otherwise.

Well, that is too bad.


Perhaps, but I haven't given up on the survival of our values and the
civilization that supports them, however slim the odds may be.

But what
> I am concerned about *here* is a search for truth.  On this list, it is
> necessary to say what is true, and to separate it from what is false.


And the truth is that a) you cannot either prove or disprove the existence
of God and b) the real motive driving fanatical atheism derives from
precisely the same evolutionary psychology as the motive driving fanatical
religion. A dispassionate quest for the truth would eschew both.

In these discussions, I simply refuse to believe things that I know not
> to be true.


I'm not asking you to believe anything. I'm asking you to refrain from
consigning science to the trash heap of history, particularly on the basis
of mere assumptions.

The other day I had a conversation with a moderate Christian who believed
there must be flaws in evolutionary theory. It was more productive than
previous such conversations because I've finally figured out what's going
on: he thinks that because he's been told by people like Dawkins -
professionals he trusts to know what they're talking about - that evolution
disproves the existence of God, and he therefore _correctly_ (given the
information available to him) discards, or at least becomes very skeptical
of, evolution.

So on this occasion I was able to tell him Dawkins is full of shit, and try
to communicate the real grandeur of evolution as we now understand it. But
there is only one of me, and I can't explain this to every Christian in the
world. I can't personally undo the work of every saboteur.

If you won't refrain from attempting to destroy religion, will you refrain
from attempting to destroy science?
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