Every once in awhile, a scientist will come out and say science and religion can co-exist. There will be some press coverage because of the obvious tensions between evidence-based thought and willy-nilly faith. So it comes as no surprise that physicist Karl Giberson is receiving some attention for his recent claim and book that says evolution and God can co-exist. (I presume the man has a longer history in the creationism-evolution issue than what LiveScience seems to suggest, but he evidently has yet to make a big splash.)
Obviously, he thinks one can be a Christian and accept evolution, but these two sets of knowledge “don’t make as much contact with each other as people think,” he said. Many fundamentalists “elevate Genesis beyond what is appropriate.”
Fundamentalists’ spin on the creation story in Genesis “robs it of everything that is interesting,” he said. Instead, readers should recall that the Bible repeats the refrain that God found what he made “good” and looks at the world as good.
It is true that bastardizing such a great piece of literature to literally mean something which is utterly absurd is a crying shame, but that doesn’t suddenly make evolution and religion, especially Christianity, compatible in any meaningful way. At best, perhaps the particular Christian god fully guided the process of evolution, making it mimic precisely what would be expected without any sort of foolish guidance, but that’s a rather superfluous compatibility. What’s more, that can comply to most any concept of a god that humans have had in the past 10,000 or more years. It’s a very non-cromulent way of thinking.
“It makes the world so much more interesting,” Giberson said. “The mystery of God’s existence is a more satisfying mystery than the mystery of how can all this arise out of a particle.”
Despite being a rather subjective claim, it seems difficult to fathom how anyone can honestly believe such a thing. First of all, it’s unclear how a mystery can be “satisfying”. It can be interesting and exciting and all that. Most of the good ones are. But satisfying? It’s when we solve the mystery or at least a piece of it that satisfaction becomes present. And, of course, the only way we can do that for most of the big questions is through the best way of knowing – science.
But what is your evidence, Shermer said, for belief in God?
“I was raised believing in God, so for me, the onus would be on someone to stop me from believing,” Giberson said, adding that “there is a certain momentum that is already there.”
This reminds me quite a bit of the silliness of George Smith. Apparently, an objective look at two sides is out of the question. It is the job of the non-believer to dismantle the long-term indoctrination of the believer. I almost don’t want to explicate on why this is so damn wrong. But I will.
Blind, stupid faith offers nothing of worth to a discussion. Once that argument is presented, any debate falls to shreds because faith is specifically belief without – or even despite the lack of – evidence. Perhaps an argument as to why faith is a bad way of knowing (indeed, it seeks to avoid a knowledge of anything) can be presented, but then one is simply dealing with a stubborn child. Perhaps it is that the onus is to lower one’s self to explaining why faith informs us of nothing.
Filed under: Creationism, Evolution, News | Tagged: bible, Christian, Christianity, Creationism, debate, Evolution, faith, genesis, God, indoctrination, karl w giberson, livescience |
For the Sake of Science 
What I find ironic about these articles is that they seem to show complete and utter ignorance about the history of science, much of which conducted by Christians, who instituted in many ways the foundation of science, which itself is a metaphyscial construct the basis of which cannot be proven and must be accepted by faith.
The problem with the “coexistence” of science and religion is that no one is addressing this issue in a scientific manner. Scientifically, the only way any issue can be addressed and resolved is by natural law, meaning that if evolution exists, then there must be a natural law that governs its existence, which law can be tested and proven for enduring truth. Similarly, if God exists, then there must be a natural law that governs its existence, which law can also be tested and proven for enduring truth.
On this note, the author is correct that Giberson’s claim has no scientific merit because it is based on his own personal opinion. However, this does not mean that the issue of whether life spontaneously generated from “primordial soup” or was intelligently designed by a “Creator” cannot be scientifically resolved. All we need is a universal, math-based law that proves the existence of either evolution or an intelligent designer. Fortunately, such a law DOES, in fact, exist. Follow the link and read all posts from earliest to latest. By the end of the read, you yourself will be able to do what no scientist has ever done – mathematically prove the existence of either evolution or God.
The argument of creationism and scientific law is one that limits itself to what we now know and have learned up until now. As history unfolds the explanation for natural events has changed drastically. Where we once demonized someone for possibly having a diabetic reaction we now know that there is a medical condition behind the lunacy. When prayer and faith commanded the sun to be blotted out in the middle of the day we now know that a random solar allignment was most likely the cause of such a phenomenon. The sight of a tornado 3000 years ago would be justified by the hand of God whereas today we now realized it is caused by many factors including the atmospheric pressure system. All of this is not to say that God doesn’t have a hand in this or that with the unfolding knowledge of our species so has divine intervention adjusted. The universe itself is unfolding, God may not be this giant man-like icon that we have put on a pedestal over the last few centuries. Things are probably much more simple and basic than what contemporary religious dogma has allowed. In time our knowledge will increase as long as we don’t let the prophetic naysayers of the dogma community to dictate that path of our leaders, just like what happened over the last eight years. A leader who believe he is sparking a change to end the world as we know it is no a productive power to be placed in high stature.
God created man to succeed, to prosper as any artist would want of his own creation. To think that he wants to end the world that he created at a high point in its knowledge goes against all natural laws. As time continues to unfold tge laws of the universe will slowly change, just as science has replaced myth and philosophy in explanation to creation and natural rule, so science may one day be replaced byt an even more focused observation of how the world/universe turns round.