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God fearing scientists

Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 4:02 am
by mal4mac
Ch 1. is not a good beginning, Harris' arguments are far too loose. For instance:p15 "A person can be a god-fearing Christian on Sunday and a working scientist come Monday morning, without ever having to account for the partition..."Why should he need to account for the partition? If he is, say, researching Human reproduction then why can't he believe that Jesus was a 'special case'? Why can't he hold the non-overlapping magisteria of moderate Christianity and reproductive biology his mind?Harris makes me more and more tempted to throw him away and read Gould!But on p.16, he tempts me to read on by suggesting there is an ultimately important sacred dimension beyond scientific understanding that we can come to terms with without faith in untestable propositions. I gotta see how he squares that circle... Edited by: Chris OConnorĀ  at: 4/7/06 10:30 pm

Re: God fearing scientists

Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 12:27 am
by diagoras
Since religion has fought science many times both in the past and present I can understand Harris' feeling about the mutual exclusion between the basic philosophies of religion and science; however, I think he was coming from a different angle when he made the statement concerning the "partition". If one derives fact from evidence six days a week, then on a Sunday accepts faith as fact, there is a fundamental difference of thought processing. This, I believe is the "partition" that Harris was speaking of.