…d empirical way of knowing. By pitting Genesis against scientific theories, Creationists have tacitly conceded to materialist claims that scripture is only of value if it is true in a historic and scientific sense. By claiming Creationism is “true science,” the Northwest Science Museum ironically implies that only science is of any value. Meanwhile, the assertion that Creationism is not “just religion” represents a further condemnation of mythos a…
…o actually be evil for us physically. Douglas points out that it’s not all about science or health, but we like to think that it is. I think the same is absolutely true for fear of foods like sugar, for example, where what we might fear is the pleasure, but then we want to rationalize it by saying that what we really fear is its effect on our health. Should we respect that fear, even if the evidence doesn’t always back it up? I feel like its accep…
…ns of Sexuality and Sexual Behaviours.” Theravada is the prominent form of Buddhism practiced in Cambodia. At least 96 percent of Cambodians practice Buddhism. The Pali Canon does not specifically prohibit homosexuality. Buddhist teachings are relatively free of misogyny, homophobia and transphobia. The steps of the Eightfold Path to enlightenment speak about sexual activity. The second step states, “You must renounce all pleasures of the senses.”…
…es and history. Grand statements about what “all religions” say or believe about anything—especially about such a complex phenomenon as human desire and sexuality—are not just unhelpful, they’re impossible. Nonetheless, this has not prevented many Christian opponents of homosexuality from asserting that all religions condemn homosexuality. This assertion is patently false; it is not even the case that all Christianities condemn homosexuality. The…
…n international fellowship. This is one of the things that I love the most about science: in my lab or any lab, there are people there from all over the world. But they’re all there speaking exactly the same language. It’s a very clear set of rules about what flies and what doesn’t fly. These are deep-seated cultural ideas about self and identity, though. I wonder if this is how evolutionary biologists were talking in, say, 1910, before evolution…
…the values and norms that guide human actions. In our modern secular world science is the arbiter of truth about the natural, material world. From a Jewish perspective, science, and especially its application in technology, can be used to solve legal problems and alleviate legal restrictions, and science and technology should be used to heal and alleviate human suffering. But science does not provide us with the values and norms necessary to guide…
…e, to identify truth with factuality. The reason creationists are so upset about evolution is because science works and they know it. They’re awed by it, over-awed perhaps, and they feel the heat. They feel it because they, like the neuroscientists of Rosenbaum’s article, over-interpret the rather narrow (if true) statements that science makes. Which brings me to my point. The question before us is not “What does science say?” If this were the que…
…w” work and being recognized by peers. This theory unmoors the practice of science from being about trying to give an accurate picture of reality, and makes it into a series of social acts, what he called “language games.” The goal of creation scientists and intelligent designers can be imagined similarly: to provoke a mainstream scientist to answer a creationist utterance, thereby making it look like a scientific disagreement. They cheered when P…
By Randall Balmer, Anthea Butler, Evan Derkacz, Jeff Sharlet, and Diane Winston
…change. What if we heard that speech today? Anthea Butler: Jeff, thinking about your closing statement that it’s not about what fundamentalists say they want, but what they have already achieved; that’s precisely what this is all about. The means of achieving it comes from a quiet, upper-class organizational structure like The Family, while everyone else is watching the sideshow of preachers and abortion protesters. The vox populi voice of fundam…
…e I like doing that and when they are happy so am I. But why should I care about others? How can science answer this? One answer might be that if everyone is happy then I will be happier. This is a bit like the Henry Ford argument that if everyone is paid enough to buy a car, I will sell more and my profits will go up. But does this hold generally? And more importantly, why should I care about the well-being of others if I can increase my own? Thi…
