Science and Religion
OK, OK, it’s been over a month since I got off the last science and religion post. My apologies. Life has been extremely busy and for some reason I blog at three blogs. Hopefully all the business is in the past and I can actually keep my word this time and get these out semi-regularly. The aim is to perhaps let people know about posts they missed. I’ll not try to catch up on everything, but to cover the main posts.
First up let me throw out a mention to Jeffrey’s long delayed return to his blog Issues in Mormon Doctrine. For a while it seemed like nothing would be found there except for comments spam. But the last few weeks he’s had a fascinating discussion of Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell : Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. His posts have engendered a lot of comments both at his blog as well as blog posts elsewhere. The book is a bit controversial, so let me lay out the LDS blog posts along with a few others.
Breaking Which Spell?
A Working Definition of Religion
Religion allegorized to music and addictions
Can religion be studied scientifically?
Miracles and the effects of religion
Should science study religion?
More on the music analogy
Would neglect of religion by science be better?
Whew. That’s a lot of posts. A few others then chimed in at their blogs. Chris, at MoBlo has done a few, but his are primarily in the context of a different book, Voltaire’s Bastards. That’s an other controversial book, questioning whether a lot that gets viewed as reason in the west isn’t actually just self-justifying.
The religion of rationality
Rationality’s Communication Problems
Are religion and ideological rationality two sides of the same coin?
When religion tries to become scientific
When is something scientific?
Chris also had earlier a series on Atran’s In Gods We Trust which was worth reading. (Check his archives)
In other news this week was the death of the evolution bill in the Utah Senate. Lots of posts on that here at BT as well as elsewhere. I’ll not link to them all though as they all pretty much say the same thing.
The DNA and the Book of Mormon issue was big as well. There are tons of posts on that. There’s no way I’d want to list them all. Fortunately over at Messenger and Advocate they put up a fair list. All I’d add is that if you are jogging you might wish to check out the MP3 of
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on the Hugh Hewitt show last week. FARMS also has up a response to the LA Times story.
There were lots of others stories out there. But I didn’t want this to become a tome. I promise to be more attentive next time.
BTW – related to the Buttars bill controversy. Over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars discussion of the bill came this excellent response to Buttar’s comment of “there are a number of influential legislators who believe you evolved from an ape. I didn’t.”
The response?
“Better 6,000,000 years removed from apes than 6000 years removed from dirt.”
LOL. Which of course doesn’t really address the LDS “literalist” perspective. But is still funny. (I put literalist in quotations since I think with the JST the question of literalism is much more complex and doesn’t necessarily entail the more Protestant conclusions)
Comment by Clark Goble — February 28, 2006 @ 4:25 pm
Just to add, this discussion of Dennett’s book over at Right Reason is worth a read. Yes, the blogs are all abuzz discussing Dennett’s book. There are also lots of other websites discussing it. (Many linked to in the comments at Jeffrey’s blog) I’ll simply not link to them all but the Right Reason one is interesting.’
Comment by Clark Goble — February 28, 2006 @ 4:46 pm