I have more reason to believe that Jesus rose from the dead than I do to believe that Harry Kroto even exists.  I had never heard of Harry Kroto prior to reading this column, while Jesus’ life is the subject of numerous contemporary accounts, the great majority of which attest to the performance of various miracles, including His Resurrection.  It is also the basis of a myriad of second-generation acts that would not have been performed absent eye-witness testimony, such as the willing acceptance of martyrdom of people like Polycarp, Ignatius, and others.

What about this, then, is “unfounded dogma”?  There is more proof of Jesus’ existence than of Julius Caesar’s, Arrian’s, Appian’s, or of that of virtually any of the renowned figures of antiquity; in fact, the record of the existence of people such as Cato the Elder, Brutus the Elder, et al., depends on surprisingly few primary or contemporaneous accounts.  Is belief that Brutus helped bring the Roman Monarchy to an end “unfounded dogma”?  Or do people such as Harry Kroto have different standards of proof for different facts?

For people like Kroto, the belief in something other than the pure mechanics and methods of their own research subject would mean a reevaluation of the value of their work. They can’t take that chance. They strive to be the sole priests of the one and only truth, so no competing view of the world, life, and the meaning of it is allowed. Their view is not different from other dogmas, like the one I saw on a bumper sticker: “The bible says it, I believe it, that’s settles it”, and has just as much validity.

Mr. Gutzman
I haven’t heard of the poor sod either. Thank God for that.

Kroto’s appeal to “true humanity” as an alternative to “unfounded dogma” is truly laughable.  the only morality that can be “rationally” derived in a world devoid of God dictates that I will take whatever action seems best suited to helping me get whatever I want in each given situation.  You simply cannot derive a love for one’s feelow man from any “rational” principle.  Which is why Kant referred to “the moral law within me” as one of the two things in life that never ceased to amaze him.

Religion should be as removed from science as from politics. Science is a discipline of investigating reality and ourselves in it. Religion and ideologies should have the same primacy over science as does politics - none. Scientific evidence cannot be accurately measured if methods are filtrated through faith in that unseen, or statutory priorities of the moment.

On the other hand, it is idiotic for scientists to ridicule and debase religion. The fact that the spiritual cannot be objectively “proven” is part of its definition. The opening lines of Exodus, with light and life springing from the void, comes breathtakingly close to scientific descriptions of the Big Bang.

The camps are separate. Period. Each - science, religion and politics - deal in exclusive spheres of human experience; that this country’s Founding Fathers realized that enhances their eminence. And actors in each camp have no business smack-talking outside of school.

My education was in the hard sciences, which I use to earn my daily bread.

And I have great difficulty in accepting that tossing a handful of dirt somewheres and, by waiting long enough, life bearing the human spirit will somehow arise.

I read “The Blind Watchmaker” and the author is a most compelling story teller.  But he blows it, to use a common vernacular, when he belittles the believers in God and then fails in his explanation on the origins of life.

Personally I have no difficulty in reconciling the creation of Adam and Eve with Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, bearing in mind that the Bible is not a scientific text.

H.F. Wolff

Ditto, S.F. Curt
There are few things more ridiculous than a Metaphysician telling a clock-maker that his sense of time is all wrong....... or vice versa

As intelligent beings, generally,..well, mostly, sometimes...... one would think that we might be able to accommodate all manner of thinking in the material and spiritual worlds without twisting our panties.

I know and understand this implicitly because me chicken entrails tell me so.

Dr. Kroto’s screed is merely a candid acknowledgement of the substance of Evolutionism: there is no room for God in a scientific assessment of the universe. They will have no truck with the various compromises that religious people seek to make, e.g., that evolution happened but God guided it, etc..

A visit to any museum in any major city, and a careful reading of the descriptions of various age-old articles found therein, should convince most people that the proofs for evolution are mighty slim indeed.  We are asked to make some rather tremendous leaps of faith in order to come up with these multi-billion year estimates of the age of the earth and the origin of the species.

Forget about proving the existence of God; first prove to me the existence of evolution, in a genuinely scientific way.  Until I have such proof evolution will remain only a theory and a fairly risible one at that.  Some decades ago I was asked to believe, for example, that dinosaurs were covered with lizard-like skin; now I am asked to believe they were all covered with feathers (have you ever seen a drawing or model of one of these feathered tyrannosauri?  I have.  Hilarious.) In another decade it will be something else, surely.  It is the same mindset with regard to the age of the earth: every PBS television program I see adds several billion years to the total and there appears to be no end in sight.  Give me science, not dreams.

So, to the evolutionists:  please give me facts, not trumped-up “missing links”.  When you have facts to present before me I will look at them.

And the origin of man?  Well, Dr Kroto may have descended from apes but not me.  Great article, Mr Piatak.

Modern scientists forget that their enterprise depends on the civilization built by Jews and Christians, and depends on the surpluses generated by capitalism.  As long as they merely use those foundations, fine.  But when they take direct and consequential actions to rip down those foundations, they are destroying their own enterprise. 

Christianity and capitalism are beginning to understand that scientists are counter-productive, and are beginning to withdraw their support.  This will be bad for all three institutions, but the blame belongs purely to the scientists.

i see Tom Piatak and P.Z.  Myers are of the same communion on Kroto’s excess of zeal :

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/10/aaargh_i_have_to_disagree_with.php#comments

What a splendid example of convergent evolution!

Mr. Seitz,

Now, now, insults are uncalled for.

The biblical world-view provides the essential foundation that makes science possible. It provides a coherent explanation of both the comprehensibility of the universe and the capabilities of human reason—something materialism cannot do. In fact, materialism’s reliance on unexplained events—the source of matter and energy, the origin of the laws of physics, the ability of the human mind to understand the world, and so on, requires far more acts of faith than Christianity.

What good does it do the average Joe on the street to be taught the Heliocentric model or the theory of evolution?

All he gets out of that are a vague understanding of science and a soul in peril.

Neither the Heliocentric model, nor the theory of evolution are required to even understand quantum physics, much less farming or blacksmithing.

So, if I understand correctly, the difference between Reiss and Kroto is that Reiss believes that the proper approach to Christians is to patiently and calmly explain to them why their faith is a heap of shit, while Kroto believes that one should explain to Christians that their faith is a heap of shit in a highly confrontational style - perhaps one not dissimilar to what one might have seen at a University in Mao’s China circa 1969 or so. This is backed up by his assertion that atheistic broadsides against religion should be read as sermons in Christian churches - something that similarly sounds like an idea straight out of the Cultural Revolution.

While we’re at it; I know that horses have not been a fixture of London life for a century now, but perhaps we can bring some back so that we might make stables out of the cathedrals.

It’s good to know that there’s such diversity of opinion amongst academics these days.

Kroto and his ilk fit the mold of “court historian” perfectly albeit their their careers are made in the hard science disciplines rather than history, journalism or economics.

Isn’t it great living in a world where chemists and biologists assume responsibility for telling us what our philosophical and theological beliefs should be. All of these clowns, Dawkins included, wouldn’t be able to hold their own with a first-year logic student. Is this where freedom gets us? Chesterton said that “we talk about the weather and call it the liberation of all creeds.” This man is allowed to make a fool of himself and then receives and award for it. If only Christians were as serious about their faith as liberals and Muslims.

Nergol:

Thank you for your very apt analogy to the Cultural Revolution.  These people are filled with hate for our culture, which they wish to destroy and replace with an atheistic culture of their own devising.  Just think of PZ Myers’ desecration of the Eucharist or Sam Harris’ ruminations on the need to kill people with dangerous beliefs, not to mention the bile regualrly spewed by the people who frequent the new atheist websites.  If such people ever gain total political power, I think we would see something very similar to the Cultural Revolution.

Now, now Tom , no need to drag the Beijing inquisition into the fray. I suspect the proximate cause of Myers applying the brakes to his rhetoric was less what you read in The Guardian’s grim pages than this recent anthropological report in:

Science 3 October 2008:
Vol. 322. no. 5898, pp. 58 - 62
DOI: 10.1126/science.1158757

“ REVIEW
The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality
Ara Norenzayan* and Azim F. Shariff

We examine empirical evidence for religious prosociality, the hypothesis that religions facilitate costly behaviors that benefit other people. Although sociological surveys reveal an association between self-reports of religiosity and prosociality, experiments measuring religiosity and actual prosocial behavior suggest that this association emerges primarily in contexts where reputational concerns are heightened. Experimentally induced religious thoughts reduce rates of cheating and increase altruistic behavior among anonymous strangers. Experiments demonstrate an association between apparent profession of religious devotion and greater trust. Cross-cultural evidence suggests an association between the cultural presence of morally concerned deities and large group size in humans. We synthesize converging evidence from various fields for religious prosociality, address its specific boundary conditions, and point to unresolved questions and novel predictions.”

One hopes the symbolic eviction of the Vatican Observatory from Castel Gondolfo this year won’t deter the International Astronomical Union from adding craters Coyne and DeChardin to the dark side of the moon.

I see no reason why science should be presented in the context of religion or vice-versa. Otherwise not only does Darwin have to be related to the book of Genesis, but the laws of physics viz conservation of matter and Archimedes’ principle with Jesus’ miraculous ‘feeding the five thousand’ and ‘walking on water’ etc. What children believe before they have been educated is irrelevant and no concern of the teacher.
Someone from the Royal Society should not discuss religion whether they have such beliefs or not and that would therefore apply to Kroto. The consequence otherwise is unnecessary controversy which detracts from the impulse to explicate the essential value of science to modern existence.

Mr Seitz:

Thanks for the citation to that study.  Quite interesting, even though I doubt it was what caused Myers to, temporarily, moderate his frenzy.

San Fernando Curt;

Shall I assume that your desire to separate government, religion, and science extend to the idea that science should not receive any government funding? Do you think Mr. Kroto would agree?

Fletcher;

An excellent point. It is a metaphysical leap beyond any that religion is capable of that the New Atheists make when they come to the conclusion that hard reason and cold logic would lead to a humane, caring, loving world. How? Why? And perhaps most vexingly, who says so? After all, if there is no higher power, then there is no objective way to prove that your moral views are superior to mine, no matter what horrible things my moral views may countenance. Certainly not by superior intelligence - history is chock full of blazingly smart, horribly evil characters.

The problem with being an atheist is that it takes leaps of faith that I just find entirely too fantastic to be plausible.

Best not remind him, or Charles Murray, of the crater on the front side of the moon celebrating s the Dominican justly hailed as the founder of modern astrophysics for first theorizing that stars might host solar systems like our own, a scientific advance that so impressed the Vatican that Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake in Rome in 1600, and his writings suppresses for two centuries thereafter.

it is only ‘slightly’ absurd to attribute the achievements of individuals to that of whatever religion thier parents happen to claim as thier own.

while Kroto believes that one should explain to Christians that their faith is a heap of shit in a highly confrontational style

Actually, Kroto appears to be saying that one should tell Christians that their faith is a heap of shit without explaining it in any way, because people who believe in the supernatural are not worthy of receiving explanations.

Glaivester:

Thanks for the excellent summary of Kroto’s argument.

The poor atheistic scientists dilemna.  If only evolution would kick in and get us all to become environmentalists to save the planet for some inexplicable, unscientific humanitarian reason.

Shall I assume that your desire to separate government, religion, and science extend to the idea that science should not receive any government funding? Do you think Mr. Kroto would agree?!

In both instances - no.

Mr. Seitz:

I presume that you are referring to Copernicus, a member of the 3rd order 0f St. Dominic, as “the Dominican justly hailed as the founder of modern astrophysics,” and that you mean to indicate that Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for having advocated Copernicus’s heliocentric theory.  However, The Stanford Encyclodedia of Philosophy states that “when Giorando Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic, it had nothing to do with his writings in support of Copernican cosmology” (ishttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/copernicus/)

No , Mr. Porreca, Bruno himself was a Dominican friar, Galileo’s nemesis Cardinal Bellarmine his persecutor, and consorting with protestants to get his 1584 treatise, _On the Infinite Universe and Worlds_ , into print in Germany one of many charges against him- like Newton after him he was a unitarian

The case is examined anew in Ingrid Rowland’s recent biography, which despites reservations about the thin historical record of his life, won this favorable review in the New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/08/25/080825crbo_books_acocella

Mr. Seitz,

Thank you for the clarification.  I’m here to learn.  It’s rather jarring, though, for a yokel like me, to see Giordano Bruno regarded as the founder of modern astrophysics.  I would expect someone like Johannes Kepler to be more deserving of such a title.

‘ Modern’ is indeed a problematic term in Bruno’s case, no less than Court Astrologer Kepler’s, Mr. Porreca, but theorizing that the lights in the sky are distant suns is about as basic as contributions to astrophysics can get-

Mr. Seitz:

Your affection for Giordano Bruno is touching, and no doubt every bit as genuine as that shown by the “Masons, atheists, [and] pantheists” who gather at his statue on the anniversary of his execution, but it is all rather beside the point:  the scientists who are being sanctioned for their beliefs these days are Christians, just like Rev. Reiss, and the ones applauding are atheists, like Harry Kroto.  In fact, Kroto’s open intolerance is the reason I wrote my piece.

Thank you for a great piece. There are serious atheists out there, but the Dawkins crowd hardly qualifies. Refuting their varificationist principle (the idea that the only real knowledge is of things proved or provable by the scientific method) seems like easy work for a philosopher these days, and Alvin Plantinga in particular has done an outstanding job of outlining its deficiencies. More fundamental than the problem you cite- that Kroto has no way of subjecting many of his views, like support for democracy, to the scientific method- is the fact that it is impossible to subject the varificationist principle to scientific varification in the first place. In other words, to support the idea that the only reliable source of knowledge is the scientific method, you’d have to subject this assertion to the scientific method, which is obviously impossible.

Thanks for your kind words, Mr. Tripodi.

I’m not concerned any longer if dawkins is evil. He is. I’m wondering if anybody has a valid reason for the survival of the usa, even of a few hundred Americans.
Please suggest good reasons for this and I might read them.
Thank you.
Sea Level.