It seems that lately, there has been an assault on science by religious fundamentalism, especially with regards to the teaching of evolution. And even when we have entered into the 21st century, there is still a considerable percentage of the population that still believe in supernatural phenomena and paranormal events that have, at best, only anecdotal evidence.
This is an old essay by Steven Weinberg, from a speech he gave in 1999 on the topic of the possibility of our universe made by a "Designer". This essay has a lot of powerful points that cannot be pushed aside easily, and someone with Weinberg's stature certainly cannot be marginalized. While religious zealots tend to not stake the high grounds in terms of the physical world (maybe they learned their lessons from the Galileo affair), they do continue to assert their "moral" high grounds. This is where Weinberg also confronts them head on, that if we look at it carefully enough, this moral high ground actually has nothing to do with their religious beliefs. In fact, he claims that:
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.
If this essay doesn't wake you up, nothing will. So what a way to start the new year, eh?
:)
Zz.
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