This article reports on the point of view of Karl W. Giberson, a physics professor at Eastern Nazarene College in Massachusetts, who "... remains a believer as well as a scientist..."
Read it, I guess he is more moderate and pragmatic than those blind fundamentalists. However, towards the end, when he's being questioned by Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptic magazine, that's when things start to lose some credibility in my book:
Shermer followed up, asking Giberson, then why believe in God at all?
"It makes the world so much more interesting," Giberson said. "The mystery of God’s existence is a more satisfying mystery than the mystery of how can all this arise out of a particle."
That's very lame! But it got worse.
But what is your evidence, Shermer said, for belief in God?
"I was raised believing in God, so for me, the onus would be on someone to stop me from believing," Giberson said, adding that "there is a certain momentum that is already there."
Shermer said, so "you’re stepping off the page of science."
"Absolutely," Giberson said, but added that he thinks science will soon nail down a definition of consciousness that will make God's intentions more clear.
That's when he lost me.
Let's try this: "Giberson, I believe that you are crazy, mentally ill, and should be locked up. Now the onus is on you to prove to me that you're not". Or what about this? "Giberson, I believe that you'll commit murder at some time in the future and should be locked up now. Now the onus is on your to prove to me that I'm wrong."
He doesn't see how absurd that is? And he doesn't understand why religion and science doesn't get along?
Zz.
2 comments:
Interesting to note here is that the 'saving Darwin'event sponsors, The John Templeton Foundation, does not have the best reputation. Dawkins often clashes with these people. I just read about them in 'The God Delusion' by Dawkins. Here's the Wikipedia entry on this:
In his book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins (an evolutionary biologist) repeatedly criticizes the Templeton Foundation, referring to the Templeton Prize as "a very large sum of money given...usually to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion."
anyway, this does not mean that Dawkins himself is holy, 'The God Delusion' is a deeply personal book for him and his language and opinions are not always as 'clean' in this one :-s
You said:
Let's try this: "Giberson, I believe that you are crazy, mentally ill, and should be locked up. Now the onus is on you to prove to me that you're not". Or what about this? "Giberson, I believe that you'll commit murder at some time in the future and should be locked up now. Now the onus is on your to prove to me that I'm wrong."
I don't think I agree with this analogy even though I understand the point you are attempting to make. He is stating he was raised this way - for your analogy to work you would have to state this individual was raised to have these opinions on believers such as this. Also in your second analogy you are implying a direct interaction with the believer and the non believer. Gib is not saying this at all, he is not trying to go out there and have people line up to convince him otherwise, he is not trying to create an intentional interaction between non believer and believer, he is simply saying this is how he grew up and he has no reason to not believe - but confrontation is not implied - which in your second analogy confrontation is implied. You first analogy works if you say the person was raised to dislike people with these particular beliefs. But even then - we all know memetic evolution is real so it still doesn't discredit the foundation for his beliefs and it seems obvious that he is intelligent enough to have some sort of foundation whether rational or not.
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