Janice Rael
Maybe it's literal, maybe hyperbole.™
- Joined
- May 3, 2024
- Messages
- 1,059
- Location
- Jenkintown PA
- Gender
- Surprise me, or she/her
- Basic Beliefs
- I believe I need to ask more people
I'd like to disagree with the assertion that a person of faith lacks scientific curiosity, or, that scientific knowledge results in an end of faith. This is merely false on its surface. There is no shortage of theistic people in science, or who trust science and the scientific method and process.Calling it "debate" is being kind but I understand where you are coming from. I think "contest" is a better word. It's a popularity contest ultimately and isn't scientific at all. To talk about complexity with a diehard religious person is a waste of time because that involves being scientifically curious and anyone who is scientifically curious is not going to be theistic or deistic, at least not today.
How many times over how many millennia has the Catholic Church accepted a scientific discovery and said "God did it"? They did so with Darwin and evolutionary theory. It's The God of The Gaps all the way back for a lot of people.
I personally fought against a bill that would have mandated the teaching of Creationism/ID in Pennsylvania science classes as an "alternative theory" to evolution. This is the thing and event that I often refer to, the one that IIDB Admin RBH and the people in the Evo/Cre debate forum helped me with, this bill, in PA.
RBH gave me that pdf scan of the original Wedge Document, the precursor to Project 2025.
I used the Wedge Document to defeat the measure. As I read from it, ID proponent "Dr" Michael Behe slammed his laptop shut and stormed out of the Harrisburg hearing. Behe abandoned his hapless teenaged co-speaker.
On my side was the ineffable ACLU-PA lawyer, Larry Frankel, (yes his memory is a blessing) and a man of faith. The man of faith was a Mormon: I believe he preferred to say he was a member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, or, LDS. His name was Dr Randy Bennett, and he was a biology professor from the science department of Juniata College.
I can't find RBH any more, but Dr Bennett still chairs the Biology department at Juniata College and would surely love to debunk any notion that science literacy leads to "atheism" or that understanding science results in an end of faith. This claim is demonstrably false and always has been. We are fools for saying it. That's why this post is a TMI blog. The story is from 2006. You've all been wrong since then. This is me telling you again.
Guys, don't do that.