Apples and Oranges

I'm sure Rees is a very nice guy, but he's comparing apples and oranges.

Martin Rees recently won the Templeton Foundation Prize for scientists that bow down to religion and that believe religion and science can play nice (I'm sure he is a very nice person and all, but many scientist-they claim-would not have accepted the prize). Rees wants a "peaceful coexistence" between the two groups, and he is not the only one.

Francis Collins of the Genome Project and codiscoverer of DNA's double helix, believes that science and religion can play nice. The organizations NCSE and BCSE, according to this open letter from Jerry Coyne, not only also believe that religion and science are compatible, but they are "bashing" on scientist who are atheists for speaking up. WTF. Read Coyne's Open Letter.

The two disciplines deal with totally different things. Science is about the physical material world that surrounds us. Our quest for understanding is achieved through what is measurable and testable; and if the tests cannot be replicated, then it's not scientific knowledge. Faith requires no replicated tests from independent sources. In fact religious knowledge is stagnant and never changing. The claims of religion can be tested as much as Russel's Teapot or folklore and mythology, which is to say, it cannot be tested. The knowledge must be accepted on faith and faith alone.

It's OK to be a "d*ck".

The fear of these people and organizations is that the aggressiveness of the New Atheist will scare or turn away people, students, from the beauty of science and the truth that it offers (not). I believe that the truth of science can stand on it's own, we don't have to coddle people and spoon feed the facts to fence sitters.  Science welcomes criticism, and yet religious faith does not**.

Faith has brought us the Crusades and witch burning and slavery. Ask Galileo if faith and science can "coexist". Recently, I do believe it was Tennessee, passed a bill that will allow the teaching of Creationism in the science classroom. Are there any atheist teaching our 'philosophy' in churches, no. It was Bush Jr's Faith Based Initiates and decades of no,or lack of, separation of church and state that prompted the Four Horsemen to simultaneously (unplanned) appear on the scene in 2004. If there were no wacko's killing abortion doctors, or the spreading of evangelicals in Africa (which coincides with the spread of AIDS, rape and exorcisms) or the blatant Christian privilege in politics...would the New Atheist have even mobilized. I think not.

* Francis Collins attempt to reconcile faith and science, Biologos.

* Collins in Christianity Today.

* The Super Awesome...New Atheist.

** Until very recently it was taboo to criticize religion. The New Atheist changed that. The nature of science is to be scrutinized. Try and prove science wrong, that is what it is all about. Religion is the opposite, and that is what is wrong with it.

* I was just reminded of that great saying...Don't pray in my science classroom and I won't think in your church. Awesome.

Update: I get these guys confused, not them, me.  Francis Collins is the Human Genome Project dude and he also was head of the National Institute of Health (NIH), right. James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the DNA thingy. But it is Collins that is a Born Again Christian....right. I think so, now. Thanks 'idahogie'...if that is your real name. Awesomeness.