"Science Minister won't Confirm Belief in Evolution"Read counter opinion from the National Post
Anne McIlroy
Globe and Mail
March 17, 2009Canada's science minister, the man at the centre of the controversy over federal funding cuts to researchers, won't say if he believes in evolution.
"I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate," Gary Goodyear, the federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.
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Brian Alters, founder and director of the Evolution Education Research Centre at McGill University in Montreal, was shocked by the minister's comments.
Evolution is a scientific fact, Dr. Alters said, and the foundation of modern biology, genetics and paleontology. It is taught at universities and accepted by many of the world's major religions, he said.
"It is the same as asking the gentleman, 'Do you believe the world is flat?' and he doesn't answer on religious grounds," said Dr. Alters.
18 comments:
That really grinds my gears. It's this exact type of shit that bugs me. Religious beliefs impeding science. It's an indirect way of imposing beliefs onto those that want none of it. Gah!
Well, I meant "impede" more in terms impeding the benefits of science. Nuclear missile development could be easily manipulated to cause mass destruction, so I would definitely want regulation on that.
As far as your mention of moral impediments to science, I ask you, what defines your moral compass? Could your religious upbringing affect your opinion on morality?
I don't want to go into the pros and cons of Stem cell research, but imo, the pros outweigh the cons in spades.
I don't believe religion should ever impede science. I have no use for religion. In the practical world, it is utterly useless; it should have zero impact in my life when pragmatics are being discussed.
As far as the allocation of funds is concerned, I disagree with your example with regards to the idea of it being an impediment to science.
If we did not have the proper funding allocated to arts, especially liberal arts, there are plenty of things that would go wrong in society. A great aspect of our human nature, that allows us to study and analyze not only ourselves, but the world around us stems from the application of our liberal education.
If we allocated everything into physical sciences alone, there's a good chance that we, as humans, would be lacking in many other areas. Now this is conjecture, I don't have any real evidence to back it up, but I am sure I could find a plethora of reasons for why arts deserves the funding it gets.
In relevance to my point, regardless of how much is funded to social sciences, there will rarely ever be a shortage funded to the physical sciences. Unless, of course, some religious twit comes along and fucks it up by cutting the funding for it.
I think economics, politics and morality should have a say in regulating science, but religion should not. I suspect many people would agree with that.
Alright, let's talk about morality, shall we?
First off, morality is relative depending on our upbringings and our influences.
Not trying to play the devil's advocate, because I am against human testing, but a lot of what we know about the human body today is a result of the human experiments done by the Nazi's during WW2 and that of the ones done in Manchuria in unit 711. Clearly it had many benefits; however they came at the cost of lives and a great deal of morality.
Now, because we cannot agree on an absolute morality, we must go by the majority. I would argue that the majority of people would argue that killing people, even for the sake of science, is a terrible thing to do. To be realistic, it would be a rather large majority of 90% upward. We could use this to say that human testing should not be allowed.
With regards to stem cell research, it really comes down to what is considered life. You may want to compare a fetus (or even a fertilized egg)to a human being as having life. I disagree. I don't want to get into why I disagree, but there are plenty of reasons for why I think so. The main reason being that a fetus has the potential to become human life, but does not possess the human characteristics to be considered human life. If we argue semantics, I would argue that animals and plants have life too. Why reap the rewards for animal testing if we know it to be immoral?
Now as far as atheism is concerned, it does not assess what I believe in, but what I don't believe in. I could call you a flying-spaghetti-monster (FSM) rejectionist because you don't believe in FSM. But the fact is, you believe in Christianity. By being an atheist, it merely says what I am not, but doesn't dictate what I am.
What I am is a PEARList. I believe in physical evidence and reasoned logic. This is all as an aside, but I just wanted to bring that to your attention.
Also, I didn't say that an atheists view should be taken exclusively over someone who is religious. I think it's very possible for an atheist to be stupid and unworthy of having a substantiated opinion; I also don't believe that religious people are incapable of accepting science.
That being said, the people responsible for the greatest contributions to science have understood the clear distinction between religion and science so as not to impede the progress of science.
As far as the taxpayer's money is concerned, yes, it should be allocated democratically; however, it should take into consideration strongly for those involved. Religious groups--especially those of the Judaeo-Christian kind--always get heard in any debate. Atheists/Agnostics/PEARLists rarely get heard and it's unfair considering that there are plenty of us out there that deserve to be heard.
Furthermore, Your cynical view on atheists being short of a moral compass is astounding. I sincerely hope you don't believe that morality is predicated on religion. If you do, then there's really no point in discussing this any further.
Your last paragraph almost made me laugh. Almost in the sense that if I hadn't found it inherently flawed and stupid, I'd have laughed.
You clearly don't know anything about atheists; Most people I know are either agnostic or atheistic and would never believe in human testing. But I won't go where you've gone; I won't label all religious people as the extreme creationist morons that are an impediment to society's progress.
I'll reply to your second comment first just to clarify some things.
1. When it comes to "some" or "a lot", it's a relative issue on what "some" and "a lot" means. What I meant to say was that a lot of what we know about the human body's limitations can be attributed to the human experiments done on people. Now, This still comes down to the semantic approach to what those words mean, but that's really all I was trying to say. Also, you, yourself, made a factual statement stating "some" but "not all". This makes you a hypocrite.
2. I don't think you read my question properly. Actually, I think, imo, you made up your mind about prematurely on what I was trying to say. All I said was that people knew there to be a clear distinction between science and religion. I know very well that some people who have made strong contributions were indeed religious. This does not reject their contributions to science, it just means that they probably knew there to be a distinction between the two so as to not just accept everything as being created by god and that the scientific realm was an exclusive entity. What I shouldn't have done was imply that it was factual since I do not have the full facts to support that statement.
3. I found it interesting how you did not detail exactly in your final 3 points when assessing my "factual" claims; however, I'll indulge in answering them for you.
Atheists rarely do get heard. Why do you think it has taken so long to get proper studies stem-cell research going on? Because of the religious impediments being faced American society. This is a fact, you can not dispute this even if you'd like to. What about the fact that Intelligent had been introduced in Ohio curricula (not sure if it was all schools) despite the fact that there is no scientific merit what so ever in it?
What about not having "in god we trust" on American money? Where do us atheists get our views heard on that?
What about getting tax exemptions for religion when there is none for atheists. If Atheism is a belief, as you say it is, then why don't we get heard on important issues when we have our own beliefs and have tax exemptions for our beliefs?
When I made the inference of you not believing in FSM, it was more rhetorical than anything. I could've asked you if you believed in FSM first, or I could've stated it differently saying that in all likelihood you didn't believe in FSM.
But given that, I think it's fair to say that you've just nitpicked on the irrelevant. It wouldn't be a stretch of the imagination to say that you've probably made factual claims based on speculative research; however, it's not something to be ashamed of because it happens from time to time. I will be more careful when it comes to making this distinction more clear next time.
Also, As for personal attacks, I think that implying that atheists have no moral compass and support utilitarian measures when it comes to life is far more attacking than anything that I said to you or about your religion. I think you should watch the personal attacks more because you've been more implicit about it, which is far worse since you may not even notice that you've done it.
In response to your first post, I will say this.
I am not sure that whether Atheism is a belief or not leads to a fundamental difference on our views. It is a difference, but I do not see how it fundamentally changes anything.
I don't think religion is a PEARList approach. It comes down to physical evidence and logical reasoning. I Think every bit of PEARLism is reserved for scientific reasoning only. If something can be rationalized by science; if we can reason it with proper and fundamentally structured scientific methods, then it can be considered a PEARList view. That is not to discount the value of religion. Just because it doesn't fall into the PEARList view of things, doesn't mean it can't be accepted or pursued.
I just think that given all the differences in religions, given what everyone believes primarily due of societal, geographical and historical differences, people are subject to having different beliefs. This precludes many beliefs from having valid reasons of truth.
The big question is what we consider to be truth. God should not be used for designating what constitutes as truth, but what constitutes as faith. Faith is not truth, there is a clear distinction between what you believe to be true and what has been factually uncovered as the truth.
If we come up with anything scientific, it starts off as a hypothesis, undergoes intense scrutiny, gets rejected before it can be accepted, then if it's good enough it can become a scientific theory. Once, or if, it gets proven, it can then become fact. This process is purely based on Physical evidence and reasoned logic.
With Religion, you have one or more persons account of what happened, it gets written and then passed off as truth. It does not undergo continuous scrutiny, it simply gets passed off as the word of god. This allows people of different faiths to reject it and come up with their own theological evidence. Where is the truth in that? if something is truthful, it should be governed by PEARLism for it to have any real factual application.
I don't know if you'll agree with my views on this, but this is specifically what I am talking about.
As far as whether religion should have an influence on the allocation of resources, I can't really say. I am not religious, so I will have a bias on that. What I am saying--and have been saying this whole time--is that religion should not have a say on SCIENCE. Morality, which is NOT predicated on religion (example: I am moral but not religious), should. But then it comes down to what we consider moral.
Now, everyone pays taxes. You and I both pay taxes, but I don't really get to say what I want my taxes to be spent on. Churches get tax exemptions. I don't think they should. I think they should pay just like anyone else. If they start paying taxes, then maybe they can have an opinion on where the taxes do get spent. I get the rewards of science, as do you. I don't get anything from religion but you do (yes, I made an inference about what you get because it makes sense; don't argue semantics).
There is a clear difference between church and state. If the church can have an influence in what gets spent, then Atheists should get an equal say in it.
You did make the implication that atheists were immoral. Case and point, you mentioned that
"So if our whole society is religious twits, then I say they have these twits have the right to elect someone to regulate their hard earned tax dollars. When we're run by atheists, then we can finally start live human testing on prisoners."
This clearly shows that you--regardless of your intentions--implied that atheists have little moral compass. You might disagree, but you were completely out of line in wording it that way.
When it comes to the separation of church and state, it's really about separating the religious ideologies from the constitution. Perhaps I worded mine incorrectly but what I was trying to stress was that by allowing religion to influence democratic decisions, that allows the ideologies of the church to interfere with the decisions made by the state.
I do believe that Religious beliefs do have more influence on society than need be. The best example would be the hindering of stem-cell research for however long.
I don't know how you interpreted my any of my statements to represent an unconstitutional mindset. You just made a claim, but you made no effort to elaborate on that, so I won't bother with it until you do so.
Impeding progress is impeding progress. Stem-cell research has been impeded, solely due to religious beliefs, and that has impeded science. That is precisely all that I am saying.
Anyways, I've made many points that I think were quite just. I don't think you've done much to support your claims against mine. You simply disagreed with me without supporting any of the claims I made against you. That's fine, but it's a waste of my time if you question my words without elaborating on it.
Given that, however, I am willing to leave it at that.
I am not exactly sure what the "course in logic" would teach, but I don't think you can fault me for assuming that you implied specifically that. Again, as I've stated many times in my posts, it was an implication, not a blatant statement, that all atheists lacked a moral compass.
Yes, in future, try to avoid the hyperbole over the internet because it's difficult to gauge sarcasm, unlike in person.
Anyways, this type of discussion would be better suited for an in-person dialogue session rather than over someone's blog. There is simply too much that can be said and too long a delay in responses, so it's difficult to correct someone if and when they make a mistake in their argument.
Good debate, guys.
....I guess that means you win, Gautam!
Not so fast:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=574#comic
FTW!
Wow, Gautam, your victory was so total that everyone else's arguments vanished.
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