A Panda Baby Step Back

A Panda Baby Step Back

Hoppe at Panda’s thumb backs off a bit from his case for NCSE’s approach after further analysis and debate, and once again I support his conclusion with the added information.

Just as ID should not be taught in Science class, NCSE should not be suggesting means to reconcile science and religion, but instead should stick to the fact that many people have and do reconcile evolution and religion. That’s fine since it’s science and empirical. [ I have a mea culpa here, I skimmed part of the articles on this because it was more back and forth than fact, so I missed that they were in fact suggesting means to reconcile.]

Hoppe argues that NCSE should use their strength which is Science, and leave the religious means for accomodating evolution to churches rather than suggesting a particular method; doing that puts them in a religious rather than scientific realm and could lead to pitfalls.

Here’s my original article:

Evolution, Pragmatism or Agnosticism?

In the Evolution discussion Richard Hoppe at Panda’s Thumb dissents from the Coyne/PZ Meyers view. I’m in agreement with Hoppe, but it’s not pragmatism alone that makes it so.

The pragmatism goes like this: Since we hope to convince more conservatives that teaching religion in science class is a bad thing, then we shouldn’t hand out the big smackdown to religion by essentially agreeing with Discovery Institute’s dichotomous view that to be a good Christian you must be opposed to science, since the Coyne/Meyers version of that is just the obverse wedge: If you support science then you must automatically deny G-d.

One is philosophy, the other religion – neither wedge should be allowed in science. Ayn Rand said “Politics is philosophy in action.” If we allow the teaching of a politics in science that denies G-D, then not only are we diminishing Science and being unpragmatic, we are also proselityzing a philosophy.

That’s probably just as unconstitutional as teaching religion as science, and as you will see below it’s not scientific. If the rabid atheists  must have that view taught then like religion it belongs in history, philosophy, and social classes, but not in science classes.

One of my heroes in this ongoing political struggle is Genie Scott and she explains this much better than I in the video below.

Even as a child I did not have faith, and PZ in many ways is like an ex-smoker in that he had faith and changed his mind – now he wants everyone else to. So he’s taking a hardline and saying that Evolution’s defenders should go on offense in his reply to Hoope here