Feb 03
Here’s a quote by Robert Jastro that I’ve heard in several debates around the compatibility of science and religion.
[HT Brian]
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
- Robert Jastrow
(God and the Astronomers, W.W. Norton, New York, 1978, p. 116)
Tagged with: cosmology • epistemology • faith • religion • science
Mar 21
When President Obama stands up and tells the nation that we should “focus more on the ‘hard sciences’” and then a few weeks later decries the “immorality” of the executive bonuses taken at AiG, I wonder if he recognizes the contradiction, or at least insufficiency, in his logic.
He can’t have his cake and eat it too, a fact he would understand if he had studied philosophy and the logical paradox such a situation creates. No, philosophy isn’t considered a “hard science” and much less theology, something which I am sure our pluralistic president would certinly shy away from (for over a decade in the case of his former pastor whom he has left under the bus).
Why is it that we demand academic excellence and rigerously thought out answers only when it comes to the “hard sciences” and not when it comes to morality? Are we really afraid that if we look very hard we just might see a divine lawgiver we are accountable to behind the moral laws we like to throw up when it is convienent? The same one who also tells us to first examine ourselves for greed, malice, and lust before throwing the (tax) book at someone else?
Tagged with: AiG • Economey • morality • obama • science
