The Irrationality of Science is a Viewpoint article which comments on the recent op ed piece by Paul Davies. A quote from the Davies article is followed by the author's response. My comments follow that.

Davies:

Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith….In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

Viewpoint author:

The last sentence is an irritatingly common misrepresentation of faith. Faith is not believing despite the lack of evidence, faith is believing despite the fact that the evidence falls short of proof. Anyway, Davies is going to argue that science, like religion, is ultimately based on faith:

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Bradford posted about Paul Davies' op-ed in the New York Times on the thread Science and Faith. Which quickly went downhill as our live-in critics decended like vultures to put a quick stop to any real discussion.

The SciBlog community wasn't hampered by such tactics, so came out hot and heavy in defense of their ideology against Davies' observations. Anti-theist PZ Myers insisted that Faith is not a prerequisite for science, but only managed to demonstrate laughable ignorance of the relevant science. My favorite excerpts…

When someone says that life would not exist if the laws of physics were just a little bit different, I have to wonder"¦ how do they know? Just as there are many different combinations of amino acids that can make any particular enzyme, why can't there be many different combinations of physical laws that can yield life?

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Paul Davies authored Taking Science on Faith an opinion piece in the New York Times. He asks some questions about laws of physics at the end of this paragraph:

The most refined expression of the rational intelligibility of the cosmos is found in the laws of physics, the fundamental rules on which nature runs. The laws of gravitation and electromagnetism, the laws that regulate the world within the atom, the laws of motion "” all are expressed as tidy mathematical relationships. But where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that they do?

Davies next notes an attitude shift and the dependence of life on a limited range of mathematical values. We live in a universe that accomodates life; a most convenient condition.

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According to Michael Behe's blog, Ken Miller has written a second review of Behe's new book, The Edge of Evolution. That Miller went to the trouble of writing a second review suggests Behe struck a nerve. Behe notes, "much of the second review turns on the theological implications of the book." Apparently, Miller raises the argument from evil, thinking that evolution somehow absolves God of any responsibility for malaria.

Behe writes:

So there you have it. Miller (and Ayala) won't tolerate life on earth being designed because that would impugn God's reputation. Too many bad things inhabit the earth. They embrace Darwinism, at least in large part, for theological reasons.

Wow, and they say ID proponents get their conclusions from religious motives!

So, how to respond to such a position? The first thing to say is that it's very hard to see how the Miller/Ayala position gets God off the hook. The "byproducts of a fruitful and creative [Darwinian] natural world" that Miller alludes to are not simply byproducts "” they are deadly, dangerous, vicious byproducts. No matter if malaria were designed directly by God or indirectly by a sloppy process He put in motion, many children of mothers in malarious regions of Africa are going to be just as dead. There is going to be as much suffering in the world one way as the other.

Why couldn't a grieving mother justifiably demand of an infinitely powerful God that He explain why He chose such a sloppy process to make life, instead of a more efficient process that would not produce natural evils such as parasites and tsunamis? One that wouldn't cause such enormous pain? It seems to me that designing a poor Darwinian process that inevitably spins off natural evils leaves One as vulnerable to being sued for incompetence as directly designing them as finished products.

Since Miller raised the theological objections, I'd say that Behe has put the ball right back in Miller's court. The question that remains is this - will Miller ignore this argument and question? Or will he deal with it in his third review?

The leaders in the New Atheist Movement like to equate religious belief with mental illness. While we can expect such rhetoric from activists, what is troubling is that the same people typically posture as advocates for science. This is troubling because science continues to show that religious belief is actually good for mental health. For example, consider this study that was announced just yesterday:

Research shows that religion and spirituality are linked to positive physical and mental health; however, most studies have focused on people with life threatening diseases. A new study from the University of Missouri-Columbia shows that religion helps many individuals with disabilities adjust to their impairments and gives new meaning to their lives.

According to the study, persons facing impending death may use religion to help them accept their condition, come to terms with unresolved life issues, and prepare for death. However, the study suggests that religion may be an equally, if not more important, coping mechanism for persons with chronic disabilities such as traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, stroke and arthritis.

Scientific American has published in its October 2007 issue a lengthy review of past and present neurophysiological research - using everything from EEG to fMRI and everything in between - in the scientific quest to understand God's interactions with human beings. Or maybe just understand human beings' communion with God.

Searching for God in the Brain covers the spectrum of scientific interpretations of the findings too. From those who dismiss the evidence as anything but errant brain states to those who think it may be possible to use the knowledge to help people overcome depression, enjoy their lives more, even better their chances for defeating dread diseases that science already knows happens more often in people of faith than in people who have no spiritual leanings or ties.

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Political activist Richard Dawkins continues to get more extreme. According to this news article, he preached the following message to a standing ovation:

In his speech, Dawkins portrayed a black-and-white intellectual battle between atheism and religion. He denounced the "preposterous nonsense of religious customs" and compared religion to racism. He also gave no quarter to moderate or liberal believers, asserting that "so-called moderate Christianity is simply an evasion."

"If you've been taught to believe it by moderates, what's to stop you from taking the next step and blowing yourself up?" he said.

Dawkins also continued his attack on relgious parents.

But the real news here is that it looks (to me) as if Sam Harris is starting to get a little nervous by the intensity of the anti-religious hate engendered by this new movement.

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For a long time, creationists have been trying to portray evolution as a religion and have failed. But with a new book on the horizon, Thank God for Evolution!, written by Reverend Michael Dowd, America's evolutionary evangelist, the creationists may finally have a case.

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The critics complaining about appearing in the "Expelled" film on false pretenses shouldn't feel so glum. Turns out other documentaries have also sugar-coated the truth to its interviewees. Like the CNN documentary, "God's Warriors":

CNN's three part series God's Warriors was not journalism's or even that ubiquitous cable network's finest six hours. Cobbling together two hours of disjointed footage and commentary, CNN ostensibly exposed many of us - in Israel and the US - as radical Jewish warriors: No different or any less dangerous than those among the world's 1 billion Muslims who are radical in their way too. …

[The CNN producer] learned of our JCRC [Jewish Community Relations Council] through her mother, a non-Jewish resident of a Chicago suburb who admired our leading role in advocating an end to the Darfur genocide. It was precisely this type of activity, the noble pursuit of justice by grassroots people motivated by religious impulses and acting through religious institutions that the young producer claimed the network and its star correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, wanted to explore. After all, she told us, it is such a decent, important activity and so much more real, common and under-reported than the conventional stereotypes promoted by the mass media. She insisted that CNN's aim was not to focus - as others do ad nauseam - on the radical fringes among the Jews, Christians and Muslims.

HT: Verum Serum

Let's say that someone proposes God created the world 6000 years ago. "Aha!" Richard Dawkins might say, arguing this belief about God is a scientific hypothesis. So let's look to science. My goodness, science says the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. So there you have it "“ science has tested and disproved the existence of God.

Oh, but not so fast. All science did was test when the Earth came into existence. That is, while Dawkins might think that science has falsified the claim " God created the Earth 6000 years ago," all science has done is falsify the claim "God created the Earth 6000 years ago."

Let's say that science determined the Earth was 6000 years old. Would that mean science detected the existence of God? Would that mean science detected a divine act of Creation? No, the only thing that science detected was the age of the Earth.

Dawkins doesn't seem to understand basic points in theology and science "“ God is not some part of Nature that can be measured and in science, measurement is not something we can discard. At best, the theist or atheist can argue that science can detect the effects of God's interventions in Nature. But detecting an effect is not detecting the cause. And if the cause is in some sense outside of Nature, science can never get to it. Science would be stalled at the effect. And if all you have is the effect, science, by its very nature, will choose the causes it can reach to explain that effect.