Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?

Rating:
Summary: A thought-provoking collection of essays
Review: I attended the "Science and Religion" symposium held in Atlanta in 2001 and it was excellent. But this book is much more than a mere summary of the symposium. The book also includes many contributions by authors who did not attend, such as a chapter on Nonoverlapping Magisteria by the late Stephen Jay Gould and a chapter on Intelligent design by William A. Dembski.

At issue is whether religion and science have anything to say to each other and what happens when they tread on each other's turf. It has been argued that science has no business intruding into the realm of religion. But the nature of "science" is poorly understood by many people. It is not a body of knowledge, but rather a means of acquiring knowledge. Some religious claims cannot be be addressed by science because no means are available to investigate them. But on those issues where a means does exist, science has consistently forced religion to retreat and revise itself.

This book should be required reading by any school granting degrees in science, and it should be placed in every high school library.

Rating:
Summary: A thought-provoking collection of essays
Review: Science and religion are NOT "Nonoverlapping Magisteria." Religion does make claims that science can neither rebut nor even investigate. But it also makes claims that can be and have been disproven. Either the transportation of a Catholic saint/goddess directly to the sky without passing GO and without collecting $... was a verifiable fact of history, or it did not happen. The dogma that a god played a role in the origin of the universe is religion, and as such is not subject to scientific investigation. The claim that the universe is less than ten thousand years old has nothing to do with religion. It is bad science.
But dogmatic religion is one thing. The belief that the universe was intelligently designed, but not necessarily by the god of religion, is something else. Arguments for Intelligent Design are presented by believers, and rebutted by scientists.
Why is belief in religion so much higher among the less educated, and so much lower among natural scientists? More than one author offers a credible answer.
Other books have considered the question of whether science and religion are compatible, but never so effectively. While "Science and Religion" will not cure incurables, it will give the pragmatically religious something to think about. Buy it or borrow it, but read it.

Rating:
Summary: Mythology versus Reality: Can they both be true?
Review: Science and religion are NOT "Nonoverlapping Magisteria." Religion does make claims that science can neither rebut nor even investigate. But it also makes claims that can be and have been disproven. Either the transportation of a Catholic saint/goddess directly to the sky without passing GO and without collecting $... was a verifiable fact of history, or it did not happen. The dogma that a god played a role in the origin of the universe is religion, and as such is not subject to scientific investigation. The claim that the universe is less than ten thousand years old has nothing to do with religion. It is bad science.
But dogmatic religion is one thing. The belief that the universe was intelligently designed, but not necessarily by the god of religion, is something else. Arguments for Intelligent Design are presented by believers, and rebutted by scientists.
Why is belief in religion so much higher among the less educated, and so much lower among natural scientists? More than one author offers a credible answer.
Other books have considered the question of whether science and religion are compatible, but never so effectively. While "Science and Religion" will not cure incurables, it will give the pragmatically religious something to think about. Buy it or borrow it, but read it.

Rating:
Summary: We have the power to brainwash, but which propaganda?
Review: This is an interesting set of blow by blow essays (at least for a Martian anthropologist studying earth science), supposedly on science and religion, but really on the Darwin debate, with the inspiration of Galileo in the background. It also includes an essay by the ID theorist William Dembski who informs us he volunteered to join M. Shermer's Skeptic to be the resident skeptic on evolution. Since Mr. Dembski is quite unacceptable (one of those people who believe weird things) for this, I should volunteer myself, think of all the free snacks.
The book opens with the standard metanarrative of science's triumph over superstition from Galileo forth, in the raised eyebrow condescending mode ("aren't we smart, why do all these people resist?"). But somehow it has never sunk in that modern science is a failure in its mission and derailed with Darwin as it entered the field of naturalistic metaphysics.
In some ways, the tone here is fine. Scientists, after all, armed with four forces for a theory of everything are now beset with a fifth, the Templeton Prize money, which has lead to so many books with the word 'god' in the title, big business.
The refusal to compromise here is admirable, but the problem is not religion, but bad science, and the mystery of why the science world view cannot deal with even the ID initiative.
My next door neighbour is a Buddhist, and I showed him the book: Yep! 'religion' means Christianity. He is a physics student but said he was fed up with being classified as 'crazy' by a legitimating science world view. One would have thought Foucault had sunk in here. Science should know better than to let 'religion' mean monotheism.
Good book anyway, with material by Gould on the magisteria that aren't supposed to overlap, Dawkins, Dennett, Lovelock, and Arthur C. Clarke, plus essays by the ediotr Paul Kurtz from Skeptical Enquirer.
Modern science is a failure and has turned the best and brightest into idiots, run roughshod over the human sciences with the result that we are given two flavors, scientism and fundamentalism. That would seem inexplicable, until you realize that corresponds to the two largest budgets for propaganda around.
The moral is that there are many ways around the science/religion divide, but both sides are satisfied with this status quo 'debate'.