Religion VS Science: Which is now the more evangelical?

On Nov. 21st, The New York Times published an editorial on science and religion. You can find it at the end of this post. This editorial addresses the current no-holds barred, hitting below the belt attacks on religion by science. Basically, although the words used do differ, the message, arrogance and approach remain the same: Kick the bum out. Basically, what science is saying is that the metaphors used by science are fine (even though they are, well, metaphors), while the metaphors of religion are not (because they are, well, metaphors that people deny are metaphors). I wonder if it is possible to discuss science without using metaphors or symbols? Of course, it is not. Certainly it was not possible for Richard Dawkins, who has been arrogant since he created the (incorrect) metaphor of the selfish gene. Quite a claim to fame, Richard, a metaphor whose metaphorical status was so often denied! A prophet of profit, certainly of academic gain. Genes, of course, are not selfish--they merely code for proteins. Nor is the behavior that genes produce necessarily selfish. However, Dawkins is irrelevant in this debate in a sense. Greater minds than his have pondered this question even though the issue could be simply solved by admitting that both science and religion are based on metaphors. The difference is that one acknowledges the metaphorical status, while the other is based on acceptance of the nonverifiable claim, a claim about the supernatural. This nonskeptical acceptance of a nonverifiable claim is found in the science, not only as the Richard Dawkins example above shows, but I remember so many students, so many faces over the years of teaching in colleges and universities, earnest faces telling me how stupid people are who do not accept Darwin, when their own acceptance of Darwin was based on NOTHING, not an iota of understanding of what the theory was or what it implied. The weak link in the man's inhumanity to man is of course or our nature. Just as we use religion, or witchcraft or whatever to justify our hatred of others, I am sure we could use science for the same end. In fact, if we drop religion and replace it with science, I am sure that will happen.

While I want to address this topic, I think what may be more important is the topic of writing, namely writing science or news, without metaphors, exaggeration.


New York Times
November 21, 2006
A Free-for-All on Science and Religion
By GEORGE JOHNSON
Maybe the pivotal moment came when Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in physics, warned that "the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief," or when a Nobelist in chemistry, Sir Harold Kroto, called for the John Templeton Foundation to give its next $1.5 million prize for "progress in spiritual discoveries" to an atheist — Richard Dawkins, the Oxford evolutionary biologist whose book "The God Delusion" is a national best-seller.
Or perhaps the turning point occurred at a more solemn moment, when Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and an adviser to the Bush administration on space exploration, hushed the audience with heartbreaking photographs of newborns misshapen by birth defects — testimony, he suggested, that blind nature, not an intelligent overseer, is in control.
Somewhere along the way, a forum this month at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., which might have been one more polite dialogue between science and religion, began to resemble the founding convention for a political party built on a single plank: in a world dangerously charged with ideology, science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion as teller of the greatest story ever told....

Before he left to fly back home to Austin, Dr. Weinberg seemed to soften for a moment, describing religion a bit fondly as a crazy old aunt.
"She tells lies, and she stirs up all sorts of mischief and she's getting on, and she may not have that much life left in her, but she was beautiful once," he lamented. "When she's gone, we may miss her."
Dr. Dawkins wasn't buying it. "I won't miss her at all," he said. "Not a scrap. Not a smidgen."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/science/21belief.html?ei=5087%0A&em=&en=e615c3cbddc62f22&ex=1164430800&pagewanted=print