Stinky fish
You know what the biggest practical problem for Christians in science is? There isn't a credible religious voice speaking from the bio standpoint. Yeah, there are apologists who are either scientists or have a very strong science background, but they're usually chemists or physicists like Polkinghorne, or Ard A. Louis who spoke at Urbana 03.
Biology is really THE science of the 21st century - sorry Karen but I think nanotech's not that big of a deal in terms of metaphysical implications - but all the Church has there is the intelligent design crowd, which as far as I'm concerned is a red herring. We seriously need thinkers with bio backgrounds (higher than undergraduate!!!) to really integrate biology into our understanding of the world as the "first book" (the "second book" being the Bible).
Unfortunately in the Western world there's a lot of fundamentalist nonsense which has created an anti-intellectual climate in some parts of the church, so it's like Christian biologists are officially isolated by both their colleagues and their fellow believers. We need to be able to discuss evolution honestly beyond "Oh well, the beginning part of Genesis might be metaphorical..." and be willing to go beyond "Stem cell research is murdering babies and genetic engineering is the devil's arrogance!" in discussing biotechnology.
Too bad I'm not really interested in evolutionary bio...although evo devo is really cool. I'm still very much caught up in the save-the-world urgency of infectious disease research.
posted by xenobiologista @ 09:57
2 Comments:
I think that mixing Christianity with science is wrong. Now, correct me if I've gotten some of my understanding wrong, because I'm not a scientist.
The basis of science, despite whatever politics that may be brewing in university funding, is to objectively analyze and study the world, without bias. Bringing Christianity into science is rather like intentionally bringing your bias into the process of scientific enquiry.
[ This is a severe problem in artistic and humanities fields; in an arena where the acknowledgment of bias is obvious and open to public, it's become increasingly fashionable to read old texts in new lights - a postmodernist, feminist, postcolonial light; and more often this has to do very much with the lecturer's own personal biases and political agendas. I find that while it is fine and learned to acknowledge one's personal biases having been influenced by one's personal experience, it is another thing entirely to insist upon it. It's an insult to the process of intellectual enquiry; it turns knowledge into nothing but propaganda.]
I see the same thing when Christians try to become apologists or spokespersons in other fields of knowledge. Christians have mentioned that the discipline of science is laden with atheistic bias; but an atheistic bias - a statement of non-committal 'no God' - is a lot easier to come to terms with and a much less cumbersome ideology than a whole book of Scripture.
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CatR.
The people I mentioned in the post - their work is not mixing religion with science - that's definitely NOT what I'm talking about. It's being in the position of a bridge - explaining to religious people how discovering the physical world we live in gives us insight into God, and explaining to non-Christians how faith is a rational way of looking at the world.
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