November 1, 2007
1 min read
Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAmLetters to the Editors, November 2007
Faith Debate--Stormy Weather--Snoozing Mice
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Religion’s Roles
The dialogue between Lawrence M. Krauss and Richard Dawkins on religion in “Should Science Speak to Faith?” is almost as frustrating as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell discussing cosmology. Both authors seem to assume that Christian fundamentalism provides a paradigm for all religion, which is sufficiently defined by its collision with biology and cosmology. Other faiths and Christian groups have never had such problems with science.
Religion is also about purpose, value and identity, the meaning of existence, the significance of human life, and the critique of our moral values. Slavery was abolished when Christians finally understood its incompatibility with their teachings. And if religion has known sin, so have science and atheism. Ask J. Robert Oppenheimer and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Ron Partridge
England
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