A Free-for-All on Science and Religion

[Seeker of Knowledge]

Found this in new york times. people like this worry me. I read the newspaper everyday and in the debate section of the paper(they are usually about 3 pages) there are often someone writing that there would be no war without religion, there would be no oppression, basically that religion is just about all thats wrong with the world.
I know that they are loud small group(often young people), but what makes me wonder is how much this little group reflect what the silent majority is thinking and what young people will come to think about religion in years to come.
Any thoughts?

[Turgonian]

Yep -- the thought that historians have done some research and concluded that 89.2% of all the wars in history were fought on matters unrelated to religion. How's that for a soundbite?

[Turgonian]

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.

Very convincing, in light of the philosophers who formulated a reply to the Problem of Pain. Let them first explain how (human) life came to be in the first place.

It is already so much more glorious and awesome — and even comforting — than anything offered by any scripture or God concept I know.

One wonders how much she knows about scripture and the concept of God. She doesn't seem to know that only with the concept of God, you can talk about 'glory' and 'awe'.

“The core of science is not a mathematical model; it is intellectual honesty,” said Sam Harris, a doctoral student in neuroscience and the author of “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason” and “Letter to a Christian Nation.”

Ah, so Sam Harris still dares to show his face in public? Does he know his book Letter to a Christian Nation is in the process of being commented on here (Letter to a Maladjusted Misotheist)?

“I don't know how many more engineers and architects need to fly planes into our buildings before we realize that this is not merely a matter of lack of education or economic despair,” he said.

How many Christians participated in that?

Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization.

Let's do it. Let's take away every basis for morality and enjoy the increase in school massacres.

How can science fight back without appearing to be just one more ideology?

A very important point, since the total dependence on and trust in science clearly is an ideology.

I am utterly fed up with the respect that we — all of us, including the secular among us — are brainwashed into bestowing on religion...

He's brainwashed all right, but not into bestowing respect on religion.
If he was a historian instead of a hard scientist, he'd know religion deserves some respect, if only because it functions as a social glue. Without religion, Europe would not have existed, and neither would Mr Dawkins.

But sometime around 1100, a dark age descended. Mathematics became seen as the work of the devil, as Dr. Tyson put it. “Revelation replaced investigation,” he said, and the intellectual foundation collapsed.

Thomas Aquinas? William of Occam, of Occam's Razor still ungratefully used by scientists today?
Honestly, the Church conserved science and philosophy where political chaos reigned all around. What patient teacher might be found to bring these 'scientists' (without any regard for the more important sciences, like philosophy and history) up to date?