USA Today is not really known as a paper for the, shall we say, “overly educated.” As the article itself hints at, the more educated, the more likely one is to be an atheist. So I was really expecting some harsh arguments in the comments section of this article from the many believers among USA Today readers. Surprisingly, I was wrong. At least in the first few pages of comments, most people agreed with the article. One of the best quotes from the comment section was something like, “Good people will do good things and bad people will do bad things, but for good people to do bad things it takes religion.”
Steve LaBonnesays
Matt, that (indeed excellent) quote (not quite verbatim but close enough) comes from the distinguished theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg.
All knowledge worships one god: Truth. But truth is represented by many gods. The quest for truth represented by science developed from philosophy, and the quest for truth represented by philosophy developed from religion. But I wouldn’t say that each new development in the search for truth is necessarily more evolved or better than the other if their knowledge differs only because they are asking radically different questions. Different disciplines of study can’t help but have different answers when they are asking totally different questions and studying totally different things. It seems conflicts only arise when different disciplines try to answer the same questions and cannot collaborate in any meaningful or productive way. If so, maybe religious thinkers should not tell scientists how the physical universe works, and scientists should not tell religious thinkers there is no life after death. I think scientists who are also religious recognize this and that is how they keep their sanity. Personally, I love a good fight. Keeps things interesting.
USA Today is not really known as a paper for the, shall we say, “overly educated.” As the article itself hints at, the more educated, the more likely one is to be an atheist. So I was really expecting some harsh arguments in the comments section of this article from the many believers among USA Today readers. Surprisingly, I was wrong. At least in the first few pages of comments, most people agreed with the article. One of the best quotes from the comment section was something like, “Good people will do good things and bad people will do bad things, but for good people to do bad things it takes religion.”
Matt, that (indeed excellent) quote (not quite verbatim but close enough) comes from the distinguished theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg.
All knowledge worships one god: Truth. But truth is represented by many gods. The quest for truth represented by science developed from philosophy, and the quest for truth represented by philosophy developed from religion. But I wouldn’t say that each new development in the search for truth is necessarily more evolved or better than the other if their knowledge differs only because they are asking radically different questions. Different disciplines of study can’t help but have different answers when they are asking totally different questions and studying totally different things. It seems conflicts only arise when different disciplines try to answer the same questions and cannot collaborate in any meaningful or productive way. If so, maybe religious thinkers should not tell scientists how the physical universe works, and scientists should not tell religious thinkers there is no life after death. I think scientists who are also religious recognize this and that is how they keep their sanity. Personally, I love a good fight. Keeps things interesting.