In Which Our Intrepid Heroine States the Glaringly Obvious

[beautifulduckweed]

Reading this article on Pharyngula today started me thinking about religion in the classrooms and bringing God up in science classes, especially biology.

I really don't understand why there was ever a controversy to begin with. I'm pretty sure I'm stating the obvious when I say that religion and mentions of deities in general should be kept of the science classroom because they're inherently unscientific and therefore are completely irrelevant to the class. If one allows religion into the science classroom, then one might as well teach deconstruction theory during biology, or Keynesian economics during physics, or knitting during chemistry.

In short: Parsimony is one of the cornerstones of science, dammit, and throwing God into a theory isn't parsimonious.

And honestly, if I were religious and/or believed in God, I'd be offended at the way Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates use the Almighty as some sort of all-purpose intellectual spackle: "We have NO IDEA how this happened, ergo Goddunnit!" It's lazy, and it completely misses the point of the scientific method.

I'd love to rant about this in more detail, but egad, I have so much work to catch up on, and people smarter and more articulate than I have done so plenty of times already, I'm sure.

(Oh, who am I kidding? I wrote this whole thing just so I could use the phrase "all-purpose intellectual spackle.")

Comments

[ibnfirnas.livejournal.com]

Nah, I'm religious, and I find their God-of-the-Gaps intellectually-bankrupt theologically-unsound bullshit pretty thoroughly offensive. Let us just say that their methods for use of religious texts and traditions, to an insider, are actually just as misguided and flawed as their pretended attempts to use the scientific method.
They really don't get either, and I want them to shut up so hard.

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

It's nice to know that your reaction as somebody who's actually religious is the same as mine would be if I were religious :) .

It also doesn't surprise me that people who manipulate facts and writings in one field would do so outrageously in other contexts, too.

[winterkoninkje.livejournal.com]

Y'know what ibnfirnas just wrote? Yeah.

Being religious I find using religion as an excuse for ignorance to be the height of arrogance. It doesn't really matter what religion one subscribes to, if they think that some great and powerful deity (or force, as appropriate) is really interested in filling all the cracks of the universe with silly putty for the sake of little ol' us — other than being a rather demeaning vision of whom one worships — it presumes we are all so perfect and special that the forces of heaven would be slavering to fetch our favour.

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

I agree with you wholeheartedly. However, to be fair, a lot of religious mythology (though by no means all) is quite clearly anthropocentric. In short, some religious myths, especially creation myths, do pretty much presume that "we are all so perfect and special that the forces of heaven would be slavering to fetch our favour." And in ancient Greek mythology, the slavering could certainly be interpreted literally ;) .