NCSE

I am now an official supporter of the NCSE (National Center for Science Education) which is essentially a semi-political non-profit group determined to maintain high standards in science education with a particular focus on keeping creationism out of public schools. Besides encouraging you all to join I have a particular quote that I think is unfortunately applicable to this particular debate.

 

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

-Max Plank, Physicist

 

I think this is probably the case with the creationism and evolution debacle that continues to play out to my utter surprise but one can only hope that in the coming years it will no longer be a debate at all. In fact it shouldn’t be a debate at all. We should have science and we should have philosophy and perhaps each is equally important (though I would argue more for the former than the later but that’s a whole other story). Clearly this is a science debate and thus the fanciful delusions of god have no place in it. Rather of folks want to debate the existence of god (if its even possible to debate it) then that should take place in the context of philosophical inquiry and not materialist science classes. The whole point of the matter is the understanding that science as we know it is unified by only one thing, the absence of “faith” in anything, religion or otherwise. In this case I define faith as, “belief without evidence.” Rather as scientists we question everything and believe nothing without convincing evidence of its validity (or at least we try not to). As part of that we can make only a few statements on religion or god:

 

First is the acknowledgement that we cannot now and will never be able to prove that a god in the judeo-christian sense or otherwise does not exist.

Second is the statement that to date there has been no physical evidence to say that god does exist

 

By these we can rightly define three groups.

 

The Religious who likely acknowledge the first statement and still feel comfortable in believing in something they have no evidence for (of course they scoff at belief in unicorns which given the existence of horses and horned creatures seems far more likely to actually exist than god) and unfortunately think they “know” things when in fact they do not know but only believe to be true.

 

The Preachers who not only believe in something they have no evidence for…actually falsely claim they do have evidence for it and in the most egregious cases claim to now the desires of this unknowable entity

 

The Atheists who think its all a bunch of junk and find themselves perfectly happy believing in nothing and knowing, at the very least, something.

 

I proudly count myself a member of this last group and find immense fulfillment in the continual process of eliminating the last remnants of a faith based existence in favor of reason based on rational inquiry into life the universe and everything.  Patrick OUT!!!