Re: Science teaching and religion: was Unorthodox science projects

[Bernard Cleyet <anngeorg@PACBELL.NET>]

Following rigorous studies, Pollard became an ordained Episcopal priest
in 1954 and served as priest associate at St. Stephen's until his death
in 1989. Throughout his studies, Pollard had to resolve in his mind a
complicated marriage of science and religion. As he struggled with the
issue, he came to believe, to put it simply, that science was a way of
investigating the wonders of God's creations. In one of his sermon's
Pollard cited the Genesis passage where God says to man and woman: "Be
fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and
over the cattle, and over all the earth." For Pollard, dominion over the
earth included man's ability to control fire, metals, and finally
nuclear energy- the focus area of his research. He did not even build a
nuclear fallout shelter in his home during the 1960s, saying that should
such an event occur, he would prefer to be ministering to those
suffering rather than hiding in a shelter.


http://www.orau.org/visitor/history/pollard.htm


Theologians can fall into the same trap. The 1958 book Chance and
Providence by Episcopal priest and physicist William Pollard is famous
for this. The uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, it suggests,
is a basis for establishing the existence of free will and God's action
in the world. Critics reacted strongly (Barbour 1966).


http://www.ksharpe.com/Word/BM04.htm

bc


Chuck Britton wrote:

> There are no effective 'arguments' that address this science vs.
> religion question but I will throw in my own personal 2 cents.
>
> I had a childhood playmate whose uncle lived in Oak Ridge, TN. He was
> in fact a Manhattan Project nuclear physicist, as I learned later.
> When I had the chance to actually meet him briefly, I was only

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