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Re: [Phys-l] Richard Dawkins Answers Reddit Questions

Bob LaMontagne wrote:

I agree that religious methodologies are not appropriate for science.

Thank you for that. It seemed pretty uncontroversial to me too.

However, I am getting a little annoyed with some people on this thread painting all people with participate in religion as somehow anti-science.

I went back through this thread pretty carefully and I see not a single thing, that could be construed as "people ... painting all people [who] participate in religion as somehow anti-science." I do see some language that I would consider inappropriate for this list, some unfair overreaction and unwarranted sarcasm, some misinterpretation of what others have said, and a few accusations (like this one) that simply aren't borne out AFAICT by an honest examination of the record.

As I have posted before, thinking about the existence of deities plays little part in my life. However, I do work at a Catholic college. The Catholic church, for the most part, is highly supportive of science. At the upper levels, the Vatican Observatory has been a constant contributor to serious astronomy. Down in the trenches, the church supports the teaching of evolution and never gets involved when our biology instructors discuss human reproduction and the growth of the human fetus. Their feeling is that one can only have an honest Faith if you are educated to all the alternatives.

It sounds like a genuinely enlightened environment.

I am amazed how some on this list who profess to be so liberal (in the classic sense) and free thinking can come out with this knee-jerk bigotry regarding religion.

Again, I don't know what you are talking about.

BC - this was not aimed at you - I just used your email to respond to the thread in general.

Because I haven't been able to locate a single likely target for your accusations, I wonder if you could be more specific about who it *is* aimed at.

On a related topic I concur 100% with David Marx's post this morning (see https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/archives/2010/11_2010/msg00544.html)

John Mallinckrodt
Cal Poly Pomona