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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
 Posted - 09/26/2009 : 18:44:37
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Here is the site copy of an email I received today from Defend Science:
Our Commentary on Francis Collins
It opens:
Our commentary on Francis Collins
[ http://www.defendscience.org/ds_commentary16.html ] has created some controversy - more so than any recent thing we have written. In reading over the responses, some in agreement and expressing concern about the implications of Collins’ appointment, others passionately in opposition to what we wrote, we felt both that there were, in some cases, real disagreements being expressed and also some lack of clarity about what we were actually saying. And we also feel that there are very important issues for science at stake in this, and so we are sending out this email.
We feel that we have to apply the same standard - the same underlying principles - to Obama that we did to Bush. When, as for example in his stem cell policy, Obama utilizes the same underlying Christian fundamentalist moral norms as Bush to set the limits for what the government will fund in terms of stem cell research, we would be derelict if we did not criticize that. (See our stem cell commentary “Obama's Stem Cell Research Policy: Needed Science Remains Banned and Constrained by Christian Fundamentalist Ideology”
http://www.defendscience.org/ds_commentary15.html )
An important part of the way we criticized the Bush attacks on science was crystallized in the original Defend Science statement, which we will quote again:
“…one thing the overwhelming majority of scientists have in common is their understanding that, when conducting scientific investigation and applying the scientific method, it is essential to use as a starting point previously accumulated scientific knowledge -- the storehouse of well-established scientific evidence about reality which has previously been arrived at through concrete and systematic scientific observation and experiment and has been subjected to rigorous scientific review and testing. This is what we scientists stand on as our foundation when we set out to further investigate reality and make new discoveries. This is how science has been done and how it has advanced for hundreds of years now, and this has allowed science to benefit humanity in countless ways. "Genuine science never proceeds from, or uses as its starting point, any set of subjective "beliefs," "opinions" or "faith-based edicts" handed down by religious or secular authorities and proclaimed to be beyond human questioning, testing and investigation. To bring into the scientific process assumptions, religious or otherwise, which were not arrived at by scientific methods, and which by definition cannot be tested by scientific methods, would destroy science as science."
Secondly, the biggest controversy in our last email was over our criticism of the particular way that Obama and also Collins have used a version of “the compatibility of religion and science”. We were accused by some of arguing that no one who is religious should hold government office; in other responses, we were accused of saying that religion and science are incompatible. We actually did not argue either of these things, and we did not address philosophical or religious questions in their own right. What we did argue was that there is actually an attack on science going on under the guise of arguing for the compatibility of religion and science. We did not say that everyone who believes that religion and science are compatible is attacking science. We did say that there is a real logic in Collins’ position that he has repeatedly stated which undermines the scientific method and scientific thinking. He has clearly stated his views repeatedly and in public forums, and we think we accurately portrayed them in our previous email… |
Read on.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2009 : 02:48:01 [Permalink]
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Science and religion are strange and hostile bedfellows indeed, and when politics make it a three-way, you end up with a Moe, Larry & Curly situation that is ridiculous to the outside observer and of no benefit to any of the participants.
Collins' appointment was a political ploy to suck up to the religious right, and as far as I can tell, it ain't working. Obama needs to stop bothering with those losers.
"There is no science in the Bible and no deity in the laboratory." ~~ Anon
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2009 : 09:17:55 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by filthy
Science and religion are strange and hostile bedfellows indeed, and when politics make it a three-way, you end up with a Moe, Larry & Curly situation that is ridiculous to the outside observer and of no benefit to any of the participants.
Collins' appointment was a political ploy to suck up to the religious right, and as far as I can tell, it ain't working. Obama needs to stop bothering with those losers.
"There is no science in the Bible and no deity in the laboratory." ~~ Anon
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To paraphrase a former crazy fundie, Frank Schaefer, "You don't arrange village life to suit the village idiot, and fundamentalist religion is certainly the idiot in our village."
I totally agree that Obama needs to stop talking to these morons(and absolutely must stop trying to appease them, because you can't appease people who will not accept facts), let the GOP fall apart and maybe purge itself of the idiots, and move on.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Defend Science: on Obama, Collins, and science...
