{"id":604,"date":"2008-07-27T05:11:04","date_gmt":"2008-07-27T10:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=604"},"modified":"2008-07-27T05:11:04","modified_gmt":"2008-07-27T10:11:04","slug":"faith-and-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/604","title":{"rendered":"Faith and Ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interesting link over at physics and physicists (rather than the title being a misquote from “Bull Durham.”) Is Faith The Enemy Of Science?<\/a><\/p>\n

Richard MacKenzie of the University of Montreal has written a rather thought-provoking and lengthy article<\/a> as a rebuttal to a talk given by Lawrence Krauss. In it, he is disputing Krauss’s assertion that:<\/p>\n

Faith is not the enemy.
\nIgnorance is the enemy.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The linked article is pretty good.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that direct observation shows that faith does not obstruct scientists from
\ndoing science. That said, there are many who portray themselves as scientists who, due to
\ntheir faith, are doing a brand of science which is an indignity to the word. I have in mind
\nparticularly those whose principal goal in science is to advance a faith-based agenda. One
\nmust wonder whether these individuals, who probably have a reasonable amount of scientific
\ntalent, might not be doing respectable science if their scientificity had not been stronger, or
\ntheir religiosity weaker.<\/p>\n

Does faith obstruct non-scientists from learning science? I would argue that it does, for
\nseveral reasons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On that point I quite agree. Anyone who uses their ideology to dictate what answers are acceptable isn’t doing science. Ignorance isn’t the enemy, in the sense that it is an opposing entity; the goal of teaching science (and education in general) is the eradication of ignorance. Ignorance can be fixed as long as there is no active plan to preserve it. Faith, the unsubstantiated belief in something, does indeed preserve ignorance if it prevents you from considering evidence and scientific explanations.<\/p>\n

Well worth a read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting link over at physics and physicists (rather than the title being a misquote from “Bull Durham.”) Is Faith The Enemy Of Science? Richard MacKenzie of the University of Montreal has written a rather thought-provoking and lengthy article as a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,43,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-religion","category-science-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}