The Christian Study Center of Gainesville is hosting a series of lectures on Mondays September 21 – October 12, 2009, 7:30 p.m. The series is titled Perspectives on Science and Worldview. University of Florida professors will be giving the following talks:
September 21
Fred Gregory, Department of History
“Science, Religion, and Worldviewâ€
September 28
Brent Henderson, Department of Linguistics
“Can Science and Theology Make Peace in the Age of Darwin?â€
October 5
Ata Sarajedini, Department of Astronomy
“Thinking About Science from an Astronomer’s Perspective“
October 12
Richard Buggs, Department of Biology
“Does Science Point to God?â€
Brent Henderson (the Sept 28 speaker) brought this to our attention and says that this is the first time the CSC has centered a lecture series around science. Should be interesting. If anyone who plans on attending would like to do a write up on a lecture, just let me know and I’ll put it up as a guest post here.
Perspectives on Science and Worldview.
“In recent years there has been a growing and increasingly polemical debate about the relevance of religion to scientific study. Over the course of this four week class, we want to consider the place of religion in scientific inquiry”
Why waste four weeks? Religion has NO place in scientific inquiry.Science in any aspect, should not endorse or oppose religion, but rather should remain completly neutural. Science must remain secular
I agree, but only because religion has been so heavily politicized in this country. Historically, however, a number of important scientific discoveries were inspired by religion, and I suppose one could even argue that the drive to uncover the mysteries of God and his teachings helped foster humanity’s curiosity and desire to explore and understand the world. Of course, all that literally went to hell during the Dark Ages when people began exterminating others for holding different religious views, leading up to the recent Christian fundamentalist shenanigans we’ve seen happening in Florida’s education system.
Given the state of things, a strict separation of science and religion remains the best solution until extremist elements which have hijacked mainstream Christianity are purged.
Hi Karl. I read your post and wanted to respond to it.
History does reveal that much science was discovered in the pursuit of revealing God’s mysteries, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that religion fostered human curiosity.
It seems to me that humans would have been curious since before we were even human. I think it would be more accurate to say that human curiosity led to religion.
Before the scientific method developed religion was about all one could turn to for an explanation of things s/he might not otherwise understand.
We’re probably both in agreement that religion fails to meet that lofty goal, but I don’t think it gets the credit for fostering curiosity.
Having said that, it’s always good to meet people who agree that modern religion has no place in modern science.
Yeah, perhaps I should clarify; I never meant to imply that religion was the sole reason for or was a direct cause of human curiosity. No doubt that man’s curious nature preceded religion, as exemplified by the similar natures of some of our closely-related species. By “foster”, I meant by its definition “to promote the growth and development of; cultivate” man’s innate sense of curiosity. And despite seeing a lot of the opposite in the last several hundred years, some aspects of religion such as the desire to spread the message through missionary work and the sense of security promised by divine protection for the faithful did play a part in allowing us to overcome any fear or hesitation impeding our exploratory pursuits.
Still, I can’t help but wonder if and when mainstream Christianity “mellows out,” will it still have a place in science after all that’s been said and done. The most plausible department I could think of would be ethics, but we’ve seen how badly the fundamentalists screwed that up with that whole embryonic stem cell research thing.
Still, I think these lectures could provide some reconciliation between science and religion. Remember back when the numerous Christian extremist trolls flooded this blog with their lies and hatred over evolution in Florida’s education curriculum? One thing they absolutely reviled was the notion that you can believe in God and evolution. The severity of their reactions were what prompted me to look further into the relationships between science and religion throughout history. A little reminder on the proper and actually helpful roles that religion had played in our scientific progress might make a few more people realize the absurdities of bible literalism and other fundamentalist garbage, and greater still, might help them see past deceptive antics such as that “academic freedom” crap.
I wanted to let everyone know that the Christian Study Center has updated its description of this course. You can read the new course description here:
The link didn’t attach to my previous post, but the link that is given at the top of this page also goes to the current description.