Max Tegmark
Huffinton post blog
"Religion, Scinece, And
the Attack of the Angry Athiests"
I'd been warned. A friend cautioned me that if we went ahead and posted our MIT Survey on Science, Religion and Origins, I'd get inundated with hate-mail from religious fundamentalists who believe our universe to be less than 10,000 years old. We posted it anyway, and the vitriolic responses poured in as predicted. But to my amazement, most of them didn't come from religious people, but from angry atheists! I found this particularly remarkable since I'm not religious myself. I have three criticisms of these angry atheists:
....Tegmark tells us that there were three major concerns in publishing the data. First to delineate the controversies: one such controversy is between atheists and religious people. Thee other is between religious group that 'attack science' and those that do not." At least he recognizes that there are those who are religious and accept evoltuion. His use of the term "attack science" is ideological. Scientist (the worship of scinece) has produced this term that anyone who dares critique or citizen atheist misuse of scinece is a "science denier," or is "attacking science." While I accept that term as a valid point about some fundamentalists who resist evolution to the point of actually attacking science, I've seen atheists confuse it doing philosophy of scinece. This is the language of their movement. It would be like a black Panther calling a policeman "pig" or a feminist calling some idea she didn't like "sexist." Not to say that there aren't plenty of sexist ideas running around.
....He goes up against Gallup Orgnaization with his survy: "Although 46% of Americans believe that humans were created less than 10,000 years ago according to a Gallup poll, our survey showed that merely 11% of Americans belong to a religion openly rejecting evolution or Big Bang cosmology, so the mainstream religions representing the majority can be a powerful ally against the anti-scientific fundamentalists." Well will have to get the two surveys and compare. A lot depends upon how the question was asked.
....The second aspect dealt with is the point he makes that we as a species, "we" meaning physicists do not know everything about reality. There's a huge portion of it out there that's beyond our understanding.
If I've learned anything as a physicist, it's how little we know with certainty. In terms of the ultimate nature of reality, we scientists are ontologically ignorant. For example, many respected physicists believe in the so-called Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, according to which a fundamentally random process called "wavefunction collapse" occurs whenever you observe something. This interpretation has been criticized both for being anthropocentric (quantum godfather Niels Bohr famously argued that there's no reality without observation) and for being vague (there's no equation specifying when the purported collapse is supposed to happen, and there's arguably no experimental evidence for it).
Let's compare the ontological views of Niels Bohr to those of a moderate and tolerant religious person. At least one of them is incorrect, since Bohr was an atheist. Perhaps neither is correct. But who's to say that the former is clearly superior to the latter, which should be ridiculed and taunted? Personally, I'd bet good money against the Copenhagen Interpretation, but it would be absurd if I couldn't be friends with those believing its ontology and unite with them in the quest to make our planet a better place.
So his second point is tolerance.
....His third point is that atheists should be into pace and trying to make a better word, they would act like people who want to make a better world. These are good points they are well taken. He's right to emphasizes the points about tolerance and getting along in spite of disagreement. Yet he also gives indications of supporting the ideology that produces such conflict. Not only is he using the language of the atheist ideology but he's helping to build their propaganda. At the bottom of the page he includes a thing scientists and they all atheists. He doesn't include single famous scientist who is not an atheist, or if eh doesn't make it clear they are not. He does not include Alan Standard or Polkinghorn or Fritz Shaffer or any of those who are Chrsitians and have made names for themselves in scenic, and there have been many.
from my page Doxa:
| Fritz Shafer, nominated for Nobel Prize in Chemistry, University of Georgia, himself a Christian: | "it is very rare that a physical scientists is truly an atheist." |
| Martin Rees at Cambridge: | "The possibility of life as we know it depends upon a few basic values which are constants. And it is in some aspect remarkably sensitive to their heir numerical values. Nature does exhibit remarkable coincidences." |
| Arthur Schewhow, Nobel prize winner from Stanford, identifies himself as a Christian. | "We are fortunate to have the Bible which tells us so much about God in widely accessible terms." |
| Charlie Towns Nobel prize winner: | "The question of science seems to be unanswered if we explore from science alone. Thus I believe there is a need for some metaphysical or religious explanation. I believe in the concept of God an in his existence." |
| John Pokingham, theoretical physicist at Cambridge, left physics to become a minister. | "I believe that God exists and has made himself known in Jesus Christ." |
| Allan Sandage, The world's greatest observational cosmologist , Caregie observatories won a prize given by Swedish parliament equivalent to Nobel prize (there is no Nobel prize for cosmology) became a Christian after being a scientist, | "The nature of God is not found in any part of science, for that we must turn to the scriptures." |
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