From a local paper's forum:
Originally posted by culheath:
There's nothing wrong with faith-based thinking, or fantasy or imagination. I like the various World Creation Myths, The Wizard of OZ, and Dr Seuss.
In their element they convey aspects of the human experience that can't be reduced to calculation or repeatable certainty. They guide us where science cannot tread.
The problem arises when such things are foisted as worthy of calculation and presented as factual. That is the realm of science. Science makes no attempt to explain the large and mysterious why of things. It explains the what and how. Evolution for example does not attempt to explain why life came to be, it attempts to explain the process or how life came to be.
Dissonance in thinking arises when people try to supplant the role of science with religious beliefs. Sometimes there are parallels, but more often there are not. Critical thinking is a science based activity because it involves a willingness to refute previously accepted premises by constantly testing them against new experiences and evidence.
Religious thought is quite the opposite in that it treasures a constant truth that cannot and should not be assailed by mere physical evidence. After all, sensate reality even with the highest technological extensions of the senses is still in the final analysis, subject to interpretation via our sensate observations.
Both science and religion do however have a common goal and that is to reveal a single immutable truth.
Their techniques unfortunately are at odds. As it is presently, science is content to allow religion its area of expertise, whereas religion is not so accommodating.
Religion tends to stick its nose into the business of science and as a result ends up looking foolish and because of religion's lack of expert knowledge and the language that science has developed for its area of understanding things, it appears stupid.
Such is the case when faith-based ideas like Intelligent Design pretend to be not faith-based and assume to be taught as science. That is religion being stupid.
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