[Quotes] [Religion, #2, #3, #4, #5]
"But in our own culture, where many people officially have no religion at all, and those who have can chop and change, new faiths have much more scope and can become more distinctive. They are hungrily seized on by people whose lives lack meaning. When this happens, there arise at once, unofficially and spontaneously, many elements which we think of as characteristically religious. We begin, for instance, to find priesthoods, prophecies devotion, bigotry, exaltation, heresy- hunting and sectarianism, ritual sacrifice, fanaticism, notions of sin, absolution and salvation, and the confident promise of a heaven in the future. ... Marxism and evolutionism, the two great secular faiths of our day, display all these religious-looking features. They have also, like the great religions and unlike more casual local faiths, large-scale, ambitious systems of thought, designed to articulate, defend and justify heir ideas - in short, ideologies." (Midgley M., "Evolution as a Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears," [1985], Methuen: London, 1986, reprint, p.15)
[top]"Another reason that scientists are so prone to throw the baby out with the bath water is that science itself, as I have suggested, is a religion. The neophyte scientist, recently come or converted to the world view of science, can be every bit as fanatical as a Christian crusader or a soldier of Allah. This is particularly the case when we have come to science from a culture and home in which belief in God is firmly associated with ignorance, superstition, rigidity and hypocrisy. Then we have emotional as well as intellectual motives to smash the idols of primitive faith. A mark of maturity in scientists, however, is their awareness that science may be as subject to dogmatism as any other religion." (Peck M.S., "The Road Less Travelled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth," [1978], Arrow: London, 1990, p.238).
[top]"I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy." ( Hoyle F., "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections," Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol. 20, 1982, pp.1-35, p.23).
[top]"It is as a religion of science that Darwinism chiefly held, and holds men's minds. The derivation of life, of man, of man's deepest hopes and highest achievements, from the external and indirect determination of small chance errors, appears as the very keystone of the naturalistic universe. And the defence of natural selection appears, therefore, as the defence of their integrity, the independence, the dignity of science itself." ( Grene M., "The Faith of Darwinism," Encounter, Vol. 74, November 1959, p.48).
[top]"Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species, was published in 1859. It is perhaps the most influential book that has ever been published, because it was read by scientist and non- scientist alike, and it aroused violent controversy. Religious people disliked it because it appeared to dispense with God; scientists liked it because it seemed to solve the most important problem in the universe-the existence of living matter. In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to 'bend' their observations to fit in with it. (Lipson, H.S., "A physicist looks at evolution," Physics Bulletin, Vol. 31, No. 4, May 1980, p.138).
[top]"It is important to notice that it was not necessary for a scientist to renounce religion in order to be a member in good standing of the new order. Simple theism, such as Darwin possessed in 1859, interfered little with the practice of science because it had no doctrines that prescribed beliefs about the world. The more complex the theology, the greater was the potential for interference. The problem, then, was not theism, but positive theological content. Scientists who were theists could also be positivists. Those who were orthodox usually became more liberal in their theological views as they drew closer to positive science. The shift from one episteme to another required not the surrender of religion as such, but rather its replacement by positivism as the epistemological standard in science. And this eventually took God out of nature (if not out of reality) as effectively as atheism. That religion could continue under such terms often concealed from participants what had actually occurred. Nor were they the only ones deceived. In the new episteme reality was always an inference. Men would never be able to claim certainty for their beliefs while they continued within its boundaries. Popularizers of the new science who spread a gospel of metaphysical materialism based on science's supposed certain authority appreciated the real significance of what had happened as little as did the theologians who thought successful accommodation of a divinely revealed religion to the new science was a simple matter of shedding a few antiquated superstitions." (Gillespie N.C., "Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation," University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, 1979, p.153)
[top]"Another major reason that scientists are prone to throw the baby out with the bath water is that they do not see the baby. Many scientists simply do not look at the evidence of the reality of God. They suffer from a kind of tunnel vision, a psychologically self-imposed psychological set of blinders which prevents them from turning their attention to the realm of the spirit." (Peck M.S., "The Road Less Travelled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth," [1978], Arrow: London, 1990, p.241).
[top]* Authors with an asterisk against their name are believed not to be evolutionists.
Copyright © 1999-2003, by Stephen E. Jones. All rights reserved. This page and its
contents may be used for non-commercial purposes only.
If used on the Internet, a link back to my home page at
http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones would be appreciated.
Created: 28 August, 1999. Updated: 3 August, 2003.