[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]It is a pity that people like Jerry Coyne and Daniel Dennett can't see how easily religion and science can be reconciled. Having once viewed the world as they do, I understand how their fundamentalist rationality has blinded them to deeper truths...
[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Patrick Bateson tells us that it is "staggeringly insensitive" to undermine the religious beliefs of people who find these beliefs consoling. I agree completely. For instance: it is now becoming a common practice in Afghanistan and Pakistan to blind and disfigure little girls with acid for the crime of going to school. When I was a neo-fundamentalist rational neo-atheist I used to criticize such behavior as an especially shameful sign of religious stupidity. I now realize?belatedly and to my great chagrin?that I knew nothing of the pain that a pious Muslim man might feel at the sight of young women learning to read. Who am I to criticize the public expression of his faith? Bateson is right. Clearly a belief in the inerrancy of the holy Qur'an is indispensable for these beleaguered people...
[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The universe is whole and without contradiction. What may appear like a contradiction at one level of physics or biology is always resolved at higher vibrational energies?or perhaps, as Miller points out, by "miracles." Needless to say, miracles, are precisely the sorts of occurrences that defy rational understanding and which would cause anyone seeking a comprehensive understanding of the world to doubt their occurrence. Which is to say that if Jesus had been born of a virgin, had raised the dead, had been so raised Himself after a brief interlude, had then ascended bodily into the heavens, and has subsequently nurtured from on high these two millennia an abiding distrust for Jews and homosexuals?these are precisely the sorts of low probability events that people like Coyne, Dennett and Dawkins would doubt ever occurred. Therefore, the doubts of fundamentalist atheist rationalist neo-humanistic secular militants actually render the miracles of Jesus' ministry more plausible than they would otherwise be. Jerry, Dan, Richard?please give this some thought.[/FONT]
