This debate between science and religion is frankly stupid as there can never be a winner in this entirely illogical argument . The fact that some people of the scientific community fail to see this is a fault in their reasoning process and a form of elitism that many in the scientific community seem prone to. Not everyone has been given the oppourtunity of a university education and they have to simply make it up as they go, best they can.
People rely on religion because they are scared shitless of death and due to the plain sad fact in this world that shit just happens for no apparent reason to everyone. Try and tell the person who just lost his or her family because some earthquake buried their village that it’s just a case of stress being released between tectonic plates, they don’t care as they have just lost everything they depended on in their life.
There is a big black void beyond this Earth that I can’t recall anyone coming back from with proof about what happens when you die one way or the other. That’s why we have religion, to try and explain death to people because no one in science has brought back a videotape of John the Baptist and Darwin having tea with Buddha.
If you want to kill religion then come up with proof of what happens when you die otherwise religion will be with the human race forever.

Hopefully, the similarity in names hasn’t confused too many people (other than myself). Please continue to enjoy the magnificent educational productions by the Discovery Channel, friends of science and nature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Channel

I absolutely love the Discovery Channel HD documentaries, and am so relieved to learn they are not funded by (or related to) the despicably unscientific “Institute”.

Donald. This phrasing alone demonstrates that you don’t understand the difference between a legal theory and a scientific theory. Theory in science means the matter is established. Everyone with an armchair understanding of what they think science is makes this mistake. The term for what you mean is Hypothesis, which is very different. A hypothesis is a working idea that still requires evidence to make it a theory. A theory is an established explanation based on evidence. Which means that until a new Einstein comes along to blow it out of the water, it’s as good as an established fact. So when one hears the phrase “It’s ‘just’ a theory” one knows that the speaker is talking through his ass, even if it appears that the speaker is defending science.

On this basis, religious claims will never be theories. There is no equivalence. They are, in many ways, different languages. Critiquing one with the other is possible only in the areas where the two coincide, that is in what Dawkins has called “existence claims”–matters of observable fact. When religion makes such claims (the earth stood still, the waters parted, the universe was created in six days) science can step in and viably say “Bull shit.” And religion can’t argue, because it is not based on a system whereby defense of such claims can be made independent of the claimant.

What this means is that while science and religion can indeed coexist, their claims are not mutually compatible.

This “tiny blurb” quotes “Bishop Boniface Adoyo, head of Kenya’s 35 evangelical denominations,” which he claims have 10 million followers.  This story appeared in reputable papers in both the UK and the US. Are you suggesting that the museum is not being pressured to hide its hominid fossils by the leaders of millions of people who find those fossils inconvenient to their religious beliefs?

Is Adoyo an extremist? You bet. But there are ever growing numbers of extremists out there. Adoyo is an extremist with millions of followers who would love to hide incredible fossil evidence of our incredible biological journey.

I dispute that evangelicals are silent. True, they are not a majority in many places, but they are recruiting hard and working non-stop to influence the science curriculum across the U.S. See here and here and here. That these monstrous school board decisions are often reversed does not make them truly reprehensible. When the evangelicals come to power, they base their decisions on highly questionable ancient texts instead of skeptically considered reason. Do you go to a doctor who uses only treatments used by people from the Middle East 3000 years ago? Or do you rely on modern science? The same approach should be used for science education, in my opinion.

Hiding hominid fossils out of public view would be the moral equivalent of finding “a burning cross on the lawn of the archeologist.” By the way, that archeologist happens to be a world-renowned scientist, Dr. Richard Leakey. When he is concerned, I am concerned, because he has dedicated his life to following the evidence where it leads.

If you think the writers at this site are not acquainted with religion and science, you haven’t done your homework. Take a look at the posts on the topics of “religion” and “science” on the homepage.

Because you think it’s “ridiculous” to believe that sentience could result from natural selection doesn’t mean it’s not true. Think of all of the other things that people (even prominent scientists) previously thought to be “ridiculous” (examples include plate tectonic theory and the cause of ulcers, as well as the recent discovery that human adults are still growing brain cells). All of these things were once considered “ridiculous.” But we now know that they are undeniably true. They were not proven true by chanting from religious books. They were proven true by painstaking experimentation. If we stopped inquiries because someone thought the theory to be “ridiculous,” we’d still be teaching our children about phlogiston.

So don’t let your failure to use your imagination paralyze you. Don’t trash a theory because you can’t fathom it or because you don’t want to believe it. Follow the evidence where it leads. Don’t follow dusty self-contradictory books when you need to understand the world around you in a precise way using the best tools.

And you can’t knock science off the table by saying that “science alone” is not adequate. Science is the way that careful and skeptical people try to understand the world. Is science always right? No way, but it is, by design, self-correcting (calling something “ridiculous” is notably not self-correcting). Does science give a full understanding of the world? Absolutely not, as I’ve elaborated here.  “All scientific explanations are partial stories.”  But, at least those explanations are partial. And, by the way, who do you trust more to give you the straight scoop about what he or she does NOT know—the limits of his or her knowledge, a religious leader preaching about the deficiencies of science or a career scientist?

When you go beyond “science alone” (as you advocate), you are choosing to inform your decisions in ways that are not careful and not skeptical.  In that world, anything goes. That is the world where witches are found and burned and where children with chemical imbalances in their brains are beaten.

I agree that dogs don’t have a sophisticated sense of social justice, but I don’t understand your attempt to connect that phenomenon with the alleged inability of evolution to take simple organisms on a path to ward complex sentience.

And I’m curious, in light of your arguments, whether you would consider the other apes (oranges, chimps, bonobos and gorillas) to be sentient. I do.  I suspect that you don’t. I suspect that you put humans in a privileged place on the tree of life. That is the topic of yet another post I wrote: “My Life as a Sponge.”

Donald, your post indicates that you lack a basic understanding of modern science (especially your prose on the implications of evolution). My purpose here, is indeed to educate the *opiated* Christian masses. Please put down your bible for a few moments and clear your mind of religious thought.

Now Donald, you are ready to embark on a scientific voyage about how sentient life evolved from the depths of Earth’s oceans. Please read this outstanding scientific article on the transition from *slime* to sentience.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/29/52121/2259

I’ve never understood why this is such a polarizing debate. Faith and evolution aren’t mutually exclusive. Only the most literalist reading of the bible forsakes belief in natural selection along with micro and macro evolution. Evangelicals are the silent minority in this debate. Evangelicals are not the proponents of intelligent design, intelligent design is the product of Christian fundamentalists.

You must make this distinction if you want to enter this debate and not have your voice swept away into the two extremes. James has been one of the few voices that has not allowed himself to be marginalized by rhetoric. Evangelicals are generally opposed to evolution but recognize that refuting it might mean a general refutation of science (which many of you have fleshed out with overheated bluster). Evangelicals are unwilling to pay this price and rather go along with the perceived momentum of initiative.

Those interested in this debate must make themselves acquainted with both religion and science. Denouncing religion as “the opiate of the masses”, as many of you have hinted at, is a very common mistake. Jerry Falwell and Paul Griffiths are not the true representatives of religion, they are as much a caraciture as Bill Nye is for science.

Here are my beliefs (so feel free to jump to conclusions as soon as possible and ignore as much as you see fit in order to satisfy your preconceptions): evolution is a theory as much as gravity is a theory. That’s right, gravity is still technically a theory. We’ve come to accept it as law because of its pervasiveness. While we can’t observe an ape mutating into a human, it’s evidence is just as prolific.

I believe in God. In my opinion, while we are animals it is ridiculous to think that a process of natural selection and gradual evolution would lead to sentience. There are numerous other phenomena that are not sufficiently explained by science alone, and not for a lack of data or technology, but sentience will serve as my example. You’ll immediately point to the fact that neanderthals and homo erectus, africanus etc. are the midpoints between us and chimps and no doubt possessed intermediate intelligence. But that jump to self-awareness, I would argue, is beyond human comprehension. It is something that was exogenously introduced. The idea of a perfectly just society is another idea that I think was exogenously introduced. How else can you explain it? While a dog may become jealous of another dog if that second dog is given more food, he would never willing eat less food in the name of substitutional justice (or logic, or love). People, throughout history, have willingly suffered the punishment deserved to others in order to preserve the concept of justice (rather than promoting arbitrary mercy).

This link provides an example of how Jason Rosenhouse (and I :P) feel about “free-thinking-Christians-types” and their attempt to reconcile Science and Faith by “re-burying” fossils.
http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2007/02/creationism_in_kenya.php

Also, be aware of yesterday’s 6-4 decision by the Kansas board of education…
No more “intelligent design” allowed in school. Victory for science!
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2872167

The wise man first says “I do not know”