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Originally Posted by waxnrope
I agree with some of your post, AJ. However, as with many things, change is afoot. There is a Center for Science and Religion in Berkeley, and similar institues elsewhere. People are talking WITH each other and listening.
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Certainly things are changing but here's the thing, Wax, religion would--in my opinion--be FAR better off if it fled as far away from subjects covered by the sciences as fast as possible. Let's say, for instance, that someone is arguing that evolution is the way that God created all the diverse life forms. Okay, as far as it goes. But then some nasty biologist like me comes along and asks the question "what does God have against caterpillars?" The question is relevant because there's a species of wasp where the female stings a caterpillar which paralyzes it but doesn't kill it. She then lays her eggs in the body of the *still living caterpillar*. When the eggs hatch the larvae eat their way out. Caterpillars can feel pain. Imagine being alive and being eaten, quite literally, from the inside out.
Now, if both the wasp and caterpillar are the results of blind forces that don't *care* about either then, as gruesome as it is, it at least makes sense. But if an intelligent entity *designed* things that way, that's messed up! At least it could have made caterpillars incapable of feeling pain. That would at least show some mercy.
There's a scene in Terry Pratchett's book, "Unseen Academicals" where the Patrician, Vetinari--who is ruthless and Machiavellian--relates a story from his youth where he sees a mother otter catch a salmon, the mother otter splits the salmon open and eggs spill out which are then devoured by the baby otters. At the end of this story, he says, "if there is a divine being, it is our job to be his moral superiors".
The universe is too heartless, too pitiless, too completely comfortable with misery, pain and fear to be the product of any entity that could be called 'loving' or 'kind' or 'merciful' by even the most generous definition. Think about the last second of a gazelles life just before it is brought down by a leopard. Imagine its fear, it's pain. Now, imagine the pain of starving for the lion (and her cubs) if she *doesn't* get the gazelle. No matter what, someone has a horrific experience--either the gazelle dies quickly, painfully and in terror or the lioness and her cubs die slowly, painfully, in a lingering fashion. Religion should want no part of that and would be best served if it didn't try to explain why that happens.
Cheers
Aj