- Sep 4, 2003
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http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=eec7f9ea-4e2c-4240-8728-bec22c93f11f&p=3
"The wars over religion continue, and not just in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, some of the most important battles are occurring, not in areas famous for sectarian storms, but in the becalmed jurisdictions of Quebec and Massachusetts.
The epicentre of the Massachusetts battle is Harvard University, the esteemed institution that began life as a training ground for Puritan clerics. Though it divested itself of its religious mission years ago, Harvard's Task Force on General Education has now recommended that it resurrect its past.
This panel notes that many domestic and international disputes have religion at their core, and it therefore suggests that all undergraduate students take a course in a category called "Reason and Faith." The committee stresses that the courses are not meant as "religious apologetics," but instead examine "the interplay between religion and various aspects of national and/or international culture and society."
That sounds innocuous enough, but evidently not to some scientists. Famed Harvard psychologist Stephen Pinker responded to the proposal by telling the Harvard Crimson newspaper that "universities are about reason pure and simple," and hence faith "has no place in anything but a religious institution."
Although Pinker's objection seems a little overwrought, his sentiments are understandable given the continuing attempts to introduce religion into biology classes through creationism and intelligent design. And that brings us to Quebec's latest religious war"...continue article here... .PeterMcknight"
The technical excellence of science is unparalleled in our understanding of the world of nature.
Science must by definition limit its inquiry to the natural world, but by definition too the supernatural remains beyond our natural experience.
Nevertheless, it is counterproductive, and unnecessarily limiting, to confine our understanding of reality by defining the whole of our reality to the natural world alone, and by what can be studied by scientific method. It simply does not do justice to the wholeness of our existence to believe that what resides beyond the scope of empirical inquiry is therefore outside of rationality too.
Reason and faith are not mutually exclusive.
There need not be the current schism in our institutions of learning between the world of physics and the world of metaphysics. For the questions being posed are not specific to two different realities, but instead pertain to two different questions, and two different explorations of the oneness of our reality.
The syncretization of these questions, according to Peter Mcknight, lies in philosophy:
"Clearly what we have here, in the responses to both the Harvard and Quebec initiatives, is a failure to understand what science is and isn't, and a reluctance to consider what religion is and isn't, and the relationship between the two. But there is a solution to this problem, and the solution involves teaching, not more science or religion, but more philosophy."
I found the article interest. Well worth the read...
"The wars over religion continue, and not just in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, some of the most important battles are occurring, not in areas famous for sectarian storms, but in the becalmed jurisdictions of Quebec and Massachusetts.
The epicentre of the Massachusetts battle is Harvard University, the esteemed institution that began life as a training ground for Puritan clerics. Though it divested itself of its religious mission years ago, Harvard's Task Force on General Education has now recommended that it resurrect its past.
This panel notes that many domestic and international disputes have religion at their core, and it therefore suggests that all undergraduate students take a course in a category called "Reason and Faith." The committee stresses that the courses are not meant as "religious apologetics," but instead examine "the interplay between religion and various aspects of national and/or international culture and society."
That sounds innocuous enough, but evidently not to some scientists. Famed Harvard psychologist Stephen Pinker responded to the proposal by telling the Harvard Crimson newspaper that "universities are about reason pure and simple," and hence faith "has no place in anything but a religious institution."
Although Pinker's objection seems a little overwrought, his sentiments are understandable given the continuing attempts to introduce religion into biology classes through creationism and intelligent design. And that brings us to Quebec's latest religious war"...continue article here... .PeterMcknight"
The technical excellence of science is unparalleled in our understanding of the world of nature.
Science must by definition limit its inquiry to the natural world, but by definition too the supernatural remains beyond our natural experience.
Nevertheless, it is counterproductive, and unnecessarily limiting, to confine our understanding of reality by defining the whole of our reality to the natural world alone, and by what can be studied by scientific method. It simply does not do justice to the wholeness of our existence to believe that what resides beyond the scope of empirical inquiry is therefore outside of rationality too.
Reason and faith are not mutually exclusive.
There need not be the current schism in our institutions of learning between the world of physics and the world of metaphysics. For the questions being posed are not specific to two different realities, but instead pertain to two different questions, and two different explorations of the oneness of our reality.
The syncretization of these questions, according to Peter Mcknight, lies in philosophy:
"Clearly what we have here, in the responses to both the Harvard and Quebec initiatives, is a failure to understand what science is and isn't, and a reluctance to consider what religion is and isn't, and the relationship between the two. But there is a solution to this problem, and the solution involves teaching, not more science or religion, but more philosophy."
I found the article interest. Well worth the read...
