AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: My scientific reaction DATE: 3/23/2006 01:35:00 PM ----- BODY:

I wanted to mention something more about my reading of the physicist's scientific analysis of the WTC collapse in 2001 (see my post of 03/22/06. What I find interesting, but not surprising, was my reaction to the story. As I was reading his argument that the molten metal found in the rubble of the trade towers could not have been created by just the jetplane fuel, (which he backed up with chemical equations and assertions about the melting point of steel), I started to nod my head. I have had some scientific training and my body likes scientific explanations. Science, for me holds a trump card over other stories, something I'm working to become more conscious of. Science has not always been a powerful storyteller (by that I mean something/someone bringing stories that people listen to "enthralled" without questioning, or that the stories and background of stories are so powerful that they happen automatically in a large number of people, such as science and me). Religion used to be the storyteller that trumped all other stories and that was the automatic story out of which people lived their lives. Now science has a similar status in large parts of the world. And you can see conflicts in the mixture of science and religion as the dominant storyteller in the States with intelligent design, and I'd imagine in the Middle East although I don't know of any examples. When and how did science gain power as a storyteller, producing people like me who will listen to a scientific analysis and say, "Ah ha. There you go. Proof." And how do/can two major stories exist in one culture? Can science and religion both exist together for a significant amount of time? And how can a person living in both stories approach the world? For me, I know I have always had problems with religion because I want "proof" of what people take on faith. And in any arguments about religion or ethics, I have tried and failed to trump people with the science card. But I'm not sure I can do this anymore. Science and religion are stories with such different ways of being in the world that perhaps they can't interact--oil and water.

----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Unknown DATE:5/29/2006 10:32:00 AM Science and religion can co-exist because they express two distinct realms of existence: Science attempts to understand, explain, and predict the physical world, while religion attempts to understand, explain, and predict the non-physical world. Science asks questions that have empirical and quantifiable answers, "Given State A, at time T1, what will be the quantifiable characteristics of State B at time T2?" Religion asks questions that cannot be explained in quantifiable terms, e.g. "Why is there something instead of nothing?"

Conflict arises when either Science or Religion steps outside of its bounds, i.e. when Science asks questions that cannot be materialistically quantified or scientifically catagorized, or when Religion asks questions that deal with quantifiable physical phenomena.

Example of Science over-stepping its bounds: Nazi Germany used a Darwinian justification for its actions. The theory was that Nations/Races were fundamental biological units, and they believed that according to Darwin, each biological unit is programmed to survive at all costs, and only the most fit shall remain. Thus, they had a mandate founded on scientific law to exterminate biological competition, other races and other nations, to make room for the Nazi biological unit to grow, and in this proceses, they would be established as the most fit, and thus, most deserving of survival. Obviously, the Nazis over-stretched Science here. Races and Nations are not biologically based groups, they are social constructs. Natural selection is also very complex. The Nazis did not take into account the fact that the Human Species (which is a biological unit striving for survival) is more likely to survive and thrive when working cooperatively with other other humans (and most likely, when working in harmony with our environment as a whole) instead of killing each other.

Example of Religion over-stepping its jurisdiction: Using Creationism to fight Evolutionary Theory. Creationism tells us that God created the world, in such and such way, giving us what we have today. Evolutionary Theory is based on scientific, quantifiable evidence, and using that evidence, a theory of heredity, natural selection, etc, has been established. They do not contradict each other because Science only tells us that Evolutionary Theory explains the physical evidence, but makes no attempt at settling whether God planted that evidence in an intentional fashion or if that evidence arrived by some other vehicle. Further, Science never says "This explaination exists, thus, there can be no other explaination," it only says "This is the current explaination that is based on our current quantifiable, verifiable, repeatable data."

When Religion does battle with Science, everybody loses, because it only shows that someone is using flawed reasoning in order to justify aggresive behavior.

~losrivas ----- --------