This was on Facebook purportedly from Howard Dean, sent go me by a friend.
What is wrong with this young scientist’s idea about life and God?
http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars-and-provocateurs/the-man-who-may-one-up-darwin/39217
That IS the question.
I have seen several videos from different occasions wherein Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses this anomaly. See Neil deGrasse Tyson - Religion vs. Science].
He points out that we should not wonder at the difficulty in getting people to be skeptical about religion when a percentage of highly intelligent scientists (he says 7%) BELIEVE in religion. To put his conclusions in my words, how can we expect to educate “the masses” when some of the most intelligent members of our species are duped into believing?
How indeed. :down:
This Jeremy England guy may be on to something with his idea re: the origin of life. He also thinks that of all that science can do for us, it cannot tell us how we should behave. He thinks he can glean that from interpreting the Torah. That’s fine, I guess, as long as it doesn’t keep him from getting on with his scientific endeavors. Hopefully, something that he finds in the Torah will tell him that he SHOULD get on with being a scientist.
One phrase from the article leaped out at me – “Before England became a religious man — he prays three times a day — he was a scientist.” Oh? Is that supposed to mean he’s not a real scientist any more? Like the two are mutually exclusive?
I don’t really get the article. It sounds as if he’s working on a theory of how molecules “self-organize” without reference to God. But of course I understand how they have to make a big deal about his religious beliefs too. 
Is that supposed to mean he’s not a real scientist any more?To me it means he is a scientist who is superstitious. However, I have no problem with someone using the bible, the torah or the koran as a guide book for behavior, as long as the result is that they are a good person. Too many people use them as an excuse to justify their bigotry or believe that they are the dictation of some supernatural being. If he buys into either of these, he is certainly less of a scientist rather than more.
This is really a simple one though, and something I think we all know…believing in a god, being part of a religion, etc is nothing more than a psychological/emotional thing. Has nothing to do with intelligence, or rather, emotion/psychology trumps intelligence. I had a friend in college who was #1 in his class, got a full ride to THE top school in London, was doing research in economics as an undergrad that was beyond his own professors…I mean this guy was smart. Oh and he was a nationally recognized debater on the college debate team. And yet when we discussed religion you’d think you were talking to a redneck hillybilly who talks to snakes. It was like night and day, and I finally gave up. But I learned a valuable lesson…emotion trumps intelligence AND people can compartmentalize things.
I have read this thread with interest.
It seems to me that there is nothing “wrong with this young scientist’s idea about life and God”, so long, as has been pointed out, he doesn’t use the Torah as a source book for his scientific research.
If on the other hand he finds a resonance between scientific ideas and his interpretation of the Torah then I would think he would find the parallel integration of ‘non-overlapping magisteria]’ very intellectually fulfilling.
I found PaineMan’s comment “To put his conclusions in my words, how can we expect to educate “the masses” when some of the most intelligent members of our species are duped into believing?" particularly bigoted.
In my field of cosmology the scientific method has explored the universe out to the largest scales and back to the earliest times. The further you push the boundaries the more mysterious the universe becomes and hard observational and falsifiable science necessarily yields to more speculative hypotheses.
The scientific method applied to cosmological scales leads to profound questions, those of:
Existence, why is there something rather than nothing? (What breathed “fire into the equations?”- Stephen Hawking),
Comprehensibility (“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible” - Albert Einstein),
Anthropic coincidences propitious for life (Brandon Carter - “The world is as it is because we are” - Stephen Hawking) and applied to ourselves:
Consciousness (How come a bunch of organic chemicals knocking together in some kind of Newtonian way, perhaps via England’s mechanism, eventually produced conscious minds asking such awkward questions?).
Most rational responses require belief in an unobservable and eternal multiverse to explain most of these conundrums; it appears Jeremy England prefers belief in an unobservable G_d.
If you are going to dismiss his world view as his being “duped into believing” (in an unobservable G_d), then you should at least have the intellectual honesty to consider the alternative world view as being held by those “duped into believing” in an unobservable multiverse.
The operative word here being of course the judgmental “duped”.
I found PaineMan’s comment “To put his conclusions in my words, how can we expect to educate “the masses" when some of the most intelligent members of our species are duped into believing?" particularly bigotedPerhaps I worded it poorly. My point was that I agree with Neil deGrasse Tyson's lament. If our most highly educated and intelligent people believe in religion, how could an Atheist expect to get reasoned thinking from less educated people. If that means that he and I are bigots in your opinion, so be it.
Firstly, just to be pedantic, I think people such as Jeremy England would say they believe in a supreme being - G_d - rather than believe in 'religion' per se, and only then, as a consequence, he follows a particular religious tradition, in his case Orthodox Judaism. Secondly, my point was that a well thought out theistic perspective can well be seen to be just as much a product of 'reasoned thinking' as an atheistic one, particularly in light of the mysterious nature of the universe that science has revealed. We ought to have respect for the different perspectives from which each of us approach this mystery.I found PaineMan’s comment “To put his conclusions in my words, how can we expect to educate “the masses" when some of the most intelligent members of our species are duped into believing?" particularly bigotedPerhaps I worded it poorly. My point was that I agree with Neil deGrasse Tyson's lament. If our most highly educated and intelligent people believe in religion, how could an Atheist expect to get reasoned thinking from less educated people. If that means that he and I are bigots in your opinion, so be it.
Jeremy England would say they believe in a supreme being - G_d - rather than believe in ‘religion’ per se, and only then, as a consequence, he follows a particular religious tradition, in his case Orthodox Judaism.I'm not sure I see a distinction and I don't want to assume what he means when he says he follows the teachings of the Torah. To me it is not following a "reasoned" path but a "religious" one. But, OK.
Secondly, my point was that a well thought out theistic perspective can well be seen to be just as much a product of ‘reasoned thinking’ as an atheistic oneHere, too, I'm not sure that following the Torah is the same as the path you describe. But again, OK.
Firstly, just to be pedantic, I think people such as Jeremy England would say they believe in a supreme being - G_d - rather than believe in 'religion' per se, and only then, as a consequence, he follows a particular religious tradition, in his case Orthodox Judaism. Secondly, my point was that a well thought out theistic perspective can well be seen to be just as much a product of 'reasoned thinking' as an atheistic one, particularly in light of the mysterious nature of the universe that science has revealed. We ought to have respect for the different perspectives from which each of us approach this mystery. It seems to me that most organized religions have an established dogma that people simply choose to believe regardless of evidence. That is in stark contrast to "reasoning" which relies on evidence and which is subject to change based on evidence. It is clear to me that the latter involves intellectual integrity and the former does not. What is also clear, is that in our society we have to put up with a lot of intellectual dishonesty by people and their belief systems. So for the sake of civility, we should have at least a modicum of respectful behavior toward "faith based believers", but I certainly don't respect their belief system.I found PaineMan’s comment “To put his conclusions in my words, how can we expect to educate “the masses" when some of the most intelligent members of our species are duped into believing?" particularly bigotedPerhaps I worded it poorly. My point was that I agree with Neil deGrasse Tyson's lament. If our most highly educated and intelligent people believe in religion, how could an Atheist expect to get reasoned thinking from less educated people. If that means that he and I are bigots in your opinion, so be it.