Implications of Scientists Discussing Religion

A recent article related a discussion in the upper echelons of scientists about the decision to allign themselves with mainstream religion in the fight against anti-science.

As you can well imagine Professor Dawkins was one of the scientists on this panel. Two other scientists were on the panel: The Astronomer Royale, Martin Rees and Steve Jones.

If you read the article carefully you can come up with some implications of the discussion.

1) The Astronomer Royal, Richard Dawkins and Steve Jones are all atheists.
2) The assumption in their conversation is that their intended audience (scientists) are also all atheists.

The three were sharply divided on the topic of aligning themselves with mainstream religion. The Astronomer Royal wants the alignment, Dawkins and Jones did not. It is, of course, amazing that someone in public should actually agree with anything Dawkins says on the topic of religion. Most commentary about Dawkins is so derogatory, inflamed and wild claims that he is a 'fanatic' or bringing about fundamentalist atheism are shouted when he calmly talks about the problems inherent in religion.

The major problem with making mainstream religion an ally of science as described by Dawkins is that it legitimizes the idea that non-rational discourse - or faith - is the key to knowledge in the material world. Any implication of that nature should be avoided I suspect he thinks, because he doesn't want religion to take a role in science.

Yes, of course, he is right. However, religion already has a level of legitimacy. That probably isn't going away. No, we aren't going to run around in an alliance with religion and tell them they can make any scientific statements. Not going to happen.

Politics, by its nature, is about compromise. Right now, there are millions, perhaps even a billion secularists, atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, deists in the world. However, even with this large number of people who are proponents of rational thought we are in a weak position.

The nature of the people in these groups is not toward homogeneous cooperative groups. Fractured in many idealogical realms even united we need allies in the fight against unreason.

Without allies, unreason will once again take over the world. The problem is that at present we are so dependent on reason and the by-products of reason, science and technology, that the loss of reason as a commanding force and moving forward for humanity will most likely result in the loss of human life - and I'm not just talking about a few people.

Anything we can do to avoid that error condition should be considered (even if sometimes outright rejected). An alliance with mainstream religion, on the topic of science and technology and the furtherance of the improvement of the human condition - is acceptable compared to total loss to the propaganda of the fundamentalist religionists which wish to deny science fact, limit the increase of science unreasonably and with all their fighting risk the destruction of humanity.

Please not that I'm not saying that science should not be limited. Genetic modification of any species for the improvement of those species is exciting, but unless we have the restraint to test such changes (even changes to humanity) and understand if they present any dangers - we could be playing roulette with humanity's existence.

Focus, control and discipline are necessary in order to ensure the continued future of humanity.