Theology is also awesomely sophisticated and complex, and I think it’s an indicator of the intelligence of the men (mostly) behind it that they have erected such a fantastically intricate collection of rationalizations for such deeply absurd ideas.
PZ Myers
Sunday Sacrilege: Cant Can’t
A great take on “sophisticated” theology and its clash with evolutionary biology. Team PZ!
It’s hard to believe that a week ago tonight I was getting geared up for a whirlwind trip down to Los Angeles, California, for the conference for the 30th anniversary of the Council for Secular Humanism. At about this time, Jerry and I were probably heading back to our house after dropping off the little one at her auntie and uncle’s for the weekend.
There’s so much to write about our adventures in sunny Cali that it will probably take at least a series of posts to do it all justice. This was a weekend of many firsts:
Many firsts. And while our credit card may be hurting for the foreseeable future, I have no regrets about what we saw, did, and spent while we were in sunny California.
Back soon with more specific posts about specific events/talks we witnessed — until then, a pictorial representation of some of the highlights of the weekend:
*bonus marks if you caught that my title is from the Joni Mitchell song, “California”
Science isn’t everything. We don’t use science to appreciate a piece of art (although, fundamentally, it is a material object and our brains are similarly natural); we don’t break out beakers and bunsen burners to determine if we’ve fallen in love; calculators have limited utility in writing poetry. That’s fine, but it doesn’t mean that religion fills in all the spaces! I don’t consult a priest to find out what I think of a painting, prayer has bugger-all to do with love, and there is better poetry in the world than what we find in holy books. You don’t get to simply assume that if science does something poorly, religion must do it well, and that the universe has to be neatly divvied up into these two mutually exclusive domains.
re: Catholic child-abuse sex scandal — PZ Myers, on why we should (always!) “tell on the church”:
So this is our sacrilege for the day: speak the truth, decry the crimes of those in authority, challenge the dogma that says we are sinful beings redeemed by the suffering of another.