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beejai's review
3.0
I had to plow through the first 2/3 to get to the good stuff. His argument isn't with Christianity, it is with fundamentalism. Of that I don't have a problem. But he paints his argument against fundamentalism (what he calls "true believers") in such a way that most Christians, of any stripe, would be offended. If you can wade past this, and his dogmatic (shall we say fundamentalist?) view of the superiority of science (skepticism) over religion, there is a lot to be gleaned in the last few pages.
ericwelch's review
4.0
Raymo is a physicist and astronomer who cannot quite accept the idea of God, nor quite leave it alone. He makes the case that science is part of the “traditional religious quest for the God of creation.” He defines a vital religious faith as having three components: a shared story of the universe and our place in it (cosmology), a personal response to the mystery of the world (spirituality) and a public expression of awe and gratitude (liturgy). Before getting into his argument, he identifies two “postures” that reveal the schism in our culture: Skeptics and True Believers. The Skeptic trusts the human mind to make sense of the universe, accepting the “evolving nature of truth” and a measure of uncertainty.
True Believers look to the outside for help in understanding God, spirits, extraterrestrials, looking beyond human capabilities. “They are repulsed by diversity, comforted by dogma, and respectful of authority.” Many great religious leaders can be counted among the Skeptics and numerous scientists, blindly accepting the authority of science, fit into the category of True Believers. Our culture is woefully schizophrenic. We embrace the fruits of technology and science while often holding religious beliefs flatly contradicted by scientific evidence. A 1993 poll revealed almost 50% of Americans believe in a geologically young earth despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. A two-to-one majority of Americans picked religion when queried which explanation they would choose between conflicting religious and scientific explanations. Raymo finds his miracles in the wonders of the world: the Red Knot a bird that flies 9,000 miles to return to specific feeding grounds without ever having been there. This ability is apparently coded in its DNA, an extraordinarily simple sequence of paired nucleotides that enables profound complexity. “Miracles are explainable; it is the explanations that are miraculous.” Ironically, what the Skeptic believes is often harder to imagine than what the True Believer accepts: the impossibly twisted strands of DNA reproducing themselves flawlessly, versus the familiar finger of God imparting life to Adam. The Skeptic is willing to believe the unfamiliar. “Certainly it is easier to believe in fairies than in DNA. It is also more consoling, more selfedifying, more entertaining. Fairies play into the whole gamut of human emotions: love, fear, power, powerlessness, ‘the land of lost content’ of childhood. But ‘fairies’ are a concept we can do without and still make perfect sense of the world. We cannot do without the concept of DNA whether we are Skeptics or True Believers.” Science is deliberately boring, he says. It is the “one human endeavor that has proven relatively immune to the passions that divide us. There is no such things as Jewish science, Christian science, Muslim science, Buddhist science. There is no such thing as male or female science, black or white science, Democratic or Republican science.” That doesn’t mean it can’t be misused or misinterpreted or argued about, but it remains a tool “for human improvement that is anchored in repeatable, verifiable observation, rather than in prejudice and passionate conviction.” “Give me evidence for your belief,” Raymo asks, to which the response often is, “It makes me feel good,” or “The truth is out there.” “They have become, in short, True Believers by default. And fair enough. Certainly it is better to feel good than to feel bad. But the price the True Believer pays for feeling good can be a chasm between intellect and intuition, and exile from a scientific story of the universe that, like it or not, is our best story, a story that is empirically reliable and therefore ultimately more meaningful than any mishmash of New Age enthusiasms. The choice, on the face of it, is between a hard truth or an easy high.” Yet, to use his metaphor, “knowledge remains an island in a sea of mystery.” We all yearn to be part of something greater than ourselves. Yet finding the proper balance between yearning and learning is essential. . “We learn by hard experience that miracles don’t happen. . . . We cannot be fully human without both. . . Yearning without learning is seeing Elvis in a crowd. . . [or] following whatever current guru offers the most promising prospects of eternal life. . . .Learning without yearning is pedantry, scientism, idées fixes. . . believing that we know it all, that what we see is what we get, that nothing exists except what can be presently weighed and measured. . . science without a heart, without a dream, without a hope of beauty.. . Yearning without learning is seeing the face of Jesus in a gassy nebula. Learning without yearning is seeing only the gas.”
True Believers look to the outside for help in understanding God, spirits, extraterrestrials, looking beyond human capabilities. “They are repulsed by diversity, comforted by dogma, and respectful of authority.” Many great religious leaders can be counted among the Skeptics and numerous scientists, blindly accepting the authority of science, fit into the category of True Believers. Our culture is woefully schizophrenic. We embrace the fruits of technology and science while often holding religious beliefs flatly contradicted by scientific evidence. A 1993 poll revealed almost 50% of Americans believe in a geologically young earth despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. A two-to-one majority of Americans picked religion when queried which explanation they would choose between conflicting religious and scientific explanations. Raymo finds his miracles in the wonders of the world: the Red Knot a bird that flies 9,000 miles to return to specific feeding grounds without ever having been there. This ability is apparently coded in its DNA, an extraordinarily simple sequence of paired nucleotides that enables profound complexity. “Miracles are explainable; it is the explanations that are miraculous.” Ironically, what the Skeptic believes is often harder to imagine than what the True Believer accepts: the impossibly twisted strands of DNA reproducing themselves flawlessly, versus the familiar finger of God imparting life to Adam. The Skeptic is willing to believe the unfamiliar. “Certainly it is easier to believe in fairies than in DNA. It is also more consoling, more selfedifying, more entertaining. Fairies play into the whole gamut of human emotions: love, fear, power, powerlessness, ‘the land of lost content’ of childhood. But ‘fairies’ are a concept we can do without and still make perfect sense of the world. We cannot do without the concept of DNA whether we are Skeptics or True Believers.” Science is deliberately boring, he says. It is the “one human endeavor that has proven relatively immune to the passions that divide us. There is no such things as Jewish science, Christian science, Muslim science, Buddhist science. There is no such thing as male or female science, black or white science, Democratic or Republican science.” That doesn’t mean it can’t be misused or misinterpreted or argued about, but it remains a tool “for human improvement that is anchored in repeatable, verifiable observation, rather than in prejudice and passionate conviction.” “Give me evidence for your belief,” Raymo asks, to which the response often is, “It makes me feel good,” or “The truth is out there.” “They have become, in short, True Believers by default. And fair enough. Certainly it is better to feel good than to feel bad. But the price the True Believer pays for feeling good can be a chasm between intellect and intuition, and exile from a scientific story of the universe that, like it or not, is our best story, a story that is empirically reliable and therefore ultimately more meaningful than any mishmash of New Age enthusiasms. The choice, on the face of it, is between a hard truth or an easy high.” Yet, to use his metaphor, “knowledge remains an island in a sea of mystery.” We all yearn to be part of something greater than ourselves. Yet finding the proper balance between yearning and learning is essential. . “We learn by hard experience that miracles don’t happen. . . . We cannot be fully human without both. . . Yearning without learning is seeing Elvis in a crowd. . . [or] following whatever current guru offers the most promising prospects of eternal life. . . .Learning without yearning is pedantry, scientism, idées fixes. . . believing that we know it all, that what we see is what we get, that nothing exists except what can be presently weighed and measured. . . science without a heart, without a dream, without a hope of beauty.. . Yearning without learning is seeing the face of Jesus in a gassy nebula. Learning without yearning is seeing only the gas.”
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