Live on Science Alone

I just read through the first chapter of Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion." His supporters claim that his "clarity" is often mistaken for arrogance-- I don't find this happening in most instances, do you? No, I think very often the arrogant are labeled so because they are.

Dawkins talks on and on of scientists that believing people have supposedly tried to take for their own. Letters, books, memoirs are misread and one mention of God is spun into a lifetime of abiding faith from Einstein or Hawkings. Perhaps this is true, though I'd like to say it goes both ways-- despite his devotion to the Church, the poor father of geology Steno is in a permanent strangle hold by the science community. That one, at least, I wish they'd give back.

An idea that's been niggling at my brain for some time finally popped to the forefront as I read it, however: many scientists truly believe that science should replace religion. They believe it should be the fount of ethical and personal beliefs, it seems. Reading Sky & Telescope this year my suspicions from earlier in life were confirmed-- just as the many science-lovers I knew were always trying to "convert" me (sorry but that is how it felt), the pages of this magazine are filled with preachy opinions about how science is the lens with which to view all the world.

This really leaves a bad taste in my mouth for a discipline I am quite fond of. I am going to try my best to seek out sources that, unlike Dawkins, aren't drunk with their own arrogance. Surely there are still minds in this world brilliant enough to know they do not hold the key to everything.

"I try to live on science alone.
Analysis and freaky sensitivity,
We've gotta live on science alone." -The Dandy Warhols