From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Tue Mar 11 2003 - 08:26:03 EST
In response to my earlier commendation of Ruse's approach, Rich Aussette
replied:
Except that it is a marked contrast to the reality of the sciences as
presented in David sloan Wilson's Darwin's Cathedral who claims
functionlaism in the social sciences and evolutionary biology were hijacked
in the '60s by social scientists to deny group selection in order to
disenfranchise any claim that religious belief and practice were efficacious
for those practicing them.
One could just as well argue that the denial of group selection serves an
example of good science being hijacked by one religious worldview (perhaps
an atheistic one) to give the appearance of discrediting the efficacy of
other religious worldviews (theistic ones). As such, it would be a rather
self-defeating strategy, would it not?
Ruse has the reality backward. It is NOT science that is being kidnapped by
religion but religion being deliberately and *incorrectly* undermined by
science. Wilson calls religion adaptive.
As I noted above, it looks to me like a case of one religious worldview
battling another religious worldview by attempting to kidnap and exploit
science as its ally. In the process, good objective science becomes the
loser.
Is that not what also happens in the evolutionism versus creationism debate?
[where "evolutionism" here signifies evolutionary science kidnapped by
maximal naturalism, and "creationism" here signifies a highly selective and
unconventional science kidnapped by supernatural interventionism, whether of
the "creation science" or ID variety.]
Howard Van Till
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