Re: [asa] Richard Lewontin quote on Naturalism

Perhaps the rest of the quote?

"The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could
believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent
deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be
ruptured, that miracles may happen."

And the introduction

""With great perception, Sagan sees that there is an impediment to the
popular credibility of scientific claims about the world, an
impediment that is almost invisible to most scientists. Many of the
most fundamental claims of science are against common sense and seem
absurd on their face. Do physicists really expect me to accept without
serious qualms that the pungent cheese that I had for lunch is really
made up of tiny, tasteless, odorless, colorless packets of energy with
nothing but empty space between them? Astronomers tell us without
apparent embarrassment that they can see stellar events that occurred
millions of years ago, whereas we all know that we see things as they
happen. When, at the time of the moon landing, a woman in rural Texas
was interviewed about the event, she very sensibly refused to believe
that the television pictures she had seen had come all the way from
the moon, on the grounds that with her antenna she couldn't even get
Dallas. What seems absurd depends on one's prejudice. Carl Sagan
accepts, as I do, the duality of light, which is at the same time wave
and particle, but he thinks that the consubstantiality of Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost puts the mystery of the Holy Trinity "in deep trouble."
Two's company, but three's a crowd."

http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Lewontin_on_materialism

On 1/12/07, Lawrence Johnston <johnston@uidaho.edu> wrote:
> Hi ASAophiles -
>
> Some of you may like to collect pithy quotes and sayings, so here is my
> choice one for cleearly showing the soul driving force behind those who
> cling to Metaphysical Naturalism, AKA Materialism, AKA Scientific Atheism.
>
> QUOTE from Richard Lewontin, Evolutionary Geneticist at Harvard U.
>
> "Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense
> is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the
> supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
> of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its
> extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the
> scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a
> prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods
> and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material
> explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are
> forced by our *a priori* adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
> of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations,
> no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the
> uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a
> Divine Foot in the door." (Lewontin R., "Billions and Billions of Demons,"
> Review of "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark," by
> Carl Sagan.
> -----------------------
>
> What's your favorite quote?
>
> Larry Johnston
>
> "There is sufficient light for those who desire
> to see, and there is sufficient darkness for those
> of a contrary disposition."
>
> -Blaise Pascal, Pensees 149 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> ==========================================================
> Lawrence H. Johnston home: 917 E. 8th st.
> professor of physics, emeritus Moscow, Id 83843
> University of Idaho (208) 882-2765
> Fellow of the American Physical Society
> http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~johnston/=================
>
>
>
>
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Received on Fri Jan 12 12:08:05 2007