[Discussion] A glance at the December issue of Wired: A truce between science and religion

[Paksoy, Hb]

A glance at the December issue of Wired: A truce between science and
religion 
Friday, December 6, 2002 
Religion and science aren't "separate and mutually exclusive realms of human
thought" anymore, writes Gregg Easterbrook, a contributing editor for The
Atlantic Monthly. People thought science would be able to explain why life
exists and how the universe was created, but those explanations have not
materialized. Instead, "the more scientists have learned, the more
mysterious the Really Big Questions have become," he writes. 
For example, scientists still don't know "what caused the Big Bang, what (if
anything) was present before that event, or how there could have been a
prior condition in which nothing existed," Mr. Easterbrook writes. They know
only that "something made an entire cosmos out of nothing," he writes. That
realization is driving some scientists who once viewed faith as fiction
toward a "renewed scientific interest" in religion, he says. "Conferences
that bring together theologians and physicists are hot, recently taking
place at Harvard, the Smithsonian, and other big-deal institutions," Mr.
Easterbrook writes. However, "most biologists still want little to do with
spiritual thought, and the feeling is mutual on the part of many believers."
More than 75 years after the Scopes trial, Darwin's theory of evolution
"remains a flashpoint," he writes. 
Yet in this era of biotechnology, biologists must "realize they're stepping
into territory best navigated with the aid of philosophers and theologians,"
Mr. Easterbrook writes. It's time for biologists and theologians to set
aside their differences and work together to "write research rules,
physician ethics, and ultimately, law," he concludes. 
The article is available online at
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/convergence.html>