Pithy Reflection on God's "Two Books"

Came across this old saying that captures the essence of the conservative / fundamentalist position on the priority of God's two books.

"When evidence points out holes in evolution, evolution is wrong.
When evidence points out holes in the Bible, the evidence is wrong"

Mark Noll in his chapter "Thinking About Science" in the book "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" points this attitude out and comments on it rather harshly.

National Geographic: The God Particle

I have always loved the National Geographic, it has a commitment to showing the "truth interpreted" by giving us photos of what "is". There is of course its' rabid anti Christian stance (in my opinion it shows a lot more respect to any other religion than Christianity). But it gets the photos that no one else can.

This month there is an article on the current search by physicists to find a fundamental particle (more energy but that is besides the point). Everyone calls it the "God Particle". It makes for interesting reading but remember the editorial bias of the source.

LINK TO ARTICLE

Rest In Peace: Robert Jastrow 1926 - 2008

LINK to obituary in The New York Times

There was a lot to like about this guy and I remember him on TV during the 60's and 70's space programs. His quotes are well circulated but the ones I like are:

"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

"There is a strange ring of feeling and emotion in these reactions [of scientists to evidence that the universe had a sudden beginning]. They come from the heart whereas you would expect the judgements to come from the brain. Why? I think part of the answer is that scientists cannot bear the thought of a natural phenomenon which cannot be explained, even with unlimited time and money. There is a kind of religion in science, it is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the universe, and every effect must have its cause, there is no first cause...

This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control...

Consider the enormity of the problem. Science has proven that the universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks, what cause produced the effect? Who or what put the matter and energy in the universe? Was the universe created out of nothing, or was it gathered together out of pre existing materials? And science cannot answer these questions".