reida, I think you should be more careful with your distinction between “fact” and “theory“: Apples falling from a tree have always been a fact, gravity that explains this phenomenon has become a fact only after Newton‘s theory was accepted. And conversely, the independence of space and time on the observer was considered a fact in physics until Einstein came. However, we are not dealing in these posts with philosophy of science, where the contemporary battle has been not between theists and atheist but between what can be traced to C. P. Snow’s “two cultures” (cf. the “culture wars“ triggered by the Sokal hoax, see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair), where the “theist“ scientists “fought” side by side with their atheist colleagues against post-modernist deniers of an “objective truth” that their research is aimed at.

I almost agree with what you say about religion. The “almost” refers to your objections to myths, when they are no longer “confined to the interior“ and become a 'fact', mainly because of the relativity (and ambiguity) associated with the term ‘fact‘ I hinted at above. Myths - both as understood by “primitive“ people and by such scholars as Mircea Eliade - serve as models of a reality - of course, a priori assumed to exist - that otherwise could not be grasped. Like theories in contemporary physics need mathematical models of reality without which reality could not be grasped: e.g. you could not understand the first thing in quantum mechanic without knowing what are linear operators in a Hilbert space.

Of course, here the analogy ends: everybody understands a religious myth as such, even those who do not accept (or understand) its relevance to a world “out there”. Something like visual models in science - e.g. electrons like tiny billiard balls orbiting a larger ball, the nucleus - that were superseded by 20th century physics. In the past most everybody accepted the existence both of a world that senses (later instruments and science) informed us about, and also of a spiritual world that various forms of “religious experience“ and “sacred texts“ informed humanity about. (ctd)

(ctd) Very few philosophers ever doubted the existence of something independent of us that can be reached through our senses, whereas today there are many in the Western world who deny the existence of Something that our religious experience (personal as well as cultural) points to. The Church thought for centuries that one could use one’s “spiritual insight” to gain insight into the workings of the material world: today some people think this works the other way around, that one gain insight into what faith and “religious experience” is about, by reducing it to its outside - cultural, psychological or just neurophysiological - manifestations.

That is a fact, that a tolerant person - on both sides of the divide - has to accept without trying to denigrate or ridicule (e.g. taking the moralistic or rationalistic high ground) those standing on the side of the divide. This, of course, is a general remark, not aimed at anybody taking part in this illuminating (for me at least) debate.

bushbasher, I was not naming Dawkins, see my previous post about my impressions of him. However, I do not think you could state ‘nobody’ is a reductionist in the sense I mentioned. The same as I could defend this or that Christian from accusations of “religious militancy” but I would not claim that ‘nobody’ deserves this label. “F=ma” needs only high school maths to understand, and I agree that contemporary genetics works with much more sophisticated maths. Nevertheless, I am convinced that e.g. Stephen Hawking needs to understand much more mathematics than Richard Dawkins. To understand the claims of string theory you need a contemporary PhD in maths.

The claim that there are more atheists among biologists than among physicists comes from John Polkinghorne, who should know, though I do not have any data to support that. Fanatics of whatever persuasion can irritate people with more informed and balanced views, but you have aggressive people on both sides of this world view divide, and it is a matter of opinion where you see the action and where the reaction

Just as Luke claimed that there were eye-witness accounts of Jesus’ resurrection, the high priest of scientism, Dawkins, claims that there were eye-witness accounts of the evolution of the common ancestor of fish and man 300 million years ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaKryi3605g

I can acknowledge some overlap, George, in our posts as we perhaps share a similar Gestalt. Our perception of the so called facts are always critical. The very nature of how we determine our facts and pronounce our theories will often have a high degree of ambiguity - hence evolution being both fact and theory. There will be some who 'see' a certain reality whereas others are blind to it. The empiricism of science measures something all are able to see but as Einstein has noted, there is a lameness to science without religion and blindness to religion without science.

Many of those bound to religion often do not, in fact, understand their own religious myth just as many scientists are quite feeble in the full appreciation of their discoveries.

Phillip Tang,

Dawkins said that IF you could've been there, then you would have seen the first steps of a fish coming out onto the land.

Stop making things up.

george, i think any disagreement between us pretty much at the nitpicking level. but a few comments on your last posts.

i don't think you should make too firm a distinction between fact and theory. i would say newton's theory of gravity is a fact. it's an abstract fact, but it's a fact. part of this is simply a matter of terminology, and it's no big deal. the trouble is, the anti-science crowd misinterpret "theory" as in "only a theory". a scientific theory can have much more solidity than that.

quick comment on linear operators on hilbert spaces: i think you're being elitist, and historically revisionist. i doubt that heisenberg and his mates knew much functional analsyis. but i accept your later point, that evolutionary biologists need much less mathematics (so far) than theoretical physicists.

re your comments on tolerance and fanatics. i take your point, but i will take it only so far. nonsense is nonsense, and i have no time for people who come with a conclusion and then fill in the argument (viz intelligent designers).

the expression militant in regard to athiests is entirely inappropriate. if you want "militant" consider the disgusting pronouncements of anti-homosexual bigots such as jennings and pell. or christians who blow up abortion clinics, or muslims who blow up anything. i know of no athiest who promotes athiesm in even a remotely similarly violent or divisive fashion.