From another board I haunt...
An excerpt from "A World of Ideas," a PBS series aired several years ago, transcribed into a book I own. The series included interviews with economists, scientists, historians, sociologists and others. Sorry there's no link. I transcribed this from Bill Moyers' interview with Issac Asimov. It was published in 1989. Sorry if there are any typos. Moyers, btw, is a Baptist.
MOYERS: In 1980 you were afraid that the fundamentalists who were coming into power with President Reagan were going to turn this country even further against science, especially with their demands that biblical creationism be given an equal footing in the classroom with science. Have they made those inroads that you feared?
ASIMOV: Fortunately, the currents have been against them. But they still put pressure on school boards and parents, and it's become a little more difficult in many parts of the nation to teach evolution.
MOYERS: The fundamentalists see you as the very incarnation of the enemy, the epitome of the secular humanist who opposes God's plan for the universe. In 1984, the American Humanist Society gave you their Humanist of the Year Award, and now you're president of that organization. Are you an enemy of religion?
ASIMOV: No, I'm not. What I'm against is the attempt to place a person's belief system onto the nation or the world generally. We object to the Soviet Union trying to dominate the world, to communize the world. The United States, I hope, is trying to democratize the world. But I certainly would be very much against trying to Christianize the world or to Islamize it or to Judaize it or anything of the sort. My objection to fundamentalism is not that they are fundamentalists but that essentially they want me to be a fundamentalist, too. Now, they may say that I believe evolution is true and I want everyone to believe that evolution is true. But I don't want everyone to believe that evolution is true, I want them to study what we say about evolution and to decide for themselves. Fundamentalists say they want to treat creationism on an equal basis. But they can't. It's not science. You can teach creationism in churches and in courses in religion. They would be horrified if I were to suggest that in the churches they teach secular humanism as an alternative way of looking at the universe or evolution as an alternative way of considering how life may have started. In the church they teach only what they believe, and rightly so, I suppose. But on the other hand, in schools, in science courses, we've got to teach what scientists think is the way the universe works.
MOYERS: But this is what frightens many believers. They see science as uncertain, always tentative, always subject to revisionism. They see science as presenting a complex, chilling, and enormous universe ruled by chance and impersonal laws. They see science as dangerous.
ASIMOV: That is really the glory of science – that science is tentative, that it is not certain, that it is subject to change. What is really disgraceful is to have a set of beliefs that you think is absolute and has been so from the start and can't change, where you simply won't listen to evidence. You say, "If the evidence agrees with me, it's not necessary, and if it doesn't agree with me, it's false." This is the legendary remark of Omar when they captured Alexandria and asked him what to do with the library. He said, "If the books agree with the Koran, they are not necessary and may be burned. If they disagree with the Koran, they are pernicious and must be burned." Well, there are still Omar-like thinkers who think all of knowledge will fit into one book called the Bible, and who refuse to allow it is possible to ever conceive of an error there. To my way of thinking, that is much more dangerous than a system of knowledge that is tentative and uncertain.
MOYERS: Do you see any room for reconciling the religious view in which the universe is God's drama, constantly interrupted and rewritten by divine intervention, and the view of the universe as scientists hold it?
ASIMOV: There is if people are reasonable. There are many scientist who are honestly religious. Millikan was a truly religious man. Morley of the Michelson-Morley experiment was truly religious. There were hundreds of others who did great scientific work, good scientific work, and at the same time were religious. But they don't mix their religion and science. In other words, if something they didn't understand took place in science, they didn't dismiss it by saying, "Well, that's what God wants," or "At this point a miracle took place." No, they knew that science is strictly a construct of the human mind working according to the laws of nature, and that religion is something that lies outside and may embrace science. You know, if there were suddenly to arise scientific, confirmable evidence that God exists, then scientists would have no choice but to accept that fact. On the other hand, the fundamentalists don't admit the possibility of evidence that would show, for example, that evolution exists. Any evidence you present they will deny if it conflicts with the word of God as they think it to be. So the chances of compromise are only on one side, and therefore, I doubt that it will take place.
An excerpt from "A World of Ideas," a PBS series aired several years ago, transcribed into a book I own. The series included interviews with economists, scientists, historians, sociologists and others. Sorry there's no link. I transcribed this from Bill Moyers' interview with Issac Asimov. It was published in 1989. Sorry if there are any typos. Moyers, btw, is a Baptist.
MOYERS: In 1980 you were afraid that the fundamentalists who were coming into power with President Reagan were going to turn this country even further against science, especially with their demands that biblical creationism be given an equal footing in the classroom with science. Have they made those inroads that you feared?
ASIMOV: Fortunately, the currents have been against them. But they still put pressure on school boards and parents, and it's become a little more difficult in many parts of the nation to teach evolution.
MOYERS: The fundamentalists see you as the very incarnation of the enemy, the epitome of the secular humanist who opposes God's plan for the universe. In 1984, the American Humanist Society gave you their Humanist of the Year Award, and now you're president of that organization. Are you an enemy of religion?
ASIMOV: No, I'm not. What I'm against is the attempt to place a person's belief system onto the nation or the world generally. We object to the Soviet Union trying to dominate the world, to communize the world. The United States, I hope, is trying to democratize the world. But I certainly would be very much against trying to Christianize the world or to Islamize it or to Judaize it or anything of the sort. My objection to fundamentalism is not that they are fundamentalists but that essentially they want me to be a fundamentalist, too. Now, they may say that I believe evolution is true and I want everyone to believe that evolution is true. But I don't want everyone to believe that evolution is true, I want them to study what we say about evolution and to decide for themselves. Fundamentalists say they want to treat creationism on an equal basis. But they can't. It's not science. You can teach creationism in churches and in courses in religion. They would be horrified if I were to suggest that in the churches they teach secular humanism as an alternative way of looking at the universe or evolution as an alternative way of considering how life may have started. In the church they teach only what they believe, and rightly so, I suppose. But on the other hand, in schools, in science courses, we've got to teach what scientists think is the way the universe works.
MOYERS: But this is what frightens many believers. They see science as uncertain, always tentative, always subject to revisionism. They see science as presenting a complex, chilling, and enormous universe ruled by chance and impersonal laws. They see science as dangerous.
ASIMOV: That is really the glory of science – that science is tentative, that it is not certain, that it is subject to change. What is really disgraceful is to have a set of beliefs that you think is absolute and has been so from the start and can't change, where you simply won't listen to evidence. You say, "If the evidence agrees with me, it's not necessary, and if it doesn't agree with me, it's false." This is the legendary remark of Omar when they captured Alexandria and asked him what to do with the library. He said, "If the books agree with the Koran, they are not necessary and may be burned. If they disagree with the Koran, they are pernicious and must be burned." Well, there are still Omar-like thinkers who think all of knowledge will fit into one book called the Bible, and who refuse to allow it is possible to ever conceive of an error there. To my way of thinking, that is much more dangerous than a system of knowledge that is tentative and uncertain.
MOYERS: Do you see any room for reconciling the religious view in which the universe is God's drama, constantly interrupted and rewritten by divine intervention, and the view of the universe as scientists hold it?
ASIMOV: There is if people are reasonable. There are many scientist who are honestly religious. Millikan was a truly religious man. Morley of the Michelson-Morley experiment was truly religious. There were hundreds of others who did great scientific work, good scientific work, and at the same time were religious. But they don't mix their religion and science. In other words, if something they didn't understand took place in science, they didn't dismiss it by saying, "Well, that's what God wants," or "At this point a miracle took place." No, they knew that science is strictly a construct of the human mind working according to the laws of nature, and that religion is something that lies outside and may embrace science. You know, if there were suddenly to arise scientific, confirmable evidence that God exists, then scientists would have no choice but to accept that fact. On the other hand, the fundamentalists don't admit the possibility of evidence that would show, for example, that evolution exists. Any evidence you present they will deny if it conflicts with the word of God as they think it to be. So the chances of compromise are only on one side, and therefore, I doubt that it will take place.
