Wired, normally one of my favourite online zines, have printed an article called God and Science in Merger Talks?. It is one of the most ill-informed and outright stupid articles I have read on this topic in quite some time, and I am quite surprised to find this tripe in Wired.
Gregg Easterbrook, the author, makes an odd comparison between speculative theories in science and supernatural claims in religion, in effect asserting they are one and the same. What he fails to say is that a speculative theory in science is presented as a speculative theory, while in religion it is presented as The Truth and believe-it-or-we-chop-your-head-off. He also fails to say, or for what I know he may be ignorant about, the fact that when scientists speculate, it is not science unless it can be tested. And that is the whole, massive difference between religion and science: the former hates criticism, the latter invites it.
When I read the article, I was just waiting for the compulsory reference to the unbelievably lame "anthropic argument," which I have written about earlier.
Easterbrook almost redeems himself when he says some half-intelligent things about the controversies between fundamentalism and evolutionary biology, but then he ends the article with a few thoroughly braindead paragraphs about neo-creationism, aka "Intelligent Design", as if that was anything like a reconcilation between science and religion. Indeed, it is more like a an attempted takeover of science by dogmatic religion. And that seems to be the enterprise Easterbrook supports: capitulation of reason to superstition.
I originally posted this article to my blog on Nov 14, 2002. I also posted about this article on Nov 23 and commented on the whole special issue of Wired it appeared in on Dec 6.A much more postive comment to a later article by Easterbrook was posted on June 19, 2003.
Wired, normally one of my favourite online zines, have printed an article called 