Many people find that when I say that science and dogmatic religions like Christian or Muslim can not walk together, due to a series of irreconcilable points between them, I'm just expressing an atheist point of view, that religious and think differently, that it is indeed possible to reconcile the two ways of thinking. Perhaps knowing the particular case of a religious intellectually honest with himself, they stop to think better.
Many religious now prefer not to touch on some delicate matters of the Bible, because they are issues which, although taken seriously for centuries on end, cause embarrassment today due to advancement of scientific knowledge, which played by land claims as the alleged young age of the Earth eg. Many manage to live hiding these conflicts, dealing with these matters of the Bible as allegorical or dishonestly attempting a reconciliation, but others actually go into a tailspin with these contradictions and decide to choose a side to believe, discarding the other. This was the case of Kurt Wise, an American geologist who now runs the Creation Research Center at Truett-McConnell College, a private college of Christian teaching. Wise graduated from Harvard and the University of Chicago and was a young scientist with a promising future, who strode to success in academic careers.
Then came the tragedy. She came not from outside but from within his own head, a head fatally undermined and weakened by a fundamentalist religious upbringing that required him to believe that the Earth - the object of his scientific studies at Harvard and Chicago - had less than 10 000 years of age. He was too intelligent not to recognize the head-on collision between his religion and his science, and mental conflict has left him increasingly uncomfortable. One day, unable to withstand more stress, have attacked the problem with a scissors. He took a Bible and ran, taking literally all the verses that would be eliminated if the scientific worldview were true. At the end of this exercise honest and laborious, so little remains of the Bible he said
As much as I tried, and even with the benefit of intact margins throughout the pages of Scripture, I saw that it was impossible to pick up the Bible without she was torn in half. I had to make a decision between evolution and Scripture. Either the Scripture was true and evolution was wrong or evolution was true and I had to throw the Bible out [...] It was there that night, I accepted the Word of God and rejected all that has not disputed, including the Evolution . So with great sorrow, I tossed into the fire all my dreams and my hopes in science.
Yes, I know, I also thought "it was enough to have thrown the Bible in the trash." Some people think the attitude of Kurt Wise pathetic, but I must congratulate him. I believe more honest you recognize that science and religion do not mix, than try to get fancy theories or intellectual acrobatics to show that they can go together. And do not tell me that that old defensive argument that "the Bible is not a science book." For advance their dogmas but on issues such as geology, biology, history, morality, genetics, psychology with teaching totally wrong by the standards of the XXI century. So if you are those who think science and religion go hand in hand, I invite you to a discussion based on the experience of a geologist who started a brilliant career as a scientist by stating the opposite of what you think. He preferred to be honest with your conscience.
Source: Dawkins, Richard. God Delusion . Companhia das Letras. São Paulo: 2006. (Pp. 365-66)
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