The War on Religion: A View from the Trenches

[cbayer]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-zimmerman/the-war-on-religion-a-vie_b_1402010.html

Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D.Founder, The Clergy Letter Project

Posted: 04/11/2012 12:09 pm


If the war against religion is real, as Republicans constantly assert, then I am one of its generals.

I am, after all, the founder and executive director of a 14,000 member organization that has as one of its primary goals the desire to ensure that evolutionary biology -- and only evolutionary biology rather than creationism in any and all of its guises -- is taught in public school science classrooms and laboratories.

As an organization, we are outspoken and clear about our intent. We believe that those who want to substitute their reading of the Bible for science lessons are mistaken and must be stopped at the doors of our public schools. We believe that those who disingenuously cast doubt on basic biological principles in an attempt to promote their religious worldview are doing great damage to our educational system. We believe that those who disparage virtually every professional biologist in the world and disagree with virtually every professional scientific society in the world in their attempt to force their religious beliefs into scientific lesson plans will, if they remain unchecked, march us into a dark age of scientific illiteracy.

We are relentlessly attacked as being anti-religious because those making such a claim make two loud but completely baseless assertions. On one hand they claim that teaching evolutionary biology in science classes turns students into atheists and thus is a direct assault on religious belief. On the other hand, they claim that evolutionary theory itself is a religion, the religion of secular humanism. (Let's ignore the inherent contradiction that if evolutionary theory is a religion that we're promoting, we certainly can't be waging a war against religion. Indeed, if evolutionary biology is a religion, which most assuredly it is not, then we would simply be promoting one religion over another -- which is dramatically different from being opposed to religion in general.)


more at link

[Thats my opinion]

1. This is exactly where progressive religion stands.

Can you all managed to applaud it?

Zimmerman has wide support. He is a faculty member at Butler University in Indianapolis, and a long-time religious expert.

[skepticscott]

4. By your own incessant claims

"Progressive religion" encompasses many points of view. So who are you to now claim that this person speaks for all "progressive" religionists?

And applaud what, exactly? That some religious people have finally gotten where sane and sensible people have been all along?

[trotsky]

5. Evidently, nothing good can be accomplished...

unless religious individuals are leading the charge. We should be grateful when they support progressive causes and not say anything that upsets them lest we lose their support - because it would seem that they value the sanctity and unassailability of their beliefs over the actual cause itself.

[darkstar3]

6. Let me see if I can put this in a way you can understand:

When was the last time that fighting fire directly with fire actually worked?

A problem cannot be its own solution.

[rrneck]

2. The "war on religion" is just the loss of market share. nt

[mike_c]

3. I'm one of the Clergy Letter signers, or members, or whatever...

...but I have to say-- and I've shared this with Zimmerman-- that I'm cynical about there ever being reconciliation between science and religion, and as most folks around here know, I'm openly hostile to religious doctrine of all sorts. I think the Clergy Letter is good intentioned, but in the end, I suspect it's a wasted effort to reconcile irreconcilable differences. I just cannot imagine how science can coexist with superstition.