From: "Rich Gauszka" 

Interesting article on 'The DNA of Religious Faith' -   snippet below

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i33/33b00601.htm
Roughgarden's Evolution and Christian Faith is a "plague on both your
houses" chastisement of "selfish genery" as well as of
intolerant fundamentalism, and thus likely (along with Collins's book) to
appeal to the "can't we all get along?" moderates among us:
"We simply don't have to let ourselves get caught up in these
polarizing positions," according to Roughgarden. "We can insist
on a better tenor of discourse."

That, too, is the goal of Edward O. Wilson, reigning dean of American
organismal biologists, although he seeks reconciliation between science and
religion for the sake of policy, not polity. The Creation, written as an
epistolary reaching out to an unnamed Southern Baptist preacher, is
subtitled An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. Wilson's journey was the inverse
of Collins's: Reared a pious Baptist in rural Alabama, he became a famous
atheist scientist. Wilson's anguish, however, is not so much over the
reduction in civility across the science-theology divide as about the
reduction in planetary biodiversity and the imminence of large-scale,
anthropogenic, species extinctions. Wilson's hope, powerfully expressed, is
that doctrinal differences between religion and science could be put aside
in favor of jointly defending the organic world, however it arose.

...

It seems inevitable that both science and religion will persist, often
struggling, rarely cooperating, warily cohabiting within our minds no less
than our works, testimony to what underlies the current efflorescence of
science/religion books. Some mutual accommodation, however, may be
envisioned. At the end of The Creation, E.O. Wilson observes to the Baptist
pastor: "However the tensions eventually play out between our opposing
worldviews, however science and religion wax and wane in the minds of men,
there remains the earthborn, yet transcendental, obligation we are both
morally bound to share."



"John Beamish"  wrote in message
news:op.tru15qcvm6tn4t{at}dellblack.phub.net.cable.rogers.com...
> "all theories are fact?"
>
> Nonsense.  The vernacular use of "theory" is not the same as the
> scientific use of "theory" (just as the vernacular use of
"size" is not
> the same as the manufacturing use:  to 'size' paper is to apply a compound
> that fills in cracks and crevices to preserve the paper and provide a
> 'finish' to the surface).
>
> Consider Einstein's Theory of Gravity.  It was postulated and, since then,
> a variety of experiments have all confirmed it.  Yet it is still a theory.
>
> In short, dismissing something called a Theory simply because it is
> *called* a theory is intellectual "Luddite-ism".
>
>
> On Fri, 04 May 2007 10:29:13 -0400, Richard B. 
> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 04 May 2007 10:46:54 +0100, Ad
>>  wrote:
>>
>>> When asked who believed in Santa & the tooth fairy.....
>>
>> I thought it was the _theory_ of evolution, or has that changed?
>>
>> Or are we to believe all theories are fact?
>>
>> Just wondering who proved it.
>>
>> - Richard
>

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