From: mss2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Re: God and Science:  The Ramblings of The Nightstalker
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 20:24:16 GMT

In article <1doomlINNrel@gap.caltech.edu> lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU writes:
>In article <1992Nov10.152019.17861@kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca>, aaron@space.ualberta.ca (Aaron Humphrey) writes:
>="Excuse me, StM?  I seem to recall seeing several posts in here from 'Stalker
>=in the past few months that >didn't< concern religion.  They were, in fact,
>=more concerned with love, and other things.  I'm sure that Nightstalker has
>=been trying >very hard< not to say any bad words in alt.callahans that might
>=annoy StM, but these just slipped out.  Or maybe he just felt pride at getting
>=something published, and wanted to share it with us, even if the subject matter
>=therein might upset one or two of the patrons.  Ya think?"
>
>I was going to let his post go without comment until I ran across this example
>of his bigotry:
>	Secondly, on a simple level, what relevance are the great discoveries of
>	science on a day to day personal level.  When a woman is being pack
>	raped, does it matter that elctrons repel one another?

>Once again we see the implication that some Christians are so fond of:  That
>Christians have a lock on morality.  I couldn't let a post with something like
>that in it go unanswered.

	"Actually, I interpreted this as simply pointing out that
_science_ has nothing to do with morality.  Which is true, after all--
gaining knowledge about the universe does not per se give one's
actions moral content one way or the other.

	"Now, naturally Nightstalker feels that the ultimate source of
morality is God.  If he claimed to believe otherwise, he would be
lying.  That doesn't necessarily mean he believes that the only people
who possess a moral code are professed Christians.  It may mean that
he believes that insofar as non-Christian moral codes are good they
are dim reflections of Christian morals (as in the Narnia allegories,
where even people who explicitly hated Aslan served him insofar as
they did good, and even those who invoked his name served his enemy
insofar as they did evil).  But that's not bigotry-- it's the logical
conclusion of a world view that presumes a God who is the ultimate
source of good.

	"One might imagine two intelligent species, one plant and one
animal.  The plant species has theorized, correctly, that the sun is
the source of all energy.  Some of the more prejudiced among the
plants might claim that whatever it was that animals ran on, it wasn't
the True Energy, since they obviously didn't feed from the sun.
Conversely, the animals might well presume that the plants were just
fools or bigots, since they knew that _they_ didn't feed from the sun.
But, of course, in fact the source of energy in the biosphere is
always the sun, whether directly or indirectly-- whatever food the
animals eat, the energy ultimately came in the form of sunlight.
(We'll assume that no one's eating sulphur fixing bacteria from
deep-sea vents or anything which skews this.)  The wiser among both
species would recognize this and realize that there was no cause for
quarrel (though of course to complete the analogy it would be
necessary for there to be a process whereby an animal could become a
plant and reason to believe that this is a preferred state, so that
the plants might encourage this as a more direct route to the sun.)

	"Now, obviously this is just an analogy, and implicit in it is
the idea that there _is_ a sun, when in fact the nature of "energy"
(morals) and whether it has a source are in dispute here.  But the
point is that for someone to believe that there's a source of morality
and a right way to relate to that source is not identical with
considering all other ways of living to be worthless and evil.  And
thus I don't see any bigotry there.  Believing people to be wrong and
hating them are two different things, and only the latter is likely to
result in bigotry.

	Michael smiles.  "Of course, by now the Nightstalker must have
expected StM's reaction.  I think we'd all be worried if someone
posted something positive about Christianity and StM _didn't_ file an
objection-- it just wouldn't be the same Place, somehow.  :-)"

Michael


-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Indeed I tremble for my country
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 when I reflect that God is just."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on
mss2@amber.uchicago.edu		    Virginia (1784)