Free Republic

A Darwinist Religious Experience Described April 11, 2009 — As millions of Jews just completed Passover, and as millions of Christians gather to celebrate Easter, a Darwinist reporter was experiencing “existential vertigo” – a sweeping sense of dizziness as her imagination zoomed in and out of the implications of her faith. It may be the closest thing that a secular materialist can call a religious experience. And religious experience is an accurate description: it was the outworking of an all-encompassing world view, with ultimate causes, ultimate destinies, moral imperatives, and heavy doses of faith. Amanda Gefter (see her previous attack...

The late Stephen Jay Gould at Harvard used to describe religion and science as occupying “non-overlapping magisterial authority,” or what he called NOMA. That is, science and religion occupied different “domains,” or areas of life, in which each held “the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution.” There were many problems with Gould’s approach, but at least a lack of respect for religion and religious people wasn’t one of them. Not so with some of today’s scientists. The New York Times reported on a conference recently held in Costa Mesa, California, that turned into the secular materialist equivalent of a...