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You had me until the phrase "anti-science".

Science and religion absolutely address different needs and answer
different questions.  But I believe the only way to end this war is to
get both sides to realize they aren't inherently opposites.  That
science answers factual question about HOW the natural world works,
while religion is a way to answer moral questions about WHY some actions
are right and others are wrong.  As similar as chocolate ice cream and
shoveling snow, indeed.  Religion is inherently non-science.  But it
doesn't have to be anti-science.

Granted, if your faith has six-day creation from Genesis as its
foundation, science threatens that.  But there are plenty of religious
people who can accept scientific explanations of all sorts of things, if
we tell those stories well.

-Anders Liljeholm
Speaking for myself and not at all officially for my employer. 

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:42:36 -0800
From:    David Savory <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: museum responses to the Evolution/Creationist debate

ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology
Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
institutions.
************************************************************************
*****

I think the key is remembering there are separate satisfactions afforded
by science and religion. "Debate" is fruitless because people are
talking past each other- you might as well be trying to convince someone
who wants a chocolate sundae to shovel snow instead. The assumptions,
premises and understandings are all different. Science should happen in
science centres and anti-science should happen in church. Trying to make
them happen at the same time in the same place will only result in the
annihilation of good feelings in a flash of heat, not light. 

David Savory
Community Extensions Program Developer and Exhibit Curator
Science World British Columbia


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