Religion and science...ahhh, those classic antagonists. The Catholic Church sees fit to torture poor Galileo and Copernicus, whose observations do not fit in with the Ptolemian geocentric universe that so nicely fits in with its philosophy. Petr Beckmann's fine History of Pi takes the Church to task for the Dusk and Night of scientific discovery in the Middle Ages. The litenay of new atheist...
more Religion and science...ahhh, those classic antagonists. The Catholic Church sees fit to torture poor Galileo and Copernicus, whose observations do not fit in with the Ptolemian geocentric universe that so nicely fits in with its philosophy. Petr Beckmann's fine History of Pi takes the Church to task for the Dusk and Night of scientific discovery in the Middle Ages. The litenay of new atheist books out, from Dawkins to Hitchens, claims we cannot have science and religion together.
On the other side, Hasidim take the plethora of evidence we have for the age of the universe and tell us that it was all planted by G-d to test our faith. (Faith?!?) Yes, really, the Earth is 5768 years old. And don't even get me started on this evolution business; I mean, c'mon, everyone knows it's just a theory. (Gravitation, too, is "just" a theory...it's hard to type while I float away.)
Or, can religion and science live together? Many of my fellow science geeks (me included) live in a world where we depend on accepted and experimentally proven scientific principles to advance our careers, and yet, we still manage to have some religion while not feeling like complete hypocrites. I justify this by defining the scientific universe to be that space of ideas that we understand enough to model, while religion concerns those ideas that cannot be proven or disproven. Yes, there are nuances, but it is a simple division that helps to guide me as I work and raise children.
Now comes along one Prof. Frank Tipler, who, with The Physics of Immortality (TPOI), takes everything one giant step further by asserting that science and religion not only can coexist, but religion is in fact a branch of physics. Holy mind-bend, Batman!
The first hint the reader has that this is all a bunch of mush is that this book came out nearly 15 years ago. If the theology as branch of physics idea had any legs, well...don't you think it's a big enough idea that you may have heard of it by now?
Yes yes, some ideas are so good, so ahead of their time, that they take at least that long to sink in.
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