Right. Here’s an Op-Ed piece by Daniel Dennett that gives one answer to Susan Greenfield’s notion that ‘science-religion ding-dongs’ are a complete waste of time. The anecdote he tells about taking part in a conference at which leading authors, artists and scientists talked to clever high school students, and he at the end of his talk mentioned that he is an atheist.

Many students came up to me afterwards to thank me, with considerable passion, for “liberating” them. I hadn’t realized how lonely and insecure these thoughtful teenagers felt. They’d never heard a respected adult say, in an entirely matter of fact way, that he didn’t believe in God. I had calmly broken a taboo and shown how easy it

Science and Religion again. I happened on this odd little item at SciTech Daily. I haven’t read it yet – when I have, perhaps I will comment further – but just on the front page there is a somewhat absurd quotation.

Science can tell us how chemicals bond but only religion can answer the why questions, why do we have a universe like this at all?

Excuse me? Only religion can answer those questions? Er…doesn’t that rather presuppose that religion can answer those questions? And isn’t that a fairly ridiculous presupposition? Answer them how? By making assertions? By telling stories? By making stuff up? At that rate, I can answer those questions too, and so can science, and so can … Read the rest

And as long as we’re on the subject, why not add a few words from the Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, as well? Especially since it was his kind of atheism (as well as her husband’s) that Susan Greenfield was taking issue with in that interview.

There is ‘Snake Oil and Holy Water’ for instance, in which he quotes a classic bit of Wool in which a psychiatrist says that traditional African healers

are able to tap that other realm of negative entropy–that superquantum velocity and frequency of electromagnetic energy–and bring them as conduits down to our level. It’s not magic. It’s not mumbo jumbo. You will see the dawn of the 21st century, the new medical

I found a rather odd interview with Susan Greenfield the other day. The site is some sort of Christian one, but some of Greenfield’s answers are still a bit strange.

My husband, Peter Atkins, is an atheist of the Dawkins stamp and so I’ve sat through many science-religion ding-dongs, and they strike me as a complete waste of time. No one is going to change their views. The Atkins-Dawkins stance treats science almost as though it were a religion, and evangelically try to convert other people. Meanwhile, the religious person can’t articulate why they believe what they do: they just do.

But people do change their views. Of course they do. Not all people of course, and not every time … Read the rest

Let’s revisit Deborah Cameron’s article yet again, because judging by the comments on my comments, I didn’t make myself clear. Or perhaps I did and people disagree anyway, or perhaps I’m just dead wrong. But I want to try to clarify one or two points all the same. The disagreement is with what I said about the different value we place (the culture we live in places) on thoughts and feelings. I do think that difference exists, I do think there is a seldom-examined or -questioned assumption that feelings are good, authentic, spontaneous, real, honest, natural, and for all those reasons and perhaps more, better than thoughts. Some readers point out that the distinction between thoughts and feelings is not … Read the rest