The Dali Lama (as in exiled Tibetan leader of the Buddhists) says that when science and religion disagree, it is our religion that must change.
Try as I might – and I have been trying mightily hard – I cannot think of a single exception when I might disagree with him. Whether it is Copernicus or Galileo, Darwin or Dawkins, when religion tries to dismiss scientific findings on a-priori grounds that God could not have created the universe that way, religion inevitably is wrong. Surely if people believe they can know God by looking at his creation, then they must be open to expanding their view of God as we learn more and more about this amazing and fantastic and marvellous universe. Not the other way around.
Of course, there are times when men use science to support unethical or immoral courses of action. Like the white supremacists who argue that Blacks are genetically inferior to whites. I find that position morally abhorrent, but it is also scientifically invalid.
Tomorrow evening one of the main television channels here is airing a programme on race and intelligence. I’m going to watch it. And if they argue, as the trailer suggests, that intelligence is genetically determined and that some races are therefore irredeemably less intelligent than others, I am going to muster every surviving capacity I possess to point out the scientific illegitimacy of this position.
I don’t disagree with this view because it is morally suspect or politically incorrect. I disagree with it because it is scientifically unsound to draw this conclusion from the data.
So there.
