I am sure that everybody remembers Kirk Cameron, the child star from “Growing Pains.” Well, he grew up to be a Christian Fundamental Bible Pusher. Kirk and his friend Ray Comfort are pushing a program called "The Way of the Master," which explains why all non-christians are doomed to hell. They are so inane that they have even gone as far as to reject the existence of evolution.
There is nothing I hate more than when religion buts its nose into science. Stephen Jay Gould once said that science and religion are non-overlapping magisteria. I do not subscribe to this perspective. I side with Richard Dawkins, who suggests that faith and reason are incompatible. In fact, faith is defined as belief without reason.
And like Daniel Dennett, I believe that religion is a natural phenomenon that should be subjected to the same scientific scrutiny as all other phenomena.
It does not do any good to invoke a supernatural explanation (including God or gods) to explain a complex system. Explaining the existence of life as the work of a magician whose powers are beyond our comprehension does not enhance our understanding of how life came to evolve. Life did not appear on earth by some elaborate, inexplicable magic trick. Life evolved.
Anyway, I am done spouting off. If you want to see the Rational Response Squad destroy Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort’s argument for the existence of God, watch Nightline tonight (May 9, 2007) on ABC or check out the nightline website.
To read more about reason vs. faith or science and religion, check out Bertrand Russell's Why I am not a Christian, Carl Sagan’s The Demon-haunted World, Richard Dawkins’s God Delusion, Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, and Sam Harriss’s The End of Faith.
