Naked Science

The Flying Spaghetti Monster and I John Rennie writes "Let me confess something. I do so with trepidation because it will surely mark me as a humorless dweeb, and may even be cause to have my membership in the Loyal Order of Anti-Creationists revoked. But the time has come to bare my soul, and I can only hope that my apostasy meets with mercy at the hands of my betters. Ladies and gentlemen, does it make me a bad person if I don't love the Flying Spaghetti Monster?" ".....my misgivings are essentially the same ones that I have about the famous Darwin fish insignia: the FSM may antagonize many religious people to whom it registers primarily as a slap at their faith, not at I.D. Many of those people have already been misled into thinking that evolution is intrinsically anti-religion, or is some kind of belief system that's equivalent to a religion that seeks to unseat Christianity. In the long run, if these frustrating evolution vs. creationism arguments are going to end, we are going to need the understanding or good will of those religious millions--or at least their tolerance, to put a worse face on it. My concern is that the FSM might postpone that day."

John makes a very good point, and while I don't agree with his conclusions, I understand where he’s coming from. Unfortunately the ID folks have framed the argument such that they are trying to claim that if you are a scientist, you can’t believe in God. Poppycock! In actual fact, most scientists I know are religious people, and see no conflict in having faith in their chosen God, and belief in the scientific facts of evolution. The two are NOT mutually exclusive! Now, there are evolution advocates such as Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers who come from an atheistic perspective, but the scientific community is not monolithic about either our scientific or spiritual beliefs.