Here is a shocker, an article expressing a positive opinion on religion in the NEW YORK TIMES!  Stanley Fish reviews the book “Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate” by Terry Eagleton.  In the book, Eagleton argues that science cannot replace religion for the simple reason that science has nothing to do with the questions, needs, and purposes religions fills.  Likewise, religion has no functions to answer the questions of science.  Here is my favorite excerpt from the article:

Eagleton likes this turn of speech, and he has recourse to it often when making the same point: “[B]elieving that religion is a botched attempt to explain the world . . . is like seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus.” Running for a bus is a focused empirical act and the steps you take are instrumental to its end. The positions one assumes in ballet have no such end; they are after something else, and that something doesn’t yield to the usual forms of measurement. Religion, Eagleton is saying, is like ballet… it’s after something else.

To use science to address religious concerns perverts it.  Likewise, to use religion to address scientific concerns is a debacle.  We need to stop choosing between the two, and instead recognize the purpose and limitations of both.

Here is the link to the New York Times article:
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/god-talk/

Here is the link to the book on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Reason-Faith-Revolution-Reflections-Lectures/dp/0300151799/

Here is a link to my past article on this topic:
How Science and Religion Can Play Nicely Together… and Should!

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