An atheist reads "True Reason": Chapter 11
Remember earlier when I said that one of my annoyances with this book is that the topics tend to repeat themselves? Well, this time they do so for two chapters in a row. I mean come on . This is a sixteen-chapter book, and it's looking more and more like it could have been, I dunno, ten. The next two chapters deal with the idea that science and religion are inherently in conflict. Now, in my experience, there are two ways theists deal with this. First is to suggest that science and religion answer different questions – the old non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) argument. The other is to point out that lots of important scientists have been, and are, religious – heck, without religious people there might not even be science! The first is actually a semi-interesting topic; the second isn't really an argument at all. Isaac Newton was a scientist and an alchemist. Does that give alchemy more credibility? Shockingly, these two chapters stick to the formula. That's a bit of