BlogWood: MT Archives

Science vs. fundamentalism

Schiavo's parents beg Gov. Bush for action

Terri Schiavo is still refusing to die, even as she approaches her eleventh day without food and water, a spokesman for her parents said Monday morning.

On Sunday night, she was visited by her father and a friend she used to go dancing with, when "something extraordinary happened," said Paul O'Donnell, a Franciscan Friar acting as a spiritual advisor to Bob and Mary Schindler.

"Terri Schiavo raised her hands up and was moving and started making guttural sounds like she does when she talks to her mother," O'Donnell said. "Everyone is willing to write this woman's obituary except one person, and that's Terri Schiavo herself."

Schiavo used to be a "vivacious dancer," O'Donnell said.

Orcinus

Science and fundamentalism are natural enemies, because they represent diametrically opposite models for understanding the world.

Fundamentalism begins with articles of faith, gleaned from Scripture, for which it then goes in search of evidence as support -- ignoring, along the way, all contravening evidence.

Science begins with the gathering of evidence and data, which are then assembled into an explanatory model through a combintation of hypothesis and further testing. This model must take into account all available facts, including contradictory evidence.

They are, in other words, 180 degrees removed from each other in how they affect our understanding of the world. One is based in logic, the other in faith. As methodologies go, they are simply irreconcilable.