Just a quick note about a new show I caught by accident last week on the History International cable channel. IDK if this is really a new show, but its new for me! HISI is certainly new on my Optimum Cable provider. I think its channel 168?
Anyway, this episode was about the life of Galileo and his troubles with the inquisition. One of the narrators was Dava Sobel who had written a very interesting biography a couple of years ago. The general theme was the age old battle between Science and Religion. People tend to make this generalization all the time, I don't think this theme is really valid, however. Many scientists in history were very devout in their own right. In fact, as a scientist myself, I was drawn to science because of my religion, not in spite of it! How better to understand the works of God?
There's a similar feud between Creationism and Evolution. Again, I don't see the problem. I don't take the Book of Genesis in the Bible verbatim. I think of Genesis as a metaphor. For example, when it states that God made the Heavens and the Earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th, who's to say how long a day is? Maybe a day is really a millennium (1000 years). This definition of day would actually make the Creationists, who do take the Bible literally, very happy as they think that the Earth and everything on it was created less than 5000 years ago. However, who's to say a day isn't longer still, say an eon (1000000 years) which is closer to what the Evolutionists think?
I think we have to get away from making all these generalizations. For example, my least favorite generalization is "Math is too tough and I'll never need to know this stuff anyway!"
Generally Speaking,
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