Now (finally) Instapundit weighs in. (By the way, did Instapundit evolve, or was he created? Is he just a fiction of bloggers' minds? Or we of his? Did he create us in his own cyberimage? If he didn't exist, would we have to invent him? I'll have to ask him next time I see him...)

Glenn quotes Asimov:

It is the chief characteristic of the religion of science, that it works.

Which is all well and good, except that it begs the question of what "works" means.

Certainly if you want to grow more food, or build stronger buildings, or go to the Moon, science works just great. The problem is, that for many people, that's not the highest value. When it comes to spending eternity in the bosom of your Creator (which is the goal of a significant segment of the populace, or so they claim), science doesn't work at all--it's broken in a major way.

The science belief system and the more conventional religious belief systems have very different goals--one is for life on this earth, and the other is for the rest (though it also purports to improve life in the here and now as well, at least spiritually).

Therein lies the (so far unbridgeable) chasm.

[Update at 11:09 AM PDT]

Here are some links to some excellent related posts by thoughtful Christians Dave Trowbridge and Tom Veal, with which I agree as much as is possible without actually being a Christian (or even a deist) myself.

Ah! Rand gets it.

Isaac Asimov, Stephen Gould, and others have made the point that is missed by far too many in both science and religion: They are separate domains.

This statement will be crude and perhaps overly simple, but I will say it anyway: science says absolutely nothing about religion except that the Bible is not a science book.

I've always liked the definitions given a certain other "Rand". Science is the branch of philosophy dealing with how things function. Religion, on the other hand, is a pre-philosophical outlook.

For anyone who didn't catch it, the quote is from the Foundation Trilogy. "The religion of science" is not *real* science, but a scam set up to impress the yokels of planets near Terminus. It "works" in the sense that a priest can effectively curse a spaceship (if he does it just before his confederate pulls out the fuses).

Rand :

I wonder if you don't give too much credit to science here and not enough to religion. On the one hand, as I believe even you've acknowledged, we can't get evolution to work--in the sense of working in a lab or other experimental setting. On the other, the Judeo-Christian West is quite measurably the most improved culture Man has ever created, and relied very specifically on religious precepts to become so. Religion may not grant us a comfortable eternity, may in fact be a mass delusion, but it has made us a uniquely successful society. It has utilitarian value if nothing else.

We get it to work every day, Orrin. You're just frustrated because we won't turn an elephant into an aardvark before your very eyes.

Science and religion may be separate domains, but they do interact somewhat.

Occassionally, religions will make statements which are testable scientificly, at least to some degree. (For example, a created vs. an eternal universe is not entirely an untestable proposition.)

Also, science is not done in a moral vacuum: It is performed by people, and sometimes ethical issues arise. The scientific facts alone cannot guide us in these areas: We need a framework for putting a value one them. What is the value of a human life? What is ethical behavior?

All such answers are shared by by beliefs which are beyond what is provable via science -- whether atheist or theist in character.

Whoops: "shaped by" beliefs. Sorry.

Religions often make predictions that can be invalidated by science. E.g., "The rapture is coming on November 20, 2005." This one's easy to test--just hang around until then.

"The End Is Near," of course, is a little more problematical, lacking specificity...

Rand :

I must have missed it, what was the duplicable controlled experiment that proved evolution?

I don't know what "prove evolution" means. I've always gotten the impression that you won't believe it until you see an orange tree turn into a chicken, or something.

But don't science and religion attempt to interact in this world and fail? And isn't that why religious people have always felt threatened by science?

Religions are based on a series of stories that are told in the belief that they are true. Jesus' miracles were not meant to be understood as metaphors, but as acts that prove that he is the Son of God. They are the source of Christian faith.

Yet, those acts cannot be proved by science. They go against scientific beliefs. You can't come up with even a theory that could explain how water can be turned into wine. There is a contradiction, unless you wish to believe that the world is bound by scientific principles except when God doesn't feel like it.

Is there a scientific instrument that can measure the weight of a soul? Can you look at the massive expanse of space and believe that we are so special to be favored by God?

You can believe in science, or you can believe in miracles, but you can't believe in both.

Sorry if this sounds like proslytizing; it's not meant to be.

Tell us what substance composes a soul and we'll have an instrument to measure it in no time. At the same time you'll have provided the first evidence anywhere for the existence of such an item. Until then it's just a little lie we tell ourselves to subdue the terror of oblivion.

Not everybody needs special effects to make their religion work. If the threat of eternal damnation is the only thing that keeps you from committing any crimes than you need to be kept under close watch.

Certainly there are theoretical means by which water can be turned to wine. It's called fusion. Water is composed of two of the simplest elements. The chemicals in wine are merely more complex arrangements of the particles comprising the hydrogen and oxygen in water. The real trick is doing it without vaporizing everything for miles around.