[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]… the face of the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich. …[/quote]
mmm… Sacralicious
(Homer Simpson)
As an agnostic liberal leftist, I really have to agree with Allan here.
It is true that science and religion came from the same place. They were both ways to address and explain the unknown. The point with Mendel the monk is well taken. It was not very long ago that religion and science were indistinguishable as disciplines.
However, these days, they really seek to deal with different tasks. Science quantifies the known and religion seeks to apprehend the unknowable. Faith in a model of the unknowable is, by definition, impossible to disprove.
The real dispute here appears to be the encroachment of one onto the territory of the other. Religious science and creationism are examples of attempts to explain quantifiable known data through the use of a model of the unknowable.
Putting that differently, you can’t explain quantifiable data with metaphysics and you can’t deny faith in a deity through astrophysics.
