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The Times Speaks: "No Miracles Allowed"

[excerpting from GetReligion.org]

“The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”

This is, of course, the famous credo used time and time again by the late Dr. Carl Sagan. What has always fascinated me about this statement is its open use of religious — even creedal — form and its willingness to launch beyond the rules of science and into a kind of anti-theology.

How, in a lab, can one prove under the rules of science that the material world is all there is? How does one run scientific experiments in the past? And how in the world does one claim to be able to test the future?

Sagan knew what he was doing, of course. I had a chance to ask him about it. He knew his famous Cosmos series was making an argument that the scientific evidence backed up these sweeping truth claims that carried him far outside the rules of research. He believed he had the facts on his side and, thus, he was willing to make a leap of faith from facts to a larger philosophy. Then he became an evangelist for this philosophical point of view.

I was reminded of Sagan while reading the massive New York Times series on how the priesthood of modern science is responding to the rebels gathered under the banner of Intelligent Design. Click here to go to a clearinghouse page for all of the Gray Lady’s efforts on this issue in the recent past.

Clearly we are in the midst of a blitz. Cages have been rattled... [continued at GetReligion.org]


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Hoosier connection: The newest writer on 'Get Religion' is Daniel Pulliam, a Washington writer for Government Executive, former editor of Butler University's online 'DawgNet', and son of Indianapolis Star journalist, Russ Pulliam. Read Daniel's recent article, "Indulgences in the Land of Luther".

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IndyChristian.com Note: I recently watched the first of a Nova series on PBS called "Origins"... anxious to see which theory of 'origins' they would postulate. They used a 4.5 billion-year timeline, equating it to 24 hours on a clock, and then positioned each key 'event' on the clockface.

In the end, though, I was disappointed. They had successfully danced with the elephant all evening, but avoided his feet... the question of 'origin'... i.e. the beginning... 'What caused (their) clock to tick from 12:00:00 to 12:00:01?"

The Times article perhaps suggests the reason for this glaring omission... "Sorry, no miracles allowed."

posted by IndyChristian @ 6:36 AM