Article 27775 of talk.origins:
From: philjohn@garnet.berkeley.edu ()
Subject: TIME cover story
Date: 27 Dec 1992 23:03:18 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 36
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <1hlcnmINNkrb@agate.berkeley.edu>

   Last week's TIME magazine cover story (Dec. 28) was titled
"What Does Science Tell Us About God?".  The story (by Robert
Wright) began by saying that "if you're religious in a
conventional sense, you probably don't seek theological guidance
from physicists."  Many people, however, are "religiously
inclined, but reaching for scientific support" for their beliefs.

   Some of the world's most prominent scientists seem to
encourage this public attitude of looking to science to provide a
basis for religion.  For example, Leon Lederman is publishing a
book called "The God Particle," and the cosmo-theologies of
Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan has been seen or read by millions. 
Moreover, TIME said that "many, perhaps most, evolutionary
biologists" now believe that "the coming of highly intelligent
life was close to inevitable," because of a supposed inherent
tendency of evolution to favor "behavioral flexibility," which
demands "complex information processing - smarts."  This is in
line with a general physical law waiting to be discovered which
"would carve out local exceptions to the general tendency of
things to become more chaotic."  TIME quotes Charles Bennett as
saying that such a law would play a role "formerly assigned to
God." TIME adds that others "would say that such a law is
EVIDENCE of God -- not a God who created human beings out of
dust, but a God with longer time horizons."

     When the U.S. National Academy of Sciences faced the threat
of creation-science in 1981, it passed a resolution saying that
"Religion and science are separate and mutually exclusive realms
of human thought whose presentation in the same context leads to
misunderstanding of both scientific theory and religious belief." 

     My questions are:  (1) Was this resolution merely a stick to
beat the creationists with, or does it apply to the National
Academy's own members?  (2) Should we "seek theological guidance
from physicists (or biologists)?"  We seem to be getting a lot of
it lately.