I Stumbled Across This
I stumbled across this and I thought it was interesting. I was reading a website called God Is Imaginary and found an interesting story. Now, being an agnostic Humanist, I don’t necessarily believe that God is imaginary. I don’t necessarily believe God is real, either. I believe the very concept of God (or any supernatural being) is outside the realm of observable, verifiable phenomena, and is not a topic that merits inclusion in a biology or geology (or any other natural science) course. But that’s a topic for the politics category.
Anyway, I had a point. The article I was reading concerns the development of Penicillin. Here’s the relevant quote:
Did Fleming or Floring say, as a religious person would, “The death of this bacteria is a miracle! God has reached down and killed it!” Of course not. Instead, they completely ignored “God”. They determined what was actually happening through experimentation and then made useful medicines from the mold. They took a rational approach rather than a religious approach and we all benefit from penicillin and its many derivatives today.
The article — the whole website, in fact — has a condescending tone toward religion, which I find unfortunate and less than useful. But the point it makes struck me. What would a deeply religious person have thought upon finding that petri dish? That God was working to develop an antibacterial? Or that those who were infected by bacteria deserved it, due to some moral/religious defect? I don’t think a fundamentalist would have said, “Hey, maybe I should test this stuff using the scientific method, and then make conclusions based on verifiable, empirical evidence.”
Maybe I’m wrong, but it makes me wonder.