The Rev. Peter Milward's view in his June 24 letter ("Cute description of creation") that "The scientist merely looks at what he sees and verifies it in the material universe" caught me by surprise. I had always thought that scientists interpret data, make provisional hypotheses and then test them. I had thought that data begets information, which begets knowledge, which begets wisdom, which is as close as we'll ever get to truth.
But Milward, a Jesuit professor of Shakespearean drama at Sophia University, has laid bare the errors in my thinking. Who needs the constraints of data or scientific experimentation when you can have "intelligent" design and "right" reason? Who needs facts when you can have belief? Who needs hypotheses when you can have certainty?
Milward has eloquently written: ". . . such men of genius as Galileo and Newton assumed the presence of an 'intelligent design' in the universe. This assumption was their guiding spirit." So the geniuses of Renaissance Europe are onboard the Creationist bandwagon? That's good enough for me! It looks like I need to get out of the laboratory and into a seminary.
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