The scientists who attack mainstream religion, rather than striving for peaceful coexistence with it, damage science, and also weaken the fight against fundamentalism.
Interpretation
Confrontation with mainstream religion can harm scientific progress and efforts against extremism.
In this quote, Martin Rees emphasizes the need for a more harmonious relationship between science and mainstream religion. He argues that when scientists aggressively challenge religious beliefs instead of seeking to understand or coexist with them, they not only undermine the credibility of science but also hinder the collective efforts to combat extreme forms of fundamentalism, which can be detrimental to societal progress and understanding.
In practice
In a debate on science and spirituality, this quote can be cited to advocate for constructive dialogue.
Let me say that I don't see any conflict between science and religion. I go to church as many other scientists do. I share with most religious people a sense of mystery and wonder at the universe and I want to participate in religious ritual and practices because they're something that all humans can share.
It's becoming clear that in a sense the cosmos provides the only laboratory where sufficiently extreme conditions are ever achieved to test new ideas on particle physics. The energies in the Big Bang were far higher than we can ever achieve on Earth. So by looking at evidence for the Big Bang, and by studying things like neutron stars, we are in effect learning something about fundamental physics.
In the beginning there were only probabilities. The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it.
Collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the biosphere - perhaps irreversibly - through global warming and loss of biodiversity.
It is astonishing that human brains, which evolved to cope with the everyday world, have been able to grasp the counterintuitive mysteries of the cosmos and the quantum.
The bedrock nature of space and time and the unification of cosmos and quantum are surely among science's great 'open frontiers.' These are parts of the intellectual map where we're still groping for the truth - where, in the fashion of ancient cartographers, we must still inscribe 'here be dragons.'
If the Lord wills, we shall make this Math a great centre of harmony. Our Lord is the visible embodiment of the harmony of all ideals. He will be established on earth if we keep alive that spirit of harmony here. We must see to it that people of all creeds and sects, from the Brahmana down to the Chandala, may come here and find their respective ideals manifested.
The holy law of Jesus Christ governs our civilisation, but it does not yet permeate it.
The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind.
Man is a centaur, a tangle of flesh and mind, divine inspiration and dust.
To be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future.
Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
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