The more things change

[mmcirvin]

PZ Myers' random atheistic quote extractor just threw up this one from Bertrand Russell:

In recent times, the bulk of eminent phyicists and a nymber of eminent biologists have made pronouncements stating that recent advances in science have disproved the older materialism, and have tended to reestablish the truths of religion. The statements of the scientists have as a rule been somewhat tentative and indefinite, but the theologians have seized upon them and extended them, while the newspapers in turn have reported the more sensational accounts of the theologians, so that the general public has derived the impression that physics confirms practically the whole of the Book of Genesis. I do not myself think that the moral to be drawn from modern science is at all what the general public has thus been led to suppose. In the first place, the men of science have not said nearly as much as they are thought to have said, and in the second place what they have said in the way of support for traditional religious beliefs has been said by them not in their cautious, scientific capacity, but rather in their capacity of good citizens, anxious to defend virtue and property.

Bertrand Russell, "Science and Religion" (1931) in Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), p. 167.

How many times have you seen that newspaper think-piece about "scientists looking to God in growing numbers" lately? Every major newspaper seems to run it about once a year, ever since I can remember. Twice a year in Time.

Comments

[jwgh]

Ex-Catholics turning to nonreligion in growing numbers. Film at 11.