No Constructive Dialogue

In an e-mail message from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I learned that the aim of this conference is to have a constructive dialog between science and religion. I am all in favor of a dialog between science and religion, but not a constructive dialog. Religion has done some good in the world, but on balance its effects on our lives have been awful. This is much too big a question to be argued here, so I'll just have to state my own opinion: with or without religion, good people would tend to behave well and bad people would do evil things, but the peculiar contribution of religion throughout history has been to allow good people do evil things. One of the great achievements of science has been, not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious - the example of John Polkinghorne shows that this is not impossible - but at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.

Contributed by: Dr. Steven Weinberg