“Intelligent” Design

Ade. You’ve raised an interesting point in your response. Religious teaching and scientific teaching are arguably easier to evaluate as seperate (often opposing) realms of ideas. However, for me this begs another question – one of dialogics. (more on this in a moment)

I have written before in response to your argument that religion and science are not equals. Particularly, I recall our conversation on truth, science and religion. It is a weighty metaphysical topic, and I am not going there again. The solipsist in me needn’t find truth anyways – I am what I am.
I will, however, suggest an additional layer for the analysis.

The fact is, a good number of people do believe in both science and religion. So we may do well to discuss the interaction that people have with these two “distinct” realms – and even consider for a moment that in many people’s minds they overlap – whether or not this is acceptable is off the table.

We are searching for the dialogic nature of our relationship to these teachings. How does the scientific, and religious, discourse unfold and interact with individuals and society? The concepts and ideas in each are obviously goal-oriented and individually ambitious. The respective language of science and religion is distinctly ideological.

However, in the Bahktinian sense:
(http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/bakhtin.html)

“[…] these disticnt ways-of-knowing are not a hermetic and self-sufficient whole, whose elements constitute a closed system presuming nothing beyond themsevles, no other utterances.”

They are the rhetoriacl fabric of the world which they interpret. In other words, they derive meaning from, and give order to our world as much as they interpret.

Niether science nor relegion is understood in a vacuum. Consequently, our interpretations of each are based on the inclusion of, and contradictions between, the overlapping)rhetorical modes found in each.

As such, I can’t determine the etheral qualities of love without a relative determination of what consitutes the “real world.”

Religion is interpreted (as you point out Ade) in its relation to what science cannot prove. Yet, science as a rhetorical experience, is equally constructed in relation to religious discourse. The truth found in science is such that we do not find it in religion. (Although you are free to argue that we understand it otherwise)

For the average person religion is experienced with the same degree of dialogic realism as science. A priest tells me God exists – a scientist tells me atoms exist.

I am coming too close to a debate on truth, so I’ll end at that. Safe to say, that the two ways-of-knowing are very much contingent – otherwise this whole discussion would make no sense. Just a thought.