Is Evolution the only option in a Naturalistic point of view ?

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The biggest difference between a law and a theory is that a theory is much more complex and dynamic. A law describes a single action, whereas a theory explains an entire group of related phenomena.

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The prayer of others is widely believed to influence the recovery of patients. To find out if it works, several studies have been carried out with mixed results. But researchers at six academic hospitals across the United States found that the investigations had not followed the best scientific methods. So they carried out their own study on 1,800 patients about to undergo heart bypass surgery, in which clogged arteries are replaced by clean ones removed from the leg. It is the largest known study so far on the question.

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A total of 600 of the patients received the prayers of others before surgery after being told they might or might not get them. Another 600 were told the same thing, but were not prayed for. The third group of 600 received pre-surgical prayer and knew it.

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The researchers report that the prayers had no effect on the recovery of the first two groups of heart patients, those who did not know whether others were praying for them.

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To their surprise, the researchers found that the third group of heart bypass patients, those who knew others were praying for them, had more surgical complications as a whole than the other two.

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And one prominent member of the byproduct camp, Justin Barrett, is an observant Christian who believes in “an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good God who brought the universe into being,” as he wrote in an e-mail message. “I believe that the purpose for people is to love God and love each other.”
“Christian theology teaches that people were crafted by God to be in a loving relationship with him and other people,” Barrett wrote in his e-mail message. “Why wouldn’t God, then, design us in such a way as to find belief in divinity quite natural?” Having a scientific explanation for mental phenomena does not mean we should stop believing in them, he wrote. “Suppose science produces a convincing account for why I think my wife loves me ” should I then stop believing that she does?”

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But Barrett and friends infer from the first half of these unexceptionable facts that children are hardwired to believe in a supreme being. Not only does this ignore the evidence from developmental psychology about the second stage of cognitive maturation, but is in itself a very big - and obviously hopeful - jump indeed. Moreover it ignores the fact that large tracts of humankind (the Chinese for a numerous example) have no beliefs in a supreme being, innate or learned, and that most primitive religion is animistic, a simple extension of the agency-imputing explanation which gives each tree its dryad and each stream its nymph, no supreme beings required.

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He compared believers to three-year-olds who “assume that other people know almost everything there is to be known”. Dr Barrett, who is a Christian, is the editor of the Journal of Cognition and Cultureand author of the book Why Would Anyone Believe in God? He said that the childish tendency to believe in the omniscience of others was pared down by experience as people grew up. But this tendency, necessary to allow human beings to socialise and cooperate with each other in a productive way, continued when it came to belief in God.

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“It usually does continue into adult life,” he said. “It is easy, it is intuitive, it is natural. It fits our default assumptions about things.”

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S&S: From your research, do you think it’s possible that the inclination toward religion or spirituality is universal?

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Petrovich: I think possibility is the precise word to use here. I can’t be more certain than that because I have only worked with children aged three-and-a-half upward, and that’s already an old age when it comes to basic understandings, some of which are in evidence in the first year of life.

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Science & Spirit Mission Statement: Our mission is to facilitate a rich and robust dialogue between the scientific and religious communities by forging a common vocabulary. We intend the result to be a more integrated and balanced approach to complex social issues. The following operating principles guide us:

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” Science can be enabling and liberating.
” Values provide a path to human integrity.
” Religious traditions should provide bridges between science and values.

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The Foundation's views on the connections between religious and scientific inquiry and their ability to provide significant grants for scientific research has led to quite polarising debate within the scientific community.

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Sean M. Carroll, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, wrote, in describing his self-recusal from a conference he discovered was funded by the Foundation, that "the entire purpose of the Templeton Foundation is to blur the line between straightforward science and explicitly religious activity, making it seem like the two enterprises are part of one big undertaking. It's all about appearances." But he also said, "I appreciate that the Templeton Foundation is actually, in its own way, quite pro-science, and is not nearly as objectionable as the anti-scientific crackpots at the Discovery Institute."[77]

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In 2006, John Horgan, a science journalist and the author of several books, wrote in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (reprinted in Edge) of his "misgivings about the foundation's agenda of reconciling religion and science". He claims that a conference he attended favored scientists who "offered a perspective clearly skewed in favor of religion and Christianity", and says that a Templeton official "told us that the meeting cost more than $1-million, and in return the foundation wanted us to publish articles touching on science and religion".[78]

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Peter Woit, a mathematical physicist at Columbia University occasionally writes about his misgivings with the foundation on his blog (which is hosted by Columbia University). Woit feels it is unfortunate that Templeton's money is used to influence scientific research towards a convergence between science and religion.

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In June 2005, Woit wrote:

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Look not at what the Templeton people say (which is relatively innocuous), but at what they do. They explicitly refuse to support serious science, and instead fund an incredible array of attempts to inject religion into scientific practice. ... Instead they are heavily funding the one part of the field that most people consider dangerous pseudo-science and a serious threat to the whole concept of what it means to do science.[80]

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