[X] My Assistant

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Interesting question, Stephen.

And a real concern.

When I was saying "respecting" I was meaning not to mock, not to humiliate, not to say "they are primitive" or "they can't do without our intelligence" as it was so often practicized with the justification of colonialism. But is keeping people in ignorance still respecting them?

SF writer Joanna Russ wrote something back in 1969 that I've regarded ever since as an extremely important principle for understanding human history: "Leather clothes and porridge do not an idiot make." Ignorance does NOT equal stupidity. The human race was dumped here (for uncertain reasons) in total ignorance of how the natural world works; and we today are all balancing at the tip of an incredible pyramid made not just out of the blood and physical sweat of thousands of years' worth of generations before us, but out of their intellectual sweat as well. Which makes it even more important -- to quote Poul Anderson -- that we "never take civilization for granted", and that we keep in mind just how much of other people's effort we will be throwing away if we do let it collapse.

[Stephen]

When I was saying "respecting" I was meaning not to mock, not to humiliate, not to say "they are primitive" or "they can't do without our intelligence" as it was so often practicized with the justification of colonialism. But is keeping people in ignorance still respecting them?

With all due respect, keeping people in ignorance does them no favours at all.

The brutal reality is that science is indeed steadily conquering the world. It is doing so because by revealing the underlying nature of the universe we live in science has also revealed how that knowledge allows us (via its practical arm, technology) to manipulate Nature to an unparalleled degree.

The downside: it is not just showing us how to build a better mousetrap. The very fact that science is revealing the underlying nature of the universe is steadily chipping away at the foundations of every other belief system with a different view about the nature of the universe we inhabit, which in turn is prising us away from those other systems by causing us to lose faith in them.

Not unnaturally different people react to this in different ways. Some embrace (or at least accept) the new order, others (eg the Intelligent Design crowd) resist to varying degrees.

I would argue it is probably also at least partially responsible for at least some of the social problems the West has gone through (and still is going through). Trying to protect others from those problems is a noble idea.

Yet choosing to have people stay ignorant of the nature of the universe science has revealed so as avoid the loss of faith is no solution at all. Science and technology are so pervasive they would have insulate themselves to a very high degree. That not only means no mobile phones or Internet connections. It would also means no modern medicine or dentistry. Those who want to stay ignorant of science yet be able to enjoy the benefits of modern medicine are trying to be half-pregnant. They want to enjoy selected benefits science brings whilst selectively rejecting knowledge of the nature of the universe which led to those benefits being developed in the first place.

A more serious problem, though, is that rejecting the modern world is not going to keep that world forever out if it chooses to intrude whether the inhabitants want it or not; and chances are sooner or later it will if they or their land have something valuable somebody else wants.

Consider the Amazonian & Papuan jungles you mentioned. The Amazon is being slowly but steadily stripped away through mining, farming, & other activities while West Papua (aka Indonesia's Irian Jaya) is being ruthlessly exploited by foreign mining & logging companies. All this in turn is impacting on the indigenous peoples who live there.

For example, in the case of Papua check out:

• "Mining a Sacred Land"
• What's Wrong With Freeport's Security Policy?
• The denial of traditional land rights in West Papua

And for the Amazon: Survival in the Amazon--Indigenous Groups and the Right to Self-Determination.

The reality is that keeping indigenous peoples ignorant of the modern world is to potentially turn them into second class citizens. What point is there in trying to protect the purity of their spirituality if that merely makes them more vulnerable than they might otherwise be to the robber barons of the modern world?

If they themselves are to have a say in their own future the reality is they have got to join the modern world--and in more than one sense of that expression. Living in ignorance of it is merely to invite others to step in and decide their future for them, whether that be robber barons out to exploit them or do-gooders trying to protect them.

======
Stephen

[ljk4-1]

Why I consider ignorance the 8th Deadly Sin:

With pulpit-thumping passion, Ham insists the Bible be taken literally: God created the universe and all its creatures in six 24-hour days, roughly 6,000 years ago.

Hundreds of pastors will preach a different message Sunday, in honor of Charles Darwin's 197th birthday. In a national campaign, they will tell congregations that it's possible to be a Christian and accept evolution.

Ham considers that treason. When pastors dismiss the creation account as a fable, he says, they give their flock license to disregard the Bible's moral teachings as well. He shows his audiences a graphic that places the theory of evolution at the root of all social ills: abortion, divorce, racism, gay marriage, store clerks who say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-na-...-home-headlines

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Interesting comments, Stephen and ljk4-1.

I shall not reply them in details, I just point at a common misunderstanding: science would be "true" and spirituality "belief".

Yes science is exact when it deals with physics; but it is not inexact, it is frankly and definitively irrelevant, when it deals with human mind, consciousness, aesthetics, morals, etc. The science method, as Galileo introduced it, relies on MATERIAL EVIDENCES which can give us informations ONLY ABOUT MATERIAL FACTS. It is very efficient to this, but knowing all the technics to for instance take an ovula to a woman and put in in the uterus of another woman ABSOLUTELY NOT tells us if it is moral to actually do this.

So science and "western civilization" should manifest some more humility: we can't escape the fact that there is more useful social knowledge in only one chapter of the Bible (or any other religion book, even in a Voodoo ceremony) than in all the scientific cursus of all our great physics and medecine universities.
So our civilization is not explaining the world, it is ONLY explaining the PHYSICAL world. What we must do or not in this physical world, what meaning to give to our lives, how to love this physical world, science do not tell us even the first letter of an hypothesis.

Physical science results are confused with a religious morals or purpose of life! A thing they can absolutely not pretend to be, all the epistemologists will agree for this. Only Marx did the mistake.

So it is this confusion, not physical science itself, which is so dangerous for other cultures, and for our culture too.

Anecdote, in Nepal, an isolated village dweller sees an helicopter for the first time, and he feels really ignorant and shameful not to be able to do the same with "just iron". He don't realizes that he is the keeper of a spiritual wisdom that now all the cultivated people in the west are seeking and studying! We are stupid not to be able to do like the Nepalese with "just our mind"!
And the spiritual wisdom of this nepalese villager is not "belief" it is the result of intensive scientific studies in large universities in India, during the first millenia, which studied the human mind with a scientific method strangely looking like ours, but applied to the mind and using consciousness evidences in place of material evidences, completelly irrelevant in this domain.

So science will be complete and really socially constructive when it will no longer limit its scope to only physical facts.

By the way, such a complete science will also be able to nail down all the fundamentalist and dogmatic views of spirituality, ID included, in exactly the same way physical science eliminated all the false conceptions in physics, such as the flat Earth or geocentrism.

Some counter-examples of peoples who were not just laminated by the contact with the West:
-Bhutan, an himalayan buddhist kingdom and theocracy, engaged in 1968 in the process of accepting modern technology and now in the process of introducing democracy, while keeping their customs and spirituality. Becoming an inspiring example for the neighboring countries.
-The Masai, african tribe in the Great Lakes region who proudly refuses our civilization and keeps with their own traditions. If you want to do something in the region, you must ask authorization to the Masai even if you had first the authorization of the government.
In both cases, these people had a positive vision of their cultural identity and of their own value.

[ljk4-1]

Interesting comments, Stephen and ljk4-1.

I shall not reply them in details, I just point at a common misunderstanding: science would be "true" and spirituality "belief".

Yes science is exact when it deals with physics; but it is not inexact, it is frankly and definitively irrelevant, when it deals with human mind, consciousness, aesthetics, morals, etc. The science method, as Galileo introduced it, relies on MATERIAL EVIDENCES which can give us informations ONLY ABOUT MATERIAL FACTS. It is very efficient to this, but knowing all the technics to for instance take an ovula to a woman and put in in the uterus of another woman ABSOLUTELY NOT tells us if it is moral to actually do this.

So science and "western civilization" should manifest some more humility: we can't escape the fact that there is more useful social knowledge in only one chapter of the Bible (or any other religion book, even in a Voodoo ceremony) than in all the scientific cursus of all our great physics and medecine universities.

So our civilization is not explaining the world, it is ONLY explaining the PHYSICAL world. What we must do or not in this physical world, what meaning to give to our lives, how to love this physical world, science do not tell us even the first letter of an hypothesis.

Physical science results are confused with a religious morals or purpose of life! A thing they can absolutely not pretend to be, all the epistemologists will agree for this. Only Marx did the mistake.

So it is this confusion, not physical science itself, which is so dangerous for other cultures, and for our culture too.

The biggest mistake people make is thinking that science is just another form of
religion or social "cure". Pure science makes no such claims: It is designed to
search out the objective truth of existence. That's it. If results coming from such
research benefit humanity, then it is a nice bonus. Anyone trying to find emotional
"comfort" in the results of science will be sorely disappointed.

You want comfort? You want to know there is a Great Big Father in the Sky
watching over you every second of every day? Go to religion, not science for that.

And of course a native of some remote region who has lived there, along with
his ancestors, for centuries is going to be far more aware of what is going on
in his neck of the world than some scientist who just arrives and spends a few
weeks doing research on a grant. That does not mean the native is an expert
on all matters in the world, just his one area. Just like most scientists.

We need the collective knowledge of all areas to get the full picture and
function as a healthy human society. Relying on one person or field is not
enough either for science or our well being.

The West has nothing to be ashamed of in terms of its science and technology.
Without them, things like the Black Plague would still be ravaging the world
and we would not have the means to be communicating in this manner, and
certainly not about the latest data from space probes of other planets.

I also recognize the "bad" aspects of what such knowledge and technology
have been brought along with the "good", but I look on it as part of the
growing process just as any person makes mistakes while growing up in
life. It's like pain: It ain't fun, but without it you would keep on doing the
wrong thing to your body until it killed you.

[ljk4-1]

Richard T., perhaps this is what you are looking for:

Welcome to the Ecozoic Era

Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow offer a new vision of reality, evolution, and the divine.

By Amy Hassinger

Spring 2006 2.15.06

Some quotes:

If we are to deepen our understanding of the universe or of God, if we are to change our collective behavior and our destiny, Dowd and Barlow say, we need a new story, a story based in scientific discovery, but also reverent of the awesomeness of the universe. A better metaphor for the universe, they say, is a set of Russian nesting dolls, made up of levels of what they call nested creativity: subatomic particles within atoms, within molecules, within cells, within organisms, and so on. Each level is uniquely creative, that is, has the power to bring something new into existence. Stars create atoms; atoms create substances like the oxygen we breathe; human cultures create art, religions, and technology. The largest nesting doll is God—or Allah, Adonai, Source of Life, Ultimate Reality, Nature, the Universe, whatever name describes the divine whole for you, the ultimate creative reality that includes and transcends all other levels of reality. God is not outside of creation. God is an integral part of it—in fact, is it.

In this metaphor, we humans are nested within that divine whole. We were not plunked here by a maker separate from us. Nor is our existence a meaningless evolutionary fluke. The basic elements that make up our bodies—carbon, calcium, iron—were forged inside supernovas, dying stars, and are billions of years old. We are, in fact, made of stardust. We are intimately related to the universe. As early-twentieth-century British biologist Julian Huxley put it, “We are the universe becoming conscious of itself.”

Intrigued, I came back the next night for a workshop presented by both Dowd and Barlow. Bespectacled and soft spoken, Barlow has a calmer and more measured style than her husband, yet she is just as passionate about her subject, which is science. As visual proof of Huxley’s idea, she often displays the famous picture of Earth from space, the “Big Blue Marble” taken from Apollo 17 in 1972, showing our gorgeous blue and white globe floating in a sea of black. The picture is a dazzling reminder, she says, that our billion-year-old Earth has now evolved to the point that it can “send a piece of itself out to look back and say, ‘Whoa. This is who I am.’”

Full article here:

http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/thew...ution2679.shtml

[ljk4-1]

WHAT'S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 17 Feb 06 Washington, DC

1. DOVER EFFECT: HAS INTELLIGENT DESIGN SUFFERED A MORTAL WOUND?

The Ohio Board of Education voted 11 to 4 on Tuesday to scrap a
requirement that "critical analysis of evolution" be taught in
biology classes. Ohio's "critical analysis" ploy for teaching
intelligent design had been hailed by The Discovery Institute as
a model for the entire nation. Rejection by the Education Board
came as a direct consequence of the Dover ruling by U.S. District
Court Judge John E. Jones III: teaching ID is unconstitutional
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN05/wn122305.html . A Discovery
Institute spokesman publicly scoffed that the Dover ruling was
not binding elsewhere, but Judge Jones expanded the blast radius
by awarding damages to the parents who brought suit. That got
the attention of school boards. The Discovery Institute has bet
the farm on selling ID as science, but the Dover effect has
blunted it in California, Indiana and Wisconsin, and now Ohio.

2. EVOLUTION SUNDAY: CHRISTIAN CHURCHES HONORING CHARLES DARWIN?

Go on! Yes, Sunday was the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin. At
450 churches around the nation it was celebrated with sermons and
programs that mingle biological evolution and faith. Something
is happening. The public is getting an unprecedented exposure to
evolution in books, museum exhibits, and news programs. Coming
soon to a theater near you is Flock of Dodos. Film maker and
marine biologist Randy Olsen has made a movie about evolution and
intelligent design http://www.flockofdodos.com . It has what
fundamentalists all lack a sense of humor. And we owe it all
to the Discovery Institute and intelligent design.

3. MELTING: GLACIERS IN GREENLAND ARE RAPIDLY BECOMING OCEAN.
New data from satellite imagery show the glaciers to be melting
twice as fast as they were a decade ago, according to a report in
today's Science. The study focused on the rate of glacial ice
flow. Meanwhile, NASA's budget is focused on finishing the ISS,
which everyone now seems to agree is pointless, and preparations
for the Moon/Mars, which is equally pointless and won't happen
anyway. NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory, which was waiting
to be launched and would have given unique insight into global
warming, is terminated because it had Al Gore's Initials on it
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN06/wn010606.html .

4. ENVIRONMENT: EPA TO SHUT DOWN LIBRARY NETWORK AND E-CATALOG.
The Bush budget cut the EPA's $2.5M library network budget by
80%. Well, you gotta cut someplace. Yesterday, Bush asked for
another $72B for the war on terror and $20B for Katrina relief.

5. ARMED AND DANGEROUS: DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE CONNECTS THE DOTS.
Why was the White House so secretive about a Texas quail hunt and
what happened to Vivy, the champion whippet, in Kennedy Airport?
The NSA put it all together: The Vice President shot the whippet.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
---

Archives of What's New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Richard T., perhaps this is what you are looking for:

Welcome to the Ecozoic Era

Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow offer a new vision of reality, evolution, and the divine.

...

http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/thew...ution2679.shtml

Interesting ideas. Just some bits of scientific though applied to the idea of creation/purpose of life. We can do several hypothesis:

1) there is nothing such a personnal god, and the universe was created by some some logical process. In this case there is no intended purpose for our lifes, and we just have to find one.

2) same of previous, but the appearance of consciousness (from unconsciouss processes) implies its own purpose (to be happy, to extend in knowledge, awareness, wisdom, poetry, beauty...). Any minimum exploration of the human mind strongly suggests that we are in this case rather than 1), although this lefts us with an infinite number of possible individual involvements into the frame of this basic purpose.


3) there was a creator with something like a consciousness or intent. But he obviously did not let us decipherable physical message about what he expects of us. So the practical result for us is similar to 1) or 2)

4) same as 3), but the message is "in our hearts" understand that we can infer a purpose of life from the basic features of consciousness (seeking happiness, awareness, knowledge, etc...as in 2)

5) same as 4, but the creator is still actively following us, eventually giving us some hints or messages at special occasions.


What the religions are doing in here? Religions are human creations, gathering of dogmas, rituals, custom, morals and hygiena rules, exactly as are political systems such as capitalism or communism. But to the difference of the political systems, they claim to be based on a "revelation" by special human beings having being taught a higher purpose of life through special experiences or capacities. We can link this to the previous hypothesis 2) or 4), or better 5)

So we can find in History many examples of greater characters having found some or large bits of spiritual wisdom, through a special destiny or from introspective techniques. Some remained ignored, some were persecuted, and some were acclaimed. But NONE of them never intended to found what we call religions. The foundation of religions was made after, by disciples who attached to follow the rules without really understanding their purpose or significance. We can compare this with a drink and the can which contains it: most religious followers adore the can, but don't really access the content. At best, they take care of the can because they know the content is precious, but things can go much worse, such as adoring the empty can (fundamentalism, bigotry...) or filling it with a foul content (cults, inquisition, crusades...)

This process can be understood from reading for instance the Gospels: Jesus never spoke of religions, institutions, dogmas, etc... All these things came after, during the obscure period of the roman persecutions, from where emerged the fundamentalist catholics, who in turn persecuted the other christian though schools and other religions, leading to the end of the the Antiquity and the most tremendous setback of all mankind history. Only much later some like St François of Assisi were able to find back the original message, but he had to keep a low profile not to be persecuted in turn.

Must we reject all the religions for this? I say no, because they still contain unvaluable wisdom. The content needs the can, otherwise it will be spilt on the ground and useless. But it is clear that today all the religions must be revived in the light of their original intent: the message. And not of the original dogma (the can) as do the fundamentalists.

Today with all the spiritual/psychological introspection techniques available, we are all able (with more or less work) to find back the original message, but we are still exposed to all the risks involved, such as becoming a new cult if we don't really understand its purpose. It is what happens for instance in the new Age, where many worthy ideas are diluted into weird speculations and cultism.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

WHAT'S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 17 Feb 06 Washington, DC

1. DOVER EFFECT: HAS INTELLIGENT DESIGN SUFFERED A MORTAL WOUND?

The Ohio Board of Education voted 11 to 4 on Tuesday to scrap a
requirement that "critical analysis of evolution" be taught in
biology classes. ...

Pity, as ID is a fascinating though-provoking hypothesis. So fundamentalists who tried to enforce it worked in facts against their stated purpose: their action resulted in a reduction of spirituality. This is especially true in the US context, but it also stands everywhere.

But is it really astonishing that fundamentalist consider true spirituality as their worse ennemy? Everywhere on Earth and anytime in History peace-seeking spirituality-mongering wisdom-studier people were alway the first targets of fundamentalists.

[djellison]

Pity, as ID is a fascinating though-provoking hypothesis

Indeed, and I'm sure it would be well suited for discussion in Religious Education class.

But not a Biology class.

Doug

[dvandorn]

Exactly, Doug! I truly believe that children should be exposed to the widest possible range of spiritual and scientific cosmologies. How else are they to decide for themselves which approach to their lives works best for them?

But the schools are *not* the appropriate place to teach any *single* spiritual or religious belief. That is the function of the church. The church is an advocate -- the schools should not be. Schools should teach facts and best, most-accepted scientific theories, without regard for advocacy of any one given possibility among many viable possibilities.

The important distinction is that religious beliefs are based upon faith, whose primary tenet is that it cannot be proven, it must be taken as truth without proof. That completely removes *any* faith-based cosmology from even the *possibility* of being a scientific theory. As such, they ought *only* be taught by churches, whose job it is to advocate faith-based belief systems.

Schools should be (and, thankfully, still seem to be) barred from teaching faith-based belief systems. That ought to be the bottom line in this debate.

-the other Doug

[abalone]

Pity, as ID is a fascinating though-provoking hypothesis.

hypothesis ? The dictionary I checked had this definition

A tentative explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Exactly, Doug! I truly believe that children should be exposed to the widest possible range of spiritual and scientific cosmologies. How else are they to decide for themselves which approach to their lives works best for them?

But the schools are *not* the appropriate place to teach any *single* spiritual or religious belief. That is the function of the church. The church is an advocate -- the schools should not be. Schools should teach facts and best, most-accepted scientific theories, without regard for advocacy of any one given possibility among many viable possibilities.

The important distinction is that religious beliefs are based upon faith, whose primary tenet is that it cannot be proven, it must be taken as truth without proof. That completely removes *any* faith-based cosmology from even the *possibility* of being a scientific theory. As such, they ought *only* be taught by churches, whose job it is to advocate faith-based belief systems.

Schools should be (and, thankfully, still seem to be) barred from teaching faith-based belief systems. That ought to be the bottom line in this debate.

-the other Doug

Errr... Churches tell the teachings of their OWN religion. If we want our children to have the knowledge of all the society we live in, they need to have some basic knowledge of all the major social, politic or spiritual systems, of course in a non-biased and non-proselytic way, allowing every one to do his own choice. This is for the philosophy class, or for the history-geography class for the youngest.

The important distinction is that religious beliefs are based upon faith, whose primary tenet is that it cannot be proven, it must be taken as truth without proof. That completely removes *any* faith-based cosmology from even the *possibility* of being a scientific theory. As such, they ought *only* be taught by churches, whose job it is to advocate faith-based belief systems.

...

-the other Doug

That religious teachings are articles of faith, and that those articles of faith cannot be proven, and that they must be taken as truth without evidence, this is a very awkward Middle Aged defense of the catholic church, in an age where there was no science, but plenty of tortures to eliminate all those who ask questions. I would like that everybody stop to impute such a thinking system to ALL the religions and all the spiritual teachings. This muddle things and is in turn a good way to avoid considering what can be true in religions and spirituality.

This said, it is true that this attitude (of "must be accepted") is often true among religious believers of all the religions. But go in a basic Zen teaching, they will speak of the frustating nature of our existence (bound to frustrations, pain and death) and tell you a better mind attitude to be more ready to the problems to come (if not eliminating pain, at leeast stopping living in the fear of future pains and death). Go in a Taoïst teaching, they will learn you to harmoniously balance your body energies to feel much better. And so on... In these cases there is no belief, but really checkable facts (social and psychological facts, but facts) and efficient means to reach a checkable result (at the very least, to feel much better and peaceful).

So I would like to stop hearing that "religions are belief systems" basically they are not, they are intuitions. Belief systems came after, by followers who were unable to catch the intuition, and created some social conformism. Belief systems are the lowest grade of spirituality. Example, in Judaism, there is a "purification ritual" of washing our hands before the meal. How relevant it is for today biologists and hygienists! But this ritual was carried along for thousands of years as a belief, as senseless custom, by peoples who did not understodd its purpose. Even Jesus (I think it is in a Gospel, I don't remember where) said that this ritual was not useful! Certainly this ritual has no real spiritual meaning, but it is a very relevant hygiena rule, so Jesus himself was wrong on this point. (A scientific evidence, by the way, that he was not the all-knowing "divine being" of the catholic dogma, but a more human or more merged being, as were saying the Arianists, a concurent christian school eliminated and persecuted in 325).

[The Messenger]

Pity, as ID is a fascinating though-provoking hypothesis. So fundamentalists who tried to enforce it worked in facts against their stated purpose: their action resulted in a reduction of spirituality. This is especially true in the US context, but it also stands everywhere.

I am in equal parts distressed by both comnunities. The fundamentalists for blindly insisting well- documented observables (such as natural selection) are still just theories; and contemporary science for making equally dogmatic assertions about the Big Bang. The disconnect between particle and GR physics is real, and until it is resolved, any extrapolation into the cosmic world is preliminary.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

hypothesis ? The dictionary I checked had this definition:
A tentative explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation.

Yes, in a pure epistemological stance. But if you look at how things happened, you notice that hypothesis such as the atom, or heliocentrism, existed during two millenia without being practically checkable. This did not made these hypothesis FALSE, this just made these hypothesis practically useless, simple subject of debate, though-provoking hypothesis. And there are still many hypothesis today which remain practically uncheckable, such as the nature of the dark matter in cosmology, or the speculations on "before" the Big Bang. The later could eventually remain uncheckable for millenia, or forever. Should this forbid to speak about it? No, so long as we present these speculations as unchecked hypothesis. The same should go with ID.

(this paragraphe added later:) It is this way because our human mind is naturally curious, and we cannot restrain from speculating about what we don't know, about what we cannot check. Scientifically this attitude is legitimate, so long as we don't make dogmas of unchecked speculations.



I am afraid that the most virulent opponents to ID are not the scientists themselves, but the atheists. Atheists by dogma will NEVER accept any appearance of spirituality in material facts, when scientists can accept such an appearance, provided they have serious evidences.

From a scientific point of view (and also from a social or legal point of view) atheism is a religion among the others, as the dogmas of atheism are as more uncheckable (for today physical science) than any other religious dogma. For instance: to such a simple question IS THERE A GOD? physical science can bring no evidence, positive either negative. So science cannot state that there is no god, it can just say it is an hypothesis, uncheckable for now. Ask to all the great scientist, at worse they were sceptic (in The Descartes meaning) but never atheists.