A Friend Writes on the Dalai Lama's Op-Ed

God bless the Dalai Lama (so to speak : ) This whole issue is deeper
than just whether Creationism is kept out of schools (or at least out of
Science class, which I would prefer); religion has no business trying
to explain natural phenomena but science has no business trying to talk
about god or moral values, which we sometimes do.

On my VertPaleo list serve, every time creationism comes up, certain
people take the opportunity to blast religion from a scientific point of
view. Science has to do with physical explanations of things in ways
that are testable. You can't test belief or moral values in the same
way that you can test the existence of dinosaurs. These are
transcendental values that perhaps should be tested but tested in ways
that are valid to us as individuals and not in the scientific sense.

I understand the wish of religious people to make the world better but
they are mistaken in their belief that science has made the world worse.
In the days of Galileo, when even scientists took for granted that the
world was created and there was a god and an afterlife and all the rest,
the world was still full of violence, greed and injustice. The common
belief did nothing to improve behavior.