Local Science Engagement Network Community

Dear Digest Reader,

Last July (2020) I posted a note in the Digest advising readers that they could obtain an email copy of my essay that hypes science.  I was hoping that some would read it and send me an email back with comments that would help me decide whether the essay was suitable for posting as a discussion topic. My posted note was removed from the Digest after only a day or so but that was enough to get me five emails, four of which were positive. Of the ‘thumbs up’ people, Farley Norman, a Distinguished Professor at Western Kentucky U, said it best: “I enjoyed reading your essay. I hope that you will publish it in some outlet where at least some of the general public will read it. Your essay is thought provoking, and we need the public to think about these issues.”

However, there was also the ‘thumbs down’ email of Dr. Jim Wise (which follows below with my rejoinders). While I disagree with most of Wise’s points, I am indebted to him for helping me to fully appreciate the power of Christian supernatural beliefs. I now include them among the greatest and most useful inventions of the human mind. 

Aside from joining up with Wise, Digest readers may also wish to direct concerns over my other related science-based claims which include: that we humans are the greatest thing to have happened in the Universe, that the way that our sensory and nervous systems operate establishes the superiority of natural beliefs if it is the truth we are after, that we do not have a supernatural free will, that it is time to give up mind-matter dualism and that psychology must become a natural science.

The attachment provides the essay along with some additional, more pointed, critical comments of Wise, although his general comments that appear below seem to summarize his position nicely.

I’m hoping that Digesters comments will result in an improved version of the essay that will make it better for Professor Norman’s “general public.”