Thus sayeth the scientists

I understand why they want to prove spiritual things scientifically. Today, a word from science is as weighty and important as the word of the Church was in the Middle Ages, but really, I don’t think this is going to work like they want it to work.

“The problem with studying religion scientifically is that you do violence to the phenomenon by reducing it to basic elements that can be quantified, and that makes for bad science and bad religion,” said Dr. Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia and author of a forthcoming book, “Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine.”

Scrappleface puts it well.

I’m not against science, btw, I’m all for science. I love science. Some of my best friends have read science books*. It’s just that people take the latest study as carved in stone when we all know that scientific knowledge is constantly growing and changing.

*no they haven’t. they’re barely literate troglodytes. but the joke works better that way.