Niel DeGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist extraordinaire, gave this talk to the National Academy of Sciences where he discusses the effects of religion on on scientific advancement, with a special emphasis on the ancient Muslim world versus the Muslim world today.
While I do enjoy this video and generally agree with the conclusion that faith stifles scientific inquiry (at least on average), I would criticize Dr. Tyson on a few points. First, the arguments in this video are made in a pretty ad hoc fashion. One data point (the medieval Muslim world) does not make a convincing argument. I would have liked to see Tyson incorporate more of a discussion to seeming counterexamples of this principle, including the protestant reformation in Europe, where a religious revolution was concurrent with a scientific one.
I would have also liked to have seen a better definition of the type of religion and God Tyson was addressing in his arguments. The traditional and easily debunked gods of, says, traditional Christianity or Islam are far different than the New Age spiritualism movements of Deepak Chopra and others, and I think that each would affect science to a greater or lesser degree.
Still, I concede that the talk was good, considering the time constraints probably present for a talk at the prestigious NAS. So, all in all, good job by Dr. Tyson.
Check out this interesting analysis on which part is more pro-science in Washington D.C. -- the republicans or the democrats. The analysis is by Dr. Neil Tyson, and the answer may surprise you.
One of the interesting things that Dr. Tyson said during the video (paraphrasing) is that talk is cheap but money talks. I agree. However, one of the points that Tyson seems to have missed is that the congress also has a huge say in how the budget money is spent, much more so than even the president at times. When a Republican is in the White House, there tends to be a Democratic congress to balance that, and vice versa. So, I'm not so sure that it's easy to say that one party or the other supports/suppresses science when it comes to spending money.
In terms of rhetoric for or against science, there is a CLEAR winner.
One of the things that I love about Neil DeGrass Tyson is that he is one cool cat when it comes to helping people accept controversial science. Instead of taking a more aggressive approach to the question of science versus religion (like Christopher Hitchens), he actually manages to help people understand and accept things like evolution and the Big Bang without alienating them from the start.
Here is a great example of his style from when he spoke at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. For a little background, BYU is a religious university for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons). The Mormons are part of the group in America that believes in a sola scriptora view of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and a few other sacred texts that they have (at least on a leadership level -- some of the members are more liberal). This means that the leaders of the church routinely speak of things like Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, etc. like they're actual events in history, not metaphors. Normally, this would raise the ire of most scientists, mainly because the fact that such events did not occur in the Earth's history is provable scientifically, at least up to the point where eveything starts becoming a miracle where the laws of nature have been suspended (think Santa Clause).
Despite this, Dr. Tyson still has enough class to answer the inquisitive young girl in this clip gently when she asks him if he's religious. The answer is no, but he tells her that in a nice way.
