At 03:23 PM 2/21/97 EST, Andrew J. Hoffman wrote:

 SLC and people like him were in fact dabblers in
>accepted fields, but that, as Gregg notes, that very dabbling was his and
>their participation in the ongoing social debate concerning the
>legitimacy of scientific knowledge in a world theretofore dominated by
>religious thinking.

Thanks are not enough!   Endure this post and win my admiration forever.

...."dominated by religious thinking" is too broad a term.
The world was,
and is, by some standards, dominated by -not thinking at all-...Twain
showed.

Twain's characters in Heaven and the cohort of "Satan" on Earth
 were thoughtful commentators on the thoughtlessness of humans.
Twain's references to the Almighty in "Captain Stormfield"   were almost as
hushed and respectful as those folks who never mention the Deity by name
or who write  " G*D "

A world system "dominated" by "science" would be a contradiction in terms
Knowledge does not dominate.
Any world run by humans -- under any theme - is subject to human tendencies,
 the chief of which is behaving like our cousins, the great apes
 -- we assemble pecking orders not based upon knowledge but instinct.
A true fact:  today's scientists generally  endorse this because it is
"natural."

Natural, like the behavior of yeast in a petri dish?  As thoughtful as a
tornado?

To be clear and fair,
Jacob Bronowski said  Science did not create Auschwitz -- "It was done by
dogma.
  It was done by ignorance,'" he said.
Adolf Hitler endorsed a world of science government,
but his favorite reading was shoot-em-up novels.
Instead, let's keep an opening to the Infinite, or highest anyway, which we
do not know
andto  whom we cannot compel others' obedience.  (Let's vote for me!  No.
oops)
Psychologist turned "Baba" Richard Alpert defined "God" as the place where
ideas
are selected to manifest as reality.
Let's not close the door on religion but on thoughtless submission to the
authority
which arises "naturally"-- thoughtlessly.

Mike