Stubbornness: Religious and Atheist World Views

I watched a debate on my Facebook page about Atheism, Creationism (Intelligent Design), Evolution and Christian belief. I was grieved by the unthinking application of the belief templates from both sides. Same age old arguments, degenerating into the same insults. Christians objecting to science, Atheists objecting to the spiritual world view. They are not mutually exclusive, and the arguers painted each other into a corner so that the corners became defended. The corners being defended was not the beliefs of each, but how the other thought the opposition believed. A lot of other things were expressed, including insults, which didn't advance the discussion. A lot of ignorance was displayed, by the Atheists about Christianity, and Christians about Science and objectivitism. Sadly, much misunderstanding by Christians about their own beliefs. Incorrect templates all around.

Some advice to Christians, from no less than Augustine, about arguing science vs religion:
"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world. About the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show a vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but the people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books and matters concerning the resurrections of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learned from experience in the light of reason?"

To the Atheists and others that reject the spiritual world view:

Einstein: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

John Polkinghorne: "The poverty of an objectivistic account is made only too clear when we consider the mystery of music. From a scientific point of view, it is nothing but vibrations in the air, impinging on the eardrums and stimulating neural currents in the brain.

How does it come about that this banal sequence of temporal activity has the power to speak to our hearts of an eternal beauty? The whole range of subjective experience, from perceiving a patch of pink, to being enthralled by a performance of the Mass in B Minor, and on to the mystic's encounter with the ineffable reality of the One, all these truly human experiences are at the center of our encounter with reality, and they are not to be dismissed as epiphenomenal froth on the surface of a universe whose true nature is impersonal and lifeless."

Astronomer Arthur Eddington relates a parable of a scientist studying deep sea life, and drops a net with three inch squares. He catches a lot, and notices that there is no life less than three inches long. He concludes there is no sea life less than three inches.

There are objective and spiritual elements to the truths of life. One view, excluding or not giving credence to another, is not going to reveal any truth. Both are necessary to understand ourselves, each other, our relationships, and our physical universe.