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syncretism sinks
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littleamerica for winding me up)
In my opinion, Easterbrook talks too much about a return to religion and not enough about religion and science living together.
His idea that biotech "may" heal the evolution-Creation (i will not dignify mythology by giving it a name that sounds like it's in any way valid science) rift is, at best, preposterously optimistic; it's evident that it's already made things worse.
"Science, which once thought the case for higher power was closed..." WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. "Science" does not think. "Science" does not assert anything. Only scientists do. This anthropomorphization of science is one of the things that polarizes the science-vs-religion false dichotomy.
"Hoyle's faith in chance was shaken by evidence of purpose." So, if the odds for something are "phenomenally low", and it happens, that constitutes "evidence of purpose"? Is this what passes for deep thought these days?
"Did a designer set Earth's life processes in motion? Few questions are more interesting or intellectually rich." Interesting? Sure. Intellectually rich? It's fairly banal, in my view. Even if the answer were "yes", its subsequent question, "Why?" is fairly stupid. You might as well ask your parents why they decided to conceive you (assuming it wasn't a purely animal moment, of course... hmm, the universe exists because God was horny. Sure, why not?)
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There are mythologies which assert exactly this.
As to the rest of it...it seems to me that whether God exists or not is immaterial, especially if one's going to Go There and ask "Why?" Either way, the chances of finding out the answer are infinitesimal to none.
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Now, "How?" is a MUCH more interesting and "intellectually rich" question. And that's what science is all about.
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Hoyle isn't exactly the best spokesman for the thought of "Science" as an anthropomorphized whole, either; he also believed in panspermia (http://www.panspermia.org/), that life on earth comes from outer space, and stubbornly clung to the steady state universe (as put in poetry in Mr. Tompkins (http://akbar.marlboro.edu/~jharker/Other/Classes/wonderland.html): "Your years of toil/Said Ryle to Hoyle/Are wasted years, believe me/The steady state/is out of date/unless my eyes decieve me/My telescope/Has dashed your hope/your tenets are refuted/let me be terse/our universe/grows daily more diluted!") long after most of his colleagues had jumped to other paradigms (and then that panspermia page calls him a Kuhnian lone wolf innovator!). He did write some good science fiction (http://www.angelfire.com/on2/daviddarling/BlackCloud.htm), though.
I'm not even going to go into Latour's ideas on science and religion, except to say that they're a mess and involve relativist views of all forms of logic in general.
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