On Conflicting Truth Claims

Jim Evans has written a thoughtful essay on The Bible, Science and Homosexuality. Here's a quote:

Science offers the best hope for finding a way to end the war. If science could some how definitively prove that homosexuality occurs naturally in humans, it would force us to re-think our religious prohibitions. After all, behaviors that are somehow part of the natural order cannot be regarded as matters of choice and are therefore beyond judgment. It would be like condemning someone for being left handed.

And without a religious prohibition the fuel for the political engine would evaporate. Politicians would be forced to find some other culture war issue to scare us with.

Unfortunately, there's one problem with relying on science. Many people of faith will never accept a scientific view that contradicts their biblical understanding about homosexuality. They would be forced to find other scientists--faith-based scientists--to refute the findings. Or at least that's what happens with global warming and evolution.

My chief complaint with those who refuse to accept the claims that the sciences make for truth is that they are willing to accept the technological benefits that derive from the truths they denounce as false.

The veracity of evolutionary science is demonstrated almost on a daily basis by technological breakthroughs in medical science, pharmacology, and genetics. Most fundamentalists readily accept the benefits of this research, yet they refuse to acknowledge this as evidence for scientific truth claims.