Prof. Lawrence Krauss writes a typically hard-hitting column in the August 2010 issue of Scientific American. I’m not sure if the piece is available online without subscription (I have access as I subscribe to the paper version of the magazine) so here are the key paragraphs.
I don’t know which is more dangerous, that religious beliefs force some people to choose between knowledge and myth or that pointing out how religion can purvey ignorance is taboo.
[…]
Last May I attended a conference on science and public policy at which a representative of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences gave a keynote address. When I questioned how he reconciled his own reasonable views about science with the sometimes absurd and unjust activities of the Church – from false claims about condoms and AIDS in Africa to pedophilia among the clergy – I was denounced by one speaker after another for my intolerance.
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[In] Arizona, Sister Margaret McBride, a senior administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, recently authorized a legal abortion to save the life of a 27-year-old mother of four who was 11 weeks pregnant and suffering from severe complications of pulmonary hypertension; she made that decision after consultation with the mother’s family, her doctors and the local ethics committee. Yet the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olmsted, immediately excommunicated Sister Margaret, saying, “The mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s.” Ordinarily, a man who would callously let a woman die and orphan her children would be called a monster; this should not change just because he is a cleric.
[…]
Keeping religion immune from criticism is both unwarranted and dangerous. Unless we are willing to expose religious irrationality whenever it arises, we will encourage irrational public policy and promote ignorance over education for our children.
For my part I’m not sure which is more worrying: Krauss being shouted down at a scientific conference or the Bishop of Phoenix. Both are very worrying.
The Sister Margaret McBride case shows certain elements of the Catholic Church to be severely lacking in compassion to my mind. The Sister herself seems to have made the only possible humane decision at the time. The logic of the hardliners saying the child's life is more important is just ridiculous. I suspect it is also something to do with a certain type of Christian fundamentalism which is found mainly in America. At 11 weeks gestation the foetus is not a child and cannot exist without its mother. Mother dies – child dies. I'm sure the good Sister knew what she was likely to face but she still gave the suthority for the abortion and full marks to her for doing so. I understand her excommunication has since be revoked.