Jason Rosenhouse is attending the North American Paleontological Convention in Cinncinnati, and reports on his side trip to the creation museum (I won’t dignify it with capital letters) in Kentucky. He also reports on a symposium on science education and literacy at the NAPC. Sadly, the symposium, at a major meeting of professional scientists, involved a lot of atheist-bashing and defenses of theistic evolution. Once again, a scientific organization presents the misleading idea that science and faith are perfectly compatible, and attacks those who think otherwise:
On Thursday afternoon there was a session entitled, “The Nature of Science and Public-Science Literacy” Most of the talks were defenses of theistic evolution, complete with lots of mandatory bashing of “The New Atheists.” The organization of the session was highly annoying. Each talk was fifteen minutes long with no Q and A’s between them. There wasn’t even a break between the talks. After eight straight talks (!!) there was a very brief Q and A session, but it was nowhere near adequate to the task of challenging all the nonsense that was spewed during the session.
The whole thing was rather frustrating. Several of the talks were devoted to taking atheists to task for, in the view of the speakers, improperly mixing science with religion. My understanding is that all of the talks were invited, but apparently no one thought it would be worthwhile to invite someone of a different perspective, if just to make the session more interesting. The speakers were keen to stress their own Christian faith and their dismay that so many feel they must choose between science and religion. This, mind you, at a paleontology conference. Who’s mixing science and religion, again? . . .
To a surprising degree it was the same frustration I felt arguing with the creationists. At one point Murphy [George Murphy, a theologian from Akron] told me that God is the ground of all being, not a being Himself. That is a phrase you often see in high-brow Christian theology, but I haven’t the faintest idea what it means. I asked Murphy what it meant. Words came out of his mouth in reply, but I still have no idea what it means.
I think that the whole approach to the problem that most people have adopted is entirely misguided and I can’t understand how otherwise very smart people can be so short-sighted (well, I can, but let’s not go into the likely reasons).
Playing it nice will not get us anywhere, and the fact that it hasn’t done that in the many decades during which science has been playing it nice with religion is a good evidence for why it will never do that even if continue doing it for another century (and we don’t have that kind of time).
Make it officially a science vs. religion issues and make society as whole pick a side, and let’s see what happens.
It was very said to see Eugene Scott battling it out with the creationists in Texas. For what? For some minimal “result” that doesn’t matter at all in the big scheme of things. If you have a large mass of people who insist in their ignorance and who will not listen to you, there is no point in trying to save science education. The way it is right now it is a big waste of time, effort, and resources, poured into trying to educate people who do not wish to learn. Not surprisingly it is failing completely. And it’s failing even at the highest level (whoever thinks that even among the people who work in science there isn’t a great percentage who have difficulty understanding what science is about and how it’s properly done, is very naive)
Again, tackle the problem at the root and make it a “pick-a-side” issue. Escalation of the conflict works for us. Because right now we are in the position of being the minority while being viewed as the establishment, and that’s a very bad situation to be in. It is useful to remember that the case that is best remembered and probably did the most to change public opinion was the Scopes trial and it was the one case where the science went up against the estabislhment, while everything after has been the opposite, and science has been on the defensive; it’s unfortunate that the battle was not continued after that.
A few days ago, there was the suggestion that teaching science is anti-constitutional, if we follow the incompatibility logic. It was mostly viewed as an absurd thought experiment. But I say that would be actually great if it really happened. I want to see the day when a judge will decide that teaching science contradicts the constitution because it undermines religious belief. I want to see that happen because it’s really the best thing that can happen. It will force society to face the choice of whether it wants to be part of a 21st century civilization or not. If it chooses not to, it was a hopeless task anyway.
A decisive battle is needed and that’s what we should be working for, not doing exactly the thing that has no chance of winning the war.
You have made me curious. Could you please comment further on your statement “And we don’t have that kind of time”.
We don’t have that kind of time because if we keep the 20th century rate of educating the masses, we will be in an irreversible Malthusian crash mode long before any meaningful gains have been achieved.
And I have yet to see someone suggesting a working way to prevent a Malthusian crash without completely marginalizing religion and, most importantly, the influence it has on people’s thinking (the vast majority of people who self-determine as non-believers still have a large part of their thinking primarily shaped by religion, it is the society we have grown in and its inescapable influence).
At the risk of being accused of comment spam, I have a post at Quiche Moraine on the subject.
Then stop ‘believing’ in absolute answers. The world is not black and white; there are thousands of shades of gray as well as several million shades of colors. Be a skeptic and lose that ‘faith’ and stop ‘praying’ and go find some answers based in reality.
There is no pas de deux, there is science, dancing along, sometimes side-stepping and sometimes backtracking, but eventually moving forward, while religion has its head in the clouds and up its own butt simultaneously, stomping on those who differ.
This was just an excerpt, I invite you to read the whole thing.
Thanks Mike. I urge others to go there and read your piece also.
Why do people on our side keep going to the cretin museum? We already know the bullshit they’re peddling. We’ve already got rebuttals of their nonsense out their on the internet. We don’t need to keep giving them money.
PZ Meyers said he’s getting a tour too – and that he’ll update his minions on details shortly. I suggested he get an invitation for Chris Hitchens as well – but we’ll see what happens.
It’s rather easy to see that they’re not mixing science and religion when they’re merely asserting their compatibility. Wrong they presumably are, but it’s their little fix for how they can “respect the invisible pink unicorn” while doing science the rest of the time.
This whole anti-accommodationism bit is likely to expend itself against a lot of people who simply don’t want to hear it. The real question is what is a productive line of discussion. It might be more useful simply to go ahead and disagree with the accommodationists, rather than trying to get them to accede your own points.
It just gets back to the fact that people won’t change their minds if they’re not willing even to listen to ideas to which they are not receptive.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
‘there was a session entitled, “The Nature of Science and Public-Science Literacy”’
which turned out to be 8 talks by 8 theists on how compatible science and religion are??
That’s mind-boggling! That’s what ‘The Nature of Science and Public-Science Literacy’ translates to now?! Atheist-bashing and theism-injection?
Oy, oy, oy.
I asked Murphy what it meant. Words came out of his mouth in reply, but I still have no idea what it means.
I have experienced the same phenomenon several times with theologians. I seriously suspect that it isn’t a tactic as much as a culture of learning that completely lack coherence and rigidity.
I’ve always seen it as a matter of inventing BS words that would be unintelligible and hence elicit a sense of awe and admiration for the (non-existent) great intelligence exhibited by the babbler. You know what they say – if you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, befuddle them with BS. After all, that was the whole point of maintaining the bible and religious ceremonies in Latin – the unwashed masses could not understand a thing and worshiped in ignorance. Only the relatively few educated people could actually understand everything – and many didn’t like what they saw.
I remember my grandma chanting prayers in Latin. She asked me one day if I knew what it meant and I said “yeah, you’re repeating the same prayers, exept in a language you don’t understand”.
Now for those who hear the story that every muslim learns Arabic – that’s not quite true either. I’ve asked a number of muslims from Asia and heard the same story: they’re taught to pronounce words on paper but haven’t got a clue what it means.
At least the Jews genuinely learn Hebrew, and that has been useful in communicating with other Jews (although some might have originally objected to using their sacred language for mere everyday talk).
Ah, so “Ground of Being” is making a comeback?
That brings back memories from the days when I was a believer and actually studied theology. The phrase originates from theologian Karl Barth and basically was his attempt to move away from an anthropomorphic god but yet have some thing that had agency by postulating some sort of mystic life force. Cynics said that he was just trying to find a way to mask his growing agnosticism by burying it in a thicket of theological language that nobody really understood but seized upon because it sounded good.
As I wrote in a recent post, in his classic 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, George Orwell explains why so much of political writing is vague and cloudy: “[P]olitical speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible…Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and…to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Theology is also the attempt to justify the unjustifiable and this naturally leads to convoluted language whose meaning and implications are hard to pin down. You can replace the word ‘political’ with ‘theological’ in the Orwell passage and you would get a good description of the writings of religious apologists.
I thought it was Tillich that came up with the “ultimate ground of all being” nonsense. But, anyways, I agree with your assessment. The theology that I’m familiar with seems to be an exercise in avoiding saying anything for which one might be asked to give a coherent explanation. Theology is full of excuses, not answers.
Wes,
You are quite right, it was Tillich. It has been a long time since my theology-studying days and the ideas of Barth, Tillich, Niebuhr, and others are all starting to blur!
“At one point Murphy [George Murphy, a theologian from Akron] told me that God is the ground of all being, not a being Himself. That is a phrase you often see in high-brow Christian theology, but I haven’t the faintest idea what it means. I asked Murphy what it meant.”
That would be an ecumenical matter.
“…the talks were devoted to taking atheists to task for … improperly mixing science with religion…”
How much IRONY can one get!!!
(That’s another industrial strength meter blown)
I was also at that session of TE talks Jason wrote of, and I have to say it moved my token closer to the rejectionist (anti-accommodationist? Churchillian?) end of the board.
Atheists mix science and religion? Huh? Who would ever have guessed – the folks with no religion are making science religious. AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Now there’s another funny thread going on (guess where) in which atheists just don’t understand history and therefore don’t understand accommodationism. Hmm. There are some real gems like:
“… back when it [religion] was actual “science”–many Christians thought that the natural world provided copious evidence of the brilliance of God’s handiwork.”
There was a bit of that, but at the time also a desperate need to associate discoveries with god’s benevolent wishes. I’ve pointed out before that we even see signs of that problem in Darwin’s writings (and someone pipes up saying I must be wrong because Darwin’s corpse is in Westminster Abbey – how’s that for a non-sequitur). Even in the “golden age” of islam the mathematicians, historians, and so on heaped profuse praise upon their god for revealing such wonders that the human mind can discover. Now going back to the catholic cult, even if you said god provided all these discoveries that was no guarantee that you weren’t a witch and fit for a barbecue.
The Vatican has operated its own observatory for quite some time now and their current main observatory is on Mt. Graham in Arizona. They’ve got decent equipment and people do good work with it. However, even when looking at papers by clergy I see no invocation of the supernatural – and these days not even the claim of “ain’t god’s work marvelous”? So even the religious scientists keep religion out of science these days. So what is it with the accommodationists and why do they want to bow down to religions and allow some religious nuts to inject elements of whatever flavor religious cult into science?
What no one ever seems to point out is that there would be nothing WRONG with mixing religion and science if the claims of religion were actually true. Getting information from angels (or whatever) and getting information from observation and experiment would be quite consistent with each other. If an angel revealed that the earth is, say, 20,000 years old and that the dinosaurs were destroyed by a great whirlwind (on a planet-wide cataclysmic scale, so that it moved mountains, etc., all described in a holy book) then there would be absolutely nothing wrong with integrating what we know from the holy book and what extra we can find out from observation and experiment. Nor would there be anything wrong with integrating revealed facts about the one-off actions of powerful supernatural beings with facts about causal regularities.
The reason this approach didn’t work out wasn’t that it was wrong a priori. It’s that nothing in the holy books turned out to be helpful. But for all people knew in earlier centuries it could have been.
If you’re in that situation, and if you actually believe in the truth of certain holy books, and you’re trying to get an overall picture of the world, then of course you’ll rely on “facts” from both the words of the holy books and from observation/ experiment, expecting them all to turn out to be consistent with each other. How else would you proceed in that situation?
Again, if the holy books actually provided reliable information (without needing to reinterpreted in the light of observation and experiment), there would be absolutely nothing wrong with this approach. So why should we be surprised that the scientists of the time sometimes adopted an approach like this, or variations of it? The futility of doing so has been a hard earned lesson, and it’s not surprising that some people (e.g. creationists … but not just them) have still not learned it.
I think some people are being a little hard on theology. It can be intellectual fun as long as you don’t take it too seriously. Jason Rosenhouse draws a striking analogy with fandom. Theological questions are similar in form to questions like “how many times was Dr Watson married?” or “can you beam between two starships travelling at warp?”. Once can have long and stimulating discussions on these topics using logic and textual evidence. Of course fans have occasional meetings where they gather with some of them wearing costumes, so the analogy does break down if taken too far…
Intellectuals who spent the first 12 years of their education told they came from monkeys, and there is no God, then sat under some atheist professor in college, naturally will have difficulty with the bibical theology of The Creation Museum. That’s compounded if they make a living digging up false science to justify their employment. The truth is out there, but just as the Bible says, many will reject it.
Ron G., that does not even make sense: it is not coherent. Your bias and prejudices are showing.