I’m not sure why the past couple of years have seen such increased attention to the “war” between science and faith. It’s all over HuffPo, for example (another instance last week), and the Templeton Foundation pays lots of dosh to people who argue that the conflict between these areas is bogus, or that the breach needs repair through “dialogue.” Some even argue that scientists are, after all, religious, for they’re “spiritual.”
It’s not obvious why the religion/science debate is so pressing. The issues have been with us for a while, and the arguments have become stale. My latest theory is that this is a form of push-back by religion. Faith seems to be on the wane, and the faithful know it. They hold science responsible, and try to preserve their bailiwick against its encroachments. That’s why they make the palpably false assertion that the dichotomy isn’t real—so they can preserve their territory—but also claim that science is a form of religion, so there’s nothing to encroach on faith.
And all of this is expressed in repeated and annoying calls for “dialogue.” Invariably, what the dialogue is supposed to yield is not an erosion of faith, or a realization by the faithful that many of their beliefs are scientifically insupportable, but an increased respect for religion by scientists. It’s always—always—intended to prop up religion against the advances of science. It’s not a dialogue they want, but a monologue.
The latest such call is from Elaine Ecklund, a sociologist at Rice University. Funded by Templeton, she wrote a big book, Science Vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think, surveying the religious beliefs of American scientists. And though she found that we scientists are noticeably irreligious—much more so than the American public at large—she’s done her best to frame the data to make them say the opposite: that scientists are really friends of faith. Several of us (see also here) have pointed out the big disparity between the facts and her interpretation of them; I see this as intellectual dishonesty that corrodes honest scholarship.
But Templeton loves it because Ecklund is giving them big bang for their bucks. She’s distorted her data over at HuffPo, and continues to do so at the Big Questions Online site, where Templeton pays handsomely to lure authors congenial to their mission. Her new piece is called “Religion, science, and the academy,” with the description “Should universities work to keep religion away from science—or to bring them closer?” You know what the answer is going to be.
Ecklund’s first task is to distort her findings again. She claims that American scientists are surprisingly religious:
While many scientists are completely secular, nearly 50 percent identify with a religious label, and almost one in five is actively involved in a house of worship, attending services more than once a month. Even among those who are not religious, many see themselves as spiritual.
Jason Rosenhouse and I have pointed out the problems with this characterization. Both of us, for example, are flat-out atheists, but we’d both identify ourselves as having an “affiliation” with Judaism—we are cultural Jews. More important, Ecklund always hides the embarrassing fact that 64% of American scientists are either agnostic or atheist, compared to only 6% of the public. (Another 8% of scientists accept a “higher power that is not God,” bringing nontheist scientists to 72%.) If you look at members of the National Academy of Sciences, the proportion of agnostics and atheists rises to a whopping 93%. I’ve addressed the “spiritual” canard elsewhere.
But this doesn’t matter to Ecklund because her agenda is driven not by data but by a desire to coddle religion. Her data show that American scientists are irreligious. She distorts these findings to promote a call for dialogue. Had her data shown that American scientists really are nearly as religious as the public, she’d still use it to call for dialogue, pointing out how alike we are. There is no conceivable result she couldn’t frame as a call for science-faith harmony. So of what use is her data?
So, if we really must have a dialogue, what kind of dialogue is it to be? As usual, we’re not allowed to ask religious people to consider how science corrodes the facts that buttress their faith. Nope, as usual it’s a one-way “dialogue”. Ecklund sees American universities as having unfairly expelled religious ideas, ideas that are critically important to science. Why? Because we can’t ground the moral implications of our science without the vital input of faith:
A number of the university scientists I spoke with suggested that their colleagues begin to change their perspective by rejecting scientism, a disciplinary imperialism that leads them to explicitly or implicitly assert that science is the only valid way of knowing and that it can be used to interpret all other forms of knowledge. This means instead of marginalizing religion, we should bring discussions of meaning and morality more broadly back into the social and natural sciences.
Do you see how Ecklund defines “scientism” in a way that is not only perjorative but unfair? She levels the old canard that scientists see little value in the humanities. That’s complete hogwash, of course. I find my science colleagues much more knowledgeable about, and appreciative of, art and literature than humanities scholars are about science.
Science, considered to be completely fact-based, was separated from more humanistic fields such as English and history. And this separation left scientists with little vocabulary for thinking about the moral implications of their research or what kind of public translation of science works well.
This is the crux of Ecklund’s argument: that religion has something really, really valuable for scientists—a moral armamentarium. And she frames this agenda purely as an outcome of her research:
But I also found that a sizeable minority of scientists — about 20 percent — think that, although the scientific method ought to be value-neutral, religion can meaningfully intersect with the implications of their research and with the education of their students. They see religion as important to some forms of science ethics and as potentially helpful in understanding the implications of scientific work (providing a justification for fighting poverty or global warming, for example). According to these natural and social scientists, their students ought to understand religiously-based forms of science ethics alongside ethical-moral-value systems derived from naturalism, those views independent of supernatural claims.
Why does Ecklund ignore the other 80% of scientists who don’t think that religion can meaningfully intersect with science? Because she agreed a priori with those 20%. (And note the “sizeable” characterization she gives to 20%—that’s framing).
. . . In other words, educating socially informed young scientists who are equipped to deal with the most controversial issues facing science today means that religion can no longer be completely isolated from scientific scholarship. Instead, university scientists must begin to point out to their students those places where religion might legitimately influence and contribute to their work. Religious scientists, especially, cannot shy away from discussing the connections between science and faith, or, in the appropriate academic context, sharing their own views on religion and spirituality.
No, no, no—a hundred times no! Of course scientists should ponder the moral implications of research—that’s our job as human beings. We shouldn’t, of course, do this in the classroom (Ecklund calls for “interdisciplinary centers to promote these “conversations”).
But what on earth does religion have to contribute to an exploration of morality? I maintain that there is not a single ethical insight contributed by religion that could not be be better contributed by secular morality—and without the taint of the supernatural. Why would a rabbi, a priest, or even a devout scientist like Francis Collins have anything more to say about the moral ramifications of science than atheist philosophers like Anthony Grayling or Peter Singer? Why are the faithful given special privilege in these discussions, as if they had some deep and special insights into morality? (Richard Dawkins has pointed out the invariable presence of a pastor or preacher in broadcast discussions of moral issues.)
Now of course there’s a broad overlap between secular and religious morality: many liberal religious people have moral precepts nearly identical to mine. But these precepts are based not on scripture but, as Plato pointed out so long ago, on considerations that are antecedent to and independent of religion. And of course lots of religious people have those other moral considerations that are not so helpful in a dialogue with scientists. These include the assertions that AIDS isn’t prevented by condoms, that global warming either doesn’t exist or is okay because, after all, we have dominion over the Earth, that a one-celled zygote is morally equivalent to a preacher or a scientist, that God says it’s immoral to allow suffering people to end their lives, and so on. If we’re to have a dialogue about morality, would you prefer input from Anthony Grayling or from Rick Warren?
In fact, scientists seem to be doing pretty well without the advice of the faithful. In our off hours we’re promoting the use of condoms, fighting global warming and depredations of the environment—depredations supported by many religious people—and trying to get stem-cell research approved. These actions come from being scientists who have thought about morality, usually in a nonreligious way. What religion has to contribute to all this, I don’t know. Overall, religiously-based morality has been a source of problems around science, not a remedy. Without faith, we’d be going forward with stem cell research, distributing condoms to everyone, and pondering programs for humane euthanasia.
Ecklund’s big error is to suppose that religious people have unique and constructive insights into morality not shared by atheists or agnostics. She doesn’t say what these insights are, and no wonder: there aren’t any. The moral insights that are unique to religion, as opposed to secular morality, are harmful and stupid.
Jerry,
I’ll read the rest of the post; but the bit about the accomodationists and apologists syaing (more or less): “science has faith, therefore it’s religion too” is something I’ve encountered many times. My reply is always:
1. Science does not include belief in anything supernatural (“beyond nature.”) If a religion does not entail belief in something supernatural, then metaphysically it is simply an acceptance of the natural world as fact. It makes no sense to call such a thing “religion.” It would rob the word of any meaning. We use the word “religion” to indicate belief in the supernatural: that is its function.
2. This fallacy [science is faith] tries to equate the minimal assumptions and uncertainties of science: For instance that our consciousness is not a computer simulation; things behave now as they did in the past and will in the future; things behave the same here as they do on a distant galaxy, with the assumptions of religion: There is a supernatural being “out there,” that cares about humans, acts in the world, worries about the eating ans sexual habits of humans, answers prayers, etc. This is plain nonsense.
I think the ‘science as faith` trope is largely an attempt to pretend (without actually coming out and saying so) that science is at base just as arbitrary as religion and that therefore religious belief is as justified as scientific knowledge or scientific theorising. The believers don’t actually come out and say this, but not, I think, out of cynicism: there is, I think, a genuine and self-protective blindness that prevents them from seeing that when they indulge in the ‘science as faith’ trope that in fact they are suggesting that religious belief is arbitrary.
Yup, that’s it. “Science is just another belief system” – they conveniently ignore the primary difference between science and superstition: science tests ideas and results of controlled experiments are repeatable and predictable. The “repeatable and predictable” part can get a little fuzzy in some cases though – for example with R. Lenski’s very long running experiment with the evolution of e. coli, you can duplicate his experiment and expect to see divergence as he has, in a few cases you may see similar traits arise independently in different cultures, and in most cases you can expect your own cultures to be very different from his. So the result of repeating Lenski’s experiment would be that you will confirm that e. coli evolve, and also (as expected) for the most part the actual changes observed will *not* be the same. Now in religion, you start out with defective assumptions, make shit up, and come out with bogus claims which other religions predominantly will not agree with – and there is no way to tell who’s wrong (all other religions) and who’s right (your own religion), except (as Augustine the Hippo would agree) via holy wars.
Religion has always been toxic, but its toxicity passed without notice in a society that was not much different. The Enlightenment is still going on and has become dominant. In a secular society the toxicity of religion becomes conspicuous and this explains the frantic effort to reverse history. It is hard to see that science has been responsible entirely for this historical process and religion’s reactionary response.
Agreed. I don’t see science as responsible, but I think the faithful see science as responsible.
What science does do is provide a satisfying answer for questions on which religion previously provided a fallacious-yet-satisfying answer. Evolution is of course the classic one — even though the Argument from Design has always been fallacious, pre-Darwin one could easily be forgiven for this mental error, since here was something that is staring us in the face every single day (whence all these damn animals?!) and for which nobody had a satisfying answer. Not so much anymore.
I see the next big one as being Cartesian dualism. Again, it’s a conundrum that is staring us right in the face every single day of our lives — how is it that the experience of consciousness springs from this base matter? — for which, up until recently, we had nothing even approaching a satisfying answer. To argue that mind is a distinct substance from matter, without any supporting evidence, is of course fallacious, but it’s an easy mistake to make.
But as our understanding of neurology progresses, particularly in regards to how the brain tricks itself into constructing a coherent narrative around even the most mechanical of actions, combined with advances in understanding how a thinking machine might work… Cartesian dualism becomes much less forgivable.
So while Enlightment values may be the dominant factor in beating back religion’s societal influence and monopoly on (faux) morality, science has been quietly undermining religion’s few apparent strengths. The faithful are correct in that regard.
I got bored halfway through the article because Ecklund makes stuff up and it is well known that she is shill for Templeton.
Let’s see, what does one call someone who gets paid for lying and doing nasty business?
These days, we call them journalists.
Word.
Templetites?
I thought they were called ‘priests’.
I’m always confused what the actual end goal is for such accomadationists…?
They seem to want science to change in some way, but I can’t imagine any form of change that could be implemented that would be….uh….scientifically sound.
Or, they don’t want anything to change, its just a plead for “tone” and nothing else. I’m not sure how that would change WHY the religious have a problem with science, however.
Might was well just say “lets not talk about it….problem solved!”
“I’m always confused what the actual end goal is for such accomadationists…?”
A paycheque.
It seems obvious to me that the Templeton Foundation, et al have one goal in mind: to subvert the national dialogue about science, because science is one of the bulwarks against a Christian theocracy.
What the right-wing has done over the past five decades has been to martial vast amounts of money in order to alter public opinion on a range of issues. Through the use of think tanks, media consolidation, and political activism they have mounted an enormous disinformation campaign in America and have changed the national conversation from a discussion of policies to a discussion about the verity of facts themselves.
The religion/science debate is so pressing right now, because never before has the Christian right had so much influence and representation in the Republican party. And prospects look darned good, especially since the political contribution floodgates have just been thrown open.
When Ecklund says:
she is making the argument, and setting the stage, for the next American Scientific Inquisitor.
What Hitch said … science does not need religion because religion demands that faith be a virtue.
If the tables were turned, and there was incontrovertible evidence that a creative “force” existed (whether or not you could anthropomorphize that source), then faith would be a sin.
It’s just as simple as that. The fable of doubting Thomas in the bible is religion’s only defense against incredulity.
“If the tables were turned, and there was incontrovertible evidence that a creative “force” existed (whether or not you could anthropomorphize that source), then faith would be a sin.”
I love that point! I’ve seen it brought up once before, but I’d forgotten about it. Yes, if belief without evidence is fundamental to your religion, then convincing evidence for the supernatural would be, counterintuitively, a bad thing!
I do use a version of that angle in answering questions from theists regarding atheism, but the sin aspect is just too cool.
Their very oh so precious faith if evidence was presented that was strong enough for atheists to accept the existence of their god would become a vice and not a virtue. I have explained that if I was to accept the existence of their god I would neither worship it nor would I be considered religious, as no faith would be involved.
From the wonderful Mr. Pratchett:
The Babel fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy recieved not from its own carrier but from those around it, It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. the practical upshot of this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any language.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist”, says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But”, says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.”
“Oh dear”, says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
“Oh that was easy” says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
I thought that was Douglas Adams, not Terry Prachett. Actually, I’m quite sure of it.
So am I. It was Adams.
Ecklund’s data does support that rather startling hypothesis that scientists are, in fact, human beings. This comes as a great shock to most Americans. So don’t pretend like her research isn’t significant!
BTW: Did Ecklund submit her findings to a peer-review journal?
What does the peer-review process do in an instance where an author collects what appear to be valid data, and then willfully and deliberately misinterprets that data?
Let’s see: A substantial minority of patients (20%) reported improvements, therefore we should approve a potentially dangerous new drug. Even though 80% of patients thought the product was worse than placebo.
Yeah, right. That’ll fly.
Where are the p values in her work?
I could be wrong about this, but I seem to remember reading recently that peer reviewers are not typically tasked with vetting the conclusions in great detail — only that the research process was valid and that the results are sufficiently novel to warrant publication. Of course I’ve only published a single paper, so I don’t know that much about the process…
Reviewers should check on whether the conclusions are warranted by the data.
Absolutely correct. When I receive a solicitation to review a manuscript for a journal (Biochem & Mol Biol journals mostly), this is typically indicated as one of the criteria. Integration or comparison with the conclusions of others is also considered.
In my field, reviewers technically do nothing more than make recommendations to the editor and offer suggestions to the authors. For example, they might recommend “accept”, “accept, pending major revisions”, “reject, encourage resubmission”, or “reject”. It is the editor’s job to decide what to actually do with the paper. And a good review nearly always includes suggestions which should be constructive.
These criticisms are typically technical suggestions, suggestions improvement of scholarship, and comments directed at verifying if the conclusions are warranted by the data. Often, if the conclusions overstep the data, reviewers will suggest additional work that would solve such issues.
Of course, these are all suggestions. The final decision is made by the editor, and many editors are quite good at spotting poor reviews, and only require a subset of the comments to be addressed. Sometimes (frequently in Nature or Science) editors will ignore reviewers either to kill a technically sound paper that they think isn’t “sexy” enough (I have a friend who recently had one of these) or (less often) to promote a “sexy” paper that the reviewers thought was technically sound.
Ugh, that last phrase should have been “that the reviewers didn’t consider sufficiently sound.”
As a minimum, peer-reviewers are commenting on the originality of the research, the significance of the research, it’s contribution to pushing the frontiers of science, how well it conforms to modern standards of data presentation, and the over-all quality of the writing. Good peer-reviewers will critique experimental design and the interpretation of results. Really good peer-reviewers will actually offer suggestions in how to correct the initial problems with the manuscript, lead the writer to other research that may shed a light on structural problems, etc.
My wife is a “really good” peer-reviewer” and is frequently called upon by the top-journals in her field because she’s committed to science as a whole and does not sabotage others with second-rate efforts. She really does want people to succeed.
I wish I could remember where this was, because it was some blog I don’t usually read… but I read this cool post awhile back where a guy in the math dep’t was asking, Why is it “cool” to say you are clueless about math, but shameful to say you are clueless about Shakespeare?
The guy admitted his liberal arts knowledge was woefully inadequate, and that he was rightly embarrassed by it. When at a gathering with colleagues, he was forced to admit he couldn’t follow a humanities-related conversation, it was an admission of failing on his part. But when his colleagues proudly asserted, “Oh, I was never any good at math,” it’s just accepted as something that is endearing and cool.
No. Not everybody can be a Renaissance (wo)man, but we should all aspire to be, and not just in one direction only. Admitting that you don’t know how Polonius is vs. admitting that you don’t know what a derivative is should be equally embarrassing.
(Note that I’m not suggesting everybody should be able to compute basic derivatives, no more than I’m suggesting everybody should memorize all of Polonius’ famous lines. But a passing familiarity with what the thing is ought to be a base expectation we have of adults. In any case, brevity being the soul of wit, I shall end this comment before I am exposed as entirely witless…)
So true.
Well put:)) The same bit jumped out at me. Eckland can’t possibly have read any of Stephen Jay Gould’s essays, or she’d never have made a comment like that. Then again, she doesn’t come across as over-scrupuous, so made she would…
Maybe scientists are simply smarter?
That’s an old C.P. Snow (“two cultures”) quotation: A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?
I’m in the process of reading Unscientific America, and was shocked to hear M&K cite CP Snow’s “Two Cultures” speech as a framework for realizing that both sides are equally to blame…! I found this a rather confusing assertion to say the least…
Fits right in with the resst of their “logic”!
This is exactly the conversation I had with a retired chemistry professor and astromomy-enthusiast friend over a few beers recently.
If one presents a bit of data, even in a simple graph, one immediately loses most a typical audience. People, even with advanced university degrees, are often proud to say, “I don’t do maths.”
And yet, if one of us said, “I’ve never read a novel,” we’d be (rightly) thought to be uneducated.
I agree with you, and so does this guy: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1995#comic
This comes I think from physicist C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures, 1959 Cambridge Rede Lecture – “A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: ‘Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?'”
I am reading it at present…
oops! Ken got there before me!
Well said, James Sweet & subsequent commenters.
I am always irritated by the arrongance of certain history mavens who are simultaneously so dismally ignorant, unconcerned about, and dismissive of the previous ~4 billion years…
Dr Coyne,
As much as I despise Templeton, I don’t think in the end all their efforts are going to bear fruit.
The latest book by Hawking is just one example. I can absolutely assure you there are tons of people who don’t have a clue what’s a Templeton, but they know who Hawking is, and they also know what he thinks.
They can spin and distort the figures all they want. The gulf is there and with time it will only get bigger. They won’t ever be able to paper over it.
In the end, no, probably not.
But it sure is a delaying action that could result in who knows how much pain.
Nice article taking apart Ecklund’s nonsense. There you go again, using reason to “dis” religion. You naughty scientist of scientism!
Her whole point, such as it is, is that we need religion to inform our morals (as you pointed out.)
Funny, how no religious person has been ale to (in a serious or siginificant way) meet Hitchens’ challenge: To name a moral act that can be performed by a religious person that cannot be performed by an atheist!
Because: (as you also pointed out) religion borrows our innate morality that we evolved as social apes. Our innate moral senses predate religion. They are what allow us to discern the moral parts of, for instance, the bible from the immoral parts (which abound in it.)
Slam-dunk: Scientists do not need religion to inform their morality.
The accomodationists just want science to back off and “respect religion” and stop knocking it down with data and demands for data from the apologists. As you said: They seek protection for religion by trying to make it socially repugnant for scientists to make rational demands of religious people and institutions. They want their magic shield from serious inquiry. (So much for “theology”!)
I agree.
I am sick of the implication that religion is required for morality. In fact religion has been used for centuries to justify a whole lot of immoral acts.
Quite.
Christians like to say that we need religion to have absolute morality as opposed to the horrors of moral relativism. They say this while ignoring that Christianity is founded on moral relativism, rejecting moral commands of Judaism, saying those commands were for a certain time, place and people, and, of course, don’t apply to Christians. =:-o
Christians also like to say that there can be no morality unless there is a transcendent morality by a “law giver,” thus Christianity must be true, and central to all morality. They have no problem with the fact that they can’t prove what, exactly, the transcendent morality says, since Christians don’t actually agree on principles of morality, nor that their “law giver” exists, let alone exists to the exclusion of all other “law givers.” Seems all a bit irrelevant being so unproven and all, kind of like saying their is a transcendent “best color”, but that nobody can prove what it is.
I am always confused by Christians claiming that their morality is defined by shaping their actions to attain reward or avoid punishment. Seems an odd basis for right and wrong to me.
I’ve heard some unconvincing hand waiving about living right with god that seemed to boil down to submission to ultimate authority. Somehow the carrot and stick of heaven and hell are just coincidental to them.
It’s especially silly because the argument that morality is separate from God has is trivial and has been around for ages.
If God defines morality, then what God commands is moral. If God commands something we consider to be immoral in all circumstances (such as rape, or the murder of your own child), then that action is moral at that time. Thus, you must choose: is it moral to rape when God commands it of you, or is it never moral to rape?
Most people choose the latter option.
Therefore, if God can act or command us to act in an immoral fashion, then morality is clearly separate from God. QED.
Who said God can command us to act in an immoral fashion?
I find it quite interesting that Western cultures traditionally associate morality with religion. I grew up in a Confucian culture. In my upbringing morality has nothing to do with religion. All morality lessons were expressed as “Confucius says…”, which are entirely secular. While the society is/was predominately buddhist, I can’t recite one single passage from a buddhist text. Buddhist teachings are believed to be too abstract and subtle to be taught to children.
While I didn’t think much of Confucian morality in my youth, I appreciate it more now that I live in a Western country. What’s so nice about it: 1. There is no absolutely no threat of hell or punishment. Confucius said that you should be a good person for no other reason than personal growth and satisfaction. 2. Morality is mostly expressed as “you should…” rather than “thou shall not…”. Confucius didn’t say thou shall not kill or thou shall not steal. I mean, do you really need a God to tell you that you should not kill or steal? Isn’t that obvious?
Yeah really. This is why I find the idea of “Judeochristian morality” to be absurd. There is, of course, much to be admired in the moral code of the Abrahamic religions, such as the Golden Rule, etc. — but every single thing of value in “Judeochristian morality” was already figured out by other cultures centuries or sometimes even millennia prior!
If you strip out all of the friggin’ obvious crap from “Judeochristian morality”, virtually all you are left with is a bunch of edicts that are alternately homophobic, racist, or just plain confusing. (No mixed fibers? Wha??!?)
So even those liberal religions who point to the Bible as “a book of fables” with much to teach us are ignoring the fact that there had been superior texts in existence for hundreds and hundreds of years. “Thou shalt not steal”? Bravo, but most 11-year-olds can puzzle this one out on their own. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me?” Kiss my ass, Yahweh!
You need a god to tell you who you should not kill or steal from (and therefore, who it is ok to kill or rob).
I was about to kill my neighbor for dropping trash on my lawn, but then I remembered “thou shall not kill” and realized I shouldn’t.
(har har har)
It’s also interesting that cultures without the threat of hell enforcing “morality” often are measurably better at being moral.
I always find it amusing, and yet highly arrogant, that Christians seem to think their religion invented morality or that it is the “source” of morality (through God or the Bible). Under the proposition that laws generally encompass moral positions (though not always, law and morality are not always in perfect accordance — legal slavery is a perfect example) taken by society we can clearly see that morality has been in existence long before the Jewish religion started.
For example, we have the Code of Hammurabi from 1760BCE. We have the even older Code of Ur-Nammu from 2050BCE. And there are are more. Quite a few more from that region alone.
And that’s ignoring China and other Asian-Continent societies. All of which had codes of laws that, in part, reflected cultural norms and morality. All of which were in existence long before the Priests of Josiah made-up vast swaths of the Old Testament (which includes Exodus).
So, considering we have evidence that morality has existed longer than Judaism and Christianity, I don’t see how the religious can require their participation in morality. Morality, simply put, seems to exist because people exist and find it a useful and, quite possibly, necessary concept in order to live together in any meaningful way.
While many scientists are completely secular, nearly 50 percent identify with a religious label, and almost one in five is actively involved in a house of worship, attending services more than once a month.
Even using her own numbers, 50% do not identify with any religious label, and 80% are not actively involved with any house of worship. Compare these numbers to the general populace.
Spin, spin, spin.
Excellent lucid post. Will use it for reference. Thanks.
In the end, Ecklund’s comments regarding a dialog about morality are just yet another spin on the old “Science isn’t everything, therefore religion is something” fallacy.
Yes, a narrow definition of science does not tell us what is moral (sorry, Sam Harris). That’s why we need ethics.
But the fact that a cold hard solely-scientific approach can’t answer moral questions does not imply that religion can. (And in any case, as Jerry copiously points out, morality is a particularly poor example to use in the “Science isn’t everything, therefore religion is something” fallacy, because a) ethics still falls well within the broader domain of reason, i.e. it’s not like art appreciation or something, and b) religion isn’t just useless to morality, it’s worse than useless)
Agreed: Sam Harris has been arguing the need for science to inform ethics. His examples though, always turn out to be ways in which science can answer specific questions, such as how can we avoid famines, or how can we improve the mental health of a certain population. The question of which value measures and what desired outcomes we should base our action upon is entirely different.
There can certainly be widely varying points of view about ethics! It would be hard to use reason in order to prove Nietzche’s ethics inferior to Jesus’s, or Jerry’s (Coyne and/or Garcia). This seems to indicate that some sort of commitment without evidence is required, even to be a humanist.
On the other hand, “religion is useless to morality” rings true, since we often use a prior concept of good ethics to decide whether religious beliefs are benign or malignant. If your religion wants to burn me at the stake I’ll certainly make a moral judgement about those beliefs.
I think that there would be less confusion if the words had less overlapping meaning. Often the word “religion” when used by progressive thinkers means exactly “a choice of ethics.” To be religious in this liberal sense means to commit to some ethical principles which you believe are right: absolutely right in a way that transcends nature. These principles would still be right in a different universe.
Thus when we judge another set of ehics we deem inferior, we are judging on the basis of our own “religion.” Of course the usual meaning of the word includes all the supernatural beings, afterlives, and magic spells we are familiar with. Clearly unfounded beliefs about this latter list get in the way of (my version of) good ethics as often as not. But I’d like to hold onto my belief in the transcendant goodness of love, in the sense of “do unto others.” Luckily, there are similar thinkers all over, including some of the early Christians who decided to make ethics the definition of religion. True religion, they wrote, is to feed the hungry and take care of the orphans. God is love.
Ah yes – James 1:27 “Pure religion & undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit the fatherless & widows in their affliction, & to keep himself unspotted from the world”. (A Great great grandmother wrote that in the bible she gave her youngest daughter the day she died of TB.)
Could you have a religious morality without the Devil or equivalent? They rely on their ideas of ‘evil’ to identify themselves – they are defined by the ‘other’. Whereas Science requires no ‘other’ unless it be the unknown…
But the fact that a cold hard solely-scientific approach can’t answer moral questions does not imply that religion can.
Why not? Sam Harris certainly thinks it can: http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html
You’ll notice I parenthetically remarked “Sorry, Sam Harris”. Yes, I am well aware of his argument, and he I think he’s almost but not quite right.
What is really interesting is that while she claims that science and scientists dismiss the humanities like History and English and don’t let it inform on them, she ignores a really important thing. Namely that science is creeping into even these ‘fluffy’ humanities. Linguistics and psychology are starting to be informed on by neuroscience, and historians derive a lot of information from archaeology and ethnography (which in turn derives a lot of techniques from other sciences). Reading some of the popular books on these subjects now, you can see the creep of scientific rigor into these fields as their practitioners realize that they can, for instance, extrapolate proto-Indo-European from the commonalities of its descendant languages, or discover some of the historical events before written language through the diversity of human genes. I can imagine Philosophers and Theologians see this happening and worry about it happening to them.
As a linguist I feel I have to defend my field a bit. Linguists have been reconstructing proto-European for a couple of centuries now, and their work was an inspiration for Darwin. So really, it’s nice to see the creep of linguistic rigor into science.
I majored in linguistics and I agree with this comment. Studying linguistics is not at all like studying literature, and it’s not supposed to be.
My mistake then. But certainly the same sort of software that we use to compare DNA strands and find a best family tree could be used to find similar sorts of ancestry trees with languages too?
Mostly I was trying to think of some way the sciences could affect literature and I think that’s about as far as I got 🙂
“But certainly the same sort of software that we use to compare DNA strands and find a best family tree could be used to find similar sorts of ancestry trees with languages too?”
Indeed it can. There are also some cool tools for analyzing audio that linguists studying phonetics use.
Gnu Atheist sez:
“Lies, statistics and acommodationist statistics.”
I have read the original peer reviewed paper from which Ecklund bases her hypothesis (Religion among Academic Scientists: Distinctions, Disciplines, and Demographics
Elaine Howard Ecklund and Christopher Scheitle 2007.) Notwithstanding the misgivings that some have for her statistical analysis I thought the paper was acceptable. The wild interpretations involving the data have come in subsequent non peer-reviewed publications (her book and various articles based on this book).
There is a talk of hers online – I think it was held at Rice University and is a sort of question and answers session. The audience seems to be religious and are lapping up her comments – up until they react with shock to her results about the tiny percentage of evangelicals in science.
I saw her speak in an academic setting (not Rice). She avoids the tough questions and the tough questioners.
Ecklund do love her spin:
This is of course all wrong, since science is guided by ethics committees or guidelines in education or business.
Conversely, we see very little of that guiding education and research in religion or theology. Would Ecklund be willing to subject schools and parents by the same review to safeguard against moral implications such as the harm of one-sided education and/or brainwashing, or pursuing theocracy instead of the human right of democracy?
(Of course not, since she argues that “religiously-based forms of science ethics” must be applied “alongside ethical-moral-value systems derived from naturalism”. Preferably above or instead, as a reversion of “scientism”, or the implications for religious practice would be unappetizing for her.)
It is a somewhat absurd trope when observed from outside US culture, since the use of militaristic language can be much less frequent and war is well defined within and without cultural context. (Such as its declaration, special legal and governmental status, and its statistical definition.)
It is IMO immoral, on many grounds, of the accommodationists to suggest its applicability.
Locally we don’t even have the preceding “cultural war” trope what I know of, at worst media would claim “strife” in similar situations. (This is of course subject to change from strong US cultural influences.)
Right….
Every single clinical trial is vetted for its ethical implications. Every one.
How many Philosophy Departments have an Institutional Review Board or an ethics committee? (…crickets chirping).
Ecklund is not merely wrong…
No! Its the only hope left for the future of life on the planet; that the rest of you will see the massive error of the US culture.
I think you’re missing the point Jerry.
Science may be able to explain how the world works, but psychic readings tell us about our future moral duties in that world.
Why does there have to be multiple psychic readings? One should be enough to predict from here to eternity.
The same reason we take multiple measurements, to cancel out errors silly 😉
It seems to me that a good way to further separate science from religion is to take faith-friendly scientists away from their work in order to participate in initiatives intended to bring science and religion together. “Say, Jan, I knew you’d be interested in this.” “Actually, no. Haven’t you heard the gnus?”
“64% of American scientists are either agnostic or atheist, compared to only 6% of the public.”
Wait… How many scientists are there in the US? Does that 6% figure exclude ‘scientists’ from ‘the public’? If not, I’m thinking that the figures are even worse than I thought…
I am pretty sure scientists are in enough of a minority that the overlap can be effectively ignored.
Hmmm, according to the NSF, in 2001 there were something like 2.2 million scientists actively employed in the US. Note that this includes computer scientists, who make up about half that number… not sure if that’s what was intended in the quoted statistic.
In any case, according to ARIS, there were ~208 million adults in the United States in 2001. (I’m not counting children here, for any number of reasons) Of these, 1.9 million identified as atheist or agnostic. This is odd, since that gives a number <1%, which differs from the 6% that Jerry cited. In any case, that also means that just over 1% of American adults are scientists (and just over half a percent if you discount the computer scientists).
If we take the 64% of scientists number from Jerry at face value, this means that atheist/agnostic scientists account for about 0.6% of the population.
Woah, okay. If the 6% number from Jerry is right, then I would assert that I was right, that the effect of scientists on the general population number, while significant, does not drastically change the results (6% vs. 5.4%, meh). But if the 1% number is correct….
I must have made a mistake, because the way I am reading this, scientists account for more than half of atheists and agnostics in the US. That can't be right…
I think the 6% number came from Ecklund’s study. But who knows where she got that?
I’m sure most of you have seen this but here it is again
http://richarddawkins.net/videos/517674-daniel-dennett-on-scientism
I participated in Ecklund’s survey a few years back. Later, when I saw how she had distorted the interpretation of the results, I was outraged and refused to participate in a follow up survey. I would not be surprised if many atheists “selected out” of her follow up surveys.
That’s a significant datum.
….well there goes that hypothesis….
…when I first saw your comments here, I wondered if you were a Neil that I knew several years back…same outlook, same language style….
Nope. He’s a commercial real estate agent.
I am fuming having just read a new bit of apologist nonsense on the BBC web pages from Dr Thomas Dixon who presents a TV programme from the once prestigeous Horizon tonight on BBC2.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11380916
JC, I would suggest that you don’t read it if you don’t want to burst an ulcer…
“Dr Thomas Dixon presents The End of God? A Horizon Guide to Science and Religion on BBC Four, on Tuesday 21 September at 2100 BST”
“Science and religion have had the kind of close and troubled relationship you would expect between siblings or even spouses. They share not only wonder at the majesty of the world we can see, but also a desire to find out what’s behind it that we can’t.
That emotional and intellectual hunger will endure longer than Professor Hawking’s M-theory, and those wishing to take a truly scientific attitude may be better advised to follow the lead of the great Victorian agnostic Thomas Huxley who, in one of the last things that he wrote before he died asked “Is it not better to keep silence about matters which speech is incompetent to express; to be content with revolving in the deeps of the mind the infinite possibilities of the unknown?”
So scientists, stay away from religions claims.
Religious people, you can just carry on.
By the way, Dixon has degrees in theology and history and now lectures on the subject of science and religion. He’s a frequent sucker of the teat of Templeton, being an invited panelist at several of their events.
What a marvellous post! Clear, incisive, ordered and completely unarguable, in my view. This, to my mind, is particularly trenchant:
“My latest theory is that this is a form of push-back by religion. Faith seems to be on the wane, and the faithful know it. They hold science responsible, and try to preserve their bailiwick against its encroachments.”
This has seemed obvious to me for some time. Religions, whether they are ready to admit it yet or not, are dying. Living religious don’t need to be on the defensive all the time. But threatened religions do, and the only way to deal with threat — since they are far more concerned with their existing members — is to go on the offensive, and do their best to diminish unbelief in the eyes of believers. It’s a crude bit of realpolitik.
It has been shown that, when religious believers feel insecure in the faith, when cognitive dissonance is at its highest, the time has arrived to start expressing certainty, to endeavour to gain more adherents, and to condemn the doubting. And we are seeing a deluge of this kind of thing lately — a signal that all is not well in the barque of St. Peter, as well as in the threatened craft of other religions and sects.
Aquinas, after all, held that it was appropriate even to kill non-believers, if their non-belief was an obstacle to the faithfulness of believers, and made it more difficult for them to believe. This is probably part of the justification for killing infidels in the Muslim tradition, why the house of Islam and the house of War are always in opposition, until the whole world becomes the “peaceful” house of Islam. But it works just as well with the kinds of slanderous and disparaging claims that religious believers make about those who do not believe.
The point is to make non-belief appear degenerate and immoral, certainly, but perhaps even more important to keep up repeating the litany that non-belief is weak and unable to stand on its own. It needs religion, because without religion non-belief is inevitably rudderless in sea of morals, and will inevitably founder. But ever since Plato we have known, as you point out, that morality is antecedent to religion, and is not dependent on it.
In fact, the truth is that, without morality, religion could not even begin to frame an acceptable concept of god. Gods are shaped by morality, not the other way round. It seems almost pointless to tell the religious this, since this is a secret that is hidden within their theologies, and does not easily give itself up to the credulous. And the first requirement for religious belief is credulousness, which is why religion is imposed on children before they recognise that self-deception is both easier than knowing and (therefore) seems more sweet.
Religion is, I believe, a form of mass self-deception. It can’t be anything else, because it has no foundations. Why anyone should imagine that it is either necessary or desirable to establish dialogue between this process of self-deception, and the most successful project of acquiring knowledge yet devised, is anyone’s guess, but I suspect it lies in the threat that science constitutes to the toxic sweetnesses of religion.
You read my mind at just this point in the thread.
Religions, whether they are ready to admit it yet or not, are dying.
Really wish I could share your optimism. While losing adherents in prosperous countries, they are going strong elsewhere. My own assessment is that with continuing dismantling of the welfare state, they will come back all over the place.
Intellectually, after all, the case against religion was closed thousands of years ago. Whenever somebody sits down and thinks about it, whether science is already invented or not, they cannot fail to notice that it is assertion all the way down, and that there are actually observations that contradict their present religion, ranging from brain damage (= no immaterial souls) to the problem of evil to prayers and sacrifices not actually working to heathens also being decent chaps, and so on.
What really kills religion is not giving people education – it only helps to speed it up – but to remove the necessity for people to rely on their clan in times of economic hardship, and thus follow the clan’s traditional beliefs at all times. Remove the economic need for this kind of ingroup loyalty, and people will be more inclined to make their own decisions when confronted with religious absurdity. But remove welfare payments as a fall-back line for survival in the worst case, and people who would otherwise have rebelled will have to play save for the protection of a community that measures the loyalty of its members with their willingness to believe nonsense.
Alex SL, thanks for that analysis, it does make immense sense to me; and for us cynics, explains why the political powers that be are happy to keep religion around, doing its charity-thing, leaving the money for those who will then pay the politicians to appear to care for the masses but not actually vote that way…also tends to keep the poor in their place…
Needless to say, I can’t share Eric’s optimism either, though I love to read his posts.
Religion is not a monolith, it’s a gravel pit.
Which “religion” is “science” supposed to sit down and talk with? There are so many of them and as Jerry has pointed out on numerous occasions, they have mutually exclusive truth claims over which much blood has been spilled. By what methods would they determine which views (if any) were correct?
What about the religions of the ancient Romans, Greeks and Egyptians? What about the Norse gods or those of the Incas, Aztecs and Maya? What, apart from few to no followers, would distinguish these religions from those which are still practiced? Do they get a seat at the table? Do their morals and values get a hearing? I don’t see that existing faiths are any better fit with the facts of the world than these defunct ones. In a thousand years the current crop of faiths may well be as bereft of followers as Osiris, Thor and Quetzalcoatl currently are. Science, because it deals with discoverable facts about the real world, will still be plugging along (assuming that there is still a civilization in existence to support it).
Let’s see religion sort out what’s what and who’s who on their side before we start making reservations for a luncheon date with science.
I agree. And why are religious leaders presumed to have special standing when it comes to morality? The obvious answer is they claim to speak for God, but if there is no agreement on which god is the real one, and no way of verifying their qualification to speak for him (her? it?), how does that claim hold any weight? If I showed up at a debate on the morality of using embryonic stem cells in treating illness saying that I was the emissary of the King of Ruritania, and insisting that the King wanted all stem cell research to stop immediately, people would want to know a couple of things: Who is the King of Ruritania? On what basis do I presume to speak for him? And why does his opinion matter? If I couldn’t answer those questions, I’d be thrown out on my ear. Religious leaders can’t agree on who the real god is, they can’t verify that they have any real warrant to speak for him (assuming he exists), and since they can’t show proof of God’s existence, they can’t show any reason why his opinion should be considered when it comes to moral questions. So why do we accord them any more respect than run-of-the-mill ethical and moral philosophers?
Ecklund:
“Science, considered to be completely fact-based, was separated from more humanistic fields such as English and history.”
Sneaky sneaky sneaky – lumping history in with English as “more humanistic” when it would make at least as much sense to lump it in with science as “more empirical.”
She’s implying that humanistic is the opposite of empirical, and excludes it, and that’s just bullshit. History that is not empirical is crap history – aka mythology.
I can assure Ms Ecklund: English is, in fact, fact-based. If you tell your professor “I think this poem is a metaphor for growing up” you have to point to specific words or phrases that actually back up that assertion.
As for history, what does she think all those historians poring over centuries-old documents or digging up rusty old relics are looking for if not facts?
I so nearly said that! That even in English – you do have to point to something on the page to back up your interpretation.
But I thought of Theory, and decided not to push the point.
:- )
Jerry:
You’ve articulated the crux of it. She has draped the cloak of empirical analysis over her work, but the truth is that she began with the conclusion that “there should be dialog.”
As the saying goes, “There’s lies, damn lies—and there’s statistics.”
Ecklund –
“religion can no longer be completely isolated from scientific scholarship. Instead, university scientists must begin to point out to their students those places where religion might legitimately influence and contribute to their work.”
Must? Must??
The mask slipped there.
Well, OK. I get her position in general. Even the “must”…if she’s not a proponent for her own ideas, then who will be?
But let’s take it to the next step.
Ms. Ecklund: Please provide examples of “those places where religion might legitimately influence and contribute to their work.”
Stem cell research? Surely not, and Dr. Collins will disagree with you on that one.
Studies of any new therapeutics? How can religion “legitimately” influence and contribute here? Should we include a prayer option along with placebo? Or dispense with the investigational agent altogether?
Studies of the cosmos? Are you saying that we should ask religion which type of instrument to use and which section of sky to look at?
Particle physics?
Computer technology?
Engineering?
Anything?
Seriously, if you’re going to make a claim like this, you’re going to have to A) provide specific examples where scientific consensus could be altered by religion, and B) provide specific examples where every religion everywhere shares the precise same view on the issue.
Waiting…..waiting…..waiting…..
I thought not.
Faith is hardly on the wane. Stating it as if it were true doesn’t make it true. If anything, faith of one sort or another is extremely vibrant these days, and possibly even growing. Atheists would like this not to be so, but any good scientist will tell you that wishing that something were true is not the same thing as having that something be true.
And burying your head in the sand doesn’t make it so…
In 2008 a survey of Canada found that 23% did not believe in a God. The US is a difficult case to make as atheists are the most despised group in America, polling worse than gays in public acceptance.
This tends to make the statistics bounce around depending on the exact question asked. Dr. Coyne’s statistic was from the bottom-end of the survey. Some surveys go significantly higher when the nasty “atheist” word is taken out of the question.
And when we get to “no religion,” there’s some moving. For example, in 1983 68% of all Britons were self-identified as “Christians.” By 2007, that had dropped to 48% while the “no religion” category rose from 31% to 46%, almost over-taking religion.
According to a 2009 survey by Trinity College, the percentage of Americans stating they had “no religion” doubled from 1990 to 15%.
15% of the population, if organized into a single group, would represent the second or third largest “sect” of religious thought, behind Catholics and Baptists.
At present, more people are willing to declare themselves “without religion” than “without god”.
The whole “spiritual but not religious” group is another large subset of the population that would declare itself atheist were the negative repercussions not so strong.
The fastest growing segment of the “no religion, no god” population is among the young.
Because of the increase in population of the US, there is an increase in the raw numbers of believers. But as a percentage of the population, the numbers are plummeting fast.
Andrew: You should know better. Around here, never make an assertion that you can’t back up with data and plenty of it.
What you’re responding to is the highly vocal nature of the religious. The shouting from the religious right continues unabated. That’s not evidence of vibrancy. It’s evidence of a dying system complaining loudly.
We can only wish, but I read “spiritual but not religious” as, “I want to hold on to the idea that I can possess extraordinary knowledge.” I suspect many would be Buddhist except that it clashes with lifestyle.
No doubt, religion is still a force to be reckoned with. But of all the categories, Agnostic/Atheist is the only one that is growing. Not in leaps and bounds, but it is growing.
Any good scientist will also tell you to have some fucking data. Which you don’t.
Religion is vibrant alright, like an erupting volcano. Oh shit, it’s coming right for us!
That was addressed to Mr. Cort, by the way, whose website states that spiritual texts are a form of psychological instruction. Cuckoo!
“…wishing that something were true is not the same thing as having that something be true.”
Gee, I would think it is theists who are guilty of doing that rather than atheists. Some part of me does wish that there was a caring god, but I know that doesn’t make it so.
“… any good scientist will tell you that wishing that something were true is not the same thing as having that something be true.”
Yet, whenever a scientist or atheist does exactly that & points out that religious faith – belief in the extraordinary without even ordinary evidence – is precisely the sort of wishful thinking you describe & deride, we are accused of being militant or bigoted or hate-filled or intolerant and bang – chat over. We are told by the New Framers to “tone it down” in case we turn anyone off the dialogue. We are told to hush by “sophisticated” apologists, lest we upset any timid little church-mice. We are told that our insistence on evidence is narrow-minded materialism. We are told that science doesn’t know everything, which is followed by implications that religion automatically fills any gaps in our knowledge.
Or it’s suggested, condescendingly, that we haven’t read enough contemporary liberal theology and shouldn’t be so literal – although literalism is fine for the church-mice, who need their fragile illusions lest they lose their moral compass at any hint that their religion is merely a collection of ancient myths, unsupported by fact & propagated & bastardised over centuries by political opportunists.
It seems to me that no “good scientist” has ever told you what you maintain they would. That, or you completely ignored them if they did.
Having people that believe that God is the basis of morality involved in a discussion of a moral issue is like having a mathematician that believes it is valid to divide by zero involved in a mathematical proof.
To my mind, any moral argument predicated on the existence of a god has to be considered invalid. They may indeed be able to arrive at a correct answer but until you know that their answers do not rely on those faulty premises you really can’t trust their arguments.
faith is believing something no matter how obvious it is that it is nonsense. religious beliefs are not true or false because they are nonsense. there can’t be any evidence for or against them.andrew cort’s comment is stupid.
Great post. Now, how do we wake people the fuck up!?!?!?!
By being aggressive and strident and militant, of course!
Don’t forget “shrill”!
Doesn’t payment for “coddling” relate to some purported ancient profession?
This was so good. I just had to say it. You totally pegged this so damn well.
But I love those dialogs – I get to tell the other side what idiots they are and they walk away thinking that the dialog wasn’t such a good idea because those horrible baby-eating godless people are so rude.
It looks like Eckland’s found a good living – ceilingcat knows she can’t get a job doing anything useful.
I’m one of the shrillest, for I utter this: No fool says in her heart, there is no God. We rationalists proclaim no God from the roof tops! We ignostics find that no referents for Him as that Primary Cause,etc. exist, so He cannot exist!The teleonomic argument alone eviscerates those putative referents!
And to go to the supernaturalist jugular: no God is our potter, and we are no God’s clay! We owe nothing to any putative God! Lamberth’s argument from autonomy notes that due to our level of consciousness- the United Nations also notes that – we are independent beings! Any God would have to travel that one -way street that the problem of Heaven notes!
According to these natural and social scientists, their students ought to understand religiously-based forms of science ethics
OK, what? What are these? What system of science ethics do they advocate, specifically? Be concrete. What is it?
To follow up on what I said a few minutes ago…
A chat about scientific ethics is great. Anyone can contribute. Real democracy requires that people, of any and every perspective, contribute – that arguments be made and defended and fought.
Of course, this isn’t what they’re calling for, is it? They want the nonreligious to go along, to accept in advance and in the abstract the alleged substance and credibility of the undefined “religious” views.
No. Your views aren’t pretty shapes and colors. Politics doesn’t allow for nonsubstantive acceptance or appreciation of ideas. Make your argument AND ARGUE IT. If you’re not willing to do that, get out of the ring. You have no place in decision-making.
“Both of us, for example, are flat-out atheists, but we’d both identify ourselves as having an “affiliation” with Judaism—we are cultural Jews. ”
I got a chuckle out of this. My lunch buddy is a foreign language professor. She and I were debating something (as usual) and when she said something about being a Jew “you Christians”, I said “what are you talking about; we are both atheists!” She replied: “yes, but I am a Jewish atheist and you are a Christian atheist”.
Strangely enough, I got what she meant.
The same joke is made about an atheist in Northern Ireland – “Yes but are you a protestant atheist or a catholic atheist?”
Unfortunatly I wasn’t able to see the talk, but my understanding is that Russell Blackord recently addressed a number of religious folks in Australia at the Crossway Conference — politely, in a friendly manner, and unflinchingly defending the standpoint that criticism of religion is necessart, and that the New Atheism, far from being either “new” or “militant,” actually has a lot going for it.
He’s got a post on it here that’s worth reading:
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/09/on-crossway-conference.html
My stance on negotiating with religion, from ‘Lisa Gets an A’–
Religion doesnt have anything I want.
“But these precepts are based not on scripture, but, as Plato pointed out so long ago, on considerations that are antecedent to and independent of religion.”
Well Plato was more direct when he asserted that these percepts will have to be independent of GOD the creator. The interpreter “The Religion” in any case has no locus standi as a true interpreter. Of course this makes the real objective moral values independent of GOD and that shoots down his all powerful image.