Muncie paper produces waffling editorial on mixing science and religion

August 9, 2013 • 9:12 am

If you’re the local paper in Muncie, Indiana, home of Ball State University (BSU) and “Hedingate”, what do you do when you finally have to give your opinion on how the matter was resolved? (That resolution occurred, of course, with President Jo Ann M. Gora’s statement that teaching of intelligent design was not kosher in science classes, and proselytizing for ID or any religion in a public university like BSU was a potential First Amendment problem.) Hedin can no longer teach C. S. Lewis in his science class.

What would a cowardly paper do?  Waffle, of course, giving something to everyone, and avoid expressing any strong opinions.

That’s precisely what the Muncie Star Press does in what I presume is its final and official take on the Hedingate outcome, the lamely titled, “Ball State adds clarity to science-religion debate.” An excerpt:

Gora’s statements should settle the issue. “Intelligent design is overwhelmingly deemed by the scientific community as a religious belief and not a scientific theory,” she wrote. “Therefore, intelligent design is not appropriate content for science courses.”

Consider it case closed to the murky mingling of science and religion.

Yet the debate over where we come from and how we got here will continue. If one seeks the scientific view, that will be found in science classes. Intelligent design or pure creationism and other religion-based theories are limited to humanities or social science courses. We see no conflict here so long as courses are clearly defined in the course catalogs, and students are fully aware of what they are signing up to study.

Of course there is conflict there—for the many BSU students, faculty, and Indiana citizens who think that intelligent design is science! The paper is simply regurgitating what Gora did and avoiding taking a strong stand against creationism.

And, to top it of, the paper winds up with a ringing endorsement of—accommodationism:

Gora clearly drew the line between science and religion at Ball State. Does that mean science and religion are incompatible? Hardly. We think many churchgoers (certainly not all) have discarded a literal interpretation of the creation account found in the Bible’s book of Genesis.

Here’s a good way of thinking about science and religion according to the National Academy of Sciences. Both “should be viewed as different ways of understanding the world rather than as frameworks that are in conflict with each other.”

Well, 40% of Americans have not discarded a literal interpretation of creationism, and only 15% adhere to the scientific view of a purely naturalistic process of evolution. For those 80% or so who either reject evolution or think God guided it, science and religion remain incompatible.  As for the “different ways of understanding the world,” the paper of course neglects to say what religion helps us understand about the world.

I didn’t expect more from this paper, which has pirouetted on the fence during this whole debate. They’ll surely not win a Pulitzer Prize for their pusillanimity.

33 thoughts on “Muncie paper produces waffling editorial on mixing science and religion”

  1. “We see no conflict here so long as courses are clearly defined in the course catalogs, and students are fully aware of what they are signing up to study.”

    They said about the healing powers of energy crystals and voodoo witch doctors.

  2. I found this whole article hard to understand as to what their point was. It seemed a mix of pointing out what everyone else has already said and some weak “there, there, there” to the offended religious crowd.

  5. The Muncie editorial is an example of what Adlai Stevenson called “BOMFOG”: Brotherhood of Man, Fatherhood of God.

  6. This may only be tangential to the topic but my irritation with the NAS is rekindled easily, particularly when they’re comments are used to support accomodationism.

    As long as science organizations continue lending the credibility of science to the accomodationists perspective, we’ll never here the end of it. I think a concerted effort to get the fence sitting science organizations off the fence would well be worth it.

    AKA Rick R

    1. Absolutely. The NAS’s support for accommodationism is particularly damaging, because it’s such a highly respected organization. I can’t believe its position is intellectually sincere. It’s just a cynical political calculation – they think have to pretend that science and religion are compatible because if they said science and religion are in conflict it would undermine public support for science.

      1. To be blunt, the NAS, like many other important public institutions in the US, is scared silly of offending the f***ing xtianists.

        Far better had the Muncie Star Press said, in plain words, that the separation of church and state benefits religion as well as the a-religious. The xtianists probably think that if they can institute a theocracy, it’ll be their flavor of theology that triumphs, but there’s no guarantee that this would be the case. Who knows? Maybe it would be a Christian Science theocracy, or some idiot snake-handling theology, or (Dog forbid!) Catholicism! Or, Dog help us all, a scieno theocracy! Man your e-meters, everyone, and tighten your fundoshis: there’s hard work ahead clearing the entire populace!

        The fundagelicals make a common mistake of thinking that because other sects and cults support some of the same things they do that they support fundagelicalism in everything. ‘Tain’t so!

        Wanna see some real infighting? Go ahead and install a theocracy in some backwater and then watch the fighting over just who gets to be king of the mountain.

      2. When polled the vast majority of NAS members -as is inevitable where hi IQs congregate- are found to reject the god(s) hypotheses.

        So the NAS appears not even to be representing the position of its members.

  7. “Yet the debate over where we come from and how we got here will continue.”

    “different ways of understanding the world ?”

    As you always say, these folks are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the mass of intellectually challenged buffoons that just “make shit up” and expect the rest of us to accept it or seriously debate the merits of their made-up bullshit.

    This is what my local-yokel newspaper does every freakin’ day of the week. They even employ certified lunatics on their staff whose sole duty is to propagate and advance this kind of made-up shit.

    And they’re experts at it!

    1. I guess my ‘local-yokel newspaper’ is marginally better than yours: it doesn’t even have an editorial page on Mondays!

  8. “We see no conflict here so long as courses are clearly defined in the course catalogs, and students are fully aware of what they are signing up to study.”

    Uh-huh. Apparently they don’t put too much emphasis on how to determine what is so and what isn’t. This editorial makes it sound as if science and humanities are just promoting different but equal “explanations”. This is what happens when courses focus on transmitting information as opposed to understanding how knowledge is created; that is, through reasoning and evidence.

  9. What exactly does it mean for a “paper” to have an opinion”? Who, at the paper, gets to decide what the paper believes? What if people at the paper disagree?

    It might not just be an issue of equivocating in front of the public, it might be a political issue within the paper.

    1. “Who, at the paper, gets to decide what the paper believes?”

      That is decided by HiPPO. (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.)

    2. In theory, the “paper’s” opinion is that of the publisher.

      In practice, publishers can’t be bothered to have an “opinion” on every issue that comes down the pike. So, they hire people who are “editorial page editors”. Those people are usually old timers from the area who are political allies (same party) as the publisher. Never say never, but I’d bet you can count on one hand the number of editorial page editors who aren’t in the same political party as the publisher.

      They’re then given pretty much free rein, unless the publisher decides to specifically weigh in on something.

      This particular editorial smells of “waffle”. Which means that it doesn’t really offer an opinion, but only offers a way for those who are wrong about the issue to have an “out”.

      1. I live about 2 hours from Muncie. The daily printed newspaper, sold on newsstands and home-delivered to subscribers, is just as endangered in Muncie, Indiana as it is elsewhere. Think of how dependent this newspaper is on local advertisers, and consider how much easier it would be to avoid displeasing those key sources of revenue by taking a stale, soggy accommodationist position in an editorial. Hard to go wrong in trying to prop up vague religiosity.

  10. “For those 80% or so who either reject evolution or think God guided it, science and religion remain incompatible.”

    My take would be quite different for those who believe in theistic evolution: Those who think God guided evolution think that science and religion ARE compatible; that science shows us the processes by which it occurred, but that God set those processes in motion.

    1. That is still incompatible with what the scientific evidence shows. The evidence shows that no decent gods were involved at all. Any explanation that inserts gods at any point is not scientifically justified. Christians make a lot of unjustifiable assertions, your take would just be one of those hollow statements.

  11. I believe it is correct to think that religious people can either be accomodationist or not. Some religious people believe that science and religion are compatible, while others do not. When they adopt a metaphysical definition of their universe, they can define the relation between science and religion however they like.

    However, most religious people do not think about science or, ironically, religion, which is unfortunate, because if they did quite a few of them would become worried or insecure that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible.

  12. Here’s a good way of thinking about science and religion according to the National Academy of Sciences. Both “should be viewed as different ways of understanding the world rather than as frameworks that are in conflict with each other.”

    Here’s a better way to think about science and religion: both should be viewed as different ways of understanding the world … which are in conflict with each other.

    There. I think I have come up with a good compromise between two opposing ways of viewing the relationship, borrowing from each.

  13. Well, a telescope and a kaleidoscope give two different views of the world, but you’ll probably get more useful information from the first of these.

    If science and religion are like two countries with a history of conflict, I have no objection to anyone personally holding dual citizenship, but a trade agreement would have to be ruled out to safeguard the autonomy of science.

    I’m personally more ok with professional practicing scientists who are religious than with armchair religious thinkers, who are weaving spiderweb theories with their only data being vague intuitions.

    1. So, you are all in with the christian idea of waterfalls, that daughters need to be raped for the good of their fathers.

  14. “Intelligent design or pure creationism and other religion-based theories are limited to humanities or social science courses.”
    Well, it’s something, but if this is correct you still have a long way to go. ID and pure creationism don’t belong in social science courses and humanities either, bar one: theology and related stuff.

  15. Here’s a good way of thinking about science and religion according to the National Academy of Sciences. Both “should be viewed as different ways of understanding the world rather than as frameworks that are in conflict with each other.”

    It is the second time on l’affair Hedin that I have had reason to object to, and lament, the assumingly empirically oriented NAS dabble in theological claims.

    And erroneous claims to boot. 2004 it was evident the universe is a result of a spontaneous process, 2006 science showed that prayer doesn’t work [hey, are we channeling Pinker on scientism again?], 2011 some hilarious religion’s ideas of a single human breeder pair was rejected, et cetera. And there has been earlier rejections of astrology, geocentrism, global floods, creationism, to mention but a few examples of former conflict and now science reigning supreme.

    Usually I would say “put up or shut up”, as a way to prompt a proper analysis. Here it is reduced to “shut up”. :-/

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