I find myself deluged with accommodationist articles today, so we’ll have one more post after this, and then, if you’re good boys and girls, we can have some cute animals.
Nobody expects the New Yorker to come down on religion. And indeed, although there are pieces that in effect express the nonbelief of their authors (see here, for instance), there’s always some lip-service paid to faith, or some atheism-dissing (in my case, my love of cats and Motown songs was characterized as “irrational love,” entirely similar to that seen in religion). On some fine day, maybe I’ll open my New Yorker to find a take-no-prisoners piece on the perfidies of faith. But that day will come when, say, we have an atheist President in the U.S.
At any rate, the New Yorker has patted itself on the back for defending science in a new piece (free online) by Michael Specter, “Pope Francis and the GOP’s bad science.” (For non-Americans, the “GOP” stands for the “Grand Old Party,” i.e., Republicans.) The author’s credential are these:
Michael Specter has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998, and has written frequently about AIDS, T.B., and malaria in the developing world, as well as about agricultural biotechnology, avian influenza, the world’s diminishing freshwater resources, and synthetic biology.
And his message is that the Pope, religious though he is, is infinitely more accepting of science than those climate- and evolution-denialist Republican politicians who dominate science policy in Congress:
It’s a shame that there is no provision in the Constitution of the United States that would permit Pope Francis to serve as the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
. . . That’s too bad, because the Pope believes that science, rational thought, and data all play powerful and positive roles in human life. The senators seem as if they do not. Last month, Francis made a lot of news when, in an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, he said, essentially, that the Catholic Church had no problem with evolution or with the Big Bang theory of the origins of the universe. “When we read the account of Creation in Genesis, we risk imagining that God was a magician, complete with an all-powerful magic wand. But that was not so. … Evolution in nature does not conflict with the notion of Creation,’’ Francis said.
. . . Still, this Pope made a point of talking about evolution—and to do so at a time when the men and women we have chosen to represent us in Washington often equate support for Darwinism with eternal damnation.
Specter goes on to decry, correctly, that the House Science & Technology committee is peopled with representatives who call anthropogenic climate change a hoax, and don’t accept evolution. He also claims, and he’s probably right again, that Americans used to elect politicians who didn’t make their names by attacking settled science. He uses Bobby Jindal as an example of how times have changed:
Jindal, who was a Rhodes scholar and before that received an honors degree in biology from Brown University, was recently asked at a public forum if he believed in evolution. “The reality is I was not an evolutionary biologist,” he responded, as if study in that one field was required to address the issue. He then went on to say that local school systems should decide “how they teach science” in their classrooms.
No, they shouldn’t get to decide what qualifies as legitimate science, as even the Pope seems to understand. In his speech at the Pontifical Academy, he said that, at least since the creation of the universe, we have all followed a logical, scientifically defined path—not a path determined by parish priests, reactionary American senators, or local school systems.
“I am happy to express my profound esteem and my warm encouragement to carry forward scientific progress,’’ the Pope said. It would be nice if we could elect political leaders capable of that kind of thought. But, in this country, that might take a miracle.
Where Specter goes wrong is claiming that the Pope is down with evolution, and therefore is down with science, and therefore would be a good person to head a congressional committee. And that’s just wrong.
True, Francis has expressed sentiments saying that evolution did happen, and for that liberals have fallen all over themselves extolling the Pontiff’s scientific acumen. “What a great move forward for accepting evolution!”, they cry.
The problem is, as I pointed out in The New Republic, what Francis said has been church policy all along. Move along folks: Francis said nothing new. The Catholic Church has accepted the process of evolution, in a limited way, since Pope Pius XII. But there are several caveats to this:
1. Humans are an exception to naturalistic evolution, as God instilled souls into us somewhere in the hominin lineage. That is not, as Specter maintains, the church’s position that, “at least since the creation of the universe, we have all followed a logical, scientifically defined path.” Since when have souls been a pit stop on the scientifically defined path of evolution?
2. The church still maintains that Adam and Eve were the historic and sole ancestors of all modern humans.
There is no evidence for claim #1: it’s what Anthony Grayling calls an “arbitrary superfluity,” added to a scientific theory to satisfy the emotional needs of Catholics. And #2 just flies in the face of evoution per se, for we know from population genetics that at no point in the last million years did the human population sink below about 12,500 individuals, much less to two (or eight, if you take Noah, his wife, and his sons). That’s settled Church doctrine, and is explicit. There’s no metaphor in the Church’s insistence on the historicity of Adam and Eve. The policy below is from Humani Generis, written in 1950 and still representing Catholic dogma:
Not much wiggle room there, eh? You can’t metaphorize it, either, as it says that it’s wrong to think that Adam either wasn’t our historical father or that he “represented a certain number of first parents” (the tactic that metaphorizers often take).
So, really, souls and two historical ancestors of modern Homo sapiens? Not to mention Francis’s belief in Satan, demonic possession, and guardian angels. Oh, and there’s that “original sin.” What, exactly is that?
Is Francis a man we want to hold up as a model of scientific belief to oppose to Republicans? I don’t think so. He’s infested with all the metaphysical superstitions of Catholicism, and really said nothing new. The view that he’s breathing a love of science into Catholicism is based solely on wishful thinking. And when you hear someone like Specter put the Pope on a pedestal of science, without mentioning his other beliefs I’ve mentioned, you know you’re dealing with someone who is trying to osculate religion, and who has not done his homework about what the Vatican really thinks about evolution.
It would be nice if The New Yorker were as honest about the Church’s beliefs as is The New Republic.
h/t: Stephen Q. Muth, Butter’s staff ~
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It would have been nice if Specter’s point had been “for chrissake even the Pope is more pro-evolution than many members of Congress. That’s how bad it is.”
Which is technically true. The Pope is not as bad as he might be. He’s less wrong — and as Asimov pointed out, there is a relativity of wrong. Specter should have lauded him with faint praise.
Then again, nobody is as bad as they might be.
True, but we’re not measuring hypotheticals. The people actually heading our environmental and science committees are orders of magnitude worse than the Pope.
Still, it says a lot about modern Republicans when the Pope has a better (not perfect) take on science than they do.
And since they’re probably not all dolts–that basically means a lot of them are simply lying through their teeth (see Jindal).
But what’s new?
Or, basically, what Sastra said. 😀
…and what I was all ready to post, until I fortunately had the luck to come here after both you and she had already beaten me to the punch.
The Pope may well be a batshit fucking insane anti-science lunatic, but at least he’s not as crazy as the GOP chairs of the Congressional science committees….
b&
It’s much more fun said colorfully! 😀
Plus he gets better hats and is expected to s**t in the woods
Fundamentalist Protestants are generally anti-science.
Catholics are more often pseudo-science.
(Would like to know what Ken Miller thinks of Adam and Eve. In general, I thihk he’s the smartest religious scientist around.)
I wasn’t able to find anything definitive, but I did find strong hints from a number of people attacking him that he considers Genesis to be an allegory divinely conveyed to the ancient Hebrews because they wouldn’t have been able to make sense of Darwinian Evolution.
Perhaps somebody else might have better luck….
b&
The people who hold that position seem to have a very low opinion of either their god’s ability to explain things or of the mental capacity of their god’s chosen people. The paired concepts of “I made things to change over time, even life” and “I made the world a really, REALLY long time ago, so there was a lot of time” are not ones I’d expect a being worthy of godhood to have trouble explaining, even to ignorant simpletons.
Of course, doing so would undermine one of the main themes of Genesis – that humans are super-duper-special – but I’m sure a deity possessing effectively limitless IQ could have figured out a way to keep it in there.
Your analysis seems spot-on to me.
b&
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the New Yorker will never do waht you suggest no matter. The plum red malignancy of Timothy Cardinal Dolan couched over the city like a Sith Lord will just go red satin and pearls all over the lobby and dozens of tight little round-headed middle age women would come by and tsk-tsk and wag their fingers and say the rosary until every one went nuts and ran off to a bar.
So, so sorry; I apologize = I cannot seem ‘to help’ it — to help this dis – ease of mine: when it comes to religions, I ‘see’ homophones or homonyms just everywhere — as when “is based solely on wishful thinking” becomes in my brain’s eyeball “is based soully on wishful thinking.”
Blue
“When we read the account of Creation in Genesis, we risk imagining that God was a magician, complete with an all-powerful magic wand. But that was not so. … Evolution in nature does not conflict with the notion of Creation,’’ Francis said.
If God is not a magician with a magic wand, then what about Jesus?
Thank you Scientifik – I LOL’d all the way through. 😀
This guy is good, he should become a professional. Seriously, I like it all the more because it puts Jesus’s “miracles” in a light where I usually see them. Big deal, you turned water into wine, produced some loaves and fishes, fixed up the odd disabled person. But doing anything about 20,000 hunger victims a day – too many football games too worry about.
Actually, I don’t think Jindal ever said he didn’t accept naturalistic evolution. For all I know, he may hold views that are better than the Pope’s. What he made clear was that he has no integrity: If local school authorities want to fill childrens’ heads with misbegotten trash, he’s down with it. He is willing to kiss the ass of GOP moneybags and prostrate himself to placate his redneck constituency. He has no problem with turning his back on all the effort he put forth in earning a Rhodes scholarship as a biology major. He is a quintessential GOP intellectual, aware that one must appeal to the worst in his constituents because his policies only benefit the wealthiest of his constituents.
Ugh. Too true.
Too many Democrats also serve the same masters.
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– And he’d also like to be President, so he’d better be kissing every ass that sticks out!
The phrase “perfidies of faith” is an interesting example of an apparent (though not real) oxymoron or at least a paradox, due to double-meanings.
“Perfidy” literally means to break faith or breach faith.
So “perfidies of faith” means the faith-breaking of faith. 🙂
I wonder if other readers or Professor Firmament Feline (if I may so paraphrase) can think of other similar phrases.
I had no idea there was a sin gene and it was past down to all. So it was evolution that caused all this problem in the bible in the first place.
When Jesus died for all this sin I’m guessing the trait was ended and we all lived happily every after.
When I read of sins we are supposed to have from birth on, I occasionally think of the SIN from Shadowrun: http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/System_Identification_Number
In this context “Jesus died for our SINs” gets a very different ring to it. Maybe the christians are up to something? 😉
The Catholic Church can no more back away from the Adam and Eve fable than can an ardent Creationist, for the same reason: without “original sin”, the whole concept of Christ’s “blood-atonement” becomes totally meaningless, a revelation which, if acknowledged, would be almost as damaging to the church as someone proving conclusively that the resurrection didn’t happen. This current, “We’re all down with scientific knowledge” act is but a sop to try to hang onto the more intelligent members of the church.
One might wonder why, if God REALLY didn’t want Adam and Eve eating the fruit of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, did he put it in the Garden of Eden? Being All-Knowing, God would have already been aware that the serpent would tempt Eve and she would. indeed, eat of the fruit… and… Ooooops! It gets pretty crazy, real quick, as usual……..
A perfect example of how, when one adopts a preconceived notion and then goes on to “work backwards” trying to prove it, history and reality have to be bent or ignored, every time.
Of cource, you always can see it as a test of their obedience. At least, that’s what any decent apologist might say.
I meant to write “say”, not “see”. :*)
Just ignore me. I misread my own sentence. 😛 Sorry for the spam.
I always thought it stood for Grumpy Old People.