My book precis in The Scientist

May 19, 2015 • 10:15 am

The Scientist asked me to provide them with a short summary of Faith versus Fact—not an easy thing to do given the diversity of topics in the book. However, I complied, and they’ve just published, for Book Day, my short opinion piece “Science & Religion: A centuries-old war rages on.” Thanks to the editors for giving me the chance to have my say.

In the next two weeks there will be a number of podcasts and pieces associated with The Albatross, and I’ll put the links here. Some of the material you’ll be familiar with (especially if you’ve read or are reading the book), while some are tangential and have new stuff in them.

66 thoughts on “My book precis in The Scientist”

  3. Amazon says my copy of your book will arrive today, 19 May 2015.

    Looking forward to it.

    Regards,

    John

      1. Hey how come my book didn’t come with a bonus camera accessory?! 😉

          1. About two inches by five by one, with a black plastic body and a clear plastic portion, possibly angled?

  4. Excellent piece. If I had read something like this when I was in my teens I would have assumed it would have led to mass conversions to atheism. Since then I’ve learned how immune the faithful are to reason.
    I predict they’ll read this and find some point they can take issue with, no matter how trivial, and think they’ve demolished the argument. For example, they’ll take your assertion that religion doesn’t change and say “aha! Not true! We’ve gained greater insights into God over the millennia”

    1. I predict they won’t read it at all. They’ll still review it negatively of course.

  6. Yes – concise, well-written, and on-target. It deserves the widest possible reading audience. I just received my copy of The Albatross today and cannot wait to start reading it.

    Jerry – Are you planning a book/lecture tour or any scheduled appearances??

  7. Very good article Jerry. Easy to read, no wasted fluff, touched on all the major points and right on target. Congratulations.

  8. I was just notified by Amazon that the Kindle version is available. Just finished downloading. Congrats Jerry!! I can’t wait to read it. I’m sure it will be as enjoyable as WEIT.

  11. The ways that religion makes truth claims about the real world are multifarious and sometimes less obvious than overt pronouncements (“evolution is not true”).

    In some way or another, the gender of God came up recently, and I thought about what effect the belief that God’s gender is male has on people. Among most of my religious friends, calling God a “her”, or worse an “it”, would be considered in very poor form, if not actually blasphemous. Those same religious friends would, of course, scoff at the idea that God has a penis, or a Y chromosome (it’s borderline blasphemous even to raise the question of God’s penis or Y chromosome, though). So what can they possibly mean by the taboo against describing God as anything but male? They mean, of course, that God is psychologically “male”, and that he takes on male roles. And so, without saying so explicitly, belief in some kind of rigid psychological “maleness” and natural male roles is asserted, and asserted strongly because it’s taboo to call God a “her” (in most circles). Worse, some sense of the inferiority of “femaleness” is strongly implied in the taboo.

    Now one can imagine a Sophisticated Believer rejecting the literal truth of Genesis and it’s female-inferiority intimations, as well as all of the other overt misogyny in the Bible, but still feeling very attached to the maleness of God and, in that way, still making a strong truth claim about the physical world. Whether or not there is any truth to the claim, the implication of psychological “maleness” and “femaleness” and their implied natural roles is clearly a truth claim about the actual world, and so in the provence of science.

    1. And so… if science discovers that there is not an actual psychological “maleness”, then of course science is undermining a large aspect of what people might otherwise think of as “mere theology”. That is, it’d be easy for someone to say that the gender of God is not a truth claim that can come into conflict with science, so that religious people are free to think what they want about it without fear of conflict with science, but I think rather clearly it is.

      (And all this is to say nothing of the blurriness of gender in corner cases… could God be psychologically XXY?)

    2. I’ve noticed that religions/spiritualities which consciously refer to god as a “her” also seem to buy into gender roles — though they “flip” which side is now the wiser and better. The Goddess is more compassionate, accepting, gentle, intuitive, loving, and mystical than those awful versions out of the war-like and domineering patriarchy. A female God is soooo feminist and now we no longer have to worry about endorsing any sexist roles.

      Uh huh.

    3. In re: theistic genetalia. I have a (female) friend, who, in addition to other salty language, will sometimes swear by ‘god’s c-ock’, which will often really get the godbotters going.

      The Romans used to regularly use epithet’s related to the genitals of deities. These were considered impolite.

  13. Very nice précis.

    Slightly off topic, Hemant did a very nice review of your book over on his site. He quotes it…and unfortunately the quote has a typo. While its somewhat trivial, I hope that the typo is a cut and paste error by him and not in the book. In any event, if you want to see his review, its here.

      1. I’m reminded of Dawkins reviewing his galleys, coming across “the Large Hardon [Hadron] Collider.”

  14. My copy is in transit from Amazon Canada.

    I wonder if there will be a secret word for your CFI Canada book signing on June 10 (for which I have already ordered tickers) ?

    1. I have it on good authority that will be “Maru”. I hope I haven’t let the cat out of the bag. <- See what I did there?

  15. But even if science and religion are incompatible, what’s the harm? Most of the damage comes from something inherent in many faiths: proselytizing.

    Part of the real damage done by spiritual modes of thought processes is the frequent failure of the faithful to distinguish between “proselytising” and “persuading.” If religion’s worst crime was setting out its views on public ground and trying to change people’s minds, then that alone wouldn’t be a problem. Letting the truth and merits of the beliefs duke it out fairly on the basis of reason and evidence means that the factual claims would eventually sort themselves out … and religion would gradually morph into poetic humanism.

    But they can’t do that. They’re terrified of approaching God as a hypothesis. Proselytizing, as Jerry points out, involves methods of indoctrination and trickery. It also involves strategies designed to deflect and reinterpret just criticism.

    That’s why I suspect that one of the most common responses to the book will be a sly and disingenuous attempt to change the topic, the definitions, and the focus. Pompous reviewers will smugly explain that “proselytizing” is what the WRONG religious folks do and pretend that THEY live their faith by doing good publicly and believing creeds privately. And they’ll then ignore or reframe the obvious fact that they guide their children towards faith as a virtue.

    1. To a large degree the conflict between science and religion boils, in my mind, to this:

      Is credulity a virtue?

      Science says “No”, and this is very deep structurally to science. Religion says “Yes”, and this is very deep structurally to religion. Ergo, conflict.

    2. Good point. It seems they don’t have any worries about approaching God as a hypothesis as long as they are in the driver’s seat and playing by their rules. But when confronted by people who won’t let them get away with that, people who will attempt to hold them to standards similar to those typical of science, that they are terrified of. Or at least very indignant.

  17. The article is well written but I would have emphasized more abstractly that religious people either choose not to want to know the truth about our universe or they put their God in the places that science does not have an answer, e.g. dark energy.

    The conflict is changing because the landscape is changing. There is far too much information, empowered by science, either directly or indirectly and, consequently, religion can no longer be insular as it was. The conflict is stridently enforced by the title: FAITH vs. FACT.

    This is where we are headed. The only bastion the religious have is to say I believe this shit because I pray that it is true. That’s all they have left.

    Amazon informed me last night my copies are in the mail. Woohoo. I am also going to call the local library to get one if they have not already.

  20. I’m already reading it on my kindle. I love your style and your thinking. Always pertinent and to the point without useless digressions. You are a superb asset for the party of reason. I loved Hitchens and greatly admire Sam Harris and Dawkins, but you stand second to none. Your voice is uniquely precious.
    keep up the good work.

  22. Annoyingly, Amazon UK says I can’t have it until June 25, and then at a considerably higher price. There’s no Kindle option either.

    1. I’m sure you can get the Kindle version from the US store, which is what I did, as it is not yet available in the Amazon site for Mexico.

  23. Enticing summary PCC; I hope it increases your book sales. You must be a jumble of nerves today (in a good way)!

  24. In the end, in both science and everyday life, it’s always good policy to hold your beliefs with a tenacity proportional to the evidence supporting them.

    YES!

    And I’d like to think that there’s at least an hint of an echo of my own rhetoric in that sentence. Seeing this sentiment expressed in such a prominent venue…gives me great hope that maybe, just possibly perhaps, we aren’t so completely fucked after all….

    Congrats!

    b&

  25. Received my ibook copy of Faith vs Fact last night and immediately read the intro. Very promising, and a clear explanation of why you felt the need to write this. I look forward to the rest.

  26. As the great naturalistic philosopher David Armstrong says:

    “Philosophy, religion, the pronouncements of mystics, other systems of belief, may be fine things to have and engage with. But, I suggest, none of them contain anything beyond belief. Or, to be on the safe side, if they do contain any knowledge, it is not reliable knowledge in the sense that it is not socially identifiable in the way that knowledge in the rational and the empirical sciences is identifiable. For instance, just maybe you know that God exists, or just maybe I know that God does not exist (we can’t both be knowers in this matter of course), but, situated as we are, there is no way to settle the question between us. Neither of us, I think, can rationally claim to have knowledge, even if one of us does have it.”

    (Armstrong, D. M. “The Scope and Limits of Human Knowledge.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84, no. 2 (2006):159-166.)

    [Armstrong’s brilliant paper, which I consider essential reading, is freely available as a lecture transcript: http://www.pufendorf.se/2004_lecture_1.html%5D

    One major difference between science and religion is that, in principle, scientists are epistemically entitled to claim knowledge and theists are not. Religion is a “way of believing,” not a “way of knowing.”

    2. OMG, I skimmed your post and for one horrible moment I thought you were suggesting we read more of the execrable Karen Armstrong. What a relief to be wrong!

      1. God forbid! The only thing they have in common is their surname. Armstrong is an atheist, a naturalist, and a materialist.

  27. Superb precis by Professor Ceiling Cat! Now I’m looking forward to it even more (and I’ve been plotzing for a week). Should be in the mail tomorrow!

  29. I am about 30% into the book. It’s pretty good so far. A couple of minor points, though.

    Apophatic theologians don’t say that nothing can be said about God. They say, basically, that whatever you can say is not God. It’s far from “nothing”, more like… everything. The ultimate source of sophisticated theology.

    Dark matter IS matter (and energy for that matter.) It is perfectly conceivable that this hypothesis is wrong, and the observations leading to this hypothesis can be explained by some phenomena other than unknown forms of matter, but then it would be incorrect to call it “dark matter”.

  30. Europe now has its very own counterpart to Francis Collins.

    My elation at finding a woman for the first time named Director General of CERN, home of the Large Hadron Collider and the Higgs Boson, was brutally sucker-punched upon finding Fabiola Gianotti admitting to her belief in god, cowering behind the execrable excuse of non overlapping magisteria.

    Here in her native Italian interviewed on Italian TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yYO77zjGIU

    Here a (badly but serviceable) translated copy of commentary on her statements: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=http://unacasasullaroccia.com/2015/01/19/fabiola-gianotti-io-credo-in-dio-scienza-e-fede-sono-compatibili/&prev=search

    When asked whether science is compatible with faith, she answers: “Absolutely, there are no contradictions.”

    Perhaps sending her a signed copy of Faith Versus Fact (co-signed by Peter Higgs) would be a timely intervention attempt.

    1. You’d think so many centuries of a close up view of the papacy would have convinced the most obtuse Italian that it’s all lies and politics. How disappointing.

      1. The fact that she’s a physicist, the discipline among which one is least likely to find godbothering tendencies, makes this especially hard to take.

        The fact that she’s a woman and at least nominally (in the positive sense of the of late so much maligned word) feminist AND a catholic – a church which continues to be one of the world’s greatest bastions of misogyny – makes this unbearable.

  31. “[…] in both science and everyday life, it’s always good policy to hold your beliefs with a tenacity proportional to the evidence supporting them.”

    That’s going into my list of favorite quotes.

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