It would seem so if you take at face value this statement that I found on Facebook:
To most of us, I bet, this statement means that all religions are crazy, as they all make unwarranted truth claims, and the story of Xenu isn’t any loonier than the stories of talking donkeys, smited fig trees, demonized swine, and the Resurrection. But, tracking down the claim, I found that it’s not what it seems. Here’s the full quote from an interview Tyson did with The Daily Beast:
I’m curious what your take on Scientology is, because the intergalactic story of Xenu does encroach on your territory a bit.
So, you have people who are certain that a man in a robe transforms a cracker into the literal body of Jesus saying that what goes on in Scientology is crazy? Let’s realize this: What matters is not who says who’s crazy, what matters is we live in a free country. You can believe whatever you want, otherwise it’s not a free country—it’s something else. If we start controlling what people think and why they think it, we have case studies where that became the norm. I don’t care what the tenets are of Scientology. They don’t distract me. I don’t judge them, and I don’t criticize them.
Yes, it’s a free country, and Tyson is free to avoid judging or criticizing believers and their beliefs. (I think he’s made a conscious decision that being more vociferous about religion is inimical to his career as a science educator and popularizer.) But really, how can he not criticize faith when he says this in the next sentence:
The line I’m drawing is that there are religions and belief systems, and objective truths. And if we’re going to govern a country, we need to base that governance on objective truths—not your personal belief system.
That of course implies criticism of those belief systems as neither valid nor useful for running society. For surely Tyson criticizes those who withhold medical care from their children on religious grounds!
Permit me to break that down a bit.
…then…
I don’t know if he’s elsewhere criticized Scientology, but he sure as hell did criticize Christianity. And he’s equating the two. The math is really quite easy to do.
I think you’re right, Jerry. Neil is likely as flabbergasted as any of us that anybody in this day and age can take any religion seriously and probably has to frequently stifle guffaws of disbelief. Yet he’s clearly afraid, for whatever reason, of being lumped in with “those people,” the ones who draw everybody’s ire for being exactly the same sort of person as who Neil is.
To draw a parallel…it’d be like the stereotypical effeminate gay hairdresser who goes to the ballet with his long-time partner…who doesn’t want to be called “gay” because he’s not a drag queen who marches in parades in San Francisco.
I bet, a decade or two from now, Neil won’t even flinch when somebody calls him an atheist.
b&
I think you’re totally correct. Here’s Neil deGrasse Tyson about why he doesn’t want to be called an atheist or agnostic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzSMC5rWvos
Most of you probably have seen this video already.
I bet he’s not agnostic about Bigfoot or UFOs or leprechauns or any other flavor of spook that goes “bump” in the night…yet he’s agnostic about gods?
And what he claims as his goals, what he’s about, what he does have energy for? Science and education and getting people excited about the world we live in? Squeeze me, but how is that any different from what all the “strident” atheists have devoted their own lives for? You can count on one hand the number of science popularizers of our current generation with as big an impact as Richard Dawkins, and Neil himself might not quite make the cut. And certainly not if one expands the window far enough to include Sagan with his Demon-Haunted World. And let’s not forget Attenborough with the worm that burrows its way out of an infected child’s eye. Even Bill Nye, as much as he bumbles, “gets” it and is today perhaps best known for mopping the floor with the Hamster in a debate — though, granted, only because the Hamster was so profoundly pathetic.
And what bigger barrier is there to getting people excited about reality than religion?
That’s why we’re not a-golf-ists.
Golf players aren’t out there insisting that everybody must play golf. They’re not insisting that humans were divinely created 6,000 years ago just to play golf and that all those who don’t play golf are doomed to an eternity of watching NASCAR — and that we must teach those absurdities as facts in public schools. And golf players aren’t disowning their tennis-playing children; nor are golf players picketing funerals with signs proclaiming, “Tiger hates footballers”; nor are their foreign cricket-loving counterparts defenestrating basketball players and incinerating bowlers and raping young gymnasts.
…but I’m preaching to the choir, I’m sure, alas….
b&
You hit it right on the head. to the point with specifics. My first thoughts were how ingenious Neil was being because I am sure he knows exactly the points you mentioned as to why anti-golfists organizations do not exist etc. He know and has written or spoken about the pervasiveness of Christian influence in politics and public schools or how nonbelievers have been forced to hide their beliefs to keep a job or not to threaten their means of a livelihood or the fear of family rejections or how communities have demanded removal of freethinkers, secular, or atheists type billboards or not allow our ads on a city bus like the have the christians ads over the years. Neil is taking the safer route by claiming “agnostic” and saying “I do ot know , but if they is evidence I am willing to change my mind.” is another way of saying that atheist claim they “know” there is no God! And Neil is not like those atheists. He has no need to join an atheist organization and become an activist! Well, Neil that might be your PR approach but your are a nonbeliever and nonbelievers and atheists including those who want to hide behind the word agnostic, are all atheist! And I watch all your YouTube videos I come across and search for them also! thnk4yurself@yahoo.com
If he was being ingenious, it wouldn’t be as easy to see that he was being disingenuous. 😁
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“all those who don’t play golf are doomed to an eternity of watching NASCAR”
You owe me a keyboard!
cr
Well analogized.
Ben’s got it right here imo. I’ve seen this before, and while I think it’s likely a result of life in the US, I still lost a bit of my enormous respect for him when I saw it.
“I bet he’s not agnostic about Bigfoot or UFOs or leprechauns or any other flavor of spook that goes “bump” in the night…yet he’s agnostic about gods?”
I think the trick is that “agnostic” makes the existence of a deity sound reasonably likely, but “atheist” does not. But even going that far is to grant the belief too much credibility.
I think it works by confusing two senses: the philosophical one of how certain we can be of ideas in general, and the everyday one of how likely an idea actually is. For instance, it’s trivially obvious that anything in science could be overturned by new evidence coming in, so technically we could be “agnostic” about all empirical knowledge. On the other hand, we recognize the difference between someone claiming to have found a new species of moth and someone claiming to have found an alien moth-man that dropped in on a flying saucer from the Sirius star system. A patient and reasonable agnosticism for the former is unremarkable given what we already know, but it’s misplaced for the latter.
However, someone trying to defend an alien moth-man nutjob could cite “agnosticism” in the first sense – the trivially true philosophical-technical sense – and blur the distinction so that they can suggest the second sense – the reasonable if uncertain belief sense – when needed. It’s really a dishonest bait-and-switch to make a belief seem more credible than it really is.
The funny thing is that people who’d rather be called agnostic on the one hand, but who don’t like the comparison with belief in fairies, Bigfoot, etc on the other hand, have the credibility issue completely backwards.
If they actually pay attention, then fairies, Bigfoot, etc are actually MORE believable than a God because they don’t require as radical a rethink of our current objective worldview, cosmology, biology, and science in general. Bigfoot would only require redrawing the map of ape evolution, fairies a modification of the tree of life, UFOs an addition to our understanding of solar systems and their biology, and so on. The existence of a god or gods, especially God with a capital G, would require a complete overhaul of our understanding in almost all scientific fields, from the physical sciences up to social and mind sciences. Either the believers should be more ready to believe the “ridiculous” ideas of fairies and Bigfoot, or they should less ready to believe the religious ones.
Am reminded of Sam Harris’s example of someone’s belief/claim that there is a diamond the size of a refrigerator buried in the back yard.
Yes, he went on the podcast “Rationally Speaking” specifically to defend his distaste for the “atheist” label; it didn’t work for me.
His antipathy towards Dawkins and company is obvious, and he doesn’t want to be thought to be like them. Well, he is.
Just listened to it.
First he says he doesn’t want to be pre-labeled. Later on uses the straw man that he is too complex to be described by 1 English word.
After listening to this I would label him as an atheist in denial and who uses a lot of straw men to convince other people.
I think he might be in denial about the term atheist meaning a position the existence of God and instead insisting that it can be a label that you’re part of some group, should we (tongue-in-cheek) call it Atheist with a capital ‘A’?
I’ve seen other videos where he says you get your 75 years on Earth and that’s it and that if you’re going to bring faith into the lab, he doesn’t want you there because it’s not going to give any answers. So he walks like a duck, talks like a duck but insists he is not in fact, a duck…
He could be a shelduck.
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Oh I see…when Tyson is asked if he’s atheist, he shelduck the question?
😆
> That of course implies criticism of those belief systems as neither valid nor useful for running society.
Shouldn’t that read “valid and useful”? And is he really saying something different here from Hitchens’ “I would leave them alone, if they didn’t insist on shoving their religion down other people’s throats”?
Judging from this video, Neil not only does not identify himself as a strident atheist, but he would prefer not be called an atheist at all.
I’d go further. Tyson’s statement doesn’t just imply criticism of religious belief systems, it directly criticizes and refutes them. It’s the standard old refrain of, “Hey, believe whatever you want, just make sure your beliefs don’t affect me.” In both cases it is a rather direct statement that “your beliefs are crap.” Just a little more polite.
Yes and I think Tyson would be against some of the lunatic practices that harm people in that they rely on faulty thinking.
Of course, I’m a bit more strident and think all religion is harmful and we’d be better off without it. At the same time, I don’t want to force anyone to believe what I believe but would rather persuade them.
This leaves me in a dilemma when it comes to children who have not choice but to be raised with the beliefs of their parents when indoctrinated into religion.
The “Zombie Jesus” and “Raptor Jesus” memes are the best weapon we have in the fight for the sanity of the next generation. Even if a child is brought up in a cloistered environment, the first time he or she encounters that sort of mockery, it’s going to be very corrosive.
…which would be why I hope everybody starts referring to the Bible as (all together, now!) a third-rate ancient faery tale anthology that opens with a story about an enchanted garden with talking animals and an angry wizard; features a talking plant (on fire!) that gives magic wand lessons to the reluctant hero; and ends with an utterly bizarre zombie snuff pr0n fantasy with the king of the undead getting his intestines fondled through a gaping chest wound.
Get even the most devout junior high school student to read and / or hear those words, and, especially in today’s environment, I doubt said child will still be as devout when a junior in college.
b&
A gaping abdominal wound, surely?
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No, it’s the snowman who’s abdominal. Shirley told me herself!
b&
And yet I think his heart is in the right place. As is his gut.
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His gut? Not last I heard from Thomas — and he should know!
Word on the street is that his heart has been replaced by a lump of coal, and his…ah…member…by a carrot found in a puddle of melting snow. Not like Jesus ever used the latter, anyway.
b&
@Ben
“Not like Jesus ever used the latter, anyway.”
I always felt a bit sorry for the poor schmuck about that. But didn’t he ever have it off with Mary Magdalene or somebody… ?
cr
Yes, and all their children were red-headed.
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Well, he’s a fictional character, and one that lots of authors have written stories about. All the stories officially sanctioned by the various popular churches have him as either a perpetual virgin or very carefully ignore the matter, but there’re others over the millennia who’ve written stories that have him eagerly sowing his wild oats.
If you really feel sorry about him, you could always write your own version of his biography. Maybe the Second Coming, wherein he becomes a modern-day porn star?
b&
It’s a little bit odd, that. Big J’s celibacy, I mean. My (very sketchy) impression of most ancient gods is that they were all pretty randy characters.
cr
Not all. Athena was notoriously celibate, for example.
b&
Watching and listening to Tyson actually played a role in my deconversion. I couldn’t really care less whether he wants to ascribe himself to atheism. It’s clear that he pisses religious people off just by the reaction they had to Cosmos and it’s also clear that he thinks religion has no place in running a country. I’m sure he influences plenty of others without having to explicitly claim atheism and he’s definitely in our camp regarding how policies should be developed as well as how to think rationally about the world.
“It’s clear that he pisses religious people off ”
I’d expect to see less and less of that from Neil from now on. BTW, in one of his recent Star Talk podcasts he even went to invite a priest on his science show. He appears to be swallowing whole the canard that both scientists and catholic priests are interested in “the mysterious,” so let’s all be friends.
http://www.startalkradio.net/show/exploring-science-and-religion-with-richard-dawkins/
I’ll take a listen to this whole podcast when I have time. Are there any specific points in the show where you found Tyson going too easy on faith? Reading this part of the description seems like there’s potentially some confusion on what incompatibility means: “Join us as we look at both sides of the issue, from whether rational thought is an evolutionary benefit, to the astronomical contributions of Jesuit scientists at the Vatican Observatory, to the question of contemporary scientists believing in a supernatural power.”
The fact that Jesuits do good science or scientists believe in God and also do good science has nothing to do with the approaches to faith and science. Of course, Jerry hammers this point home throughout Faith vs. Fact. Lemaître didn’t come up with his primeval atom idea by praying, he did it through analyzing evidence.
“Are there any specific points in the show where you found Tyson going too easy on faith?”
That would be the whole podcast.
I listened to the whole thing. I’ll give Tyson some credit in shooting down the Rev. Martin’s assertions but then he let Martin get away with two many absolutely absurd one liners. I can’t say this seems out of line with his general method of interviewing guests though, he seems to avoid extended confrontation regularly regardless of who he’s talking to.
The overriding theme that I didn’t like was that Dawkins’ quotes were played, but Dawkins wasn’t there to elaborate upon them nor respond to Rev. Martin. Anyone can win a debate on any topic if the only thing you’re debating against is pre-selected sound bites.
Despite this advantage, there were several problems that stood out to me. Early on, the evolutionary advantage of an illogical action was conflated with the advantage of rationality in obtaining truth about the Universe. At another point Rev. Martin says that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a “mystery you believe in” as if that use of mystery is anything remotely like the mysteries attributed to God. Then Martin simply sidestepped the whole issue when the clip of Dawkins’ discussing the Virgin Birth came up. Martin claims that religious scientists will not reject science based on faith claims and then happily ignores what science has to say about human virgin births or the violation of everything we know about Physics if Jesus and Mary ascended “body and soul” into Heaven, whatever that means. Finally, Rev. Martin really tips his hand in the final segment about the First Cause argument, an argument that is far from scientific. Despite a nearly hour long conversation, Martin didn’t list one bit of knowledge he’s actually obtained from faith, so I suppose the takeaway is that science and religion are compatible when the ratio of objective knowledge obtained from the two is 100 to 0 in favor of science.
Worse than that, it’s one that’s been soundly refuted, and shame on Neil especially for not having multiple examples of said refutation on hand.
There’s nothing that causes a particular radioisotope to decay at a particular instant, and nothing that causes virtual particles to come into existence. And we already know more than enough about the Big Bang to be overwhelmingly confident that it falls into that same sort of category of things for which the notion of causality isn’t even worng.
The “good” father might as well have pooh-poohed the notion that the planets follow their orbits of their own accord without divine guidance, and Neil’s failure in calling him on it is equally inexcusable.
b&
You are right, this may be one of the most splendid examples of Not Even Wrong one can find. It is even “meta-Not Even Wrong.” Take the initial statement that a real infinity into the past can’t exist, so something must stand outside of time to have caused it. Causality (as Rev. Martin uses it) is explicitly tied to time. One can’t even use the word “cause” without assuming time. So not only is it the wrong question to be asking when we say “before” the Big Bang, it’s the wrong words being used in the wrong question.
A third problem arises when one considers why an infinity couldn’t exist in reality. It may seem counter-intuitive when it comes to time, but not nearly as many people see it as counter-intuitive when it comes to space. In fact, I think it’s easier to picture infinite space than it is to not picture it because we can’t imagine what space ending would look like. Likewise, most people can more easily imagine a next moment in time going forward toward infinity despite the difficulty in imagine it going toward the past. The fact that our intuitions about infinity are completely contradictory depending on the case should suffice to show just how useless armchair speculation is, which is what the First Cause argument amounts to.
The only amazing thing about Rev. Martin’s statement is just how much wrongness he packs into a single sentence. And, as we saw in the Sean Carroll/William Lane Craig debate, what I said above only begins to unpack the problems. And you’re right, it’s inexcusable for Tyson to let that go and wrap the show on what was, I think, Rev. Martin’s weakest point of the discussion.
Worst of all, the example the use proves the opposite of what they claim. Yes, proves!
The problem, according to the theologians, is that every action requires a cause. And they propose their gods as the ultimate cause of all action…and, in the same breath, insist that the gods themselves have no cause. Well, that right there contradicts the initial claim that every action requires a cause, resulting in an ironclad refutation of the very premise used to start us down this road.
Never mind that this is ancient syllogism 101; far too many of even the most respected of theologians and philosophers still think the ontological argument is sound, at least at some level. And we’re supposed to take these clowns seriously on any subject, when they can’t even get right the most trivial of exam questions in the discipline they claim to have invented?
b&
First, the myth that we live in a “free country” is a false believe. Christianity has been the social, political, economic and the largely educated norm. If you rejected that norm than you were not and are not by many,as the first President Bush said about atheist, “No, Atheists neither citizens or patriots.” Early radio and television would not allow open criticism of christianity and atheist were not allowed to speak freely about what they believe. People were expected to be believers or keep their mouths shut! They were not be be accorded respect by any regular community. that is not what I am willing to call free! Not just because were were not arrested and put in jail! And we were the ones that fought for our cause and were ignored when it came to the history books. We did not exist along with many others. “free’ terminology we should be more critical about how it is use. 73 and a life long active atheist, socialist, civil rights activist, feminist, anti war activist, and early 1963 supporter of gays.
I guess if Tyson wants to go through life in a neutral position and create little to no controversy, he can do that. Living here in America it is kind of hard to do that and he seems to complain about that as well.
Sometimes in attempt to be popular and liked by all you can come across as not so interesting. In the area of religion they will not let it go so easily and he is experiencing that too.
It’s like Hilary and the email. Just come out and say you screwed up and should not have don’t it from the beginning. It will all then pass.
Imagine Constantine had not promoted Christianity and the Roman gods had prevailed. Would scientists like Tyson still be neutral on Poseidon, Zeus and the others? Is christianity less absurd only because it’s familiar?
Tyson seems to me to have made a deliberate decision to respect the 50 dollars. The flack (including financial losses) that he thinks he’d get if he went all “strident” on his audience would markedly decrease his income. It might also, by decreasing his exposure to the children of “havering” (equivocating, more or less, in Englishish) parents, actually decrease his effectiveness as a science teacher.
That’s rather close to saying that deGrasse Tyson is whoring himself to the almighty dollar, but it would be possible to make the “outreach” argument with a straight face and a reasonable interpretation of audience figures. He could make that argument without being totally divorced from reality. Besides, I’ve had friends who’ve rented out their orifices down beside the docks. It doesn’t make you a bad person – or even (despite one screaming match I overheard from the flat above) an “unfit father”.
Faint praise it may be, but if he’s deaf to the creaking of thin ice, he could make reasonable arguments like that. Maybe I’ve fallen off more vertical ice and through more horizontal ice than Tyson has, and am more attuned to it’s creaking sounds, and I’d find the creaking cacophony a tad disturbing. But Tyson is big enough, old enough and ugly enough to make his own mistakes.
What’s the basis for concluding that Tyson’s motivation is personal financial gain? It seems if cupidity were the driving force, his safer bet would be full-blown accommodationism. Instead, he’s made clear he finds the entire religious enterprise misguided.
He nevertheless declines to attack specific religious beliefs. Based on his statements recounted in this post, and others he’s made over the course of his career, it appears his motivation here is two-fold (both prongs relating to his role as a public educator).
First, as the spokesman for a publicly funded educational institution in a nation with a Constitution that guarantees the “free exercise” of religion, he seems concerned that his attack on any particular faith might somehow infringe on that right. (He’s wrong here, but not perniciously so, or for reasons of self-interest.)
Second he’s concerned that such an attack would turn-off people who might otherwise be amenable to the educational opportunities he and his employer offer. (Whether this concern outweighs any countervailing interests seems a judgment call about which there is no clear-cut right or wrong answer.)
Even if it turns out Tyson is wrong on both counts, he’s at least as entitled to his mistakes as religious adherents are to their wrongheaded practices.
(Finally, your comment tortures your “ice” metaphor so hard, it’s effacing faster than the Ross Ice Shelf. Keep it up and you’ll be contributing to sea-level rise. 🙂
You also risk being brought before The Hague on the charge of crimes against figurative language. As a proud, long-time metaphor-torturer myself, I hate to see such a precedent set. 🙂 )
Wow – 2 great Neils in one day!
Per Youtube video, Neil de Grasse “Don’t Get Me Started!” Tyson has (more than once?) chastised Dawkins for effectively being “strident.” IF Dawkins is ever “strident,” he has certainly shown that one does not have to also be LOUD and interrupting, Tyson notwithstanding. Whenever Tyson is on a panel, it is helpful for all other panelists if Lawrence Krauss is also on the panel.
For (what I perceive as) an example of Tyson gratuitously going after Dawkins, see below approx. min. 12:15 through 15:00
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj1rAp4shvI
Motto: “When In Doubt, Shout.”
I fail to see it in this clip. Unless, you just mean going after his question, this doesn’t seem to be going after him for “stridency.” Though I have to say the best part there for me was Bill Nye’s mimicking smoking pot.
I don’t know if it’s available online, but I saw Neil in person once saying that what he wanted an explanation for was not the number of top scientists who didn’t believe in god, but the existence of those who did. Because he considered it astonishing that anyone so prominent in scientific exploration of the universe could still believe in something as silly as god. He is clearly an atheist and has considerable disdain for those who believe in fairy tales. He just considers that being as rude about religion as he’d like to be would be counterproductive to his main agenda.
I was wondering if that was at Think Inc in Melbourne a while ago.
I was there too.
And, I was going to say the same thing as you. Tyson does actively criticize religion on occasion.
I think I saw that video, but from what I remember he didn’t mean to disparage religious scientists in that argument, but rather get the average Joe off the hook. To me it’s like saying that we shouldn’t address the problem of high black-on-black gun violence, until gun crimes committed by white people are completely eliminated.
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-08-20/the-stark-statistics-on-young-black-men-and-gun-violence
NdGT may have used that more than once, but he originally made that statement during one of the Beyond Belief conferences during a discussion with several other notable speakers. And the meaning was definitely more along the lines of Scientifik’s interpretation just above. Though I did not take it as negatively as Scientifik did.
By the way, if you (anyone) have never watched the Beyond Belief conferences you are really missing something special. I can’t recommend them enough. The first one took place at the Salk Institute in 2006. There were at least two more after that, 2007 and 2008. Video of all of them is available to stream, or buy on DVD, at thesciencenetwork.org website.
Just to entice, here are the speakers that were at the 1st one.
Roger Bingham (Host), Steven Weinberg, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Terrence Sejnowski, Joan Roughgarden, Richard Dawkins, Francisco Ayala, Carolyn Porco, Stuart Hameroff, V.S. Ramachandran, Paul Davies, Steven Nadler, Patricia Churchland, Mahzarin Banaji, Scott Atran, Harold Kroto, Ann Druyan, Charles Harper, Jim Woodward, Melvin Konner, Paul Churchland, Richard Sloan.
Bill Burr would seem to agree with this meme.
Tyson seems to be operating on the philosopher’s distinction between veriability and proof.
Except that some religious propositions can be definitely disconfirmed.
NdGT’s position does not withstand reasoned scrutiny: He proclaims he does not care what people believe – they can believe anything they like as long as they keep those beliefs out of his science classroom.
Does he not see that the fundamental tenet of religious belief is that it supersedes what he teaches in his science classroom? And that he therefore, then, must care what people believe? And, he must declare these believes what they are, namely false?
On the other hand, how long would he be allowed to remain, in these United State, as director of the Hayden Planetarium, as host of national TV shows if he sounded like Richard Dawkins?
He seems to be saying these things while wearing his “science hat”. Though he wouldn’t say it so pointedly, privately, I suspect that he would have no other option then to agree that religion can be harmful (wrong thinking, indoctrination, bigotry, death). What I find peculiar is that those religious beliefs may not enter a science classroom, but they certainly affect science and therefore society’s progress – curtailing stem cell research comes to mind.
Neil deGrasse Tyson – Reason & Faith are Irreconcilable…
Sounds like a book I just read.
That must be how they invented deviled ham.
The only distinctions I make about any mystical belief system is this: I judge more harshly the more recent, post-enlightenment belief systems than the ancient ones. I think in ancient/prehistoric times, humans in a pre-scientific age used their imagination to explain things. I think it was very logical for the time to worship the sun. That just seems as physically, observably god-like than anything conceivable in a pre-astronomy era. I get into heated arguments with friends all the time over this incremental type of judgement call.
If I didn’t know a little bit more, I’d say the statements are compatible with him being (say) an unspecific theist, like, say, Martin Gardener.