Tonight there will be a debate at 7 p.m. on the topic of accommodationism: the announcement is below, and if you’re not in Toronto, you can watch it live on YouTube (see below). The participants are Denis Alexander, one of the more amusing accommodationists I’ve read, and Larry Moran, an evolutionary biologist and biochemist at the University of Toronto.
Actually, it’s not really a debate; Larry tells me this:
“Denis Alexander is going to give a 30 minute presentation. Then we’re going to have a ‘dialogue’ for about an hour followed by a 30 min Q&A.”
Below are the descriptions of the participants. I’ve crossed swords with Alexander several times before, as he’s a Templeton-funded accommodationist who describes himself as an “evolutionary creationist.” You can find some of the posts I’ve made that are critical of his views here, here, here, here, here, and here.
DR. DENIS ALEXANDER is the Emeritus Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge, where he is a Fellow. Dr. Alexander was previously Chairman of the Molecular Immunology Programme and Head of the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Signalling and Development at the Babraham Institute, University of Cambridge. Prior to that Dr. Alexander was at the Imperial Cancer Research Laboratories in London (now Cancer Research UK), and spent 15 years developing university departments and laboratories overseas, latterly as Associate Professor of Biochemistry in the Medical Faculty of the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, where he helped to establish the National Unit of Human Genetics.
Dr. Alexander writes, lectures and broadcasts widely in the field of science and religion. From 1992-2013 he was Editor of the journal Science & Christian Belief and currently serves on the National Committee of Christians in Science and as a member of the executive committee of the International Society for Science and Religion.
DR. LARRY MORAN is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. He is the author of the blog called “Sandwalk” and one of the authors of “Principles of Biochemistry” (5th edition). Dr. Moran is interested in biochemistry, molecular evolution, and science education. He received his PhD from Princeton University.
It will be streamed live on YouTube, and you can see it by clicking on the screenshot below (not operative yet, of course). My screenshot says 6 p.m., but that’s undoubtedly Chicago time, an hour earlier than Toronto time. I’ll be watching this for sure, and I have high hopes for Dr. Moran.
It’s at 1 AM in the Netherlands, so I might tune in. It would be a nice ending of the exam week for me.
Thanks for the heads up – I’m guessing it will ba captured on UT for later watching.
Ad FWIT, my humble opinion, there is no conflict between science and religion. Science uses a particular method to describe physical reality. Religion makes shit up and when it parrots science it usually does so poorly. To my knowledge religion has never stated a reality that is not much better understood by use of the Scientific Method. Natch!
“Is there a conflict between science and religion?”
The answer is ALWAYS “yes … and no.” That’s because all general and vaguely-defined questions are going to pull in a mixed bag of situations and interpretations which involve a nuanced analysis which won’t easily fall into one category or another.
“Is there a substantial conflict between science and religion which makes a difference and matters to us so that we ought to emphasize the answer?”
Ok, now we’re getting a tad more focused.
I would say that there is a broad front of conflict between science and religion. Those terms are pretty broad, so their meanings must be ‘broadly construed’.
Science, broadly construed, is knowledge that gained by observation and testing and is open to revision based on further observation and testing.
I am less certain how to broadly define religion. Perhaps as a set of beliefs about causality, morality, and meaning, but is almost always couched in beliefs about the supernatural. Religious beliefs, in practice, are not generally open to revision based on facts, but may be open to changes in culture and social norms (and I am being generous here).
Now science can exist without conflict with religion if we are more specific. For example, I cannot right now think of any conflict between the study of photosynthesis and the practice of Catholicism. These are in fact, non-overlapping magisteria.
1pm Saturday afternoon NZ time.
One of the things that natural scientists are accused of in these contexts is lack of historical sensitivity. I note that because the very idea of naming something about science and religion (other than KEEP THEM WALLED OFF FROM EACH OTHER) for Faraday is an insult to the memory of that great man.
I am not so sure about that. Faraday was a devout Christian. A quote from the Wikipedia article about him states “a strong sense of the unity of God and nature pervaded Faraday’s life and work.”
He was a great person, but like most great people, they are never as Ideal or perfect as we like to think they are.
Faraday was a sincere believer, yes. But he was also as far as I can tell almost completely compartmentalized. I do not know (and the biographers I’ve read ditto) do not know any place where the religion and science meet in his work in any explicit way. (Unlike, say, Maxwell, who was more so, to pick a physicist of very roughly the same time by comparison.)
Faith is an essential and highly-praised and respected virtue in religion.
In science, faith is the one-and-only unforgivable sin.
You can use doublethink and similar techniques if you want the two to coexist, but they’re in no way actually compatible.
Cheers,
b&
Science is the philosophy that reality can be understood.
Religion is the philosophy that belief is reality.
Charles Darwin never attempted to challenge religious beliefs directly yet caused a revolution in human understanding, why then do modern scientists continue giving their precious time over to the futile debates over religion since it only encourages the faithful to think that there is something tangible in their fantasy that must be of real importance.
Thanks Prof CC.
I always find out about these things when it’s too late to attend.
Oh well, might view the stream.
NO SOUND !!!
Actually there is, just stupidly low volume. TURN IT UP !!!
Oh my gosh, this debate is terrible. Larry is rightly talking about the evidence-based
thinking supporting science, and how religious people seem to accept beliefs on very poor evidence.
And his opponent and moderator step in to say “let’s not make this about evidence, or the existence of God…now is there any conflict between religious claims and science?”
Larry is rightly flustered by the incoherent nature of the debate.
I do wish Larry could make the conflict between science and religion more explicit.
He’s got to point out how IF you accept the necessity of controlling for variables, hypothesis testing, replicability as a way of proportioning our confidence in every other sphere…it’s not justified to just drop these demands for religious claims and still slap the label “knowledge” on religious claims!
It’s like the President of the USA declaring “no one should own slaves BECAUSE every human has the right to autonomy” and then going home to a house full of slaves. To say “Well, that was in the capacity of my being at work; now I’m at home so slaves are ok.”
No, this is a completely unjustified, demarcation that does nothing to justify espousing a virtue in one position and abandoning it in the next.
As Jerry continually writes about, if the religious are going to say they have another way of knowing, they have to explain “how do you know that?”
I wish Sam Harris or Jerry were debating this guy: they wouldn’t let him get away with all his fallacious claims.
“Science has got all the questions. Not all the answers, but it has all the questions.” – dr. Larry Moran. Beautiful!
Interesting, I had a different reaction to Moran’s “Science has all the questions.” It could be just as vapid as phrases like “Science asks how, Religion asks why?”
Depending on what he actually meant.
I think he’d be on more forceful, less ambiguous grounds to say something like “Science has the best method of investigating empirical questions, and since any experience we have is empirical, religious claims of experience can’t be excepted from science.”
That is a better way of putting it, I fully agree with that. Yet it would make a terrible one-liner. Saying that “science has all the questions” is a much better way to drive the point home and make the audience remember what science is about. And I don’t think dr. Moran did much violence to the concept of science and what sciencists actually do, so that’s why I’m okay with that statement.
There was a similar event at U of Ottawa on Wednesday, though it lacked a spokesperson for the good guys. Spouse Steve was postering at Carleton University earlier this week for PCC’s Ottawa talk and found a perfect location: https://twitter.com/theobromine/status/693276323087831040
There was a similar talk on Wednesday at U of Ottawa (though it lacked a spokesperson for the good guys).
Spouse Steve was postering at Carleton U for PCC’s upcoming Ottawa talk, and found an ideal location:
https://twitter.com/theobromine/status/693276323087831040
I tried to listen to the debate for well over an hour, but the sound was so poor that I heard NOTHING. Very sad. I gather that it was better for some people, but the comment stream showed this was a general problem. I sure hope they post this debate permanently on YouTube, but that they fix the sound when they do. I did see the slides, though. . .
Yes, that really sucked. I had to put on headphones and crank the sound to hear the debate.
It’s amazing: SOMEONE must have been responsible for setting up the sound and visuals for the feed. How could they not be monitoring it so see it’s actually working properly?
I listened to the whole thing (at max volume, which was barely enough). Sadly, Larry Moran didn’t do nearly as well as I had expected, primarily because he didn’t seemed prepared fro the topic, which is odd. Most of the time, it was frustrating to hear the back and forth, and I don’t feel like the side opposing Alexander was well represented.