The National Museum of Natural History, part of the government’s Smithsonian Institution, has a nice traveling exhibit on human evolution called “Exploring human origins: what does it mean to be human?“. Well, the first three words would have sufficed, as I’m not sure whether the question “What does it mean to be a human?” has an answer more meaningful than the question “What does it mean to be a wombat?” Even asking that question about our species tends to conjure up some notion of human exceptionalism, sometimes verging on the numinous. The scientific answer—a list of all the traits that characterize humans and distinguish them from other species (i.e., a morphological and genetical description of H. sapiens)—is not exactly what people want. They’re looking, it seems, for some essence of our species.
That said, the Smithsonian’s exhibit looks terrific, and will have visited 19 cities between March of last year, when it began, and April 28, 2017, when it will end. The exhibits will be in libraries, so check when it comes to your town and go see it. (Better yet, go to the Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian itself, even though it was funded by David Koch and has some pretty cringeworthy accommodationist videos.)
Beyond that, I wanted to point out the exhibit’s sponsors; there are three.
Why is Templeton in there? Well, to make sure there’s discussion about the relationship of human evolution and religion. The Human Origins Initiative, of which the exhibit is a part, includes a “broader social impacts committee” that, as you might expect, consists largely of preachers and ministers. In fact, twelve of the fourteen members are preachers, with the exception of Fred Edwords, a humanist, and Dr. Joe Watkins, of unspecified affiliation.
Here’s part of what the committee deals with: the “challenges posed by evolution“:
In the vibrant scientific field of human evolution, new discoveries and research findings are regularly reported as lead stories in newspapers and other media. Despite strong public interest, however, many people find the idea of human evolution troubling when viewed from a religious perspective. While polarized public opinion on the matter is the usual focus, the diversity of contemporary religious responses to evolution is less recognized. These responses point to opportunities for a productive relationship between science and religion without assuming a conflict between the scientific evidence of human evolution and religious beliefs.
So right there you have a more or less theological viewpoint: that the conflict between evolution and religion is to be minimized, and that’s the goal of this group. For fundamentalists like Southern Baptists, there is no productive relationship between evolution and their faith. Notice how the statement above weasels around the fact that 42% of all Americans are Biblical young-earth creationists.
The statement goes on:
There are a number of different approaches to the science-religion relationship. One approach is to see science and religion as separate domains that ask different questions focusing on separate interests in human life – for example, about the natural world in science and about God in religion. This approach depends on respecting and maintaining the distinctions but can sometimes overlook the ways in which scientific interpretations may have an effect on religious beliefs. Conflict is seen to arise when efforts are made to eliminate the separation that the first approach assumes. The strongest conflicts develop when either science or religion asserts a standard of truth to which the other must adhere or otherwise be dismissed. An alternative approach sees interaction or engagement as positive. Engagement takes many forms, including personal efforts by individuals to integrate scientific and religious understandings, statements by religious organizations that affirm and even celebrate the scientific findings, and constructive interactions between theologians and scientists seeking common ground, respect, and shared insight into how the science of human evolution contributes to an awareness of what it means to be human.
Here they’re proposing Steve Gould’s “NOMA” (non-overlapping magisteria) argument, whereby the ambit of science is said to be the understanding and description of the natural world, while that of religion is descrying human meanings, morals, purposes, and values. The problem with this, as I describe in Faith Versus Fact, is that religion obstinately refuses to adhere to Gould’s claim that it says nothing about what’s “real” in the universe. Virtually all the opposition to NOMA, then, has come from thelogians who recognize that religion critically depends on certain claimed facts about the universe. To wit: scripture itself, namely 1 Corinthians 15 (King James version, my emphasis):
Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.
That is the fundamental, non-negotiable claim of even liberal Christians.
The Smithsonian avers that the NOMA approach can “overlook the ways in which scientific interpretations may have an effect on religious beliefs,” but that’s not the problem. The problem is that for most Abrahamic religions, the “meanings, morals, and values” depend at bottom on truth claims such as the Resurrection. And in such cases science can indeed “assert a standard of truth to which religion must adhere.” For there’s no other way to determine things like the existence of gods, of the afterlife, or of miracles except using the methods of science. Revelation or dogma won’t do it. What reliable standard of truth does religion even possess? If it had one, there wouldn’t be thousands of different faiths making thousands of different truth claims.
As for the “constructive engagement” part, fine—so long as religion adheres to scientific truth. Religious belief has nothing to add to the practice of science, but science has a lot to add to the practice of religion—mainly by falsifying its truth claims. Think of evolution, and how that’s changed liberal theology since 1859. And now that we know that all humans didn’t descend from just the two ancestor of Adam and Eve, theologians are tying themselves into knots trying to save the idea of Adam and Eve without turning the First Couple into a metaphor.
As for this:
[Engagement between religion and science takes many forms, including] constructive interactions between theologians and scientists seeking common ground, respect, and shared insight into how the science of human evolution contributes to an awareness of what it means to be human.
I’m not sure what that even means, though it sounds very nice and conciliatory. But as I said repeatedly, the question of “what it means to be human” is nebulous. If it does have any answer, the question will be framed by philosophy, not theology, and then answered by science. (For example, philosophers could tell us that “what it means to be human” means having things like rationality and language.)
But I find the whole question of “what it means to be human” tedious and unproductive. One might as well ask, “what it means to be a fruit fly.” There’s simply no objective answer to that question, and it’s time to stop raising it until we figure out what we’re really asking.
Finally, the statement, written by Rick Potts, ends with this poorly written pair of sentences:
Surveys on the public acceptance of evolution indicate that the conflict approach continues to impede public understanding of scientific methods and ongoing discoveries. Looking beyond that, however, the wider variety of perspectives suggests that there is considerable support for maintaining the integrity of religious understandings of the world while embracing the factual basis of evolution, including human evolution, at the same time.
(Rick Potts, Director of the Human Origins Program)
Yes, there is considerable support by the faithful to maintain their antiscientific fictions and unsupported beliefs. And they’re entitled to. But why should they be encouraged and supported by the Smithonian Institution, an organ of the United States government? There’s also considerable support, among believers and especially among scientists (about half of whom are atheists), to dismantle our framework of religious understandings of the world.
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In some fairness, Mr. Koch is, by his own admission, an unbeliever. It is my information that he didn’t interfere with the depiction of the scientific evidence of human origins. What he did interfere with was depiction of the evidence for AGW. IMHO, the powers that be at the Smithsonian were derelict in their duties in letting him get away with it.
Gould was too, so there’s precedent.
I see they will be in the Lake Orion, MI library late this summer, which is about 20 minutes away from me. I have marked my calendar, and will try to see it.
I never noticed that the Templeton Foundation’s emblem is the nautilus. Yeah, I get it, the golden ratio demands a designer.
they’re both living fossils?
I thought the emblem was a reference to Alice falling down the rabbit hole and blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.
🙂
The essence of humanity is precisely that list of differences, however poorly understood. (One should perhaps relativise it to a certain level of description, e.g., the essence of humans at the level proteins is thus and so.)
Of course, this doesn’t make the “humans are special” crowd any happier, but as a point I always like to mention that evolution doesn’t rule out essences, just makes them change over time and go extinct …
“opportunities for a productive relationship between science and religion”
What logic led them to conclude that? When does science require faith?
As far as I can tell, religion has never made a legitimate attempt to explain or predict anything that is not wholly arbitrary or trivially coincidental with the findings of science.
This is nothing more than misplaced politeness: treat the ignorant as snowflakes. God forbid their faith comes under criticism.
The exhibit just opened in Cottage Grove OR, just 60 miles down I-5 from here. Flo and I expect to check it out, hopefully getting good enough weather for a bike ride on the Row River bicycle trail.
Cottage Grove was the setting for 2 notable movies. The town itself was the backdrop for Animal House.
The Row River Bicycle Trail is a rails-to-trails project, following tracks used in Buster Keaton’s The General (1926).
I am continually stunned when institutions that promote an understanding of the natural world fall into the trap that science & religion are non-competing ideas.
Science draws its power from critical thinking, observation and evidence of how we see things. Religion is based in faith, operates in a realm that eschews critical thinking and has no evidence to support its existence.
That, by definition, is a conflict. Especially since faith is belief in the absence of evidence. If you are a scientist and follow a religion, you either understand it requires that you suspend your critical thinking or you are comfortable within your own delusion (you cannot reconcile your science training with accepting a premise without evidence or plausibility.)
The danger in this false approach is it allows that religions can interfere in places/decisions it should not warrant a voice. Just think of religions resistance to birth control, use of condoms, objections to vaccine programs in Africa, etc., etc. There is great harm to people that arise from this distorted view!
Robert Ingersoll said it all:
“There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: ‘Let us be friends.’ It reminds me of the bargain the cock wished to make with the horse: ‘Let us agree not to step on each other’s feet.'”
Perhaps the Smithsonian is angling for the Templeton prize. I understand museums are under lots of financial pressure nowadays. 🙂
Just a guess but possibly the reason the Smithsonian is catering to this religion and science compatibility is because the heads of science committees in our legislature are republican and very religious folks. Assuming they have some influence over the Smithsonian.
I went to see the exhibit when it came to a nearby Pennsylvania town. The town has a big population of Mennonite and evangelical Christians. The What Makes Us Human part had paper and pencil. Exhibit goers got to write and then post what they thought made them human. The answers were religious in nature: That Christ died for me, That I was made in god’s image, etc.
This exhibit may have made some folks think. There were skull models to touch. These were models of Neanderthal, etc. I doubt many of those people will ever visit the Smithsonian. It got people talking. It was a toe in the door.
well, this explains why they published two letters to the editor in the Smithsonian magazine praising their article about archaeology and Jesus and not a single critical one about the very poor scholarship displayed in that article.
Many have argued that the definition of being human is the ability to redefine yourself. Captain Picard says this in a Star Trek movie “The potential to make yourself a better man… that is what it is to be Human… to make yourself more than you are.” but the sentiment vastly predates Star Trek.
But it is unclear that other animals are entirely lacking in this capacity. It is basically a question of not being sphexish to use the term coined by Douglas Hofstadter. But shpexishness is a spectrum. Humans alone are not exclusively antisphexish.
(Being antisphexish seems to be the core of compatibilist free will arguments.)
This public announcement in Sept of 2014 from Arizona State University was also depressing: “ASU institute receives single-largest investment in human origins research”, which was a $4.9 million grant to its Institute of Human Origins from the Templeton Foundation.
Sadly (IMO), Donald Johanson, founder of the Institute and significantly, the discoverer of the 3.2 million year old Lucy specimen(Australopithecus afarensis), is one of the beneficiaries of this via his “outreach activities.” I have a lot of respect for Johanson, and to my knowledge he is not personally an accomodationist.
Expertise combined with funding is the lifeblood of carrying out research and education, but to partner with an organization such as Templeton provides yet another accomodationist intrusion into a better way of thinking, dragging it down to its own level.
ASU announcement: http://asunow.asu.edu/content/asu-institute-receives-single-largest-investment-human-origins-research
Not a difficult question. You’re born. If you choose, you reproduce. You die. Then, in the words of Ilkley Moor, “then worms shall come and etten thee (etten thee).”
(Post-death experiences may vary by location and availability of worms.)
There is more? What? You’re either non-existent (“a gleam in your father’s eye, though that might not be the most appropriate organ), alive, or a part of history. How big a part of history is up to you (initially) and then it’s up to other people.
Don’t like the lack of control or the impersonality? I’ll see if I can find some suitable suppositories. No lube.
“This approach depends on respecting and maintaining the distinctions but can sometimes overlook the ways in which scientific interpretations may have an effect on religious beliefs.”
They conveniently neglected to add “and often overlooks the ways in which religious claims can in fact be scientifically tractable.”
“The strongest conflicts develop when either science or religion asserts a standard of truth to which the other must adhere or otherwise be dismissed. An alternative approach sees interaction or engagement as positive.”
Those who recognize that science and religion do conflict also see interaction/engagement as positive. This approach engages religion by trying to get theists to see that they are simply pretending to know things, which is exactly what science is meant to avoid.
When organisations try to assert that there’s no conflict between science and religion they’re really being pretty patronising towards religion. (There is, of course, no other position that it’s possible to take in reality.) When they do this they often mollify religions by handing them the right to decide our morals, which seems to have happened here too.
It annoys the hell out of me, not least because it reinforces the religious view that they have the right to decide morality. As Jerry points out, that is a role for philosophy, not religion. There is enormous evidence every day why allowing religion to be the arbiter of our morals is a mistake.
“As Jerry points out, that is a role for philosophy, not religion.”
The most unappealing part of the NOMA argument, for me at least, is not its vulnerability to the obvious counter – that religions make scientifically amenable claims all the time – but its assumption that religion is in any way an authority on philosophical issues like ethics and metaphysics. The instant you find people trying to square “God” with “love” or “beauty” or “ground of being” or “meaning of life” or “good and evil” is the moment you find religious apologists scraping the barrel.
Remove science and secular philosophy from religion, and as far as knowledge, wisdom, and learning are concerned, there’s nothing whatsoever to recommend it. It’s an intellectual parasite and imposter.
Right – and this is why, I encourage us to continue the work of David Armstrong, Mario Bunge and other *secular* worker in systematic metaphysics so that this “space” doesn’t get ceded to the religious etc. Metaphysics affects policy – think of individualism vs. holism vs. systemism in normative macroeconomics.
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