With the good reviews come the bad, and although I had predicted that Faith versus Fact would be uniformly panned by believers, a science journalist—John Horgan—has gone after it in both the Wall Street Journal (sadly, the article, “Preaching to the converted,” is behind a paywall) as well as in in his Scientific American blog, where he couldn’t resist giving a precis his WSJ review (his piece at SA is “Book by biologist Jerry Coyne goes too far in denouncing religion, defending science.” I’m not going to respond to Horgan’s review in detail: he notes that, as is the case, we’ve bickered before in the blogosphere (mostly about free will), and I don’t propose to extend the bickering. His main point is in the first paragraphs:
I’ve never understood the appeal of preaching to the converted. What’s the point? Why bother bashing believers in ghosts, homeopathy and Allah or non-believers in global warming, childhood vaccines and evolution in ways that cannot persuade but only annoy those who don’t pre-agree with you?
This question kept coming to mind as I read “Faith vs. Fact,” the latest in a seemingly endless series of books that berate religious believers for their foolishness. Biologist Jerry Coyne reveals early on that his goal is to enlist more people in his anti-religion crusade. He was disappointed that his previous book, “Why Evolution Is True,” a tutorial on Darwinian theory, failed to vanquish creationism. What Americans need, Mr. Coyne decided, is “not just an education in facts, but a de-education in faith.” His shrill, self-righteous diatribe is more likely to hurt his cause than help it.
Well, I deny that the book is shrill and self-righteous. What Horgan clearly dislikes most is that I don’t snuggle up sufficiently closely to faith, or admit its benefits. Further, neither I nor the other New Atheist books are “preaching to the converted,” but talking to those who are on the fence, or haven’t thought through the issue of how religion and science relate to each other.
And, of course, does anybody criticize the religious books (ALL OF THEM!) that really do “preach to the converted”? Has that ever been used as a criticism of Alvin Plantinga, John Haught, John Polkinghorne, et al.? If so, I haven’t seen it. After all, where does the metaphor of “preaching to the converted” come from?
Curiously, Horgan was once an opponent of the accommodation of science and religion—he wrote an admirably critical piece on Edge about taking money from the Templeton Foundation—but seems to have changed his tune about the issue. The Edge piece contains, for instance, Horgan’s recommendation for the Templeton Foundation:
“First, the foundation should state clearly that it is not committed to any particular conclusion of the science-religion dialogue, and that one possible conclusion is that religion — at least in its traditional, supernatural manifestations — is not compatible with science. To demonstrate its open-mindedness, the foundation should award the Templeton Prize to an opponent of religion, such as Steven Weinberg or Richard Dawkins.”
It’s a pity that Horgan now considers such conclusions as “shrill and self-righteous”! For surely The God Delusion is more extreme in its criticisms than Faith versus Fact.
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Over at ScienceNews, science journalist Bruce Bower goes after the book in his review “‘Faith versus Fact’ takes aim at religion.” Here I have a few things to say because Bower’s review seems ill-informed, either because he didn’t really read the book very carefully or is commited to a pro-faith agenda. A few quotes and my reaction:
Coyne, a veteran of battles with creationists, says science generates evidence-based knowledge while religious faith consists of unverifiable, supernatural convictions. His book joins those of Richard Dawkins and other “new atheists,” who regard religious faith as delusional and religious believers as dangerously intolerant toward nonbelievers and inconvenient scientific findings.
Never in the book do I even come close to saying that religious faith is delusional or that all religious believers are “dangerously intolerant toward nonbelievers and inconvenient scientific findings.” I avoided hot-button words like “delusional,” and in fact use the term only once: to refer to how believers in some faiths regard believers in other faiths! And even Bower must admit that many religionists, like creationists or extreme Muslims, are intolerant toward nonbelievers (for crying out loud, look at ISIS or the laws of Saudi Arabia) or toward “inconvenient scientific findings” (viz., Christian Scientists and creationists).
More:
[Coyne] ends by arguing for a worldwide turn to secular, European-style social democracies. In these nonreligious societies forged from a wide range of cultures and political systems, Coyne predicts, opposition would recede to evolutionary theory, scientific reports of human-caused global warming, childhood vaccinations and assisted dying. People would be happier without God, he says. But his scenario rides more on faith than fact.
Well, I do give evidence that for this claim, including the strong correlation between secularism and acceptance of evolution (both within and among countries), the religiously-based opposition to vaccination and assisted dying (this is undeniable: Catholics have long lobbied against assisted dying), and some evidence that religion has prompted some people to deny global warming. Further, I challenge Bower to show me where in the book I say, or even imply, that “people would be happier without God”. What I say is that people can be happy without God, and that godless societies don’t have to be dysfunctional. None of this is based on faith: look at Scandinavia, whose general well-being and comparatively moral governments are not a matter of “faith”.
More:
Coyne makes debatable points about both science and religion. While science contains powerful accepted knowledge, he underplays the importance of discoveries that increase uncertainty about what’s known.
This is science-dissing, pure and simple. (Criticizing science and emphasizing its limits are, for many, ways to promoting religion, as though tearing down the former builds up the latter.) Throughout the book I emphasize that scientific conclusions are provisional, and that many earlier conclusions regarded as sound (like the immobility of continents) have shown to be wrong. Further, discoveries that cast doubt on what is know do represent scientific progress, for they help dispel error—and that’s progress. But I deny absolutely that, as a whole, science has not generally led to an increased understanding of nature. Does Mr. Bower abjure the canon of science-based medicine?
Here are my “debatable” points about religion:
Coyne portrays religion as a byproduct of an evolved human tendency to mistake inanimate objects for living things. But researchers who study small-scale societies suspect that religion has flourished throughout human evolution partly because it deepens individuals’ commitment to their communities.
Religion doesn’t churn out science-worthy evidence, as Coyne argues. But the author doesn’t come to grips with faith’s deep evolutionary roots. If religion is irrational, it should have been eradicated through natural selection among Stone Age folk. Coyne’s book will irk religious friends and foes of science alike. And that’s a fact.
This is complete hogwash. I summarize several theories about how religion originated, including evolved ones, one that piggyback on evolved tendencies, Boyer’s “agency” theory, group selection, and so on. And I conclude that, since we weren’t there, the origins of religion are irrecoverably lost in the past. Further, Bower’s claim that researchers in general see religion as a result of individual (or even group) selection to promote group welfare is simply wrong: researchers are still groping to understand why religion either evolved genetically (I know of no “religiosity genes”) or culturally. It’s statements like the first paragraph above that lead me to conclude that Bower didn’t read the book with any care.
Finally, in the last paragraph Bower argues that irrationality in the form of religion would have reduced reproductive output (implying that it’s is genetic), and therefore should have disappeared. Conclusion: religion is rational. Both the genetic and reproductive-output claims are dubious at best. Further, Bower is mistaking “rationality” for “usefulness”.
Irrationality in any endeavor or philosophy will disappear through natural selection only to the extent that a). it has a genetic basis and b). “irrationality” genes reduce reproductive output. If this were invariably the case, no irrationality would remain in our species. But of course there is. To name a few forms, we have homeopathy, our tendency to view ourselves as better than we are, conspiracy theories, climate-change denialism, and so on. In my book I quote Steve Pinker on the issue of whether human beliefs are rational or supportable:
Members of our species commonly believe, among other things, that objects are naturally at rest unless pushed, that a severed tetherball will fly off in a spiral trajectory, that a bright young activist is more likely to be a feminist bankteller than a bankteller, that they themselves are above average in every desirable trait, that they saw the Kennedy assassination on live television, that fortune and misfortune are caused by the intentions of bribable gods and spirits, and that powdered rhinoceros horn is an effective treatment for erectile dysfunction. The idea that our minds are designed for truth does not sit well with such facts.
Does Bower deny that irrationality persists in our species? If it does, why is it still with us?
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There’s also a new review of FvF in World Religion News, but, curiously, it renders no verdict, merely recounting a few things I said in the book.
h/t: John
