I’m not going to dissect every critical review of Faith versus Fact, for that way lies madness. But I will address a few critical reviews when they make points worth discussing. This one, in fact, says very little about my book, which I consider a bonus.

The review, “Two-way monologue: How to get past science vs. religion” is actually a joint review of FvF and The Territories of Science and Reigion by Peter Harrison. It appeared in the Los Angeles Times, and was written by Colin Dickey.  I think Dickey’s claims of why science and religion are truly compatible are misguided, and steeped in postmodern dislike of objective truth.

First, the piece isn’t really a critical review of FvF—more like a lukewarm one, for he spends only a few paragraphs on my book (thank G*d), before devoting the rest of his review to Harrison’s thesis. Dickey notes that he understands why, as an evolutionist, I might be peeved about the conflict between my career and creationism, but adds that debates between science and religion are futile:

One always feels a bit for scientists like Coyne, who have no doubt spent much of their professional careers dealing with people who irrationally discount their ideas and their work. Arguments over the age of the Earth or the origin of the species are exhausting even to the most casual observer; one can only imagine how dispiriting they are to one who’s made evolutionary biology her or his life’s work. But the problem with all of these arguments is the belief that the debate between science and religion is a thing one can “win,” as though there were some central set of propositions and axioms that all parties could agree to, a basis for some kind of lucid exchange and final judgment everyone would accept. If there is one belief one can empirically demonstrate to be wrong, it’s that these debates are anything but circular and fruitless.

This betrays a profound misunderstanding of my thesis, and of the debate in general. Of course we don’t expect religionists to roll over and admit defeat! That’s not the way such issues are settled.

First note that my thesis, which is similar to that of many other New Atheists, is that science tells us verifiable facts about the cosmos, and has led to ever-increasing understanding of that cosmos, while religion, which also makes empirical claims, has no way of deciding whether its own claims are “true”, even in the provisional sense that science uses that word. That’s why I called my book Faith Versus Fact. 

So yes, the debate can be “won”, not when religionists admit that their beliefs are unsupported and untestable, but when religion passes away from the world, as it is doing now. The fight will be long, and we won’t be alive to see the victory of secularism—make no mistake, a reliance on reason and observation will ultimately defeat superstition—but win we will. Already many people have given up their faith because they see no evidence for its claims, or they see the conflicts between incompatible claims of different religions. Already we know that these debates are NOT “anything but circular and fruitless.” It’s a debate between how to adjudicate truth claims: by faith or by rationality, and how can such a discussion be fruitless? And if it is fruitless, at least for the nonce, it’s because religionists stubbornly cling to their irrational blanket of superstition.

But Dickey (and apparently Harrison, whose book I’ve not read), see the debate as irresolvable for other reasons as well:

a. Science and religion both rely on teleological narratives, so they have “common ground”. Dickey says this:

Which is not to say. . . that there wasn’t still common ground between the two. Among the many similarities that persist between the two entities is their fondness for teleological narratives. Both science and religion can tend toward descriptions of history that focus on an inexorable progression toward some kind of end. Just as Christianity has long focused on the Second Coming and the End of Days, science has at times adopted a Whiggish sense of itself, shaped by the belief that it is constantly progressing forward. These strains have always been a part of the Western intellectual tradition, but natural philosophy and natural history once permitted alternative conceptions of time, self, and thought. In the reorganization of knowledge in the 19th century, these alternatives were downplayed, delegitimized, and, for the most part, forgotten.

This is ludicrous. First of all, while the tenets of religion sometimes involve teleological processes, the understanding of the divine, as I’ve long maintained, has not progressed at all. We know no more about whether there is a God, much less the number of gods or their nature, than did the ancient Greeks. New religions have cropped up and lie beside old ones. There has been no progress here.

In contrast, science’s teleological path (not narrative) has led to increasing improvement in understanding the universe—unless, perhaps, you’re someone like Dickey who can’t bring himself to admit it. Yes, there have been periods of stasis, and some blind alleys, but the claim that science really has led to greater understanding of the cosmos needs no defense. In truth, only an idiot or a postmodernist could deny such a claim. Just look at how much more we know about human heredity, or about how the Universe began and is organized, than did the authors of the New Testament.

b. Science merges with religion because they both use “apocalyptic terminologies.” This is a truly bizarre argument—a claim of those who are desperately groping to find commonalities between disparate fields. Why not say that science and sports are harmonious because sportswriters use apocalyptic terminologies when referring to the fates of teams? While making this specious argument, Dickey manages to get in a lick against global warming:

The discourse of popular science journalism has become thoroughly imbricated with the religious rhetoric, where global warming is described in explicitly “apocalyptic” terminology: in a recent piece for Reuters, to take one such example, David Auerbach predicted that “[a] child born today may live to see humanity’s end.”

This tendency to appropriate biblical rhetoric for questions of science and policy only reinforces the blurring that has taken place between the supposedly diametrically opposed poles of science and religion. “Such popular accounts of science not only assume the social functions of myth with their attendant moral imperatives,” Harrison writes, “but some also propound their own ersatz eschatologies.” One need not be a climate denier to recognize that the rhetorical moves of many scientists today are the result not of science’s incompatibility with religion, but its long dependence on it.

That’s garbage. To claim that “seeing humanity’s end” not only appropriates Biblical rhetoric (a stretch at the least), but shows the dependence of science on religion, shows how desperate this kind of accommodationism has become. Such rhetoric is not, as Dickey claims, the norm.  His claim needs no further refutation.

c. Science isn’t really about truth anyway. Dickey makes a two-part argument here. First, he argues that much of what people see as “science” is really technology, which doesn’t really have much to do with science anyway.  I’ll let readers deal with this fatuous claim (remember, Dickey goes along with Harrison’s claims right down the line):

Harrison’s way out of the dilemma is to first recognize that “science” and “religion” are only tentative shorthand for a disparate collection of various competing ideas and methodologies. “Science,” for example, has become synonymous (or at least closely allied) with “technology,” even though the two often have very little in common. Much of what goes on in the “tech sector” these days is based entirely on semiotics; coding, after all, has nothing to do with applied sciences and has everything to do with linguistics and logic. And yet “technology” becomes the means to justify science to the public: “Science is true, we are repeatedly told, because it works,” Harrison writes.

Well, medicine, which is science-based technology, can serve as an example of the palpable value of science. Does Dickey really think medical technology (or our ability to fly space probes past Pluto) “is based entirely on semiotics”? Again we see the desperation of accommodationists, and what kinds of arguments they emit in their death throes.

Second, Dickey makes a claim I deal with in FvF: that science really doesn’t find much truth anyway, because it’s so often been wrong. Here’s Dickey agreeing with Harrison:

And yet “technology” becomes the means to justify science to the public: “Science is true, we are repeatedly told, because it works,” Harrison writes.

There is, of course, a subtle slight-of-hand [sic] involved in this line of justification, and one that becomes apparent as soon as we consider how many scientific theories and models that have yielded true predictions, practical outcomes, or useful technologies have nonetheless been superseded […] The history of science is a graveyard of theories that “worked” but have since been replaced.

It is appalling to see an educated person make the argument that science doesn’t “work”. For even when science-based technology “works,” that shows that science has produced approxmately correct explanations of the world. And much science that “works,” in terms of making verifiable predictions, worked long before it was incorporated into technology. Such advances include quantum mechanics, the identification of DNA as the genetic material, and our discovery of the Big Bang.

OF COURSE science has been incomplete or wrong, yet nobody but a chowderhead would claim that it hasn’t led to progressively greater understanding of the universe, and better ability to deal with our problems. We’ve eliminated smallpox and have almost done the same for polio. We know how to produce clean water supplies for big cities. We have airplanes to get to distant lands. In what ways has religion “worked” to uniquely impart to us one solid truth about the universe? And by that I mean one idea (for religion produces no truths) that hasn’t been suggested as well by secular humanists.

d. The supposed conflict between science and faith isn’t mostly about truth, but about morality and values. Dickey:

And the struggles between science and religion are rarely about “truth,” anyway. “While the ostensible focus in high profile science-religion disputes is factual claims about the natural world,” Harrison notes, “such debates are often proxies for more deep-seated ideological, or, in its broadest sense, ‘theological’ battles.” The real questions up for debate have to do with politics and policy, with Darwin and the Bible only standing in for different views on governance, family, and education. “For their part, what religiously motivated antievolutionists fear is not the ‘science’ as such,” Harrison argues, “but the secularist package of values concealed in what they perceive to be the Trojan horse of evolutionary theory.” No one involved truly cares about what happened in the past, whether that past was 6,000 years ago or 4 billion years ago; what they care about is who gets final say over their own lives, and their children’s lives. “Perhaps these skirmishes should be thought less in terms of conflict between science and religion, and more as theological controversies waged by means of science.”

My response is short: people wouldn’t have these conflicts, even about values, if they didn’t accept the epistemic claims of religions in the first place. If you don’t think that morality comes from God, because you don’t believe in a God based on lack of evidence, then such battles simply can’t occur. Further, many creationists are indeed interested in the truth of the Bible, for if they see that evolution’s tale is true, the whole provenance of Scripture comes into question.

e. Finally, we’re using science wrong. We shouldn’t appreciate it for telling us true and marvelous things about the universe, but use it as a vehicle for our self-understanding and betterment. Dickey seems to conceive of science as a self-help program, much as Deepak Chopra does. Have a gander at this:

Outside of the realm of policy, though, what is available to the rest of us is a return to natural philosophy, a habitus that involves using the study of nature as a means to personal understanding and betterment. Such study not only brings back the element of personal introspection and refinement into discussions of the natural world, but it also rejects the teleological aspect of modern science. It is less concerned with the steady march of progress toward some final state of knowledge, and more concerned with an inner progress in which one recognizes both the scope and majesty of the natural world, as well as one’s specific place within it.

. . . Scientists — those who have devoted their life to the study of the physical and biological world — can be forgiven for thinking they are assuaging, multiplying, and extending. But the rest of us might be better served to use their discoveries not to one-up the believers in our midst, but to enrich our own personal habits of mind.

Excuse me, but I prefer my science straight rather than on the rocks, for “natural philosophy” dilutes science by appropriating it as a vehicle for metaphysical or philosophical speculation, as it did in the days when it was engaged in using nature to buttress the existence of God. Yes, we can use science to appreciate ourselves as evolved and material beings, but we can also appreciate how all elements came from stars, and that frogs are related to sparrows, and a whole panoply of wonders that doesn’t lead at all to “personal understanding and betterment”.

What solipsism and misunderstanding of science permeate Dickey’s review! If these arguments are the best these men can muster to show that science and religion are compatible, I can suspect only that they lack intellectual rigor or that there’s something else motivating their pathetically weak arguments. For any thinking person knows that there is true incompatibility in the ways that science and religion perceive truth (and yes, Dickey admits they’re both in the truth business) and in the “truths” that each discipline produces.

Postmodernism poisons everything.