Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Okay, teatime’s over: back on your heads! This photo of a bald eagle is by Stephen Barnard. His notes (click photo to enlarge):
These eagles are almost tame. They’ve been nesting successfully on my farm for many years, unmolested, and they’re pretty used to people.
Well, if this doesn’t beat all. Just when I thought I’d heard every existing criticism of atheism, a new one pops up. And it’s from an atheist, of course: Chris Arnade, who recounts a varied life as a janitor at a college, a physics student who got a Ph.D., a Wall Street analyst, and then a photographer of homeless drug addicts (his website is here).
His association with the addicts and homeless left him with a lesson that he describes in a new Guardian piece: “The people who challenged my atheism most were drug addicts and prostitutes” (subtitle: “I’ve been reminded that life is not as rational as Richard Dawkins sees it. Perhaps atheism is an intellectual luxury for the wealthy.”)
Surprisingly, Arnade expected the down-and-outers to be atheists—but they weren’t!
When I first walked into the Bronx I assumed I would find the same cynicism I had towards faith. If anyone seemed the perfect candidate for atheism it was the addicts who see daily how unfair, unjust, and evil the world can be.
None of them are. Rather they are some of the strongest believers I have met, steeped in a combination of Bible, superstition, and folklore.
I could have told him that. The people who tend to be the most religious are those who are worst off, for where else can they turn? Tons of sociological research tells us that.
Arnade gives us lots of examples of the outcasts of society who hold onto God:
Sonya and Eric, heroin addicts who are homeless, have a picture of the Last Supper that moves with them. It has hung in an abandoned building, it has hung in a sewage-filled basement, and now it leans against the pole in the small space under the interstate where they live.
Sarah, 15 years on the streets, wears a cross around her neck. Always. Michael, 30 years on the streets, carries a rosary in his pocket. Always. In any crack house, in the darkest buildings empty of all other furnishings, a worn Bible can be found laying flat amongst needles, caps, lighters, and crack pipes.
His theory for the religiosity of the marginalized, however, seems off the mark:
Takeesha and the other homeless addicts are brutalized by a system driven by a predatory economic rationalism (a term used recently by J. M. Coetzee in his essay: On Nelson Mandela). They are viewed by the public and seen by almost everyone else as losers. Just “junkie prostitutes” who live in abandoned buildings. They have their faith because what they believe in doesn’t judge them.
But what else is Christianity about but being judged? No, they have their faith precisely because what they believe in does judge them—judges them as sinners who can be forgiven and sent to heaven. They believe because in their God they find someone who, they think, cares about them and will eventually make things right. All this was known by Karl Marx.
From this Arnade concludes that he shouldn’t proselytize atheism among these people, and who could disagree? It’s the “dying grandmother scenario” on the streets:
They have their faith because what they believe in doesn’t judge them. Who am I to tell them that what they believe is irrational? Who am I to tell them the one thing that gives them hope and allows them to find some beauty in an awful world is inconsistent? I cannot tell them that there is nothing beyond this physical life. It would be cruel and pointless.
Well, this is a judgment call, for perhaps if he told them that God wasn’t going to take care of them, they’d be motivated to do something about their lives now, for it is the only life they have. If they asked me what I believed, I’d tell them, but the most important thing for these people is not being disabused of their religious delusions, but learning how and where to get help. Sadly, Arnade then extends his view not just to the homeless, but to everyone:
Soon I saw my atheism for what it is: an intellectual belief most accessible to those who have done well.
I want to go back to that 16-year-old self and tell him to shut up with the “see how clever I am attitude”. I want to tell him to appreciate how easy he had it, with a path out. A path to riches.
And he ends his essay with about the most mean-spirited criticism of “strident” atheism that I’ve ever seen:
I also see Richard Dawkins differently. I see him as a grown up version of that 16-year-old kid, proud of being smart, unable to understand why anyone would believe or think differently from himself. I see a person so removed from humanity and so removed from the ambiguity of life that he finds himself judging those who think differently.
I see someone doing what he claims to hate in others. Preaching from a selfish vantage point.
First of all, is it a crime to judge those who think differently? What about white supremacists, misogynists or the Taliban? Should we not judge them? The fact is that some people harbor incorrect or even harmful views. Religion is both of those at once. And while we can strive to be charitable towards religious people who aren’t malefactors, is is surely judicious to criticize bad or incorrect ideas.
And I suspect Dawkins, like all of us, is perfectly capable of understanding the motivation to be religious. Many of us were once believers! And I suspect that most of us wouldn’t preach godlessness to a homeless person whose first needs are food, shelter, and methadone. True, some of the poor find succor in faith; but in the end all they get from that faith is some psychological uplift. Their problems aren’t solved—in fact, their solution may be impeded—and they’re not going to get the rewards or help (material or ethereal) they expect.
Atheism is not just for the wealthy. In fact, it’s probably most useful, as Marx realized, for the downtrodden. Arnade is doing what we see so often: arguing that although religion is a delusion, and he doesn’t accept it, we must let the “little people”—in this case the poor and homeless—have their delusions. That is an unforgivably condescending attitude, and another sad and gratuitous swipe at New Atheism, instantiated, as always, by Dawkins. There are many atheists on this planet, and not all of them have “done well.”
Arnade should realize, as lots of us do, that in many cases religion serves as a tool of oppression, telling people that suffering is good (the Catholic church is a master at this), and that they should accept their lot (viz., Mother Teresa). I’m not a Marxist, but on this I’m with old Karl: when you discard your faith, you’re throwing off your chains.
In a short piece called “Holy sighting on Scottsdale cheesecake,” AzCentral.com reports one of the loonier miracles I’ve heard of It’s not even the face of Jesus on the cheesecake, either, but simply a cross. There’s a video on the site, whose entire narration is below (I love the “objective journalism” of the last sentence):
“A family makes a cheesecake for the holiday season, and when it was cooling off, it formed a crucifix. Is this a simple crust-cracking, or is this actually Jesus Christ coming back and showing support for this family’s religious beliefs?”
Here’s a screenshot from the video. Are you convinced? If it was Jesus, why did he come back in a cheesecake instead of appearing as a person to the family and saying “I am Jesus Christ, and I approve of your beliefs”? He could then produce many cheesecakes from the single one—enough to feed all of Scottsdale.
The site adds:
“Family members say they won’t be eating the cheesecake. Instead they plan on selling it and donating the money to a local charity or church.”
People on eBay will eat this up.
UPDATE: I forgot that I posted 2.5 years ago on the connection between Templeton and some organizations that are either explicitly climate-denialist or anti-government-regulation in nature, like the Mercatus Center and the Heartland Institute, as well as those with looser connections like the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. See my earlier post for details.
Since Templeton pours huge amounts of money into free-enterprise initiatives (that is an explicit part of its mission), I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s opposed to government regulations that would ameliorate global warming.
Again, I emphasize that we don’t have the data showing exactly how much Templeton money goes to climate-denialism of anti-climate regulation. Indeed, in some cases (if they just donate for “general support”), it would be impossible to figure out. What I am saying is that the connections are deeply suspicious, that Templeton has a long history of supporting conservative, anti-regulatory organizations, some of which are mainly involved in climate denialism or anti-climate-regulation activities, and, finally, that any scientist who wants Templeton money should know about this issue and try to find out if the Foundation really is involved in fighting science or preventing improvement of climate. I suspect, though, that most scientists who want some of that Templeton dosh will find reasons to look the other way.
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There are many scientists who take money from the John Templeton Foundation, whose ultimate aim is to show that science and religion are harmonious. If you’ve been at this site a while, you’ll have read my own take on Templeton, which is negative, and my opinion that scientists should not take money from this organization.
Nevertheless, many do, including Brian Greene (Templeton partly funds his and Tracy Day’s World Science Festival, which I hasten to add is a great event), Martin Nowak at Harvard (head of a $10.5 million Templeton project on social evolution), and social scientists like Elaine Ecklund and (in the past) Tanya Luhrmann. When scientists do justify taking money from Templeton, they often say that the Foundation’s religious activities are irrelevant to their own, aren’t inimical to their science, and, after all, somebody has to get the money.
Well, that excuse won’t hold water any more, for a new paper in the journal Climate Change (reference and link below) shows that Templeton gives substantial sums of money to climate-change denialist organizations. And by “substantial”, I mean more than 20 milliion dollars over the eight years from 2003-2010.
This, in fact, puts scientists directly in conflict with an anti-science strain of the Templeton Foundation, since the consensus view of scientists is that human activities are substantially altering the Earth’s climate. That’s not religion, but science, and if you take money from the hand of Templeton you are likely involved in a group whose other hand gives money to science denialism.
The paper, by Robert Brulle of Drexel University, is called “Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations.” (If you can’t download it free at the link, judicious inquiry should yield it.) What Brulle did was go through Internal Revenue Service (IRS) records of both private foundations (e.g. Templeton, Lilly Endowment, Inc., etc.) and of organizations engaged in what he calls the “climate change counter-movement,” or CCCM. Those organizations either are engaged in climate-change denialism (like the Mercatus Center), or, if they accept the scientific consensus, nevertheless argue that it’s too onerous to take action (see Brulle’s schema for identifying these groups in his “supplementary material”).
The survey period was from 2003-2010, and records for most of these foundations are publicly available, though some aren’t required to identify their donors.
His final sample included 140 foundations that gave 5,299 grants (total $558 million) to 91 organizations identified as CCCM groups. Here’s figure 1 from Brulle’s paper, showing the investment of various donor groups in climate-change denialist organizations. Note the $20.2 million dollar investment by the John Templeton Foundation: 4% of total investments in CCCM groups (I’ve added the arrow). As Brulle’s paper notes:
Over the 2003–2010 period, they [the Donors Trust/Donors Capital Fund] provided more than $78 million in funding to CCCM organizations. The other major funders are the combined Scaife and Koch Affiliated Foundations, and the Bradley, Howard, Pope, Searle and Templeton foundations, all giving more than $20 million from 2003–2010.
Brulle points out that the foundations giving the most money to CCCM organizations, Donors Trust/Donors Capital, are what they call “donor directed” foundationa, meaning that other groups and individuals contribute to such groups can state the intent of their donations, and then the donor directed foundations can disperse the money to CCCM organizations without disclosing the identify of contributors. That means that money intended to fund climate-change denialism is laundered; it’s what, in a parallel with physics, Brulle calls “dark money.”
Here, by the way, are the CCCM organizations to which the groups shown above donate:
If you want to know who Templeton donated to, here are the data from Brulle’s “supplementary material”:
As Brulle notes,
. . . conservative think tanks were the largest recipients of foundation support. These think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute, are among the best known conservative think tanks in the United States. The American Enterprise Institute received 16 % of the total grants made to organizations that are active in the CCCM. The Heritage Foundation was a close second, receiving 14 %. The majority of foundation funding goes to multiple focus conservative think tanks. As previous analyses have shown (Jacques et al. 2008; Dunlap and Jacques 2013), these multiple focus think tanks are highly active in the CCCM.
One of Brulle’s more notable findings was that “network analysis—” a measure of the “weight” of donor groups among all monies dispersed to CCCM organizations—showed that donations by two of the largest groups once funding climate-change denialim, ExxonMobil and Koch Affiliated Foundations, have dropped to almost nothing (ExxonMobil went from 4.7% of total funds in 2003 to zero by 2007, and Koch from 9% in 2006 to 2% in 2010.) At the same time, as you see in the graph below, the amount of funds dispersed by Donors Trust/Donors capital has risen dramatically, from less than 4% in 2003 to more than 23% in 2010. It is possible, but not certain, that ExxonMobil and Koch are still donating to CCCM groups, but hiding their donations by giving the money to donor directed foundations like Donors Trust/Donors Capital. That is not a certainty, but are we to think that these organizations have simply stopped donating completely?
As Brulle notes:
The rapid increase in the percentage of funding of the CCCM by Donors Trust/Capital and the decline in both Koch and ExxonMobil corresponds to the initiation of campaigns by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Greenpeace publicizing and criticizing both ExxonMobil and Koch Corporations as funders of climate denial. Although the correspondence is suggestive of an effort to conceal funding of the CCCM by these foundations, it is impossible to determine for certain whether or not ExxonMobil and the Koch Foundations continue to fund CCCM organizations via Donors Trust/Capital or direct corporate contributions. However, it is important to note that a Koch run foundation, the Knowledge and Progress Fund, initiated a pattern of making large grants to Donors Trust in 2008.
Let me add here that while Templeton has donated substantial funds to CCCM groups, it’s not certain whether (or how much of) that money was earmarked for climate-change denialist activities. I’m not sure, for instance, whether the recipient foundations just have a pot of money that they disperse for whatever activities they want (i.e., “general support,” in which case Templeton would be directly complicit), or whether Templeton can say, when it gave out that 20 million bucks, “We don’t want any of this money used for climate-change denialist activities.” The latter possibility seems quite unlikely to me, and certainly to Brulle. But at any rate, were I a Templeton-funded scientist, I would demand to know how much Templeton money goes for climate-change denialism. If any does (and I suspect it does), or if they won’t reveal the answer, I’d stop taking their money. (I would never take Templeton money anyway, but lots of scientists do, for federal grants are hard to get, and Templeton has deep pockets and much looser standards.)
On December 21, The Daily Climate reported on Brulle’s paper and interviewed him in a piece called “Study finds shift to ‘dark money’ in climate denial effort.” Here are a few statements by Brulle in that interview:
“The climate change countermovement has had a real political and ecological impact on the failure of the world to act on global warming,” Brulle said in a statement. “Like a play on Broadway, the countermovement has stars in the spotlight – often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians – but behind the stars is an organizational structure of directors, script writers and producers.”
“If you want to understand what’s driving this movement, you have to look at what’s going on behind the scenes.”
. . .In the end, Brulle concluded public records identify only a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars supporting climate denial efforts. Some 75 percent of the income of those organizations, he said, comes via unidentifiable sources.
And for Brulle, that’s a matter of democracy. “Without a free flow of accurate information, democratic politics and government accountability become impossible,” he said. “Money amplifies certain voices above others and, in effect, gives them a megaphone in the public square.”
Powerful funders, he added, are supporting the campaign to deny scientific findings about global warming and raise doubts about the “roots and remedies” of a threat on which the science is clear.
“At the very least, American voters deserve to know who is behind these efforts.”
And so do American scientists, especially those who take money from Foundations like Templeton. So how about it, Drs. Greene, Nowak, Ecklund, and Luhrmann? Will you demand to know how much money from the organizations that fund you goes for climate-change denialism? If any does, will you continue, as scientists, to take money from groups that fund anti-science, a kind of anti-science that threatens to destroy our planet?
And if you look at the Board of Advisors of the John Templeton Foundation, you will find many prominent scientists and academics. Will they be willing to demand accountability from the organization they “advise”?
The “I-don’t-care-about-religion” excuse can no longer hold for those associated with Templeton money. For scientists must surely care if they’re supported by a group that also gives money to deny the findings of science in the service of capitalism.
h/t: Diana MacPherson
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Brulle, R. 2013. Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations. Climatic Change. doi:10.1007/s10584-013-1018-7
Stanley Fish has written his last “Opinionator” column for the New York Times, and I can’t say I’m sorry to see him go. His writing was dreadful (and he’s an English professor!), his opinions cranky and quirky (see here, for instance). He was the intellectual equivalent of the old man who yells, “Hey, kids! Get off of my lawn!”, and he always conveyed an invidious air of intellectual superiority—if you could actually wade through his tedious prose to discern that. Plus he hated New Atheists, though I suspect he was an atheist himself. (I says “suspect” because, as he notes in his column, he was more interested in the nature of an argument than resolving it.) He merely wanted to show that the rest of us weren’t up to his ability to tackle the sophisticated arguments for religion. It’s a mystery to me why the Times let him rabbit on so long: eight years!
His last column, published December 23, is called “So long, it’s been good to know you,” but what he really meant was “So long, it was good for you to know me.” In his final column, he explains why readers were often frustrated with him, gets in a lick at New Atheism, and then decries the boycott of Israeli universities—but without giving his opinion on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
His atheist bashing:
I explained (too often) that I was typically less interested in taking a stand on a controversial issue than in analyzing the arguments being made by one or more of the parties to the dispute. I was making an argument about the structure of argument, and the fact that I came down hard on the reasoning put forward by one side didn’t mean either that I rejected its position or embraced the position of the other side.
So, for example, when I found the writings of the “New Atheists” — Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens — shallow, callow, historically uninformed and downright silly, that didn’t mean that I was a religious believer. Bad arguments can be made on behalf of a position you may well hold, and by pointing out their badness you don’t (necessarily) reject the position.
. . I tried to stand on the side of cogency and against slipshod reasoning, which meant that I stood on neither side of a substantive question like “Is there a God?” or “Does religion do more harm than good?” I might of course have answers to those questions, but it wasn’t the point of the columns I wrote to reveal them. Let me hasten to say that I wasn’t trying to be objective (a label pinned on me by both my detractors and defenders) or to be above the fray; I was in another fray, making points about making points, and reserving the deeper, moral issue for another day, which usually never arrived.
Pity about that. As Marx said in his Theses on Feuerbach, “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” But Fish didn’t even interpret the world; he interpreted arguments. That’s fine for a philosophy class in college, but not for a newspaper column. “Making points about points”, an arcane meta-analysis, does have its uses, but it would have been nice had Fish let us know where the correct arguments actually led. But at least he gets to show here that he’s brainier than the more popular New Atheists. (I suspect a bit of jealousy, since Fish aspired to be a “people’s scholar”.)
Fish does note, thank Ceiling Cat, that the boycott of Israeli universities is misguided (“No matter what the motivation or the circumstances, curtailing the freedom of academics because of a political judgment — saying, as the boycotters say, “because we don’t like the policies of your government, we won’t have anything to do with you” — is just flat out wrong.”), but then pulls back when it comes to the larger question, saying that this is “a geopolitical calculation I am not competent to make.” Bullfeathers! I don’t believe that for a second.
So goodbye to Fish, goodbye to meta-analysis, goodbye to tedium and labored prose. Let us hope the New York Times, which has often made dreadful choices in its “Opinionator” writers, will replace him with one of the many academics who write livelier prose and actually have opinions beyond “Look at ME!”.
Fish’s final paragraph:
In saying that, I find myself back at the same old stand, making a point about the kind of point I’m not making, doing what I do just after having announced that I will no longer be doing it. As John Wayne might have said, but in fact didn’t, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. And in whatever venue (including, perhaps, this one) I continue to do it, I hope you’ll be along for the ride.
“As John Wayne might have said, but in fact didn’t”?? I’d cross that out if it were in a student essay.
And sorry, Dr. Fish. I’m getting off that horse.
Hili: We can laugh at the tradition but such a festive atmosphere has its charm.
In Polish:
Ja: Hili, podano do stołu.
Hili: Możemy śmiać się z tradycji, ale taki świąteczny nastrój ma swój urok.
By Matthew Cobb
In the UK (and perhaps in other parts of the ex-empire) 26 December is a holiday – Boxing Day. When I were a lad, preparing for Xmas was like preparing for a siege as all shops were closed on 25 and 26, and if 27 was a Sunday, there’d be three days-worth of supplies to stock up. That’s changed, but Boxing Day is still a holiday, although shops are open and the sales start. Nevertheless, many of us are blearily post-prandial and about to start again on another round of over-eating and over-drinking. Whether you’re about to stuff yourself silly, or go to work, here’s some great footage of maternal love from the northern hemisphere’s top terrestrial predator.
Cats versus holiday decorations. Bottom line: cats win.