Whatever Myers’s target, his weapons are taken from the arsenal of ridicule. He is in good company — writers such as Jonathan Swift and George Orwell spring to mind. Myers’s prose, although serviceable, isn’t quite in the same class, but sometimes reaches lyrical heights. Explaining his decision to bury, rather than burn, unwanted books of scripture sent for his spiritual instruction, he exults “as nematodes writhe over the surfaces, etching the words with slime and replacing the follies of dead men with the wisdom of worms”. Myers’s favourite weapon is the extended metaphor, deployed to expose his targets as arbitrary and absurd. He wields it adroitly, comparing religious diversity to hat variety and theologians to courtiers fawning over the Emperor’s new clothes. These conceits are often amusing and occasionally instructive, but the tactic is cheap.

Whether infuriating or invigorating, ridicule is no substitute for a considered critique, and Myers often fails to do justice to his targets. For example, his analysis of the idea that God guides evolution by acting undetectably at the quantum level, if amusing, is a popular rather than a scholarly treatment, and incorporates value judgements that are unsupportable by science. Myers might respond that his targets are too ridiculous to warrant anything more serious, but such a response presupposes, rather than compels, agreement.

The chief problem with The Happy Atheist, however, is that it seems to break no new ground. By my count, Pharyngula posts provide the basis for at least 26 of the 38 essays and 5 more are adapted from a talk he gave in 2010.

Admirers and detractors alike will be disappointed by the book as a missed opportunity for Myers to refine, systematize and extend his thoughts on science and religion. . .

I take issue with Branch’s claim that Myers’s rebuttal of the “quantum-mechanics-guides-evolution” argument” is popular rather than scholarly. In fact, there is no scholarly rebuttal, for that claim is a God-of-the-gaps argument, an unnecessary add-on to science that cannot be tested.  And an untestable claim is one that need not be taken seriously as either science or theology.  Further, I’m not sure how “value” judgments are involved in dismissing that argument, except for the “value judgment” that science has never needed supernatural add-ons. If Branch really thinks that, then his organization, the NCSE, should dismiss naturalistic evolution as a “value judgment” as well.

Finally, Myers’s book is a popular rather than a scholarly treatment. Branch’s critique reminds me of Terry Eagleton’s “Courtier’s Reply” (satirized by Myers himself) to Dawkins’ The God Delusion. Like Richard’s book, because P. Z.’s is directed at a popular audience, it’s completely unfair to criticize for not providing a “scholarly treatment.” The public doesn’t want a scholarly treatment.

Myers’s “self-plagiarism,” apparently not mentioned in the book, is another issue. I haven’t read The Happy Atheist, but it’s customary for an author who anthologizes his work to note at the outset that this and that bit were previously published, and to mention where. I wanted to do this with a few paragraphs in my new book, and so asked my editor how to handle this. She emphasized that I must indicate which bits have been “self-plagiarized,” and note where they were originally written.

What I really want to highlight here, though, is a follow-up bit of accommodationism: a letter  in this week’s issue of the journal Nature  (link below, but not free) written as a supplement to Branch’s review. The letter is by Robert White, George Ellis, and Denis Alexander, and is called “History: Science luminaries are often religious.”

White and Ellis are at the Universities of Cambridge and Cape Town, respectively, and you’ve probably heard of Denis Alexander, an ex-immunologist who is now head of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge (largely funded by Templeton).  Alexander, an evangelical Christian and a well known accommodationist, is also on the Board of  Trustees of the John Templeton Foundation, and has featured regularly on this site. Here is the letter of White et al. in its entirety:

Young Earth creationists are easy to lampoon (see G. Branch Nature 500, 149;2013). However, using reasoned arguments might hold more sway with the US creationist movement.

PZ Myers, author of The Happy Atheist (which Branch reviewed), should remember that the majority of those who helped to establish the disciplines that we now practise as modern science were religious believers, including Nicolaus Copernicus, Rene Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Carl Linnaeus, Edward Jenner, Michael Faraday, Charles Babbage, Joseph Lister, William Thomson and Arthur Stanley Eddington — to name but a few, and excluding a long list of contemporary names. Half of the 10 most influential scientists of the past 350 years chosen for the Royal Society’s commemorative stamps in 2010 were religious believers.

Now this is a completely gratuitous letter, though readers will be familiar with this “scientists of the past were religious” argument, and may be familiar with its refutation. What galls me is that Nature, one of the two most famous science journals in the world (the other is Science), felt the need to print this letter.  Nature has shown a continuing and unseemly desire to osculate the rump of religion, and I wish it would stop it.

The fact is that before the 20th century, nearly everyone was religious, scientist or not. That one can come up with a list of scientists who were religious doesn’t say anything about what motivated the beginnings of science, what motivates its practitioners now, or whether science and religion are compatible.  One could just as easily come up with a list of malefactors, murders, warmongers who were religious.  Indeed, had Newton not spent so much time on his religious activities (he was a non-trinitarian Arian), he may well have produced a lot more science!

What White et al. know, but deliberately fail to point out, is that 92% of the U.S.’s most prestigious scientists—the members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)—do not believe in a personal God. That is a huge contrast with the religiosity of the American public, about 95% of whom believe in God.

Likewise, a recent survey by Robin Elisabeth Cornwell and Michael Stirrat (cited in The God Delusion) showed that 78% of the members of Britain’s Royal Society (the U.K. equivalent of the NAS) strongly disagree that there is a God, and only 20% agree. As always, scientists are far, far less religious than is the general public.

It’s clear that the letter of White et al. intends to not only claim a compatibility between religion and science, but to give religion credit for helping give birth to and advance science. We can dismiss as unconvincing the claim that “using reasoned arguments”—as if their argument from the religiosity of Newton et al. were rational—will help change the minds of creationists. Can you imagine a Christian thinking “Wow! Newton and Linnaeus were religious? That does it—I’m embracing evolution!”?? Such a claim strains credulity.

Adducing the religiosity of some scientists, particularly in the past, carries no weight here. True, some scientists were motivated to find out stuff as a way of revealing God’s handiwork, but the belief in supernaturalism has held back science far more than it has advanced it (think of the opposition to a heliocentric solar system and to evolution). Further, the methods that religion uses to find its specious “truths” are completely incompatible with and inimical to the methods that science uses to find real truth. There are many religions, all with conflicting claims, but there is only one science: a materialistic and godless practice.

But I’ve said this many times before.  What distresses me is that Nature gives its weighty imprimatur to arguments as bogus as those of White et al.  Clearly, the journal has made a decision to go soft on religion—perhaps as a misguided way of drawing believers into science. I wish one of my readers who is a scientist would write a counter-letter to that of White et al.

h/t: Karel

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Branch, G. 2013. Science and religion: Godless chronicles. Nature 500:149. doi:10.1038/500149a

White, Robert, G. Ellis, and D. Alexander. 2013. History: Science luminaries are often religious. Nature 501: 33 . doi:10.1038/501033c