Today’s shenanigans from the offended faithful

May 2, 2012 • 11:23 am

Before I go lecture about evolution, I want to highlight two shenanigans from the faithful that hit my inbox in the last hour.

The first is from one Dan O’Brian, who runs a goddy blog called The Search for Truth (has anybody heard of him?).  He sent a comment to be appended to the post below—the one about why serious atheists should be in despair. I thought I’d put it above the fold instead:

Such is the abasement and self-loathing that faith teaches; we are born sick and commanded to be well.  We are “nothing” (WTF?).

My response to Mr. O’Brian is this: once you are disabused of the fiction that is God, then without friends, love, and earthly goals and aspirations, YOU are nothing.  If you were sufficient without God, then you would have no need for prayer, church, or faith.

Oh, and the intelligent-design clowns at Uncommon Descent decided on April 30 to have a contest based on my upcoming paper in Evolution, which holds religion responsible for creationism (duh!) and argues that Americans won’t accept evolution as strongly as do Europeans, for instance, until our country becomes as non-religious as Europe.  But achieving that degree of secularism might require  profound social change, for America’s religiosity may well result from the manifest social inequality and dysfunctionality that afflicts our country.

At any rate, here’s the Uncommon Descent contest:

Crusade/jihad? No, it doesn’t properly  describe this antic in a science journal (see also this). In the best tradition of our contest to come up with a term for a reviewer who does not read the book he is trashing (which resulted in noviewer as the winning entry), we now invite contest mavens to address the following problem:

. . . We lack a word in English for the sort of campaign Coyne and his New Atheist friends are conducting against Christianity. Technically speaking, “crusades” are conducted under the sign of the cross, and “jihads” are conducted in the name of Allah . .

We need a new Coynage. What should we call Coyne’s battle for incivility toward – and distortion of facts about – traditional religion?

Well, there were 57 entries, and they announced the winner today:

 And now the winner: Jammer writes at 11: It’s the gnu atheists’ very own Crusades, so… The Gnusades. That succinctly captures the apparent religious element of gnu atheist campaigns against other systems of thought. As with entries “gnuhad” and “jerryhad,” the main point  to get across is that these people will not live peaceably with anyone, not even with other atheists.

Lord, they had to co-opt our own word to get their own!  “Faitheist” has that one beat ten ways from Sunday.  Personally, I preferred “Coynoscopy—The search for truth in all the wrong places.” (I refrain from dwelling on the cranial colonoscopy that is intelligent design.)

p.s.: There are plenty of atheists with whom I live peaceably—much more peaceably than evangelical Christians or Hindus live with Muslims.

More theological criticism of atheists: we’re not despairing enough

May 2, 2012 • 8:05 am

UPDATE:  Over at Choice in Dying, Eric MacDonald has a nice commentary on this issue, “Nothing beside remains.”

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The video and the interview highlighted here aren’t new, but I wanted to put them up them because of the recurring accusation that New Atheists aren’t “serious” enough (I believe Terry Eagleton and R. Joseph Hoffmann have said this recently).  In a nutshell, the criticism is that New Atheists don’t follow their beliefs to the logical conclusion—the despair and nihilism that supposedly emerge when we realize that there is no God, no afterlife, and no supernatural basis for morality. When we see that, we lose all hope—or should lose all hope.

In other words, we’re not lugubrious enough. We should be existentialists like Sartre or even Camus, who said, in The Myth of Sisyphus, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” Why not bump ourselves off when we realize that life is meaningless?

The answer of course, is that we, not a sky-father, give life its meaning, and can find joy and fulfillment in the limited time we have. Is that “frivolous”?  I don’t think so.  Given our finite span, why spend our time being dolorous, weighed down by the supposed futility of life?  There is so much beauty and love to be had, not to mention friendship, books, music, food, drink, and cats; and I for one am happy to be happy about these things.

But Robert Barron, a Catholic priest, thinks I should feel otherwise. Watch the video of this seemingly genial fellow and see how many things you can disagree with in just a few minutes:

I find this the most invidious part of his spiel:

We have deeply ingrained in us a sense of the limitedness of this world that there is something more. In fact, our very wiring for God proves the existence of God. We desire something which transcends the limitations of this world means that we have within us a sort of participation in the eternal. . . Your hunger is not a sign that food is a projection, but your hunger in fact proves the existence of food—your hunger proves the reality of food. Right? It doesn’t mean that food is some kind of subjective projection or illusion. So that our desires are not misleading us: our desires order us to realities—so our desire for God.

That’s a new theological argument to me: The Argument from Hunger. Because we want something so badly, it must exist.  Readers might amuse themselves with refuting it.

Along similar lines, here’s part of an interview with John Haught published in Salon in 2007: “The atheist delusion.”

You’re saying older atheists like Nietzsche and Camus had a more sophisticated critique of religion?

Yes. They wanted us to think out completely and thoroughly, and with unrelenting logic, what the world would look like if the transcendent is wiped away from the horizon. Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus would have cringed at “the new atheism” because they would see it as dropping God like Santa Claus, and going on with the same old values. The new atheists don’t want to think out the implications of a complete absence of deity. Nietzsche, as well as Sartre and Camus, all expressed it quite correctly. The implications should be nihilism.

Didn’t they see the death of God as terrifying?

Yes, they did. And they thought it would take tremendous courage to be an atheist. Sartre himself said atheism is an extremely cruel affair. He was implying that most people wouldn’t be able to look it squarely in the face. And my own belief is they themselves didn’t either. Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus eventually realized that nihilism is not a space within which we can live our lives.

But it seems to me that Camus had a different project. He thought there was no God or transcendent reality, and the great existential struggle was for humans to create meaning themselves, without appealing to some higher reality. This wasn’t a cop-out at all. It was a profound struggle for him.

Yes, it was. But his earlier life was somewhat different from his later writings. In “The Stranger” and “The Myth of Sisyphus,” he argues that in the absence of God, there’s no hope. And we have to learn to live without hope. His figure of Sisyphus is the image of living without hope. And whatever happiness Camus thought we could attain comes from the sense of strength and courage that we feel in ourselves when we shake our fist at the gods. But none of the atheists — whether the hardcore or the new atheists — really examine where this courage comes from. What is its source? I think a theologian like Paul Tillich, who wrestled with the atheism of Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus, put his finger on the real issue. How do we account for the courage to go on living in the absence of hope? As you move to the later writings of Camus and Sartre, those books are saying it’s difficult to live without hope. What I want to show in my own work — as an alternative to the new atheists — is a universe in which hope is possible.

I don’t need no stinking hope, at least any hope that when the being known as Jerry Coyne has expired, he’ll be tranported to a cloud above, where he’ll pluck a harp for eternity.  And I do hope for accomplishment in science, and for love, friendship, learning, good books, good wine, and good noms—and that’s enough hope for me.

I give a talk

May 2, 2012 • 3:51 am

Posting will be light today as I have to prepare and deliver a talk at Harvard’s Museum of Natural History, “Why evolution is true and why many people still don’t believe it.” It’s at 6 pm. in the Museum’s Geology Lecture Hall (24 Oxford Street, Cambridge) and it’s free (more information is at the link).  There will be a book signing thereafter, and then I’m off for a well-deserved and bibulous dinner.

If you’re in the area and want to attend or say “hi,” you’re welcome.

Readers’ animal photos: Moar owls (short-eared ones)

May 2, 2012 • 3:38 am

Reader Tom C. sent along some of his owl photos which arrived too late for our recent OwlFest. But they’re lovely pictures, so I’ll post herewith his snaps of Aseo flammeus and his captions (click to enlarge).

Short-eared Owl at sunset: stretchin’, to get ready for some killin’… and eatin’. (Cape Vincent, NY)

(Oh, and I love this sentence about them from Wikipedia: “In Scotland this species of owl is often referred to as a cataface, grass owl or short-horned hootlet.” Short-horned hootlet!)

Also Short-eared Owl(s) from Cape Vincent NY. These images, plus the stretching bird, are all from the same late February afternoon.

This species is a communal rooster as you can see on the right!

Below, this bird is a bit agitated (short “ears,” but erected):

(JAC: Wikipedia says:

Owls belonging to genus Asio are known as the eared owls, as they have tufts of feathers resembling mammalian ears. These “ear” tufts may or may not be visible. Asio flammeus will display its tufts when in a defensive pose. However, its very short tufts are usually not visible.

and this, instantiated by the bird below:

The yellow-orange eyes of A. flammeus are exaggerated by black rings encircling each eye, giving the appearance of them wearing Mascara, and large, whitish disks of plumage surrounding the eyes like a mask.)

According to The Owl Pages, their courtship displays are stupendous:

Courtship and territorial behaviour is spectacular for an Owl. Males perform aerial displays by rising quickly with rhythmic and exaggerated wing beats, hovering, gliding down, and rising again, often 200 to 400 meters (650 to 1,300 feet) above ground. Wing claps, in bursts of 2 to 6 per second, are often made during this flight and some singing occurs. The flight can be ended with a spectacular descent where the male hold his wings aloft and shimmies rapidly to the ground. Two birds may engage in flight, locking talons, and fighting briefly.

These owls occur in both the New and Old Worlds; here’s their range map:

And a  nice video:

Robert R. Sokal 1926-2012

May 1, 2012 • 11:11 am

by Greg Mayer

Robert R. Sokal,  Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolution at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, died at the age of 86 on April 9. During his long career he made distinguished contributions to evolutionary biology, systematics, human population genetics, and statistics, and generations of biologists have learned the principles and practices of statistical inference from the textbook he wrote with Jim Rohlf, Biometry (first edition 1969; fourth edition 2011). It was my privilege to be a student of his as an undergraduate at Stony Brook.

Robert R. Sokal in 1964 (courtesy the late Robert R. Sokal, via Joe Felsenstein, from Panda's Thumb)

Mike Bell has written a fine summary of his career at the Stony Brook Ecology & Evolution website, and Joe Felsenstein also has memorialized him at Panda’s Thumb (read the comments there, too). His life story was just as, if not more, interesting than his scientific career. Born into a Jewish family in Vienna, his family fled the Nazis in 1939, and found refuge in Shanghai, China. There, he attended college, and met his future wife, Julie. They came to the United States after the war ended, and remained here. Their story, known in general terms to all at Stony Brook, was chronicled in the book Letzte Zuflucht Schanghai: Die Liebesgeschichte von Robert Reuven Sokal und Julie Chenchu Yang by Stefan Schomann (click on the title for pictures from their time in China).

He will be perhaps best remembered for his contributions to, and insistence on, rigorous, quantitative reasoning in all aspects of biology, and in helping to usher in the age of computer-based analysis of biological data. In systematics, he pioneered quantitative techniques in both phylogeny reconstruction and the assessment of similarities and differences. The latter, which he pioneered with P.H.A. Sneath, became known as numerical taxonomy. Sokal and Sneath argued that knowledge of phylogeny was not fundamental for the classificatory purposes of taxonomy, which they thought should be based on overall resemblance (an approach known as phenetics). This approach to systematics has not prevailed, but the methods developed have proved of great value throughout biology, including phylogenetics. Although he thought evolutionary considerations should not rule taxonomy, he was always devoted to the study of evolutionary questions, first in aphids, then weevils (a word he consciously strove to avoid saying, because of how it came out from a native German-speaker– something like “veevels”), then man, among other subjects. Ironically, it was some of his opponents in the taxonomic debate (the so-called transformed cladists) who seemed to lose interest in evolution, embracing a sort of Platonic idealism as the basis for what were supposedly phylogenetic methods.

At Stony Brook, he was a towering figure, always impeccably dressed in coat and tie, and with an Old World dignity and reserve, the latter reflected in the fact that, unlike all the other professors, he was known to graduate students as “Dr. Sokal”, until the students had gotten their Ph.D.’s.  (There was a weekly Friday afternoon social event called the “BS”, which initials might have various meanings; officially it was the “Beer Social”, but it was rumored that it had those initials so that graduate students could refer to “Bob Sokal” before getting their degrees.) He was also superbly disciplined: on a number of occasions, a hallway conversation with him ended as we approached the elevators, because he always took the six floors of stairs down, as it was a way to regularly exercise without an interruption in his other work. But he was witty, open to discussion, and generous with his time, even for an undergraduate.

For first year Ecology & Evolution (and some other) graduate students, his biometry class was, quite literally, a rite of passage: successful students were inducted in to the “Loyal Order of Normal Deviates”, whose hymn was “Freedom By Degrees”. I was fortunate to be able to take the class as an undergraduate in my senior year (fall 1978). The second edition of Biometry was in the works, and we received the revised text in xerox. As much for his accomplishments as a researcher, he should also be recognized for his accomplishments as a teacher, both in the classroom, and through his book, which I found to be perhaps the most readable self-teaching tool I have ever encountered. I have used it (or it’s shorter version, Introduction to Biostatistics or “Baby Biometry”) for 20 years, and plan to keep using it in future classes. But last week it was my sad duty to tell my class that they are the last to use it while Dr. Sokal was alive.

A best-selling book on a child’s trip to Heaven used as an excuse to diss science

May 1, 2012 • 7:48 am

Friday’s New York Times contained a discussion by Maud Newton of a publishing phenomenon, Pastor Todd Burpo’s bestelling book (written with Lynn Vincent), Heaven is for Real.

I wrote about this book thirteen months ago. It recounts how Todd’s son Colton, four years old at the time, suffered a burst appendix, and how his “near death experience” involved visiting heaven—for real!—and seeing things like his dead relatives, God sitting on a big throne (of course), and Jesus riding a huge horse. Colton supposedly also learned things that he could not have known in real life, like the fact that his mother had a miscarriage. (You can read a chapter of the book here.)

In my earlier discussion of the book, I listed young Colton (now twelve) as the main author, with his father, mother and Lynn Vincent as co-authors. Curiously, in the latest version of the book neither Colton nor his mother are listed as authors.

Anyway, Newton elaborates:

. . . over the months following his recovery did his parents hear his whole story: that while in surgery, he went to heaven and met Jesus, who assigned him homework; he also encountered angels, a rainbow-hued horse, John the Baptist, God the father, the Holy Spirit, a sister his mother miscarried (unknown to Colton) before he was born and his great-grandfather, Pop, as a young man. Everyone in heaven had wings; Colton’s were smaller than most. He learned that the righteous, including his father, would fight in a coming last battle.

“Heaven Is for Real” was published in late 2010, became a word-of-mouth best seller and has spent 59 (nonconsecutive) weeks as the No. 1 nonfiction paperback on The New York Times’s best-seller list. Recently the publisher, Thomas Nelson, spun off a children’s picture book, now also a best seller, with illustrations verified by Colton. And sometime in 2014, courtesy of DeVon Franklin, vice president of production at Columbia Pictures, who considers his faith “a professional asset,” a movie version should be released in theaters.

Newton gives further  “evidence” for Colton’s entry into heaven (he knew several things he couldn’t have known otherwise), recounts her own indoctrination with faith as a girl, and describes some post-book developments, in which Colton seems to have become a bit of a religious jerk:

Not long after his celestial journey, Colton interrupted one of Todd’s funeral services, pointing at the coffin, nearly shouting: “Did that man have Jesus?! . . . He had to! He had to! . . . He can’t get into heaven if he didn’t have Jesus in his heart!” [JAC: Can you imagine how the mourners felt?] The success of “Heaven Is for Real” has as much to do with the undercurrent of blame in these asides as it does with the feel-good, I-met-Jesus story.

Newton then uses the book to lay blame on both evangelical religion and on science, which has tried to explain near-death experiences—NDEs—as a combination of psychology and physiology:

These explanations, however respectful, won’t persuade a believer that her visions are imaginary, just as “Heaven Is for Real” will never convert an atheist. Whichever side of this divide you sit on, you’re unlikely to seek rapprochement with the other. In our à la carte media world, most of us seek only to reinforce what we already think, and it’s zealots who drive the discourse. Pat Robertson depicts natural disasters as God’s punishment for homosexuality; Richard Dawkins seems almost reasonable by comparison, arguing that religion begets persecution, that teaching children to believe in God is abuse and that science is the only principled way to order existence. Yet as Marilynne Robinson has observed, Hitler embarked upon the Holocaust in the name of science; the fact that eugenics was bad science doesn’t negate that fact. No matter how much we learn, the vision science offers — of ourselves and of the universe — will always be incomplete and consequently imperfect. Stories of gods, angels and rainbow horses will persist in the gaps.

(n.b. I’ve just finished Marilynne Robinson’s book, Absence of Mind, and it’s dreadful. It’s not only very poorly written—in contrast, Robinson was nominated for a Pulitzer for her fiction—but it’s almost incoherent in its attack on “scientism”.)

It’s ridiculous to invoke Hitler’s eugenics to cast aspersions on scientific analysis of religious experiences. First of all, there are serious arguments about how much of Nazi eugenics was really drawn from contemporary genetics—as opposed to the “selective breeding” that had been practiced for centuries without any knowledge of genetics beyond “like begets like”. Further, even if the Nazis had drawn on genetics when extirpating mental defectives, Jews, and gypsies, how is that an indictment of science itself?  And the Nazis could fabricate plenty of other excuses to exterminate Jews.

The blame here lay not on genetics and science in general, but on people who misused science in the service of warped ideologies. I’m not sure what Newton means by saying that “the fact that eugenics was bad science doesn’t negate that fact” (the “fact” being that “Hitler embarked on the Holocaust in the name of science”); but it sure looks as if she’s casting aspersions on science itself simply because it was misused. That’s a common tactic used by theologians to justify faith (“both have been misused!”).

And does science really seek to “reinforce what we already think”? If that were true, science wouldn’t progress. (In contrast, faith does seek to reinforce what the faithful already think, which explains why, while theological doctrine may change, it doesn’t progress.) Indeed, science seeks to test, or even to overturn, what we already think.  Think of all the excitement attending the now-dubious finding of faster-than-light neutrinos.

Too, it may well be that science some day will explain NDEs as a combination of one’s psychology, religious or other beliefs, and physiological changes accompanying on a medical crisis. Newton doesn’t consider whether the interstices for angels and rainbows may be growing insupportably small.

Finally, note how Dawkins is implicitly characterized as a “zealot” for his criticisms of faith.

This essay is an example of how one person—Newton—tries to place herself in the “reasonable middle” between science and faith. This becomes clear at the end of her piece:

As for me, in matters of the soul, I’m a devout agnostic. What astounds me, what has always astounded me, is not that so many people are so certain of their beliefs but that they excoriate people who don’t share them. As a child, I repented for my doubt. Now I embrace it. Religious dogma is not verifiable; science is fallible. Uncertainty is the only belief system I feel sure of.

Yes, I am so certain that evolution is true that I do excoriate—or try to educate—people who don’t share my acceptance. In her desire to occupy the “reasonable middle” (P. Z. would call it “halfway to crazy town”), Newton seems oblivious to the fact that the evidence for God and heaven is far less certain, indeed nonexistent, than the evidence for most scientific propositions.  Is Newton an “agnostic” about taking antibiotics when she has a bacterial infection? Does she fly in airplanes or use a computer? Is she agnostic about the existence of dinosaurs in the past?

Of course science is fallible: none of us pretend that we possess the absolute and final truth, and scientific consensus has been wrong (most scientists once poo-pooed continental drift).  Yet science is nearly infallible about many things: water has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom per molecule, evolution happened, the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, and objects attract each other gravitationally with a strength inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them and directly proportional to the product of their masses. I doubt that Maud Newton is as “uncertain” about these issues as she is about the existence of heaven or souls.

*****

This list of books also purchased on Amazon by those who bought Heaven is for Real appeared at the end of Newton’s story yesterday, but seems to have disappeared today.  It reinforces the lessons from Todd Burpo’s best-seller: there’s an enormous appetite for books reassuring people that there is indeed a chance that they’ll be with Jesus after they die.  Most of the books below reinforce the desire of the faithful to fool themselves:

“The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven,” by Kevin Malarkey and Alex Malarkey (2010) [JAC: the authors’ names are appropriate].

“90 Minutes In Heaven: A True Story of Death and Life,” by Don Piper with Cecil Murphey (2004)

“Flight to Heaven: A Pilot’s True Story,” by Capt. Dale Black with Ken Gire (2010)

“23 Minutes in Hell: One Man’s Story About What He Saw, Heard and Felt in That Place of Torment,” by Bill Wiese (2006)

“The Five People You Meet In Heaven,” by Mitch Albom (2003)

“Through My Eyes: A Quarterback’s Journey,” by Tim Tebow with Nathan Whitaker (2011)

“Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever,” by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard (2011)

“Fifty Shades of Grey,” by E. L. James (2012)

Guest post: another brand of accommodationism

May 1, 2012 • 3:58 am

Columnist and gay activist Dan Savage, speaking at a journalism conference in Seattle, caused quite an uproar by criticizing Biblically-based bigotry against gays. Reader Sigmund draws some lessons about accommodationism from this incident.

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Religious accomodationism beyond evolution

by Sigmund

The Huffington Post recently posted a video of Dan Savage, the originator of the anti-bullying initiative, “It gets better”,  talking about the Bible and its use as moral justification for anti-gay bigotry.

The clip is worth watching for two reasons.

First, Savage, speaking at the National High School Journalist Conference in Seattle, points out the hypocrisy of someone using the Bible as a justification for certain actions while ignoring all the other questionable behaviors it endorses (such as slavery or stoning non-virgin brides to death). Savage says this:

The Bible. We’ll just talk about the Bible for a second. People often point out that they can’t help with the anti-gay bullying because it says right there in Leviticus, it says right there in Timothy, it says right there in Romans that being gay is wrong.

We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people, the same way, that we have learned to ignore the bullshit in the bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation.

We ignore bullshit in the bible about all sorts of things.  The bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slave owners waved bibles over their heads during the civil war and justified it. The shortest book in the New Testament is a letter from Paul to a Christian slave owner about owning his Christian slave. And Paul doesn’t say: “Christians, don’t own people”. Paul talks about how Christians own people.

We ignore what the bible says about slavery because the bible got slavery wrong.

Sam Harris, in ‘Letter to a Christian Nation’, points out that if the bible got the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced, wrong, slavery. What are the odds that the bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong.  One hundred percent.

The Bible says that if your daughter is not a virgin on her wedding night, if a woman isn’t a virgin on her wedding night, she shall be dragged to her father’s doorstep and stoned to death.

Callista Gingrich lives. [a reference to the wife – and previously mistress – of the outspokenly religious Republican Presidential contender, Newt Gingrich.]

There is no effort to amend State constitutions to make it legal to stone women to death on their wedding night, if they’re not virgins. At least not yet. We don’t know where the GOP is going these days.

People are dying because people can’t clear this one last hurdle. They can’t get past this one last thing, in the bible, about homosexuality.

Second, look at the reaction the speech receives, both in the hallway—a mass walkout by Christian students, and then on the Huffpo comment section—where it is met with the same sort of responses that Gnus get from religious accomodationists: don’t upset religious people, for we want them as our political allies!

Commenter Judmiller:

How did this guy think spewing hate would help his cause? He has set gay causes back 20 years with this video. People will hold this up as example of the hatred gays have for straights.

Commenter Rob in Oregon:

I wonder if he would also ridicule other minorities? Anti-Christian bigotry is America’s last acceptable prejudice.

Apparently criticizing the moral lessons in the Bible is equivalent to insulting Christians—and therefore Savage is bullying Christians!

After noting the walkout, Savage commented:

I apologize if I’ve hurt anyone’s feelings, but I have a right to defend myself, and to point out the hypocrisy of people who justify anti-gay bigotry by pointing to the bible and insisting we must live by the code of Leviticus on this one issue and no other.

The incident, as a whole, illustrates an important point in regards to accomodationism.

The right and even the moral necessity to criticize religious teachings, particularly those derived from ancient sacred texts, is not confined to the issue of evolution.

While fundamentalist Christianity impacts the teaching of science in public schools, particularly in those regions where politicians pander towards the faithful, it is primarily the more ‘moderate’ forms of religiosity that affect people’s lives lives.  Be it discrimination against gays or denying proper healthcare and reproductive choice to women, religously-based resistance to equality and choice is derived almost entirely from the core doctrines of the major denominations, such as the Roman Catholic church. Such teachings on homosexuality and birth control are based on religious grounds— primarily the revealed opinions of an unquestioned and even unquestionable deity—and are therefore not amenable to secular reasoning.

Accomodationism, insofar as it seeks to dampen criticism of moderate religion in order to foster political alliances, silences action against very real problems perpetuated by these supposedly friendly faiths.