Government-funded accommodationism at UC Berkeley

December 18, 2011 • 11:10 am

The University of California at Berkeley has a website, Understanding Evolution, which is generally a great resource for teachers and students of evolution. There’s one fly in this ointment, though, and it’s in the section called “Misconceptions about evolution.” It includes the usual misconceptions: evolution is “just a theory”, it’s not widely accepted by scientists, and so on.  And the site does a nice job of refuting these.

But there’s an additional misconception. Guess what it is.

It’s that “religion and  evolution and religion are incompatible.” Who could have been dumb enough to think that?  And this is how the website dispels this ludicrous notion:

Misconceptions about evolution and religion

  • Evolution and religion are incompatible. Because of some individuals and groups stridently declaring their beliefs, it’s easy to get the impression that science (which includes evolution) and religion are at war; however, the idea that one always has to choose between science and religion is incorrect. People of many different faiths and levels of scientific expertise see no contradiction at all between science and religion. For many of these people, science and religion simply deal with different realms. Science deals with natural causes for natural phenomena, while religion deals with beliefs that are beyond the natural world.

Of course, some religious beliefs explicitly contradict science (e.g., the belief that the world and all life on it was created in six literal days does conflict with evolutionary theory); however, most religious groups have no conflict with the theory of evolution or other scientific findings. In fact, many religious people, including theologians, feel that a deeper understanding of nature actually enriches their faith. Moreover, in the scientific community there are thousands of scientists who are devoutly religious and also accept evolution. For concise statements from many religious organizations regarding evolution, see Voices for Evolution on the NCSE website. To learn more about the relationship between science and religion, visit the Understanding Science website.

Who’s responsible for this stuff?

Credits
This site is a collaborative project of the University of California Museum of Paleontology and the National Center for Science Education. For more information, see our credits page.

Funding
Support for Understanding Evolution has been provided by The National Science Foundation [NSF] (under grant no. 0096613) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (under grant no. 51003439).

Now I’m sure that when the NSF gave money to the Cal Museum of Paleontology, it had no idea that taxpayers’ money would go to fund theology—for that’s exactly what this kind of accommodationism is—but we need to be aware of what message taxpayer–funded institutions are putting out to the public. (Berkeley is a state university)  My position has always been that scientific organizations, particularly ones funded by the taxpayers, should say nothing about the compatibility of science and faith.  The statement about the teaching of evolution by the Society for the Study of Evolution, for instance, is a model of how to promote evolution purely on its scientific merits, without treading into the marshy hinterlands of theology.

Let’s rewrite that statement so it better reflects reality, though of course I’m not suggesting that this appear on the website:

Misconceptions about evolution and religion

  • Evolution and religion are compatible. Because of some individuals and groups stridently declaring their beliefs, it’s easy to get the impression that science (which includes evolution) and religion are at war; and indeed, in many respects they are.  Although people of many different faiths and levels of scientific expertise see no contradiction at all between science and religion, for many others the contradictions are many and profound.  Science and religion have different methods of “knowing” (science depends on reason, observation, doubt and replication, religion on dogma, authority, and revelation); science and religion arrive at different conclusions about the world (e.g., the existence of Adam and Eve or of a sudden creation); and while there is only one form of science that transcends ethnicity or faith, different faiths arrive at different conclusions, so that the idea of religious “truth” must differ from that of scientific “truth.”  Further, although many people feel that science and religion simply deal with different realms—that science deals with natural causes for natural phenomena and religion deals with beliefs that are beyond the natural world—many others think this demarcation is misleading.  Many religions, for example, make claims about the natural world, some of them testable by science, and many of these claims have been disproven by science. Religion and science are distinct realms only insofar as religion is deistic, and posits no supernatural intervention into the creation or workings of the universe.

Of course, some religious beliefs explicitly contradict science (e.g., the belief that the world and all life on it was created in six literal days does conflict with evolutionary theory); however, some religious groups have no conflict with the theory of evolution or other scientific findings. But many others, do. In fact, only a minority of Americans—16%—accept that humans evolved via a purely naturalistic process (the current scientific consensus), 38% agree with a theistic evolution of humans guided by God, and 40% of Americans think that humans were directly created by God in their present form within the last 10,000 years or so.

Although many religious people, including theologians, feel that a deeper understanding of nature actually enriches their faith, that can be seen as a way to avoid the cognitive dissonance of simultaneously entertaining two incompatible worldviews.  And although in the scientific community there are thousands of scientists who are devoutly religious and also accept evolution, around 60% of scientists are atheists or agnostics, a figure that rises to 93% for members of America’s most elite body of scientists, the National Academy of Sciences.  Clearly there is a profound disconnect between science and religion, one that reflects their fundamental incompatibilities.

But don’t worry about that, just take our word that that science and religion are compatible.  After all, there are all those religious scientists.

Rosenhouse on scientism

December 18, 2011 • 8:55 am

Jason Rosenhouse is always worth reading (except, for me, when he writes about chess!), and his latest post at EvolutionBlog, “What is scientism?“, is a penetrating analysis of the slur that’s often levelled at atheists and scientists by accommodationist and believers. Jason was inspired by a peevish post from (surprise!) Michael Ruse, who, feeling that philosophy is being dissed in discussions about “ways of knowing,” argues that mathematics and morality are sources of “genuine knowledge.” Jason responds:

In the context of science/religion discussions, this definitional morass seems supremely unhelpful. It’s far too abstract. The real issue is very simple. If you are going to make assertions about how the world is, then it is on you to provide evidence for that assertion. Then people can decide for themselves if they think your evidence is any good. What science (defined in some reasonable, everyday sense) provides is a set of investigative methods that everyone regards as legitimate. In this it differs from religion, which points to sources of evidence, such as personal experience or the contents of holy texts, that are considered by many to be of highly dubious validity.

Jason, who of course is a mathematician, argues that much of mathematics is indeed part of science. “Pi,” for example, comes from empirical observations about the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.  That’s true, of course, but that seems an exception, and much of mathematics is simply logical deduction from axions.  Math is a useful tool for understanding the world, but with few exceptions the discipline itself, absent empirical observation, doesn’t tell us truths about the world.  But Jason’s willing to buy that, too:

But just for the sake of argument let’s suppose we are absolutely determined to define our terms in such a way that mathematical knowledge is not part of science. Very well. Since I am happy to grant that mathematics provides knowledge, I will consider scientism to be refuted. In its place I will suggest a new notion called “scienceandmathematism,” which is defined as the idea that science and mathematics are the only reliable routes to knowledge. Happy now?

Jason argues, correctly, that while science can inform moral judgments, in the end statements about right or wrong (or, in Ruse’s case, whether one should feel ashamed of an action) are opinions, based on subjective value judgments.  I think that’s true: even Harris’s justifiable claim that well-being should be the criterion for morality is not something that can be justified through science.

Finally, Jason takes on the really annoying claim (one made by theologians like John Haught) that because we can’t philosophically justify a priori the exclusivity of science as a way to find truth, then science devolves to a faith—like religion. (The object here, of course, is to drag science down by analogizing it to faith.)  And Jason’s response is the one I always give:

But why can’t we justify scientism on scientific grounds? I would think there is a plausible argument to be made that our confidence in scientism is an inductive inference from the persistent success of science coupled with persistent lack of success of all other routes to knowledge. Ruse earlier defined science as a generalization from experience. Is that not precisely the basis for a confident assertion of scientism?

Certainly the distinctively religious ways of knowing that people have suggested over the years have frequently proven themselves unreliable. Philosophical and ethical analysis are certainly valuable activities, but it seems strange to me to describe them as ways of knowing. What they provide is not knowledge, but clarity.

Indeed.  If you want to see a philosopher’s justification of scientism—in this case “philosophical naturalism,” read Barbara Forrest’s paper published in 2000 in Philo, “Methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism: clarifying the connection.” The paper is free at the link; do read it.

Finally, in response to an almost incoherent statement by Ruse, Jason brings his piece to a close:

I don’t know what it means to say, “[I]f it isn’t science it isn’t genuine.” Genuine what? What I do know is that an assertion that science is the best, and perhaps the only, way of genuinely knowing the world is not a diss to the humanities. It certainly is not a rejection of mathematics, philosophy or ethical reasoning. And if you are going to argue that the assertion is false then it is your burden to point to a better way, and to indicate the knowledge provided by that alternate method.

There can be no knowledge about the universe that doesn’t derive from reason and empiricism, or that can’t be tested by empirical observation. Broadly construed, that’s science.

Readers’ tributes to Hitchens

December 18, 2011 • 5:47 am

The response was greater than I expected: we have about 40 tributes to Hitch, and they’re great.  Rather than putting them all up at once, which I’m told could clog some people’s blog readers, I’ll do them five at a time over the next week or so.  Often the words that accompany the photos are very moving.  If you have a photo/drawing, send it to me ASAP—there’s still time.

The first is, appropriately, from Mason Crumpacker and her mother Anne. Mason, you’ll recall, was the girl whom Hitchens provided with a reading list at the atheist meetings in Houston, and here she’s holding one of the books Hitch recommended.  (The messages provided by the readers, as with this one, will be indented.)

Our tribute photo: Hitchling locked and loaded:

Reader Bala created some images in memory of Hitchens; here’s one:

From Kurt Lewis Helf, an ecologist:

From “yesmyliege”:

Attached is a photo of Atlas confronting the Church, which I took in Rockefeller Center, which I thought might be an appropriate symbolic essay on Hitchens’ important literary contributions for atheism. From Wikipedia on Atlas: “Atlas continues to be a commonly used icon in western culture, as a symbol of strength or stoic endurance…. Atlas is used as a metaphor for the people who produced the most in society, and therefore “hold up the world” in a metaphorical sense.”

And from Chuck O’Connor:

This is a photo that captures for me the legacy Hitch leaves me with. It is a snap-shot of my son at the Peggy Notebart Nature Museum butterfly house. It embodies the honest sense of legacy Hitchens often spoke of in his relationship with his children and the best response of our natural world, learning about it. My son is the only connection I have to life after death and sharing with him the wonders of nature is the only worship I want to enjoy.

Ian McEwan on Hitchens’s last days

December 17, 2011 • 6:32 pm

I’ve avoided reading most of the Hitchens obituaries, for they make me too sad.  But some have stood out: the eulogy by his brother, a wonderful remembrance by his officemate at The Nation, and yesterday’s memorial in The New York Times by author Ian McEwan.

It’s all about books, ideas, and Hitchens’s fierce drive to keep producing up to the very end. Here’s the ending. McEwan is paying his last visit to Hitchens at the hospital in Houston:

The next morning, at Christopher’s request, Alexander and I set up a desk for him under a window. We helped him and his pole with its feed-lines across the room, arranged pillows on his chair, adjusted the height of his laptop. Talking and dozing were all very well, but Christopher had only a few days to produce 3,000 words on Ian Ker’s biography of Chesterton.

Whenever people talk of Christopher’s journalism, I will always think of this moment.

Consider the mix. Constant pain, weak as a kitten, morphine dragging him down, then the tangle of Reformation theology and politics, Chesterton’s romantic, imagined England suffused with the kind of Catholicism that mediated his brush with fascism and his taste for paradox, which Christopher wanted to debunk. At intervals, Christopher’s head would droop, his eyes close, then with superhuman effort he would drag himself awake to type another line. His long memory served him well, for he didn’t have the usual books on hand for this kind of thing. When it’s available, read the review. His unworldly fluency never deserted him, his commitment was passionate, and he never deserted his trade. He was the consummate writer, the brilliant friend. In Walter Pater’s famous phrase, he burned “with this hard gem-like flame.” Right to the end.

When people learn that their time is coming to an end, they often do the things they neglected in life: travel, visit friends—anything but what they did in their “normal” lives. That is, after all, what the “The Bucket List” was all about.  Hitchens just kept on writing, for that was what he was born for, what he loved to do.  He didn’t need to change his habits when death was nigh, because he had lived exactly the way he wanted.

We often hear that we should live as if each day was our last.  That’s not possible, of course, because we’re humans, and we make plans. But we should surely live each day cognizant of—but not obsessed with—our mortality, and so few of us do. Hitchens did.

Do read McEwan’s piece.

Creationist rabbi Moshe Averick has another Marshall McLuhan moment

December 17, 2011 • 9:25 am

Moshe Averick, an Orthodox rabbi here in Chicago, has been pwned again: he’s getting it not only from his commenters, and from the wife of a Nobel-winning scientist whom Averick attacked, but now from the Nobelist himself and a science columnist.  It has not been a good week for the good rabbi. I wonder whether, in the dark of night when he lies wrestling with his God, Averick even considers the possibility that he might be wrong—or duplicitous.

A few days ago I was scurrilously attacked by Averick for criticizing the ID advocate and pompous twit David Berlinski.  Among my other failings, Averick singled out the quality of my writing, which he compared to a bottle of Ripple.

Averik’s schtick has always been that since science can’t tell us how life arose from nonliving precursors, God must have done it.  He claims to be a novice in all other areas of evolution, not qualified to pass judgment on neo-Darwinism, or my own work, but he’s 100% sure about abiogenesis: science not only can’t tell us how life began, but never will.

In his frenzy to pwn me, Averick quoted Nobel Laureate Jack Szostak, who happens to work on the origin of life. Unfortunately, Averick not only took Szostak’s quote out of context, but added a bit to it to make it seem as if he was finishing Szostak’s thoughts.  Here’s what Averick said:

The argument that I put forth in my book, which Rabbi Jacobs also presented in his Huffington Post column, was that the simple reason why Origin of Life researchers are baffled in their attempts to find a naturalistic origin of life – as Noble Laureate Dr. Jack Szostak put it, “It is virtually impossible to imagine how a cell’s machines…could have formed spontaneously from non-living matter,” is because it is impossible for a cell’s machines to have formed spontaneously from non-living matter. The notion that the functional complexity of a bacterium could be the result of an unguided process is as absurd as asserting that the sculptures on Mt. Rushmore were the result of an unguided, naturalistic process.

When you read Szostak’s quote, you immediately detect that it might have been ripped out of context: evolutionists have seen this happen many times, and we get a sense when there’s duplicity afoot.  (Note as well that Averick takes it upon himself to finish Szostak’s quote, so subtly that the reader might think that the whole sentence came from Szostak.)

As I pointed out in my earlier post on this, Szostak’s wife, Terri-Lynn McCormick, commented on Averick’s post, noting that the full quote didn’t express what Averick said it did, but instead discussed ways that the first proto-cell might indeed have formed.  And McCormick called Averick a liar, an accurate characterization.

In response, Averick waffled a bit but wouldn’t admit that he dishonestly truncated a quote, claiming it was all a “misunderstanding.” (LOL!).  So McCormick went right back to the comments and again pointed out his dishonesty:

How dare you misrepresent my husband. Your quote from the Scientific American article blatantly distorts his meaning. It is virtually impossible to imagine the cell we know now to emerging from the pre-biotic earth. He and others have, over many years, been showing incrementally how an RNA cell might have been created on early earth. There is nothing in my husband’s work that suggests otherwise. It is quite sickening that you would try to make him, a steadfast rationalist and atheist, into a propopent for I.D. You are in complete disagreement with Prof. Jack Szostak. Unfortunately for you his opinion is backed up by facts and mountains of results from peer reviewed research.

Please refrain from misrepresenting his opinions or work again. We consider it slander.

What was missing here was Szostak’s own take on the matter.  Well, it turns out that Faye Flam, science columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, went to the horse’s mouth for clarification. She’s posted the answer on her Planet of the Apes website, in a piece called: “Did a creationist quote a Jack Szostak imposter?“
Flam, who had previously watched Szostak lecture on his work and interviewed him about his origin-of-life ideas, quotes the great man:

I emailed Szostak to find out where Averick’s quote came from – whether he remembered saying or writing it. “If I recall, the basic point I was making was that the complex machines of modern life could not have formed spontaneously, but must have emerged gradually over a lengthy period of evolution,” was his reply.

It’s not about whether the process is guided, but whether it was sudden or gradual. What kind of a person would take the first part of that quote and then finish with support of creationism?

I’ll tell you what kind of person: someone who’s a professional liar for Yahweh.  And this is for you, Averick, for you’re a man who, to support your unevidenced belief in God, regularly breaks the Ninth Commandment:

And Flam, Szostak, and McCormick have given Averick one of my favorite moments: The Marshall McLuhan Pwn, as seen in this clip from Annie Hall:

My own tribute

December 17, 2011 • 5:50 am

I did the best I could, but I lack Mr. Walker’s amber restorative.

For our joint tribute to Hitchens, please be sure to email me your own photographic (or graphic, as in drawing) effort by this evening, and I’ll put them up tomorrow.  I’ll use your real name unless asked otherwise.  At present we have about a dozen and counting. . . .