Physicist Alan Lightman is one of the rare breed of working scientists who is an engaging and prolific popular writer. I loved his book Einstein’s Dreams. But now he proves to be somewhat of an accommodationist (and “somewhat” is being charitable). And Lightman’s arguments for accommodation, laid out in his longish essay at Salon, “Does God exist?” (subtitled  “The case for reconciling the scientific with the divine—and against the anti-religion of Richard Dawkins”), are not only unconvincing and unoriginal, but embarrassing.

The piece is distressing from the very first paragraph:

Ten years ago, I began attending monthly meetings of a small group of scientists, actors and playwrights in a carpeted seminar room at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Our raison d’être, broadly speaking, has been an exploration of how science and art affect one another. As we drink merlot and munch on goat cheese and crackers, with the late afternoon sun draining from the room, we discuss topics ranging from the history of scientific discovery to the nature of the creative process to the way that an actor connects to an audience to the latest theater in New York and Boston.

Oy, gewalt! If they’re gonna have goat cheese, they should at least be serving a good white wine like a sauvignon blanc!  Or even something sweet, like a Sauternes.

At any rate, Lightman’s “salon,” which includes physicist Alan Guth and biologist Nancy Hopkins, often discusses science and religion.  After much deliberation, Lightman declares:

As a both a scientist and a humanist myself, I have struggled to understand different claims to knowledge, and I have eventually come to a formulation of the kind of religious belief that would, in my view, be compatible with science.

His reconciliation involves first defining the main principle of science, what he calls “the central doctrine of science.”

All properties and events in the physical universe are governed by laws, and those laws are true at every time and place in the universe.

And then God:

For the purposes of this discussion, and in agreement with almost all religions, God is a being not restricted by the laws that govern matter and energy in the physical universe. In other words, God exists outside matter and energy. In most religions, this Being acts with purpose and will, sometimes violating existing physical laws (i.e., performing miracles), and has additional qualities such as intelligence, compassion and omniscience.

And the big reconciliation? Just garden variety deism (or “immanentism,” which Lightman defines as the idea that “God created the universe and the physical laws and continues to act but only through repeated application of those fixed laws”):

Tucking these axioms under our belt, we can say that science and God are compatible as long as the latter is content to stand on the sidelines once the universe has begun. A God that intervenes after the cosmic pendulum has been set into motion, violating the physical laws, would clearly upend the Central Doctrine of science. Of course, the physical laws could have been created by God before the beginning of time. But once created, according to the Central Doctrine, the laws are immutable and cannot be violated from one moment to the next.

Lightman, who claims he’s an atheist, then cites religious scientists like Francis Collins and Owen Gingerich as examples of those who have achieved a fairly reasonable form of reconciliation, although they do accept the existence of miracles.

Lightman then adduces a form of reconciliation that might well have come from John Haught. It’s the “other ways of knowing” argument combined with the fact that his central doctrine of science (“All properties and events in the physical universe are governed by laws, and those laws are true at every time and place in the universe”) can’t be rationally supported;

However, I certainly agree with Collins and Hutchinson and Gingerich that science is not the only avenue for arriving at knowledge, that there are interesting and vital questions beyond the reach of test tubes and equations. Obviously, vast territories of the arts concern inner experiences that cannot be analyzed by science. The humanities, such as history and philosophy, raise questions that do not have definite or unanimously accepted answers.

Finally, I believe there are things we take on faith, without physical proof and even sometimes without any methodology for proof. We cannot clearly show why the ending of a particular novel haunts us. We cannot prove under what conditions we would sacrifice our own life in order to save the life of our child. We cannot prove whether it is right or wrong to steal in order to feed our family, or even agree on a definition of “right” and “wrong.” We cannot prove the meaning of our life, or whether life has any meaning at all. For these questions, we can gather evidence and debate, but, in the end, we cannot arrive at any system of analysis akin to the way in which a physicist decides how many seconds it will take a one-foot-long pendulum to make a complete swing. These are questions for the arts and the humanities. These are also questions aligned with some of the intangible concerns of traditional religion.

As another example, I cannot prove that the Central Doctrine of science is true.

This somehow makes room for God:

But artists and humanists often don’t care what the answer is because definite answers don’t exist to all interesting and important questions. Ideas in a novel or emotion in a symphony are complicated with the intrinsic ambiguity of human nature. . . .Then, there are questions that have definite answers but which we cannot answer. The question of the existence of God may be such a question.

Just like the question of the existence of Zeus, Wotan, or garden fairies.

Lightman then defends the possibility of deism against the arguments of New Atheists like Dawkins:

As a scientist, I find Dawkins’ efforts to rebut these two arguments for the existence of God — intelligent design and morality — as completely convincing. However, as I think he would acknowledge, falsifying the arguments put forward to support a proposition does not falsify the proposition. Science can never know what created our universe. Even if tomorrow we observed another universe spawned from our universe, as could hypothetically happen in certain theories of cosmology, we could not know what created our universe. And as long as God does not intervene in the contemporary universe in such a way as to violate physical laws, science has no way of knowing whether God exists or not. The belief or disbelief in such a Being is therefore a matter of faith.

(Note that he says this holds as long as God doesn’t intervene in the contemporary universe. Apparently God might have in the past, as with the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus, and that’s okay, even though those events blatantly violate physical principles.)

So what’s Lightman’s real beef with Dawkins? That Richard is dismissive of faith:

What troubles me about Dawkins’ pronouncements is his wholesale dismissal of religion and religious sensibility. . . In my opinion, Dawkins has a narrow view of faith. I would be the first to challenge any belief that contradicts the findings of science. But, as I have said earlier, there are things we believe in that do not submit to the methods and reductions of science. Furthermore, faith, and the passion for the transcendent that often goes with it, have been the impulse for so many exquisite creations of humankind. Consider the verses of the Gitanjali, the Messiah, the mosque of the Alhambra, the paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Should we take to task Tagore and Handel and Sultan Yusuf and Michelangelo for not thinking?

I believe Dawkins has extolled the beauty of cathedrals and other religiously inspired art. But that doesn’t in any way justify the claims of religions. And then, like John Haught, he simply redefines “faith” in a way that gives all of us—religious folks and atheists alike—that quality (at least, those of us who are moved by art or literature):

Faith, in its broadest sense, is about far more than belief in the existence of God or the disregard of scientific evidence. Faith is the willingness to give ourselves over, at times, to things we do not fully understand. Faith is the belief in things larger than ourselves. Faith is the ability to honor stillness at some moments and at others to ride the passion and exuberance that is the artistic impulse, the flight of the imagination, the full engagement with this strange and shimmering world.

Umm. . . note to Lightman: when I’m moved by Beethoven, and carried away by his music, that does not somehow vindicate religion.

He then makes The Argument for Faith from the Good Stuff that Religion has Done and the Bad Stuff that Science has Done:

Scattered throughout Dawkins’ writings are comments that religion has been a destructive force in human civilization. Certainly, human beings, in the name of religion, have sometimes caused great suffering and death to other human beings. But so has science, in the many weapons of destruction created by physicists, biologists and chemists, especially in the 20th century. Both science and religion can be employed for good and for ill. It is how they are used by human beings, by us, that matters. Human beings have sometimes been driven by religious passion to build schools and hospitals, to create poetry and music and sweeping temples, just as human beings have employed science to cure disease, to improve agriculture, to increase material comfort and the speed of communication.

Lightman then recounts a story of watching two baby ospreys fled on his property in Maine:

When they were within 20 feet of me, they suddenly veered upward and away. But before that dazzling and frightening vertical climb, for about half a second we made eye contact. Words cannot convey what was exchanged between us in that instant. It was a look of connectedness, of mutual respect, of recognition that we shared the same land. After they were gone, I found that I was shaking, and in tears. To this day, I cannot explain what happened in that half-second. But it was one of the most profound moments of my life.

Almost every biologist who watches animals in the field has had an experience like this—an experience of either feeling kinship with nature or awe of nature. But in what sense does that vindicate either religion or faith?  We are creatures of emotion, but that hardly proves that God exists, or constitutes some kind of reconciliation between God and science.

The subheading of Lightman’s title is “the case for reconciling the scientific with the divine—and against the anti-religion of Richard Dawkins.” Let us summarize Lightman’s case for such a reconciliation:

• There could be a deistic God, or even one who, in the past (but no longer) performed miracles that violate the laws of physics.

• There are some religious scientists like Francis Collins (Lightman even cites, God help me, the studies of sociologist Elaine Ecklund, who, as we know, has misrepresented her data to prove her Templeton-funded claim that scientists are more religious than we think.  Dr. Lightman should actually read and think about what Ecklund wrote).

• There are questions science cannot answer, like these: “We cannot prove whether it is right or wrong to steal in order to feed our family, or even agree on a definition of ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ We cannot prove the meaning of our life, or whether life has any meaning at all.  We all know that these are not questions that have an objective scientific answer, or perhaps any answer at all.

• We cannot prove that physical laws are true and obeyed everywhere in the universe. But surely Lightman is aware that we see no exceptions to this.  Maybe he can’t prove that somewhere, in some corner of the universe, these laws are violated. But experience gives us no evidence that they are. He might as well say he can’t prove that invisible fairies guide his actions.  Science works—and it has always worked without assuming the existence of the supernatural. We don’t have to justify the existence of physical laws on first principles.

• Religion is still with us, and has created nice works of architecture and art, like Notre Dame and the paintings of Giotto.  So how does that reconcile science and God?

• Science has done bad stuff, like making atomic bombs. The bad stuff, of course, comes not from science itself, but from extra-scientific motivations applied to the products of science.

• Lightman was once moved to tears by watching the first flight of two young ospreys.

What a puerile and unoriginal defense of faith—especially by a renowned physicist and thinker! Each of these arguments has been made by theologians like John Haught, and none are convincing.  Perhaps Lightman has not gotten out enough, for what is contained in his essay is simply a warmed-over hash of arguments for faith that have long been dismantled.

Monday’s Los Angeles Times contains a remarkably weak-minded op-ed pushing science/faith accommodationism: “Science and religion: a false divide.” The author is John H. Evans, a professor of sociology in the UC San Diego who has written two books on bioethics.  His point is that fundamentalist protestants in America aren’t the big opponents of science that we take them to be.

Evans claims to have conducted “survey research” showing that, compared with those “who do not participate in any religion,”

The conservative Protestants are equally likely to understand scientific methods, to know scientific facts and to claim knowledge of science. They are as likely as the nonreligious to have majored in science or to have a scientific occupation.

That may be true, but he doesn’t reference his survey.  And he draws a conclusion about these conservatives that doesn’t seem supported by his study—that is, he asserts this conclusion before he brings up his survey, and I find the statement dubious:

While many conservative Protestants disagree with the scientific consensus about evolution, you cannot infer their perspectives on other scientific issues such as climate change from this one view alone. Fundamentalists’ and evangelicals’ relationship with science is much more complicated than the idea that they “oppose science.”

The disagreement with evolution alone is telling, but it was my impression that conservative protestants were more opposed to the idea of anthropogenic global warming than, say, atheists or those of more liberal faiths. This is confirmed by a Pew Survey for Earth Day in 2009, showing that evangelical Protestants were far less likely than either other religious groups or the religiously unaffiliated to accept the idea of human-caused climate change—and far more likely to deny it. Here are the data from that survey (click to enlarge):

Note too that evangelical Protestants are more recalcitrant on this issue than “mainline” white Protestants or black Protestants.

And a Pew Survey in 2009 found that while 36% of Americans as a whole agreed with the statement that “science conflicts with your religious beliefs,” and 61% disagreed, the figures were quite different for white evangelical Protestants, among whom 52% found a conflict between science and their religious beliefs, and only 46% disagreed.

I would, then, like to see Evans’s own “survey” research.

Evans then uses his dubious results to make a case for comity between science and religion:

On most issues, there is actually very little conflict between religion and science. Religion makes no claims about the speed of hummingbird wings, and there are no university departments of anti-resurrection studies — scientists generally are unconcerned with the vast majority of religious claims and vice versa.

Of course there are departments of anti-resurrection studies: we call them physics departments and biology departments.  We’re unconcerned with the vast majority of religious claims because many of us (and most “elite” scientists) simply don’t accept them as worthy of consideration. Evans goes on:

There are, of course, a few fact claims in which conservative Protestant theology and science differ, such as the origins of humans and the universe. Here we find that typical conservative Protestants are likely to believe the teaching of their religion on the issue and not the scientific claim.

We could complain that they are being inconsistent in believing the scientific method some of the time but not always. Yet social science research has long shown that people typically are not very consistent. The people who are more consistent are those who are punished for inconsistency: philosophers, media pundits, political activists and politicians.

What is he saying here? That it’s okay to be inconsistent—to tell pollsters that you accept science but, when the rubber meets the road, deny science when it conflicts with your faith? As I told the audience in my debate with John Haught last night, a Time Magazine poll in 2006 showed that 64% of Americans would reject a scientific fact if it was shown to conflict with their faith. In such a situation, a general “support of science or the scientific method” means very little.

Evans homes in on something, however, that does seem true: much of American opposition to evolution (and science) is based on its perceived erosion of moral values:

The greatest conflict between fundamentalists, evangelicals and science is not over facts but over values. While scientists like to say that their work is value-free, that is not how the public views it, and conservative Protestants especially have homed in on the moral message of science. William Jennings Bryan, famed defender of the creationist perspective at the Scopes “monkey trial,” was not just opposed to evolution for contradicting the Bible but also concerned that the underlying philosophy of Darwinism had ruined the morals of German youth and had caused World War I.

The situation today is not that different: Contemporary “intelligent design” advocates, for example, are deeply worried that the teaching of evolution has a negative effect on children’s values.

It would have been nice, though, had Evans inserted a caveat that there isn’t a “moral message of science”; there are just scientists who use the objective findings of science to draw conclusions about what is good and what isn’t.  Most of those conclusions derive from personal and extra-scientific considerations.  And Evans might also have noted that in countries that have much broader acceptance of evolution than America—countries like Sweden, Denmark, France, or Germany—children and adults don’t have markedly debased morals.

Evans’s lesson: moar accommodationism is needed!  And most of that accommodation should, of course, come from by scientists and atheists, who simply have to be more accepting of right-wing religious people:

To move forward, we, as a country, need to lower the political conflict. Yes, the views found in fundamentalist churches are not exactly the same as those at the National Science Foundation. But we would see less of the polarizing “we real Americans” rhetoric from the religious right if its members were not ridiculed as know-nothings. Conservative Protestants are not fundamentally opposed to all science.

No, they’re just fundamentally opposed to those parts of science that contravene their faith, like global warming, evolution, and stem-cell research.  I’m sorry, but though I may not ridicule those people as morons, I do decry their ignorance—an ignorance that stems from blind adherence to unsupported superstitions. Evans’s prescription is weird:

No, it isn’t futile. Understanding what concerns the “other side” would help. Those wishing to affect public policy on issues such as climate change, for example, need to make it clear to conservative Protestants that the science of global warming is based more on direct observations than on analytic abstractions, that it is more like determining the average body temperature of a human than where humans came from.

This is like saying that if we simply made it clear to conservative Protestants that scientists’ acceptance of evolution is based not on abstractions but on hard evidence—evidence drawn from fields as diverse as paleontology, molecular biology, biogeography, and embryology—then those Protestants would simply roll over and accept evolution. Is anyone really stupid enough to believe that?

As I mentioned in my book, I once gave a lecture on the evidence for evolution to a group of conservative and religious businessmen in a rich town north of Chicago. At the end of my talk, one of them came up to me and said, “I find your evidence very convincing. But I’m not convinced.”  Why not? Because he was religious—one of the 64% who reject scientific facts that contravene their faith.

It’s naive to think that educating the public on the science alone is going to change minds.  That change is blocked by religious faith. And that’s why, if we want to solve the problem of evolution-denial and climate-change denial, we have a harder job ahead of us than simply purveying facts: we must loosen the grip of faith on the American mind.  When will people realize this obvious conclusion?