You’d think there would only be a finite number of arguments about why science and faith are compatible, but Noah Efron,  a city councilman in Tel Aviv, Israel, has come up with a new one. It’s not worth spending much time on, but we have to keep up with the enemy.  In an article at (where else?) HuffPo called “The meaning of science and religion in real life,” Efron finds the loving concordat of science and faith in the internet.  Why? Because it’s a product of science but can be used for social purposes.  So why are “social purposes” religious?  Because the Pope talked about the internet!

A few days ago, Pope Benedict XVI issued a statement about social networks like Facebook, called “Truth, Proclamation and Authenticity of Life in the Digital Age.” The Pope’s tone is one of reflection and careful measure, and he finds online things to admire and things to avoid. He sees in the Internet “a new appreciation of communication itself, which is seen first of all as dialogue, exchange, solidarity and the creation of positive relations.” At the same time, he finds in posting and Tweeting and poking a “tendency to communicate only some parts of one’s interior world” and a “risk of constructing a false image of oneself, which can become a form of self-indulgence.” Life online shakes up life as we knew it, raising important questions:

Who is my “neighbour” in this new world? Does the danger exist that we may be less present to those whom we encounter in our everyday life? Is there a risk of being more distracted because our attention is fragmented and absorbed in a world “other” than the one in which we live? Do we have time to reflect critically on our choices and to foster human relationships which are truly deep and lasting?

What makes this document moving is the fact that in it Pope Benedict tries to make sense of how the vast changes quickly wrought by scientific technologies affect the lives of our kids and our own lives, how they might bring people together or keep them apart, how they add to our loneliness or subtract from it, how they allow us to find meaning and love, or prevent us for this. What makes it moving is the Pope’s certainty that “the truth of Christ” and “the task of witnessing to the Gospel” are affected by the Internet . . .

Here’s the best part:

Even more than tired polemics about Darwin, this is where science and religion meet in ways that matter, behind the locked bedroom door of a teen at a screen, waiting, forlorn, to be friended. Meetings of this sort reflect no “great war of ideas.” They are something more delicate than that, far from headlines, taking place at a scale more human than seminar room polemics, with stakes that are, in the end, higher.

Umm. . . I don’t think that most teens who are on the internet behind locked bedroom doors are “waiting to be friended.”

Efron promises a “series of essays” on this stuff.  LOL!

If you’ve followed this site, you’ll know that from time to time I highlight accommodationist statements by science organizations.  I want to publicize them because I feel that such statements, asserting a compatibility between science and faith (usually by claiming that the two areas have “different ways of knowing”), do a disservice to science.

On these grounds I’ve criticized the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), since they have a “Faith Project” explicitly dedicated to reassuring religious folks that science need not conflict with their faith.  To accomplish this, they hired an accommodationist, Peter M. J. Hess, as Director of Religious Community Outreach.  And the NCSE site is loaded with defenses of accommodationism (if you doubt that, spend some time browsing here).

My view, which is similar to that of people like P. Z. Myers and Larry Moran, is that the NCSE should stay away from what is essentially a theological pronouncement and stick to science itself.  If they discuss religion at all, I think they should limit their words to something like, “There is a diversity of opinions about the compatibility of science and faith.”

Curiously, Josh Rosenau (and I’m forced to pwn him for the third time in one day), a Programs and Policy Director for the NCSE, is now asserting that neither the NCSE nor major science organizations promote this sort of accommodationism.  Rosenau’s claim came in response to a comment by physicist Sean Carroll on Rosenau’s personal website.  Carroll, clarifying what people like he and I think about official statements on accommodationism, said this (he mistakenly called Josh “Jason,” probably thinking of Jason Rosenhouse, who has a similar name but very different views!)

Jason, anti-accommodationists don’t want science organizations to go around saying that science and religion are compatible. That’s all. It’s not that vague, or hard to understand.

True.  That’s exactly what we don’t want.  But Rosenau replied (my highlight):

Sean: I’m Josh, not Jason (Thoughts from Kansas, not Evolutionblog). Also, I don’t think you’ll find that science organizations go around asserting a compatibility of science and religion.

I’m flummoxed, for I’ve spent the last couple of years highlighting such assertions.  And within two minutes of Googling I found official accommodationist statements from the two most prominent scientific organizations in the United States.

American Association for the Advancement of Science (publisher of Science):

The sponsors of many of these state and local proposals seem to believe that evolution and religion conflict. This is unfortunate. They need not be incompatible. Science and religion ask fundamentally different questions about the world. Many religious leaders have affirmed that they see no conflict between evolution and religion. We and the overwhelming majority of scientists share this view.

The National Academies (National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering, National Research Council, and Institute of Medicine):

Acceptance of the evidence for evolution can be compatible with religious faith. Today, many religious denominations accept that biological evolution has produced the diversity of living things over billions of years of Earth’s history. Many have issued statements observing that evolution and the tenets of their faiths are compatible. Scientists and theologians have written eloquently about their awe and wonder at the history of the universe and of life on this planet, explaining that they see no conflict between their faith in God and the evidence for evolution. Religious denominations that do not accept the occurrence of evolution tend to be those that believe in strictly literal interpretations of religious texts.

Science and religion are based on different aspects of human experience. In science, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world. Scientifically based observations or experiments that conflict with an explanation eventually must lead to modification or even abandonment of that explanation. Religious faith, in contrast, does not depend only on empirical evidence, is not necessarily modified in the face of conflicting evidence, and typically involves supernatural forces or entities. Because they are not a part of nature, supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science. In this sense, science and religion are separate and address aspects of human understanding in different ways. Attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist.

Also: The National Academies FAQ:

Aren’t evolution and religion opposing ideas?

Newspaper and television stories sometimes make it seem as though evolution and religion are incompatible, but that is not true. Many scientists and theologians have written about how one can accept both faith and the validity of biological evolution. Many past and current scientists who have made major contributions to our understanding of the world have been devoutly religious. At the same time, many religious people accept the reality of evolution, and many religious denominations have issued emphatic statements reflecting this acceptance. (more information)

To be sure, disagreements do exist. Some people reject any science that contains the word “evolution”; others reject all forms of religion. The range of beliefs about science and about religion is very broad. Regrettably, those who occupy the extremes of this range often have set the tone of public discussions. Evolution is science, however, and only science should be taught and learned in science classes.

Josh, please do your homework.  Accommodation is the position du jour.

I see I iz going to have to pwn Josh Rosenau twice today.  I seem to remember that when Josh went off on his honeymoon, he promised to return a kindler, gentler man, no longer interested in going after Gnu Atheists since he had grown bored with them.  Sadly, that resolution instantly went by the board, and the man has returned to cranking out his same long, muddled posts.  They often remind me of what H. L. Mencken wrote about Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class: “Well, what have we here? What does this appalling salvo of rhetorical artillery signify? What was the sweating professor trying to say . . .a cent’s worth of information wrapped in a bale of polysyllables.” (That review, by the way, is one of the funniest I’ve ever read.)

Having read my post from last Sunday, in which I discussed—civilly!—science and religion with a reading group at Chicago’s First United Methodist Church,  Rosenau has somehow concluded that I’m an accommodationist!  In his snarky post, appropriately called “Minor Coyne snark,” Rosenau manages to make five errors of understanding in only three paragraphs.

Fortunately, I don’t have to correct them because Brother Blackford has already done so over at Metamagician, in a post called “‘Gnu atheist’ does not mean ‘nasty’; accommodationist does not mean ‘nice’.”  Russell even reproduces my response to Josh’s post, which I put as a comment below the church post.  Russell’s conclusion:

But the real take home point is that accommodationism is not necessarily “nice”. As Rosenau demonstrates by example, accommodationists can be as snarky, unfair, and obsessed with scoring cheap points as anyone else. And those of us in the broadly anti-accommodationist camp, who see a genuine and serious difficulty in reconciling a worldview based on science and reason with worldviews based on religion, are not thereby nasty. I see nothing in Jerry’s original post that recants his anti-accommodationist position or shows him backing away from it in his dealings with liberal Methodists. What I see is a further demonstration, if one were needed, that anti-accommodationist positions can be as careful, subtle, and, alas yes, “nuanced” as any other intellectual positions.

When I spoke to a group of progressive evangelicals last year – a group nowhere near as theologically liberal as the group Jerry met with – I had much to say in their praise. That doesn’t mean that I thereby turned into an accommodationist. It means that I give credit where it’s due, as Jerry did.

What really pisses me off about Rosenau’s approach is its “heads-I-win-tails-you-lose” mentality. If we show the slightest degree of aggression towards the religious, we are attacked for being, well, basically, nasty. If we are polite, thoughtful, and give credit where it’s due, we’re accused of abandoning our substantive positions. This is plain unfair. It stinks like the proverbial dead cat.

(Umm. . .did we need that dead cat simile?)

I think some demon has taken over Josh, making him obsessively peruse my website and write long posts about my supposed failures.  I’m a bit mystified by this obsession. But this latest post, in which Josh claims that I’m his brother in accommodationism because I talked nicely to Methodists (while firmly maintaining my atheist views), is particularly bizarre.

In response, I can’t help returning snark for snark and posting a Rosenau buzzkill sent to me by an alert reader.  (If you don’t know buzzkills, go here; they’re hilarious.)