I’m not  sure why the past couple of years have seen such increased attention to the “war” between science and faith.  It’s all over HuffPo, for example (another instance last week), and the Templeton Foundation pays lots of dosh to people who argue that the conflict between these areas is bogus, or that the breach needs repair through “dialogue.”  Some even argue that scientists are, after all, religious, for they’re “spiritual.”

It’s not obvious why the religion/science debate is so pressing.  The issues have been with us for a while, and the arguments have become stale.  My latest theory is that this is a form of push-back by religion.  Faith seems to be on the wane, and the faithful know it.  They hold science responsible, and try to preserve their bailiwick against its encroachments.  That’s why they make the palpably false assertion that the dichotomy isn’t real—so they can preserve their territory—but also claim that science is a form of religion, so there’s nothing to encroach on faith.

And all of this is expressed in repeated and annoying calls for “dialogue.” Invariably, what the dialogue is supposed to yield is not an erosion of faith, or a realization by the faithful that many of their beliefs are scientifically insupportable, but an increased respect for religion by scientists.  It’s always—always—intended to prop up religion against the advances of science. It’s not a dialogue they want, but a monologue.

The latest such call is from Elaine Ecklund, a sociologist at Rice University.  Funded by Templeton, she wrote a big book, Science Vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think, surveying the religious beliefs of American scientists.  And though she found that we scientists are noticeably irreligious—much more so than the American public at large—she’s done her best to frame the data to make them say the opposite: that scientists are really friends of faith.  Several of us (see also here) have pointed out the big disparity between the facts and her interpretation of them; I see this as intellectual dishonesty that corrodes honest scholarship.

But Templeton loves it because Ecklund is giving them big bang for their bucks. She’s distorted her data over at HuffPo, and continues to do so at the Big Questions Online site, where Templeton pays handsomely to lure authors congenial to their mission.  Her new piece is called “Religion, science, and the academy,” with the description “Should universities work to keep religion away from science—or to bring them closer?” You know what the answer is going to be.

Ecklund’s first task is to distort her findings again.  She claims that American scientists are surprisingly religious:

While many scientists are completely secular, nearly 50 percent identify with a religious label, and almost one in five is actively involved in a house of worship, attending services more than once a month. Even among those who are not religious, many see themselves as spiritual.

Jason Rosenhouse and I have pointed out the problems with this characterization. Both of us, for example, are flat-out atheists, but we’d both identify ourselves as having an “affiliation” with Judaism—we are cultural Jews.  More important, Ecklund always hides the embarrassing fact that 64% of American scientists are either agnostic or atheist, compared to only 6% of the public. (Another 8% of scientists accept a “higher power that is not God,” bringing nontheist scientists to 72%.)  If you look at members of the National Academy of Sciences, the proportion of agnostics and atheists rises to a whopping 93%.  I’ve addressed the “spiritual” canard elsewhere.

But this doesn’t matter to Ecklund because her agenda is driven not by data but by a desire to coddle religion.  Her data show that American scientists are irreligious.  She distorts these findings to promote  a call for dialogue.  Had her data shown that American scientists really are nearly as religious as the public, she’d still use it to call for dialogue, pointing out how alike we are.  There is no conceivable result she couldn’t frame as a call for science-faith harmony.  So of what use is her data?

So, if we really must have a dialogue, what kind of dialogue is it to be?  As usual, we’re not allowed to ask religious people to consider how science corrodes the facts that buttress their faith.  Nope, as usual it’s a one-way “dialogue”. Ecklund sees American universities as having unfairly expelled religious ideas, ideas that are critically important to science.  Why? Because we can’t ground the moral implications of our science without the vital input of faith:

A number of the university scientists I spoke with suggested that their colleagues begin to change their perspective by rejecting scientism, a disciplinary imperialism that leads them to explicitly or implicitly assert that science is the only valid way of knowing and that it can be used to interpret all other forms of knowledge. This means instead of marginalizing religion, we should bring discussions of meaning and morality more broadly back into the social and natural sciences.

Do you see how Ecklund defines “scientism” in a way that is not only perjorative but unfair? She levels the old canard that scientists see little value in the humanities.  That’s complete hogwash, of course.  I find my science colleagues much more knowledgeable about, and appreciative of, art and literature than humanities scholars are about science.

Science, considered to be completely fact-based, was separated from more humanistic fields such as English and history. And this separation left scientists with little vocabulary for thinking about the moral implications of their research or what kind of public translation of science works well.

This is the crux of Ecklund’s argument: that religion has something really, really valuable for scientists—a moral armamentarium.   And she frames this agenda purely as an outcome of her research:

But I also found that a sizeable minority of scientists — about 20 percent — think that, although the scientific method ought to be value-neutral, religion can meaningfully intersect with the implications of their research and with the education of their students. They see religion as important to some forms of science ethics and as potentially helpful in understanding the implications of scientific work (providing a justification for fighting poverty or global warming, for example). According to these natural and social scientists, their students ought to understand religiously-based forms of science ethics alongside ethical-moral-value systems derived from naturalism, those views independent of supernatural claims.

Why does Ecklund ignore the other 80% of scientists who don’t think that religion can meaningfully intersect with science?  Because she agreed a priori with those 20%.  (And note the “sizeable” characterization she gives to 20%—that’s framing).

. . . In other words, educating socially informed young scientists who are equipped to deal with the most controversial issues facing science today means that religion can no longer be completely isolated from scientific scholarship. Instead, university scientists must begin to point out to their students those places where religion might legitimately influence and contribute to their work. Religious scientists, especially, cannot shy away from discussing the connections between science and faith, or, in the appropriate academic context, sharing their own views on religion and spirituality.

No, no, no—a hundred times no! Of course scientists should ponder the moral implications of research—that’s our job as human beings.  We shouldn’t, of course, do this in the classroom (Ecklund calls for “interdisciplinary centers to promote these “conversations”).

But what on earth does religion have to contribute to an exploration of morality?  I maintain that there is not a single ethical insight contributed by religion that could not be be better contributed by secular morality—and without the taint of the supernatural.  Why would a rabbi, a priest, or even a devout scientist like Francis Collins have anything more to say about the moral ramifications of science than atheist philosophers like Anthony Grayling or Peter Singer?  Why are the faithful given special privilege in these discussions, as if they had some deep and special insights into morality? (Richard Dawkins has pointed out the invariable presence of a pastor or preacher in broadcast discussions of moral issues.)

Now of course there’s a broad overlap between secular and religious morality: many liberal religious people have moral precepts nearly identical to mine.  But these precepts are based not on scripture but, as Plato pointed out so long ago, on considerations that are antecedent to and independent of religion.  And of course lots of religious people have those other moral considerations that are not so helpful in a dialogue with scientists.  These include the assertions that AIDS isn’t prevented by condoms, that global warming either doesn’t exist or is okay because, after all, we have dominion over the Earth, that a one-celled zygote is morally equivalent to a preacher or a scientist, that God says it’s immoral to allow suffering people to end their lives, and so on.  If we’re to have a dialogue about morality, would you prefer input from Anthony Grayling or from Rick Warren?

In fact, scientists seem to be doing pretty well without the advice of the faithful.  In our off hours we’re promoting the use of condoms, fighting global warming and depredations of the environment—depredations supported by many religious people—and trying to get stem-cell research approved.  These actions come from being scientists who have thought about morality, usually in a nonreligious way.  What religion has to contribute to all this, I don’t know.  Overall, religiously-based morality has been a source of problems around science, not a remedy.  Without faith, we’d be going forward with stem cell research, distributing condoms to everyone, and pondering programs for humane euthanasia.

Ecklund’s big error is to suppose that religious people have unique and constructive insights into morality not shared by atheists or agnostics.  She doesn’t say what these insights are, and no wonder: there aren’t any. The moral insights that are unique to religion, as opposed to secular morality, are harmful and stupid.