This video really makes me queasy, for it’s made and partially funded by America’s largest association of scientists, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS. And that organization has an official program to reconcile science and religion, the “Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion,” also called the DoSER program (information here). DoSER is an example of the Templeton Foundation putting its sticky fingers into science; for Templeton started DoSER in 1996 with a 5.3 million dollar grant (!) that ends this month (and I’d bet money it’ll be renewed).
Here’s DoSER’s mission, as quoted on the Templeton site:
These grants established the AAAS program, Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER), and provide support for its ongoing infrastructure costs. DoSER engages the public on a range of questions in science and religion, including evolution, cosmology, astrobiology, and human evolution. The program seeks to establish stronger relationships between the scientific and religious communities and promotes multidisciplinary education and scholarship on the ethical and religious implications of advancements in science and technology.
I wonder how many AAAS members even know—or would approve if they knew—about the DoSER program. It is, in effect, a theological enterprise of a scientific organization, one devoted to telling the faithful that there’s no conflict between their beliefs and science—including evolution.
The head of DoSer is Jennifer Wiseman, who appears in this video along with a younger interlocutor whose name I can’t find (correct me if you find it). Wiseman is a Christian astronomer and head of the American Scientific Affiliation, a group of Christian scientists. The Test of FAITH website says this about her, though I don’t think she’s still president of the ASA:
[Wiseman] is also the current Council President of the American Scientific Affiliation, and she enjoys speaking to student and church groups on the excitement of seeing God’s beauty and creativity in nature.
So here, filmed during last week’s AAAS meeting in Chicago, is Wiseman and her colleague promoting accommodation by interviewing Galen Carey from the National Association of Evangelicals, as well our old friend sociologist Elaine Eckland of Rice University, who has been funded by five Templeton grants and who has used her Templeton money to show that science and religion are perfectly compatible. She likes to take her survey data and twist it to show that scientists are far more friendly to religion than people think, and vice versa.
Most of the discussion in the video below is about Ecklund’s recent survey of the beliefs of scientists and religionists.
So what happens when you get a Templeton-funded Christian scientist interviewing a Templeton-funded sociologist on the question of whether science and religion can coexist? Guess! It’s a regular love-fest, with the answer not even remotely in dispute from the outset.
The AAAS site is Live Chat: Can science and religion coexist?, and the nearly hour-long video “chat” is embedded below. Watch it if you dare. I did watch the whole thing and nearly required insulin for the excessive sweetness and light. If you make it through the whole thing I will congratulate you. I do hope, however, that at least some of my fellow scientists find this AAAS endorsement of accommodationism (with an evangelical Christian chiming in, for crying out loud!) repugnant:
Here are a few highlights, if you can call them that:
12:00: The mission of this conversation is explicitly accommodationist, as Ecklund notes that her work is aimed at trying not to alienate religious people who want to go into science. She also mentions darkly the “implications for the funding of science” (i.e., don’t alienate religious legislators). Carey notes that religion can enhance the science-religion dialogue by adding “voices that bring a moral sensibility to the conversation.” (As if the faithful were more moral than scientists!)
Wiseman adds that accommodationism helps us retain science talent that would be otherwise alienated by science’s “overreaching into areas that science isn’t equipped to address”. The alienation of the faithful is, apparently, muddled by misperceptions that scientists have about the faithful, and vice versa. In other words, Ecklund, Wiseman et al. “want to make sure that we can move as much as we can away from misperceptions so we can have more honest dialogue.” There’s a lot of this fluffy talk throughout the conversation.
Carey, when asked, then defines evangelicals as those who take the Bible seriously, trust in Jesus as saviour and lord, focus on Bible as an authority for living, and try to discover how they have a personal relationship with Jesus. What is this doing in an AAAS-sponsored conservation?
17:20: The discussion turns to what science and religion have in common. What can bring them together? Ecklund notes that both show a “concern for diversity in American society” (e.g., fair gender representation), as well as a desire to increasing the diversity of science by bringing in more religious people. Ecklund’s agenda, and that of DoSER, becomes manifestly clear here.
25:00: Carey says we shouldn’t ask scientists to provide data on “spiritual realities”, even though “Spiritual reality is there, but has to be approached with different methods and tools.” This is an explicit admission of a disparity, and a serious one, between science and religion. Carey admits that religion is looking for reality, but using tools different from those employed by science. Those tools, of course, are revelation and dogma—completely useless for finding any kind of relity.
29:30: Ecklund notes that, among Evangelicals, 42% favor teaching creationism instead of evolution, but the figure is only 13% for mainline Christians. That’s certainly a conflict! But of course she qualifies the figure by saying that evangelicals support science as much as does the general population. She is, in other words, getting around data that she doesn’t like. Notice how Ecklund nods along in agreement with what the evangelical Carey says. Good feelings and brotherhood all around!
33:30: Carey makes the outrageous claim that religion, like science, tests its claims every day, differing from science only in which tools are used for the testing. Right: empirical observation and reason versus revelation and authority.
Ecklund then promotes initiatives from the AAAS asking for more “collaboration” and “creative dialogue” for the sake of “everyone’s good”. The AAAS should try to get religious people together with scientists and “talk through the issues.” (It’s not clear to me what such a dialogue will really accomplish.) Once real agreement on some issues is established, then, says Ecklund “we can go forward with some of the much harder issues”. Like trying to get creationists to accept evolution?
37:15: Wiseman notes that religion can address questions that science can’t. Indeed, say I, but “addressing” questions is not the same as answering them. She also implies that scientists aren’t really that good about interacting well with the public, and that scientists need to “be more communicative about their lives as a whole.”
45:30: The participants discuss how a religion-science dialogue can “help the planet.” Science is supposed to “provide the information,” but people “are the portal for that information, and “many people are religious”. That’s a pretty tenuous form of collaboration, cooked up to show false comity. I suppose the dialogue here is aimed at finding common ground between religious people and scientists so they can collaborate in matters of common interest. But I think they already are doing that (e.g., promoting environmental conservation), and further dialogue isn’t going to help matters much. Moreover, that dialogue, to me, merely gives credibility to magical thinking—the elephant in the room that is totally ignored in this conversation.
Near the end, someone mentions that a collaboration between science and religion will help bring out the “broader context of scientific discoveries” because “religious communities are better at that”. That’s a base canard, for secular humanists and philosophers are also good at that. Why not foster a dialogue between philosophers and science instead? After all, most philosophers don’t believe in magical thinking.
The whole aspect missing in this “dialogue” is the recognition that science is more than just what professional scientists do for a living. It’s also a way of thinking about the world. And that way of thinking is in complete opposition to the way that people like Carey think about the world, at least about the world’s “realities.”
In the end, I’m still baffled by these repeated calls for “dialogue” between scientists and religious folks. These calls never come from secular scientists, but from religious people or religious scientists.
I don’t see the point of such a dialogue, or an attempt (costing millions of dollars) to find “common ground.” Like Steven Weinberg, I believe in a dialogue, but not a constructive one. I believe in a dialogue in which scientists undermine the habits of magical thinking and the reliance on faith. As for the faithful, I don’t think they have one iota to contribute to science.
