Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Over at the Guardian website, James Hannam has appeared from the woodwork to argue that by critiquing the philosophical accommodation of faith with science, I am explicitly rejecting an alliance with the enlightened faithful to go after creationism:
It’s popularly imagined that the history of science and religion is one of violent conflict, but the facts don’t bear this out.
As the battle between creationism and evolution heats up, some atheists, like Jerry Coyne, have been insisting that it is really a battle between religion and science. Coyne resists any accommodation between religious and non-religious scientists to defend Darwinism. He doesn’t want to see them joining forces against the creationist common enemy in case that legitimises religion. In order for his position to make sense, he needs to show that there is some sort of existential conflict between religion and science. So it is unfortunate for him that the historical record clearly shows that accommodation and even cooperation have been the default positions in the relationship. . .
. . .The conflict between science and creationism is real enough, but it is the exception, not the rule. For most of history, science and religion have rubbed along just fine. So, if Jerry Coyne really wants to promote evolution, he should be joining hands with the religious scientists who want to help.
Mr. Hannam is either joking or simply hasn’t immersed himself in the debates or the c.v.s of their participants. For crying out loud, I have always been allied with religious people in attacking creationism. For example, I wrote a book on the evidence for evolution. What I won’t do is suppress my view that people who claim that religion and science are compatible are victims of bad philosophy. You can obviously defend Darwinism without cozying up to the faithful. As far as I can see, none of the new militant fundamentalist atheists have ever threatened to stop attacking creationism if organizations such as the NCSE and AAAS continue their accommodationism. As P. Z. Myers has pointed out, it is not we atheist/scientists but the religious scientists who threaten to withdraw from the creation/evolution battles unless the other side shuts up about religion. Do we threaten to withdraw our support if Kenneth Miller, the NCSE, and others continue to espouse accommodationism? I don’t think so.
On to the bigger fish, who badly need frying.
Update: It looks as if I didn’t have to correct Hannam here. The comments on his own post, and a note by Olivia Benson, are warming his tuchas.
Over at his website, Metamagician and the Hellfire Club, philosopher Russell Blackford (who has been out of town), finally weighs in on the debate about accommodationism. His tactic is to take on Steve Gould’s concept of NOMA, or religion and science as “nonoverlapping magisteria.”
There is more to be said about this, but I’d like to spend more time on another claim, the idea, popularised by Stephen Jay Gould, that science deals with the empirical world, where it has authority, while religion deals with questions of how we ought to live, essentially the realm of morality, where it has authority. Thus, science and religion have separate spheres of authority and that do not overlap. According to this view, we are entitled to tell religious leaders to keep out of such matters as the age of the Earth and whether Homo sapiens evolved from earlier forms of life. However, so the idea goes, scientists should not challenge the authority of religion in the moral realm.
In my view, this is comprehensively wrong.
(Snipped . . . a lot of good arguments)
. . . I conclude that NOMA is comprehensively false. Religion is not confined by its very nature to the moral sphere and in principle it has as much authority in the empirical sphere as anywhere else. I.e., it could have made accurate empirical claims if really in receipt of knowledge from an angel or a god.
Conversely, science has at least as much authority as religion in the moral sphere: science cannot determine the ultimate point that morality should be aiming at, but neither can religion. Once we know what we want to achieve from morality, science is at least as well placed as religion to tell us how to achieve it, though we also need to rely on personal and historical experience, etc., since the most relevant sciences (such as psychology) are relatively imprecise and at an early stage of development.
However we look at it, religion is neither conceptually confined to the moral sphere nor authoritative within that (or any other) sphere. NOMA is a false doctrine. NOMA no more!
Of course, NOMA is a contentious doctrine. While I have put the case that it is false, that does not entail that, for example, science organisations should say that it is false, or that school students should be taught that it is false. Nor, however, should it be promulgated to students and the public as true. While I’m convinced that religion has no special authority in matters of morality (or in matters involving a supposed supernatural realm if it comes to that), other intelligent and reasonable people may disagree with this assessment.
All I ask from science organisations and school curricula is neutrality on the point, but I am personally convinced that NOMA is a completely specious philosophical doctrine. Those of who are not already convinced of the claims of religion should not buy it, and we should in no way be convinced by its proponents that we ought to back away from our critique of religion. Religion possesses no special authority in the moral sphere, and no one should persuade us to stop saying so.
I reviewed Gould’s lame book on NOMA, Rocks of Ages, in the Times Literary Supplement some time ago (need I say I was critical?), but it doesn’t seem to be online these days. You can find other reviews here.
Take a look at this article by Tom Clark at Naturalism.org; it’s about the misguided notion that in some areas faith can give us genuine answers to questions before which science is impotent. This is the NOMA (“nonoverlapping magisteria”) refrain that we hear constantly from organizations like the National Academy of Sciences, the National Center for Science Education, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Are there “ways of knowing” that are not only unique to faith, but provide real answers about the nature of the universe? I have long thought that this notion is completely misguided, a conclusion reached in the article. A snippet:
A popular rationale for such respect is that science and religion don’t conflict since science can’t evaluate religious claims about the supernatural; it’s only concerned with the natural, material world. This suggests that religions have epistemic authority when it comes to the supernatural. Some recent statements about the relationship of science and religion make this point:
Science is recognized internationally as the best way to find out about the natural world. But the natural world is not the only thing that human beings ask questions about…[M]ost people believe that there is a universe or world or something beyond or other than the material one, which is populated by gods, spirits, ancestors, or other non-material beings. Science doesn’t tell us anything about this world; this transcendent world is the provenance of religion. – Eugenie C. Scott, Evolution vs. Creationism, p. 47, original emphasis.
Because science is limited to explaining the natural world by means of natural processes, it cannot use supernatural causation in its explanations. Similarly, science is precluded from making statements about supernatural forces because these are outside its provenance. Science has increased our knowledge because of this insistence on the search for natural causes. – National Science Teachers Association, in Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science p. 124
At the root of the apparent conflict between some religions and evolution is a misunderstanding of the critical difference between religious and scientific ways of knowing. Religions and science answer different questions about the world. Whether there is a purpose to the universe or a purpose for human existence are not questions for science. . . . Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral. – National Academy of Science, also in Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science, p. 58
These statements suggest that faith-based religions, or more broadly, non-empirically based worldviews, might have domains of epistemic competence, for instance in knowing about the supernatural, paranormal or astrological. This in turn suggests that there might be reliable and objective understandings of these domains, lending support to the idea they actually exist. In the last quote above, the National Academy of Science (NAS) contrasts religious and scientific ways of knowing, and says science can’t pronounce on the nature and existence of the supernatural. This implies that religious ways of knowing can, and might be authoritative in confirming its existence the way science is when describing nature. But this is exactly what should not be conceded. By implying non-empiricism might have some epistemic merit as a route to objectivity in certain realms, the NAS and other science-promoting organizations miss the biggest selling point for science, or more broadly, intersubjective empiricism: it has no rival when it comes to modeling reality in any domain that’s claimed to exist.
Note that Eugenie Scott’s quote (she’s director of the National Center for Science Education) clearly implies — if not states outright — that religion is able to tell us something true about the transcendent world. Really? What is that? Can it settle the question of whether Jesus or Mohammed was the real prophet? (Note that the Qur’an states flatly that anyone believing Jesus to be the divine prophet will burn in hell for eternity.) The “claims” of all major faiths are in direct conflict, so what are the “truths” they tell us?
Thanks for Tom Clark and Ophelia Benson for calling this to my attention. And be sure to bookmark Ophelia’s site, Butterflies and Wheels.
Take a look at this article on the BBC website, “Who goes to a creationist museum?” It’s about the Creation Museum in Kentucky, and they interview four of its visitors, asking them why they came. All of them denigrate Darwinism, although one guy is willing to allow that “parts” of evolutionary theory are sensible (as are parts of creationism).
The article also quotes creationists as dismissing the fossil of Darwinius on the grounds that it’s just a lemur. (I don’t think that Ida tells us much about primate evolution, but the fact is that we are descended from common ancestors with other primates.)
Shouldn’t the BBC state, somewhere, that there is EVIDENCE for evolution, or at least quote one single scientist who thinks the creationist museum is a huge, expensive vehicle for telling lies? Or mention the many, many museums that show evidence for evolution? (Not one is mentioned.) In fact, this piece doesn’t even try to be objective: it just allows creationists and there adherents to present their misguided views without challenge.
I don’t think the BBC would provide such coverage — without counterargument from experts — if they were reviewing a museum devoted to Holocaust denial, which is of course another lie.
And while millions of people the world over will spend 2009 celebrating Charles Darwin’s memory – it’s 200 years since he was born and 150 years since his seminal work, the Origin of Species, which set out his theory of evolution, was published – many others will side with this museum’s theme: “life doesn’t evolve around Darwin”.
Does anybody know if the profits from this museum are subject to tax, or if Answers in Genesis is considered a church, and therefore tax free in the US?
Thanks to Anthony Grayling for calling this to my attention.
An alert reader sent me the following video, which in terrifying and graphic detail shows the remarkable four-headed penis of the echidna, or spiny anteater. (Remember that we discussed this species earlier in the week).
(Doesn’t that penis resemble the alien bursting forth from the guy’s stomach in the eponymous movie?)
In 2005, Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary (Gold Coast, Australia) came into possession of a 17‐year‐old captive male echidna that had become habituated to human presence as part of an interactive public display. Zookeepers noted that, on handling, this animal would readily produce an erection. Over a period of 2 weeks, zookeepers at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary conditioned the echidna to develop an erection to the point where it would ejaculate. In preparation for semen collection, the echidna is placed in lateral recumbency on a clean surface of the floor of its enclosure. Using a closed fist, the zookeeper gently pushes his hand into the lower abdomen of the animal, at which time the echidna usually responds by pushing its cloaca up against the zookeeper’s fist and developing an erection (fig. 1).
But the ejaculatory behavior of the generously-endowed male is unique:
During the early stages of erection, the glans penis displays all four rosettes, but as the erection continues, two of the rosettes retract, leaving the remaining rosettes fully engorged and slightly rotated, to give the fully erect penis a symmetrical appearance (; figs. 1, 2A). The penile morphology of the erect echidna penis is therefore, at this point, completely compatible with the anatomy of the cranial portion of the female’s urogenital sinus. In this form, the engorged penis would appear to deliver the semen directly adjacent to the female’s oviductal ostia. Ejaculation commences approximately 20 s after the penis has become fully erect. When erect, the penis was about one‐quarter of the echidna’s body length. Erection and ejaculation typically lasted between 10 and 15 min. During ejaculation, the semen pooled into the cups of the rosettes as a white viscous fluid (fig. 2A).
What is going on here? Is there any explanation for this bizarre ejaculatory behavior? One possibility arises from examining the echidna’s sperm:
Semen samples contained bundles of up to 100 spermatozoa that were joined at their apical extremity and were observed to swim progressively forward in a vigorous and co‐ordinated pattern.
To the authors (and also me), this cooperation among sperm implies one thing: sperm competition. For by working as a team, a group of sperm can swim faster than individual sperm, something that’s already been observed in the opposum, in which many sperm join with another to form pairs in the ejaculate. If females can be inseminated by more than one male, anything that gives a male’s sperm a leg up in the race to the egg will be favored by natural selection. In WEIT, I describe several adaptations in other species that may have been favored by sperm competition (these include “copulatory plugs” in rodents and “penis scoops” in damselflies — features of a male’s penis that he uses to remove the sperm of a previously-mating male before he ejaculates himself). Features of the echidna’s biology indeed suggest that sperm competition is likely. For one thing, they form “gravy trains”:
Perhaps the most likely is that the formation of bundles is associated with the evolution of some form of postcoital sperm competition (Jones et al. 2004). This idea is supported by the comparatively large size of echidna testes, the high number of extragonadal sperm (Jones et al. 2004), and the observation that male echidnas can form mating trains of up to 11 animals behind an estrous female, with the dominant male in the front of the line (Rismiller and Seymour 1991; Augee et al. 2006).[JAC emphasis]. In addition, mating can be a prolonged event (30–180 min; Augee et al. 2006) in the echidna and may be associated with a copulatory tie (Rismiller and Seymour 1991); both these phenomena are likely to be mechanisms that exclude copulatory opportunity for male rivals.
Now the mystery of the four-headed penis has been solved, revealing another reptilian trait: male echidnas ejaculate with just two heads (half of the penis) at a time.
This resembles very much the way lizards and snakes ejaculate: they have a double penis (named hemipenis), but only one of the two penises is used during the copulation, while the other will effectuate the next copulation/ejaculation. Marsupials (another primitive group of mammals) are now in this matter something between monotremes and placental (evolved) mammals: they do not use half of the penis for mating, but still have a double headed penis, while the echidnas have a reptilian joined hemipenis, with each part of the penis in a marsupial-like fashion.
But ancestry from reptiles, who have two-headed penises, is not an evolutionary explanation of the echidna’s equipment, for their four-headed organ is a novel feature. And how having such an organ helps you win “sperm wars” against other males is not clear. Perhaps another alert reader can suggest an answer.
The Big Debate continues about whether faith and science are compatible and whether scientists should criticize those religious people who agree with them about matters like evolution. Several people, however, have complained that discussion is spread out among so many places — and people — that it’s confusing to follow, especially now that Jason Rosenhouse, Kenneth Miller, “Erratic synapse” (somebody please tell me who he/she is), and the indefatigable P. Z. Myers have weighed in. I believe that John Brockman is going to post all this stuff on the Edge website, but until then here are the links in chronological (and philosphical) order. I think I’ve gotten them all.
