Thoughts in a Haystack

Jerry Coyne is disappointed in the Center for Inquiry and, in particular, John Shook, Vice President and Senior Research Fellow at the CFI.

I don't have a dog in that hunt, so I won't comment on that part of it.

But this jumped out at me:

[F]or the umpteenth time, "faitheist" did not originate as a pejorative term, but as a term for atheists who nevertheless favor religion: those atheists who have what Dan Dennett calls "belief in belief."

Hmmmm ...

Here is where the term was "Coyned."

While it is true that Coyne originally asked for a "term for atheists who nevertheless favor religion: those atheists who have what Dan Dennett calls 'belief in belief,' he also asked for:

...a snappy, one-word name for those atheists who are nonetheless soft on faith (i.e., atheist accommodationists) ... [Emphasis added]

Are we really supposed to believe that Coyne wasn't searching for a pejorative term? Why do we need a "snappy, one-word name" for a concept like Dennett's (typically) nuanced idea of "belief in belief," unless to use it as a bludgeon against opponents? What is so onerous about referring to a philosophical contention that can be encapsulated in three words?

If that wasn't enough to question Coyne's "history" of the term, there are the suggested terms that he found to be the "Runners Up":

Godlycoddlers

Placatheists

Credophiles

Betraytheists

Muzzle-ems

I'm sorry. I no more believe Coyne did not intend the term to be pejorative than I believe that the Discoverless Institute intends ID to be science.

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As an aside, Coyne accuses Shook of 'redefining' "accommodationism." Where, exactly, has accommodationism been definitively defined?
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Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 4:56 AM 47 comments

Russell Blackford has, to my mind, a rather strange defense to the latest incompatiblist - accommodationist debate sparked by Jean Kazez. You'll have to follow the links to understand the contretemps if you are not already familiar.

[T]here is always going to be a level of very robust debate on the internet, so it's always possible to find examples of people who really are behaving very rudely and perhaps rejecting ideas of politeness. But that's not something unique to people with New Atheist sympathies. You'll find people behaving like this when discussing the merits of political parties, sports teams, movies, comic-book artists, or whatever else people get passionate about. So it's hardly fair saying that the New Atheism encourages incivility any more than these other things. The most that can be said is that the subject of religion is now debated on the internet in a way that was not common a decade ago, so inevitably it attracts the same kind of very robust arguments as, say, sport or politics. Inevitably, some people will let off steam on their own blogs, and we'll see even more robust expression from anonymous commenters. ...

[A] great deal that has happened has had a context. If people who don't believe they have been especially uncivil are chided not to be "a dick", or if lies are told about people like them behaving in public in outrageously uncivil ways, and if stories are told that suggest they are uncivil in the manner of the children in Jean's story, it produces certain emotions. To be blunt, it creates anger and ill-will.

Poking peoples' emotions with a sharp stick is likely to make 'em squeal and it's no use pretending to be surprised.

Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:29 AM 11 comments

This is interesting.

Russell Blackford is explaining "incompatiblism":

[A]nti-accommodationists note the way that religion needs to be constantly reinterpreted to maintain even logical consistency with our empirically-based secular knowledge. This process in itself leaves religious beliefs looking ad hoc and implausible.

But, wait a minute, doesn't science constantly reinterpret itself to maintain consistency with empirically-based knowledge?

So, is the complaint that those forms of theism that try to reconcile empirical knowledge and religious faith are being too damn much like science?
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Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 3:05 AM 44 comments

Or so Jerry thinks ...

[T]heistic evolution, in which God has a role in the process, is not acceptance of evolution as we biologists understand it. So yes, the true biological view of evolution as a materialistic, unguided process is indeed at odds with most religions. Organizations that promote evolution, such as the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), prefer to avoid this critical point: all they care about is that evolution get taught in the schools, not whether believers wind up accepting the concept of evolution as it’s understood by scientists. ...

Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:12 PM 31 comments

I seem to have helped touch off another round of the accommodationist / incompatibleist wars.

Josh Rosenau and Jerry Coyne have been going at it and others are chipping in. The posts I've noticed so far:

Rosenau:

Minor Coyne snark

The danger of certainty

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."

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.

Acceptance of the evidence for evolution can be compatible with religious faith.

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.

Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:42 PM 7 comments

Massimo Pigliucci has a good post on the nature of science, "Why plumbing ain't science," the title of which, Pigliucci explains, "is a reference to Jerry Coyne's occasional remark that there is no substantial difference between plumbing and science because plumbers test hypotheses based on empirical evidence." The gist, I think, of Pigliucci's argument is:

What separates science from other human activities is, I suggest, its extremely more refined methods, its sociological structure, and its historical context. ...

Graduate students learn the art (yes, I'm using the term on purpose ...) of setting up controlled experiments, analyzing massive amounts of data using sophisticated statistical techniques, and writing cogent papers to present their results to the world. None of this is done by plumbers, and for good reasons.

[S]cience is a particular type of social activity, certainly as conceived and practiced today. It has a complex — and necessary — structure of peer review, edited journals, funding agencies, academic positions, laboratories, and so on. Of course science has not always been practiced this way (see my next point about history), but a good argument can be made that it has evolved into a mature discipline precisely when these sort of social structures came to be implemented. ...

The history of science is a fascinating illustration of how a practice that initially truly was barely distinguishable from plumbing eventually became a major branch of philosophy (natural philosophy), and then flourished spectacularly as an independent type of inquiry beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries (Galileo and Newton), culminating in the 19th and 20th centuries (modern physics, biology after Darwin) and beyond. ...

[T]here is of course a sense in which science and philosophy, and indeed math and logic, are connected. ... William Whewell ... coined the term scientist. He got it from the Latin word scientia, which means knowledge in the broadest sense. ... I think it is reasonable to see the totality of third-person knowledge (as opposed to first-person, phenomenological knowledge) along a rough continuum from completely or almost completely abstract (logic and math ...) at one end, to necessarily coupled to empirical evidence (science), passing via an intermediate field where empirical evidence is relevant but most of the work is done via analysis and logic (philosophy).

This is the sense in which I think scientia, but not science sensu stricto, can reject the supernatural (Coyne's and Dawkins' project), or arrive at non arbitrary moral judgments (Harris' project). ... [I]t is in this sense — the continuity and yet individuality of these disciplines within the broader category of scientia — that I argue that plumbing ain't science, as honorable and necessary as that trade is to our everyday lives.

Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism, Methodological Naturalism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:20 PM 2 comments

Jerry Coyne has a post I can entirely agree with ... almost!

First of all, Jerry points to a gloriously vicious (and thoroughly funny -- the worst sort of viciousness of all!) disemboweling perpetrated by Gregory A. Petsko, at Genome Biology, upon one George M. Philip, President of the State University of New York at Albany, who recently eliminated the university's departments of French, Italian, Classics, Russian and Theater Arts. You can find more about this shameful episode at Leiter Reports.

I cannot recommend highly enough Professor Petsko's explanation of what a university should be, as opposed to what our public, and even our private, institutions threaten to become in our MBA-driven, corporate-sponsored, ignorance-dependent oligopoly that is sometimes called the United States.

Jerry quotes two notable parts of Professor Petsko's essay:

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you have trouble understanding the importance of maintaining programs in unglamorous or even seemingly 'dead' subjects. From your biography, you don't actually have a PhD or other high degree, and have never really taught or done research at a university. Perhaps my own background will interest you. I started out as a classics major. I'm now Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry. Of all the courses I took in college and graduate school, the ones that have benefited me the most in my career as a scientist are the courses in classics, art history, sociology, and English literature. These courses didn't just give me a much better appreciation for my own culture; they taught me how to think, to analyze, and to write clearly. None of my sciences courses did any of that . . .

. . . No, I think you were simply trying to balance your budget at the expense of what you believe to be weak, outdated and powerless departments. I think you will find, in time, that you made a Faustian bargain. Faust is the title character in a play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It was written around 1800 but still attracts the largest audiences of any play in Germany whenever it's performed. Faust is the story of a scholar who makes a deal with the devil. The devil promises him anything he wants as long as he lives. In return, the devil will get – well, I'm sure you can guess how these sorts of deals usually go. If only you had a Theater department, which now, of course, you don't, you could ask them to perform the play so you could see what happens. It's awfully relevant to your situation. You see, Goethe believed that it profits a man nothing to give up his soul for the whole world. That's the whole world, President Philip, not just a balanced budget. Although, I guess, to be fair, you haven't given up your soul. Just the soul of your institution.

~ University students are still, in many respects, children, who should not be allowed to choose their own academic programs but should, instead, be required to complete a core curriculum, including the humanities -- unless, of course, you want to change the title of your institution to "trade school" or "vocational college." The very fact that "comparatively fewer students enrolled in these degree programs" is due to the faculty's abrogation of their duty to broaden the knowledge and love of learning of their students.

~ "Knowledge" cannot be easily classified and "what seems to be archaic today can become vital in the future. ... [T]he real world is pretty fickle about what it wants. The best way for people to be prepared for the inevitable shock of change is to be as broadly educated as possible."

~ "One of the things I've written about is the way genomics is changing the world we live in. Our ability to manipulate the human genome is going to pose some very difficult questions for humanity in the next few decades, including the question of just what it means to be human. That isn't a question for science alone; it's a question that must be answered with input from every sphere of human thought, including - especially including - the humanities and arts. Science unleavened by the human heart and the human spirit is sterile, cold, and self-absorbed."

The best teachers are not the ones who instill knowledge in your brain, but those who instill a love of learning, making you autodidactic in their subject for the rest of your life. I don't think I've attained that ability as a professor, but I sure benefited from it in college. And I don't give two hoots for a scientist who knows nothing of music, art, or literature (or food!). They're missing a great swath of the world's wonder.

Those other disciplines aren't really "ways of knowing," but they're ways of experiencing*, and to die without that panoply of experience, had it been available to you, is to have lived in vain.**

Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 5:44 AM 7 comments

Ah, Jerry Coyne is at it again.

He has a screed in USA Today once again displaying his poor grasp of philosophy and rehashing all the worst arguments in favor of atheism as if they were knockdown truisms.

There is much that could be said about Coyne's failings as a philosopher or even as a rationalist but I think the following is emblematic. First Coyne says:

"But surely," you might argue, "science and religion must be compatible. After all, some scientists are religious."

But only eight paragraphs later he is asserting:

But don't just take my word for the incompatibility of science and faith — it's amply demonstrated by the high rate of atheism among scientists.

If the fact that some scientists are religious is no evidence for compatibility, how can the fact that some scientists are atheists be evidence of incompatibility? More importantly, if Coyne can't keep a consistent thought across a few hundred words, why should anyone pay any attention to opinion about science and religion?

Everything that Coyne says about the incompatibility of religion and science applies equally to the "incompatibility" of science with art and literature. Yet some of us think that those deliver a kind of "truth" about the human condition that make them at least potentially valuable and something that any scientist can engage in with no fear of betraying science simply because they are "incompatible" in the sense Coyne asserts.

The specific examples Coyne recites as coming from the "truth" claims of religion -- "the oppression of women and gays, opposition to stem cell research and euthanasia, attacks on science, denial of contraception for birth control and AIDS prevention, sexual repression, and of course all those wars, suicide bombings and religious persecutions" -- are not shared universally by all religions and, therefore, are less likely the result of "religion" instead of being the outcome of particular cultural forces. More importantly, the opposition to those positions are not themselves scientific results but, rather, the outcome of different cultural forces.

Coyne could have argued that his atheism is more moral than theism but that's not what he's claiming. He's claiming that his atheism (which he confuses with science) is empirically true and religion is not.

To say he's failed to make that case is a massive understatement.

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Update: See Chris Schoen's excellent comments at u n d e r v e r s e.
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Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:01 AM 33 comments

Larry has changed his own definition of "accommodationism."

Today, at least, "accommodationism" means "rhetoric [that] comes from atheists (secularists) who direct a great deal of anger toward the vocal atheists but go out of their way to excuse their religious friends."

Hmmmm ... just 6 months ago, Larry declared the following, from Peter Hess' article "God and Evolution" on the NCSE website, had "all the earmarks" of accommondationism:

Of course, religious claims that are empirically testable can come into conflict with scientific theories. For instance, young-earth creationists argue that the universe was created several thousand years ago, that all the lineages of living creatures on Earth were created in their present form (at least up to the poorly-defined level of "kind") shortly thereafter, and that these claims are supported by empirical evidence, such as the fossil record and observed stellar physics. These fact claims are clearly contradicted by mainstream paleontology, cosmology, geology and biogeography. However, the theological aspect of young-earth creationism—the assertions about the nature of God, and the reasons why that God created the universe and permitted it to develop in a particular way—cannot be addressed by science. By their nature, such claims can only be—and have been—addressed by philosophers and theologians.

The science of evolution does not make claims about God's existence or non-existence, any more than do other scientific theories such as gravitation, atomic structure, or plate tectonics. Just like gravity, the theory of evolution is compatible with theism, atheism, and agnosticism. Can someone accept evolution as the most compelling explanation for biological diversity, and also accept the idea that God works through evolution? Many religious people do.

No anger directed at atheists nor indiscriminate excuse of the religious.

In fact, aren't the people Larry is calling "accommodationists" those people who were dubbed "faitheists" by Jerry Coyne?

Now, of course, Larry is free to make up his own private definition for any word he likes but, out of common courtesy, he might wave a flag or set off a flare or something so the rest of us know ... just so we don't get whiplash.
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Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 7:19 PM 14 comments

Jerry Coyne is "doing" philosophy again ... but maybe this time we should forgive him since he is just out of his sickbed. The occasion is Massimo Pigliucci's response to Coyne's last foray into philosophy.

It's the same old topic and the same old result. Coyne is unable to even conceive of the possibility that his personal weltanschauung may not be coextensive with "science."

Coyne has asserted this confluence in the past by equating "science" with a "world view" (though he tried to back away from that, without success, by switching to "the scientific attitude"). He has also called "science" an "approach to the world." Coyne continues in this "tradition" of confusion in his latest piece:

What I mean by “philosophical consistency” is that one’s philosophies are consistent. In the case of a scientist, one’s scientific philosophy is that you don’t accept the existence of things for which there is no evidence. In the case of a religious person, your philosophy requires you to believe in things for which there is either no evidence or counterevidence. It’s just that simple.

I will resist the temptation to say that it is just that simple-minded ... though I will not succeed.

To start with, as I have pointed out before, if, in fact, science is "a philosophy" or a "worldview" (i.e. a metaphysical belief about how best to approach all aspects of life), then it is on equal footing with religion under the American Constitution. If, as Coyne correctly points out, science contradicts at least some religious claims, then science cannot be taught as true in American public schools but, at best, can be taught in comparative religion or philosophy classes as one competing "worldview" out of many.

If, on the other hand, it is not a weltanschauung, there is nothing "inconsistent" in applying the scientific method to some things and not to others, depending on your objectives.

Of course, this does not demonstrate that Coyne is wrong about the philosophy of science. That comes from the fact that the scientific community doesn't act as if science is a "worldview." They do not employ it in such matters as who they should love and what music they should listen to and, more importantly, they also do not take one another's "worldviews" into account in deciding which other scientists' work to trust and incorporate in their own, unless and until it's shown that the science has been tainted by a "worldview." Coyne would, doubtless, accept a paper by Ken Miller on the same basis he would any other scientist.

But the damage Coyne's ignorance of the subject can do to science education in the US may well explain why others are so adamant about countering Coyne's philosophical nativité. I seriously doubt the truth of Coyne's whiney plaint that Pigliucci "doesn’t like me" but I would credit his impression that Pigliucci "thinks I don’t know anything about philosophy and therefore I—and most other scientists—should shut up about it." After all, Coyne has spent much time demonstrating his lack of understanding of philosophy in general and the philosophy of science in particular. I suspect that Pigliucci's attitude toward Coyne when it comes to philosophy is about the same as Coyne's attitude toward any creationist who spouts ignorant nonsense about evolution.

There's much more that could be said about Coyne's post but there is nothing new there and Coyne wouldn't listen anyway. It's ironic that Coyne complains that he has repeated his "points" over and over again. Those who have attempted to correct his primitive understanding of philosophy could say the same thing ... in spades!

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Update: It seems my interpretation of Pigliucci's attitude towards Coyne was right.
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Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 2:09 PM 97 comments

Jerry Coyne is "doing" philosophy again ... with the usual results:

Giberson is just playing a word game here to avoid tackling the real question, the question that I broached in our debate—science and faith are philosophically incompatible. Accommodationists pretend that these are equally valid "ways of knowing", but they actually differ radically in how they attain this "knowledge" (I'd claim that faith produces no knowledge at all), and in how they buttress it when answering the questions, "What's the evidence for what I think is true?" and "How would I know I was wrong?" There are many religions, all making incompatible assertions about what is true, but there is only one science.

I've belabored these points ad nauseam here and elsewhere, but accommodationists like Giberson won't deal with them, despite my having explicitly defined what I mean by "compatibility."

A religious scientist functions routinely as a "naturalist" in the lab, perhaps looking for the gene that causes Alzheimer's. While doing this, he refuses to accept any conclusion that isn't supported by data. One of his students wants a particular gene to be involved, since he's working on it, but the r.s. tells him that wish-thinking isn't enough. There have to be hard data—perhaps through association studies—that can either implicate that gene or rule it out. On Sunday this scientist goes to church, where he prays for the health of his mother, assuming against all evidence that someone Up There hears his prayer and is kindly disposed to answer it. He has a sip of wine and eats a cracker, assuming without evidence that these substances have been magically transformed into Jesus's blood and body before consumption. Later on, he goes into a little booth and tells a hidden priest that he masturbated twice during the week. He believes, without evidence, that if he doesn't confess to this diddling he'll be immolated for all eternity in molten sulfur.

It's strange, but I've been teaching evolution for nearly thirty years, and I've never claimed in class—though I do believe it—that anything worth knowing and sharing about the world must be found out and verified by reason and empirical examination. Nor have I seen any other teachers of evolution bring up the issue.

Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:15 PM 5 comments

Via Jerry Coyne, we have Greta Christina describing what it would take her to abandon skepticism. I'll just focus on the first "example":

What would convince me: If I saw an unambiguous message from God, I would be persuaded of his existence. If I saw writing suddenly appear in the sky, in letters a hundred feet high, saying "I Am God, I Exist, Here Is What I Want You To Do" -- and if that writing were seen by every human being, written in whatever language they understand, comprehended in the same way by everyone who saw it -- I would be persuaded that God existed. I'd be puzzled as to why he'd waited this long -- why he'd decided to do it in 2010 and not at any other time in human history -- but I'd still believe.

(And for the record: Yes, it's possible that this could happen without God. It could hypothetically, for instance, be accomplished by a highly technologically advanced alien species. But I don't think that would be the simplest explanation. If this phenomenon happened, "God" would, in my opinion, be a simpler explanation than "aliens" -- and unless I saw good evidence that the writing was done by aliens, God would be the provisional conclusion I would come to.)

Oh, goody! ... she at least recognizes Arthur C. Clarke's maxim that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

But why does she abandon skepticism? "If this phenomenon happened, 'God' would, in my opinion, be a simpler explanation than 'aliens'..." But, wait a minute, if "God" survives Occam's Razor when it comes to writing in the sky, why doesn't he/she/it survive in the Cosmological Argument? Surely, if God is the "simpler" explanation for writing in the sky, then he/she/it is the "simpler" explanation for the existence of something rather than nothing!

I frankly don't for a minute believe that Coyne or Christina would be such scientific naïfs as to fall on their knees because of a few squiggles in the sky. They are merely engaged in rhetoric, attempting, in a most unconvincing manner, to show that they would seriously consider evidence for a god.

That's far more damning of their claims to skepticism than anything that theists might challenge them with.
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Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 11:02 AM 39 comments

Russell Blackford is one of the more reasonable people engaged in the accommodationist / incompatiblist wars, even if we are on (somewhat) opposite sides. Russell is probably right to complain that accommdationists overlook the nuance in incompatiblist positions, though his point is blunted, in no small degree, by his starting it out with "As usual with accommodationists ..."

As Russell points out:

In my case, what I say is something like this: they are incompatible in a sense. Accordingly, it is misleading to state simply "science and religion are compatible" as if there's no problem. If you say that, you'd better gloss it, and you'd better acknowledge that, in the sense that actually matters to traditionally religious people, they may not be compatible, and that there's thus a big problem.

Russell is correct that the article in the Huffington Post by Alan I. Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Executive Publisher of Science, was pretty bad. On the other hand, not all incompatiblists show Russell's nuance either.

Similarly, not all of us in the "accommdationist" camp view it as simply a public relations ploy to suck "traditionally religious people" into accepting science ... a rather unnuanced view of accommodationism. Some of us view it as a reasoned attempt to understand what science is and whether people of good will who value science, both theist and non-theist, can reach some understanding on that issue that both sides can live with.

In a comment to his own post, Russell says:

I think I've said enough to explain why it won't wash to say, simply, "Religion and science are compatible" (or not incompatible in any serious sense) usually followed by "because there are lots of religious scientists" and then a reference to Ken Miller or, as in the case before us, to Ecklund's study.

I, for one, have been pointing out that the real import of the fact that theists are among those who are good, and even great, scientists is that it demonstrates that science is not a "worldview" but a method that, in fact, draws its greatest strength from the very fact that it can be conscientiously practiced by people of many different worldviews, thus self-correcting for such biases. It follows, then, that religion and science, being on different philosophical levels, are "incompatible," to borrow from Robert Pennock, in the same way religion and plumbing are incompatible because you don't need to invoke god(s) to explain why a toilet flushes.

If Russell really wants accommodationists to recognize the nuance in incompatiblist arguments, maybe he should practice what he preaches.
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Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 11:00 PM 13 comments

Okay, I promise I won't bring up "cuddling" ever again:

Now let us admit that in one respect, he's right. Science isn't everything. We don't use science to appreciate a piece of art (although, fundamentally, it is a material object and our brains are similarly natural); we don't break out beakers and bunsen burners to determine if we've fallen in love; calculators have limited utility in writing poetry. That's fine, but it doesn't mean that religion fills in all the spaces! I don't consult a priest to find out what I think of a painting, prayer has bugger-all to do with love, and there is better poetry in the world than what we find in holy books. You don't get to simply assume that if science does something poorly, religion must do it well, and that the universe has to be neatly divvied up into these two mutually exclusive domains.

So is [Francisco] Ayala claiming that evolution is not a product of god's actions? Or is he just a goddamned dimwitted airhead?

Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:01 AM 3 comments

Jerry Coyne and Karl Giberson are having at each other, which all but guarantees that there will be a lot of talking past each other.

Coyne opens with this interpretation of Giberson:

Science and faith are compatible because there are lots of religious scientists. Some of them have even won Nobel Prizes!

... Coyne raked Brown University cell biologist Ken Miller and me over the coals in The New Republic for our claims that Christians can unapologetically embrace science.

Giberson and Miller are thoughtful men of good will. Reading them, you get a sense of conviction and sincerity absent from the writings of many creationists, who blatantly deny the most obvious facts about nature in the cause of their faith. Both of their books are worth reading: Giberson for the history of the creation/ evolution debate, and Miller for his lucid arguments against intelligent design. Yet in the end they fail to achieve their longed-for union between faith and evolution. And they fail for the same reason that people always fail: a true harmony between science and religion requires either doing away with most people's religion and replacing it with a watered-down deism, or polluting science with unnecessary, untestable, and unreasonable spiritual claims.

For the sake of argument, let us set aside questions about the truth of religion vs. the truth of science. Suppose there is no such thing as religious truth, as Richard Dawkins argued in The God Delusion. Allow that the "New Atheist Noise Machine," as American University communications professor Matt Nisbet calls it, has a privileged grasp of the truth. Even with these concessions, it still appears that the New Atheists are behaving like a boorish bunch of intellectual bullies.

There is something profoundly un-American about demanding that people give up cherished, or even uncherished, beliefs just because they don't comport with science. And the demand seems even more peculiar when it is applied so indiscriminately as to include religious believers with Nobel Prizes. What sort of atheist complains that a fellow citizen doing world-class science must abandon his or her religion to be a good scientist?

Our commitment to pluralism and individual freedom should motivate generosity in such matters and allow people "the right to be wrong," especially when the beliefs in question do not interfere with us. Nothing is gained by loud, self-promoting and mean-spirited assaults on the beliefs of fellow citizens.

The New Atheists need to learn how to play in the sandbox.

Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 11:14 AM 0 comments

One of the more disconcerting penchants of some "New Atheists" is their willingness to throw over the scientific method when it is convenient to their arguments. We've already seen the fairly harmless example of PZ Myearshertz claiming that cuddling is science when he wants to avoid admitting that he does not apply the scientific method to everything in his life.

The latest example is Jerry Coyne and his discussion of Michael Zimmerman's Clergy Letter Project.

Coyne revives his list of things "supernatural" that have supposedly been tested by science and found wanting, which I've already addressed, though not in depth.

But this is what interests me in his latest:

Zimmerman isn't describing the real world, but the world of left-wing theologians. ...

If you turn on your television on Sunday morning, as I did today, you'll see that real world. You'll see oodles of preachers testifying to the literal truth of God's creation, the Fall of Man, and the power of prayer. What's more, some of these preachers promise salvation, wealth, happiness, or health if you'll just forward a few bucks to their ministries. Aren't those empirical claims? ...

Maybe Dr. Zimmerman should get out more.

Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:27 PM 10 comments

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an Op-Ed piece by Mano Singham entitled "The New War Between Science and Religion." Singham, a theoretical physicist and Director of the University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education at Case Western, imagines that the "war" is between "accommodationists" and "New Atheists," instead of between those who deny science and those who support it.

However, Singham doesn't have very much new to say on the subject ... which has attained the status of beating the spot in the grass where a dead horse once peed.

There are the complaints that science organizations, such as the National Academy of Sciences, should be purer than Caesar's wife. Then there is the notion that science can test the supernatural.

And could the hackneyed "But the fact that some scientists are religious is not evidence of the compatibility of science and religion," be far behind? ... especially without any apparent understanding that the salient point is that "science" is a methodology -- not a philosophy -- that can be appropriately, often brilliantly, used by people of very different philosophies? Singham's plaint is only relevant if science is a philosophical system -- i.e., Scientism. You don't have to have much truck with Francis Collins to see that Singham has little, if anything, to support that claim.

But there is always a certain frisson when observing someone -- supposedly intelligent and educated -- who can't keep a thought over a few paragraphs. He says:

Why have organizations like the National Academy of Sciences sided with the accommodationists even though there is no imperative to take a position? After all, it would be perfectly acceptable to simply advocate for good science and stay out of this particular fray. ...

But political considerations should not be used to silence honest critical inquiry.

Heh! He'd like to shut up the NAS but objects to being "silenced" -- which amounts to nothing more than being criticized by those who disagree with him, without any coercion by government. This is made even more ironic by Singham quoting Philip Pullman at his own blog:

Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if they open it and read it, they don't have to like it. And if you read it and dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me. You can complain about it. You can write to the publisher. You can write to the papers. You can write your own book. You can do all those things but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published or sold or bought or read. And that's all I have to say on that subject.

Earth to Singham: Pot. Kettle. Black.
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Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:47 PM 3 comments

Jerry Coyne has admitted that he is no philosopher.

For some strange reason, he still insists on proving it.

This time the occasion for doing so is his response to something Massimo Pigliucci (a real philosopher) wrote about Sam Harris' attempt to draw an "ought" from an "is" (which Chris Schoen at u_n_d_e_r_v_e_r_s_e has a good take on). Specifically, Coyne disputes Pigliucci's statement that:

Dawkins and Coyne ... insist in applying science to the supernatural, which is simply another form of the same malady that strikes Harris: scientism, the idea that science can do everything and provides us with all the answers that are worth having.

Coyne then states:

Virtually every religion that is practiced by real people (as opposed to that espoused by theologians like Karen Armstrong) makes claims that God interacts with the world. That is, most religions are theistic rather than deistic. And to the extent that a faith is theistic, it is amenable to empirical study and falsification—that is, it's susceptible to science. (Bold in the original)

Coyne then gives a list of things which he thinks show that "science already has tested the supernatural," about which much could be (and, perhaps, in the future, will be) said. Suffice it to say that science can address some empiric claims made by adherents of religion but the issue remains whether it can test the "supernatural."

But what interests me here is what I want to call "the reverse argumentum ad populum fallacy." Let's look at Coyne's bolded statement above. Assume for a minute that we take a survey of American nonscientists who accept the theory of evolution and then determine, in detail, their understanding of the actual science. If we were to then compare that to the empiric evidence, would their understanding hold up? I rather think not.

If the ad populum understanding of religion is the measure that should be applied to its "truthiness," then why shouldn't the ad populum understanding of science be the measure of its "truthiness"?

If Coyne wants to appeal to the expertise of scientists, he cannot, without special pleading, deny the possibility of expertise in theologians.

In fact, Coyne wants to shoot only at the easy targets ... which should hardly give us confidence in his aim.
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Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:29 AM 8 comments

I have generally held that PZ Myers was more right than wrong when it came to philosophy but I'm afraid that he has a blind spot about the philosophy of science.

In his post "Am I to be the next enemy of the NCSE?," he criticizes the NCSE for having a "Faith Project." I agree with this. It's one thing for an organization dedicated to science education, in a society as religious as ours, to make soothing noises in the direction of believers and quite another to actually set up a theological arm to dispute particular religious beliefs.

That part doesn't interest me. But he has again proclaimed that:

These guys always seem to use "science" as a word demarcating a very narrow field of endeavor involving white lab coats, test tubes, and strangely colored solutions, but it isn't. Science is simply a process for examining the world, and anyone can do it, even if you do't have a lab coat. If something has an effect or influence, you can try to examine it using the tools of science — so when someone announces that gods cannot be detected by observation or experiment, they are saying they don't matter and don't do anything, which is exactly what this atheist has been saying all along.

There is a lot wrong with this.

Besides the scientism ("The only way [God] can escape our probes is if he doesn't exist" ... what scientific evidence does PZ have that nothing exists except that which is amenable to scientific investigation?) and the suggestion that atheism is a scientific result (which would play hob with our constitutional law), the notion that science has no formal aspect and is something that one person can do is flat out wrong.

Sure, you don't need to have a science degree or a fancy laboratory in order to do real science. But you do need to publish your systematized results in such a way as to attract peer review. It need not be in refereed journals and their often leaky peer review, but nothing is "science" unless and until the scientific community has seriously considered it and a consensus has formed that the method of the proposition is "scientific" (even if no consensus on the right answer has emerged). Has PZ ever published his "experiments" in cuddling and has any consensus arisen in the scientific community that what he was doing was real scientific investigation?

Certainly, PZ's cuddling with the Trophy-Wife-to-be is not "science" ... unless Deepak Chopra's "interpretation" of a single PBS program is also "science."

What marks the difference between "thinking about things" and "science" is the engagement of the scientific community. Absent that, you are only aspiring to science.

Strangely, people like Ken Miller understand this while PZ doesn't. Miller doesn't claim his musings about facts of the world such as quantum mechanics supports his metaphysics, only that they do not contradict and may even be amenable to that metaphysics. PZ, on the other hand, insists that any musings whatsoever that he deems to count as "science" positively supports his.
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Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:55 PM 2 comments

Chris Schoen, at u n d e r v e r s e, has a nice take on the latest accommodationism-incompatiblism flap:

Once we have dismissed religion as a source of legitimate beliefs based on its inability to scientifically verify those beliefs, we have to likewise bear the egress of other non-verifiable means of human expression and understanding: Art, politics, fashion, jurisprudence, history, and many others.

Nobody wants this, and so these endeavors must be smuggled back as actually scientific. Taking up this burden is PZ Myers. To John Pieret's question (originally posed to Moran) whether he has "decided he loves his wife because he has performed scientific tests on himself?" Myers answers:

John, yes, we carried out a long period of empirical investigation. It's called "dating". Both my wife and I studied the problem carefully, and if I'd been a jerk or she'd tormented me cruelly, we'd probably have reached the rational decision that we shouldn't marry.

I really don't understand how people can fail to recognize that we do carry out critical examinations of others and ourself. Love doesn't just pop into existence in the absence of knowledge or experience.

And as I predicted, you do have a naive view of what "scientific" means. It does not mean hormones and [EEGs.] You don't have to put on a lab coat to do it. It's simple, rational, evidence-based thinking. (my emphasis)

And later, in follow up comments,

Are you suggesting that I was just imagining things when we had long conversations? That first kiss was just a fantasy?

Seriously, man. Human beings actually interact physically and intellectually with other human beings -- we have evidence. People are always measuring each other up on the dating scene. Watch an eHarmony ad sometime. (my emphasis)

No doubt the probability of denial was bound to increase in proportion to how personal the counterfactual is (your wife.) But it is remarkable how much a scrupulous scientist has left out of his definition. White lab coats aside, without hypothesis testing and publication and replication of results, Myer's courtship is about as scientific in its method as UFOlogy. Probably less, given the number of publications devoted to the latter. Which is not to say, of course, that PZ's love is not real, or that his knowledge of it is flawed.

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Oh, and now John Wilkins has weighed in too:

PZ Myers, who I also claim as a friend and will be flying to meet when he finishes the Atheism Lovefest in Melbourne (no, I'm not miffed I wasn't invited to speak, why do you ask?), makes the same mistake – he tries, as Chris Schoen discusses, to show that his love for his wife is a scientific inference. I think there's a clear is-ought fallacy here; trial and error may explain why Paul and his Trophy Wife[tm] found each other compatible, but the justifiable belief that he loves her is not the result of anything like a scientific inference. It's what linguistic philosophers call a "performative": he loves her in virtue of expressing the love. How he got there is beside the point.

Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:15 PM 5 comments