Ron Lindsay talks to Chris Mooney
Heard Lindsay talking to Mooney yet? Very interesting.
They start with accommodationism and the putative compatibility of religion and science. Lindsay quotes a bit from Unscientific America in which M&K say the NAS and other big science outfits say the two are “perfectly compatible.” Lindsay presses that point, and Mooney ends up admitting he’s not sure “perfectly” is an exact quote and he’ll look it up…
Which kind of sums up the whole disagreement right there. Yes we all know they’re “compatible” in the superficial sense, but are they compatible all the way down? Are they compatible in the substantive sense? Are they perfectly compatible? Of course not.
Then they move on to the Catholic church and its generous tolerance of evolution. Lindsay points out that that doesn’t really count as the Catholic church being compatible with science, given that it also insists – and tells believers to believe – that god intervened by giving humans “souls” and thus different from all other animals, a difference scientists don’t accept. Mooney says that’s all right provided it’s a supernatural claim, because science can’t say nuffink about that. If the Catholic church said humans have souls and we can prove it and here’s the data, then it would be a scientific claim and science could say No, but as it is, it’s not, so science can’t, and that means science and religion are compatible.
So the deal is, as long as it’s just a perfectly legless reasonless arbitrary assertion, it’s compatible with science, and no one can say “but that’s bullshit.”
Then Mooney claims that “methodological naturalism” is dominant and mainstream and the reason he’s right.
Then he talks about Galileo and Newton being motivated by their religion to do science. Lindsay shrewdly objects that we can’t know what might have motivated them if they’d lived in a less religious time and place…and Mooney just pretty much brushes that off. Things get somewhat worse from then on – Mooney’s tone (yes “tone”) gets more dogmatic and certain and, at times, scornful. He’s very confident of what he thinks he knows, and somewhat patronizing in defense of it.
They move on to the badness of new atheism. Lindsay asks if he has any evidence for the putative badness, and Mooney rather irritably says no, he couldn’t have, it would be too complicated and expensive. “So you could shut up about it then,” I murmured pensively, and Lindsay made a similar point, with nicer words. Mooney said no no, it’s perfectly all right for him to draw big conclusions, because “it’s an inference based on a lot of knowledge.”
Hmm.
Lindsay points out that European countries do better at scientific literacy and understanding of evolution, and that that’s probably because they are more secular and thus less inclined to let religion trump science. The US could become more like that. Mooney wasn’t having that – he knows better. Lindsay suggested that direct criticism of religion might be a step on this road; Mooney said “that’s incredibly naive psychologically.”
Hmm.
Then they talked about the Templeton Foundation, and Mooney’s “fellowship,” and the fact that it was controversial. Would you accept a fellowship from the Discovery Institute? Lindsay asked. No. Liberty University? Probably not. But they interfere with science, and Templeton doesn’t. Templeton, he said, “are generating a dialogue about the relationship between science and religion.” He thinks that’s a good thing.
I don’t.
I also don’t think he is thinking about it carefully enough. He’s not, for instance, apparently aware that the knowledge he thinks he has is largely Templeton knowledge – it’s knowledge that fits right into Templeton’s agenda and that is produced by Templeton funding. The books he’s read that tell him about Newton’s motivation and so on very often turn out, when one looks at the copyright page and then at google, to have been written by people with Templeton connections. I’m not a bit sure they don’t always turn out to have been written by such people. I don’t think he realizes the extent to which he’s parroting a line.
Lindsay differs. Yay Ron. Lindsay says one can see Templeton as in fact interfering with science just as the Discovery Institute does, but in a more subtle fashion. Yes indeed one can; that’s exactly how I see it. They fund most of the blather about “science and religion” that’s out there, and they do it very subtly. But Mooney was just frankly dismissive of that suggestion.
I haven’t listened to the second half yet.
Lindsay deserves a lot of credit for not making it easy for Mooney, while remaining calm and rational (to the bit I’ve heard so far).
I’ll admit, it is fun to read or listen to a good Mooney pounding. It is also frustrating to listen to his tepid defences. I am tensing up just reading your review.
Tell us bluntly: is there any value in listening to this interview?
only 20 minutes in but you can definitely see the change in posture, especially when asked to substantiate the claim ‘frank’ discussion of theism will do more harm than good.
Going off just what I’ve heard it sounds like it’s been a while since he had to defend his position infront of a critical audience.
If this were true, then you could make up anything and science couldn’t touch it. No, you don’t get to do that. Your invisible dragon isn’t there without evidence showing that dragons are real, that living things can be invisible, that something detectable really is there, that it fits with or enhances our current conceptions of reality, and so on. Otherwise, English has a perfectly good word for stuff people make up: bullshit.
Tyro – well yes I think so. I think Ron did a really good job of presenting him with stuff that needs defending. But there won’t be a quiz or anything!
Well, goodness, then I guess that idea stands corrected. If Chris Mooney thinks it’s “incredibly naive psychologically,” then who are any of us to question?
That particular remark stood out for sheer…effrontery. Other than that he wasn’t overtly rude in the half I’ve heard so far. But there was a good deal too much irritable sniggering for my taste.
@ Rieux
He ends up giving those answers a lot. Mr. Lindsay at one point (pretty early on) asks if he isn’t relying on his common sense when he should be looking at what the data tells us. Mooney’s response is reminding everyone how expensive, large and complicated such a study would be.
I wonder if he sounds this empty to anyone else. At first I thought it might be he isn’t used to such a critical audience but he might just havebeen hopelessly unprepared. Odd considering this is hiss supposed area of expertise.
Is it that you don’t think a dialog between religion and science is a good idea? If so, why?
Or is it that you just don’t like that it is Templeton who is funding it? In that case, I can understand why you object.
I don’t think a dialogue between religion and science is a particularly good idea because what is there to talk about? I think the (Templeton-fostered) idea that there is something to talk about is a way to add status to religion while it adds nothing to science. It might be no worse than a silly waste of time if there weren’t all this breathless expectation about it, but given that there is, I think it’s a good deal worse.
It more or less assumes they’re on the same footing. They’re not.
Thanks for linking this – listening now and finding it a very valuable discussion.
Mmmmmnot really. That’s how it’s been all along. He doesn’t have much (on this subject). He never has.
At at least one point he reverted to his old area of expertise, on which he really does know something. The contrast was striking. (It was when he started listing interferences with science – stem cell research and the like. He speeded up, and talked specifics. It was a whole different thing.)
This is why Unscientific America is so thin, of course. It’s just some putative common sense from a coupla people.
My pleasure, James. Belated thanks to Michael De Dora for telling me about it.
Yes, I’d stopped listening to POI, but this is worth a spin.
I can’t understand this attitude. Science can debunk homeopathic water but not holy water? I have no idea why homeopaths don’t just say their mixtures work supernaturally, then at least the NOMAs like Mooney would accept their claims. Hell, they could say the cure is supernatural too, so it’s no good running studies to see if people get better.
Yup. And he brings it out with a kind of smug “got you there” triumph that’s…annoying.
The strategy of the accommodationists seems to work like this: 1) claim it is common sense, if that doesn’t shut people up, 2) claim we don’t have enough money to study whether or not our methods are better, if that doesn’t shut people up, 3) claim that science can’t study the supernatural, if that doesn’t work 4) repeat steps 1 through 3.
I also stopped listening, right about when they brought in, uhm, Chris Mooney. Even if he’s being reasonably grilled I’m not sure I can stomach listening to his narcissistic, cognitively dissonant smugness.
I was disappointed that he was not asked some pointed questions about his handling of criticism of Unscientific America — and in particular his failure to deal with it in any substantive way.
Yes – that would have been good, but it also would have been tricky. There was a kind of veiled allusion, in the mention of the many controversies around the book. Ron does at least make it pretty clear that the book was not universally popular.
I have to give Ron and CFI credit for having the nerve to do this. It’s clearly the intellectually honest thing to do, and they have undoubtedly been dealing with lots of pushback about Mooney from people who want to support them. But you don’t often see that level of integrity.
I listened to the first half, and yes, Mooney is defensive. We all would be, in his position. But his responses were pathetic. Really genuinely pathetic. Every time he characterized his position (well, it’s from lots of evidence that I can’t cite that I know confrontation doesn’t work) as reasonable and obvious on its face, I kept screaming TALK ABOUT TOM JOHNSON!
What would have been really good would have been if, when Mooney said “it’s an inference based on lots of knowledge,” Ron had said, “Really? But if you have lots of knowledge about how people react to the way people say things, why did you do such a bad job of saying things yourself in that meagre little book?”
That would have been funny!
And for those of you who haven’t listened, it really is just like this:
Ron: How do you know confrontational tactics don’t work? Sounds like you were working on a hunch.
Chris (scoffing): It’s inferred from lots of evidence.
Ron: What evidence.
Chris: I don’t have a study. That would be really expensive. I don’t know how you’d design it.
Srsly. For rlz.
Ah yes – that reminds me of something that bugged me while listening but that I forgot to mention – Lindsay said what evidence, and Mooney kept saying I can’t do a study.
Evidence doesn’t necessarily mean a study you’ve done yourself, or a study at all. Mooney didn’t offer any kind of evidence.
Plus the scoffing. Really irritating, the scoffing.
The problem with holding a “dialogue” between science and religion is that while you would only need one chair and a glass of water for the person representing science, you’d need a whole stadium’s worth of seats to handle the representatives of religion.
What the accomodationists seem to forget is that “religion” is not just just one thing. It has no unifying substrate to which it can point and on which it can offer expertise. Just look at the startling variety of entities which have been called gods over the course of humanity’s career. There’s no evidence or test which would let one decide between the supernatural claims of animists, polytheists and monotheists. It’s not like they’re applying different names o the same thing; they defined and conceived as different entities from the get-go. How does “religion” choose between the conflicting and irreconcilable claims of Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam? Historically it’s tended to be by the edge of a sword. Unlike the case in science, there are no facts of the world to which they can appeal to support stuff that’s just been made up. It’s just creative writing taken much too seriously.
The second part is about emotion and reasoning and he points out that using beliefs makes them stronger. He then says that poking them won’t help because it’ll “activate” them. He believes that changing things slowly is what works – start with compatible ideas.
It seems like nonsense to me – if using the belief is what strengthens it then pretending science and a belief are compatible will only strengthen their belief.
He does point out that showing people that a belief is false triggers a defensive response. I’d like to see more long-term research about whether that contributes to defeating belief more effectively than saying science is compatible with the belief which seems to me to just reinforce belief in the long-term and contribute to rationalization.
I also can’t help but see in Mooney what I saw in Berlinski – something of an “rationality/atheism works for me but it won’t work for all those less educated people” kind of attitude.
I downloaded it and I’ll watch it tomorrow morning. But I had one quick question. He says that he doesn’t have evidence because it “would be too complicated and expensive” yet he then says his position is “an inference based on lots of knowledge”. If there truly is lots of knowledge, doesn’t that mean there must necessarily be evidence? How else could there possibly be knowledge without evidence. Yet he also says that there can’t be evidence because it’s too complicated.
So what’s going on here, is this a problem with the summary or is this a problem with Mooney?
This is a problem with Mooney. He’s talking logical nonsense. Don’t take our word for it – you’ll get your fill soon enough when you listen tomorrow. Don’t be simultaneously engaged in an activity that requires to you refrain from laughing or saying “WTFLOL!?”
I went down the list and ended up listening to the PZ, Mooney episode hosted by Hecht. This is getting frustrating…
PZ is the least emotional and angry guy in that episode but his position keeps being labeled angry or arrogant especially.
Every time I see Mooney’s name, all I can think is “so do you have any examples, perhaps an ‘Exhibit A’, for your claims?”
About the superficially compatible thing.
I’ve read people who say a scientist can leave religion out of the lab and work doing science, then pick it up again. And that would prove science and religion are compatible.
Now, what I don’t understand is isn’t the fact that she has to leave it out of the lab proof that religion and science are not compatible? If they were, she could bring over religion to the lab and use them both at the same time. Kinda like how a t-shirt and jeans are compatible because you can use them at the same time, in combination. Imagine two people who can’t stay in the same room together. For one of them to get in, the other must leave first. Would we say these two people are compatible?
I’ve seen Mooney give a talk and he was well-prepared and very professional sounding. He rattled off statistics and facts with impressive speed, was always on-point, and seemed, if anything, too well-rehearsed and impersonal for someone on a book tour. Anyway, it’s safe to say that if there were such a study that realistically backed Mooney’s position, even at a bit of a stretch, it would have been in the book and he’d have it memorized in bullet-point.
I’ve noticed that the so-called “common sense” argument overlooks an important distinction. This argument, broadly speaking, goes something like:
First, it is up for debate whether or not Dawkins, et al, are really aggressive, or at least any more aggressive than anyone else in the public square. Second, this position is not necessarily true: a more aggressive approach could jar a person from a slumber, and/or hint that the argued position should be taken seriously.
But let’s say I admit that an aggressive approach is not a best practice. Let’s say my experience bears this out, and that I find it typically better to be as friendly as possible; to ask questions, and point out inconsistencies, rather than tell people they are flat-out wrong. Fine.
The problem is that you cannot extrapolate from this person-to-person interaction to society-wide interaction. Dawkins, et al, are not knocking on the doors of each American for rough-and-tumble personal conversations on religion. They’re writing books and trying to sway the public consciousness. So I’m not sure the argument really holds any weight other than in interpersonal relations.
Actually, if you really want Dawkins to lose and to say nasty dickish things to religious people you can always find a middling study that doesn’t show this but could if you squint.
In better news, I hadn’t listened to this for a while, and trying to get my sub to update on itunes, I ended up DLing old eps, and lo and behold, there’s Ophelia talking to DJ. A pleasant 20 minutes.
There is one previous point of inquiry episode that is worth listening to if you want a clear representation of how far Mooney has shifted his position to what can easily be described as an extremist viewpoint. That episode involved a threeway discussion between Mooney, Dave Silverman of American Atheists and Hemant Mehta, the friendly atheist. I get the impression that Mooney had arranged it the same way he had arranged the PZ Myers discussion with Hecht as the ‘moderator’ – in other words it was designed so that there would be two moderates versus one extremist – the extremist in this case being Dave Silverman. The funny thing about the discussion is that, in effect, it DID turn out to be two moderate reasonable atheists countering an extremist who was dogmatic in his views and unwilling to be swayed by any evidence- except the extremist turned out to be Mooney! Hemant and Silverman agreed on nearly everything that could be said to be on the gnu atheist agenda and Mooney seemed to be almost taking a contrarian position on each point.
It’s weird, I don’t think that he realizes how far he has moved towards extremist fundamentalist accomodationism – remember, his Slate article from a few years back shows that he was once a moderate – like us!
Ophelia:
I would have answered “But you just got through telling me that you don’t have any evidence for this badness due to it being to complicated and expensive to gather.”
Mooney directly contradicts himself – if he doesn’t have any evidence, for whatever reason, then he also doesn’t have knowledge. The “lot of knowledge” in question would qualify as evidence if he actually had it.
That I think is one of the chief things that bugs me about him – he’s so obviously slimy.
I’ve now listened to the full podcast.
Ron Lindsay did a good overall job in asking the relevant questions.
Mooney performed exactly as I thought he would (if you listed to the previously mentioned podcast with Dave Silverman and Hemant Mehta it was very much along those lines).
Mooney shows a rather obstinate reluctance to take the arguments of the non-accomodationists seriously. For instance he seemed shocked by the idea that confrontational tactics might be designed to change the mind of onlookers rather than those who are directly confronted. This is a critical point for the promotion of atheism since creating a critical atmosphere is often the only way young people will get exposed to atheistic arguments. Since these young people have not become ‘unreachable’, like the older generation of religious people, they may see the value of critical thinking – something that, if it doesnt turn them into atheists, might turn them away from the sort of fundamentalist certainty inherent in evangelicism.
He spent so much of his time saying that confrontational tactics don’t work with stringly religious people he never got around to admitting what Ken Miller and Francis Collins admit when pushed – namenly that NOTHING works with strongly religious people – at least nothing works to a major extent. the same thing happened with racist views in the past. People didn’t listen to the arguments (gnice arguments or confrontational arguments) and suddenly change their minds. What happened was that younger people got more exposed to young people of other races and realized, before their views had become ingrained with age, that calls for equality and human rights were not unreasonable. The older racists views became less and less frequent for the simple reason that they got old and died.
We have the same demographic factors working in our favor – which makes it all the more essential that we keep the debate in the public rather than in private.
One more thing, Mooney’s argument that confronting people with deeply held views only makes them hold stronger to those views – wouldn’t that mean that his confrontational tactics against the gnu atheists simply make us more obstinate and more likely to attack religion?
If he was to take his own advice then the best thing for him to do is either be silent about the gnus tactics or to get a friendly atheist to gently explain why we are wrong.
You must mean Berlinerblau, right?
I’m too busy to answer you in detail, Hamilton. Prof Berlinerblau’s given me an assignment of reading the entire 26 volume history of the Flemish heretic movement of the thirteenth century (and not a translation, for the true essence I need to read it in the original flem!).
1) Really expensive? Well, I have read of a very wealthy organisation that loves to fund investigations into science and religion compatibility. It begins with “T”, I think.
2) Don’t know how to design the experiment? Off the top of my head, Gnu vs Accomodationalism effectiveness of getting some sense into the general population: Have a group of Gnu Atheists tell random bunches of religious people that science is correct, that the religions are mistaken, and why. Have a group of accomodationalists tell random bunches of religious that science is correct, but don’t let that worry you, as we are not saying that you are suffering under delusions. As a control, we could get some people to tell religious people that they are stupid, but don’t tell them why. /snark
After a few weeks of this, do surveys to see how many people have become atheists, and how many have accepted scientific findings, and how many now use critical thinking in their lives. Just think how powerful the findings of such an experiment would be. Of course another way to look at it would be that it is a Templeton-funded study to find the best way to increase the atheist population, so it might not be so easy to sell, after all.
Rixaeton, I agree, Templeton is the obvious source for funding of such a survey although I suspect your suggested format might not be ideal – if the gnus strategy is really based on long term influence of younger people not so fixed in their religious views then a much longer timeframe might be required.
The funny thing about this is that one study DID come out in the past couple of weeks that backed the gnus confrontational strategy – presumably after this podcast interview was done but before it was edited and put online. Mooney blogged about the results and was forced to admit that it provided evidence in favor of the gnu strategy (I think his words in this interview had painted him into a corner and he couldn’t dismiss the results).
While I understand the concept Mooney expresses here the conclusion he thinks it leads to strikes me as wrong. So what if the claim being made is supernatural in nature and there is no way for science to really comment on or test the validity of the claim. If it causes those that hold the claim as true to reject legitimate science, to the extent that important research is held up if not outright prevented, wouldn’t that mean the two are not compatible? Also, wouldn’t that mean that scientists should dispute the claim despite it’s supposedly supernatural character?
Okay so I loaded it up in VLC so I could at least set it to 1.8x speed and whip through it. Even then it’s intensely irritating. So just to whip through some points…
And the evidence/no evidence about vocal criticism of religion is even worse than OB said. Lindsay asks Mooney if his position is based on a “hunch” and Mooney replies “no, i think that there’s a huge amount of evidence. It’s all basically psychology and since writing UA, i have done more research and am even more convinced. Basically the evidence is that religion is a deeply held belief.[…] So if you look at how people respond to attack on their identity […] then we know this triggers a defence mechanism. […] It seems to me highly unlikely that taking someone on in that way for whom the identity is strong is going to have an effect other than reinforcing […] their identity.”
Lindsay then says this is very general and asks for any specific evidence. And Mooney immediately replies “Not as such” then goes onto his “controlled experiment” blather – as if this was what Lindsay was asking for. Sets up a straw man, laughs patronizingly at it, then graciously says that if we have this scale of study, he would acknowledge the evidence. I’m sure I’m biased but it reminds me of the IDiots replying that they’d happily accept evolution if we recreate the entire history of life in a lab and the fact that we haven’t means evolution is a myth.
Around the Templeton point, I am finding the way Mooney talks to be increasingly insufferable. He’s smug and conceited and he answers questions as if his critics were clinically insane. To be charitable, perhaps he’s merely talking to us like we’re children. His answers always sound like “Just because! When you’re grown up like me, dear child, you’ll understand.”
He closes his talk on Templeton by saying religionists “make up crap” about stem cells, abortion etc. All of these positions arise because these religions have claims about when the soul enters. Given that irrational religions belief, these positions are not crap at all – the crap is believing without evidence that the soul enters a zygote. The crap is exactly the beliefs that 20 minutes earlier Mooney had said were beliefs that were fully compatible with science and which science could not investigate.
In Pt 2, Lindsay draws upon how beliefs changed in the past – slavery, racism, etc. He says that many people changed their beliefs because of shame. Mooney gives his patronizing laugh (as if to say, “whaaa, how could anyone say something so stupid. Isn’t it cute that such naive ignorance can still flourish?” At least that’s how it comes across to me.) and then says stammeringly, as if trying to find a way of responding without laughing at our naivete: “I mean [sigh] I don’t think this would work out. To make them feel ashamed of themselves…? I mean, people, you know, beliefs are, beliefs are, beliefs make us feel that we are smart, intelligent with people and something we all need to feel about ourselves.” YES! Exactly! So if those beliefs actually lead you to being subjected to ridicule and derision, people will drop those beliefs! Lindsay makes this point and Mooney fumbles out “so basically, you’re gonna, you’re gonna… So someone that thinks they’re intelligent, reasonable and smart is um going to be convinced that they’re not, quickly, by you?”
Lindsay points out it’s not meant to be quick, but over time and progressive. Money just dismisses it. Not to belabour the point (or to quote him any more) but he had said that he would consider evidence and here, when confronted with evidence about how people changed beliefs that were important enough to kill and die for, Mooney shrugs it off and says only that religion is more important and that these past examples aren’t relevant.
He now talks about cognitive dissonance and says that this means people will never change their minds, only become more entrenched. He even cites the birthers. Yet the views on all of these issues change over time. Birthers were affected by the birth certificate and their support dropped. Some fanatics became more committed but in general, people responded positively to the evidence. This whole thing is really starting to piss me off, it strikes me as being extremely dishonest. It’s like he’s saying that if some tactic won’t convince absolutely everyone then it won’t convince anyone, even though the last two weeks have shown how clearly false that is. He even comes right out and says that if someone gives them evidence they “won’t change their beliefs, we know this.” Bullshit! We know that they DO change their beliefs in general, even though some fanatics do not.
Towards the end, he says that he supports “out atheism” but not “out, confrontational atheism”. Is this the DBAD all over again? Who are these confrontational atheists and are they actually the same group as the “merely out” atheists?
In the end, I was impressed by Lindsay. He asked good questions, didn’t hector Mooney, gave him a chance to express himself while still not shrinking for asking difficult questions. Why don’t they give Lindsay the job as host?
My impression was that Chris Mooney was behaving defensively and unable to apply the scientific/skeptical thinking that he purports to defend. The tone and content of his answers belayed a youthful naivetey and perhaps support for the theory that when you push someone into a defensive mode they become more entrenched in their position. As someone mentioned above, he seems to be going towards a more extreme angle the more he’s called on his “acommodationism”.
I haven’t come across any in-your-face atheists when it comes to personal interactions and as many people have already written, it’s a different landscape when you are speaking/writing publicly. I think that’s a major miss by Mooney. Because of Global Warming “skepticism”, there seems to be quite a bit more research going on recently regarding what makes people entrenched in untenable beliefs . It probably applies equally well to the this discussion. Last year, NPR did a show about what happens when people are presented with facts that oppose their beliefs: “New research suggests that misinformed people rarely change their minds when presented with the facts — and often become even more attached to their beliefs. The finding raises questions about a key principle of a strong democracy: that a well-informed electorate is best.” in any case, This is worrisome…http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128490874
jose # 30
Yes exactly. I made the same objection about a post Karl Giberson did at BioLogos some time ago. He said something to the effect that the scientist can be in church and then be in the lab and keep the two separate. Well quite…and keep the two separate…because they’re not compatible.
Michael # 32 – right – he talks as if the entrenched defensive believer were the only audience.
And Sigmund and maybe others on the demographic aspect – that was another item I wished I could parachute in and shout in Mooney’s ear. Duh – we’re not just talking to where people are right this minute full stop. We’re all on the conveyor belt of time, and things don’t stay the same. Jeezis, hasn’t he noticed? Public opinion changes over time! He’s Mr A Lot of Knowedge and he hasn’t even noticed that?
Gad, it’s so obvious.
Mooney has been collared and belled by the Templetons.
He has long since passed his credibility “Mendoza line” (apologies to the non-baseball fans — it’s the only analogy I can think of at this point).
Mooney says that science can make no statements regarding the supernatural.
As in: Thor caused the Alabama tornadoes. (Or maybe it was Zeus.) In any event, one of the two caused the tornadoes because they don’t like the anti-gay policies of the bigots down there. A good wiping clean of a part of the Bible belt and maybe folks will get their heads put on straight.
Or: Ruaumoko caused the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. (He’s a Maori god, who is also in charge of changing the seasons.) I mean, he was in the neighborhood, and I’m pretty sure he’s anti-nuke.
Can’t challenge any of that, can you Chris? And so, it must be compatible with science.
ORLY?
More links in the blog post I linked, I didn’t want to transcribe them all. Mooney either didn’t do his homework on Templeton before applying for his money, or he didn’t care, and now he’s backed into defending them (because Mooney doesn’t admit mistakes, or that his reasoning was faulty — he just keeps plowing).
Mooney also used the old “methodological naturalism” line in this interview.
I always find this a rather curious way to argue that science and religion are compatible.
It is commonly agreed by both theistic scientists and atheistic scientists that to ‘do science’ you need to practice methodological naturalism. But ‘naturalism’ is just another word for atheism. And ‘methodological’ in this context means functional. So, in other words, to do science you must function as an atheist while carrying out your experiments and while inferring things from your results.
The practice of methodological naturalism means that even a creationist can do good science (so long as the specific segment of science they do is done on methodological naturalistic grounds). There is no requirement for a particular metaphysical viewpoint for scientists but the science you do must be carried out as if there is no chance of interference from a deity.
What this means is that being religious and being a scientist is compatible however the practice of ‘doing science’ (the empirical method) requires an atheistic/naturalistic approach.
Ah – very helpful, Sigmund. Being religious is compatible with being a scientist, but doing science is not compatible with doing religion.
A useful quick formula.
Mooney claims that he’s done a lot of research and that his position is based on a lot of knowledge, and it’s all psychology, but IMO he seems almost entirely ignorant of the most relevant kind of psychology—social psychology of conformity going back to Solomon Asch’s very famous experiments in the 1950’s.
Read the whole comment.
@Ophelia,
“he talks as if the entrenched defensive believer were the only audience.”
Good point. P.Z. Myers added another one:
Michael, yes exactly. And of course that is already happening. All these noisy atheists cluttering up the landscape aren’t just a figment of my imagination after all. Earth to Mooney: look around you!
Nobody answer Paul’s comment here; I’m going to make it a guest-post, so answer it there.
Kevin,
As strange as it sounds, you aren’t given a sarcastic, inflated view. That really is what he’s saying and he’s defended it before. He has said that no, science can’t challenge any of that. And yes, this does sound like an easy get-out-of-criticism card for any kook but he has just shrugged his shoulders and stood his ground.
In his interview here, he seems to be saying that if we answered differently then science would become a religion. Did anyone else understand what he was saying there?
Slightly off topic but of interest to those who were around at the beginning of the accomodationist/new atheist arguments that Nisbett and Mooney started on scienceblogs.
Do you remember the good old days when these two were the A (ccomodationism)-team, battling the mockers, citing evidence and trying to rid the world of acrimonious online disagreements? At the time it seemed they would go on forever.
Well that world has long gone.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/05/03/miller-mccune-on-the-nisbet-climate-report/#comments
Yup I remember that, although I didn’t follow it very closely at the time. By the time I did start following it closely – two years ago, when Mooney did the “Jerry Coyne should Be Moar Sivvil” post – they’d already split up.
Tyro asked
It is basically the standard NCSE NOMA tactic. Science deals with the natural world and religion deals with meanings and values (and presumably the supernatural world). Therefore science cannot comment on religion.
The sort of sounds like it makes sense but if you examine it in any depth you see some glaring flaws, namely that science CAN deal with values/morality/altruism etc – it is part of the science of the study of behavior and there is no need to invoke any supernatural element to effectively deal with it.
The other flaw is that religion, as commonly practiced, DOES deal with the natural world. A religion that involves relevation implicitly requires the intervention of a supernatural being with the natural world – how else would ‘He’ communicate with puny mortals! This requirement for interaction with the natural world is the reason why religious organisations reject NOMA (for instance Biologos is very critical of NOMA for this very reason).
Ron did an admirable job but I thought he could have made a greater distinction between immediate knee jerk rejection (that Mooney seems to think is the only response) and the ‘evolution’ of rational assessment that gradual erosion over time brought about by shame and ridicule can achieve – how did that Catholic church come to accept evolution (I’m sure it was the result of coddling their beliefs)? Just look at what’s happened in our political realm by not calling out the Republicans – the lies they repeat become truths because it’s not nice to confront them.
All Mooney managed to do was to demonstrate that accommodation is synonymous with rationalization.
Ophelia Benson#45 Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to steal your idea! It’s great to see others coming to what I think it’s a straightforward conclusion, especially if it’s people who I look up to.
jose – steal?! I didn’t mean that. P’raps you’re joking. No, I just meant I’ve noticed the same glaring issue.
Giberson has left BioLogos. I wonder if he’s been noticing it too.
I don’t know why Mooney thinks that scientists and New Atheists are trying to convince the deeply religious of anything. It’s not worth our time. According to a Pew Poll, 74% of Millennials described themselves as affiliated with a religion and among those only 37% of described themselves as “strong” members of their religion. That’s only 27% of Millennials. Who cares about the 27% for whom religion is a deeply-held belief, when we could be trying to convince the other 73%? We should be marginalizing the strongly religious by making science and secularism part of the general culture. You do that by convincing the 73%, not the 27%.
http://pewforum.org/Age/Religion-Among-the-Millennials.aspx
In some sense he knows we’re not – he did admit at one point that people who see religion as “part of their identity” are not the only people. But he shrugged that off as soon as he admitted it. So his point seems to be…the new atheists can’t change the minds of the most radically convinced theists, therefore, they should stop doing anything.
Right. By the same token, the civil rights movement couldn’t convince the people who were screaming and yelling outside Little Rock High School, therefore they should have stopped doing anything.
Gee, it was so many months ago when I criticized Mooney for making absurd claims (“difficult if not impossible to prove, but I’m right and I have tons of evidence”). Honestly, that’s the exact sort of malarkey that religious organizations spout. “You cannot see or hear god, but he’s out there – you just have to have faith.” There is never any evidence offered, only excuses and wild proclamations.
As for the Templeton Foundation, their game is to promote the idea that science is nothing but another religion and therefore that everyone should accept both science and religion as different but equal methods of understanding our world. Even with its best attempts at subterfuge, Templeton’s objectives remain transparent. What is really pathetic is that there are apparently a lot of people out there who swallow their swill.
I think Mooney is an accomodationalist because rational arguments clearly have no impact on him so he assumes they have no impact on anyone. He gets so defensive in this interview (and anytime he’s criticized). He just never comes across as having an open mind about this, or any, issue.
I don’t think the agenda of new atheists revolves around theists, rather the agenda is aimed at fellow atheists. In other words, we’re trying to get other atheists to not automatically respect religious beliefs.
The raising of consciousness is only indirectly related to believers, the vast majority that the message is aimed at is to get fellow atheists to stop respecting religion. This appears to be very much the strategy of American Atheists, as an example.
It’s a bit silly when people here are characterizing Mooney as saying ““difficult if not impossible to prove, but I’m right and I have tons of evidence.” (I’m using a specific quote, but many commenters here have said similar) What he did say was that proof that the Gnu atheists in particular are creating a backlash effect would be an expensive and difficult study, but that it’s an inference based on the science showing that when you challenge someone’s strongly-held belief, their belief is strengthened.
Based on that, it’s a reasonable inference that Gnu atheists’ challenges to strong religionists strengthens their belief.
It seems pointless to attack Mooney with the straw-man mischaracterization that I quoted when there’s so much else to attack him for. I would even be willing to provisionally concede that the Gnu atheists’ do strengthen the beliefs of fanatic religionists, based on Mooney’s information. However, he ignores that it probably weakens the less-strong believers, and creates a climate of shame around religion that I suspect will be very influential for young people. His question of Lindsay asking where these people are was annoying, and I’d wished Lindsay had answered “Everywhere! Open your fool eyes! Every culture has youth!”
Also, I was stunned when he said that the Catholic church can’t be challenged by science as long as they have no data. WTF? I wished Lindsay (who did a great job, overall) had jumped on that, but I suppose it was an interview, not a debate.
I won’t watch the video, because you just summed it all up for me. And I thank you kindly for that!
My godless! I’ve been converted. I thought that Mooneytits was just full of crap. That you couldn’t really lure people in by compromising your positions to achieve goals more radical than your stated position. But, then I heard him defending the Templeton foundation for a very solid block of time. That’s exactly what Mooney wants: an atheist Templeton foundation! The new atheists are like the Discovery Institute which he swears up and down are trying to undermine science, but he’ll work with Templeton because he thinks their stated goals don’t really matter and they are all about the dialog.
Clearly, we really could do what Mooney advocates and we really would end up with converts in the theist community defending science when they wouldn’t otherwise. We could start an atheist Templeton foundation and swing some Christian ‘Chris Mooney’-esque people to the cause. Hm. Wait, that thought just made me puke a little in my mouth.
At 03:25 Mooney makes an interesting statement:
So, basically, Mooney’s claim boils down to a claim that faith and science are compatible when the faithful don’t actually believe what they’re supposed to believe according to The FaithTM; that faith and science are compatible when people reject, in some small way, some aspect of their faith.
But is that really a claim that faith and science can be compatible? I can not understand how one could make such a claim: it just does not make sense. If one has to reject a part of the doctrine of one’s faith to accept a scientific claim, then it really does seem that faith and science are quite incompatible!
I suspect Mooney probably wanted the easy money [cynical] and the opportunity to add an ‘Oxford’ experience to his resumé, together with a little smidge of egocentric notoriety tossed into the mix. After all, it must become somewhat tedious and a little boring to be a science journalist [journalism being the operative vocational condition], one step removed and a second order career to that of doing the real stuff of science itself.
If science and religion are ‘compatible’, then it is from the perspective of a definition of which I am quite unfamiliar. First and foremost, theism [religion] is the utterly dependent social variable of the independent variables of everyday social and physical reality. Nothing more, nothing less.
Mooney needs to read a little more widely into the fields of the various neurosciences that are shining a deep and penetrative light into the origins of ‘belief in gods’ within the brain, mind and mind-states.
The following interview might be a good start:
http://c3135562.r62.cf0.rackcdn.com/110511AndyRadioInterview.mp3
Stephen – yes…
In a way Mooney took in some of what his critics (including me, before I was banned from the Intersection) were saying: that religion and science are “compatible” only in the dopy, obvious sense that people can have beliefs that contradict each other. After a few weeks of that he suddenly started admitting that himself, without ever admitting that he’d gotten it from his critics. The bit you quote reflects that. Yes, he thinks it’s significant that people can have beliefs that contradict each other…which is understandable in a way, because that does make it possible for people to be churchy and still not try to kick science out of the local high school. But…the way he presents it, of course, it sows a lot of confusion.
Ophelia @ 10: I don’t think a dialogue between religion and science is a particularly good idea because what is there to talk about? I think the (Templeton-fostered) idea that there is something to talk about is a way to add status to religion while it adds nothing to science. It might be no worse than a silly waste of time if there weren’t all this breathless expectation about it, but given that there is, I think it’s a good deal worse.
It more or less assumes they’re on the same footing. They’re not.
Okay. I can understand your position. I don’t agree, but I appreciate your taking the time to explain why you feel the way you do. It seems to me that there is plenty of fodder for various people from both sides to discuss. I don’t see that a dialog adds to the status of either religion or science, nor do I feel it implies that they are on the same footing.
I liked what Lewis Richmond said at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lewis-richmond/do-buddhists-believe-in-g_b_859658.html “Dialogue is the universal antidote to misunderstanding and prejudice, especially the religious kind, and I am all for it — even when it falls short, or seems unfruitful.” While he was referring to an entirely different dialog, I think the sentiment applies to this situation as well.
Beth –
Hmmm. I’m afraid I think what Richmond said is rather naïve, not to say sentimental. I think it depends. Sometimes dialogue is useful, but it isn’t invariably useful. It depends on what each side is after – how honest each is, and the like.
What Templeton means by dialogue is often religion “enriching” science. It’s not necessarily (in fact I think not usually) about religion learning about science and undertaking not to interfere with it. It’s about science flattering religion’s importance. I find that at the very least annoying.
I think Mooney has a partial point, tho he doesn’t make it well; not all religions are conservative or even moderate evangelical Xianity.
That said, such a religion-to-science “accomodationist” as the Dalai Lama is on record more than once as saying if science ever challenges karma or reincarnation, science goes out the door.
Ophelia,
I don’t think that Richmond was saying that dialogs are invariably useful, rather that he was invariably for them. I tend to feel the same way, although I suspect that I would find more exceptions to that rule than he does. As far as what the Templeton foundation wants, I’m not familiar enough with them to know their intentions regarding support of such dialogs. However, a desire to be flattered doesn’t qualify as a dialog IMO.
@Socratic Gadly
Is that true about the Dalai Lama? I’d always heard the opposite formulation. Such as here, although a source is not provided.
If that’s the point he wants to make, he should make it. That wasn’t what he said, though. Even if that is his point, it doesn’t excuse his perpetual smear campaign against the gnus (or the new atheist noise machine, or whatever he’s calling it now). He can make that point and have us agree. Where does that leave us? Even groups that aren’t hyper-conservative can benefit from some stridency in the opposition.
Beth – well Richmond said “Dialogue is the universal antidote to misunderstanding and prejudice, especially the religious kind.” I thought “useful” was a good enough shorthand for that, but maybe not; anyway, I don’t think that is true either. I don’t think it’s true that dialogue is the universal antidote to misunderstanding and prejudice; I think sometimes it just intensifies it (and other times it’s just a wash).
I agree with you about flattery, but that’s the thing about Templeton – it often uses language that way. It says “nice who-could-object thing” but it means “more dubious thing.”
Chris Mooney says: “Religion inspired Galileo and Newton”
I hate that argument.
No, religion FUNDED them. There were probably brilliant atheists, but the only institution that could support the leisure time of hordes of philosophers was the church. All those successful natural philosophers were religious because the church was the only place you could be a philosopher!
Finished this today. It was hard to listen to at times because I wanted to come back at some of Mooney’s points.
Yes, we won’t convince the true believers. THAT’S OK. That’s not the goal.
You don’t enter into a public political debate with the goal of getting your opponent to change his mind. You debate to demonstrate your opponent’s position holds no merit. You never expect him/her to surrender that position, but your opponent is NOT the target. Your opponent’s followers, neighbors, friends, and kids are the target.
We atheists don’t have to convince the true believers there is no evidence for God and we don’t have to convince them that Genesis is not a cosmology textbook. All we have to do is show the next generation how silly those ideas are.
We don’t have to convince them, we just have to marginalize them – push them farther out on the bell curve a little more with each generation.
You don’t get there by saying “maybe there is a God, it’s a personal choice, don’t rock the boat.” You get there by pointing and declaring loudly that “The Deity has no clothes!”. Mooney is so busy using one study to support his middle-of-the-road populist position that he’s missing the bigger picture.
I know I’m late to the party, and I apologize if this has been covered (skimmed the above comments, but didn’t read in detail), but a few things really struck me.
At one point, something like the following exchange occurred:
Chris: Rational arguments don’t work at convincing people.
Ron: So, should CFI close shop?
Chris: No, it’s good to get these ideas published in books and formally recorded. Also, it works for people like you and me.
Maybe I just took it the wrong way, but that exchange kind of blew me away. Chris’ first comment was basically “shut the f*** up and get back in the lab, nerd.” Amazingly dismissive of academics in general, and decades (centuries, really) of humanists/atheists/secularists/whateverists in particular. I wonder how, say, Paul Kurtz would respond to young Chris here.
His second point is even worse, since it shows terrible arrogance and condescension towards the general public. He’s basically saying that the average person is too stupid to handle reason, logic, evidence, and rationality. Now, don’t get me wrong, I certainly feel that way from time to time. (Okay, I’ll admit … I feel that way often.)
However, unlike the supposedly-enlightened Mr Mooney, I respect the people I argue with enough to be honest with them. I would also feel uncomfortable trying to deceive them into adopting a position more in line with my own, as he more-or-less suggests doing. I guess he would say I’m “psychologically naive,” then. Dick*.
*Of the Don’t-Be-A variety, of course.
I tried raising this point and some others in a less-clearly-anti-Mooney manner on the CFI forum, but it doesn’t look like he’s taking calls over there.
[…] for accommodationism in a Point of Inquiry podcast made during a Mediterranean junket (see Ophelia‘s and P.Z’s takes on the podcast). The only one defending Mooney, apparently, is Josh […]
Guy makes claims. Says he can substantiate them. Asked how. Says he can’t (afford to) substantiate them. Scoffs that anyone would doubt his claims.
Really? This guy is supposed to be a spokesman for rational inquiry? I can think of a good dozen or so people who could do the PoI gig satisfactorily; how did this guy get the job?
cheglabratjoe – I’d forgotten (and I’ve still forgotten, apart from a faint “oh yes, that…”) that exchange. It is indeed revolting – elitist in the only sense that counts (this stuff is for me and not you), dismissive, patronizing, wrong…
Well…probably in a friendly manner. Mooney was one of his recruits.
Duncan – no, actually, at least not any more. And how he got the job I don’t know, except that he started out at CFI as a fresh-faced kid and (see above) as a Paul Kurtz pick.
Ophelia,
I know Kurtz has kind of become an embarrassment lately (which is sad, but not at all undeserved based on how he’s acting), but I’d like to think he’d stand up for the larger utility of what CFI and organizations/people like them do. But, perhaps I’m naive. There’s also a chance that I’m more sensitive than most to anti-academia-type statements, since I made the questionable life choice to go to graduate school. :P
I’ve also been more cognizant of Mooney’s haughty “we can handle science, reason, logic, and evidence, but those religious chuckleheads just can’t” since I noticed it in that exchange. It certainly reared its ugly head in his post at the Intersection, when he responded to PZ’s point about making religious people think by saying that they aren’t thinking. At the risk of repeating my (unanswered) questions on CFI’s forums: isn’t his supposed to be the nice side in this situation?
PZ’s saying they’re wrong, and he wants to make them think. Chris is saying they’re wrong, and they’re too dumb to think so they need to be coddled. But the new atheist is the asshole in this exchange? By what criteria? Certainly not in terms of respect or honesty.
Am I one of the few that actually heard the interview? Lindsay makes a couple of wrong assertions also, which I can’t believe no one caught, one of which sets up a straw man argument (isn’t this a creationist tactic?) comparing shaming an individuals view on religion to being able to shame someone about foot binding, dueling, slavery. If a comparison is to be made at least pick something along the lines of “you still believe in Santa Claus?” vs an atrocity against another human. Not even the same category.
That said, you can shame a five year old after getting caught stealing into not stealing again. Is it as easy to shame an adult who makes a career out of stealing? The point of comparing a child to an adult is to show how hard it is to “shame” someone into your way of thinking depending on how firmly established his/her views are. The adult in this case will repair in their mind the two conflicting thoughts of right and wrong so they can sleep at night.
Moving on, you do need someone that is outspoken (Dawkins, though he sure is awful polite in doing it as compared to the US way) to “shame” those that aren’t firmly indoctrinated into re-evaluating their ideas and someone like Mooney for the more entrenched to find a common ground and go from there. If you think the depth of faith religious people have is all the same, you are being naive. If you think there is only one way to deal with them you are being unimaginative.
Comparing Liberty University or DI to Templeton Foundation doesn’t make sense. How many atheist do the first two try to get to write papers or even want?
Now where I think Mooney makes his mistake is where he said he would not write for Liberty or DI. Letting the fox in the hen house? Heck yeah he should. Even if they distort his paper to their followers (and the more it is distorted the better) some of those followers are going to be impressed enough with Mooney’s writing to look him up. Yeah, you won’t be seeing Liberty or DI looking for atheist writers anytime soon.
conpas,
I can’t speak for anyone else, of course, but I don’t see anyone saying Lindsay did a perfect interview, or that he accurately portrays the “correct” approach to this accommodation vs. new atheist issue. On the contrary, I thought he let Chris off the hook too easy many times (and lobbed him softballs to defend himself other times), and I found his “shaming” comments that you tore into pretty confusing and off-topic. Of course, the guy doesn’t do interviews for a living, so I cut him more slack than you seem to.
Also, I don’t know who you’re criticizing when you say it’s naive and unimaginative to think that all religious people are equally faith-y (for lack of a better term) and that one approach to reach the religious is the best. It reads like you’re criticizing the folks here, but of course we’re not the ones telling anyone to shut up. That would be Mooney and his ilk, and all their “psychological expertise.”
You are right. No one said Lindsay did a perfect interview. And no one said it was an imperfect one either. Not the point I was making and in my opinion as far as voice and the ability to move the interview along and this is just my opinion, Lindsay does it very well. It’s his ideas or some of the tactics that I take issue with. There, he gets no slack. No one should. But if you notice I did it without name calling.
Perfect example of how bias works is you think the “naive and unimaginative” was directed only to the anti-Mooneys and I am guessing because I wrote criticizing Lindsay. That set the tone apparently. The intent is directed to the pro-Mooneys also. Or it could just be that I can’t write worth crap though I thought it was made clear that you need both Dawkins and Mooney types before.
Well you don’t write with perfect clarity, conpas; I’m not sure what you’re saying in several places.
At any rate: it’s hard to do a flawlessly impartial analysis of a podcast, because it’s too difficult to check particular items. It’s not like having a written piece that you can easily and quickly scan or search.
Guess I’m skirting around what I take issue with. Trying to be less combative or argumentative as I get older. So much for that idea. So here goes. You say that “it’s hard to do a flawlessly impartial analysis of a podcast, because it’s too difficult to check particular items.” I would give you that if I thought you even tried. Using sarcasm as much as you did only shows that you don’t think your points are strong enough on their own so you need a little emotional tug to pull your audience in. Fox News, creationist, conspirators do this. You shouldn’t. Not saying sarcasm doesn’t have a use. But there is a fine line between trying to make someone chuckle and using it as a crutch for your argument.
Lets talk a bit about your quote mining. Not being totally honest on the “perfectly” paragraph. Mooney, if he got the quote right, doubts the proper usage of it and also he states his view on religion and science compatibility. What I heard, Mooney is not saying that the two are perfectly compatible. Sometimes they can be and sometimes not. But not perfectly. He goes on in the interview to explain this conflict. You on the other hand in your next paragraph say that since he got a quote wrong that sums up the disagreement. No, it doesn’t.
Next is the Catholic Church part and the soul. “Mooney: If they said god put a soul in and we can prove it and we have the data and this is how we do the studies then they would be clearly putting themselves into conflict with science. I’m not so sure that’s really the kind of claim that’s being made there.
Lindsay: Your right and I don’t want to get to deep into the theology of the Catholic Church or the theology of any other church but maybe this leads to another point……..
Your quote “Mooney says that’s all right provided it’s a supernatural claim, because science can’t say nuffink about that”. He is right. The Scientific Method or science for short, only works with the natural world and not the supernatural. Maybe you are reading it as scientist can’t have an opinion????
Look, I am going to stop here. This is way longer than I wanted. In short it was a one sided analysis for the most part and from the comments I read everyone agreed with you. Even if they hate Mooney, (which I wouldn’t bet against) for just the shear principle of matter someone should have told you that you are mistaken in what you heard or you are misquoting or picked up on Lindsay’s mistakes. People just need to be more open minded. Use a little logic and reason with some neutrality thrown in along with honest dialogue, not this herd think. Oh and number 69 comment. You should have spanked him/her for that whether you were 100% correct in your analysis or not. About the saddest comment someone can make. But he did say video so hopefully it was about something else.
conpas,
I suspect that you don’t understand where Ophelia is coming from, and that she’s writing from an audience that’s mostly coming from a similar place. She’s not explaining stuff you need explained, at least not spelling it out quite enough for you, because she knows most of her audience understands the issues and Mooney’s history, and why sarcasm about Mooney is indeed merited.
In this post, she’s not blogging in Atheism 101 style, for people who don’t understand the background.
One thing you don’t seem to understand is that in our view, and the view of most philosophers of science, science can study the supernatural. If it has observable effects, science can study it. It’s often said that “science studies the natural world,” but all that means is that science studies whatever is directly or indirectly observable—anything with observable consequences.
The “natural” in that extremely broad sense does not exclude the “supernatural.” The relevant senses of the word “natural” are quite different. Saying that science can’t study the supernatural because it only studies the natural world makes no more sense than saying that science can’t study artificial hearts because it only studies the natural world. It’s a fallacy of four terms, hinging on an unfortunate ambiguity in the word “natural.”
Science can study the supernatural, and it does. For example, when we found out that lightning was electricity and obeys mindless rules, following the path of least resistance beween regions with very different electrical charges, that undermined a whole lot of supernaturalist hypotheses about lightning. Lightning turned out not to be supernatural at all; it was weird in some ways, but not the ways needed to count as supernatural. And when we basically figured out various aspects of life—like metabolism, adaptation, replication, locomotion, development, and evolution—we realized life consists of natural (material) processes, and there’s nothing left for a supernatural life force to do. The supernatural life force went from being an explanation of observed things to useless, unparsimonous, and implausible baggage.
Likewise, now that we understand a lot more about minds and brains that we didn’t know when religions were invented, it’s pretty clear that there are no substance dualistic souls of the sort that almost all religion assumes in one way or another. Things that were assumed to be done by the soul—and thus to be observable evidence for the soul—turn out to be done by some exquisitely organized information-processing meat, and to be material, not involving supernatural entities or essences.
Mooney has a history of ignoring this utterly basic point, and quote-mining philosophers to support the idea that science can’t study the supernatural, as though methodological naturalism made the supernatural off-limits to science, which it plainly doesn’t. Methodological naturalism is not an in-principle limitation of science, but an empirically justified heuristic, based on thousands of years of failure of supernaturalist hypotheses (dualistic ones) and hundreds of years of increasingly impressive success of naturalistic (monistic, materialist) ones. We go with what works, and supernaturalism doesn’t work; it’s a failed paradigm.
You are also missing a basic point that most of us are familiar with, about Mooney moving the goalposts about the compatibility between science and religion.
The issue of “perfect” compatibility is important, because what’s always been in question is whether there is a basic, ineliminable factual or philosophical inconsistency between science and religion. The question has never been about whether some scientists are religious, or whether religious people can do some particular good science. We have always acknowledged that a substantial fraction of scientist are religious, and that most manage to compartmentalize their religious beliefs enough to accept most scientific results, and do competent science in their own particular area
In his book, he very definitely said that science and religion are perfectly compatible, clearly meaning something much stronger than that some scientists are religious, and proceeded to say that New Atheists don’t understand the scope and evidentiary basis of science. We do understand it, and always have, much better than Chris Mooney does.
We explained all that to Chris, over and over, for years, and he’s finally backed off from some of the basic claims he used to tar the New Atheists as philosophically naive, but he hasn’t acknowledged that he was ever wrong, and that he was wrong to vilify us and condescend to us for not agreeing with him when he was in fact wrong. He made some very strong claims, including some quite insulting ones, and he’s stopped defending some of those claims but hasn’t retracted the insults—insults that he dished out in his book, in nationally syndicated op-eds, and dozens of times over several years on his blog.
And he still hasn’t retracted all of his silly claims. For example, what he says about religious claims being off-limits to science as long as they don’t make specific testable predictions is garbage. It misrepresents the crucial issues of falsifiability, which Chris Mooney conveniently fails to understand. Science is not generally neutral about conveniently unfalsifiable theories. You don’t get to throw in arbitrary, elaborate rationalizations as to why hypothesized entities which should be observable are nonetheless unobservable, and then claim that your hypotheses are compatible with science. You especially don’t get to do that if you’re making claims about how observable things work—e.g., that there’s a supernatural basis for human reason and human morality.
That’s really annoying, and it justifies Ophelia being a bit sarcastic and chuckling at Mooney’s evasiveness and disengenuousness. At best, he is dodging or begging all of the basic questions and arguing by assertion. You may not get it, but many of us do, and we do think it’s funny. Pathetic and annoying, but also funny.
That last comment was from me. (Not the real J.S. Mill, who I haven’t seen around since he borrowed my netbook yesterday. Damned autofill…)
conpas, in comment #89:
Boy, conpas, you were just itching for an opportunity to lecture me, weren’t you? I don’t need “bias” explained to me, but thanks anyways. If you’d taken the time to actually read what I wrote, I think it would have been pretty clear that I said (1) I’m not sure who you’re addressing, but (2) it sounds like you might be addressing the anti-Mooney side, and if so (3) you’re mistaken since the pro-Mooney side is guilty of what you’re criticizing, not the anti-Mooney side. I have no idea how you twisted that around to “you’re biased because you assumed my criticism was aimed at you.”
But, hey, at least you got that rant in comment #91 off your chest. Hopefully that was cathartic for you.
conpas –
You’re flat wrong about that – and you called me a liar in the process, so that’s pretty irritating. The words “perfectly compatible” come from the book; Lindsay read Mooney the passage in which they occur, attributed to the NCSE and the NAAS; in the end Mooney admitted that the “perfectly” attributed to the NCSE and NAAS might be inaccurate and he would have to look it up. No quote mining; not true that I wasn’t being perfectly honest.
So. I don’t have a lot of respect for your opinion now. I haven’t read what other people replied to you yet.
Learned a few things from reading the comments. Note to self. Do not ever and I mean ever, use “Not being totally honest” again. From now on I’ll use “not quite accurate.” Ophelia, I was not calling you a liar. I apologize.
Next thing I learned is, there is more to being an atheist than not believing in god. I took Atheist 101 and passed though it was only one test with one true or false question. Apparently there is more but no one told me. Guess it must be ’cause I’m self taught.
Not even going to get into the past issues. But two questions that still bother me and I’ll ask and if anyone wants they can answer, end of subject. I’ll drop it.
One: (And I am saying this in the nicest way possible. For me at least. Apologizing in advance.) Would you teach a child to use sarcasm or that it is appropriate?
Two: Do you think it is appropriate for someone to shame another out their religious beliefs?
[…] Mooney is a prominent atheist and author who came out on the wrong side of the great accommodationist debate, and has been digging a deeper hole for himself ever since. Basically, Mooney’s […]
[…] do not comport with, you know, actual reality. I am sick and tired of the Waytzes (and Linds, and Mooneys) not only ignoring reality themselves, but urging us all to respect and accommodate those who […]