Those bloodthirsty New Atheists
I saw this article by Chris Mooney yesterday but I couldn’t summon the will to comment on it. I waited for Jerry to do so instead. If I had commented I would have said something brisk about the silly word “spirituality,” but mostly I would have pointed out how heavily Mooney always leans on war-language when he talks about overt atheists, and how invidious that is. He leans especially heavily here.
We hear a lot these days about the “conflict” between science and religion — the atheists and the fundamentalists, it seems, are constantly blasting one another. But what’s rarely noted is that even as science-religion warriors clash by night, in the morning they’ll see the battlefield has shifted beneath them.
The old science-religion story goes like this: The so-called New Atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, uncompromisingly blast faith, even as religiously driven “intelligent design” proponents repeatedly undermine science. And while most of us don’t fit into either of these camps, the extremes also target those in the middle. The New Atheists aim considerable fire toward moderate religious believers who are also top scientists, such as National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins. Meanwhile, people like Collins get regular flack from the “intelligent design” crowd as well.
In this schematic, the battle lines may appear drawn, the conflict inescapable. But once spirituality enters the picture, there seems to be common ground after all.
It’s invidious, and it’s also quite sinister. It’s a kind of hate-mongering, done in a climate in which atheists are already abominated. I don’t think Mooney is unaware of that climate, so I don’t think he can be acquitted of being at least irresponsible about this. I think he is more or less deliberately stoking hatred of what he persists in calling “the New Atheists,” and I think that is reprehensible.
When it comes to real cannons, though, the religious have been beating the New Atheists handily lately.
Quite, Ophelia. Not only that – note how Mooney uses the violent, war-like language almost exclusively to describe the actions of Gnu Atheists, and almost never to describe the actions of the religious. It’s deliberate, and it’s perverse.
Yipes! Where to begin? Intelligent design proponents “undermine science”? How so? (Still not the case.) And what does he mean when he says “spirituality…doesn’t operate on that level. It’s about emotions and experiences, not premises or postulates”? On the level of what, science? And that’s why “spirituality” doesn’t require logical compatibility between religion and science? So how could it ever be a bridge? If it doesn’t require compatibility, then what’s gained? (His point escapes me.) And finally, is Mooney so “moony” that he doesn’t realize that Harris (unless I’ve misread him) has been arguing for an understanding of what we might actually mean by “spiritual” experience through objective study? When/Where did Harris say spirituality could be understood as “sacred,” as Mooney implies we should infer?
Sorry, I see on closer inspection that my post was a bit off topic…On the issue of warmongering, how preposterous that Mooney refers to the “conflict” between religions and science as if it were less a real conflict (which he should be “attacking”) and more a colorful metaphor. It is a real conflict and it merits strong language in discussion. His “attack” is clearly mis-directed. And near the end, he laments that we still have our “evolution battles, to be sure” as if that weren’t such a big deal. As long as we have “spirituality,” I suppose.
God, I can’t imagine what Mooney must think of Neil De Grasse Tyson, who pointed out how far the Muslim world has fallen since they decided to take “other ways of knowing” and revelation as the primary sources of relating to the world.
And furthermore, does any one have a fire extinguisher for Mooney’s “Goats on Fire.!”
He seems to take the approach that criticising people is bad and mean and wrong – but at no point does he seem to stop to consider what it is the people being criticised are being criticised for. Atheists ask Collins tough questions because he can’t back his woo up with science; Fundamentalists, on the other hand, ask him tough questions because his unsupported woo is different from their unsupported woo.
It’s like saying that a the criticisms of an anti-vaxxer by a doctor who says there’s no evidence to support the position are, for all intents and purposes, the same as the criticisms raised by a phrenologist because it doesn’t factor in how much their forehead slopes.
How are the two positions equivalent?
Really, he seems to be moving into the same position that so many liberal Christians – at least those who show up on blogs to argue with atheists – do, which is that any position based on consistency is bad, whether it be science and evidence based (i.e. supported by reality) or dogma (supported by – well, nothing) – and that’s a truly ridiculous way of looking at things, and an especially nonsensical one when the issue being discussed involves science.
Robert Fuller a religious studies professor at Bradley University wrote a book Spiritual, But Not Religious. In a short summary at belief.net, Fuller contradicts Chris’ claim that spirituality will unite people; these are often people who apparently still think god exists, but don’t like organized religion for one reason or another. :
He goes on to define spirituality in a way which tries to be inclusive, but excludes atheists:
@Wowbagger
While continuing to do the same at every opportunity. Hypocrite.
When someone uses the word “spirituality,” I immediately tune out or stop reading. It is one of those words that is only ever used for bullshiting like “organic,” “wholistic,” and “detoxify.”
Mooney’s use of military imagery seems to be a veiled reference to Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”. These are the relevant lines:
It seems that Arnold felt, as many still do, that without religion we are helpless, that there can be no moral guidance, no reason to act well, to live lives of compassion or care. The world has gone suddenly dark. Faith, which was once “like the folds of a bright girdle furled” is now in full retreat, “down the vast edges drear / And naked shingles of the world.” But there is a strange resonance in the poem, for, like Auden, who said, “let us love one another or die”, at least Arnold saw a place for love (“Ah, love! Let us be true to one another”), and surely that is enough of a foothold in the world of the human to be going on with.
Mooney, however, is a thoughtless barbarian, and really has nothing at all to communicate. He seems curiously emotionally and intellectually sterile. He’s not so much a hypocrite, as simply empty. He’s obviously struggling to find an idea, but he can’t seem to manage it. And although he thinks that framing is important, framing takes empathy, but as is very clear from the stilted imagery of this piece, he has no idea how to think himself or feel himself into other people’s lives. Though he’s apparently not religious, it seems that only religion really has the power to move him, so he lurks on the outskirts of religion to give himself a sense of purpose. Without ideas, without feeling, what else can he do but write awkward, wooden prose, and say mindlessly stupid things. This is what a has been looks like. And so young too!
Mooney:
Damnit, you’re one of the ones responsible for widespread acceptance of that term! Don’t try to push it off as ‘so-called’ now.
What I can’t stand is this implied notion that the Mooney position—i.e., the accommodationist’s position—is somehow the more sophisticated position. The self-satisfied fence-sitter who shakes his head at the folly of the warring “fundamentalists”—this is also why I have no use for Robert Wright and (more recently but to a lesser extent) Phil Plait.
Would it be too churlish of me to suggest that much of the bashing of the gnu atheists, and specifically the horsemen, is rooted in pure jealously? I realize that this cannot account for all the criticism, but I often sense that it is not altogether insignificant, either. Some little quasi-famous Mr.-Nice-Guy-type like Mooney bashes Richard Dawkins: Mooney wishes his prose had a fraction of the intelligence, wit, and elegance that Dawkins’ work has. Mooney wishes his arguments had half the lucidity that Sam Harris’ do. Mooney wishes he were as sharp and as witty and as influential as the mighty Hitch. These gnu atheists, of course, are people. They sometimes make mistakes and say and do silly things, as humans will. But compared to a twerp like Mooney (with his dumb, half thought-out arguments), their work stands extremely tall.
Strawman arguments. That’s what Christ Money is working.
Er, Chris Mooney. My bad.
Charles Sullivan wrote:
I don’t know; I think that’s pretty spot-on – though, to be accurate, it’s money spelt with a silent ‘Templeton’…
It may well be that Mr. Mooney did not put his full heart in that article. It may just as well be part of the payback for the Templeton foundation. See here:
http://www.templeton-cambridge.org/faq/
Q: Are fellows expected to produce published pieces at the end of the fellowship?A: Each fellow will be encouraged to write and publish news stories, editorial pieces, or magazine articles at the end of the program.
The FAQ doesn’t say what kind of articles Templeton expects. However, since eligible people are “Any journalist, writer, or editor with at least three years of professional journalistic experience”, it seems that Templeton expects a bit more from these people than just continue their profession.
It may be that fruitful co-operation with the Templeton foundation provides goodies also in the future.
“Spirituality” is something we ought to be able to disclaim – no soul, so no spirit – which is why it’s dispiriting to find otherwise estimable thinkers using the phrase.
But then, since I take my elderly mother to the Unitarian-Universalist church she joined forty years ago, I have to deal with the fact that they mention “spiritual development” in their principles ( UU’s are free to believe what they choose, but they have some areas of agreement). It’s pretty straightforward to interpret this as intellectual or social development; I’m glad to say that though I’m nearly 60 I’m still learning that much of what I used to think is actually ridiculous, which is kinda fun. I’d still rather not call it spiritual development, but UU’s are keen on inter-faith dialogue (UU’s have faith? who knew?) and sometimes give secular meanings to religious terms.
For example: our newly hired pastor recently described evil as treating other people as though they didn’t matter. Not a bad thought, and it does capture Hitler and Stalin. But, applied literally, it means that nature is evil. Is that wrong? Pitiless indifference to humans is arguably only a fault in another human.
He also described once feeling, in the middle of a wilderness, an almost erotic sense of connection with the entire planet, which resonated with me, had the ring of truth, even though I can’t recall ever having an experience anything like that despite extensive use of psychedelics. My nearest approximation was a night flight with a window view of Mars and the center of the Milky Way in Sagittarius. It felt like flying through interstellar space, but the deepest feeling I could sense was affection.
I confess: I love the vast, empty, airless, evil universe. I wouldn’t call that spirituality, but it’s what I’ve got.
The whole “Warfare between Science and Theology” idea was drummed up by a 3rd rate atheist scientist (called Draper) who wanted to sell a book and gain fame. It has been totally discredited in serious academic circles, and the leadership of the scientific community, esp in the US, had done an excellent job of moving the discussion on (in the NAS statement).
Then another 3rd rate atheist scientist beginning with D re-ignited the whole dreary trope to sell a book and gain fame. It has worked for him, but has deplorable consequences and has muddied the waters. Many serious scientists think he has been “bringing sicence into disrepute”.
I think you’re imputing too much deviousness to the guy. Seems to me like he just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. As a lib’rul comm’n’tatur, though, he must pretend he does.
I listen to him on Point of Inquiry every now and then (like when I run out of alternatives, and I’m bored). The thing is that he does seem to have a niche – that of a moderate democrat supporting liberal interviewer. When he’s is interviewing people on political subjects he is fine – it is scientific subjects that are over his head. With science he tends to stick to safe skeptic talking points (climate change, vaccination etc) and give a softball interview to a figure of authority in that field. Its pretty safe but bland as podcasts go and he does all he can (probably under orders from the CFI leadership) to keep away from New Atheist topics.
@Nicholas Beale. Would you like to fill in the blanks?
The bridge that Mooney wants to build is a bridge that rests on the fallacy of equivocation. Even if an atheist considers themselves spiritual, they mean something quite different from what your average believer means.
The whole “Warfare between Science and Theology” idea was drummed up by a 3rd rate atheist scientist (called Draper)
So you are claiming the guy who made portrait photography possible, was the first to pull off astrophotography, and one of the two figures behind the Grotthus Draper law and who is why we have the fucking Draper point 3rd rate because you disagree with him on theology.
Meanwhile I search your name and get a social philosopher and a book with mediocre reviews.
Were you born a douchebag or did it take practice?
Beale
Because that one was too damn stupid to not blog:
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/expensive/2010/09/15/petty-irritations-third-rate-bs/
Has anyone sent Mooney the memo about not being a dick?
Regarding the militaristic portrayal of civil conversations, the conflation of spirituality with awe, and the use of “New” for nothing new, where is Inigo Montoya when you need him?
If only he had written, “the so-called Gnu Atheists”, then I would have to agree with him. (Related to that point, any likeness of the Gnu Atheist “A” on my blog to a gnu’s a**hole may not be entirely coincidental.)
I wonder what Nicholas Beale means. Is he actually claiming that the idea that science and theology are incompatible (which he for some reason chooses to call “the Warfare” between the two) was invented (is that what he means by “drummed up”?) by someone named, cryptically, “Draper”? Who is this Draper; why does this Draper have only one name? When did this Draper do this inventing or drumming up? As far as I know, the idea that science and theology are incompatible has a long history and a lot more than one initiator.
Funny to see Nicholas Beale calling Dawkins third-rate. What rate is Nicholas Beale?
The NAS pamphlet Science, Evolution, and Creationism is filled with vacuous crap like this:
Not a single thing about how religion contributes to knowing, understanding or experiencing anything. Nothing at all about how religion goes about acquiring these thing.
Here is Paul Conkin’s comment in the preface of his book When All the Gods Trembled: Darwinism, Scopes, and American Intellectuals:
It is all about how one defines terms. If you redefine both science and religion you can make them agree, but not without leaving each as a hollow shell.
nth rate?
Ophelia
John William Draper, wrote History of the Conflict between Religion and Science in 1874. The book was not very good – he took liberties with history and presented an oversimplified relationship between religion and science to support his thesis. He is avoided by historians accordingly.
But that doesn’t change the fact that he was a brilliant photochemist, making a lot of highly important advances, (Draper Point and bringing attention to the Grotthus Draper law.) Calling him a third rate scientist? That is the mark of a pseudo-intellectual wanker. It is like calling Einstien a third rate scientist because of his difficulties with accepting quantum mechanics.
If you go to Nicholas Beale’s blog, you’ll discover some of the motivations for the dropping he left above. He really, really, really dislikes Dawkins, and the selfish gene hypothesis. Beale goes on and on about how Dawkins’s silliness (you know, kin selection and other wacko ideas that nobody but a fringe figure like Jerry Coyne could believe in) is being “debunked.” Dawkins and Coyne, see, don’t “understand the maths,” see.
And he also links to John Polkinghorne’s site.
Josh – Beale co-wrote a book with Polkinghorne. He did a slew of comments on a post about Polkinghorne at Talking Philosophy a couple of years or so ago. I think the post was Kazez’s. (I can’t check because I can’t access TP – I get an error message.) Eric and I replied to him along with other people, I think (I think other people). It was all quite interesting. Beale simply moved the goal posts, steadily, patiently, imperturbably…
I wonder what tune Mooney will be singing in November when the Tea Klan barbarians batter their way into the halls of power and start breaking down America’s last remaining barriers between church and state.
Unless, of course, all of this has just been an attempt to ingratiate himself with our exciting new would-be theocrats.
Oh, thanks for the background, Ophelia. Guess I was the one who didn’t do my homework!
I look at Mooney somewhat differently, I think. I think he got some success and attention with his earl works and then wrote a stupid and misguided book bashing scientists because the press (of which he is a practicing member) can’t write about science and religious just don’t care about that “science-thing” when they Jezuz and Football to worry about…
Mooney’s book was very much like blaming the fire department for fires. So, when some very prominent scientists, who happened to be Athiests, ripped him up one side and down another for the excrement he produced, he got butt hurt.
Since then he’s refused to leave the ideological corner in which he painted himself. His existence, at this point, seems to revolve around using his corner to whine, pout and cast stones at “those mean Gnu Atheists” while refusing to see he’s caused his own trouble.
I hoped that Nicholas would fill in the blanks, and actually say “Dawkins”, but he didn’t. So he still has at least plausible deniability. However, as you say, Ophelia, funny to see him rating Dawkins in the third rank. What, that would put Beale, say, down around 3000?
But, as you say, talk about slippery customer. I was reminded of Beale when we were ‘talking’ with Tim Simpson over at Jerry’s yesterday. Religious language is like an adjustable wrench. It will fit almost any nut.
@Moses. That’s why I think he’s struggling to find an idea. Notice how hard he is trying in this piece. The two ends against the middle, and all that hokum. Yes, his first book was, apparently, quite good. But he really hasn’t had an idea since. There are some people who only have one book in them. Perhaps Mooney has reached his limit. There’s only one way to go when you come up against that invisible ceiling….!
Eric, seems a bit weird you’d use such language in this thread.
@ Michael Fugate, care to tell me why you think the material you posted from The NAS pamphlet Science, Evolution, and Creationism is “vacuous crap”?
And may I ask where this “Gnu Atheists” meme came from? I can’t stand it.
Michael, it’s weird to make a drive-by comment like that. What Eric said makes sense in context – coming after the Arnold poem.
No you may not! What is this, B&W clean-up day?! No you can’t just drop in out of nowhere and issue a slew of peremptory rebukes and interrogations.
Even with the poem, it doesn’t make much sense to me. He could have characterized Mooney with countless terms than “thoughtless barbarian.”
Well, I should amend. I’m clearly allowed to ask where “Gnu atheists” came from. But you’re clearly allowed to decline to answer, as you have done.
Yes, of course he could, but the word “barbarian” does resonate well with “Dover Beach” and especially with Matthew Arnold himself. It was a literary allusion of sorts – buried and subtle, but there. Granted it’s rather harsh, but then Mooney’s writing does tend to the barbaric at times – barbaric in the sense of crude and unlettered, not the more violent overtones it has acquired lately. As for thoughtless – surely that is apt enough.
Your question was rhetorical, so I gave it a rhetorical reply. No, from my point of view, you may not ask such an abrupt, peremptory, out of nowhere, footling question.
The question is not rhetorical. I am genuinely interesting in knowing where the term came from.
But, contrary to what you are saying, I did ask it. Now what?
The “may I ask” was rhetorical. It’s a bit of phatic communication which I pretended to take literally.
You’re ignoring my objections. I don’t like all these abrupt peremptory questions and rebukes.
However. “Gnu” atheist was a joke coinage in a comment here by Hamilton Jacobi. It’s a satire on the people who spend much of their time complaining about the militancy and fundamentalism and general awfulness of the putative new atheists. We think it’s funny because we think the complaining is so stupid and invidious.
Well, Michael, ‘barbarian’ was supposed to resonate with what both Matthew Arnold and Mooney said. He’s talking about barbarians carrying out warfare against each other, fundamentalists on one side, and the “so-called” ‘New Atheists’ on the other, the imagined moderates, like Mooney, caught in the cross fire. (The entire situation he describes is about as imaginary as Star Wars, by the way, but he apparently takes it as descriptive of something.) As to thoughtlessness, I should have thought that reading the article would have been proof enough of its mindlessness! Mooney doesn’t get to throw verbal ordnance around without qualifying as one of his ‘warriors, clashing by night’. Sorry. It certainly did sound harsh. It was meant to. I still mean it.
Michael,
It is crap because although they say how science leads to understanding and knowledge, they never say how religion does. Frankly, because they can’t and it doesn’t are the obvious answers. Yet they prate on about different ways of knowing and understanding.
Not to mention all this crap about religion in its properly understood form. As Conkin and others have pointed out – this makes religion into something few religious believers would not recognize. Really, who the hell decided science organizations like the NAS and the NCSE knew a damn thing about the proper practice of religion? How do they know it requires one to accept evolution?
Michael De Dora – I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, because I think you might be genuinely unaware of how you’re coming across.
You come here infrequently, and often when you do, you jump into the middle of a conversation and make remarks that come across as demanding and totally out of place. You demand (or appear to demand, in a snotty way) answers to questions about in-jokes or conversational topics in a way that indicates you believe you’re owed first references, and that it’s other people’s fault that you haven’t been around long enough to know what’s being discussed. Or other people’s fault that you didn’t read prior comments closely.
If this were a real-life cocktail party, it would be like walking up to a small group you’ve only just met, and asking them why they were laughing at a joke you “can’t stand.” Can you imagine the response you’d get?
Given that you do this sort of thing often during your infrequent visits here – and considering the fact that you’ve been quite contentious and, well, disingenuous in arguments here before – you really don’t have a cache of social credits stored up that lets you get away with your snide posts. You’re acting like you’ve got social capital when you don’t, and it pisses people off. You have to earn it.
In a word, you have a tone-context problem.
Perhaps an expert in communication could help.
:- )
Well said, Josh. I know someone just like that. He will join a conversation group at a party, and then, suddenly apropos of nothing, he will launch into something which has no relationship to what has gone before, and everyone looks at him as though he has horns and a tail.
When I signed on just now, Michael, I took note of the title that Ophelia had given her note and this thread: “Those Bloodthirsty New Atheists”. Remember that this is the picture that Mooney paints of the New Atheists (a term which, whether he named them or not, he has used and overused, and then has the nerve to call them the “so called New Atheists”!), lobbing heavy ordnance back and forth with religious fundamentalists — who, by the way, have shown themselves in many instances to be genuinely bloodthirsty. My response was in tune with this theme, and I think it was appropriately in tune.
What concerns me, I think, is that Chris Mooney, who is one of the point men (or point persons) for CFI Point of Inquiry, thinks it appropriate to take out his inarticulate anger on people who are (in general, at least) supportive of CFI. I wonder why CFI thinks it is appropriate to continue the tenure of someone who so immoderately (and so unwarrantedly) criticises a large segment of CFI’s support base? Over the last year or two Chris has shown himself to be intellectually sterile, as well as incompetent as a communicator. He is invested ideologically in opposition to those who have chosen to be direct and candid about their disbelief. He has accepted Templeton money, and has, so far, given Templeton good value, by criticising those who find Templeton’s use of money morally and intellectually questionable.
Mooney has a serious credibility problem, and it is about time that CFI began to deal with it, because it is, in my view, beginning to rub off on CFI. In his latest contribution (the essay under discussion here), Mooney shows very little understanding of the state of play in the contemporary conflict between belief and unbelief, or of its importance for our future. He keeps playing games with tone and framing, and now with some kind of generalised spirituality which he takes as a bridge between believers and unbelievers, but all he is doing is muddying the waters. If Mooney can’t get his act together better than this, then CFI should begin to have serious doubts about his ability to contribute to CFI’s goals, unless those goals have changed, and we are now into mudslinging, instead of thoughful comment and criticism. Time to deal with it.
Well I won’t argue whether Draper was 2nd or 3rd rate as a scientist – that’s a matter of fine judgement. Unlike Dawkins he actually contributed something substantial to science beyond rhetoric and a misleading metaphor. But he was simply wrong about the “conflict between science and theology” esp at the time that he wrote almost all the greatest scientists were committed Christians.
As for Kin Selection and the “Selfish Gene” – yes I’m afraid that Coyne doesn’t understand the maths (why should he, he’s a biologist with no real mathematical background) and nor sadly do most biologists. But Nowak, Tarnita and Wilson have explained why Kin Selection is simply a rule of thumb, which doesn’t really add anything and often fails, and Noble has explained why the “selfish gene”, as anything other than a metaphor, is just plain wrong. (if you want to know more, go to http://www.starcourse.blogspot.com)
Michael de Dora wrote:
Could it be because it uses that most oleaginous of empty apologetic expressions, ‘other ways of knowing‘ – a phrase that only seems to issue from the mouths of the profoundly intellectually dishonest? Or, at least, it did; now it seems to be emanating from those who should know better.
Michaele
My understanding is that “Gnu atheist” is essentially an in-joke highlighting the cartoonish straw man of “new atheist” arguments. Its silly, and overused, but then so is the sort of framing being used by the golden mean fundementalists.
Personally I see myself as being more of a wildebeest.
Nicholas
Let me point something out here:
Denis Noble has sent me a draft of his forthcoming paper in The Journal of Physiology which demolishes the “Selfish Gene” nonsense from the physiological point of view. The draft is of course confidential so I can’t quote from it, but there are some interesting citations
This whole introduction just tells me “I know Denis Noble, he shared their draft paper with me, and he asked me not to tell anyone just yet, because it is a draft. That said, I will ignore this trust that was placed in me in order to cement the image I have of knowing this great person, and tell you a few handy tidbits.”
Cut the name dropping. If you have a point, make it yourself, don’t rely on famous friends to get you by.
I think it’s worse than that, Wowbagger (though your critique is spot-on): they do know better. They don’t actually believe what they’re saying, and they’re consciously saying it anyway for political reasons. That’s what really gets stuck in my craw.
@Michael Fugate, you wrote:
But the NSCE is not trying to address in-depth if or how religion leads to understanding and knowledge. They are trying to address what science can and/or cannot say about religion.
@Wowbagger, you wrote:
But the NSCE does not use the expression “other ways of knowing.” It uses the word “understanding.”
@Josh, they might be modifying some of their language for political reasons, but discussions with people of this mindset relay to me that they believe they are correct about their position on science’s (lack of) power to study the supernatural.
Michael,
Yes the NAS does talk about other ways of knowing – you seem to have missed the first para in the passage Michael F quoted:
After that, it doesn’t use the word “knowing,” that’s very true. It’s always seemed to me that it was very careful not to put the word “knowing” too close to the assertion about what science and religion do – in other words that it was deliberately careful not to make it too obvious that it was saying that religion and science have different ways of knowing, while still saying it. So I think your attempted defense is not a defense at all – I think their use of “understanding” there is not because that’s really how they see it, but deliberate evasion.
What is their position on religion’s power to study (or inquire into, investigate, test, confirm, falsify) the supernatural? Is it their position that science cannot investigate the supernatural but religion can?
Michael – you, and your mentor Dr. Dr. Dr. Pigliucci are full of it. One can’t just wall off a claim or assertion from examination by arbitrarily labelling it “supernatural.” Why you and Pigliucci fall for this crap-nay, actively perpetuate it- is beyond me.
Why would they write that religion leads to knowing and understanding if they have no evidence that it does? If they don’t know or haven’t studied how it does, then isn’t this just vacuous crap as I stated earlier?
And why is a science organization trying to tell people how to practice religion?
Here are some other comments from the NAS booklet:
From the Clergy Letter Project:
Without definitions of science, religion, and truth, this is meaningless – but it sure sounds profound.
From Excerpts of Statements by Scientists where they claim three positions exist – scientism, deism or theism – so if you don’t believe in god you automatically practice scientism or so it would seem. This seems to be saying that religion offers a way of knowing that is in some manner equivalent to science.
From Francis Collins:
They also cite a message from Pope John Paul II, but leave out these tasty bits:
Perhaps you can clue me in on how the spirit, heart, and soul differ from the mind, where one can find the spiritual realm, and how we can learn from it.
Michael
You meant the NAS, of course. Anyway – that’s a very flattering view of what the NAS is trying to do in that pamphlet. A less flattering view would be that it is trying to tell science to stay the hell out of religion while it tells religion and everyone else that religion has its own special kind of “knowing” and understanding.
This is in considerable tension with the Templeton view that science and religion go together and can “enrich” each other and should be “in dialogue” a lot.
Noble has explained why the “selfish gene”, as anything other than a metaphor, is just plain wrong.
Duh, of course it’s a metaphor.
Thank you Windy — since I was just coming to Nicholas Beale. It is a metaphor, but, as I understand it, it has been a very fruitful metaphor. By the by, ‘natural selection’ was a metaphor as well, and it seems to have done very well for itself. Strange that, about metaphors.
But now to Nicholas Beale, the starstruck wonder of the self-promoting blog starcourse. Since this whole discussion is about atheists and religionists, I keep wondering, aside from name-dropping, Nicholas Beale, why you thought it appropriate to attack Dawkin’s theory of the selfish gene here. Nicholas, this was a very odd move on your part. I went to your blog, and I’m not quite convinced that you understand the idea of the selfish gene (especially when you associate it cryptically with the growth of Christianity in China), and it certainly is not the case that, whatever the papers you can point us towards, or the ones that have been secretly sent to you, that the question of kin selection is settled just yet. Scientists have a way, you know, of arguing about things and disputing claims for years before things get settled. But since you did link the idea of the selfish gene negatively with growth of Chinese Christianity, I wonder just what point it is that you want to make, and just what you think Dawkin’s metaphor means.
In any event, I shouldn’t bury that coffin yet, if I were you. Jerry Coyne is an acknowledged authority in evolutionary biology, and, to my knowledge, you’re not. So, how about just a smidgeon of modesty? You never know, it might become you. I remember arguing with you over at the Philosopher’s Magazine, and you struck me as rather pointlessly arrogant then. I see that time has not taught you manners, nor has your much vaunted Christianity. One of the proverbs of your holy book tells me that you believe that pride comes before a fall, and a haughty spirit before destruction, if I remember aright. You might valuably look to your soul. Given you as a penitent, that would be my ‘spiritual counsel and advice’.
Not only does he slap Jerry Coyne, but the majority of biologists:
This may have been true when NB’s hero Polkinghorne was a lad, but not now. I know plenty of biologists within shouting distance who could give NB a run for his maths money. I just read the main paper last night and haven’t had much time to look at the 43 page supplement (which is amazingly filled with typos and formatting errors). The paper seems at first glance to be a “just so story” about how eusociality might have evolved and, while plausible, is hardly verified. I would wait to see how other biologists with backgrounds in this area respond.
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Tell that to the Christians in Russia and China.
That’s not the climate in question, obviously.