At long last, have you no…
I want to say a few brisk words about a new piece by Mooney and Kirshenbaum in Newsweek. First a few extracts.
As soon as Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian geneticist who headed up the pioneering Human Genome Project during the 1990s, was floated as the possible new director of the National Institutes of Health-he was officially named to the post on Wednesday-the criticisms began flying. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago, for one, said Collins is too public with his faith…The poster boy for the so-called New Atheist movement today is biologist Richard Dawkins…The New Atheist science blogger PZ Myers, for instance, has publicly desecrated a consecrated communion wafer, presumably taken from a Catholic mass, and put a picture of it, pierced by a rusty nail and thrown in the trash, on the Internet.
I’ve had it with these two. I’ve had it with their passive-aggressive whiny tattling nonsense, their mindless bulldog persistence, their refusal to pay attention to the abundant highly reasonable and cogent criticisms they’ve received, and above all with their petulant name-calling finger-pointing hatred of an invented group called “New Atheists” and real people such as Dawkins and Coyne and Myers. They’re not as clever or as learned or as interesting or as funny or as good at writing or even as polite or decent or civil as Dawkins and Coyne and Myers. They’re a nasty pair, bent on attacking their betters in hopes of flogging a wretchedly bad book. The hell with them.
Ophelia, I honestly read your News headline twice, thinking it was a joke. It was the “no, really,” that got me.
Even I, with my low opinion of Mooney, am shocked to see this. It is morally reprehensible, to use just one example, for him to trot out PZ’s “cracker desecration” without any reference to the incident that started it. A kid takes a communion wafer to show his friends, and gets assaulted. Then the church tries to get him expelled from the university. Then he gets death threats. Then PZ gets death threats BEFORE the “desecration,” for merely THREATENING to do it.
My God – Mooney actually frightens me. Really.
I think you’re too generous. I haven’t read the book and have no intention of doing so. Just reading their non-responses to criticisms leveled at the book was sufficient to convince me that there’s nothing there.
Why continue to refer to these clowns as “accommodationists”. What they are is apologists, pure and simple, defending irrationality and proposing more of it as the solution to the problem of irrationality.
And is just me, or is everyone treating Kirshenbaum as a minor player in all of this? Or perhaps she really was just along for the ride.
Hypothetical question.
If the strong atheist coalition were to win the argument that there is no rational basis for religion, what would it accept as some of the terms of a reasonable ‘settlement’? (for lack of a better term)
I have followed rather a good deal of the sparring between protagonists from both camps and the battle lines are very clearly drawn. A ceasefire appears somewhat unlikely in the foreseeable future, however I am curious as to what undertakings might be included in an armistice or surrender document.
There are a few obvious and easy clauses, including removing creationism from science classrooms and the elimination of human rights abuses which derive putative legitimacy in any part from religious authority. What happens after (or is it before) that? Help anyone?
I love this one:
“The critics, though, have it exactly backward: the United States needs more scientists like Collins—researchers who show by their prominence and their example that a good scientist can still retain religious beliefs.”
So if the majority of us scientists just lied to the public about our religious beliefs, they would immediately start accepting the evidence for global climate change and evolution? Who knew it was so simple? Maybe M&K offer solutions after all.
But wait religion is not the root problem – so I must have it wrong.
I have a silly comment awaiting moderation on the intersection, I hope you don’t mind me posting it here in case it doesn’t get through.
—————–
The K&M communication hypothesis (KMCH): “Don’t be nasty to those you wish to persuade.”.
K&M communication hypothesis in practice: “Oi, New Atheists, you’re really nasty and stupid, and you smell a bit too! Now do you believe us?”.
The thing is, the antagonistic stance towards the ‘New Atheists’ is actually engaging the NAs with their (K&Ms) messages. If they had solid arguments and would respond to criticism, this confrontational approach could actually work to change the minds of NAs.
Thus, I think, this episode shows that a) they don’t believe in the KMCH and b) the KMCH is not likely to always be right.
The whole thing is just delightful, delightful I tell you.
I haven’t followed this debate in detail, and from my meager knowledge of the whole affair, I think that Mooney is right about some things, but he sure is an unscrupulous, vengeful bastard. How could he publish in Newsweek, a mass circulation magazine, that Myers had desecrated a holy cracker, especially after Myers has received death threats ? That is low, that is low class, that is pathetic.
I like this bit (accompanying the article on The Intersection)…
“The new atheist movement takes an adversarial approach, but only succeeds in alienating the majority of the planet away from science.”
I have my problems with Dawkins, Harris and others, but who knew that they were so influential.
Of course, it may have been the cracker alone – its crunch echoing around the globe…
I completely agree, Ophelia. Their behavior circa this publication has been increasingly disgusting. I think I have made my last trip to ‘The Intersection’. As a silver-linings type of girl, however, I must express appreciation to M&K for their role in making me aware of ‘Butterflies and Wheels’. Other positive outcomes include the new knowledge that I should pay close attention to anything authored by Peter Beattie. So, Thanks Chris and Sheril! <3
I know how you feel.
Since you and Mr. (?) Stangroom wrote Why Truth Matters, it should be abundantly clear by that Mooney & Kirshenbaum are not the exceptions, but the rule. They are not in any sense honest seekers after the truth, but intentionally and deliberately promoting their point of view using all the rhetorical tricks developed over millennia for suppressing and distorting the truth. And they are in the majority, within the intelligentsia.
I understand Mencken: I’m tempted to “spit on [my] hands, hoist the black flag and …” well, you know the rest.
Er… I’m a.k.a. The Barefoot Bum
I like the way they called Dawkins a “so-called New Atheist” as if it ware a label he applied to himself rather than a smear concocted by religious apologists.
There! Finally got those pesky italics out. They kept hiding from me.
Good point, Jennifer! I’ve gained awareness of you, Peter Beattie, TTT, Feynmaniac, and more.
Stangroom is Dr. I’m the hack in the bunch. Yes their way with the truth helps to explain their dismissive take on the Sokal hoax and on postmodernism in general.
I guess I’ll just write emphatically then. I’m not sure what to say about this bit of childish vindictiveness from Mooney and Kirshenbaum – and Sheril’s name is on this story as well, so I can no longer in good conscience give her a pass as a secondary figure in this imbroglio. Josh, you are absolutely right: To bring Crackergate up in Newsweek willfully shorn of context is beyond the pale – utterly inexcusable.
M&K’s tactics do seem of a common character with their argument, insofar as their entire book (and the blogospheric conversation about it) is extremely accusatory in tone and content: First, M&K make the entirely unsupported causal claim that poor science communication by scientists is largely or primarily to blame when people reject the findings of science they find personally inconvenient or emotionally uncomfortable. (Really? It isn’t any feature of those who reject science that causes them to reject science – say, for example, their inadequate education or faulty epistemology or rigid ideology? They would stop rejecting science if only scientists told them about it better? Right! Pull the other one!) And where can M&K go after that trick?
Once you characterize a problem by looking for who’s to blame rather than by offering a sober, evidence-driven causal analysis, there is nowhere for the conversation to go but downhill. The people you’ve blamed will naturally be inclined to defend themselves – and rightly so, when the accusations are as baseless as M&K’s. And what response can you have to such defenses – especially when the accused are in fact not guilty – except to repeat and intensify the accusations? The only other option would be to admit that you’re completely wrong, which is very tough to do when your book’s been on sale for roughly a day: It would be professional suicide.
Of course, a book this egregiously bad ought to be professional suicide anyway – but we are living in Unscientific America, which may well save M&K. The very flaws the book ought to be focusing on – the tendency towards dogmatic ideological preconceptions and a profound lack of critical thinking skills (and/or the wildly inconsistent application of critical thinking) so widespread in the American public – make it likely that the thesis of the book will seem plausible to a gullible public despite the book’s lack of plausible evidence and clear reasoning. There’s some kind of layered irony in that, but I find the whole situation too repellent to appreciate the humor value.
Quite. The fact that so many large publications and blogs and websites are promoting them is ominous and infuriating. It’s just not a good book. Even if there were not a word about wicked atheists, it would still not be a good book, or even a mediocre book.
I am coming down pretty hard on them too.
It’s looking more and more like a vendetta – especially against PZ.
As Jerry Coyne said the other day, Chris and Sheril used to seem like nice people. It looked as if they were people with whom we might be able to have a useful discussion, perhaps agreeing to disagree about some things in the end.
But that’s not how it looks now. They’ve received much cogent and detailed criticism about their simplistic account of the relationship between religion and science. We’ve explained why religion and science cannot be considered straightforwardly compatible (even though some people are psychologically capable of believing many established propositions from science as well as many theological claims, and even though we fully realise that it’s possible to avoid direct conflict by adopting a religious position with little or no testable epistemic content). We’ve elaborated our views at length to try to dispel misconceptions and to take into account the grain of truth in what they’re saying. We’ve asked civil questions; we’ve tried to be nice and to assume good faith.
In return, we get the repeated presentation of caricatures of our position (which, it appears, many people are all too ready to believe reflect what we’re really saying), an unwillingness to engage with the complexity of the debate, and what looks like a dishonest, head-kicking approach to dealing with intellectual opponents.
I won’t be blogging about this much for a few days, as I’m on the road, but I’ll certainly be having my say.
Hopefully Newsweek will give PZ a right of reply.
I’d like to echo Jennifer B. Phillips in saying that, if nothing else, at least this kerfuffle made me aware of Ophelia’s wonderful blog. Bookmarked!
Or perhaps Jerry Coyne or Richard Dawkins will get to reply. Or maybe the 3 of us can do something. But I’m not counting on it.
I’m shocked at all you people who haven’t been reading B&W all along!
I find that the Intersection is much more tolerable when one stops reading the posts and instead reads the comments. Sure, there’ll be a few trolls, but if you’re on a mission to avoid contact with Mooney and Kirshenbaum it’s perfection; they’ll never bother you there.
M&K’s advice is if you write a science book for a popular audience and you happen to be a Christian make sure to write a last chapter on how you can be both a “good” scientist and a believer.
If you are an atheist, then the advice seem less clear – but may include the following:
a) write the book, but lie and include a last chapter on joys of being a Christian and a scientist and how no conflict exists between the two.
b) don’t write the book – leave it to the Christians – you might offend the public if you do. Won’t they know you are an atheist if you don’t write the last chapter?
Ophelia, if you mind me dumping a “comment in moderation” at the Intersection here, please delete and accept my apologies. I think it’s important, though, and I have little confidence it will get approved.
There’s a commenter who there doesn’t seem to understand “crackergate,” and doesn’t get why it’s an ethical cock-up for Chris and Sheril to have left that out. That’s not being helped, of course, by the fact that McCarthy and Kwok are conspicuously keeping silent on that and pretending it isn’t there, all the while encouraging outrage at PZ’s terrible horribleness. Maybe the commenter is innocent of the real story. If so, I’m desperate to know if he’ll actually reconsider his unconditional support of Chris and Sheril. That is, if he sees what I wrote:
********************
That’s exactly the point, Scott. There was NOTHING in the Newsweek piece about why PZ did what he did. That’s the problem. Do you not understand that? If you innocently don’t, OK, but please consider that omission by M and K is a very, very serious one, and it’s an unethical act on their part. In case you don’t know, here’s a quick summary:
1. A kid at a Florida University took a communion cracker back to his seat in church (which was on-campus) to show to a curious friend later who didn’t know what a communion wafer was.
2. Some parishioner tried to grab it away from him in the church. He refused to give it back, and left the church (I don’t take kindly to people grabbing at my hands, do you? And no, I don’t give them a pass for touching me because they’re “offended.” Do you?)
3. Some members of that Catholic congregation went ballistic, and accused the kid of – wait for it – kidnapping the Body and Blood of Christ.
4. Other members of that congregation demanded that the kid be expelled from the college.
5. The kid received death threats from outraged Catholics. Please read that again. Death threats.
6. PZ got so angry at this bullying, that he threatened to desecrate a cracker in protest. This was to demonstrate that PEOPLE, not symbols, are what’s most important. That the deplorable treatment of this kid was the bigger evil than his “disrespectful” treatment of a cracker.
7. Before (read that again: before) PZ even performed the “desecration,” he too was receiving death threats.
Do you understand now how important this context is? How utterly dishonest it was for Chris and Sheril to leave this out? It doesn’t matter whether anyone thinks PZ’s ultimate act was good, bad, tasteless, or not. It didn’ t occur in a vacuum. It was a response to a college kid being mercilessly bullied, being the target of an expulsion push, and threatened with death for what was – at worst – a social faux pas. For God’s sake, where is the outrage against the malicious activities of these church members and death-threateners? Why does THAT not disturb you more than PZ’s act of protest against it?
Does this make you question, just a little bit, if Chris and Sheril are as honest and reasonable as they portray themselves to be? It really, really should make you question that.
D Troeper
Simply that being an atheist not be taken as being inferior, that atheists workers not have to fear for their jobs if their religious bosses find out, that atheist children not be hounded out of schools for being atheists, and that atheist soldiers be allowed to organise meetings with other atheist soldiers without fear of disciplinary action or the fear that their religious brethren will “frag” them in battle.
That laws be made based upon secular arguments, not upon religious ones and that those laws apply equally to all members of society – such that you do not have religious creches in Alabama which do not have to submit to the same legal standards as secular ones.
That religious orders which break the law are treated just like secular groups that do the same thing, such that for example, pedophile priests are named and charged in Ireland, and that the Irish government not be charged for the Irish church’s crimes.
That the sanctity of one’s own mind be protected – such that apostacy isn’t a crime in Saudi Arabia – and that one’s right to freely criticise all ideas be maintained – such that blasphemy isn’t a crime anywhere.
That people who use fear and lies to win their arguments be treated with the contempt they deserve, and that people who intentionally traumatise children in the name of their god not get to continue doing so.
That being an atheist or a theist means nothing much more than holding an opinion on the existance of a supernatural entity for which there is no evidence.
These people are really out of order. They have been presented, over the last few weeks, with a battery of questions about and points opposing their analysis of the situation of science and the public in America today. They have not responded to a single one, to my knowledge, and yet they say that they are actually speaking in support of science. Surely, answering some of their critics would have been, not only more appropriate, but more consistent with the scientific reasoning that they not only claim to support, but which they think of as in some danger in American culture. That they are, in fact, however, people of faith, religious or otherwise, is quite evident from the fact that they dare not respond to their critics.
One of their errors was to attack people like Jerry Coyne and PZ Myers, using ideas that were soon to be published in book form, without having given those ideas some public exposure before. Once the criticisms were there, they had no choice but to ignore or to belittle them, and those who made them; otherwise, the enterprise of publishing their book was a lost cause from its first day of issue.
I want to pull one quote from their embarrassingly childish Newsweek article. “Yet if we consider religion more broadly—in its own considerable diversity—we find many sophisticated believers who’ve made a peace between their belief and the findings of modern science.”
What a piece of work this is! If we take religion more broadly, that is, allowing for the diversity of (conflicting) beliefs found in religions, then, surely, there will be beliefs which do not so obviously conflict with science as, say, Genesis chapters 1 and 2, taken literally, conflict with science.
But then we have to ask these dozy thinkers. Why not take Genesis literally? Well, because of science, obviously. Once science is on the scene, the Genesis stories are obviously folk tales. The trouble with this is that Francis Collins does take Genesis literally! He believes that God uses evolutionary processes as the means of creation of human beings, and if God fiddles with the knobs in order to produce human beings, then God has had to fiddle with all the knobs along the way.
Collins has absolutely no evidential ground for believing this other than Genesis – and surely he does not think that this constitutes sound evidence – otherwise he would provide it. So, right at the heart of Collins’ work as a scientist is a deeply non-scientific assumption, and Mooney and Kirshenbaum think that this kind of careless thinking is an appropriate model for commending scientific methods to those who are not convinced that science and religion are compatible.
Despite his ability as an adminsitrator of the genome project, and despite his undoubted skills as a scientist, Francis Collins is a deeply compromised scientist. This is something that should be more widely known. He accepts an incredibly conservative view of what religious believing is about, and he allows this to corrupt his scientific findings.
I would love to see all three of M/K’s targets – Myers Coyne and Dawkins – respond in Newsweek, but knowing Newsweek, I’m not holding my breath.
Hey yeah what PZ said – what’s up with all you people not reading B&W already?! It’s an outrage!
Your comment did make it through, Josh. Good one. It’s a very interesting question, why M-K are in such a frenzy about the cracker affair and so dead silent about how the student was treated. (They do give some of that background in the book, though only some.) What a pathetic, warped set of priorities.
An addition to Bruce Gorton’s excellent list above:
That religious organizations no longer be exempted
from their responsibility to support the society they live in and instead be required to pay taxes commensurate with those levied on other businesses.
But despite the nation’s severe fiscal crisis don’t look for that to happen any time soon.
Ugh. M&K’s ‘Part III’ is up. It’s going to take me hours to clean the vomit off of my keyboard. I know I said I wouldn’t visit their blog again, but I can’t seem to look away from this train wreck :O
I keep telling myself the same thing, but I can’t help peeking in to see how the hole they are digging is progressing.
Odd how compelling it is, isn’t it. Bad thinking, just grinding on and on and on, imperturbable.
Hmm. I’m apparently made of sterner stuff. Not that I looked at M&K’s latest and avoided nausea. Rather, I just managed to overcome that car accident rubber-necking instinct and refused to look. I made my last visit ever to the Intersection some time last week.
Oh, god – it’s worse than I imagined. It’s worse than I could have thought possible.
Urrrrrggh.
ERV let them have it!
I think it’s a case of Barbie emasculating Ken. The Republican War on Science was the right book for its time and was an effective tool to communicate some of the forces arrayed against science. But ever since Barbie moved in, things haven’t been the same. No more bowling on Wednesdays, no fried foods, and no more jeans with holes in them. And definitely no hanging out with that poopy-face, PZ Myers. Ken’s next book: “Why Hugging Feels So Darned Good”.
Oh, boy, skeptTick. You’ve really stepped in it now.
It’s probably Kwok in disguise.
I don’t know, OB. Has anyone ever seen Kwok and Bill Mahr at the same time? (Like a high school teacher with a book deal, maybe…)
The 3rd installment of their reply to PZ was the one that finally made me give up on them. What the hell is wrong with them?
A lot of us disagreed with them when they were talking about framing, but at least there was some kind of dialogue going on. On this issue, there has been none. How can one debate with people who are not willing to address the arguments, distorts the contexts etc.?
I’ve now officially given up on Chris and Sheril. I am not going to not have anything to do with them in the future, but I will certainly not buy this book, and I’ll look elsewhere for strategies for spreading science.
Ooooh, such original thoughts, SkeptTick. Those icky, icky girls give boys cooties, so boys’ light sabers can’t ignite and deliver manly thrusts to their enemies. *Snort*
And if that’s it, how does Skep Tic explain me, and Athena, and Jennifer, and ERV? Are we, like, mutants?
The softening of Mooney’s both heads started when he began his acolyte stint with Nisbet. But then it was “Nisbet & Mooney” — not as good as “Mooney & X” which allows self-designation and self-regard as an alpha male.
Kirshenbaum is an afterthought, in the book, on the blog. Far from influencing Mooney, she actually fits well Virginia Woolf’s quote in A Room of One’s Own: “Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice his natural size.”
SkeptTick is employing the ages-old argument that women distract men from “real” tasks which can fully flower only in all-male enclaves (like treehouses, prisons and armies). The same argument is used in fundamentalist religious societies to enforce total body cover as well as the injunction to public silence and even private singing.
As for women like Ophelia, me, et al, perhaps SkeptTick’s view coincides with that of Samuel Johnson: “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” And if we object to such views, we’re strident, militant, shrill… in short, unwomanly — which is still the defining criterion for most women, regardless of their gender-independent accomplishments.
Hear, Hear Athena.
If we only knew Chris’ “real” task….
I have tuned into the US Senate’s Sotomayor hearings infrequently this week; I find myself swearing at the radio whenever some white male accuses her of sexism and racism.
Quite. I keep being surprised by the number of commenters who give themselves away by patronizing commenters with female names the instant there is disagreement. One peep out of me and it’s “Ophelia, dear” – from total strangers.
Ophelia, yes it’s rather noteworthy isn’t it?
I get some of the same thing once in a while, from people who assume that my first name is female for some reason – as soon as they realize that I’m male, they drop the patronizing tone (or in one particular case, actually started addressing me by name).
Why would anyone feel that it’s permissible to address anyone in that way, I’ve never understood. Even with people I’ve known online for years (present company included), I’d never presume it was okay.
You should see what happens when reviews are made truly blind. Examples: orchestra players auditioning behind a curtain; grant research plans, fiction submissions and Ivy league admissions judged with names removed. I’ve had direct experience of the latter three, by the way, not just statistical knowledge.
First outcome: The number of women suddenly skyrockets, giving the lie to arguments that “there just weren’t enough qualified female candidates”. At Harvard, the student ratio went from 1:7 to 1:3 within ONE year.
Second outcome: Comfortably ensconced insiders get either genuinely furious (“I don’t give my money to Harvard so that it can admit a bunch of girls!”) or pseudo-concerned (“If this is taken as affirmative action, it could diminish the institution’s high reputation!”).
I have written about these issues in my book and in several essays (I’ll be happy to supply links off-list; I don’t want to overtake Ophelia’s blog). Bottom line: we may muddle through as a species while treating women as less than fully human — after all, we have so far. But we will never truly thrive as long as we do.
Feel free to supply links on-list, Athena – links are informative, not overtaking. (Well, provided they’re not to something by John Kwok, of course.)
Athena, is this you:
http://www.setileague.org/reviews/rarearth.htm
If so, coooooooool!
Yes, that’s me, Josh.
I do basic molecular biology research on brain function and dementia and I also wrote The Biology of Star Trek (http://www.toseekoutnewlife.com/).
This is also me — a few entries that are pertinent to our discussion here:
We Must Love One Another or Die: A Critique of Star Wars
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2005/20051003/star-wars-a.shtml
Recent interview about genetic engineering and space exploration
http://crossedgenres.com/archives/008/interview-athena-andreadis/
On Being Bitten to Death by Ducks
http://www.starshipnivan.com/blog/?p=196
More essays and stories are at my site, http://www.starshipnivan.com/
I have a feeling you’re going to become a favorite read of mine, Athena. Going to go right out and buy The Biology of Star Trek. Two of my favorite things – well-written popular science (I read one of your essays; you’re an excellent prose stylist), and Star Trek. Now I hope for a rainy day so I can spend all day reading. . ..
I’m glad you enjoyed the essay, Josh! If you want a quick Star Trek fix, voilà:
Forever Young
http://www.starshipnivan.com/blog/?p=237
We Now Interrupt Our Regular Programming…
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=7795
Have fun — I did!
Dang – I’m so envious – The Intersection gets the wit and wisdom of Kwok and McCarthy and all B&W gets is people like Athena.
Hahahahahahaha.
Yes, my stomach is too weak for the vim and vigor of the Intersection… so I slunk over here in utter defeat. *snerk*
I should probably have said “vim and rigor”. Closer to the truth (not).
Ophelia, I was just thinking about that. The silver lining to this whole ridiculous affair is that B&W gets to collect even more quality people around its watercooler!