Why?
I was listening to the introduction to that panel where Dan Dennett set John Haught straight about “scientism”, and David Kelly, president of the CUNY graduate center, said that Haught had been given a “Friend of Darwin” award by the NCSE. He broke off to remark on what a nice award that would be, and everyone smirked or smiled politely, as appropriate. “What?!?” I squawked. I googled. I found it to be so.
NCSE’s Friend of Darwin award is conferred annually to people (and occasionally organizations) whose efforts to support NCSE and advance its goals have been truly outstanding.
Scroll down, and it is even as Kelly said. It’s alphabetical – he’s below Forrest and above Kitcher and Krauss.
So my question to you is: why? Does anybody know? In what sense does Haught advance the goal of defending and improving science education?
Haught is not an inerrantist or literalist or a Bible-thumping fundagelical, and so far as I know, he is not openly hostile to the specifics cosmology, geology, and evoultionary biology.
More important, Haught was an expert witness for the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller v. Dover, but I don’t recall the specifics of how effective he was.
So maybe it was with a mixture of relief, genuine gratitude, and a tiny bit of hypocrisy that the NCSE gave him the “Friend of Darwin” award.
By the way, at least the first part of Haught’s testimony in the Dover trial can be found on the Talk Origins web site. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day5pm.html.
Right, I’d forgotten that he was a witness at Dover. I just found the NCSE press release that sort of explains.
http://ncse.com/rncse/29/4/ncse-honors-friends-darwin-2006
It says he testified effectively, and that he is “The author of a number of books on the theology of evolution.”
But what is “the theology of evolution”? And what is the NCSE doing giving it awards?
He may be a friend of Darwin, but he’s an enemy of what he calls “scientism.”
It’s also sad to see who isn’t on the FoD list: Dawkins? Coyne? Maybe they’re not friendly enough.
Shouldn’t it be Friend of NCSE? How would any know whether or not Darwin would find the action friendly?
So the “Friend of Darwin” award has gone to someone who makes idiotic accusations of “scientism”?
Seriously. This is like giving the “Friend of Aquinas” award to P.Z.
Something tells me that, had Haught been alive when Darwin first published his theory, Haught would have accused Darwin himself of “scientism.” After all, how dare this Darwin chap suggest that there is a “natural” explanation for God’s creation? See how closed-minded Mr. Darwin is!—he isn’t even open to “ways of knowing” beyond mere science!
Wait…are you implying I don’t have a shot at the “Friend of Aquinas” award?
Maybe they get the Lovers of Darwin award?
Well, heck. I’ve read The Origin of Species and a few other popular books and articles on evolution. I fully accept evolution as the foundation of biology and agree it should be taught in school. I and several million others like me should at least get a Casual Acquaintance of Darwin award.
There must be some way to pharyngulate the “Friends of Aquinas” award.
But seriously, I was brooding on this, and the “no Dawkins, no Coyne?” is very relevant. There’s some kind of weird mechanism where people who do one tiny thing get lavishly praised and thanked while the footsoldiers who do more than that every single day get taken for granted. Men who change one diaper are heroes while women who change all the rest of them are just doing what they’re supposed to do. People who are spectacularly lazy and let the burden fall on everyone else get gratitude when they lift one finger one time, while everyone else just flies under the radar. I do this myself, to my fury – I’ve found myself feeling pathetically grateful to notorious do-nothings who managed to get off their butts to do one tiny thing on one occasion.
The NCSE seem to have fallen into this trap. Why the hell else would they be rewarding Haught and not Dawkins or Coyne or Dennett or Haack?
I think any award that is “Friend of…[ X ]” suggests exactly the phenomenon Ophelia describes. As in, “Here’s someone who is normally doing something else altogether, but he/she helped us out once in what was perhaps a surprising way, so we’re grateful.” After all, I have a mug that says I’m a “friend” of Public Television, even though I have a day job and spend NONE of my time advocating on behalf of public broadcasting.
A better award would be a “Defender of Darwin” award. That’s what we need. More defenders, not passive-aggressive friends-of-a-friend.
PZ Meyers,
You can’t get an award because of your terrible answers to astronomy questions!
I sense a conspiracy! Are there any links between NCSE and Templeton? Hmmm.
Come on. NCSE’s mission is defending American science education. Richard Dawkins, when asked on more than one occasion if he isn’t concerned that his outspoken atheism will hurt that mission, has replied explicitly that he really doesn’t care. That’s the whole party of Churchill/ party of Chamberlain (to which he assigns Eugenie Scott) thing. That’s an honest, and admirable, position, but it can hardly be expected to endear him to NCSE.
PZ is definitely a Friend of Octopus. Beats Aquinas if you ask me.
Really? He’s said he doesn’t care? I’ve never seen that. (That doesn’t mean it’s not true, of course.) I have seen him say that he is absolutely the wrong person to testify in court or go to school boards and the like – which pretty much implied that he thought the right people should do that.
But come on, it’s hardly as if Dawkins is an enemy of science eduation, now is it.
People who moan at Professor Dawkins are enemies to science. He has been at the forefront of promoting science and atheism against religion for decades. He could very well be responsible for it’s huge shifts toward non-theism from the 90s to the present.
But the shifts in America are far less than in Britain and Europe. There really needs to be a Zeitgeist or new Enlightenment for science/atheism in America, especially within the political realm, and most definitely the gnu type of atheism and not the accommodationist kind. I think theocracy is very much part of the agenda of the political right, and there needs to be some rational voice speaking out to replace the nonsense of Fox News.
Ken, do you have a reference for those Dawkins statements? I don’t mean to be picky, but Dawkins is probably the most widely misquoted and misrepresented person on the face of the Earth and knowing what I have read of his I can’t imagine him saying that he doesn’t care about science education.
Well, now, we weren’t talking about science education, we were talking about NCSE. NCSE is an explicitly accommodationist organization, and they keep their distance from outspoken atheism as a matter of political strategy. Heck, they provide resources for clergy. Were they to honor an avowed atheist, the CSC fellows would be all over it.
Personally, I’m fine with NCSE’s accommodationism, which has an explicit purpose. (It seems that explicit is my word of the day.) You read the story of Dover, and those science teachers were being put through hell. A strong organization, unassailably neutral on religion, was exactly what they needed.
Now if only Josh Rosenau could accept that we understand the need for NCSE’s accommodationism, and not spend so much time trying to justify it.
This little comment may be relevant regarding Dawkins (it just immediately came to mind):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7diwQ5dHZ0U&t=1h2m50s
I think he’s obviously exaggerating to say that he doesn’t care about the role of religion in society, but it does make it clear, I think, that his personal goal is to promote atheism as being a more reasonable position, not necessarily to focus on specific issues regarding science education or civil rights or all those sorts of things.
Yeah, I can’t find it. I was thinking of an interview after a large conference, recorded on New Scientist. In any event, the point wasn’t that he doesn’t care about science education. It was that, even if his stature has the effect of rallying enemies of American science education, that isn’t his problem. And I agree.
Here’s link-rich discussion of different approaches to the issue of teaching evolution from Coturnix, contrasting accommodation and ardent atheism. It’s not new, and it doesn’t especially feature Dawkins, but it explores the issue at great length. I’m convinced that the best way to promote acceptance of evolution is by popularizing atheism. Sure, the halfway house of theistic evolution is an advance over creationism, and probably improves support for environmentalism, feminism and sanity in general, but only the freedom of fearless atheism offers science the fullest support.
bad Jim,
I think using the term ‘atheism’ in terms of teaching evolution is a mistake. As we all know, atheism is not anything other than not a theist. Atheists can be religious nutters too. What we need to use is the worldview that we all inhabit which agrees with science: the naturalist worldview. We are naturalists, and we agree with the scientific worldview and disagree with the God-centric and other spooky-centric worldviews.
I couldn’t find the bit where Dennett specifically has a go at Haught about ‘scientism’. I thought Dennett was pretty good on the conflict between scientific and religious worldviews; on why we should study religion in the way he means, less so – and open to some sort of charge of ‘scientism’. We should study religion, obviously – but what’s wrong with history, sociology, psychology? What, really, do the particular kind of scientific approaches Dennett is talking about in Breaking The Spell add?
To be clear, I don’t mean that any of these disciplines are just ready-made blocks of thought to be applied willy-nilly. And there are certain aspects to the study of religion where a more natural-science approach seems very useful. I enjoyed Pascal Boyar’s Religion Explained, and David Lews-Williams’ Conceiving God. But Dennett talks about it – in this video, for instance – very much in terms of the sort of policy decisions natural-science approaches can provide. I’m not at all sure that they do provide much (certainly there’s nothing much in Breaking the Spell which doesn’t seem a bit obvious). His approach does seem to me to give a kind of priority to a kind of natural-science study – over historical, etc – which is ‘scientistic’ at least in a common sense meaning of that term.
Clive, the part where Haught burbles about “scientism” and then Dennett says why there is no such thing is linked on this post at Freethought Kampala
http://freethoughtkampala.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/scientism-the-new-straw-man/
I saw it there, and that’s why I watched the intro yesterday; I wanted to confirm that it was Haught (it sounded more like “Hot” in the clip). Scroll down to find the vid.
Thanks Ophelia – watched it now. Dennett’s right, I think, in terms of that particular argument and invocation of the term.
Here’s the link for that specific talk:
http://fora.tv/2009/11/17/Great_Issues_Forum_What_Is_Religion
I’d also recommend fora.tv. It has some good talks on there, but much of it is being available only to subscribers.
Many organizations give awards to their supporters to thank them for their support. That is clearly what the “Friend of Darwin” award is for. The web page says it is for “efforts to support NCSE and advance its goals”. NCSE has a worthy but narrow goal: keeping creationism out of public schools and keeping evolution in. Chances are, if you give them enough money you can get this award even if you do nothing else. (If you don’t believe me, go ahead run an experiment :-)
Neither Dawkins nor Dennet nor Coyne nor Haack is listed as a supporter (see http://ncse.com/about/supporters ) so you can’t really expect them to be given this award.