Moving on.

Scientists as a group are more secular than ‘the rest of the nation.’ Religion is an emotional matter. Creationists fear that evolution [the subject, not evolution itself] will ‘undermine their religious culture.’

Abrasive atheism can only exacerbate this anxiety and reinforce the misimpression that scientific inquiry leads inevitably to the erosion of religion and values. [p. 100]

They apparently mean ‘abrasive atheism’ of scientists there, but they failed to specify that, which is one problem throughout – a constant tendency to overbroaden their claims and confuse the issue. As it stands the claim is nonsensical – ‘abrasive’ atheism as such can only exacerbate fear of evolution? Well, possibly, but it’s not obvious how CM and SK know that. In any case what would one be expected to conclude from that? Abrasive atheism in general will have X predicted bad consequence, so…what? Everybody everywhere should stop being an abrasive atheist? That would be asking a lot.

But they do ask a lot. That’s the problem.

To further the cause of scientific literacy, we need a different, and far more sympathetic, approach, one that’s deeply sensitive to the millions of religious believers among our citizenry. [p 100]

See what I mean? That’s asking a lot. It’s asking a great deal too much. We’ve had that – we’ve had years and years of nearly everyone being deeply sensitive to the millions of religious believers among our citizenry, and we don’t want to be deeply sensitive any more. We want to talk freely. The millions of religious believer can toughen up a little and get used to disagreement.

Then there are two pages of fundamentally irrelevant stuff about history, which demonstrate only what we already know, that people can combine incompatible beliefs, and have done so in the past. Then we get back to the advice.

The official position of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science is that faith and science are perfectly compatible. It is not only the most tolerant but also the most intellectually responsible position for scientists to take in light of the complexities of history and world religion. [103]

That hasn’t been demonstrated.

The problem with the New Atheism [sic], however, isn’t just that it’s divisive or historically incorrect about the relationship between science and religion. It’s also misguided about the nature of science. [103]

Then there are a couple of pages on the putative distinction between methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism, which is treated as if it were gospel.

The American scientific community gains nothing from the condescending rhetoric of the New Atheists [sic] – and neither does the stature of science in our culture. We should instead adopt a stance of respect toward those who hold their faith dear, and a sense of humility based on the knowledge that although science can explain a great deal about the way our world functions, the question of God’s existence lies outside its expertise. [105]

And that’s about it. I’m not skipping the part where they present a real argument, because there isn’t one. There is some handwaving about methodological naturalism versus philosophical naturalism, but nothing we haven’t seen on their blog.

One thing that’s interesting about this is that it shoots to pieces Mooney’s recent claims that he hasn’t been telling anyone to shut up. The whole chapter is all about telling ‘the New Atheists’ to shut up – not literally as in ‘Hey, New Atheists: shut up!’; but plainly nevertheless, as in ‘We should instead adopt a stance of respect toward those who hold their faith dear.’ It’s true that it’s not literal censorship, or even a literal command to self-censor – but it’s pretty damn close to being the latter. It is very strong moral advice to self-censor. I think it’s pretty disingenuous of Mooney to keep expressing shock-horror that everyone thinks he’s telling us to shut up. That is pretty much what he is telling us.

I half-promised to stop disputing the claims of Chris Mooney yesterday, but then Jerry Coyne sent me the SEED summary of Mooney’s and Kirshenbaum’s new book, and I realized I had been premature.

Following up on his The Republican War on Science. science journalist Chris Mooney joins Sheril Kirshenbaum in explaining the disconnect between scientists and the public. This time the onus is on not just on obfuscating and interfering conservatives, but largely on scientists themselves. By talking down to the misinformed – and outright insulting the religious – scientists, they argue, do more harm than good in their quest to enshrine reason in American politics and culture. While the authors’ call for more friendly and magnanimous champions of science is far from a radical conclusion, it duly highlights the Sagan-and Gould-shaped holes we have in our current scientific discourse.

Oh, thought I, I’ll have to look into that. So I did. I read chapter 8, which is titled ‘Bruising Their Religion.’ It starts with two pages scolding PZ Myers for the eucharist incident, mentioning the death threats against Webster Cook (the student who removed a communion wafer) but not mentioning the campaign to get Cook expelled. It says it’s a good thing that Myers wasn’t fired or disciplined, but…

Nevertheless, Myers’s actions were incredibly destructive and unnecessary. He’s a very public figure. His blog often draws over 2 million page views per month. It was dubbed the top science blog by Nature magazine in 2006…Yet Myers’s assault on religious symbols considered sacred by a great many Americans and people around the world does nothing to promote scientific literacy; rather, it sets the cause backward [sic] by exacerbating tensions between the scientific community and many American Christians. [Unscientific America p. 96]

After some more scolding in this vein, we get to the nub of the matter.

Myers is certainly not alone. In recent years a large number of ‘New Atheist’ voices have arisen…The writers Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett are generally considered the ‘big four’ (or if you prefer, the ‘four horsemen’) of new atheism. [p 97]

Note, before we go further, the silly vulgarity of all that. There are scare quotes on the first mention of ‘new atheism,’ but that is the only distancing there is; after that the term is simply taken for granted without ever being explained or itemized or pinned down in any way. But it’s a stupid term. We all know that. There is no such thing – it’s just that some existing atheists have written some books which did well, and they and other existing atheists have done other writing and speaking, and atheism has belatedly managed to get a little more public attention than it was able to get ten years ago. That’s all. That’s not such a coherent or organized or sinister phenomenon that it deserves its very own label, but CM and SK give it one anyway, and treat it as established and self-evident. The nonsense about the ‘big four’ or (why would we prefer?) the ‘four horsemen’ is just dopy journalistic jargon; it should be beneath them.

They’re hardly a monolithic group…But the broad tenor of the movement they’ve impelled is clear: It is confrontational. It believes religious faith should not be benignly tolerated but, rather, should be countered, exposed, and intellectually devastated.

The most outspoken New Atheists [sic] publicly eviscerate believers…If the goal is to create an America more friendly toward science and reason, the combativeness of the New Atheism is strongly counterproductive. [p 97]

And so on and so on, for another eleven pages.

America is a very religious nation, and if forced to choose between faith and science, vast numbers of Americans will select the former. The New Atheists err in insisting that such a choice needs to be made. Atheism is not the logically inevitable outcome of scientific reasoning…A great many scientists believe in God with no sense of internal contradiction…[pp 97-98]

Yes of course, but the issue is whether there is in fact a contradiction, not whether or not people have an internal sense of such a contradiction. The chapter never comes to grips with that distinction but instead relies on pointing out the brute fact that many people have combined science and religion in their own heads. The fact that this is fundamentally beside the point never gets a look in.

That’s about halfway; I’ll let you digest that and me take a breather, before I continue.

Horrible man, the archbishop of Canterbury – cruel, callous, ruthless, tyrannical. He doesn’t think so of course, but he is. He’s again sticking his oar in to prevent suffering people from ending their own lives.

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury; Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, and Sir Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, have come together for the first time to urge peers to reject proposals that would allow families to help loved ones to die abroad free from the threat of prosecution.

Why? No reason – just to show off the superior devoutness of devout people by straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.

It would surely put vulnerable people at serious risk, especially sick people who are anxious about the burden their illness may be placing on others. Moreover, our hospice movement, an almost unique gift of this country to wider humankind, is the profound and tangible sign of another and better way to cope with the challenges faced by those who are terminally ill, by their loved ones and by those who care for them.

Notice the conditonal tense about imagined vulnerable people while the real, non-conditional, known people who have horrible diseases and don’t want to experience the last, worst days of those diseases go unmentioned. Notice how brutally callous that is. Notice the soothing irrelevant claptrap about hospices. If people prefer hospices, they will go to hospices! But some people will find their condition unendurable in a hospice or anywhere, and want to escape instead. It should not be up to the archbishop of Canterbury to decide whether they can do that or not. He’s not their daddy, and it’s none of his business.

I’m thoroughly tired of attempting to get a straight answer out of Chris Mooney, so I’ll drop the subject, but I just want to note that he has an annoying habit of attributing ignorance to people who disagree with him. He did it a month ago in his first reply to Jerry Coyne:

I guess you could say I’ve changed my view; certainly I’ve changed my emphasis. A lot more reading in philosophy and history has moved me toward a more accomodationist position. So has simple pragmatism; I don’t see what is to be gained by flailing indiscriminately against religion, other than a continuation of the culture wars. That’s especially so when those who flail against religion do so in philosophically or historically unsophisticated ways…

But that didn’t work out all that well, because some philosophers hove into view to tell him that his ways were not all that philosophically sophisticated either, though they didn’t put it that rudely. They did however say that his cherished distinction between methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism is not as simple or as self-evident or as orthodox as he seems to think. So he’s gone to his fall-back position.

I’m growing increasingly convinced that the lack of historical awareness is an important factor in fanning the flames of science-religion conflict.

Not his lack of historical awareness, naturally, only that of people who disagree with him.

Then he tells us a story that he got out of a book, by way of demonstrating his historical awareness. The thought that the book might be wrong, or debatable, seems not to have occurred to him – yet he doesn’t hesitate to patronize everyone else.

Well that’s communication for you.

Allow me to run down a few of the claims in Sholto Byrnes’s review of our book that are not true.

Actually, first, let me start with a plain oddity, since it appears in the first sentence.

The question of whether God hates women is not one that can be answered with certainty; not least since, by the time any of us dared ask a putative deity such an impertinent question, we would be in no position to communicate the response to our fellows.

Ah – so he admits it. The putative deity is one that we cannot question or otherwise address until after we’re dead – by which time it is too late to ameliorate anything the putative god’s putative rules might have done to fuck up our lives while we had them. Yes, quite so; and this is part of the problem. We’re supposed to obey the rules but we can’t appeal them to a higher court until after we no longer need to. Ding ding! Bad arrangement!

Now, for the falsehoods.

Benson and Stangroom don’t really have religion in general in mind – there’s one in particular they’re after. True, a few pages deal out blame to the Christian, Jewish and Hindu deities for the misogynistic activities of some of their more extreme devotees.

Not true. It is considerably more than ‘a few pages.’ It is true that Islam gets the most pages (for obvious reasons) but it is not true that the others get only a few pages.

[A]mid the torrents of invective, they allude to many matters worthy of calm examination, such as the Prophet Muhammad’s marriage to his favourite wife, Aisha, when she was only nine.

There are no ‘torrents of invective,’ and there is a considerable amount of calm examination – including that of Aisha.

This could have been the starting point for a thoughtful discussion about textual literalism and modernity. Instead, Benson and Stangroom attempt to trash the reputation of Karen Armstrong, a respected religious scholar who believes that “the emancipation of women was a project dear to the Prophet’s heart” and then quote, without qualification or disapproval, the view of an American Baptist leader that Muhammad’s marriage means that the Prophet was a “demon-possessed paedophile”.

1. There is such a thoughtful discussion. The ‘instead’ is absurd, because there is a whole chapter of thoughtful discussion.

2. We don’t attempt to trash the reputation of Karen Armstrong, we dispute her scholarship, which is a perfectly routine and legitimate thing to do.

3. Armstrong is a respected religious scholar only among people who are not themselves religious scholars or historians. She is referred to that way by radio presenters and similar, but not otherwise.

4. The ‘and then’ is incorrect because we quote the Baptist preacher before the extended examination of Armstrong’s work, not after it, and we quote it simply to indicate that the subject has been in the news; the suggestion that we passively endorse what he said is absurd.

This is inflammatory in the extreme. But that appears to be the point. Self-proclaimed champions of the secular right to challenge and insult others’ beliefs, Benson and Stangroom show no desire to go beyond name-calling and distortion.

1. Since it is not what we wrote, it is not inflammatory in the extreme. I consider the review itself to be considerably more inflammatory than our book is – and a kind of inflammatory that is directed at particular people (us), not at religions or their beliefs or practices.

2. Since it is not what we wrote and not inflammatory, that can’t be the point. We’re not self-declared champions of anything, and in particular we’re not champions of the right to ‘insult others’ beliefs.’ (How do you insult a belief?) I at least have argued for a general right to challenge ‘others’ beliefs’ – but does Sholto Byrnes really want to claim that there is no such right? Let’s hope not.

3. It is flatly and blatantly untrue that we show no desire to go beyond name-calling and distortion. That simply dismisses the whole book – via distorted name-calling, ironically.

Other than that (and a few more details) it’s all very reasonable.

Yesterday, by way of refreshment from enumerating the falsehoods in Sholto Byrnes’s review of our book, Jeremy and I chatted a little about elephants. He’d sent me a picture of the Toronto elephants playing water games, so I made him envious by saying I used to join the Seattle elephants in their pool to scrub their backs and generally play with them. This led to a discussion of how one gets used to being around such large animals, and Jeremy asked if they knew not to tread on people by accident. I said they do, and told a little story to illustrate, and he thought I should share it, so I will. Consider it refreshment from whatever you need refreshment from.

One of those summer pool-play days, I was standing a short distance away from the pool and the youngest calf, Sri, who was about three at the time, was standing at the edge of it. She was about my height then, but so is an SUV – she was about my height and weighed several times as much. The older calf, Chai, was in the pool and she suddenly gave Sri a playful bump from behind that sent her rocketing straight toward me, too fast for me to jump out of the way. Sri slammed on the brakes in order not to crash into me. It’s not easy to do that! She had to dig in her feet and brace her legs and just jar herself to a stop – and she did. I was very impressed by that (not to mention very relieved). She was just a kid, but she not only knew not to crash into me, she knew it mattered enough to make a big effort.

The Toronto ‘phants on Saturday:

From Safari 2009-06-27

Chris Mooney wonders something.

Wilkins’ post stirs up something that, especially as a journalist, has always made me wonder about the New Atheists–how are they so confident?…I met a lot of moderate religious people, in the course of my life, who were anything but irrational or fundamentalist. And they changed me…[T]hey certainly made me less of an absolutist. They made me less confident that I had all the answers, that my way was the only way–not just for finding out the truth, but for getting through life.

How are ‘the New Atheists’ so confident of what? What is it that Mooney takes ‘the New Atheists’ to be so confident of? Apparently that they have all the answers and that their way is the only way. Well that is (to use a good word that he also likes) a canard. I simply don’t know of any atheists who are confident that they have all the answers. In fact one thing the atheists I know are confident of is that they don’t have all the answers. Is that what Mooney means? How can ‘the New Atheists’ be so confident that they don’t have all the answers? Well…because it is so obvious that there are so many answers to be had and that life is short and the human mind is limited. But Mooney implies that the atheists he knows are confident that they have all the answers. I wonder if he could quote any of them saying anything that would back that up.

I suspect that what Mooney means, but didn’t manage to pin down accurately, is ‘how are they so confident that the epistemology of religion gets things wrong?’ I would put the confidence I have in this way: I am confident that I know of no good reason to believe that a god exists. I think that’s what atheists in general are confident of. Not that they can be certain that no god exists, but that there is no good reason for most of us to think so. I say most of us because it may be that for people who have had really powerful experiences of god, it is reasonable to say that there is a good reason for them to think so. A goodish reason anyway. Well, not really a good reason, but a reason of sorts. But for most people, there isn’t. I think we are and can be confident of that simply because if there were such a good reason, everyone would know about it. As it is – we don’t! We ask for a good reason, and we are handed a stone.

Now…is that ‘so confident’? Is it so confident that it is too confident, deplorably confident, strangely confident, unreasonably confident? No, I don’t think so. I think it’s just the commonplace kind of confident like the confident in ‘I am confident that there is no good reason to think Will Shakespeare is sitting across the room writing a new sonnet.’ It’s just vulgar everyday empiricism. I have good reason to think there are oranges in the glass bowl, I don’t have good reason to think there are elephants in it. There could of course be a kind of expertise or scholarship or instrumentation such that if I were properly trained I would be able to detect elephants in the bowl or Shakespeare across the room or a god – but I have no good reason to think there is. No one has any good reason to think there is.

That’s the kind of confidence I have. I think it’s not an over-reaching or arrogant kind of confidence because it does leave room for being wrong, and for learning better. It could be (in principle) that there is such a reason and that nobody has found it yet. It’s a temporal claim. So far, nobody has any good reason to think there is a god. (Well I suppose I can’t be confident that there are no secretive or isolated people who do have such a good reason and simply haven’t made it known yet. But other than that – if there were such a good reason it would be common knowledge in a heartbeat. It would knock Michael Jackson right off the front page.)

So that’s how we are ‘so confident.’ We are confident that we shouldn’t be expected to believe things if there is no good reason to believe them. That’s not quite the same as thinking our way is the only way, as Mooney hinted. It’s just thinking we should match important beliefs to good reasons, by way of caution, you see.

Peter Hess, a Catholic theologian who is director of something called ‘the Faith Project’ at the National Center for Science Education (the what? at the where? yes, you read that correctly) recently said in a Washington Post ‘On Faith’ article (have we got enough name checks of faith yet?):

Too often, debates over the public perception of evolution are dominated by the fringes, by fundamentalist Christians and others who reject basic science due to their literal reading of the Bible and by ardent atheists who reject religion because they’ve embraced metaphysical naturalism ― that nature is all that exists. But the silent majority ― that spans the spectrum from theism to atheism ― have no problem reconciling their religious beliefs with established sciences such as evolution.

Spoken like a true journalist, theolgical credentials notwithstanding. Yes right: atheists who decline to believe in supernaturalism are waaaaaaaay out there on the freaky fringe of extreme maniacal militant crazy as a bag of rats fringe, while all the nice, normal, sensible, mainstream, average, just like you and me people are here in the middle smiling and agreeing that everyone can have an activist god who answers prayers and sciency stuff like evolution. It’s only lunatics who say anything else. That’s the way to frame things! Just declare your own view Normal and then describe two views that differ from yours as fringey-extreme.

Chris Mooney is full of approbation of this tawdry gambit.

I heartily agree–my sense, too, is that the silent majority doesn’t side with either of the extremes.

See? There you have it again. Those other views are Extreme, while good decent family-oriented views are silent majority middle and Good.

[I]n the science blogosphere, we don’t hear a lot from the “silent majority.” Rather, and admittedly with some important exceptions, we hear from the New Atheists.

Whom it is important always to refer to by an epithet of some sort and treat as a bloc. At any rate – it doesn’t seem to occur to Mooney that the reason for the silence of the ‘silent majority’ in the science blogosphere is that the putative extreme has a better case than does the putative silent majority. It ought to occur to him.

Jerry Coyne is not as impressed by Peter Hess as Mooney is.

As I’ve maintained repeatedly, religion is neither set up for finding truth nor very good at finding truth. Let me correct that — faith is incapable of finding truth, or at least no more capable than is astrology. The methods of ascertaining “truth” via faith are either revelation or acceptance of dogma. These methods have produced “truths” like a 6,000-year-old Earth and the Great Flood. Not a very good track record. In fact, I have yet to find a single truth about humans, Earth, or the universe that has come uniquely from faith.

Same here. I’ve tried – I really have – as I mentioned the other day, I asked the Templeton shill exactly that question:

What exactly do you ‘believe’ that the world’s religious traditions have to contribute to understanding human experience and our place in the universe? Can you specify one theory or explanation or bit of evidence that a religion has contributed to understanding human experience and our place in the universe?

But the Templeton shill didn’t answer.

Jerry Coyne says this matters.

In all these debates about the compatibility of science and faith, I have yet to see an intellectually respectable answer to this ultimate dichotomy between “ways of knowing.” Instead, people like Mooney go after us for our tone, for polarizing people, and so on…Instead of beefing about our “militancy,” why don’t accommodationists start addressing the question of whether faith can tell us anything that’s true? Let’s hear about whether you can coherently accept a Resurrection on Sunday and then go to the lab the next day and doggedly refuse to accept any claim that lacks evidence. Now that would raise the tone of this debate.

Mooney does, at last, give a straightforward answer.

I don’t believe that faith can tell us anything true, or at least, anything that we can reliably know to be true. I don’t think we can know anything except based on evidence. In this I’m in full agreement with Coyne, Dennett, Dawkins, and all the rest.

Well done. But then he veers off into a false choice.

I don’t see a need to pry into how each individual is dealing with these complicated and personal matters of constructing a coherent worldview…I know that many very intelligent people are struggling all the time to make their peace with this incongruity in their own way–a peace that works for them. And so long as they’re not messing with what our kids learn–or, again, trying to ram their views down our throats–then good on ‘em.

But that’s a false choice, because anti-accommodationists also don’t see a need to pry into how each individual is dealing with epistemology; that’s not the issue; as has been pointed out a thousand times, the issue is what it is reasonable and fair and useful to talk about in public. It’s not a question of grabbing every American over the age of ten for an inquisition on beliefs, it’s a question of writing and discussing and debating in public fora. As has been pointed out a thousand times, Jerry Coyne didn’t break Ken Miller’s door down to challenge him, he reviewed a book for a magazine – a book that Miller himself wrote. This isn’t private, this isn’t prying into people’s heads, it’s public discourse. It’s not fringe public discourse, it’s just public discourse. We’re allowed to do that.

Update: see Russell Blackford’s comments @ 128, 129, 138. Beware of the oceans of Anthony McCarthy you have to wade through to get there.

Update 2: see Russell’s post on the subject.

Chris Mooney also read the Lawrence Krauss piece in the WSJ. He saw it as yet another chance to say methodological naturalism is different from philosophical naturalism and that scientists have no business going from the first to the second and they’d just better not or else.

What Krauss is effectively saying is that it is rational to go beyond science’s methodological naturalism to also become a philosophical naturalist…But it is an omission on Krauss’s part not to admit more explicitly that in making this move, one is leaving beyond the realm of science per se and developing a philosophical worldview. I think–though I’m not sure–that in a conversation Krauss would probably admit as much. But by not doing so in the Journal, Krauss is helping along the misconception that science itself is inherently atheistic. It isn’t.

Krauss agrees in a comment that that is what he was doing:

I agree with you about it being a philosophical leap… and that is why I began the argument with Haldane, who makes it clear that it is such.. or at least it was clear to me.

But Tom Clark and Russell Blackford dispute this idea of a Great Separation or a leap.

First Tom:

Seems to me Haldane isn’t making a “leap” from his atheistic scientific practice to his global atheistic naturalism, rather it sounds like he believes it’s ethically required of him to apply the same (reliable) cognitive standards in all domains. It’s not only rationally permissible, but epistemically responsible to do so because the standards are reliable. Not to do so is, as he says, intellectually dishonest if we’re interested in truths about the world.

Then Russell:

Science and philosophy are continuous with each other. Yes, Krauss is not speaking as a physicist, carrying out specialist research in an area of cosmology or whatever, when he makes the claims that he does in this article. He is stepping back from that; he is speaking as a person who has an overall familiarity with the image of the world that comes from modern science – which you’d hope any high-level scientist possesses – and is capable of comparing that with the typical claims of religion. Yes, that is an example of what we mean by doing philosophy, but you make it sound as if “doing philosophy” is some kind of exercise discontinuous from all our rational investigation of the world.

Krauss is doing exactly what Dawkins does, or what a philosopher like Philip Kitcher does. There’s no conspiracy to hide this and pretend that Krauss’s article in the WSJ is reporting findings from his lab.

Chris Mooney please note. (Not that he will. He never does. He just keeps repeating his mantra.)

Laurence Krauss says God and science don’t mix.

He has joined his friend Ken Miller in telling school boards that ‘one does not have to be an atheist to accept evolutionary biology as a reality. And I have pointed to my friend Ken as an example.’

This statement of fact appears to separate me from my other friends, Messrs. Harris and Dawkins. Yet this separation is illusory. It reflects the misperception that the recent crop of vocal atheist-scientist-writers are somehow “atheist absolutists” who remain in a “cultural and historical vacuum” — in the words of a recent Nature magazine editorial. But this accusation is unfair. Messrs. Harris and Dawkins are simply being honest when they point out the inconsistency of belief in an activist god with modern science…Though the scientific process may be compatible with the vague idea of some relaxed deity who merely established the universe and let it proceed from there, it is in fact rationally incompatible with the detailed tenets of most of the world’s organized religions.

Cue the defense of ‘pluralist naturalism’ – whatever that is.

Back to talking about things that actually matter. What the thugs did to the family of Neda Soltan is quite staggering.

Neighbours said that her family no longer lives in the four-floor apartment building on Meshkini Street, in eastern Tehran, having been forced to move since she was killed. The police did not hand the body back to her family, her funeral was cancelled, she was buried without letting her family know and the government banned mourning ceremonies at mosques, the neighbours said…Amid scenes of grief in the Soltan household with her father and mother screaming, neighbours not only from their building but from others in the area streamed out to protest at her death. But the police moved in quickly to quell any public displays of grief…In accordance with Persian tradition, the family had put up a mourning announcement and attached a black banner to the building. But the police took them down, refusing to allow the family to show any signs of mourning. The next day they were ordered to move out. Since then, neighbours have received suspicious calls warning them not to discuss her death with anyone and not to make any protest.

How fiendishly brutal is that? Less fiendishly brutal than murdering Neda Soltan in the first place, but fiendishly brutal all the same.

“We are trembling,” one neighbour said. “We are still afraid. We haven’t had a peaceful time in the last days, let alone her family. Nobody was allowed to console her family, they were alone, they were under arrest and their daughter was just killed. I can’t imagine how painful it was for them. Her friends came to console her family but the police didn’t let them in and forced them to disperse and arrested some of them. Neda’s family were not even given a quiet moment to grieve.” Another man said many would have turned up to show their sympathy had it not been for the police. “In Iran, when someone dies, neighbours visit the family and will not let them stay alone for weeks but Neda’s family was forced to be alone, otherwise the whole of Iran would gather here,” he said.

Yes well of course that’s exactly why they wouldn’t allow it – they couldn’t be doing with the whole of Iran gathering there. Bastards.

So this Ramsey fella is still at it, so now it’s six days instead of five. He is, clearly, getting some kind of jollies out of goading me – and of course he is succeeding at goading me. I find him highly irritating. But then – that is because he is being so 1) belligerent 2) dishonest. Snake swallowing tail. He succeeds at irritating me by being so obviously determined to irritate me. Naturally that does succeed (unless one is a Buddhist monk, of course). Somebody making a big point of a repeated personal attack is naturally bound to be irritating (except to a Buddhist monk).

At any rate – Ramsey is having himself an enjoyable time, but at the price of displaying himself as a dishonest troll with a vendetta. He is insisting on claiming that he can tell that the book is bad on the strength of four paragraphs. Like today for instance – Jeremy told him, “And lastly, READ THE BOOK, then criticise it. It’s much better that way around.” Ramsey replied:

Stangroom: “And lastly, READ THE BOOK”

With all due respect, I prefer to read books when I see signs that they are likely to be good. Every quote that I’ve seen from it so far–and quotes cited by the authors at that–show problems, and not just in tone but in content.

Jeremy didn’t say, ‘read the book,’ period, of course, he said ‘READ THE BOOK, then criticise it‘. In other words, don’t criticize the book when you haven’t read it. Criticizing a book you haven’t read is dishonest and unethical. Ramsey’s way of carrying on is disgusting.

What’s the problem with J J Ramsey’s last comment on Un-der-stan-ding met-a-phor?

I am trying to find a way to say this in a way that avoids sounding too accusatory, but for now I can’t: Don’t even try to use the murder of a little girl to shield your own ideas from scrutiny. I’m sorry to put it so harshly.

That is, why does it seem not just wrong, and obnoxious in the usual routine internetty way, and beside the point, and belligerent? Why does it seem even more than that?

Let’s see…Partly it’s the absurdity of saying he is trying to find a better way of saying it, but can’t. Of course he can. He said it the way he did because he wanted to say it the way he did. (Just as we said what we did in the final pages of Does God Hate Women? because that was what we wanted to say.) That kind of pseudo-regret is just a way of saying ‘Your offense is so foul that there simply is no other way to say this.’ It’s a way of underlining the aggression rather than diminishing it, but at the same time it’s a way of pretending to be attempting to be decent but being simply too overcome by outrage. It’s a bit of rhetoric embedded in a prolonged (for days and days, and thousands of words) attack on my use of rhetoric. It’s also a self-administered pat on the back.

Then the ‘Don’t even try’ – as if he’s the cop on the beat, shoving my arm up behind my back until my shoulder breaks. The bossy note. That adds an extra level of deliberate offensiveness, as if he’d caught me picking his pocket or molesting his child.

Then there’s the ‘use’ and the ‘murder of a little girl’ – which of course pisses me off more than all the rest combined and cubed, as no doubt it was meant to. I’m not using anything; I’m calling attention to a horrible outrage, and there is nothing wrong with doing that. The murder of a little girl indeed – would he even be aware of that murder if I hadn’t called it to his attention? Who is using what here? Where does he get off telling me not to ‘use’ it?

Then there’s the ‘to shield your own ideas from scrutiny.’ The brazen insultingness of that is obvious enough without my spelling it out – but it is worth noting that I wasn’t doing that; I wasn’t saying don’t scrutinize my ideas; I was saying that Madeleine Bunting has a warped sense of priorities because she gets in a fury at my use of language while skipping right over the incident that prompted it. It has to do with proportion, not with non-scrutiny. Bunting strains at a gnat and swallows a camel.

Then finally there’s the ‘I’m sorry to put it so harshly.’ That’s just more self-flattering having it both ways – saying the most grossly offensive thing you can think of, then pretending to be sorry for saying it. What nonsense – what mealy-mouthed, devious, self-serving nonsense.

I don’t know who this guy is, but he’s been at this, unbelievably, since last Saturday. Five days! Would you credit it? It’s so important that it’s worth five days of repeated lengthy posts, all to quarrel with some deliberately emotive metaphors. What was I just saying about proportion? Oh yes: that some people could use a better sense of it.

Chris Mooney takes issue with Sean Carroll.

[I]s a claim like “Jesus died and was resurrected” really falsifiable by science in the same way that a claim like “The Earth is 10,000 years old” is falsifiable? I’d submit that at least as held by some sophisticated believers, it isn’t.

The fact that it isn’t falsifiable is actually a reason not to believe it rather than a reason to believe it. Freudian psychoanalysis isn’t falsifiable either, and that’s what makes its claims so dubious. But Mooney isn’t really talking about falsifiability, he’s challenging Carroll’s ‘The reason why science and religion are actually incompatible is that, in the real world, they reach incompatible conclusions. It’s worth noting that this incompatibility is perfectly evident to any fair-minded person who cares to look.’ He’s asking something more like ‘is it really the case that a claim like “Jesus died and was resurrected” is incompatible with empiricism?’ He then quotes John Haught talking a lot of wool about that there resurrection, then he says we’re allies so why worry about what Haught believes.

Because that’s what the discussion is about. The discussion isn’t about preventing Haught from believing what he believes – it’s about whether religion (the epistemology of religion, if you like) and science are genuinely compatible, so the question of why one would believe that Jesus died and was resurrected is right in the middle of it. It’s not possible to give evidence that demonstrates that Jesus was not resurrected – but that is not a reason to believe that Jesus was resurrected. The salient point here is that there is no good reason to believe that Jesus was resurrected. None. Zero. There are no records, no physical traces, no contemporary accounts, no eyewitness accounts, nothing. All there is is a story, composed decades after Jesus was executed. There is no more reason to believe the story is true than there is to believe that Athena really appeared to Odysseus. That’s what Carroll means by ‘perfectly evident.’ He doesn’t mean anyone can brandish a slide that demonstrates the non-resurrection of Jesus, he means there’s no good reason to think the story is anything other than a story. Carroll is talking about epistemology and Mooney is talking about all getting along, and those two subjects are also somewhat incompatible. Then again, one could simply be more interested in getting along with people who don’t automatically believe stories than with people who refuse to be skeptical of certain stories. We can’t have everything, after all.

Jerry Coyne did a post on the Templeton Foundation a couple of days ago, and Templeton’s ‘Chief External Affairs Officer,’ Gary Rosen, offered a reply. I call your attention to one thought in particular:

[W]e do like to include philosophers and theologians in many of our projects. Excellent science is crucial to what we do, but it is not all that we do. We are a “Big Questions” foundation, not a science foundation, and we believe that the world’s philosophical and religious traditions have much to contribute to understanding human experience and our place in the universe.

I asked Gary Rosen

What exactly do you ‘believe’ that the world’s religious traditions have to contribute to understanding human experience and our place in the universe? Can you specify one theory or explanation or bit of evidence that a religion has contributed to understanding human experience and our place in the universe?

But answer came there none.

Of course I didn’t really expect an answer – but if Gary Rosen really wanted to persuade anyone of anything, it would have been sensible of him to give one. That’s because his comment is highly unpersuasive precisely because what he says is so carefully vague and empty and meaningless. This is what pro-woolly people do, and it is why anti-woolly people can’t take them seriously even if they try.

Note the wording. ‘The world’s philosophical and religious traditions’ first of all. He puts ‘philosophical’ first, so that we start out by thinking something rational is afoot, and he attaches religion to it so that we will associate religion with philosophy, and also so that we will think the two form a natural and reasonable pair. Then, he says ‘religious traditions’ rather than just religions – which is a much more shifty, evasive, vague, deniable way of saying religions have much to contribute. Saying ‘religious traditions’ have much to contribute could just mean something about music, or stained glass, or calligraphy, or community feeling. It could mean anything or nothing. Then ‘much to contribute’ is carefully vague too – one can ‘contribute’ sheer nonsense, or fairy tales, or a bowl of macaroni and cheese. And finally ‘understanding human experience and our place in the universe’ can also mean anything or nothing. Understanding human experience is a broad, vague, capacious project, and so is ‘understanding our place in the universe,’ and almost anything can ‘contribute’ to it. So in a sense Templeton is perfectly right to ‘believe’ what Rosen says it believes, but then, that’s just like saying Templeton believes ice cream is nice. It’s not very disputable, and it’s not worth disputing – because it doesn’t say much of anything.

Yet Rosen thinks it’s worth saying things like that on anti-Templeton blog posts. Why? It’s just a kind of advertising language, a kind of PR speak. It’s worse than useless when arguing with people who are actually thinking critically, because they will recognize it for what it is. It’s funny that he doesn’t recognize that.

I was treated to a similar bit of PR boilerplate a few days ago from someone at an ad agency. Bacardi rum ran an ad in Israel based on the suggestion ‘Get an ugly girlfriend.’ Funnily enough some feminists objected to this, and a VP sent one such feminist a kind note which she shared with the Women’s Studies list. The note concluded:

Bacardi proudly celebrates diversity and we do not endorse the views of
this site. We sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by this
site and thank you for bringing it to our attention.

Bacardi proudly celebrates diversity – what’s that got to do with running a sexist ad?! Women aren’t ‘diverse’ – we’re the majority! Proudly celebrating diversity has nothing whatever to do with running a sexist ad, but it’s the stock bit of ‘we’re good people please leave us alone’ for such situations. So language is used for not saying things.

Russell Blackford asked an important question on Jerry Coyne’s post on Andrew Brown and Michael Ruse:

It’s true that science teachers in public schools should not draw inferences, when talking to their students, about whether some scientific findings cast doubt on some religious positions. But is Brown really going to say that NO ONE should draw such inferences in public debate? That would go a long way towards putting philosophers of religion out of business. Does he really think that the whole question is one that should not be debated honestly in the public sphere?

Yes. Here is how he puts it:

Suppose we concede that the new atheists are right, and no true, honest scientist could be anything other than an atheist. If that is true, the teaching of science itself becomes unconstitutional. For it is every bit as illegal to promote atheism in American public schools as it is to promote religion…[T]he footnote on page four of Judge Selna’s ruling in the recent case of a science teacher censured for calling creationism “superstitious nonsense” in class makes this clear. He says The Supreme Court has found that

the State may not establish a “religion of secularism” in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion.” School Dist. of Abington Tp., Pa. v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 225 (1963). This is simply another way of saying that the state may not affirmatively show hostility to religion.

And Brown is indeed saying that no one should draw inferences about whether some scientific findings cast doubt on some religious positions in public debate because if people do then the teaching of science itself becomes unconstitutional, and Judge Selna said so.

The trouble with that, of course, is that Judge Selna was ruling on what can be said in the public school classroom, not in public debate in general. The quoted passage from Selna’s ruling doesn’t show what Brown wants it to show, but he thinks it does. That’s rather careless.

This is a big, and sloppy, mistake, and it matters because it seems to be at the heart of what Ruse and Brown keep insisting on. Judges are very likely to rule that atheism cannot be taught in public schools. It does not follow that judges are very, or at all, likely to rule that public discussion of the incompatibility between science and religion makes science a branch of atheism and therefore forbidden in the public schools. That outcome is in fact vanishingly unlikely. (One reason for that is simply that another important part of the First Amendment guarantees free speech, and judges are pretty well aware of that.

I suspect that Ruse has been making this claim because he enjoys irritating his colleagues. (He has said this freely many times.) I’m not sure why Brown is backing him up. Anyway – the claim is just nonsense, a kind of joke. It has no legs.

Here’s a stupid remark. On a post of Russell Blackford’s on Bunting’s encounter with the hostile commenters there’s a guy defending Bunting’s reading of the book (despite not having read the book himself, but never mind). He said some really point-missing stuff about the whited sepulchre etc, and I tried yet again to explain it, saying that

The point is that religion is ugly because it is used to dress up ugly things. Is that not obvious? The white tie and tails on an executioner are themselves ugly because of what they are doing. This is vastly more true of religion precisely because religion is supposed to be the heart of a heartless world, the fount of compassion, etc etc. Religion is made ugly by the many people who use it to justify cruelty.

He replied, astonishingly

Oh, please. Cruelty can be justified in the name of love, science, freedom, and so on. That hardly makes any of the latter ugly.

Are you kidding me? Of course it fucking does! If someone is being cruel and justifies it by talking of love – that’s a very ugly version of ‘love.’ It’s not unknown, either. OJ Simpson made a career out of it. That love is another wart hog in a party dress.

It’s so hard to abandon internet arguments when people are being obstinately stupid, you know? I’m hopeless at it.

Jerry Coyne says why it’s nonsensical to say that atheists have to be quiet or else the Supreme Court will rule the teaching of evolution unconstitutional:

And yes, it’s likely that teaching evolution probably promotes a critical examination of religious beliefs that may lead to rejecting faith. But teaching geology, physics, or astronomy does that, too. In fact, education in general leads to the rejection of faith…What Brown is really saying is that we should be worried about promoting rational values of any type, or any notion that beliefs require evidence. He doesn’t seem to realize the difference between cramming atheism down people’s throats and teaching them to think, which may have the ancillary effect of eroding faith…I repeat, so that Brown can get it: teaching evolution is not promoting atheism, it’s promoting a scientific truth. And the promotion of any scientific truth may have the ancillary effect of dispelling faith. This is almost inevitable, for the metier of science — rationality and dependence on evidence — is in absolute and irreconcilable conflict with the with the metier of faith: superstition and dependence on revelation. Too bad.

Jason Rosenhouse points out how helpful Michael Ruse has been to the fight against creationism and ID:

In 2004 he edited a book with William Dembski called Debating Design, published by Cambridge University Press. In doing so he effectively cut the legs out from under those fighting school board battles on the ground. It’s pretty hard to argue that the evolution/ID issue is a manufactured debate when Ruse has one of the most prestigious university presses in the world certifying that it is, indeed, a real debate. Making matters worse was the fact that the four essays Ruse chose to represent “Darwinism” added up to a very weak case for the good guys…More recently Ruse said, in a public debate with Dembski, that the book The Design Inference was a valuable contribution to science…When the ID folks were putting together a book in honor of Phillip Johnson, Ruse was happy to contribute an essay to a section entitled “Two Friendly Critics.”

Oh…really? How odd then that he emailed Jerry Coyne just the other day to say: “I don’t know who does more damage, you and your kind or Phillip Johnson and his kind. I really don’t.”

Strange fella.

The Church of England is gearing up to give the BBC a damn good scolding for being so mean to Christianity and so nice to Islam.

Concerns over the appointment of Aaqil Ahmed, who was poached by the corporation from Channel 4 last month, will be raised in a Church document to be published tomorrow…Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, met with Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director-general, in March to challenge him about the issue. Now a motion prepared for the Synod calls on the corporation to explain the decline in its coverage of religion and its failure to provide enough programming during key Christian festivals.

Sorry to be clueless, but what’s the deal here? Is the archbishop of Canterbury the boss of the BBC? Is the BBC a branch of the church of England? Is the church of England the boss of everything that happens in England? What is all this? Why does the archbish get to challenge the BBC’s director-general about the BBC’s appointments? Why does the Synod get to call on the corporation to explain things? How does all this work? What kind of power, exactly, do they have? Apart from all those bishops in the House of Lords, of course. What kind of temporal political power do they have? What entitles them to be so bossy and so explain-yourselfy?

“BBC 3 tackles religion rarely but does so from the angle of the freak show, and many of the Channel 4 programmes concerned with Christianity, in contrast to those featuring other faiths, seem to be of a sensationalist or unduly critical nature.”…The main Christian documentary broadcast for Easter [last] year, called The Secrets of the 12 Disciples, cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Pope’s leadership of the Roman Catholic Church.

Yes…But you guys are Protestants, remember? You’re supposed to have some doubts about the legitimacy of the Pope’s leadership of the Roman Catholic Church yourselves! Have you forgotten all this? Have you forgotten your own history? Bloody Mary? Foxe’s Book of Martyrs? Latimer and Ridley? We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out? Ring a bell, any of that? It had quite a lot to do with the pope. Surely you remember.

Ah yes but that was then; now the pope is a bulwark against secularism, and the enemy is everyone who doesn’t want to grovel to religion, like that god damn atheist BBC.

Nigel Holmes, a General Synod member and former BBC producer, who has tabled the motion and who wrote the paper, said that the Church needed to tackle the issue at a time when the future of religious broadcasting was under threat…”Religion is higher on the political agenda than ever before and we are crying out for programmes that give a moral view.”

And religion alone can do that of course because religion alone is moral while everything else is inherently and adamantly anti-moral. This is common knowledge.

A spokesman for the BBC said…”The BBC’s commitment to religion and ethics broadcasting is unequivocal. As the majority faith of the UK, Christians are and will remain a central audience for the BBC’s religious and ethics television and other output.”

See? Religion and ethics are the same subject, they go together like waffles and syrup or god and bothering. Got that? So no worries: the church of England will harmoniously combine with the Roman Catholic Church and Islam to impose religion and theocracy on everyone else. Can’t say fairer than that can you.

Jerry Coyne quoted Tom Clark the other day; I want to quote another passage from the same article, ‘Reality and Its Rivals: Putting Epistemology First’.

Of course, many non-empirically based convictions are relatively harmless as guides to behavior so long as they’re confined to our private lives. Beliefs in god, astrology, psychic powers, cosmic consciousness and so forth can be the epistemic equivalent of victimless crimes. But the presumption of such beliefs – that there are reliable alternatives to empiricism – isn’t so benign when carried into the public arena…To imagine that one’s worldview, whether religious or secular, is beyond disconfirmation helps to license an absolutism which brooks no dissent and countenances the demonization of those with different ideas…A little epistemic humility would go a long way toward reducing the ideological tribalism underlying the culture wars. (What’s ironic is that populist suspicion of bi-coastal know-it-alls gets it precisely backwards: empiricists are just those who realize they don’t know it all.

The whole article is an excellent antidote to all the muddle about naturalism and supernaturalism and methdological versus philosophical naturalism that’s been splashing around lately, ever since Chris Mooney got the urge to lecture Jerry Coyne on civility to theists. Enjoy.