There have been a few things I’ve wanted to comment on over the weekend, but haven’t. All have coincidentally been inter-related, which has made it all the more interesting, but all the same, I’ve had a throbber of a headache the last couple of days.
First cab of the rank is the issue of definitions surrounding the word “evolution”.
“Pelagian7″, in response to an ongoing discussion about Darwinian evolution and ethics, writes…
“I’m started to get the feeling that we are on the same thought process but semantics and terms are preventing some of our understanding.”
(Pelagian7, 2009)
It’s a fair enough statement. I defined my use of some terms in the post in question (“ad hoc“, “altruism” and “egoism”), but I didn’t define my use of the terms “evolution”, “natural selection” and so on. Also, given that when I talk about “evolution”, I can sometimes oscillate between gene-centric biological, and meme-centric cultural, interchangeably, there is room for confusion.
Anyone familiar with neo-Darwinian evolution, and Dawkins’ Selfish Gene, wouldn’t have any problem getting where I’m coming from (I’d hope). But I guess that without declaring my terms, I’m limiting my audience.
So at some point I guess I’ll have to nail my colours to the mast and write a post on my use of these terms. And given the widespread abuse of evolutionary terminology, I guess it wouldn’t be as trivial an exercise as it may seem.
And while on the topic, I’ll ask a couple of questions put to me.
“If some in a species begin birthing many times more than others because they have the cabability, does that not produce resource hardship on the others of the species? Doesn’t hardship then eliminate those who produce less offspring?”
(Pelagian7, 2009)
No, and no. People who use birth control and who have a lowered reproduction rate due to female emancipation and education, tend to do pretty well for themselves as far as quality of life is concerned, and more so in terms of resource allocation. As a species, there isn’t an extinction, even if these types of people never have children, because there are others of their species carrying much the same genes.
Memetically speaking, there may be a kind of tendency towards a cultural extinction if ideas aren’t passed along, said ideas being caught up in some kind of class-reservoir. But even then, this isn’t necessarily a function of suffering, nor even involve suffering. Not all cultural memes that exist amongst the privileged are to the benefit of their hosts, nor are they missed when they’re gone (reality TV anyone?)
At any rate, I think in discussion of evolution, as opposed to any ethical discussion it may inform, the use of extremely subjective terms such as “hardship”, is risky. At least, for those not familiar with the way biologists, ethologists and the like, may use evolutionary terminology. When Dawkins calls something “selfish” or “altruistic”, he’s talking about an empirically observable behaviour, not a psychological disposition. Put in his words…
“When biologists talk about ‘selfishness or ‘altruism’ we are emphatically not talking about emotional nature, whether of human beings, other animals, or genes. We do not even mean the words in a metaphorical sense. We define altruism and selfishness in purely behaviouristic ways: ‘An entity… is said to be altruistic if it behaves in such a way as to increase another such entity’s welfare at the expense of its own… It follows from such a behaviouristic definition of altruism and selfishness that ‘calculation’, whether long-term or not, is irrelevant, as is ‘emotional nature’. I assume that an oak tree has no emotions and cannot calculate, yet I might describe an oak tree as altruistic if it grew fewer leaves than its physiological optimum, thereby sparing neighbouring saplings harmful overshadowing.”
(Richard Dawkins, In Defense of Selfish Genes, ‘Philosophy’,1981)
Similarly, I don’t think it right to automatically equate negative selective pressures – constraints upon genes to perpetuate themselves – with hardship. Aside from introducing an unnecessary term into the evolutionary language, and from not equating perfectly (see birth control), it’s risky language open to misinterpretation. Best to call “negative selective pressures”, “negative selective pressures” and be done with it, saving reference to suffering for ethical discussion, if such suffering occurs.
And on that note, I’ll segue to the next topic.
Science and Ethics
I’ve said before, that science can only, and should, inform ethics. That it can’t dictate ethics. It’s always a bit gratifying to have someone with academic stature say the same thing.
Letting science inform morality (4:43)
Back when I was studying Ethics, Education and Critical Inquiry, I was introduced to an acronym: CURF. It stood for…
- Circumstances
- Utilitarian Principle
- Reasoning
- Facts
(Knight & Collins, 2000)
Basically, these were the principles by which a community of ethical inquiry would operate. The idea was geared towards the classroom (either Primary or High School), but was at least formulated with lifelong learning, and hence a life lived with ethical curiosity, in mind.
As I was studying under a science degree at the time, it was immediately obvious that “Facts”, or “Getting the consequences “straight”", as the course literature put it, would in many cases be best served by science. Neither, supernaturalism, ideology nor material speculation are quite up to the task of making predictions when science is able. The consequences of medical procedures upon a patient come to mind – a shaman is no match for a doctor in seeing where options leads (even paths through the shaman’s own domain where science hasn’t taken a look, entails a lot of wild speculation).
Broaden this to human nature, where science is still making early steps in spite of taboo, and you have the possibility that the idea of evolution, and evolutionary knowledge, could help us make predictions for human consequences. Even if only tentatively. (That socio-biologists and evolutionary psychologists have taken such caution, while ideology has tended to make bold assertion about human nature, is to the credit of the evolutionary perspective.)
In pursuit of this kind of thought, I’ve got Singer’s A Darwinian Left on order at Dymocks. Although I’m already expecting to have a few points of difference from the author.
Singer
Aside from the fact that I probably take a more conservative estimation of the point at which to assume a life-form is capable of suffering from their death, I suspect my logic to be the same. It the points of fact where I anticipate divergence.
Daniel Dennett’s more recent Freedom Evolves, reports that in modelling of evolutionary game theory, when accounting for variables such as location, previously excluded due to issues of computational power, altruism (the behaviour) fared better than previously thought. Personally, I suspect that the evolutionary outlook of human nature, as it progresses will continue to throw up surprises like this, more so as it makes its transition from corrigible philosophy to material science.
At a guess, I suspect human nature involves a capacity for kindness that has been previously discounted. Hence, the way evolution informs ethics, if this were true, would be different – especially as Singer dwells on the obstacles our selfish nature pose to ethical venture, not privy to more recent thought at the time of publishing.
More broadly than this, I expect that I’ll be looking into the evolution of culture as possibly informing ethical decision-making. Whereas I suspect that Singer hasn’t looked into this side of things as much as Dennett has. Imagine A Darwinian Left grafted on top of Breaking The Spell, and maybe you can see where I’m going with this (loosely speaking – at the very least I’m not restricting myself to the evolution of religion, but other cultural institutions as well).
Whatever happens, I’m sure I’ll be surprised in one way or another, which is always nice.
Church and Lies
Especially considering that this kind of stuff doesn’t surprise me anymore. Thanks again to Matt Kovach, for finding this little gem. (How do you find these articles, Matt?)
Responding to a New York atheist ad that essentially argues that atheists can and are good people as well, with the cheeky question “are you?” at the end, New York Dominican friar, Gabriel Gillen, comes out with this disingenuous pap.
“If the ad’s claim is true, that an atheist is capable of the same type of heroism as, let’s say, Wesley Autrey – the construction worker with two small children who risked his life to save a stranger who had fallen onto the subway tracks – I would not only agree with this assertion but point to a concrete example from the well-known atheist Peter Singer. When his own mother lay helpless with Alzheimer’s disease, he broke all of his own rules, thus throwing away his credibility as a utilitarian philosopher onto the tracks: He came to her rescue.”
(Gabriel Gillen, 2009)
Because there are no atheists in foxholes for Gillen to come up with an equivalent to Wesley Autrey? But to compound Gillen’s bad humour in bad faith, it gets worse. Apparently Gillen’s education to become a Dominican friar didn’t include the observation that irony doesn’t flow from imaginary contradiction.
Despite what Gillen (wrongly) tells us, Peter Singer’s approach to the disabled is that first, it depends on the disability and how it detracts from quality of life compared to the loss brought about through euthanasia. Second, Singer’s position is that this is a decision for the family. And you know what? Singer has family and they decided they didn’t want euthanasia. There isn’t anything in Singer’s logic that is contradicted by the turn of events surrounding his mother’s unfortunate situation.
I wish I could chalk this opportunism up to his past as a Wall Street stock broker, but Gillen and his religious absolutist ilk, have been pushing this sad, mendacious canard for over ten years now. That the suffering in the Singer’s personal lives could be used as a political football like this, especially considering there isn’t actually a genuine ethical argument to made from it, tells us a lot about the psychology of the Gillen’s of the world.
Don’t think that Gillen is unwilling to go further in his sadistic misanthropy. A pass by Godwin’s law comes next.
“History has shown that a radically rationalist culture becomes radically irrational if it is detached from God. The atheistic ideologies of Nazism and Communism did not produce earthly paradises, but only tragic regimes of terror that trampled human dignity and freedom.”
(Gabriel Gillen, 2009)
Considering that nobody is claiming that the Godless are automatically saints (which Gillen claims is the case for the billboard campaign), that atheists have done bad things (or that the religious have done bad things) is uncontroversial. However, there were problems in Communist Russia which had nothing to do with Godlessness, and Nazism wasn’t a godless ideology anyway. Chalk another one up for The Big Lie – why do so many old-school Catholic opinionists and “academics” repeat pap which is known to be false?
At any rate, Gillen hasn’t shown a causal link between “radically rationalist” and “radically irrational” (much less defined the terms). Moreover, there are godless societies around now that are doing quite well, breaking any notion of a logical necessity between godlessness and “tragic regimes of terror”.
“This is why Pope Benedict reverses the axiom and says: “Even those who are unable to accept God should in any case seek to live and direct their lives as if God exists. This is the same advice that Renée Pascal had given to his nonbelieving friends; it is the advice that we would like to give today as well to our friends who do not believe.”"
(Gabriel Gillen, 2009)
Amazing is Gillen’s hypocrisy. Fresh from bleating that Singer didn’t live up to his ethics, and warning that atheism leads to tyranny and terror, Gillen gives us advice on how to steer clear of this terror from an anti-Semite who once joined the Hitler youth!
And Pascal’s non-argument (nee Pascal’s Roulette, nee Pascal’s Wager), please. When you add all the gods into the wager, the Catholic God, as with all the rest, becomes a bad bet. At least earnest godlessness has the virtue of honesty, which is more than can be said for Pascal’s position – just act like you believe!
Oh well, at least with my intended future reading into ethics, I’ll get a break from this kind of silliness. So much for the Dominican intellectual tradition!
~ Bruce
… No more pracs. No more tutes. No more workshops. No more lectures. No more assignments.
Would it be too soon to update the “About the author” section with details of my B. Sc. when I get my final grade in, or should I wait until the formality of getting my parchment?
And on that note, I’ll also point out that I really don’t like the idea of collecting a parchment with a robe and silly hat on. It offends my sensibilities (I’d say “sartorial sense” if I had any.)
~ Bruce
In taking Greg Craven to task over a rather paranoid, bare assertion and straw man laden snit against those terrible new atheists, which given the material, is fair enough, thanks to his own rhetoric, winds up scoring an own goal as well.
“The neo-atheists – Dawkins, Hitchens and others – are an annoying bunch, taking the most literal version of monotheism, and then guffawingly mocking it (’oh a whale, really’) in a tone not unlike the baby in the Family Guy.”
(Guy Rundle, 2009)
Firstly, the use of the whole “neo-atheist” tag, with the recent (and perhaps unfortunate) exception of Victor Stenger, isn’t readily used by the “neo-atheists” themselves. The phrase is pretty much the province of people who whine that there is an atheist conspiracy to rob people of their religious rights, which is baloney. It’s lingo right up there with the terminology of birther, Obama is a secret Muslim-Socialist and FEMA death camp conspiracy theories. A label to facilitate outgroup hostilities.
Rundle’s take on things is also pretty inaccurate. At least nor even remotely for anything outside Hitchens’ God is Not Great, and even then it’s a pretty poor approximation.
I’ll summarise the “neo-atheist” books so that you can see why I don’t think Rundle’s approximation stacks up.
The End of Faith (and Letter To a Christian Nation), by Sam Harris – First of all, Harris makes a clear and explicit distinction between fundamentalist literal monotheism, and more moderate religion, then proceeds to tackle the fundamentalist variety. Making such a clean distinction, there is no room for reasonable confusion between the two and thus one can’t possibly make the serious suggestion that he’s pretending to represent all there is to religion. He does however, in my view, while excluding the possibility of accidental equivocation and straw man arguments, ride rough-shod over the self-identification of religious people and flirts with the problems of essentialism with his talk of “true Christians” and so on. As for guffaw, there isn’t much – the tone is very serious and attempts to engage fundamentalist Christians with the utmost sincerity.
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins – This book sets out with a very specific purpose – it’s essentially a public polemic reaching out to what one pastor referred to a “low hanging fruit” – the doubters. The point is to give affirmation to atheists, closet atheists and would-be-atheists, that being an atheist is a “splendid” thing. It deliberately and explicitly doesn’t deal with moderate religion because frankly, it doesn’t have to. It doesn’t pretend to represent or critique moderate religion. Guffawing? Sure. Although I’m not sure Stewie is the best approximation for the tone of humour, and there’s a lot more to the book than the lolz.
Breaking The Spell, by Daniel Dennett – Again, another book that while singling out less moderate religion, does so for a reason – Dennett arguing that his immediate concern entails the breaking of the taboo of analysis of more fundamentalist religious belief, and that if he had the time, he’d liked to have addressed the taboo of the analysis of moderate religion as well (which wasn’t as pressing). Guffaw is pretty much the opposite of what you will get in this book. In fact the book is about how religion came about, not a condemnation.
God: The Failed Hypothesis, by Victor Stenger – This book focuses on those more literalist Gods – specifically the ones that Stenger argues make testable predictions (which is pretty much the thrust of the book, so you can’t expect the unfalsifiable gods of moderate religion to make a show). Again, like with Dennett, it’s pretty much a guffaw free zone.
God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens - If there is any one of the “new atheist” books that deserves Rundle’s approximation, this is it. But to argue that guffaw is the point of the book, or even the mode of the book, is an exaggeration. The Guffaw is garnish, and there are plenty of factual religious dogmas (from East and West) worthy of said guffaw. But let’s be charitable to Rundle and assume that Hitchens stays with the more familiar monotheisms, and simply restricts himself to put-downs, rather than worthy critique with a bit of acerbic flair.
The Portable Atheist, edited by Christopher Hitchens – Most of the content is philosophical essay, of which most contributors aren’t on the “neo-atheist” black list. Gerin Oil by Dawkins has guffaw, which really takes the edge off of a rather chilling analogy. Atheists for Jesus by Dawkins is almost the exact opposite of what Rundle pretends the “neo-atheists” to be about – it’s rather flattering of moderate Christians. Betrand Russell’s An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish is scathing and Mencken’s Memorial Service makes light of dead gods in typical Mencken fashion – so much so that the guffaw in God is Not Great seems all the milder. If the “new atheists” have some kind of monopoly on laughing at religion, shouldn’t the old atheists and agnostics have been abstinent?
Quantum Gods, by Victor Stenger – This book is dedicated to those gods of moderate religion that take refuge in obfuscations of quantum theory and cosmology, to which Stenger (a physicist) takes the proverbial blow torch. Quantum theory of mind (all that Penrose rubbish) also gets a look-in, making it a nice complimentary text to Dennett’s Freedom Evolves and Consciousness Explained. As fundies tend not to hide their god in quantum theory, the focus is in exactly the opposite direction from what Rundle suggests. Like God: The Failed Hypothesis, the book is to the point and very serious. It’s not the stuff of guffaw. Further to this, the book questions whether moderate Christianity has slipped into deism, quietly abandoning theism while keeping some of the bells and whistles – something to consider if you wonder why the “neo-atheists” aren’t paying attention to your god.
The New Atheism, by Victor Stenger – This is the “new atheist” book of 2009, and perhaps an unfortunately titled one. If there is irony, it doesn’t appear to be intentional and there isn’t any hint of deliberate appropriation of the “new atheist” term, making it look like Stenger isn’t aware of the term’s history as a pejorative. Either that or he’s holding his cards to his chest with regard to subversion, or his sense of humour is even drier than mine. The New Atheism is a review of the discussion surrounding most of the above books, and an analysis of the largely rubbish critique they have received.
These are the major “neo-atheist” publications by the major “neo-atheist” authors. Yet to me, they don’t show Rundle’s assertion (partly in jest I’m sure), holding true. Even by standards permitting oversimplification. Let’s just go with the obvious truth and state that Rundle’s perception is that of those who are annoyed by “new-atheists” (atheist and theist alike); they feel like all the “new atheists” do is guffaw at fundamentalists. It’s a load of rubbish of course. They’re just being overly precious.
Rundle entreats Craven that…
“If you’re going to oppose atheists, you better give a more sophisticated account of what belief is…”
(Guy Rundle, 2009)
I’d argue that if Rundle was going to oppose “new-atheists”, he’d better give a more sophisticated account of his objections. Perhaps for the sake of Rundle, and the theists and atheists that share his irritation, the “new-atheists” could amp-up their guffaw to something approximating that of which they are accused, just to resolve the confusion? “This is what derision looks like!”
At the very least, it’d help delineate them from the Russells, Ingersols and Menckens of old so that the level of mockery was actually something new. Indeed, then they would be speaking about religion in unflattering tones that are allowed when discussing most anything else – such as politics (I’m looking at you, Crikey!)
~ Bruce
(HT: Thanks again to Matt Kovach.)
I’d say it never gets old, but it does. Michael Ruse is back writing ‘Dawkins et al bring us into disrepute‘, stirring up those terrible “new atheists” who claim that all religion is necessarily evil and that science is the only way of knowing things! Those “New Atheists” that bring science and the philosophy of science into disrepute!
I think Ruse has been wrestling with straw men for so long he’s forgotten what a real interlocutor looks like.
Ruse asks, “Is there an atheist schism?” A schism between godless people like himself, and others like Dawkins and Dennett.
I’m going to say “no”. In order for there to be a schism, there either has to be two distinct camps in the atheist population, or at least an atheist formal structure of some kind to be split in the first place. The latter doesn’t exist – there was no formal alliance between those dubbed the new atheists – no plot to release their books in a coordinated fashion and draw a line between their like and the rest of the godless. The former is illusory, whatever anyone tells you. Atheists still differ on a number of issues, even quite wildly within the “new atheists”.
There was never enough unity of thought for their to be a schism to begin with. Which really is what you’d expect from a bunch of free thinkers.
But that doesn’t stop Ruse from fabricating a schism.
He points to unkind things said about him by those evil “new atheists” as an example of the schism. (So a new atheist is an atheist that calls Ruse names? A bit of a narcissistic demarcation criterion?)
Dawkins compared his evolution campaigning to the appeasement practised by Neville Chamberlain, which is perhaps a bit too Godwinish, but otherwise you get the point. Jerry Coyne channelled Orwell to paint Ruse pretentious. PZ Myers called him a “gobshite”, which is perhaps going too far. Ruse, after listing these insults, tells us that he will “spare you what my fellow philosopher Dan Dennett has to say about me.”
What could have Daniel Dennett said that could have been so bad? This seems like the calculated impression Ruse wants to leave in people’s heads. But I’m totally unaware of anything Dennett has said about Ruse that could compete in terms of acerbic rhetoric, with the comments attributed to Dawkins and the others. Indeed, Dennett has a reputation for being the nice guy.
Which Ruse does not. A few years back, Ruse kicked up a stink about Dennett’s Breaking The Spell, running a line about how it was all scientism, evolutionism, reductionism, blah, blah, blah and all the rest of the usual strawman arguments. Further to that though, Ruse started a bit of a grudge with Dennett, sending him some emails with rather colourful language. Then when thinking he had the upper hand (the emails were chock full of some pretty audacious self-indulgence), without permission he passed on the exchange to William Dembski of the Discovery Institute, and they’ve been open to the public ever since.
If you are interested in the exchange, it can be found here. Aside from rhetorically turning Ruse’s cleaner words back on him, Dennett’s harshest comment seemed to be the calculated “I doubt that you mean all the things you say here. Think it over.” Which frankly, is pretty mild. Especially when compared to Ruse’s antics in the exchange – indeed, even PZ Myers’ “gobshite” is made to look considerably more mellow!
If there is an example of Dennett acting up like this, I’ve never seen it and it would seem out of character.
Somehow, I think trash-talk is a pretty poor choice of demarcation criterion for Ruse to use, given his own hyperbole.
So then he moves onto the strawman arguments.
“First, non-believer though I may be, I do not think (as do the new atheists) that all religion is necessarily evil and corrupting.”
(Michael Ruse, 2009)
Oddly enough, Dawkins doesn’t believe think this either, which if you read Atheists for Jesus, or any of a number of other his essays, is obvious. Indeed, one need only look to the example of the Muslim taxi driver in God is Not Great and you can see that Hitchens doesn’t think that all religion is necessarily evil and corrupting. To characterise Dennett like this, in light of what he said in Breaking The Spell, is a particularly grotesque distortion. For one, Dennett didn’t say anything of the sort, and moreover, he was very tentative about what he did say.
Ruse is distancing himself from a caricature. And in taking himself so seriously, makes a caricature out of himself.
“Second, unlike the new atheists, I take scholarship seriously. I have written that The God Delusion made me ashamed to be an atheist and I meant it. Trying to understand how God could need no cause, Christians claim that God exists necessarily. I have taken the effort to try to understand what that means. Dawkins and company are ignorant of such claims and positively contemptuous of those who even try to understand them, let alone believe them. Thus, like a first-year undergraduate, he can happily go around asking loudly, “What caused God?” as though he had made some momentous philosophical discovery.”
(Michael Ruse, 2009)
Well, Ruse’s history of deploying the strawman completely puts the lie to the claim that he takes his scholarship seriously. Let’s not be fooled by this, even if Ruse has fooled himself.
And if Ruse has taken the effort to try to understand what it means, that God exists necessarily, why doesn’t he tell us what it means? Why not demonstrate this scholarship, instead of just telling us how good he thinks he is? Coyne was right to call him out on being pretentious.
But it gets sillier.
“Dawkins was indignant when, on the grounds that inanimate objects cannot have emotions, philosophers like Mary Midgley criticised his metaphorical notion of a selfish gene. Sauce for the biological goose is sauce for the atheist gander. There are a lot of very bright and well informed Christian theologians. We atheists should demand no less.”
(Michael Ruse, 2009)
For a start, Mary Midgley did criticise The Selfish Gene, and she did so in the most disingenuous fashion, alleging that Dawkins was setting up the grounds for philosophic egoism, and trying to make her argument through multiple distortions of the content. To quote Dawkins in the end notes of The Selfish Gene…
“This strategic way of talking about an animal or plant, or a gene, as if it were consciously working out how best to increase its success… has become commonplace among working biologists. It is a language of convenience which is harmless unless it happens to fall into the hands of those ill-equipped to understand it. Or over-equipped to misunderstand it?”
(Richard Dawkins, ‘The Selfish Gene’, 30th Anniversary Edition, pg. 278, 2006)
Midgley’s utterly ludicrous distortion of Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene can be read here. If you get the gist of Dawkins’ book, it should be easy to grapple with where Midgley has gone badly wrong. If not, you can read Dawkins response here, where he addresses several specific distortions point by point. Just remember, Ruse is throwing in his lot with Midgley and presents her as “a bright and well informed Christian.” If I were a Christian, I’d be offended, both by the specious flattery and the association with Midgley’s particularly unscholarly distortions.
(If you want things simplified on Midgley on Dawkins, consider that she has accused Dawkins – who has argued against social Darwinism on several occasions, has called paying tax in support of the welfare state a moral act, and who has never voted conservative – of ideological Thatcherite competition worship.)
Finally, Ruse gets to the point of who Dawkins brings us all into disrepute with.
“Fourth and finally, I live in the American South, surrounded by ardent Christians. I want evolution taught in the schools and I can think of no way better designed to make that impossible than to spout on about religion, from ignorance and with contempt. … If, as the new atheists think, Darwinian evolutionary biology is incompatible with Christianity, then will they give me a good argument as to why the science should be taught in schools if it implies the falsity of religion?”
(Michael Ruse, 2009)
Firstly, that bit about contempt I think is a bit of an over-exaggeration, at least in as far as the inference is that there is undeserved contempt. When contempt has been shown, it’s been directed at specific examples – the antics of the Haggards, the Hagees, the Liberty and Pat Robertson Universities and so on. All quite deserving of contempt. There isn’t a contempt for the general Christian population. That’s just baloney.
As for Darwinian evolutionary biology being incompatible with Christianity, let’s get a few things straight.
- There is a difference between saying that the ideas of Christianity and the idea of Darwinian evolution are incompatible, and saying the Christian faith and the idea of Darwinian evolution are incompatible. The former is argued by Coyne, Dawkins and Myers at least, but none of them argue the latter. To Dawkins et al, the Christian faith is a state of mind which doesn’t necessarily exclude Christians from believing things that are incompatible with Christian ideas. Dawkins has said as much repeatedly, on the tour for his current book and previously in The God Delusion when talking about Ken Miller. Myers and Coyne recently went over the same points in relation to the beliefs of Francis Collins after the announcement of his appointment to the NIH.
- There are plenty of ideas taught in secular science that conflict with religious ideas. If Ruse is setting this as a standard to have secular science chucked out of classrooms, then he’s the one who’s guilty of giving support to the anti-science crowd. Geology contradicts Young Earth Creationism. Geometry contradicts a literal parsing of The Old Testament where Pi is described incorrectly. Are we going to hold back teachers from discussing the archaeology of the ancient Middle East, just to satisfy some religious narratives? Can we talk about menstruation in biological terms, if we don’t want to contradict notions of original sin? There is already contradiction!
- The question of evolution being kicked from the classroom is only one side of the story – the introduction of creationism, indeed, the introduction alongside evolution, is frankly a larger issue in the debate, and the potential hostility to religion of evolution isn’t relevant to the way the establishment clause works in regard to this.
- Finally, why would we not want to bring to debate on the civics of teaching evolution in public schools, the notion that it is incompatible with religion, if indeed it is? It’s an important civic debate and such obfuscation is tantamount to withholding evidence – being flatly dishonest and ultimately impractical in that it only delays the inevitable.
Apparently not having actually made his final point, and needing to needle a little more, what would be better to finish off with that an unscholarly summation of The God Delusion.
“In the God Delusion, we have a message as simplistic as in The Genesis Flood. This too will solve all of your problems. Peace and prosperity await you in this world, if not the next.
Forgive me if I don’t sign on.”
(Michael Ruse, 2009)
Of course, anyone who has actually read The God Delusion without such blinkers, knows that it makes no such claim as to “solve all of your problems.” Indeed, it only pretends to solve a very few, specific maladies. Like Dennett, I really doubt that Ruse believes what he says.
But then, perhaps Ruse, in one honest phrase in his exchange with Dennett, explains the apparent contradiction between Ruse’s professed respect for scholarship, and his lack of it.
“I have no reputation to preserve, and frankly can say and do whatever the f**k I want to without sinking further.”
(Michael Ruse, 2006)
Says a lot really, doesn’t it?
Kind of makes the assertion that Dawkins et al are the ones bringing us all into disrepute look a bit silly, really.
~ Bruce
(HT: Mattincinci for the heads up on Ruse’s Guardian article.)
