…and this is a 
What should a scientist think about religion?
Category: Godlessness
Posted on: June 29, 2006 1:23 PM, by PZ Myers
In a thread that will not die at the Panda's Thumb, the argument has settled into a more reasonable back-and-forth on the issue of the entanglement of atheism and science. There are a number of people, including many of the contributors to the Panda's Thumb, who are adamant that evolution must maintain a plausible deniability from atheism—that atheism is not a necessary consequence of accepting good science (a point with which I agree), and that atheism is basically a scary thing that will alienate many potential supporters (a point with which I strongly disagree). One comment, though, highlights the problem with the atheist-averse strategy.
Distinguish between whether you are speaking as a scientist or as an atheist. If the two labels are not necessarily linked, then it helps to minimize the confusion by clearly stating on a particular matter, whether you are pissed off as a scientist, or as an atheist.
If you must say, "Religion is irrational," I think a theist would like to know if you are speaking as a scientist or an atheist. Scientist: Is irrationality a scientific concept? On what quantitative measure do we evaluate irrationality? Atheist: Why do I reject God premises? Why is materialism a superior philosophy?
As I was puzzling over how to answer such an odd question, I realized why I thought it was odd. The scientist and atheist positions are the same. It doesn't matter which hat I'm wearing, the answers won't change.
What should a scientist expect from an idea? That it be a reasonable advance in knowledge; that it be built on a foundation of evidence; that it be testable; that it should lead to new and useful questions and ideas. If we look at religion from that perspective, it doesn't help. At best, the hypothesis of the supernatural and/or a supreme being is vague, unfounded, and inapplicable in any practical fashion—deistic views, for instance, are so abstract and so carefully divorced from risk of challenge that they represent an empty hypothesis, and the most flattering thing you can say about them is that they're harmless. At worst, religion is confused, internally contradictory, and in conflict with evidence from the physical (and near as we can tell, only) world.
The one thing you could argue that would help religion is that another thing scientists have to do is prioritize—you can't go haring off after any old hypothesis in front of you, many are timewasters, and you could say some are simply too unproductive to be considered. It's fair to say that the majority of the world's scientists feel that way about religion, even those who personally believe. They just can't bother to argue for or against something so…unscientific. That's a fair point, and I have no problem with others bowing out of the debate. But some of us do think it is an important issue, one that is affecting not just society, but the execution of science itself.
This does not mean that scientists can't be religious. We can encompass irrational beliefs without regret and without obligation—I can, actually, look at my kids in a different way than I would an experimental subject under my microscope. I also do not pretend that I view my children rationally and objectively, untainted by emotion or history, and I'm not ashamed of that at all. So, a scientist should have no problem demanding one standard of logic and evidence in the lab, and dropping that demand when they go to church on Sunday.
Of course, that means the commenter's question above is completely backwards. Atheist scientists are consistent, and don't need to announce whether they are speaking as a scientist or an atheist—those two voices are the same. Religious scientists are the ones who have to be careful, because they are the ones who are living with two very different worldviews. They are also the ones with incentives to blur the boundaries, not just to promote preferred religious ideas with the credibility of science, but because groups like the Templeton Foundation pay hefty bribes to get scientists to cross that line.
And this gets to the root of the problem I was pointing at. Science does erode faith, because faith is not part of the scientific worldview. When you accept a scientific position for scientific reasons, you are dividing yourself if you are trying to simultaneously accept a religious belief that contradicts scientific principles. People can do that, but it takes work. It's far easier to maintain consistency by rejecting one or the other of the conflicting ideas, although certainly many people do manage to keep religion and science tidily partitioned.
I think this is a deeper conflict in the evolution-creation wars than most people, including many at the Panda's Thumb. When making excuses for and accommodating religion, we are doing something common and normal and compatible with the usual conflicting chaos of human ideals, but we are doing something contrary to scientific thinking. The short term political expediency of making theists comfortable with evolution by hiding its implications undermines what should be a greater, more substantive goal of reconciling people's beliefs with reality. If we insist on treating people like four-year-olds who mustn't be told that Santa isn't real, what we get is people with the wisdom and attention spans and screwy ideas about how the world works of four-year-olds.
Don't take my word for it. Mitchell Stephens has found a provocative article by EO Wilson that advances some similar ideas. He also brings up something that might be relevant to the debate about the public role of the atheist.
Both of these worldviews, God-centered religion and atheistic communism, are opposed by a third and in some ways more radical worldview, scientific humanism. Still held by only a tiny minority of the world's population, it considers humanity to be a biological species that evolved over millions of years in a biological world, acquiring unprecedented intelligence yet still guided by complex inherited emotions and biased channels of learning. Human nature exists, and it was self-assembled. It is the commonality of the hereditary responses and propensities that define our species. Having arisen by evolution during the far simpler conditions in which humanity lived during more than 99 percent of its existence, it forms the behavioral part of what, in The Descent of Man, Darwin called the indelible stamp of our lowly origin.
He's a bit more of a genetic predispositionist than I am, but the interesting idea is that there are two kinds of atheism: the dogmatic kind that we see in Communism, and this emerging scientific humanism, where the atheism is implicit in the scientific view of the world. It's an extraordinarily common slander that any time an atheist expresses his views unambiguously, he will be instantly greeted with shouts of fundamentalism, evangelism, and dogma. There is a refusal to recognize that someone might arrive at atheism as an appropriate way to see the world because it is consonant with a scientific way of seeing it, and in fact we often get the rather strange message that scientists shouldn't talk about atheism because it isn't scientific. Au contraire, I would say, as would Wilson or Dawkins.
So, will science and religion find common ground, or at least agree to divide the fundamentals into mutually exclusive domains? A great many well-meaning scholars believe that such rapprochement is both possible and desirable. A few disagree, and I am one of them. I think Darwin would have held to the same position. The battle line is, as it has ever been, in biology. The inexorable growth of this science continues to widen, not to close, the tectonic gap between science and faith-based religion.
Rapprochement may be neither possible nor desirable. There is something deep in religious belief that divides people and amplifies societal conflict. In the early part of this century, the toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.
Many Christians and Muslims are going to squirm uncomfortably at that, and there will be howls of protest that science must not lead people towards godlessness…but I say it's about time. All that's holding up religion now is the privilege and power that is artificially granted those who adhere to it; that should be enough, and I see no reason anyone should grant the religious the false notion that their beliefs have a basis in logic or evidence. Most importantly, shying away from the fact that it is a god-free scientific worldview that makes evolutionary biology powerful and persuasive impairs our ability to promote good science.
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Comments
I think you're a little off course here, though your point about how its religious folks that must accomodate science and their beliefs is certainly correct.
But you do seem to be implying that science isn't just a method, isn't just empiricism, but that it's the superior method and epistemology period. While I may agree with you on that for any number of reasons (the prime one being moral: making the right choices means striving always to know what the consequences and implications are), I don't think that view is itself scientific at all. People with faith aren't doing something contrary to scientific thinking: they are doing something outside the scope of science. Unless they pretend (as many creationists do) that they are applying science, then the fact that faith is not part of the scientific method, and contrary to scientific practice, just isn't particularly relevant. Having sex with your lab partner isn't part of the scientific method either: that doesn't mean that it's meaningfully described as "contrary to scientific thinking." It never claimed to be working in that realm in the first place. It's only when creationists conflate science with their own nonsense that we gets the trouble.
Posted by: plunge![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 1:50 PM
OK, I started my life indoctrinated into a religion, but have since left it. Part of the "let's not talk about atheism" attitude seems to rely on one of two things. Either the person taking this attitude somehow things atheism is not a respectable intellectual stance to take for some reason ("It's just another kind of dogma!") or they respect atheism but think that somehow their acceptance is a sign of their own personal superiority and that it will never be accepted by the public at large. I really don't have any respect for the former attitude, and I think the second attitude is simply arrogant. Am I supposed to think my intellectual evolution from a Catholic to an atheist is somehow unique? That other people wouldn't come to the same conclusions?
The unifying philosophy behind atheism and scientific work is an insistence on preferring empiricism over dogma. That's it.
I don't think scientists do themselves a favor by running away from atheism in the search for more politically palatable public faces for science. Anybody who really wants to understand science needs to understand how scientists think about science. Also, I kind of resent the implication that any possible ambassadorship on my part (so to speak) which be frowned upon due to my lack of religious affiliation. Given that lack of religious affiliation is extremely widespread in science, the attitude that prefers religious spokespeople to talk about science seems like a kind of tokenism.
Posted by: RickD![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 1:58 PM
Plunge is correct that there really is no "scientific method"; it's just empiricism, with an admixture of rationalism- the best approach humans have yet found for gaining knowledge while refraining from fooling themselves. What makes science science is simply the application of this mental attitude to study of the natural world.
But he's incorrect in not drawing the obvious conclusion to the above: that "faith" is a blatant contradiction to the mental habits that our species has gradually and laboriously discovered to be the only useful road to real knowledge. The tired old "nonoverlapping magisteria" argument may be a useful fiction for smoothing over social relations but it's not seriously tenable by anyone who values intellectual consistency. I agree with every word of PZ's post, and indeed I would nominate it as one of his best atheism posts ever.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 2:04 PM
"I see no reason anyone should grant the religious the false notion that their beliefs have a basis in logic or evidence."
I agree. Most of the religious people I know best have no desire to be burdened with any such false notion.
"I can, actually, look at my kids in a different way than I would an experimental subject under my microscope. I also do not pretend that I view my children rationally and objectively, untainted by emotion or history,. . . . Science does erode faith, because faith is not part of the scientific worldview."
Do you think that science sometimes erodes those non-rational, non-objective human relationships that are, I suppose from your description, also not part of the scientific worldview? Or are they more resistent to erosion than religious faith? (Or am I simply not understanding you - if so, sorry.)
Posted by: Julia![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 2:06 PM
Prior to the recent turn of political events polls as recently as 2004, prior to the NSA and WMD revelations, showed that a majority of Americans continued to think that Saddam had nukes(WMD), that he had associations and outright cooperation with Osama Bin Laden, that he took part in the planning of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and that a majority of the terrorists on that day were Iraqis.
What is funny about this is that anyone with access to a computer could have found that there were no iraqis on the 9/11 hijacker lists, and that the overwhelming majority were in fact Saudis who the Bush admin loves, admires and whose princes Bush loves to hold hands with when visiting.
So when we see polls showing that a majority of the nation still does not believe evolution is proven, or are not certain of it, we can assume that these people don't know what a f*cking thing about the subject. This is one item that does not always make the polls. Whether or not the people polled about evolution know even the slightest f*cking thing about it.
So when we talk about the conflicts between science and religion is there any doubt that these conflicts are brought about mainly because the people being polled don't know enough to judge, along with the chance that some who do know a lot about it are too arrogant or partisan to accept it, choosing to call it lies or liberal Dem party tricks??
It seems to me that by trying to reconcile religion and science we are trying to take one step forward then two steps back. We help nothing.
I can understand that we all love our grandmothers and grandfathers, and when they talk about hoping that when they die they can finally be with the other who died long before, is it not easy for us to say "Sure grandma, when you die I just know you'll go to heaven and see grandpa after all these years." The same applies to just about any relative, and our dependence on religion is simply a check against fear and hopelessness. Would anyone deny a loved one the hope of seeing loved ones passed away long ago?
Do we not hold some hope in the chance that though there is no god or heaven, that there still exists some chance that there is a form of life or consciousness after death during which time we can either see and meet with friends and family or at least know that they, like you, are still in some ways 'alive' after a sense and are out there for you to find and catch up to along the way?
I do not know if there is an afterlife. Because of this I have no fear whether there is no afterlife. If there isn't then I won't exist in which to care. If there is then I will not have spent my life in fear and hopelessness.
I think the atheist view, the atheist but objective view is the right way to go simply because if handled correctly and understood can still provide the same level of hope that the faithful possess without the irrationality and fanatic zealotry that marks all past and modern religions.
MYOB'
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Posted by: MYOB![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 2:16 PM
"Many Christians and Muslims are going to squirm uncomfortably at that, and there will be howls of protest that science must not lead people towards godlessness..."
The presumption behind this and similar reactions is that morality originates from gods, and that those who do not believe in these gods will not share the moral judgements of believers. This, in general, is false. We atheists may not share those morals which are demonstrably irrational (i.e. disputable via rational evaluation) or arbitrary constructs based on religious assumptions, but we are quite likely to share many ideals which arise from a shared biology and culture (i.e. those which are based on shared emotional predispositions leading to some level of consensus). We can obviously also agree on some moral judgements which arise from correct rational evaluation of consequences.
Religionists need to get past this offensively stupid assumption that atheists must be broadly immoral. It would be even better if one of our highest shared moral convictions was that it is wrong, without good reason, to force ones moral judgements on other people, especially those which are arbitrary and inconsequential such as that one should believe in some god or gods.
Posted by: Alan![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 2:18 PM
The problem lies in beliefs that demand you accept the existence of invisible immortal superbeings that nonetheless manage to impregnant young women, for instance. That should make a mind used to thinking scientifically sputter and choke and seize up...so you have to really maintain a dichotomous way of thinking.
Posted by: PZ Myers![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 2:19 PM
The more I've thought about it, the more I'm convinced there is a fundamental conflict between science and religion. Because they are not simply two separate laundry lists of beliefs, they are two contradictory ways of being human. They each have at the core a different idea of what constitutes Truth. For the scientist, Truth is what can be shown to objectively exist. For the religionist, Truth is what feels right subjectively. Scientific thinking destroys religious Truth, and religious thinking destroys scientific Truth.
I think everything you are rests on this basic assumption of what constitutes Truth. Everything you "know" is built up from there. And these two "ways of knowing" couldn't be more fundamentally antagonistic. They are the basis of two antogonistic ways of being human.
The interesting question is what you would do if you had to choose. If people are forced to confront the contradiction and choose one Truth over the other, where does that leave them? Can a sane person really deny scientific Truth?
Posted by: udargo![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 2:23 PM
Isn't the issue one of being? Is a scientist always, every second of his life, a scientist? Or is it more like a job? When you do science, you are a scientist, otherwise you might be characterized as something else. In this latter way of being, science and theism and co-exist nicely in an individual. In the former, science and theism in an individual would cause a bit of dissonance.
Of course, shifting from one mode to another is not clean or always easy. I think that someone trained in the sciences would start to wonder about the evidence behind their theistic beliefs over time.
Essentially, the question is, "Is science a world view or is it a job?"
Posted by: charlie![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 2:29 PM
Precisely, udargo. Religious beliefs may or may not conflict with the findings of science, but they necessarily conflict with the scientific method, and as such are incompatible with science.
There is no middle ground here. It would be nice if there were some way to keep our thinking rigorous and correct while also being 'nice' and 'fair'. There isn't.
We have to choose. And most people choose religion.
Posted by: Caledonian![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 2:29 PM
" Do you think that science sometimes erodes those non-rational, non-objective human relationships that are, I suppose from your description, also not part of the scientific worldview?"
"No, not usually, because they generally do not contradict science, and are instead apart from it."
I would also add that science is perfectly capable of examining such relationships -- and so far, it's generally been *confirming* that there really is a good basis for them! Human not only love their children and other family, but form strong caring relationships even with non-kin, because we're a sort of creature which does that. It's part of our lifestyle, our survival strategy, and even our developmental needs.
By comparision, if (say) octopi advanced to intelligence and developed science, they'd probably come up with a fairly similar approach to our scientific method. They would certainly agree (eventually) with out particular findings about natural laws. But they wouldn't share our social mores, because octopi aren't that sort of creature -- they're predators with almost no social structure, much further towards the "r" side of the r/K axis. On another tentacle, if they studied our habits as we've studied theirs, they'd certainly recognize that we have those social relationships, and that having those relationships is normal and beneficial to us. They'd probably also note that if they want to interact with humans on a non-hostile basis, they'd better learn something about how our social behavior works!
Posted by: David Harmon![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 2:45 PM
Posted by: Bronze Dog![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 2:50 PM
I'm not one who thinks that we should go to any trouble to accommodate religion, but I also don't think we should (ordinarily) go to any trouble to antagonize religion.
Yes, it is all the same to PZ whether he is a scientist or an atheist. But I would maintain that for some theists there is also no difference between being theistic and being scientists, and their universal search for knowledge is based on logical/universalistic notions gained from their religion.
It has not gone unnoticed that science benefitted from the Greek/Xian belief that unities and numbers exist across the phenomena that we see in the universe. Some scientists still believe in this in a religious way, and at that point, at least, religion and science are not different for them.
Some theistic scientists wouldn't dream of controverting the evidence from science because they do science to know something about God. This was especially true in the past, when many scientists essentially saw science as another avenue to find out about God.
Religious scientists will add on religious ideas to the beliefs found through evidence, but the most honest ones are not going to make the same claims about religion as about evidence-based science.
Wes Elsberry has written that one of the reasons why he opposes creationism/ID is that it is so dishonest, something contrary to his religious--and personal--sensibilities. Is this not a happy coincidence between a kind of theism and science?
After all, Nietzsche was willing to bite the bullet and ask why we even want "truth", as if we were adherents of Xianity. He really was more than a little willing to point out that desires for truth, and other attributes of the scientific endeavor, are a legacy of Xian beliefs and attitudes (he seems not to have paid enough heed to the fact that we all desire "truth" in some manner or other, but the push for "truth" was emphasized in Xianity more than it has been in many religions, almost certainly to science's benefit). This is not as true today, I would claim, however the aims and ethics of science often do coincide with those of the most honest and open religious folk.
The fact of the matter is that religion is just a collection of human thoughts and beliefs of a bewildering variety and form. Some of those varieties share the ethics and beliefs necessary for science, while a good many do not. Any theist whose honesty requires acceptance of the evidence and its implications should be able to do science.
That is to say, a metaphysical basis for a scientist's work is adequate for science, and indeed a number of past scientists, and even some present ones, have had a kind of religious/metaphysical drive to discover "God's creation".
Some theists have simply accepted a metaphysical view of the world and they do science with it (others, no doubt, are religious but not wedded to metaphysics). The "mistake" that they make is that they have never questioned their a priori beliefs, because Xianity (and presumably all other religions) cannot be justified philosophically from the ground up. However, within their limited range of views, they are combining their morality, honesty, and desire to know, as a kind of religious/scientific endeavor to know the world/god.
I wrote more about these things here:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/06/ron_numbers_int.html#comment-109053
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm
Posted by: Glen Davidson![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 2:51 PM
"God-centered religion and atheistic communism, are opposed by a third and in some ways more radical worldview, scientific humanism"
A VERY interesting idea - and almost correct!
Communism, is, of course, a classic religion, complete with warring sects and persecution of deviamt believers, and the propaganda, and the death camps.
Which is why it and the catholic church are/were so at war with each other.
ANd, yes a "Scientific Humanism" will be fundamentally opposed, philosophically to either of those murderous churches, and to islam as well, of course.
What we must fear is a temporary accomodation between islam and fudie xtianity, to suppress humanism, before that fall on each other.
Think Nazi-Soviet pact here .....
Posted by: G. Tingey![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 2:55 PM
Posted by: sdanielmorgan![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:01 PM
I think that in general people who attempt to 'reconcile' science with religion tend to
1.) Redefine "religion" into secular terms -- and try to shoo in anti-materialist possibilities under the cover
2.) Protect religion by placing it into a non-scientific domain through bad analogies to morality or values.
3.) Make religion scientific by doing poorly designed studies which come up with results which don't stand under legitimate scrutiny.
What falls under the domain of things science can study? Mind-brain relationships? ESP and psychokensis? There goes God. Ghosts? Reincarnation? There goes the afterlife. What about religion itself?
Or maybe look at it this way. Could someone be a good chemist and endorse homeopathy? Perhaps -- if he admits the explanation is garbage and redefines 'homeopathy' as 'the placebo affect.' Or he can place 'homeopathy' into the category 'something which can't be examined by science' by making clear that it's got nothing to do with empirical discoveries about water and what it remembers. Homeopathy is a matter of faith, and therefore he never lets his views about homeopathic chemistry run into his practice of regular chemistry. That's #1 and #2.
About all he can't do -- and remain a 'good chemist' by the criteria of many defenders -- is #3.
Posted by: Sastra![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:09 PM
It seems to me, as a person of faith, that a person of faith who will not admit that faith is not a rational position -- call it irrational if you want to -- is a person who lacks either guts or honesty to make such an admission.
Science has little need for either failing. Atheists may suffer from similar failings, and science has little need for such failings from atheists, also. The interests of honest and sincere people on all sides of the discussion are best served by those who understand that faith is a faith position, and not one of reason. Why is that so difficult to understand?
If we had the evidence to "prove" faith, we would be agnostics with evidence. A leap of faith is required, and that should be understood. Those who deny that such a leap is required have missed the point of the faith, as well as science.
So, where's the conflict? It's between people who accurately see the difference and those who don't. Atheists are not alone on the side of rationality, nor is rationality opposed to religion. Seeing things as they are enables us to see where and how to make change, especially in human relationships.
The debate has been framed incorrectly, IHMO.
Posted by: Ed Darrell![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:13 PM
"All that's holding up religion now is the privilege and power that is artificially granted those who adhere to it"
Holding up religion in what domain, the scientific community or the world? Science thoroughly disproved most religions 150 years ago. Certainly if you're a serious scientist, it must be very difficult to maintain any kind of religious belief. But scientists are a tiny percentage of the population, and it's a battle over minds, not facts. Do you really think the rest of the world cares? Those who have no scientific background are more likely to trust their own family, or pastor, or church group, rather than scientists who they don't know, and knowledge and methods they don't understand. If science could kill religion, it would have already done so hundereds of years ago.
Posted by: jeffw![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:13 PM
I do understand that, Ed. But why should anybody be respected for making an irrational leap of faith? It may be humanly understandable, but worthy of respect or any sort of deference (which is what is involved in feeling a total lack of conflict with someone)- sorry, that requires an argument that you haven't given. Because I do have a conflict with people who insist on taking a "leap of faith" into a belief in the tooth fairy or what have you, even though in practice of course I'm not at all inclined to bother them just so long as they don't bother me.
Care to try again? So far, you haven't made any progress toward showing that PZ framed these questions incorrectly. I think he nailed it.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:19 PM
Isn't a leap of faith... just accepting something irrational to be true?
Posted by: stevie_nyc![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:21 PM
The reason science doesn't beat out over religion is the same reason people play the lottery.
The chance of payout is so attractive that people are willing to believe they might win.
Except someone does actually win in the lottery.
Posted by: stevie_nyc![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:25 PM
Oh, and lest I be unclear: One of the chief values of religion is in it's holding us to a higher standard of honesty, to agree that fundamentally, the powers of the universe (whom we Christians name as God) put great value in our looking at things rationally, without illusion. Contests between gods once were entertaining, but are rarely useful in sustaining a lasting peace between different peoples.
P.Z. quotes Wilson:
That's what the religious pray for. That it may come on a silver platter of rationality, even rationality compatible or derived from atheism, is no reason to reject it. God not only works in mysterious ways, ways queerer than we do imagine; God works in ways queerer than we can imagine. Christians are commanded to seek the good, whatever its origins.
Posted by: Ed Darrell![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:26 PM
Science's goal isn't to kill religion. Support rational thought and arguments.
Religion's goal is for people to keep the faith. Suspend disbelief.
Posted by: stevie_nyc![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:28 PM
Posted by: PZ Myers![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:29 PM
I don't think there is any "if" there, udargo--we all have to choose whether we confront the contradiction or not. A lot of people choose to bury that awareness is all.
The question that particularly interests me is "can a person who--for whatever reason--feels the need to deny scientific truth be persuaded to let go of that perceived need?".
For a lot of people, clearly the answer is no: Dembski, for one example, has too much invested in what he does to turn his back on it now. Hard-core "alties" like Kevin Trudeau are another example. And one of my students, who was extremely disfigured in an accident, has found that he gets his emotional and relationship needs met in a charismatic denomination. I can't promise him that if he rejects that fundamentalist sect in favor of becoming a scientist, that he'll meet a woman who'll accept him as he is in a sexual relationship because his disfigurement is "science's will". And so, for him, given his priorities, I could even be persuaded that rejecting science for his religion is the rational choice for him, even though it never would be for me.
But none of those people I described above will ever transform their attitude toward science, and so what I am most interested in is the people (mostly in the complementary and alternative medicine community) with "science-phobia" through no fault of their own. They didn't "get" science coming up through school (maybe their teachers were cowed from discussing evolution by aggressive fanatic parents in the community, or simply didn't have resources through lack of funding for a too-large class, or they were tracked out of science and math early and told they were "stupid" or whatever). They have constructed a worldview in which science is foreign and scary, based not on a philosophical investment that it must be that way, but on their previous bad experiences.
I like ameliorating their bad experiences and helping them discover that it's not so bad and scary after all. And I find often that if I make that effort, their receptivity to rethinking their previous worldview increases. I can't make them change, but often, by presenting it in a non-threatening way, they change on their own.
I don't lie and pretend to them I'm a believer or share their "spirituality" or anything. Since I am a teacher, it's not about me, but about them, although if they bring it up or want to know, then I tell them the truth. But by not overtly confronting or "flooding" them with the contradiction, either, it's possible to encourage people to gain the confidence to stop burying the confrontation. Perhaps that's what Steve means when he refers to the social utility of NOMA. Of course, just because I don't feel the need to "flood" my students in no way means I'd tell anyone else to be in the closet, and I find certain leftists' willingness to go along with that call (like Amy Sullivan) rather icky.
Naturally, this is anecdotal, and it's a highly-self-selected (therefore, skewed) population, so this may or may not have any applicability to anyone else's experiences or the population at large. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this is a really corner case (outlier), and so it's probably not very representative. But what I think is generally extrapolable is that we all have to confront the contradiction, and decide how we handle it. For a lot of people--given their life experiences--burying that confrontation is a rational (and not necessarily permanent) response (your "sane person") to their previous experiences. If encouraged, that same urge to rational response can persuade them to let go of that previous reaction.
Posted by: RavenT![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:30 PM
Careful there: "higher standards of honesty" than who? Us godless heathen?
Posted by: PZ Myers![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:35 PM
Ed Darrell:
I agree with this and have said it many times myself:
then you lapse into this:
How could you possibly know this and then make a statement about it? How do you know how God works?
What it boils down to is why accept an irrational position at all? At the end of the day all faiths are then equal. You can have faith in quite literally anything.
Posted by: Chance![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:36 PM
I only need Carlin's Two Commandments. That standard is plenty high for me.
I think I have higher standards than many christians.
Posted by: stevie_nyc![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:41 PM
"The scientist and atheist positions are the same. "
I think this comment strikes to the heart of the Religious Right's efforts to infiltrate science classrooms.
Once you have accepted the scientific method and its evidentiary based method of examining the world, holding religious beliefs becomes intellectually dishonest. While it may possible to reconcile the scientific pursuit of knowledge with religious beliefs I was not able to withstand my hypocrisy.
Despite my initial resistance to questioning my religious beliefs and the subsequent guilt and fear of damnation, my atheist views came about as a direct result of my exposure to scientific ideas.
This is the Religious Right's nightmare and I believe explains their desperate attack on both science education and scientific ideas in America.
PZ, this comment explains it better than I ever could:
"Science does erode faith, because faith is not part of the scientific worldview. When you accept a scientific position for scientific reasons, you are dividing yourself if you are trying to simultaneously accept a religious belief that contradicts scientific principles. People can do that, but it takes work. It's far easier to maintain consistency by rejecting one or the other of the conflicting ideas"
Well said.
Posted by: C Faubell![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:41 PM
Let's let David Hume make a contribution to this discussion (especially in regard to Ed's rather offensive comment about a "higher standard of honesty"):
Posted by: Steve LaBonne![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:48 PM
sdanielmorgan, thank you for posting that link to the religious "witnessing" from our scientist friends.
It's hilarious, though, that Dembski tries to use the words of those scientists to bolster a bogus argument re evolution. I'm sure that Miller and Collins would agree that Dembski is one of the least credible and most pathetic players in the ID propaganda campaign.
I note that Collins also is honest to a point: he clearly recognizes that his faith in a God who is watching over him has NOTHING to do with reason or rationality and everything to do with simply believing, not because of the evidence, but in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. For what it's worth (very very little, in my personal opinion), that view is consistent with the teaching in the New Testament (e.g., the resurrected Jesus' admonition of Thomas).
The real issue I have with scientist Christians witnessing in this way is that they fail to make it clear that (1) they are knowingly and willfully playing a mental game which gives them comfort and (2) the ID peddlers who use religion as a platform from which to attack science are truly vile human beings. Not confused. Not "prone to exaggeration." But disgusting propagandists for whom lying is second nature.
Ken Miller will go out of his way to praise the charlatans at the ID institute for their "gentlemanly" and "civilized" behavior. That's appalling and dishonest and the only reason I can see for behaving that way is that it is shorthand for "We're all Christians here and at the end of the day we'll both be in Heaven despite our disagreements. God bless!"
Otherwise, why pretend that these lying creeps are anything but lying creeps?
Posted by: Memo from Turner![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:50 PM
Focus on the Family blames atheism and evolution on violence....
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/6/282006h.asp
...A Christian pro-family advocate is linking youth violence to a godless, Darwinist worldview. Focus on the Family vice president Bill Maier says atheistic beliefs have led to an alarming increase in youth violence. Young people are more aggressive than ever, he asserts, with many participating in fight clubs and posting violent videos on the Internet. But that is what you get from Darwinist evolution, the Focus on the Family official contends. "If we have a prevailing worldview that teaches that, basically, human beings evolved from the slime and we have no intrinsic worth or value or meaning," he explains, "then naturally we are going to see individuals begin to gravitate toward behavior such as this. It's basically Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' concept carried to its logical conclusion." Maier says parents need to help kids learn to distinguish between necessary defense and excessive violence and can do this, in part, by limiting their children's exposure to media violence. [Natalie Harris]
Posted by: lloydletta![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 3:59 PM
PZ wrote
Science does erode faith, because faith is not part of the scientific worldview.
I agree with much of you've written here, PZ, and the general thrust of your argument, but I would avoid using this term "worldview" simply because the term is so loaded now with evangelical Christian baggage that, whatever it once meant, it now means something very close to "religion."
As others have pointed out, we humans are bound to our emotions to some extent and simply to remain sane and functional we do not think every one of our actions through "logically" before taking them.
I think a less divisive way of putting your statement is that "science erodes faith, generally speaking, because most people who spend increasing amounts of time thinking about understanding the world in terms of science discover that their need to believe in the supernatural is diminished."
Yeah, it's less catchy. But as we've seen the underwear of religious theists tends to get knotted up really quickly.
Posted by: Memo from Turner![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 4:02 PM
A Christian pro-family advocate is linking youth violence to a godless, Darwinist worldview. Focus on the Family vice president Bill Maier says atheistic beliefs have led to an alarming increase in youth violence.
Classic.
And here's a prediction: a prominent Catholic church leader is not going to stand up and issue a seering denouncement of this garbage and on Focuse on the Family generally or on the fundamentalists who give money to Focuse on the Family so they can disseminate this anti-science garbage.
And the The Panda's Thumb weblog won't do these things either.
Go figure.
Posted by: Memo from Turner![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 4:05 PM
"But he's incorrect in not drawing the obvious conclusion to the above: that "faith" is a blatant contradiction to the mental habits that our species has gradually and laboriously discovered to be the only useful road to real knowledge."
Ah, and here's where you basically toss in the cards. Suddenly, you've decided what "useful" and "real knowledge" must mean. Those are all _judgements_ external to science.
Posted by: plunge![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 4:06 PM
But as we've seen the underwear of religious theists tends to get knotted up really quickly.
That should be "theists" (including "theistic scientists").
Posted by: Memo from Turner![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 4:07 PM
I think there is a problem in this piece. I think it's here:
"As I was puzzling over how to answer such an odd question, I realized why I thought it was odd. The scientist and atheist positions are the same. It doesn't matter which hat I'm wearing, the answers won't change."
I think this is fundamentally incorrect. I think you are projecting your atheism onto science PZ.
Because I don't think the answers to questions of morality and faith and belief and love are the same for a scientist and an atheist. Science is restricted in nature and there are some topics that fall outside the realm of science, such as the ones above.
An atheist's "I don't believe in any gods" is different to an scientist's (or agnostic's) "we have no evidence/knowledge of any gods". An atheist's lack of belief can be informed by the lack of scientific findings, but a theist's belief is also not contradicted by the (lack of) evidence. After all absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
You PZ yourself touched upon an area of human irrationality that you have experienced - the unconditional love of your children. Even if you think that religion is irrational, you are only talking about grades of irrationality between religious people and non-religious. We're all irrational to some extent. And we all turn off our irrationality when we step into a lab, in order to do science properly.
Some people have a bigger switch than others, that's all.
Posted by: Tim Hague![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 4:07 PM
And we all turn off our irrationality when we step into a lab, in order to do science properly.
In some respects, the irrationality is turned on because -- let's face it -- the salary is not that great. ;)
Posted by: Memo from Turner![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 4:10 PM
Supernaturalism is constantly being marginalized by the real, tangible, results being produced by the scientific process, rational thought, and logic. This is a historically demonstrable fact. As long as Religions keep clinging to supernatural concepts they will increasingly be viewed as irrational, end eventually, distrubed ideologies.
Posted by: Alex![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 4:11 PM
Steve--
I don't think Ed's comment was offensive. What I understand him to mean in "holding us to a higher standard of honesty" is " . . . than we as believers would otherwise have". I didn't read it as being intended to compare believers to nonbelievers. Of course, I could be wrong.
Ed, however, should recognize that he may well be in a minority.
As Sam Harris pointed out somewhere in _EOF_ and others have here, there's a reason that so many believers have taken up science (in whatever perverted form) to attempt to illustrate that God exists--it's because science gets so much (and deserves so much) respect as a way of determining what is real or not. Those efforts come from people who would be much happier without having to make that leap of faith.
Posted by: Jake B. Cool![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 4:12 PM
WRT science eroding faith, Julia said:
Do you think that science sometimes erodes those non-rational, non-objective human relationships that are, I suppose from your description, also not part of the scientific worldview? Or are they more resistent to erosion than religious faith? (Or am I simply not understanding you - if so, sorry.)
Science deals with the "is" of the world. In this area, its success is unparalleled.
However, it has nothing to do with the "ought" of the world - it gives you the predictive power to mould the world to your will but tells you nothing about what form you should mould it into. The behaviours you mention fall very firmly into this category, and it would thus be quite hard for science to erode them (except insofar as geekiness in general has a corrosive effect on social skills :P).
Religion overlaps both categories, and hence is in some sense a legitimate target for science.
Posted by: Corkscrew![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 4:13 PM
The reiligious believe they are morally superior because of their faith. Thus the supposed HIGHER standard. Seems backwards to me. Maybe I'm wrong.
ID makes the mistake of trying to prove there is a god through science. Just accept there's no reason to believe in god other than faith. That's it. They believe because they want to. It's insanely simple. Why do people forget that?
You choose to believe. I choose not to.
Posted by: stevie_nyc![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 4:20 PM
"If we have a prevailing worldview that teaches that, basically, human beings evolved from the slime and we have no intrinsic worth or value or meaning," he explains, "then naturally we are going to see individuals begin to gravitate toward behavior such as this. It's basically Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' concept carried to its logical conclusion."
It's only by understanding "Darwinism" that we have any chance of escaping it. As Richard Dawkins puts it:
"Much of the message of my first book, "The Selfish Gene," was that we must understand what it means to be a gene machine, what it means to be programmed by genes, so that we are better equipped to escape, so that we are better equipped to use our big brains, use our conscience intelligence, to depart from the dictates of the selfish genes and to build for ourselves a new kind of life which as far as I am concerned the more un-Darwinian it is the better, because the Darwinian world in which our ancestors were selected is a very unpleasant world. Nature really is red in tooth and claw. And when we sit down together to argue out and discuss and decide upon how we want to run our societies, I think we should hold up Darwinism as an awful warning for how we should not organize our societies."
Posted by: jeffw![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 4:26 PM
Tom Hague writes, "You PZ yourself touched upon an area of human irrationality that you have experienced - the unconditional love of your children. Even if you think that religion is irrational, you are only talking about grades of irrationality between religious people and non-religious."
It seems to me that we're blurring two very different kinds of irrationality. A father's love for his children does not entail any particular belief about the world, not even that his children are good and admirable. It is an emotional response and a committment to a relationship, not the adoption of a creed or ontology. And because it doesn't require any credal statement, it can be the kind of thing that doesn't even enter the same arena as science. In contrast, the Christian's or Muslim's leap of faith precisely is that of thing, having as its base a belief about the nature of the world.
Admittedly, a parent's love can lead to irrationality in the second sense, as when a father refuses to believe that his child committed some crime, even though all evidence says otherwise. But that isn't necessarily a part of parental love, and not all parents are capable of that kind of irrationality, regardless of how much they love their child.
"An atheist's 'I don't believe in any gods' is different to an scientist's (or agnostic's) 'we have no evidence/knowledge of any gods.'"
Barring a leap of faith, it's pretty much identical. Such a leap is pretty much dismissed in the science lab or classroom or colloquia, so the only distinction then becomes the domain in which some people want to make such leaps. "It's alright, when it's about religion."
Posted by: Russell![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 4:32 PM
PZ, perhaps rather than having an article about science versus religion, it would be nice for you to write an article about what you think that science is. The way that I understand the word, it is a process for investigating claims, and it is not any particular set of claims. There is no such thing as a scientific belief, there is only a scientific argument laying out the evidence for or against a particular belief.
When you say the scientist and atheist positions are the same, you are in error. For one thing, in the same way that a religious person can also be a scientist, an atheist can be completely unscientific. The fact that someone doesn't believe in gods doesn't imply that they have any allegiance to the scientific method, or that they care about evidence. It doesn't imply that the person will not be prey to homeopaths or global warming deniers.
Perhaps you want to say that a scientific worldview implies atheism, not that they are the same.
Posted by: Daryl McCullough![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 4:35 PM
Posted by: Chance![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 4:40 PM
If we have a prevailing worldview that teaches that, basically, human beings evolved from the slime and we have no intrinsic worth or value or meaning, then naturally we are going to see individuals begin to gravitate toward behavior such as this.
I agree with this statement completely, and this illustrates my point about science and religion being incompatible ways of being human.
If you teach kids that there is no value in being human unless you are a faithful servant of an ancient Near-Eastern war god, then when those kids learn that the god is a myth, they're going to lose the basis for their belief in the value of the human being.
If you teach kids that moral codes only have value if they are backed by the authority of the Great Cosmic Fairy-King, then when the kids realize there is no Fairy-King, they will question the value of morality.
But if you drop all that nonsense and teach kids to just pay attention to others and develop a healthy sense of empathy and a deep personal appreciation for the intrinsic value of justice and fairness in a world of interdependent people, then the Fairy-King becomes irrelevant and their sense of dignity, morality and fairness are not built on unreliable mythic vapors.
The problem is that religion keeps telling kids that the Fairy-King is essential to their worth and their goodness, and that they are essentially shitty creatures without the saving grace of the Fairy-King, and science keeps telling them the Fairy-King doesn't exist. Put those two things together and you've got a problem raising kids to be healthy, responsible, moral adults.
It's obvious that many religious people cannot conceive of morality outside of religion. And since their religious beliefs are nonsense, and they are inevitably going to be confronted with that miserable reality on a daily basis, the moral foundations of our society are weak and unreliable.
Posted by: udargo![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 4:48 PM
Hear! Hear! Udargo said it just right.
Posted by: Russell![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 29, 2006 4:54 PM
Is it any wonder that religious people often have so little empathy for their fellow man?
Empathy is what matters not a fear of hell.
Posted by: stevie_nyc