…and this is a 
Theology is a deceitful strategy
Category: Godlessness • Religion
Posted on: July 1, 2008 2:01 PM, by PZ Myers
Karl Giberson is interviewed about the subject of his new book, Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It looks interesting, in an aggravating sort of way, and it's on my long list of books to read and use to put dents in my wall. The interview reminds me why I detest the rarefied apologetics of sympathetic theologians as much as I do the bleatings of the purblind literalists — neither one even notices the fundamental flaws in their core of belief.
Let me be nice first. Giberson does say a number of eminently sensible things — he's a physicist by training, he has no brief for creationism at all, he might wish Intelligent Design were true but he sees it as a betrayal of the scientific enterprise. Don't mistake him for your corner bible thumper! Here, for instance, is a good argument well spoken:
Wouldn't that suggest that if God was involved in evolution that he had to tinker and give us consciousness?
No, because, here's another mystery: Consciousness emerges in the development of an embryo. We have a fertilized egg and there's no consciousness there, and it's not that consciousness is present but is really small, it just isn't there. And then, some months later, a baby is born, and child psychologists debate about exactly when self-awareness occurs, but at some point before the age of 3, you've got a conscious human being.
Now, God doesn't have to step in to make consciousness occur, but something that we don't understand at all is occurring. I don't think it's supernatural. I think that someday we may understand this. There's something going on that when the neuronal networks reach a certain level of complexity, something appears that maybe is brand-new and that is consciousness. But that's just a guess about how we'll eventually be talking about that phenomenon.
That's an argument I've used before, but I can see stealing that for the conciseness. Giberson also doesn't make the mistake of demonizing atheists as amoral monsters, either.
Do you think life can only have meaning and purpose with God?
I think it's very dangerous to try and argue that. I have children and raising them has been one of the most inspiring and purpose-filled parts of my life. Yet it doesn't seem helpful to say that seems meaningful and not meaningless because God made child-rearing purposeful. I found it purposeful to learn how to do a Willie Mays basket catch when I was in high school. I got very good at it and loved doing it. But certainly, God didn't make that a part of the natural order. So I think there's loads of ways to get purpose because purpose ultimately is a psychological state of mind. And certainly people like Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould aren't walking around glum all the time, saying, "Oh, life has no purpose, I think I'll just kill myself." They are very energetic people who love life and do lots of fun things. I don't think Christians are wise to say we've got the corner on purpose.
Good for him. Of course, now we also have to note an unfortunate reality: that statement immediately removes him from the realm of the majority of believers, whose central objection to scientific conclusions rests on the twin pillars of a sanctimonious sense of morality and a demand for recognition of the superiority of their species/culture/race/sect, that unfortunate combination of exceptionalism and bigotry. This is one of many reasons I dislike these theologians, despite the sensible bits with which I agree — they provide cover for inanity. So often, you'll get into an argument over the latest insane nonsense from the world of the god-soaked, and someone will petulantly tell you that you're picking on the weak arguments, that there is a world of smart, clever, well-informed religion, and then they'll point to someone like Giberson and tell us that his is the real religion. Liberal divinity schools seem to have the primary purpose of churning out theological stalking horses, so the benighted mob can frolic in ignorance behind them.
But all right, Giberson can't be blamed for that — he deserves some credit for extracting reason and rational support for science out of the slop-trough of religion. Would that many, many more Christians and Moslems would put the thought into what they ought to believe that Giberson has.
Of course, if Giberson carried that reasoning to its logical conclusion, he'd be an atheist. He isn't. That means that his ideas are full of the woolly headed apologetics common to those who make excuses for faith, and for that I do fault him. Even the premise of his book is the kind of category error he and his ilk try to deny.
His book is about reconciling science and religion. Funny word, that "reconcile". We don't talk about reconciling apples and oranges, yet practically the first defense of theologians is to claim that gods are completely different phenomena, not of this natural world, distinct from the subject of science, yet at the same time they babble obsessively about reconciling the two. This is what I tell creationists all the time: cut to the chase. You're going to declare a miracle at some point, so all the flailing about to claim scientific relevance is a waste of time. I would say the same to Giberson: you can't reconcile science and religion, and it's all a pretense on your part, because somewhere in your rationalization you're just going to trot out the warm fuzzies of "metaphor" and "faith", and you're ultimately going to profess a belief in some weird sect that contradicts other weird sects, and you aren't even going to try to explain why. These are people who sit down to a fine meal, rich with delicate flavors, and sprinkle dried bullshit on it … and then declare the ripe, repulsive flavor of dung was the best part of dinner.
Giberson does not disappoint.
Many Christians insist the Bible is the literal word of God.
Yes, that's widespread and again it's because of a certain lack of sophistication from a literary point of view. Many people translate "the word of God" into the "words of God." They don't recognize that when you talk theologically about the Bible being the word of God, you mean that it contains an important message, that God is revealing himself through the history of Israel and Jesus Christ. New Testament theology gives us the "Word made flesh in Jesus." But that phrase makes no sense if you're talking about words and sentences. But it does make sense if you're talking about some kind of revelation about the nature of God.
The Bible is correctly understood in Christianity as the Word of God. But it's a distortion to say the Bible contains the words of God as if God had dictated these things. We need to grant that there are differences in the way that biblical authors talked about the world. We can't just pull all of this into the 20th century as if it was just recently written down by God for our benefit.
That is so awful and so typical. He is correct that taking the bible literally is unsophisticated. What he then does, though, is waffle, lifting his own vague inferences up out of the text, and assumes that this implies that somehow the bible is a valid window into the nature of his particular god. Why should we accept that this uneven hodgepodge of scattered writings by authors of varying degrees of talent and lunacy is an inspired insight into the mind of his god at all? What makes it better than the Bhagavad Gita, the Iliad, the Gilgamesh, Moby Dick, or the latest potboiler from Danielle Steele? He does not say. This class of theologian never says.
I don't think God is revealing himself through the history of Israel and Jesus Christ. I think humanity is revealing itself through its own narratives, and that's equally true of the history of the Ashanti as it is of the Hebrews, and the words of Paul are as true a slice of the human experience as the words of Dan Brown. If you want to take the stream of words generated by humanity as non-literal, as you must, and interpret them as a reflection of something real, it makes more sense to see them as a mirror of the human condition rather than a crystal ball into the mind of an imaginary deity.
To call a book the metaphorical wisdom of a god is as offensively stupid as calling it the literal wisdom of a god. And note, Giberson seems to blandly accept that cock-and-bull story of the cosmic ruler of all taking earthly form and trotting about in some Roman backwater until he died of heart failure on an instrument of torture. What kind of reasonable rationale exists for that bit of nonsense? Why isn't he expecting us to believe without evidence in Anansi stories, or Thor's battles against the frost giants, or the sacrifice of Prometheus?
And then there's this:
You criticize creationism's leading opponents like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould for treating evolution as religion. What's your main point of contention with them?
I think there's a reckless extrapolation from what we know about evolution to an all-encompassing materialism. Evolution has so much of its data missing in history that to look at the whole thing and say we know for sure that despite all the stuff we can't find, and have never seen, has purely naturalistic causes -- and we know this with such certainty that we insist the knowledgeable buy into this idea -- goes way too far. It overlooks the reality of human experience, overlooks that religious experiences are very common and meaningful for a lot of people.
I'm not at all uncomfortable saying that religious experiences can be genuine. A lot of them are fraudulent and some of them are epileptic seizures or whatever. But I believe in God, I believe God is personal and that God exists and cares about the created order. I think it's a very reasonable belief that God interacts with creation and that experiences people have of interacting with God are profound and deeply meaningful.
This is more infuriating blather. Gould and Dawkins do not claim that evolution as a religion, or that it should be treated as one, and neither do I; that would be ridiculous, since if I were equating the two, that would mean I think people ought to grow out of their absurd faith in evolution. Evolution is not a god-of-the-gaps enterprise, either — we have positive evidence for natural phenomena, and reasonably extrapolate those phenomena to tentatively explain what we don't know…and most importantly, suggest observations and experiment that can further expand our knowledge. It's the inverse of a faith that seeks solace in unexamined beliefs about the voids in our understanding, filling them in with fantasies and demanding that those darned nosy scientists leave them alone.
And far from overlooking the reality of religious experience, we scrutinize that reality far more carefully than the theologically inclined find comfortable. Where the pious see the Virgin Mary in a pita, we look and see cooked bread, random mottling, and a credulous brain that matches an irregular pattern to a familiar expectation. I think we have the more accurate and useful explanation; if the religious think they have a better explanation, then they're welcome to propose it and subject it to critical evaluation. If it's just nebulous, airy-fairy "you've got to believe" or "you've got to respect our faith" B.S., then they can go get in line with the dowsers and UFOlogists and Bigfoot fans.
I don't think Giberson sees universal spiritual truths in the Madonna-in-a-pita phenomenon (but maybe he does; I'll have to read his book to find out), but he does believe in something equivalent. He is not a literalist looking for a bearded man in the sky described in the bible, but instead has this vague metaphorical notion that if he melts down the bible in the philosophical flux of his personal beliefs, he'll be able to extract something ethereal and true from its words — a beautiful, loving, personal god who thinks he is really, really important and wants to give him eternal life in a paradise. That's his Madonna-in-a-pita, his credulous imposition of an expected pattern on the swirling chaos of generations of ravings and noise and poetry that is the Christian faith. I suspect he is sincere in his delusion.
It's still just as wrong as expecting a god's dimensions to be spelled out in Imperial units in a mathematically defined pattern of letters in the book of Daniel. It's all pareidolia, pure and simple, and there is no reason given that we should respect that — it's simply assumed that all matters of faith deserve reverence.
Screw that.
Look at the bible as a pastiche, a collection of mutually and often internally inconsistent fragments slapped together for crude reasons of politics and art and priestly self-promotion and sometimes beauty and a lot of chest-thumping tribalism, and through that lens, it makes a lot of sense. It does tell us something important…about us, not some fantastic mythological being. It tells us that we are fractious, arrogant, scrappy people who sometimes accomplish great things and more often cause grief and pain to one another. We want to be special in a universe that is uncaring and cold, and in which the nature of our existence is a transient flicker, so we invent these strange stories of grand beginnings, like every orphan dreaming that they are the children of kings who will one day ride up on a white horse and take them away to a beautiful palace and a rich and healthy family that will love them forever. We are not princes of the earth, we are the descendants of worms, and any nobility must be earned.
Theologians like Giberson who try to impose their fantastic personal delusions on a book like that actually interfere with our understanding — they betray the entirely human story that we should be trying to extract from it. I will have no truck with the perpetuation of fallacious illusions, whether honeyed or bitter, and consider the Gibersons of this world to be corruptors of a better truth. That's harsh, I know — a Giberson isn't the clear, present danger of a fundamentalist theocrat, but he is undermining the core of rationalism we ought to be building, and I find his beliefs pernicious rather than malignant. But that's still something we must resist.
What do you know: Jason Rosenhouse has already written a review of Giberson's book.
Politics
Comments
The latest book on similar lines:
"Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion" by Stuart Kauffman.
http://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Sacred-Science-Reason-Religion/dp/0465003001
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman
"Stuart Alan Kauffman (28 September 1939) is an US American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher concerning the origin of life on Earth. He is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection, as well as for proposing the first models of Boolean networks."
Posted by: Shan | July 1, 2008 2:14 PM
Thanks for that. The penultimate paragraph is PZ at his best and most memorable.
Posted by: Don | July 1, 2008 2:15 PM
Posted by: H.H. | July 1, 2008 2:17 PM
The interview reminds me why I detest the rarefied apologetics of sympathetic theologians as much as I do the bleatings of the purblind literalists
Oh, but they're interesting, PZ. The great Henry Gee tells us so!
Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 1, 2008 2:19 PM
Just scanned down the article - he can't be too bad, no Comic Sans!
Posted by: mr-zero | July 1, 2008 2:21 PM
Is there a wave of this sort of stuff coming down on us? When my mother recently visited, she was looking for a book called Thank God for Evolution!: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World. We couldn't find it at the local bookstore and eventually determined that it hadn't been released yet. I note that now it is. It's by one Michael Dowd, described on the Amazon page as a former YEC. Anyone heard of this guy?
I wonder if this phalanx of conciliatory books is a reaction to the clutch of so-called New Atheist books that have appeared over the last few years.
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | July 1, 2008 2:23 PM
I've read the christian bible. I've read what people have to say in its favor, and I've read what its critics have to say. I have long listened to people on both sides of this argument. I even went and saw "Expelled" and thought, "This is the best they could do?"
I don't want to go so far as to say I'm an atheist. But, if there is a God, he or she or it is completely irrelevant.
And if the judeo-christian god exists, he or she or it is either a dick or an idiot or a very unappetizing combination of the two.
And you can tell yhvh I said so.
Read my upcoming book, "God doesn't give a shit and he thinks you're an asshole."
Posted by: Hoosier X | July 1, 2008 2:23 PM
Best line I've seen in a good long while!
Posted by: qetzal | July 1, 2008 2:25 PM
Amen!
Posted by: Reginal Selkirk | July 1, 2008 2:27 PM
Yeah, I reviewed Thank God for Evolution. Didn't care for it.
Posted by: PZ Myers | July 1, 2008 2:27 PM
#6 Bill Dauphin wrote:
PZ reviewed the book last year:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/thank_god_for_evolution.php
Posted by: Shan | July 1, 2008 2:29 PM
Shan@1,
Looks like Kauffman's going for a Templeton!
Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 1, 2008 2:30 PM
These are people who sit down to a fine meal, rich with delicate flavors, and sprinkle dried bullshit on it ... and then declare the ripe, repulsive flavor of dung was the best part of dinner.
LOL! Actually, that's something my dog would really appreciate!
Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 1, 2008 2:33 PM
Yeah yeah, consciousness also appears during waking from the unconsciousness during sleep every morning. It's clearly not an impossible mystery.
That said, I don't especially mind his apologetics. Sure it's BS, but it's BS made compatible with sensible knowledge. If it weren't that, it would simply be religious BS. Considering that many check their minds with religious BS, I'm glad that some will smuggle openness to science into their religious BS.
As pure thought, I am not in favor of it. As a didactic exercise, I do like it.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | July 1, 2008 2:34 PM
Something which always pops into my mind whenever I see the word "apologetics":
If you have to keep apologizing for it, why do you keep doing it?
Posted by: Ktesibios FCD | July 1, 2008 2:34 PM
Posted by: Zombie | July 1, 2008 2:35 PM
It was a fine day when I finally realized that even the most reasonable, intelligent and educated theist was just as deluded as the most slack-jawed creationist. Both groups begin with faulty premises; it only gets worse from there, just in different directions.
Posted by: Will E. | July 1, 2008 2:35 PM
I wonder if this phalanx of conciliatory books is a reaction to the clutch of so-called New Atheist books that have appeared over the last few years. - Bill Dauphin
I would guess so - and if so, they are evidence that the Overton window shifting strategy works!
Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 1, 2008 2:36 PM
PZ, you're such a good writer. You should write a book on atheism and science for the masses.
Posted by: MZ | July 1, 2008 2:36 PM
Well said PZ. I especially took notice of the bullshit on the fine dinner and the orphans dreaming they are nobility parts.
As for Madonna on a pita, I liked her early stuff, bought her latest CD. Is that the title of her next album?
Posted by: mr_p | July 1, 2008 2:36 PM
Giberson is not a "fundamentalist" since he is trying to unite secularism with the Bible. A true fundamentalist would never unequally yoke together two opposing principles such as secularism and Christianity. Karl Giberson in fact has been used as a tool to try and counter "fundamentalists" in their approach to the origins of life. He was invited to speak at the Vatican who also has embraced evolution so years ago as their official document revealed. I think you use the term (fundamentalism) too loosely PZ. Just because one believes in the existence of God, and takes a few things as face value, doesn't mean they are "fundamentalists". Just like in the political world, there are conservatives and liberals in different parties. For example, there are conservative Dems known as Reagan Democrats. And then there are mainstream Democrats which would be considered as liberal and so on...
Posted by: Michael | July 1, 2008 2:40 PM
Curiouser and curiouser. Just a couple weeks ago, the information-desk person at our local Borders very clearly told me and my mother that Thank God for Evolution had not yet been released, and actually gave us a specific release date. Yet when I look more carefully at my own Amazon link, I see the publication date listed as last November... and when now that I look at it, I recall reading PZ's review. I didn't make the connection because I was thinking of this as a brand new book.
[Totters off muttering to self...]
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | July 1, 2008 2:41 PM
#8 -
Agreed. That line really stood out for me too. I may steal it for my email sig.
Posted by: spencer | July 1, 2008 2:43 PM
Giberson dispensed with Biblical literalism. Good for him. Then he wrote:
Where's his sophisticated theological argument for that?
This tailor is friendly and well-spoken, but the emperor still has no clothes.
Posted by: ndt | July 1, 2008 2:43 PM
...go get in line with the Bigfoot fans...THAT was really funny PZ. :)
Posted by: Patricia | July 1, 2008 2:44 PM
Tsk, tsk, Michael. Work harder at it. I'm plainly saying that Giberson is not your bible-thumpin' fundagelical, and I don't like him, anyway.
Posted by: PZ Myers | July 1, 2008 2:45 PM
For example, there are conservative Dems known as
Reagan Democratshalfwits. - MichaelThere, fixed it for you.
Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 1, 2008 2:47 PM
Wow, that's a wonderfully powerful and stylish and succinct and freaking awesome critique. This post is one of PZ's best.
Posted by: Mike | July 1, 2008 2:51 PM
It's always a fair point to note that faith claims are unsubstantiated and ultimately explain little. But I think we would go to far in asserting that the general thrust of liberal theology )that there is a God who's mark is in some Bibley Code way apparent through study of all sorts of myths and spiritual perspectives) is just plain irrational or invalid.
It's possible that's its the case. Our strongest position is not to deny that possibility, but to simply point out that there's no fundamental justification for believing it.
Pareidolia is definitely an excellent analogy here.
I've also long wondered why it is that liberal christians retain the Bible at all in its calcified, official form. That seems to me to be a fundamentally, well, fundamentalist preoccupation (one true set of words), as opposed to what I would expect from liberal theologians, which is the use of lots of different text modern and new, without any special place for whatever a couple of 3rd and 4th century people unilaterally decided.
Posted by: Bad | July 1, 2008 2:54 PM
This is the most objectionable:
Some almost certainly do go too far into fictions such as "materialism" and "naturalism".
That said, we do not properly (and many of us don't at all) insist that everything has "purely naturalistic causes". We simply note that what we see does not deviate from physics, and indeed, that anything "supernatural" would seriously call into question the amazing reliability of thermodynamics and the rest of physics.
In court you don't get away with claiming that a miracle got that lady's pocketbook into your possession--because that's a dishonest claim. So are any miracles which lack the requisite evidence to show violations of the "natural order" (that is, all miracles). It's simply a matter of being honest with one's experience that makes us deny miracle claims, not an absurd claim that we are omniscient and may thus deny all possibility of miracles.
He overlooks the fact that "religious experiences" are not exclusive to the religious, and they are far from demanding any kind of religious explanation for them. Indeed, the acid experience is quite suggestive that it is the result of chemicals and the rest of brain physics.
Who denies their genuineness? We simply deny that anything more than physiology is involved in them--according to the available evidence.
And just what sort of evidence could show that epileptic seizures are any less "genuine religious experience" than any other brain state is? The fact that he denies the divinity of epilepsy and insanity only indicates that his is an incoherent worldview. You can either accept all spiritual manifestations as indicating the truth of some realm beyond "objective awareness", and thus believe the insane, or you can learn to be skeptical of all religious experiences (without, of course, denying that they are real and meaningful to the person).
He wants his "experience of the beyond" to be credited, without his being willing to allow that certain insane folk far surpass his "knowledge of the beyond".
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | July 1, 2008 2:55 PM
Posted by: David | July 1, 2008 2:57 PM
Will E.:
Except that educated theists will sneer that, because you don't have an advanced degree in godification, you're a philistine who can't possibly understand their sophisticated arguments. But I agree with your point--I've never understood how building a towering edifice of logic atop a foundation of flawed premise is supposed to produce anything but epic fail. I've come to believe that so-called sophisticated theology simply uses complexity as obfuscation, in the hope that you won't notice the inherent circularity of its arguments.
Posted by: Epikt | July 1, 2008 2:58 PM
Michael, PZ never used even used the word "fundamentalist" except when he wrote "Giberson isn't the clear, present danger of a fundamentalist theocrat."
So it would seem your single criticism is utterly baseless. Save yourself some time in the future and actual read something before you waste energy typing up unrelated responses.
Posted by: H.H. | July 1, 2008 2:58 PM
"I wonder if this phalanx of conciliatory books is a reaction to the clutch of so-called New Atheist books that have appeared over the last few years."
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
Posted by: Rey Fox | July 1, 2008 2:59 PM
Ref. #1
There may not be a christian theological deceit in Kaufman's Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion , but it looks like an out-and-out anti-atheist book:
Posted by: Shan | July 1, 2008 3:04 PM
Now if it was just the non-believers and the believers like Giberson in the world, I think we could have lovely discussions, and not trouble each other too much in the long run. Sadly, it's the moderates which allow the fundies who just ruin it for everyone. *sigh*
Pareidolia in text... bravo!
Posted by: Nicole | July 1, 2008 3:04 PM
We are not princes of the earth, we are the descendants of worms, and any nobility must be earned.
Well said. We do have the ability to annihilate the earth, however, along with every other species on it, but... that makes us something else entirely.
Posted by: John Farrell | July 1, 2008 3:05 PM
I have got Mark Vernon's After Atheism: Science, Religion and The Meaning of Life. He used to be an Anglican (Episcoplian to you Colonials) Priest but got disillusioned and became and Atheist, got disillusioned, a PhD in Philosophy and now he is arch proselytiser for a muscular agnosticism. it is driving me to distraction and I am only on page 50. He seems to be building up to a sophisticated form of Pascal's Wager. He seems to have swapped the Bible for Socrates as well, as though we have learned nothing about the human condition since either, sheesh.
I got it out because it has this from Michael Shermer on the cover:
'I rcommend this work be read by skeptics and believers alike.'
Must find the full review to see the context of that I think. I have had too much good beer (Innis&Gunn beer matured in Malt Whisky barrels and Tripel Karmeliet from Belgium, a live Trappist beer) to be able to read any more tonight without blowing a fuse...
Posted by: Peter Ashby | July 1, 2008 3:06 PM
I desperately hope that those reviews of Kauffman's book are simply wishful thinking on the part of some fundie reviewers. Kauffman always struck me as an eminently sensible (read: non-theistic) guy, at least from what I knew of him from Waldrop's book "Complexity" (which I highly recommend). If Kauffman really has turned out to be a fundie nutjob, I've just lost one of my long-time heros.
Posted by: co | July 1, 2008 3:08 PM
Schlock is like the tide... it never stops coming in.
Posted by: Trent Eady | July 1, 2008 3:11 PM
This concept was probably the key for me to abandon all the pretense of belief in God. I knew that it was idiotic to not believe literally, but then again, if you don't believe literally, you end up chosing arbitrarily what to believe or not. If you are just going to pick and chose what parts you want to accept, in what way is that book any different from any other, which I could just as easily pick and chose from?
If I am picking and chosing parts I like, what is a Holy Book actually teaching me? Nothing I don't already know, apparently. So who needs it?
Posted by: Pablo | July 1, 2008 3:15 PM
PZ, is there no nobility in the Lowly Worm?
At least it looks great in a Tyrolean hat!
http://burningideas.com/applecar/
Posted by: Longtime Lurker | July 1, 2008 3:16 PM
#39 "co" wrote:
He seems like a New Agey kind of guy (at least his book smells like thick ambitious woo.)
Posted by: Shan | July 1, 2008 3:19 PM
Wot, no reconciling fact and fiction?
Posted by: Dagger Up The Strap | July 1, 2008 3:32 PM
"... despite all the stuff we can't find, and have never seen..."
Apparently physics doesn't have to rely on things "we have never seen," except, of course, you know, atoms, or the electromagnetic spectrum or all those weird little particles with funny names...
"and we know this with such certainty that we insist the knowledgeable buy into this idea -- goes way too far."
Yes, we know that those who don't "buy into" the idea will get EXPELLED...someone should make a movie about it....
"...overlooks that religious experiences are very common and meaningful for a lot of people..."
Unless I'm wrong, all science "overlooks" that. Are we to understand that physics incorporates "religious experience" into its analysis?
Sorry...first time commenting here...this guy really annoyed me...
Posted by: Roland | July 1, 2008 3:32 PM
Bravo PZ.
Your message deserves a larger audience. You're still young, get to work on the book.
It's nice to read someone so concisely explain why the call for reconciliation is really a call for unwarranted respect by riding on the accomplishments of rational thought and skeptical inquiry.
Posted by: Alex | July 1, 2008 3:39 PM
Fixed. See also Barbara Forrest on naturalism
Posted by: windy | July 1, 2008 3:40 PM
If you use Cain and Able as allegory for Humans and Neanderthal...
...and you view the Creation story by thinking of the 5 big extinction events as the end of a day...
...and you say that the laws of physics are simply tools found in God's toolbox with the word "miracle" used for tools we don't yet understand...
...you're still talking out of your ass.
Posted by: Ibid | July 1, 2008 3:41 PM
It's unbelievable how much credibility so many idiots on this planet place to some supposed mythological and legendary stories that happened in some backwater corner of the world. All the Abrahamic religions place the foundation of their beliefs on some ancient cobbled-together mesopotamian stories that were then truncated to fit the needs of a migrating people, who also borrowed heavily from Egyptian and subsequently Zoroastrian mythology. This whole nonsense of chosen people and the thousands of years of chaos that has since resulted is utterly stupid and illogical. I do beleve it speaks of our nature as intelligent but highly unpredictable apes who need some form of comfort when ignorance is the only way of life. As knoweldge, rationality, empirical evidence, and the scientific methods progress, we must shirk off these false comforts and embrace the universe as it truly is. An astonishing place capable of supporting life, yet, apathetic to whether said life survives or goes extinct. Such is reality, and no amount of wailing, chanting, praying, flailing, penance, self flaggelation, self immolation, rain dancing, or for that matter, any other stupid half-hearted method of achieving comfort can ever fully change the nature of the universe. Our goal and purpose is what we choose to do with our intelligence, and that should be in exploring and attempting to postulate and ultimately try and answer as many questions as we can, before our atoms disperse among the nebulous vastness of space and time.
Posted by: Helioprogenus | July 1, 2008 3:42 PM
I have to echo Mike, #28. More than extremely well expressed!
Posted by: John S | July 1, 2008 3:44 PM
Isn't it interesting how Giberson sees evolution as having "so much of its data missing" but doesn't seem to realize that Stephen Jay Gould is dead (as he speaks of him in the present tense)? Perhaps it is a niggling point, but why would we trust a man's knowledge of evolution when it looks like he thinks one of the most well known popular writers of science of the 20th century is still alive?
Posted by: Andrew K | July 1, 2008 3:48 PM
I read Mr. Giberson's comments this morning and now, surfing over here, I see that PZ has already done a masterly job of reflecting on it. My own opinion is that after reading the interview I cannot understand why someone as rational as Mr. Giberson bothers with any religious beliefs at all. If having religion is not meant for moral purposes, or as way of explaining the world, but only as a means to share the "spirituality" (read: superstitions) of the human past it hardly seems worthwhile to even get up a small Inquisition. Many of the comments at salon.com on the original interview suggest most readers see through this. And the argument that evolution is a "religion" since it has to extend itself by inference overlooks the idea that evolution is based on facts and an observation of the natural world whereas at least the Christian religion seems founded on a questionable book and nothing more.
I have to say that after months of reading this blog and Dawkins', I wonder why we still have yet to actually make it into the Age of Reason.
Posted by: Leslie in Godless Canada | July 1, 2008 3:51 PM
@#37:
Meh. Us, or a kilometer-sized hunk of asteroid. What's the diff?
Posted by: David | July 1, 2008 3:51 PM
I think the reviewers are reading too much into Kaufman. I've always found him reasonable and interesting. And he is an atheist (he's said as much in several of his articles), but he does speak of spirituality in a way that could easily lead a fundie to think he was anti-atheist.
Posted by: The Science Pundit | July 1, 2008 3:53 PM
I've come to believe that so-called sophisticated theology simply uses complexity as obfuscation, in the hope that you won't notice the inherent circularity of its arguments. - Epikt
I think, in most cases, it's more so the theologians won't notice the inherent circularity of their arguments.
Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 1, 2008 3:57 PM
PZ, Given your output, I am amazed at how you always write well and structure your thoughts clearly, but that penultimate paragraph is in your top tier. Save it for he best of PZ
Posted by: sailor | July 1, 2008 3:58 PM
Excellent post.
For several years I used to sit in that middle ground, if you can call it that, between science and faith where Giberson seems to dwell.
I grew up in a nominally Christian household, though we never were big church-goers or anything -- we were one of those Christmas and Easter only families.
Throughout college I pretty much used the same "religion and evolution aren't incompatible" line, though of course I always reviled creationism, particularly ID. But I think any faith sort of started gradually wearing away as my knowledge of science increased and I realized that actually, they are kind of incompatible. Seeing how religion breeds violence and they way religious conservatives treat gays, etc. kind of helped wear the faith away too.
I do think that understanding and studying religion has its value if only purely from an anthropological view as a mirror looking back at us and our societies.
Posted by: astroande | July 1, 2008 4:01 PM
Why should we accept that this uneven hodgepodge of scattered writings by authors of varying degrees of talent and lunacy is an inspired insight into the mind of his god at all?
Who's this "we" you're referring to? Judging by the title, it sounds to me like he's specifically addressing Christians. So they take it as given that the Bible is the word of God. Did he ever say that non-believers should buy any of this? Try not to take everyhing you read personally. :-D
Posted by: Cheezits | July 1, 2008 4:02 PM
To me, this is the point about atheism; if you are going to be an atheist, then damn it, be a complete one. If you are going to hang onto one minor segment of religious nonsense, then you are deluding yourself and any true atheist you may come in contact with. I am not several of those descriptions that are ascribed to wishy-washy atheists, and I am sure we all know what they are. There was a similiar discussion here sometime last year about being an atheist and still liking religious music and art and other needless trappings associated with religion. I was roundly critisized and fed a litany of excuses why you can still be an atheist and still find enjoyment and meaning in religious rituals and expressions. Religious music, art and architecture is composed and designed to glorify a non-existent entity and to visually and aurally impress upon the senses the existence of that entity. If one sees a church, is there an immediate vision of fries, hamburgers and soda? If one sees a religious painting, is one compelled to reason that the image must be real because it is depicted as so? If one hears a "Missa Solemnis", is the tune and words transposed into "Bogalousa Strut"? The intent of the aforementioned is to instill a religious impression upon the beholder and nothing else. Now if a former church had been closed and now contains books in the form of a library or bookstore, then the religious intent has been erased and the function has nothing to do with religion. Form follows function, whether it be a church, religious music and painting, and is meant to convey only that purpose. As many posters here know, I have no ambiguous feelings toward religion and it's adherents and express my utter contempt for religion in all it's forms and meanings. PZ's description of Karl Giberson's hedging religiosity in a manner that I find disengenous and false only confirm and entrench my view on being all or nothing. Have the cake; and eat the damn thing too.
Posted by: Holbach | July 1, 2008 4:02 PM
But PZ, that pastiche is a window into the mind of a god -- it's just that their God is schizophrenic, and often psychopathic. Giberson is right --- just not in the way he wishes he were.
Options:
Intelligent Design: No evidence, and possibly self-contradictory. Non-falsifiable.
Malevolent Design: Some evidence, yet still possibly self-contradictory. Non-falsifiable.
Psychopathic Design: Non-falsifiable, but eminently possible and consistent with reality.
Posted by: frog | July 1, 2008 4:07 PM
David at #53
I think the idea that should not be diminished is that humans have the capacity to be highly deterministic when applying large forces and energies, while asteroids do not.
Posted by: Alex | July 1, 2008 4:15 PM
I didn't see this in the comments so far,but I have to say this: Its a good start.
Lets face a big whopping fact here. Tomorrow morning everyone is not going to wake up and realize that there is no god. They won't wake up and think "Hey! maybe we should stop legislating religion into our government". They certainly aren't going to wake up and become outspoken atheists.
People hate change. When Obama talks about change its extremely superficial. People just want Bush gone. That is all they hope for with change. Most people worry about fundamental shifts in our societal mechanisms, our political structures, and our religious priveledges.
So while I certainly wish everyone would just wake up and start focusing on humanity and tolerance of humanity and stop going by what the most charismatic person tells them, its just not going to happen.
We need folks like this guy to start helping to make understanding of evolution not so scary and not so against their religious upbringing. We need religious folks to say its OK to believe what the scientists are saying.
Even the Southern Baptists are doing this (well, to a small degree). Once there is some semblance of acceptance of scientific learning and progress, religion will slowly fade into the "side dish" we all hope it will become. I don't see how we can get there without guys like this.
Posted by: Techskeptic | July 1, 2008 4:16 PM
"We are not princes of the earth, we are the descendants of worms, and any nobility must be earned."
Well said! The more so because, according to the Christians' own New Testament, the "prince of this world" is Satan (John, 12,31-32)...
Posted by: Irene Delse | July 1, 2008 4:16 PM
co #39, doesn't look like Kauffman has become a fundie nutjob so much as he seems to have embraced newage woo in a big way. The whole 'the universe is concious' thing. Still might be reading it worng. May have to check it out of the library when I'm done with Microcosm .
Posted by: Natasha Yar-Routh | July 1, 2008 4:18 PM
Aw man....not Stuart Kauffman too. Hitchens is right, religion does poison everything.
Posted by: TheNaturalist | July 1, 2008 4:19 PM
It tells us that we are fractious, arrogant, scrappy people who sometimes accomplish great things and more often cause grief and pain to one another. We want to be special in a universe that is uncaring and cold, and in which the nature of our existence is a transient flicker, so we invent these strange stories of grand beginnings, like every orphan dreaming that they are the children of kings who will one day ride up on a white horse and take them away to a beautiful palace and a rich and healthy family that will love them forever. We are not princes of the earth, we are the descendants of worms, and any nobility must be earned.
Sorry; that was so damned good, I had to see it again. PZ, I read you for your content more than your style; in stylistic terms, you write quite well, but you're no Roy Edroso. (Who is, other than Roy?). But often enough to count, you hit your stride, as in the bit quoted above. And when you do, you feckin sing.
Posted by: Mrs Tilton | July 1, 2008 4:19 PM
If I understand what the book is getting at, I suspect it will go over well with the "so long as you believe in something" crowd. They're not a bad crowd. . . but pointless and sometimes annoying. Let's face it: if you claim it doesn't matter where you go to get your "spirituality," and on top of that, you accept evidence-based reality and that there is no evidence for God, then going to church isn't really all that different from playing Dungeons & Dragons, is it? So, why not give all of your money to charities that will spend more on helping the less fortunate (and less on World Youth Days and abstinence-only sex ed), seek out a good group of gamers, and roll up a cleric of Loviatar. . . er. . . Tyr?
Posted by: Jeph | July 1, 2008 4:24 PM
wow-- This shows again that PZ is a lot more attached to his athiesm that he is to educating people about science, because people like Giberson are the best hope for science in America. If people have to follow PZ to an rejection of all religious belief in order to accept science, you can be pretty confident that the anti-scientific attitutes of the current US president are going to continue to dominate in the next few centuries. Humans are just not willing to give up on the search for a consciousness greater than themselves.
Posted by: ganv | July 1, 2008 4:25 PM
Humans are just not willing to give up on the search for a consciousness greater than themselves.
Evidence from western Europe says otherwise. But then, for some people, OWHITUSAC!
Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 1, 2008 4:29 PM
Jeph @ 67
"They're not a bad crowd. . . "
But the larger, and less obvious, point is that moderates give safe-harbor to the extremists. I think Sam Harris makes that point quite well, but it is expressed quite often where this kind of analysis is done. When a muslim extremist kills non-combatants, or a xtian freak murders a doctor for "killing" babies, the first and most vocal denunciations should come from within that religious community. Most usually, it does not.
Posted by: Alex | July 1, 2008 4:30 PM