Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: her God problem

A few weeks ago we posted about a bunch of crazy rabbis flying over Israel and blowing horns to save their countrymen (and the women, as long as they stayed segregated) from swine flu. We got a few comments, mostly respectful but with the common theme that we were being culturally insensitive, if not intolerant. As someone brought up as a Jew, I recognized the syndrome. It may be crazy, but it's our craziness. Hands off. It put me in mind of a really fine piece by Natalie Angier, one of our best science reporters (and New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner), author of The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science. It was a piece originally published in The American Scholar in 2004 called "My God Problem" and you can read the whole thing here.

Angier is an atheist. I don't think I'd call her a militant or angry atheist, but I'd call her an honest one and "My God Problem" calls out the critics of the New Atheists even before the phrase was used. While writing The Canon she says she was nagged by scientists she interviewed to take up arms against the irrational Creationists and to skewer the woeful public ignorance that didn't appreciate rejecting evolution was evidence of inexplicable superstition, if not stupidity. As she points out, however, when it comes to socially acceptable superstition in the form of religion, too many scientists find discretion the better part of valor. The piece is so full of superb and articulate observations it's hard not to just quote the whole thing, but I won't. You should read it yourself. But here's a sample:

Consider the very different treatments accorded two questions presented to Cornell University's "Ask an Astronomer" Web site. To the query, "Do most astronomers believe in God, based on the available evidence?" the astronomer Dave Rothstein replies that, in his opinion, "modern science leaves plenty of room for the existence of God . . . places where people who do believe in God can fit their beliefs in the scientific framework without creating any contradictions." He cites the Big Bang as offering solace to those who want to believe in a Genesis equivalent and the probabilistic realms of quantum mechanics as raising the possibility of "God intervening every time a measurement occurs" before concluding that, ultimately, science can never prove or disprove the existence of a god, and religious belief doesn't—and shouldn't—"have anything to do with scientific reasoning."

How much less velveteen is the response to the reader asking whether astronomers believe in astrology. "No, astronomers do not believe in astrology," snarls Dave Kornreich. "It is considered to be a ludicrous scam. There is no evidence that it works, and plenty of evidence to the contrary." Dr. Kornreich ends his dismissal with the assertion that in science "one does not need a reason not to believe in something." Skepticism is "the default position" and "one requires proof if one is to be convinced of something's existence."

In other words, for horoscope fans, the burden of proof is entirely on them, the poor gullible gits; while for the multitudes who believe that, in one way or another, a divine intelligence guides the path of every leaping lepton, there is no demand for evidence, no skepticism to surmount, no need to worry. You, the religious believer, may well find subtle support for your faith in recent discoveries—that is, if you're willing to upgrade your metaphors and definitions as the latest data demand, seek out new niches of ignorance or ambiguity to fill with the goose down of faith, and accept that, certain passages of the Old Testament notwithstanding, the world is very old, not everything in nature was made in a week, and (can you turn up the mike here, please?) Evolution Happens.

[snip]

So why is it that most scientists avoid criticizing religion even as they decry the supernatural mind-set? For starters, some researchers are themselves traditionally devout, keeping a kosher kitchen or taking Communion each Sunday. I admit I'm surprised whenever I encounter a religious scientist. How can a bench-hazed Ph.D., who might in an afternoon deftly purée a colleague's PowerPoint presentation on the nematode genome into so much fish chow, then go home, read in a two-thousand-year-old chronicle, riddled with internal contradictions, of a meta-Nobel discovery like "Resurrection from the Dead," and say, gee, that sounds convincing? Doesn't the good doctor wonder what the control group looked like?

[snip]

I recognize that science doesn't have all the answers and doesn't pretend to, and that's one of the things I love about it. But it has a pretty good notion of what's probable or possible, and virgin births and carpenter rebirths just aren't on the list. Is there a divine intelligence, separate from the universe but somehow in charge of the universe, either in its inception or in twiddling its parameters? No evidence. Is the universe itself God? Is the universe aware of itself? We're here. We're aware. Does that make us God? Will my daughter have to attend a Quaker Friends school now? (Natlaie Angier, My God Problem)

I don't know what Natalie Angier would say about a bunch of bat shit crazy rabbis with trumpets flying around on an airplane to ward off the consequences of a tiny hunk of protein and genetic material that can get into a human cell and make copies of itself (NB: it didn't work; Israel still has lots of swine flu. Surprised?). But why any scientist should consider them just a cultural variant while people who believe, often just for their own amusement, that the astrological sign they were born under can affect their daily life are stupid morons seems more than a little off to me.

Anyway, read all of "My God Problem." And be Enlightened.