The F-word

Credibility, once lost, is hard to regain.

Very nice post. Indeed, The Science of Discworld is a great book series.
One additional thing about teaching: the more the public/students/school children hear the same message presented in different ways, the more they have a chance to understand it, because people learn in different ways an what might bring the illumination to one might remain obscure to others (plus, the more they hear it the more they might realize it is important). This is were all the different ways to present the message have a place...

My mother was a primary school teacher in the UK. As she recounts it, her greatest reward was to see the light of understanding suddenly dawn in a child's eyes after struggling to grasp something that had hitherto been incomprehensible.

She would sometimes have to try many different approaches until she eventually hit upon one that worked and it seems to me that this is true about the public debate about science. There is no one true and infallible method by which scientists can educate the scientific laiety about their disciplines.

The framers fear that the bluntness and unbridled passion for their subject of some scientists might offend some of their audience who are of a religiously sensitive disposition and lead them to harden their hearts against anything coming from that source.

The frameless despise what they suspect is nothing more than an attempt to hide inconvenient truths from people who need to know them - a form of scientific political correctness at best or downright lying by omission at worst.

Both are right because there is no one approach that works for all. It has been said, quite correctly, that you do not encourage people to listen sympathetically to what you have to say by calling them idiots. On the other hand, where idiots are making a career out of fostering idiocy in others, they need to be exposed for the charlatans they are in no uncertain terms.

Winston Churchill wrote that there is no certain way of winning a war between equals, they only thing to do is keep trying. The framers have some useful advice about tactics but their strategy is far less certain.

I think that what happens in education is that all the students get the science education in the primary grades; but then science becomes a series of "electives" later on. Students that opt out of science courses in secondary schools aren't given the analytical tools in later years to be able to shed what they have learned in the early years.

So, as adults, when they hear denialist claims that sound "science-y" they kind of remember the terms and definitions that they learned when they were younger. They never learned what to "do" with the early knowledge. The denialists know this, at least subliminally, so they use the terms and common knowledge to support their positions without the fear that their target audience won't be able to call them on their falseness.

When I was in third grade, we studied mercury. We needed special gloves and were given a warning lecture on the dangers of mercury ingestion, absorption and vapor inhalation. The fish and wildlife service issues warnings on eating more than three meals of fish caught from native lakes and rivers because of trace amounts of mercury absorbed into their fatty tissue. Then later, they learn that vaccinations contain thimerasol and thimerasol contains mercury. Contact lens solution manufacturers label their packaging "thimerasol-free."

While reported cases of autism rise, someone botches a study on the relationship between thimerasol and autism. Frustrated parents dealing with an autistic child latch onto the thimerasol claim and all hell breaks loose.

The same thing happens when AGW-denialists and creationists adapt the language of science to their propaganda; the general public just hasn't picked up the tools needed to evaluate their claims and so they latch on to those claims which confirm their biases. The general public think that they are evaluating critically because the denialists use terminology with which they are vaguely familiar.

I don't buy the claim that scientists and professors are poor communicators. Even though you aren't technically a "scientist," John, you do an excellent job of communicating science to those who will read and listen. The public face too many distractions to take much time to pay attention, and that is where I think that the problem lay (lies? whatever.)

Mike, it would be 'lies'.

If you place something down, you lay it down, as in 'lay down the law'. The 'law' would be the 'direct object' of the verb 'to lay'. If there is no such direct object, then the verb is 'to lie'. Sooo, "My baby is lying in her crib" (to lie) versus "I am laying my baby down for a nap" (to lay).

Signed: grammar teacher attempting to frame her subject for an audience consisting of (mainly) nonspecialists in that field. How'd I do, folks?

Broken frame: Of course, complicating matters is that the past tense of 'to lie' is 'lay', and maybe Mike was trying to use the past tense. Damn, an understanding of grammar can not be conveyed through the recitation of simple rules. Sigh. Now I can really sympathize with you folks.

John wrote: "So long as it isn't trimming and spinning, why not? We have to fight the PR wars somehow, and we won't do it by naively repeating the information as if to fill a gap in public knowledge. The public usually do not care, and they need, for the well being of the common weal, to be made to care, just as they do for civics, mathematics and hygiene."

This is an excellent point, and I also agree that other voices need to speak up. What doesn't work is doing a 'data dump,' and also what doesn't work is conflating atheism with science, or telling religious people that they are irrational, deluded, and/or stupid. For the 'wobbly middle' moderately religious audience that the framists have been talking about, I've seen the reactions to combining science with patronizing talk about religion, and the effect appears to be to make this particular public care more about defending religion.

"Framists"?

Bah.

Would you want an advocate of framism lurking anywhere near your child?

To achieve anything like academic respectability, framians must become framioticists!

John,

When you say "I think, and I have said repeatedly on this blog, that science doesn't lead to atheism or theism, and that those who claim it does are wrong" do you mean that accepting science does not mean you HAVE to reject theism or do you mean that some people who study science do not reject theism as a result of what they have learnt about what theism and science have to say about the world ? I can see the former is arguable, but the latter would be very wrong indeed.

My historical geology professor explained undergraduate education in geology thusly. "We lie to you for a year, and then spend three years trying to convince you that we lied to you." He also pointed out that, although there were excellent introductory texts written by eminent geologists, we used a mediocre text written by junior college instructors so as to try to avoid authoritarianism. It is unfortunately true that one tends to retain the first things one learns about a subject.

I think the teaching of classical genetics is an excellent example of going from the narrow truth to a wider and wider truth.

Ian Spedding (comment #3) hit on it - we should put school-teachers in charge of framing instead of Nisbet! Works for me.

But I don't agree that you're lying to children. Lying suggests an intent, often malicious or selfish, to deceive. That's not what you're doing (unless you're a creationist!). You're educating, which is entirely different (unless you're a creationist!).

Ian Spedding writes:

The framers fear that the bluntness and unbridled passion for their subject of some scientists might offend some of their audience who are of a religiously sensitive disposition and lead them to harden their hearts against anything coming from that source.

That doesn't sound accurate to me. Is anyone complaining that (for example) biologists are showing too much passion for biology?

John, is your claim that science doesn't lead to atheism one of those lies that is useful for teaching purposes? It's not that I think that the decline of traditional religion over the last two centuries was caused by the emergence of evolutionary theory or the growth of geological knowledge. I don't. Secularization had other and deeper roots. Thing is, though, the fact that science did not discover anything to bolster traditional religion is a hugely important part of the story of how we got to the present situation. All those Cambridge dons back in 1800 knew that the world was older than 6,000 years; but they expected that natural history would bolster a theistic or at least deistic view of the universe that could reasonably be harmonized with an allegorical reading of Genesis. Imagine what the debate between PZ Myers and the Christians would be like if genuine empirical evidence of intelligent design had emerged from decades of research. The dog never barked. Biology does not explain why secularism won; but it does have a lot to do with why traditional religion lost, at least among educated people.

The defenders of traditional religion know they are being conned when liberal theologians and irenic philosophers insist that evolutionary theory is not hostile to their religion. Of course it is. The assertion that biologists and geologists are not doing theology is formally true and important to recognize, but it doesn't change the practical fact that in the real world biology is the enemy of the faith. If only to accord a decent respect to our adversaries, we ought to credit them with correctly understanding that much about the state of play.

The defenders of traditional religion know they are being conned when liberal theologians and irenic philosophers insist that evolutionary theory is not hostile to their religion. Of course it is.

But even if evolutionary theory does lead to the demise of "traditional religion" (whatever the heck that is, given how much religion has change over time), it still does not follow that it leads to atheism. It just means that "traditional religion" will have to change again.

Great statement, John.

One thing - coming from *here*, is it going to appear upside down to those reading it *there*?

Just another thought...

I only came into this "framing" issue recently, due to the obvious "we'll take it from here" posts.

Prior to this, as the "Expat Yank Down-Under" that I am, I had noticed the term "framers" being used on many of the Fox-News shows and thought that when I was a kid, we never spoke of "The Framers" as the right-wing was doing then. When I saw the first few blogs on this, I wondered slightly what this had to do with The Constitution.

Jim: you ask if the claim that science doesn't lead to atheism is a lie to children. I say no.What leads to atheism is either being raised as an atheist or finding that you are deeply disappointed in theism in some way. But if you are, then you can retain a form of theism that evades the disappointment, and do so rationally. Some atheists might contest that, but then they would, wouldn't they?

As I've often said here, if your religion contradicts the facts then you'd better revise your religion, but there's no reason that a religion cannot be consonant with the facts as they stand, so long as the core commitments of that religion are not contrary-to-fact. That is, if your religion believes as a core doctrine that the earth is flat and 6000 years old, so much the worse for your religion; but most religions adapt to novel facts and knowledge, so what you must do is shift your religious commitments accordingly, should you need to retain religious belief.

In that sense, a religious believer need not abandon religion per se in the face of the facts. So I do not think that learning about evolution (or physics, astronomy, geology and neurobiology) automatically means one must abandon religion, no. And it is not an oversimplification here, but a rejection of the argument that science does necessarily lead to atheism. That is itself a contrary-to-fact claim.

On framing/spin/agendas etc.

I suspect that we have more than one frame going on here and people have a tendency to mix them up.

1) Some people want science taught in science classes, simply that. So, as has been seen in the USA it is most times religious parents who have argued and fought against non-science being pushed into science classes help by the NCSE and scientists who also wish to have science taught in science classrooms.
Allies in a comon cause.

2) Some people want to destroy, eliminate, ridicule religion and anyone who is a theist or doesn't hold to their style of materialist dogma; they desire everyone to become their type of atheist (they seem not to know that not all atheists are materialists or wedded to scientific methodology as the only path to Truth).

The second set claim, or appear to, that if everyone was an atheist then scientists would rule (they assume that this would be good) and everyone would magically become bright and as uber-rational as they are and the world would be without evil. (If religion is the root of all evil then no religion equals no evil seems to be the rational).

This set claim that science = atheism, factually untrue but they aren't always rational.

3) A third set wish to impose their particular religious views and also hold that science = atheism. They are anti-atheism and anti those religious people who don't hold to their particular dogma.

They agree with the 2nd set that science = atheism.

4) There is a 4th, very large group, who watch from the sidelines or don't even know that a fight is happening.

Now sets 2 and 3 are very noisy and so garner media attention. Sad but true with modern media and the need for soundbites.

They are both happy to attack the first group and ignore the fourth group.

Now those who wish to have science taught in science classes really shouldn't be suprised that group 2 pisses on them. They have a different agenda so are fighting a different battle, their aim is to convert others to their beliefs, similar in that respect tp group 3.

If the aims are different then of course the framing will be different.

It's clearly true that science doesn't necessarily lead to atheism.

But it's also true that science has historically put pressure on various religious views of the world and continues to do so. Obviously you can modify your religion endlessly to accommodate science, but not without giving up something - even if it is only giving up whatever claims your religion tends to make to providing an encyclopedic understanding of the world. Many religionists no longer want to do that but (a) the ones who do (such as YEC creationists) are in real intellectual trouble, and (b) the ones who don't are also in trouble, since they are tending to lose one of the things that make religion attractive in the first place, i.e. its ability to explain so much in one more-or-less coherent system.

I can't prove that the image of the world that has come out of science so far is incompatible with any and all religious views. In fact, it isn't ... because you can always develop a theological view that's compatible with whatever body of scientific theory is well-corroborated at any particular time. However, given enough space and time, I can prove that well-corroborated scientific theory is incompatible with the a lot of the religious views that dominate European thought before science came along. What is more difficult to prove - but I think is clearly correct at the end of the day - is that science has been putting together a picture of the world that's seriously in tension with a basic ideas that Christianity, in particular finds it very difficult to cast off: i.e. with certain conceptions of human exceptionalism; with the claim that God is a providential being; and, perhaps less importantly, with the image of a world that is haunted by angels, demons, and other non-material spirits (and not just by lingering superstitions about spirits).

If you have to set aside those ideas or else redefine them theologically, you may well reach a point where you wonder whether the game is really worth it. No wonder that many scientifically-literate people do abandon religious belief - seeing its different versions as either just too implausible or just too ad hoc.

Felix Salmon of Conde Nast has a review of Expelled that raises some issues for framists and their opponents alike:

The film sets up Dawkins, Myers and other atheists against the likes of Eugenie Scott, of the National Center for Science Education, who sees less of a conflict between science and Christianity. And weirdly the film comes down on the side of the atheists in this debate: Darwinism does lead to atheism, we're told over and over again, by atheists and believers alike.

At this point it's worth remembering that atheists are America's least trusted group - if you want to stir up an irrational response directed against any group of people, one of the best ways of doing that, in America, is to label them atheists. ...

[I]n America; "atheist" is very much a negative term. And while Expelled naturally can't do a very good job of persuading its viewers that Darwinism is unscientific, it can do a good job of persuading them that it's atheistic. It's cheap, and underhanded, and pretty bloody effective.

And so it goes ...

Mr Wilkins wrote:

What leads to atheism is either being raised as an atheist or finding that you are deeply disappointed in theism in some way.

I don't know if I'm exceptional or unique but I seriously doubt it and I have to say that I did not become an atheist in either of the ways that you suggest. My father was an atheist and my mother was agnostic but I didn't discover this until after I myself had become an atheist.

As a child growing up in a small rural village in Britain in the 1950s and 60s I received the normal religious education at school and until I was about ten went to the local Baptist Sunday School. I was also a Boy Scout, an overtly Christian organisation in those days, until I was fourteen and regularly took part in church parades for Armistice Day and similar occasions. I took an active interest in Christianity and even won prizes in scriptural knowledge quizzes. Although my father was an atheist he believed his children should receive a solid knowledge of Christianity because it is the largest single forming factor in European society and you can't understand that society without that knowledge. He also believed in letting his children decide for themselves, as did my mother.

Around the age of thirteen I started actively examining the information that I had been supplied with by the Christian community instead of just passively consuming it. This examination, carried out without any feeling of disappointment, aggression or any other negative emotions, led me quite simply to the conclusion that there are no grounds whatsoever for any form of belief in any form of deity and so I declared myself an atheist. Over the next ten to fifteen years I read about and researched many forms of religion and mysticism and their histories and saw no grounds to change my standpoint and have never done so. Along the way I picked up some useful tips for my own private lebensphilosophie mostly from Buddhism and Taoism.

As a historian of science I am very thankful that I posses the knowledge of the religions and their histories that I do as my work would be impossible without it and if I had children, which I don't and now never will, I would, like my father, want them to have at least a basic knowledge of the major belief systems and their histories because of the influence that they have exercised in the formation of the culture in which we live. I would also want them to be free to make their own choices or rejections of belief systems. Just for the record my elder brother is a charismatic born again Christian, my eldest sister is a main stream Anglican, my next eldest sister is a typical non-active nominal believer who probably has no idea what she actually believes in and my younger sister is like myself an atheist.

Post scriptum

I fully accept your, that is Mr Wilkins', stance that for the given knowledge situation agnosticism is actually more rational and more justified than atheism but I have never claimed to be rational. ;)

John,

I expect that a good many Fundamentalists would rather become atheists than sign up with some version of rationalizing, liberal Protestantism. After all, Fundamentalism began as a protest against liberalizing tendencies in the church. Anyhow, from a marketing point of view, accommodation is a non option since Fundamentalism appeals to mass audiences because of and not in spite of its intransigence. Rationality would screw up the business plan.

Modern biology, geology, and astronomy contradict the literal version of Christianity. If evolution is true, Fundamentalism is false. But evolution is true. Ergo... It's an instance of modus ponens those guys understand perfectly well. There's nothing wrong with their grasp of logic on this point. You can tell them that they are free to adapt their theologies to the facts. They will decline.

As I wrote above, I don't think that the emergence of evolutionary thinking was a major cause of the advance of secularism, and I completely agree that one always figure out ways of harmonizing a modified theism with science--apologists have even fewer intellectual scruples than defense attorneys. Anyhow, a lot of the substance of religion has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of propositions. Ritual and emotion are not menaced by natural selection. That said, the discovery that so much of the workings of nature could be explained without appeal to providence really does change the situation. It doesn't require anybody to be an atheist, but it removes one of the previously cogent grounds for belief. And it isn't just the tenets of the Fundamentalists that are undermined in this fashion.

I don't know if it is practically wise to highlight the problems science makes for existing forms of belief. In particular, I don't think it makes sense to exacerbate the contradictions in order to promote atheism, if only because I don't think that there's anything particularly wonderful about atheism or intrinsically horrible about religion. I just don't want to mistake a rhetorical tactic, however useful or even admirable, for a valid argument with true premises.

I think John Harrison is making good points, except that I'm not sure whether I agree that there's nothing intrinsically horrible about religion. Perhaps "intrinsically horrible" would be too strong, but ...

(1) If you buy seriously and non-sceptically buy into a religion, your whole life will be lived in thrall to a worldview that is fundamentally and pervasively false, and it is likely that everything you do and say will be distorted. I actually think that that's a pretty bad fate. I'd like to rescue people from that fate to the small extent that I can (using nothing but liberal means, such as persuasion). (2) Religions tend to preserve moral norms that may or may not have once been functional in the societies in which they originated, but are certainly not so functional now. The result is often a cruel disconnect between the way religion tells you how to live and the way of life that would actually be flourishing and pleasurable - and perhaps better for your neighbours as well as for you.

Perhaps this doesn't matter so much, because religious people can still feel happy, even if their happiness is based on the illusion that they are living the most moral or correct way of life in the service of a deity or a supernatural principle. But, worse, the religious are often eager to impose their way of life on others by means of the coercive power of the state. They are always trying to ban something or other, whether it's abortion, alcohol, divorce, contraception, homosexual acts, stem cell research, rival belief systems, or whatever.

We have some choices here: we can insist on liberal tolerance, according to which the state does not impose contentious religious and moral beliefs - taking some proposals off the democratic agenda. I think we should do exactly that, but it's not a complete answer.

First, many religious leaders have no commitment to liberal tolerance; sometimes they merely pay it lip service, and at other times they are explictly opposed to it. Second, oftentimes religious and moral beliefs that are not well-founded are nonetheless not actually all that controversial within a particular population for historical reasons, even though they perhaps should be, since they have little evidence in their support. Third, there are many grey areas, since most moral claims that are motivated by a religious worldview can be given some kind of secular translation, even if the translation seems implausible to sceptics. Weak secular arguments can obtain great popularity within an electorate if many people in the electorate have a visceral response that is based more on their religious instincts. For these reasons, it is often only the most blatantly sectarian claims (e.g. compulsory belief in transubstantiation) that end up being completely off the political agenda.

If really do oppose popular religious moralities, we can't just trust that religious lobbies and the electorate will favour liberal tolerance across the board and interpret it in a way that narrows their right to enlist the coercive power of the state. We also need at least some people to attack religion's moral pretensions directly, and since the morality may claim to be backed by revelation that can mean attacking the religion itself.

I think it's healthy that our society have a constant stream of fairly high-powered people expressing scepticism about religion and backing up their scepticism with arguments, including arguments about the almost-inevitable tensions between religion and science.

This may not destroy religion, but that's not necessarily the aim. It can help create a social ethos in which there is widespread scepticism about the authority of religion. To me, that's healthy. It can also put pressure on religion to adapt to social and intellectual change and become something more benign. To me, that's also healthy.

As for framing. There is some contradiction between what I described in the last two paras above and the masterplan of trying to tell existing religious demographics that science poses not threat to religion ... and so should be more appealing to the religious. I'm afraid that I'm unlikely ever to accept that this masterplan - which is Matt Nisbet's - should be allowed to override the great social benefit of some people in each generation (like Dawkins and PZ in ours) continually putting intellectual pressure on religion.

But it comes back to what John said in his post, if I understood him correctly. Let all viewpoints be put. Although I disagree with Nisbet, I won't try to shut him up. On the other hand, if he tells me to shut up he'll get the same sort of terse and hostile response that he got from PZ.

If someone tried to use the coercive power of the state to prevent Nisbet saying "Shut up", I'd defend him. In that sense, but only in that sense, he has the right to say it.

But once it's said, PZ has the same right to say "Fuck you very much," or whatever. I think that that's an appropriate response to "Shut up." When you are told to shut up, the conversation has moved to a meta-level where you need not follow it: no one should need to feel that they have to justify their right to argue for their view, as opposed to giving their arguments for the view itself.

While the article and most of the answers already cover the debating points, one point is conspicously missing: The reason for the F-Word.
Matt Nisbet wrote the article: Why the PZ Myers Affair is Really, Really Bad for Science. What he effectively wrote there was simply: Shut up, PZ and Dawkins.
And that is IMHO a really bad example of stupid framing from an "expert". You can argue with people about their impact and try to convince them to alter their discussion tactics. If they don't follow your advise (which is their right, noone needs to listen to you), it is best to distance themselves from their opinion and show that their opinion is not uncontested and - even better - that they are a minority. Every person understands that there are people in groups who are obnoxious; in fact, it would be suspect if a group lacks such people.

But people are extremely reluctant to follow an advise to stay silent by acting like a teacher in public. The whole article from Nisbett has a condescending and berating
attitude. I wouldn't have said: "F*** off !", but a "Mind your own business !" would have left my mouth immediately.

Worse, in case of the "Expelled" expulsion the complaints of framers are off the point. There is no way anyone can put a positive spin of throwing out film interviewees while complaining about intolerance and suppressed opinions.
The framers seems to be so impressed by form and presentation that they ignore the valuable content of a message. Controversy is *not* bad if the message is embarassing for the "Expelled" makers.

Oops, I mean "Jim Harrison".

Well, I can't say I've never been a John...

19th Century doctors used to insist that self abuse results in everything from blindness to insanity, heart trouble, and hairy palms. Sure enough, whatever the disease, it turned out that the suffer had in fact played with him or herself at some time or other. QED. Similarly, every form of evil can correlated with religiosity because religion is pretty much coextensive with humanity. By the same logic, however, every form of good can also be related to religion. Hard to explain particular effects by omnipresent causes. Tying specific ills to particular beliefs or practices might get you somewhere, but that would require a more serious examination of history than the usual automatic reference to the Crusades or the Inquisition.

I'm a philosopher, though perhaps a philosopher only in the sense that a bad poet is still a poet. As such, I reject the various religions because they make claims that are pretty obviously false. The truth or falsity of propositions is what matters to me, so I don't have to educe other reasons to reject systems of beliefs once I've decided they are false. Anyhow, I don't find that the usual polemics against religiosity are based on much familiarity with religious traditions and institutions. What you mostly encounter is one-dimensional view of history retailed by people whose experience of human culture is largely limited to the sciences. You can't even call the world view of the village atheists on the web positivism. Mostly it isn't that reflective or worked out.

I think Mrs Patrick Campbell's well-known saying about homosexuals could apply equally to the religious:

"Does it really matter what these affectionate people do so long as they dont do it in the streets and frighten the horses!"

Daryl McCullough wrote:

Ian Spedding writes:

The framers fear that the bluntness and unbridled passion for their subject of some scientists might offend some of their audience who are of a religiously sensitive disposition and lead them to harden their hearts against anything coming from that source.

That doesn't sound accurate to me. Is anyone complaining that (for example) biologists are showing too much passion for biology?

I think we can assume that the religious sensitivities of true believers are unlikely to be offended by some boring old fart droning on incomprehensibly about the more inaccessible reaches of string theory (no offence intended to any string theorists who might be reading).

But a Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers or David Attenborough or Jacob Bronowski who can speak with both passion and knowledge about their speciality is, I suspect, perceived as a threat by some of the faithful, if only at a visceral level. Not only does scientific knowledge threaten to undermine the authority of a faith's dogma but if it is presented vividly and comprehensibly it becomes an attractive nuisance. People stop, look, listen, ask questions and, maybe, try to find out more. And that is the last thing fundamentalist faith's want.

The other thing about "unbridled passion" is that it is "unbridled". It is unlikely to be confined just to a primary interest but may boil over into other areas such as philosophy or religion or politics. This is an even greater threat to the believer. A passionate advocate for a verified body of knowledge and coherent, testable explanations over which they have no influence is again the last thing they need.

Rightly or wrongly, the framists give the impression that they fear the heat generated by the controversy surrounding resurgent atheism. They are afraid it could polarise opinion into two opposing camps each of whom who would be utterly immune to persuasion by the other. To stretch the heat analogy, though, if the temperature rises high enough the energy can be emitted as light.

Yes, the argument about belief has become hot-tempered at times but it has also stimulated some productive and, dare I say say it, enlightening debates. That is to be encouraged, not suppressed.

"Rightly or wrongly, the framists give the impression that they fear the heat generated by the controversy surrounding resurgent atheism. They are afraid it could polarise opinion into two opposing camps each of whom who would be utterly immune to persuasion by the other. To stretch the heat analogy, though, if the temperature rises high enough the energy can be emitted as light."

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The inclusive community is the hope of human beings. From Scott Peck's book "A world waiting to be born", it depicts four stages of community building process; 1. Pseudo-community, 2. Chaotic stage, 3. Empty stage, 4. True community stage.

At this moment, it seems that the debates between two opposing groups are in stage two; chaotic stage. Does the framing help to move towards empty stage or backwards to pseudo-community stage? It depends on the debate quality of the respective stances. If truth, light, love and vibrant life are the goals of debating (pursuit), then both parties shall relinquish their assumptions from time to time, and be humble enough to get enlightenment from each other.

Sometimes, I think the stance of agnostic perhaps is more humble and more able to bring inclusive community.

"As a historian of science I am very thankful that I posses the knowledge of the religions and their histories that I do as my work would be impossible without it and if I had children, which I don't and now never will, I would, like my father, want them to have at least a basic knowledge of the major belief systems and their histories because of the influence that they have exercised in the formation of the culture in which we live. I would also want them to be free to make their own choices or rejections of belief systems."

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Thanks for the authentic sharing. It has been the successful point of this blog; authentic and genuine posts no matter what stance that you have taken.

In general, scientists are the persons who are the least assertive; the updated discovery will change the belief system any time. For instance, my field in marine virus by latest metagenomics tell me that more than 90% (maybe more) virus are un-named and un-identified, so much unknown in our nature.

One of the challenges for religious person is to respect other person of the different religious backgrounds.

Over all the inclusive community building indeed is the thing that modern people need to be disciplined.