In this week's Point of Inquiry podcast, host DJ Grothe and I share a wide ranging discussion about the relationship between science and religion in the United States and the impact of the New Atheist movement. Much of the discussion revolves around the themes that I explored in the presentation at the AAAS panel on "Communicating Science in a Religious America."
From a description for the show:
In this discussion with D.J. Grothe, Nisbet highlights the recent AAAS panel he organized titled "Communicating Science in a Religious America." He details his ideas for the most effective strategies to engage the public about science issues, and debates whether the warfare metaphor of science versus religion undermines science education, and contrasts the approaches of leading scientists like Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson. Nisbet also explores why it might be advantageous for secularist activists to re-prioritize when it comes to working in coalition with the religious around certain issues of concern to the science-education community.
In the presentation at AAAS and in the Point of Inquiry interview, I use a metaphor first coined by the journalist Andrew Revkin in describing the communication dynamics of climate change, but as I explain the metaphor can also be applied in understanding the influence of the New Atheist movement.
In this case, when it comes to communicating about science and religion, there is a vast invisible middle of perspectives emanating from both atheist and religious scientists, religious leaders and various traditions, as well as organizations such as the National Academies or AAAS. This perspective--that focuses on the many shared common values and goals between science and religion--rarely if ever gets prominently heard.
Instead, on the bell curve of perspectives, by far the loudest and most visible messages originate from the extreme tail ends of the spectrum. On the one end you have religious fundamentalists who claim that science undermines moral values and therefore should be opposed and at the other tail end of the distribution you have the New Atheists who claim that science undermines the validity of religion or even respect for religion.
The result is polarization and a constant drumbeat of conflict in news coverage. In fact, in the analysis I presented at AAAS looking at close to thirty years of news coverage of the relationship between science and religion in the national press, the results show that the major spikes in attention overwhelmingly occur around creationism court cases and that within this coverage, a dominant lead metaphor for these stories is one of warfare.
As you will hear at the end of the Point of Inquiry program, I talk about how the New Atheist movement confronts atheists and secular humanists with some hard choices. In fact, we may now be at a crossroads in the movement.
-->Do we embrace the Dawkins model, further intensifying the beliefs of people who already agree with us, but otherwise only contributing to polarization in society? In other words, just one more loud voice in the argument culture.
-->Or do we pursue the EO Wilson and Carl Sagan model, understanding that we may always have different worldviews from other Americans, but that we otherwise share far more in common in terms of many core values and goals?
There's another even more central question: how long will it be until we realize that in emphasizing these common shared values that we can achieve real social progress, tackling major issues such as education, climate change, poverty, income inequality, and/or the weaknesses in our electoral and democratic system?
As I argue in the interview, by working with a diversity of groups on these latter problems while also building up new forms of cross-cutting community interactions, secular humanists may actually best achieve their goal of promoting a secular America.
In the end, the choice boils down to this: Do we want more of the same in terms of identity politics and polarization or do we want to come together with a plurality of groups in society to work for real change that will make a difference.
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This reminds me of the futility of citizens trying to clean up corrupt police forces by making compromises. Give and take cannot work unless both sides enter in good faith.
Every individual's interests span a wide variety of concerns, and most are able to separate those. When environmentalists band together to preserve some local wetlands, they don't require of each other that they share views on religion, entertainment, diet, or even political issues beyond the one at hand. Similarly, those in a local sports league don't qualify their mates on political grounds. It is this usual separation of concerns that allows people to join with those who share their values in one area, and with different groups in different areas. I can think my neighbor an absolute crank on science, yet still value his work on civic issues.
What you seem to be suggesting, though, is something quite different. I don't know any "common values and goals between science and religion." Obviously, yes, some people practice both, and those who practice either may share other kinds of interests. But that doesn't mean science and religion have any more "common values and goals" than do bowling and vegetarianism.
I, a secular humanist and a retired scientist, share with my religious sister: the common value of respect for our parents; the value and goal of providing a quality education for children; the value and goal of alleviating poverty; the value of courtesy and fairness in the debate of issues; and, the goal of making our country a decent place to live.
These values and goals, along with many others, bind us together in our search for meaning in our lives.
I sincerely question the intellectual honesty of people who state that common values and goals do not exist between science and religion. They do exist, in all of our lives. Without them family and friendship would not, could not, survive.
Not every scientist respects her or his parents, shares the same nation or has the same goals for the various nations, or cares about alleviating poverty. Those are fine values and goals, but I don't know that they have much to do with science. Consider that your first paragraph would have made just as much sense had it been written by someone who began it, "I, a secular humanist with no interest in science,.."
Scientists are concerned with education. But let's be careful not to pretend that a common phrase has the same meaning when spoken by different individuals, just because the words match. Both the scientist and the fundamentalist preacher will say they want "quality education" for their children. That doesn't necessarily mean they share a common goal or will have the least agreement about what constitutes that.
Now yes, of course, almost any two individuals will find that they do share some common values and goals. That doesn't say anything much about science and religion, beyond pointing out that those who practice such are human.
An analogy may be useful here. Smokers and physicians will share a wide variety of common goals and values. Both groups will be interested in decency, justice, and making a better world for the future. Those who American hopefully will share common civic values by virtue of that. These two groups overlap: there are physicians who smoke. And smokers are interested in health issues. They will diet and exercise and do a wide variety of other things for the sake of their health.
Nonetheless: smoking and health are antagonistic. That doesn't mean that we should stigmatize smokers, that physicians never smoke, that physicians shouldn't be friends with those who do smoke, that smokers don't care about health issues, that physicians won't share a lot of values with those who do smoke or those who own stock in tobacco companies, etc. We're all people.
Still: smoking and health are antagonistic.
Dr. Nisbet -- I recently discovered your blog and just listened to the podcast mentioned above. Thank you for your work. May your funding never cease. I am a member of the 'invisible middle' mentioned above; I'm a religious person and a retired scientist, who was also an atheist for several years.
By New Atheists, I presume you mean the atheist fundamentalist crowd that has hit the bookstores in the past few years. I see them as secularism's equally embarrassing counterpart to Pat Robertson. I have read Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens. When it comes to religion, they are polemicists who apparently preach well to the converted; but when it comes to promoting critical thinking, reason, or science, they use so few of those skills in their attacks that they make poor ambassadors for critical thinking, science, and reason to the broader culture.
I agree with you that it's all about what people want to accomplish: if secular and/or religious people want to promote science in the broader culture, they will have to recognize that proselytizing an unprovable worldview (science is no more capable of proving or disproving metaphysical naturalism than it is of proving or disproving theism) is not the way to garner public support for teaching and promoting science.
Science has so many strengths of its own that it need not be hijacked by naturalist proselytizers, any more than the promotion and teaching of ethics need be hijacked by supernaturalist ones.
Anna K writes:
The chief problem with metaphysical naturalism is defining what counts as natural. Any attempt to draw a substantive a priori distinction between the natural and unnatural, and then limiting the domain of science to the former, is contrary to both the spirit and methodology of science. As soon as we find evidence for extraterrestrial visitors, reincarnation, and fairies, we will study those as we now do quarks and quantum decoherence. That last, by the way, is about as strange as anything formerly imagined. On the other hand, if by "natural" one means just that for which we have evidence, then it becomes simply a short-hand reference to current knowledge, and it makes no sense whatsoever to posit metaphysical naturalism as some sort of basis or assumption of science.
The core conflict is not between religion and science, but between faith and reason. Not all religions require faith. But those that do, such as those that require their adherents to believe in some god for which there is no evidence, build the irrational into their core. They will conflict with science substantively as believers spin empirical implications of their faith, such as floods and creation stories and the homuncular soul, and methodologically, since a leap of faith is simply contrary to the way science proceeds. A believer can insulate their beliefs from the substantive conflict, by rejecting any aspects of religion that have empirical content. Methodologically, that protects their first irrational act ("I will believe in this fantasy because I want to believe in it") by a second irrational act ("and protect it from any contrary evidence by never letting it intersect in testable fashion the world we experience").
BTW, I've never heard anything particularly new in the new atheism. Is far as I have seen, it's new only in the sense of popularization. Nor is the issue one of science, but of sense versus fantasy. As Clarence Darrow put it, before Dawkins was born: "I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose."
Russell,
From reading your post in response to mine, your framing appears to be:
Religious believers are irrational and deluded and will cut any intellectual corner to protect their fantasies.
To my mind, the communication strategy that follows from your frame is:
Therefore, the best way to promote scientific literacy, scientific knowledge and funding for science in the public sphere is to tell religious believers that they are they are irrational and deluded, and have forsaken their intellectual responsibilities.
However, on your post at 10:10, it seems you advocate for 'separation of concerns' -- that is, I take it that you can see the possibility of working together with a neighbor on civic issues, even if you think he is a crank when it comes to science. (I am going to make the further assumption that when you think of the general public, you feel surrounded by 'absolute cranks' when it comes to science.)
So my questions for you are:
Do you think people have to buy into your worldview and your definitions of faith and reason, to appreciate and understand science?
Given that most people claim to believe in God, which you say is irrational, what do you think would be the best way to promote science and advocate for scientific knowledge and funding?
Anna, you won't be surprised that I disagree with what you suggested would follow "from my frame." My view is that it is infrequent that religion is or ought to be discussed in promoting science. Just last week I returned from talks on whooping crane conversation and monarch butterfly migration, and heard nary a word mentioned of religion. I had no idea what the religious beliefs were of those who gave the talks, nor of those who were in the audience. Exactly as it should be, in my opinion.
Where faith comes into conflict with the teaching or practice of science, for example, at a school board meeting where some want creationism included in the curriculum, I think the best frame is separation of concerns. "Your faith tradition teaches this. Other faith traditions teach other forms of creation. Every one is free to choose their faith tradition and to teach it to their children. But the public schools don't have that purpose, and in a science class, let's teach science." It serves absolutely no purpose in that arena to criticize religion. The important thing is to distinguish it, to defend science in the public school science classroom, to advocate for the American principle of the separation of church and state. Very likely, the best thing to interject into the "frame" for that discussion is the legal precedent established, and why it was established.
But. People also will discuss religion. Including scientists. It is the rare scientist who is interested only in science, or in advocating for science, and not in anything else happening in the larger culture and world. You may think that Dawkins's book on religion is a lousy way to advocate for biology. I suspect that wasn't his intent in writing it, but to lessen the influence of religion. It's fair to question whether his book will have any success at that. As you point out, it's far from clear that rational discussion has much effect in areas where people are purposely choosing belief over reason.
And what counts as "proof". Science is not in the business of ultimate proof, so what puts proselytizing an unprovable world view in a different category than proselytizing ultimately unprovable theories like germ theory and Big Bang cosmologies? Clearly science can differentiate among world views to some level, so we need some more info here than the bland assertion that theism is off limits.
In practice, no you can't. If your neighbor lacks the specific data necessary for him to recognize that his positions are wrong, all you need to do to end his crankhood is provide him with the information. If it's not a matter of ignorance, then his reasoning is wrong, and that irrationality is highly unlikely to be sequestered away from his understanding of civics.
How can a group work together to protect a wetland if they do not have a shared understanding of how the wetland is in danger and what actions must be taken to protect it? Science is the application of rationality to our attempts to understand the world. It is not a thing we can disagree about and still work together. It is not a thing we can be wrong about and still take effective action.
Religion and science have mutually exclusive methods. They have incompatible goals. We can't have our cake and eat it too, and the people who reassure us that we can are trying to deceive us for their own ends.
Caledonian writes:
My observation is that people do in fact compartmentalize their thinking. I frequently encounter people who will show more than a bit of erratic thought, or even downright lunacy, on some topic such as religion or their ex or the latest health fad they have adopted, yet are quite rational when thinking on other issues. The cognitive model that people have an overarching "reasoning component" in their psyche that if faulty or not applied in some area, therefore will be faulty or not applied in other areas seems plainly mistaken to me.
Really? I work with people all the time on all sorts of endeavors, without first checking their views on science.
Yes. That is precisely the problem! Most people are consequentialists, too.
When you compartmentalize to keep correctness away from error, you cannot eliminate the error by appealing to correctness.
My experience is that the vast majority of people are totally irrational and do not wish to be rational in the first place. Genuine rationality is so rare that, lacking examples of it, the word is usually applied to things that aren't actually rational at all.
'Reasonable' as it tends to be used has nothing to do with reason, and everything with fulfilling expectations of familiarity and declared correctness.
I strongly suspect that you don't work with people who think the wetlands can be improved by draining, bulldozing, and developing them. So to speak. You work with people who share your conclusions about what goals should be desired and what methods must be used to reach them. Science is what justifies the conclusions.
Do you not care whether your positions are actually justified? Most people do not.
Caledonian writes:
Yes, cooperation often stems from commonality on some goal, and to some extent on method. It doesn't require complete agreement.
More for the wetland example than for many other issues. Even there, it would be silly to give some kind of biology exam to those involved, allowing only those who score high marks to participate. And downright counterproductive to exclude those who believe in some silliness in areas outside biology.
Sure. But you're raising a very different issue: How much I should care about the thinking of everyone else who might participate in a common effort? More, how much I should care about their thinking on issues other than the one at hand? It is relevant. Particularly on an issue such as wetlands protection, efforts likely include an educational component so that those involved better understand the biological importance of the particular area, and are better able to communicate that to others. But not everyone involved has to become an expert. And why should anyone involved care if one member has some completely outrageous and irrational views of their ex, unless that member behaves in such a fashion that that becomes an issue in the group's efforts?
There are already two churches focused on group mental hygiene. It's not accident that hey both have "scient" as part of their name. Nor that they are nuttier than average. ;-)
As far as I could tell, you never quite answered Grothe's question about what should be done if evolution turned out to be incompatible with religion.
Today, after rereading this thread, I took my usual afternoon walk. As is my practice, today's walk was accomplish in a neighborhood in which I do not live. During that walk I asked those that I met whether they cared, in an effort to protect a wetland, that their fellow enviornmentalists were religious or secular humanists. (Of course, it was not a scientific study.) Of the seven strangers I met, seven stated they didn't care at all.
In a followup question, I rephrased the origianl question to inquire whether their actions as volunteer evironmentalist's would change if the person next to them had, at least once, insulted their religious beliefs. Six of the seven stated that they would find a different group to work with on a similar environment task.
It should come as no surpise to anyone, that how you treat people affects their willingness to work with you.
I continue to vote for shared core values and goals over that of identity politics and polarization.
Evolution is about as compatible with religion as a bacon sandwich.
I think it's important to separate out what is being framed before evaluating the success or failure of it. There is no obvious apples-to-apples comparison between E.O. Wilson's book on climate change and Richard Dawkins' book on the existence of god, and it is just wheels-spinning to suggest there is.
Matt Nisbet proceeds as though Dawkins wrote The God Delusion to secure greater funding for (American?) science education, win converts to an antipoverty program, or displace Al Gore as the best-known advocate for addressing climate change. Those sound like worthy enough causes but they have zero to do with The God Delusion.
If E.O. Wilson writes a book about whether god exists, or if Dawkins writes a book about climate change, we'll have a an "E.O. Wilson model" to compare side by side with a "Dawkins model" of framing on a contentious issue.
It is important to get framing right. But not every argument worth having will have a "silent majority" to call upon and rally. There is a need, at times, to say unpopular things.