On the eve of Expelled premiering in theaters across the country, Pew offers a wide ranging Q&A with Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project. The full interview is more than worth reading, but a particular exchange is revealing.
How can scientists - especially scientists who are religious believers, like yourself - do a better job of reaching out to these people and convincing them that these findings are not a threat to their faith?
That's a very difficult challenge. And I don't think we should underestimate just how threatening it is to someone who has been raised in a creationist environment to give that up. They have heard many times since they first came to church as a child that the creationist view is part and parcel of belief in God. And, they've been told, if you even for a moment begin to allow the possibility that evolution is true, you are on a certain path toward loss of your faith and probably worse, eternal damnation. So we have to recognize that in that circumstance, a simple logical argument and presentation of the data is not going to be sufficient in one sitting to change somebody's mind. And in fact, there will be strong resistance to even looking closely at that information because of the fear of what it might lead to.I also think that those of us who are interested in seeking harmony here have to make it clear that the current crowd of seemingly angry atheists, who are using science as part of their argument that faith is irrelevant, do not speak for us. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens do not necessarily represent the consensus of science; 40 percent of scientists are believers in a personal God. A lot more are rather uncomfortable about the topic but certainly would not align themselves with a strong atheistic perspective. To the extent that it can be made clear that the assault on faith, which has been pretty shrill in the last couple of years, is coming from a fringe - a minority - and is not representative of what most scientists believe, that would help defuse the incendiary rhetoric and perhaps allow a real conversation about creation.
As Collins accurately notes, the argument by Dawkins, PZ Myers, and other atheist hardliners that science undermines the validity of religion, even respect for religion, is at odds with the consensus view in the scientific community.
For example, as the recent National Academies report on evolution concludes: "The evidence for evolution can be fully compatible with religious faith. Science and religion are different ways of understanding the world. Needlessly placing them in opposition reduces the potential of each to contribute to a better future."
In a subsequent journal editorial, these core themes as featured in the report were endorsed by twenty professional science societies and organizations. As the editorial recommends: "These data indicate that Americans respect the expertise of science and education professionals and also look to clergy for guidance on scientific issues of potential relevance to religion. The value of encouraging each of these groups--including scientists who hold religious beliefs--to become involved in promoting quality science education cannot be overstated."
As I noted at the time of its release, by taking an audience-based approach to communication, the National Academies report was an innovative--perhaps even historic--step towards more effectively engaging the wider public on evolutionary science.
Yet the more things change, the more they appear to stay the same. With the release of Expelled in theaters this spring, we are once again trapped in what amounts to a perceptual Ground Hog's Day. On display in the film, and in the resurrected press coverage of intelligent design, are the two tail ends of the bell curve of opinion in the debate. These two voices continue to drown out the vast middle on the issue as represented by the National Academies, many scientists, religious leaders, and lay citizens.
At one end of the spectrum you have the loud voice of cultural conservatives like Ben Stein who claim that there is censorship in science and that evolution is part of a larger atheist agenda to undermine religion. At the other tail end of the distribution of opinion, the most visible affiliates of science are atheist hardliners such as Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers.
While these two maverick communicators are to be commended for their tireless work to counter the pseudoscientific claims of the ID movement, their paired message that science is indeed incompatible with religion likely only alienates many Americans who might not otherwise be concerned about the teaching of evolution in schools.
This unfortunate impact is only magnified in a carefully marketed documentary such as Expelled. A moderately religious and under thirty audience of movie-goers is likely to respond positively to Ben Stein as a familiar comedic actor and to be receptive to what for them is a preferred Comedy Central genre of public affairs content packaged as irony and satire. Moreover, they are unlikely to know many details about the Dover case or even to previously have heard about ID.
Yet for this audience, when Dawkins and Myers compare religious faith to knitting and hobgoblins or when they describe learning about science as inevitably eroding faith, Stein's central argument that "Darwinism" is part of a larger atheist agenda will be powerfully reinforced.
The coarseness of Dawkins' and PZ's commentary even has film critics bristling. In reviews otherwise harshly dismissive of Expelled, Jeffrey Kluger of Time magazine describes Dawkins and Myers performance as "sneering, finger in the eye atheism," while Justin Chang of Variety refers to Dawkins as "atheism taken to hateful extremes."
If Hollywood cognoscenti are offended, imagine the anger triggered among movie-going audiences?
To be fair, Dawkins and Myers report that they were deceived by the Expelled producers. They were originally told that the film was titled "Crossroads" and that it would be a documentary about the intersection of science and religion. If they knew the real focus of the film, they would not have agreed to the interviews. Yet it is unlikely that Dawkins and Myers would have said anything different for a PBS special on the same topic.
Dawkins and Myers are entitled to their opinion and as a fellow atheist I strongly support their right to voice criticism of religion. Yet at some point they need to consider the unintended consequences of their preferred brand of atheist punditry, and to recognize the pragmatism of the consensus message from the National Academies and other leading science organizations.
In their campaign, Dawkins and Myers may honestly believe that they are speaking truth to religion and that by adding their voice to the argument culture, they can raise awareness among the non-religious while potentially shifting society towards greater secularization. However, in coming decades, if the goal is to defend the teaching of evolution in schools and to maintain public trust in science and scientists, their message likely serves as a liability towards that end.
For those in the DC area, I will be discussing more of these themes in a presentation tomorrow (Friday) at the National Science Foundation, details here.
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Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ, Curator of Meteorites at the Vatican Observatory, former President of the Division of Planetary Science, American Astronomical Society, spoke on Tuesday 15 April 2008 to the Friends of Caltech Libraries.
Since he's known me for some time, he autographed my copy of his latest book -- "God's Mechanics" -- which is explicitly about the relationship between Science and Religion, based in part upon roughly 100 interviews with Silicon Valley "techies" about their views on the subject.
I enjoyed how he contrasted The Bible with the equally thick GRAVITATION by Thorne, Misner, Wheeler, which was also prominent on his book shelf since its publication. One is 2,000 years old and still worth reading. The other is, as he put it, 25 years old, and already out of date.
I appreciated his answer to my question from the floor, which ran something like this:
When you said that scientists aren't usually trying to prove something, you exposed the flaws in Stephen Jay Gould's
"Nonoverlapping Magesteria." Specifically, that he lists only two, and they don't overlap at all.
I have come to believe, from many sources that there are are least 5 kinds of "truth" that each have their own notions of "proof", of deduction, of evidence, of social protocol.
(1) Axiomatic Truth, the beating heart of pure Mathematics, from Euclid on. Given a set of axioms, and rules of deduction, and two people can sit down together or apart and prove the same truths or disprove the same falsehoods, up to the limits described by Godel, Turing, Church, Post, et al. -- but that is not the Physical world.
(2) Empirical Truth, from the Scientific methods, and, more recently, from Experimental Mathematics a la Borwein et al. That is, an evolved articulation of trial and error, with open publication and peer review, with a standard of independent verifiability in diverse laboratories.
(3) Legal-political Truth. If a jury declares O.J. Simpson "not guilty" of murder, then he is, by law, not guilty of that criminal charge. Another jury may find him guilty of a civil charge of wrongful death, as did happen. If a politician is elected by a plurality, he or she may claim a mandate from the people, and that is a political truth, regardless of circumstance.
(4) Aesthetic Truth. A song is beautiful or ugly to you regardless of what the composer, singer, or critic says. Same for a painting, a sculpture, a building, or (to a Mathematician), an equation or a sequence of integers. Except that one grows and changes over time, with education and with acculturation and with maturity. What first seems discord can become beautiful. People stormed out of Beethoven symphony premiers, or stormed out of art museums, outraged, and we now wonder why.
(5) Revealed or religious or mystical Truth. We are required by law to respect the diversity of individual beliefs in this domain, when teaching (as I do now, in public schools), and to respect the "separation of church and state" in specified ways.
No two of these forms of truth are the same, and much agony comes from the philosophical category error of confusing one with another. Legislating the value of pi to be 3 or 22/7 (as was alleged for the Tennessee Legislature). Outlawing an art form. China enforcing laws about Tibetan reincarnation. Seeking beauty in a test tube, or equations in prayer (unless you're Ramanujan).
I liked his answer, which included something like the following:
That you enumerated these suggests that you come from the techie world. All 5 converge on the human being. There are many different ways to do science. Is Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation a poem? A metaphor for how objects move? We can do science in various ways, and sometimes we don't even know which way we are doing it.
I enjoyed his argument that one can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God to a techie's satisfaction. In October 2007 I was one of the two participants in a big debate at Cal State L.A. on "Does God Exist" where I was the scientist/agnostic debating a rather well-known minister turned militant atheist. I did not try to prove the existence of God, but rather tore apart all of his attempts to disprove Him.
Although I often find PZ Myers entertaining, and did think that Ben Stein was funny in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (1996). But these two celebrities are indeed extremists.
There is a huge middle ground. The political purpose of extremism is, in my opinion, to shift the center, not to destroy each other.
The fact that only 40% of scientists believe in a personal god speaks much more loudly about the conflict between science and religion than do a few scientists writing explicitly atheist books. No one argues that this conflict is definitional. As Dawkins points out, there are many religious believers who do good science. But there is something going on that makes scientists less religious than non-scientists.
I agree that it is not the science, per se. There is no leap from evolution or quantum mechanics to the claim that there are no gods. But science teaches a kind of rigorous thought, and those who practice that in one area, then are apt to apply it in other areas. Religion is discarded not because it cannot be made compatible with science, but because it makes no sense on its own grounds. One doesn't have to be a scientist to recognize that. But more scientists do.
It no doubt is the case that "true" carries a variety of meanings that are conflated in ordinary use. Jonathan Vos Post aptly describes a few of these. Coming to this one, though:
Well, yes, the US Constitution guarantees freedom of religious belief. That may require respect for varying beliefs as a public school teacher. But that is a tepid, procedural respect, not the substantive respect of thinking such views make sense.
But scientific findings DO negate every particular religion, and leave only an unobservable-in-principle deist God unscathed.
For example, Christianity is based largely on the idea of original sin. This requires Adam and Eve, original humans. Evolutionary theory says no such thing ever happened: the allele-frequencies in hominid populations changed gradually over many generations to produce modern humans.
Like a house of cards, the rest of Christianity comes crashing down. Was Jesus sent to save us from the actions of a metaphoric ancestor? For that matter, historical sciences have failed to find a historical Jesus, so are we further to be condemned for not believing in a metaphoric savior sent to save us from the actions of a metaphoric ancestor?
All other particular religions make similar false truth-claims and false predictions, and are similarly debunked by science.
What's left as a reality-compatible range of opinions includes deism, agnosticism, and atheism. Dawkins merely points out that bottom-up (rather than skyhook) explanations have a long history of being true (nuclear synthesis of heavier materials, evolution, etc), and that top-down explanations result in an infinite regression without solution (the "who made the maker" problem), making even a deistic universe unlikely.
So, although science =/= atheism, atheism is one of the few world views that is compatible with science.
Completely separate from this academic is-there-a-God contemplation is "atheist anger", based far more on the politicization of religion than the persistence of religion. Greta describes it best:
http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2007/10/athei…
Even more impressive is the fact that the overwhelming majority of outstanding scientists don't believe in any god. Something like 70 percent are outright atheists and another 20 are agnostics.
Among biologists in the NAS, only 7 percent believe in a personal god, and IIRC most of those are something like deists; almost none are the kind of orthodox theists most Americans are.
There is a strong connection between deep scientific understanding and atheism (non-theism).
The awkward fact is that modern scientific knowledge definitely does conflict with the kind of religion most Americans believe in; given that, it tends to decrease the appeal of religion in general. Most people don't see the point of a non-designing non-person "god" that doesn't particularly care about them and isn't a moral authority.
I would be very interested in a serious, evenhanded discussion of the likely consequences of those facts becoming common knowledge.
I suspect that if most people knew that most outstanding scientists were atheists, it would be polarizing. Millions of people would think there's a big anti-Christian conspiracy within science, and become more anti-science and anti-intellectual.
But millions more would start to question religion, and especially organized, orthodox religion. They would also find science more interesting and important. Certainly, one of the things I find most interesting about science is the big picture stuff about our own nature and our place in the universe.
Pretending that science has nothing to say about such profoundly important things things makes science boring and impotent.
In the long run, I think that the polarization might be worty it.
This seems like the kind of thing a serious discussion of framing should address head-on.
Most Americans have conflicting schemas about science and religion. Without simply giving ground to religion over science, and pretending the conflict isn't there, can we do schema judo to actually mostly win the argument in the long run?
(That is, to shift the Overton window of acceptable views, so that when things become more polarized, the middle mostly comes our way rather than going the other way?)
I simply do not agree. No matter how many times you tell Dawkins et. all. to "sit down and shut up, we must tread gently on the religious" they won't. They have an important point to make. As was stated in the comments above, their anger (as is mine) is not about religion in of itself, it is about the dangerous influence fundamentalist religion has on public policy. That is what they are speaking very strongly out against. This anger needs to be heard - loudly and vigorously since that is what it takes to be heard above the intense spewing of hate, and intolerance that comes from the other side. If you think Dawkins and Myers are unpleasant, just take a listen to the unbelievable amount of hate, nastiness and vitriol that comes out from the likes of Pat Robertson, and the fundy gang - and their's is all over talk radio, cable and satellite TV, and in many churches across the nation. There is no pretense of any sort of moderation of their message at all.
Dawkinds and Myers et all. are are not about hate, they are about anger - anger that is aimed at the hate and intolerance of the fundamentalist Christian doctrine that is directly on the attack against anything that dares to challenge any tenant of their faith as well as the fundy's insistence on making their doctrine public policy. Their anger needs to be heard.
I feel you are simply wrong for insisting that they sit down and keep their mouths shut because you don't like the tone of their voice.
Oh wow.
Firstly. Collins was defending the pope who condemned Galileo? Can he be more an apologist? Collins is comparing someone who was trying to convince people that the earth revolves around the sun to a man who was trying to convince everyone that there is a an invisible man in the sky, watching you masturbate. In regards to the level of arrogance, there is no comparison. Then, oh boy, then he defends the church at the time of Darwin's OOS by explaining that there was a large segment (of course, he only names one person) of the church that embraced Darwin's ideas. Oh boy, that's impressive apologetics there. Basically, it was a cake walk for Darwin, apparently.
The questioner then goes on to say that Dawkins argues that there is "proof" for God's non-existence. This bull, he says the exact opposite over, and over. Of course Collins knows this, but of course Collins does not correct the questioner and instead plays along to slay the strawman. Pathetic.
Collins lastly ends by saying that science can not answer why people have spiritual experiences. It can answer how (what actually happens in the brain), but not why. Um, hello? Again, bull. Put a nun and an atheist in an MRI, show them a cross and look at their brains. The nun might have a spiritual experience, but the atheist will not. Why? Because the atheist does not believe in fairy tales. Now, throw someone like Neal Tyson under there and show him a photo from Hubble, and his brain might just look like the nun's when she saw the cross. It's all very, "duh".
Nisbet cites the National Academies report on evolution as a source that supports Collins and himself, even though the report does not provide evidence for what it says about faith and religion. Because it's statement is so general it is meaningless. Something that was brought up several times after Nisbet's post on this, but he never entertained that point. For whatever reason he ignored everyone on that.
Nisbet: "If Hollywood cognescenti [i.e. film critics] are offended, imagine the anger triggered among movie-going audiences?" Film critics? Really? Who takes them seriously about anything except "this movie is good" or "this movie is bad"? No one. Since when have they been representative about anything except if a movie is good or not?
Nisbet: "Dawkins and Myers are entitled to their opinion and as a fellow atheist I strongly support their right to voice criticism of religion." Except when you say that they should silence themselves.
Again faith, defined as belief in the absence of, or regardless of evidence, is completely at odds with science. And faith is required, REQUIRED in order to believe in the supernatural. It's very, very simple.
FYI, it's spelled "cognoscenti."
Spelling corrected.
An interesting use of the word "consensus" given the 40% personal-god-belief figure among scientists. That doesn't sound like a consensus as I understand the word.
I would just add that it's Biblical literalism (which is heavily problematic in and of itself since literal interpretations lead to major contradictions) that is the issue, and more precisely, the belief that selective Biblical literalist views trump science. The more the Bible is taken as parable, tradition, philosophy, and ritual, the less conflict there is with science.
Let's look at this historically. By the 1950s fundamentalism and creationism had been relegated to the world of regressive and forgotten communities clinging to the dregs of nineteenth century revivalism. There was no national discussion of these things - it was assumed at the national level that the argument was over, and time would eliminate these retrograde beliefs.
What happened in the 70's to change this? An aggressive, vociferous and positively angry campaign to intimidate the rest of the country into agreeing that creationism and fundamentalist religion was a "valid point of view". It fairly clearly was an attempt to channel the anger at the civil rights movement into a new package more likely to succeed as a political strategem, since you could no longer openly use race. The forces of rationalism sat back quietly, believing that they could be given this position, in exchange for no longer holding other human beings as virtual slaves - that fundamentalist religion was an acceptable redirection of those authoritarian impulses. That they would whither away, like communist fantasy about capitalism.
So, where does this "moderation" leave you? It sounds to me an awful lot like post-reconstruction apologetics for non-action. If you want to advance a position, you have to do it clearly and aggressively. The historical record is unambiguous that accommodationism is a recipe for failure. You can negotiate with opponents, but to condescend to them is fatal.
decrepitoldfool: "An interesting use of the word 'consensus' given the 40% personal-god-belief figure among scientists. That doesn't sound like a consensus as I understand the word."
Careful here. The purported consensus is about whether science undermines the validity of religion, not about whether religions are valid, period. One can be a nonbeliever (atheist, agnostic, apatheist, etc.) and still think that the considerations that undermine belief are less about whether science has disproved religion and more about religions being unnecessary hypotheses.
Hm. An instance of a middle school science (!) teacher being requested to remove a 10 Commandments display from his classroom and a Bible from prominent display on his desk just arose in my local school district. He removed the 10 C's, but has refused to remove the Bible.
Now, should one pander to the sensitivities of the persecuted majority (which is what Christians claim to be) by saying, "Now, now. 40% of biologists are believers, so you aren't alone," or just be quiet and let him violate the constitution, or should we slap him silly with an Establishment Clause lawsuit and get called atheists regardless of whether we go to church or not, as was the case in Dover, PA?
Already, in the face of a simple request from the BOE, he has played the religious persecution card, the free speech card, the free exercise card, and the martyr card, and we're barely two days into the hoorah. That's his framing, accepted without question by the thousands of fundamentalists in this district. Our community is going to be ripped apart for no other reason than a fundamentalist bibliolater thinks his beliefs trump all else. But no, no, shhhh -- we shouldn't complain or get angry at the shredding of our constitutional democracy. Just hush, folks, and it'll all be better soon. Use sweet reason on this fundy loon and I'm sure he'll see the light.
Oh, and I should add: The soft-headed scientists who are evangelicals do not speak for us.
decrepitoldfool:
I thought the use of the word "consensus" was entirely correct. The National Academies' report is fairly typical; pretty much all such reports, from any major scientific body, says the same thing: Evolution doesn't contradict religion. At worst, it contradicts some interpretations of some religions.
Unless you're trying to say that the 40% personal-god-belief figure implies that 60% of scientists are screechy-monkey-anti-theists?
"Dawkins and Myers are entitled to their opinion and as a fellow atheist I strongly support their right to voice criticism of religion. Yet at some point they need to consider the unintended consequences of their preferred brand of atheist punditry, and to recognize the pragmatism of the consensus message from the National Academies and other leading science organizations."
It appears that they have considered what you allege to be the unintended consequences, and have decided to continue as they've been doing. So what you really mean is, "at some point they need to agree with me," which presumably you hope to accomplish through repeated hectoring. Ironic, since that's one of the things for which you condemn them.
If you read the full article you can see that Collins basically admits defeat in the battle to change the minds of those who follow a belief system that involves literal biblical interpretation. His suggestion of getting together "open-minded" (i.e. religious protestant) scientists and pastors who would sit down and come up with a 'new theology' - in other words a new religion that accepts some of the scientific findings of the past two hundred years - is quite frankly ludicrous. Does he seriously think this will be welcomed by the fundamentalists?
The 'angry atheists' don't speak for him, but reality challenged supernaturalistic scientists don't speak for the rest of us.
I notice his vision for the future is that it will be resolved such that we all believe in evolution AND God.
Presumably his God.
How he's going to achieve this, given the lack of success of the theistic evolutionist approach so far, is a bit of a mystery - do you think he's invented a frozen waterfall factory?
I have read the full article, and if I understand it, Collins is saying that God is outside of nature. What is not clear if he is saying that God was there to create the universe and then absolve himself/herself of what happens after . That does not stop me from asking the big question who and what created God, and Why? Religion seems to say God intervene in nature and influence human affairs or he/she just watches from a hideout and collects data on individual human beings to use as basis for punishing or rewarding them in the next world. My question to Collins and other believers is: If God actually intervenes and controls nature, why does he/she allow bad things to happen to good people?
I'm not Francis Collins. In fact, I'm completely disinterested in the question. But my question to you is: For the purposes of exposing Expelled, who cares?
"For example, Christianity is based largely on the idea of original sin. This requires Adam and Eve, original humans. Evolutionary theory says no such thing ever happened: the allele-frequencies in hominid populations changed gradually over many generations to produce modern humans."
The idea of original human is an abstract one. All it really means to me is that at some point "Humans" existed. I also believe they were created by God. This could be special creation or part of some billion year process. Genesis is not dogmatic about either. I like to ask two questions to people in the era of "human rights": What is a Human and what distinguishes us from animals or as some would say other animals?
The Bible makes this distinction in Genesis and gives Humans primacy over plants and animals. I think there two questions go far beyond anything Science can tell us with certainty. Though, I think Science should look into questions of origins of humanity and the universe. But I like the breaking down of truth in the comment about the Vatican astronomer above. There are limits to all academic disciplines and what they can tell us about the world.
"... if I understand it, Collins is saying that God is outside of nature...."
I don't see that Francis Collins says exactly this. That would be theologically dubious.
It is one of the oldest metaphysical theological questions: whether God is:
(1) Immanent (existing and acting within the mind or the world; present in every living being and every atom);
or
(2) Transcendent (surpasses physical existence, and in one form is also independent of it;
as opposed to
(3) Pantheism (God is indistinguishable from physical existence).
As wikipedia currently comments: "Although transcendence is defined as the opposite of immanence, the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Some theologians and metaphysicians of the great religious traditions affirm that God, or Brahman, is both within and beyond the universe (panentheism); in it, but not of it; simultaneously pervading it and surpassing it."
As I commented on Greg Laden's blog thread "Albert Einstein: March 14, 1879 - April 18, 1955" on 18 April 2008:
Einstein, when pressed on the subject, would say that he believed in the God of Spinoza, that is, that all matter, energy, time, space existed "in the mind of God."
The phrase "the mind of God" was used by Hawking and others since, to indicate what some Physicists think that they are trying, by mathematico-scientific means, to read from what Galileo called "the Book of Nature."
Spinoza managed to become officially a heretic in both Judaism and Christianity. Hence the quasi-deism of Einstein is also a rejection of organized religion.
I honestly don't know Einstein's position on Islam, which (of course) dominated Science for several centuries. There must be an editor at the Einstein Papers Project (Caltech campus) who knows.
Hard to be a heretic in Buddhism, though. Or Hinduism -- billions of gods to choose, at least one of whom endorses your position. One can, I suppose, be a Confucist or Shintoist heretic. Can one be an Animist heretic?
Just wondering...
In any case, I don't see that specific Collins text taking a definitive stand on the old Immanence/Transcendence/Pantheism debated, although I strongly suspect that he rejects Pantheism.
just saw Expelled; the fact that Ben Stein isn't trying to win any popularity contests helps to validate his message... his goal was to promote free thought, especially more thinking about motivations that drive American academia and a lot of other behind-the-scenes worldview that we tend to take for granted.
I invite you to read about my theory of evolution totally different to that of Charles Darwin. You can believe it if you are an atheist (the evidences to back it every body has them). You can believe it if you are a Believer (I give you the evidences in the Bible to back it). It is the same theory for Believers and atheists. Please read my commentaries to the Richard Dawkins' article "The Angry Evolutionist" in 3 parts in www.cicatrices.com.mx
Felix Rocha Martinez, frocham@yahoo.com