Jerry Coyne is looking at the AAAS and Templeton influence again, via the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion, chummily known as DoSER. Check out that website. The bullshit starts with the first sentence on the page.
AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) facilitates communication between scientific and religious communities.
See, that’s deceptive already. It’s sugar. Who could possibly object to “communication between scientific and religious communities”? No one! That just means sciencey people and religious people talking and maybe throwing picnics together. But that’s far from all that DoSER is about.
It’s PR, that kind of word-choice. Sticking the word “communities” in is sure to disarm people’s suspicions by assuring them, however implicitly, that there is no question of substantive engagement, it’s just a matter of communities getting friendly. But DoSER is about substantive engagement. It’s about making religion look less dopy and legless and anti-rational by pretending that it can have a meaningful “dialogue” with science.
You see it again, just down the page.
This Thursday, November 11th, Dr. Jennifer Wiseman will be speaking at the Ramon Areces Foundation’s conference “Science and Religion in the XXI Century: Dialogue or Confrontation?” in Madrid, Spain. This conference will bring together scientists and religious leaders from around the world to refelct on the intersection of science and religion as it pertains to contemporary issues in forefront research, ethics and more.
“The intersection,” you see – it assumes there is one. In fact, in every sense that counts, there isn’t. You can confirm this at any time by reading a page of an empirically-oriented book followed by a page of theology. The first keeps you informed as to where its claims come from, and the second doesn’t. Those two ways of looking at the world do not intersect. They are fundamentally different.
The DoSER page has thematic areas, with articles under each theme. Lots of stuff to browse. Elizabeth A Johnson for instance, under Evolution, on divine providence and chance:
The creating God is also the redeeming God whose self-emptying Incarnation into the vagaries of history reveals the depths of divine Love, and is also the sanctifying God whose self-gift in grace brings wholeness to the brokenness of sinful hearts and situations without violating human freedom. Could it not be the case that, rather than being uncharacteristic of the mystery of God, divine kenosis revealed in the human history of salvation is what is most typical of God’s ways, and therefore also distinguishes God’s working in the natural world? Could it not be that God’s being edged out of the world and onto the cross, in Bonhoeffer’s profound intuition, also refers to the cost of divine vulnerability in creation? Could it not be that since the human world is on a continuum with the micro world, only mediated by more complex biological matter, the best way to understand God’s action in the indeterminacy of the natural world is by analogy with how divine initiative relates to human freedom?
That’s theology, all right. Drunk on its own vocabulary, mumbling over the same old runes year in and year out, doing hermeneutics until the sheep start yelling for their tea – but never actually discovering anything. You can see it as a kind of music or poetry, but the trouble there is that it claims to be more than that.
And in any case what the hell is it doing on the AAAS website?
Or there’s Christopher J Corbally, SJ, on the religious implications of ancient life on Mars:
…the proper sense of God, derived in the dialogue between religion and science, is needed if we are to avoid making God in our own image. For then there would be nothing that exploration could reveal, except an inadequate view of ourselves. If instead we allow the echo of the Infinite Creator to be heard in the vastness of the universe that is shown through science, then we shall be open to those possibilities that God through the universe wants to reveal to us. This openness, as we have found from history, is one that tries to be aware of its premises. It is informed by past experience and a structured knowledge (or well-winnowed wisdom, as some would express it). What this correct partnership of the disciplines will give is the grounded openness by which we can respect and cope with any new phenomenon that science brings, whether this indicates we are in the end alone in the universe or are co-creatures with, say, the ancient Martians.
In other words, it’s all good. Whatevers. Keep an open mind, but always continue to assume “God.” Do both; do four things; do as many things as you like, as long as you continue to assume “God.” Don’t worry, it all works; we can cope with whatever comes along, because we continue to assume “God” while claiming to be doing something called grounded openness. Yes we can!
And all this is on the AAAS website.
Why, such logic knocks over everything in its path!
We should properly call it the BullDoSER….
I don’t understand how people can write things like the quoted theology on a sustained basis. We probably all write incomprehensible paragraphs from time to time, but to keep at it year after year must require a rare talent.
Uh huh! It duz hav big werdz n stuff, yup, must b tru
# 2 – I know. The very idea of having to write crap like that makes me flinch as if from fire.
That’s why there’s no goddam intersection and never will be – it’s because to anybody with genuine curiosity about any aspect of the real world, that kind of aimless rootless woolspinning is like a poke in the eye. It’s insulting. It doesn’t even try to get anything right. The frivolity is insulting.
Ophelia “That’s why there’s no goddam intersection and never will be – ”
I was thinking about that before. Could there possibly be an intersection of scientific writing and theobabble style nonsense? If someone poured a nice quantity of rum down my gullet and then had me start writing about “deep” topics, perhaps I could personally form such a link. Mild-mannered scientist becomes writer of … But then I’d probably fall asleep and you’d be right again.
I love this. It’s a fitting response to much Sophisticated Theology™, and also to rootless wordsmithery of other sorts–lots of PoMo academese, New Age gobbledegook, psychoanalytic musings, padded essays by clever high schoolers–even some of the more grandiloquent MRA blather that’s been posted on this very blog.
“the sanctifying God whose self-gift in grace brings wholeness to the brokenness of sinful hearts”
These are some of the givens arising out of ancient myth that rational people are supposed to go along with, accept uncritically, agree to differ with, reconcile with science, find scientific justification for, etc, etc.
The PR stunt here is that believers are somehow ‘informing’ the scientific and rationalist population. What the latter are informed with is merely the latest pitch for selling assumption-ridden myth-based gobbledegook.
(All religious believers have got it wrong, except for us Polytheistic Zoroastrians. We alone have found The One True Way. Take it or leave it. It’s up to you.)
😉
That’s the stupidest fucking bullshit I never thought I’d see on a science site.
As a side note, has the AAAS consulted its membership before putting its prestige into support for a specific religion? That stuff about an incarnation isn’t just imposing religion, it’s very specifically Christian. Their “intersection” is excluding Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, pagans, and I would guess Hindus as much as it is us atheists.
This might be worth pointing out if we’re looking for support from non-atheists.
Stacy – precisely. I used to pad my exam answers in exactly that way when I didn’t know enough, as “a clever [but fucking lazy] high schooler.” I wish I could give my 15-year-old self a slap upside the head.
So much assertion so little evidence…
Here is part of a review by John Roeder of one of the program’s publications “The Evolution Dialogues” by Catherine Baker:
The following text attempts a synthesis as well, by stating that what enables scientists to work compatibly with their belief in Christianity is a core of values shared by both scientists and Christians, among them truthfulness, community, tradition, and reason. Scientists who are Christians are in a unique position to show other Christians that science is not only compatible with Christianity but also shares common values with it. But this type of synthesis would not seem to apply to Christians “who would change science in order to make it consistent with their theological commitments.”
Really?
What the hell does that mean? No, really, I am not quite sure what that is supposed to mean, and I’m usually pretty good at interpretation of gobble-dee-gook. Did I lose some skills when I quit being all New Age-y, because I feel like I should get that?
Total sidenote, there’s at least one Pol.Sci. professor at the local tech college that has a thing for word counts. I don’t get it. If you’ve made your point, expressed your argument, and answered all the questions, what does it matter if you’re 50 words short of the goal? Isn’t succinctness a good thing? The only effect I see it having is word padding: trying to say something in 10 words when 3 will do. Just recently I was typing up an assignment for a client, saw several ways the client could have tightened up his phrasing, and didn’t say a damn thing because I knew he needed the word count (and, it’s his grade, not mine). It’s just . . . stupid.
/end sidenote rant
Great analysis here. I particularly liked this:
Thenk you.
Nathan – what it’s supposed to mean is something about god as jesus – it’s all special that god made “him”self human and suffered like a human. “Self-emptying”=special.
It’s theo-jargon. They love that “self-emptying” thing. Gives them chills.