Red State Rabble declares that we must stand united against the common enemy, creationism and such anti-scientific forces of unreason that threaten our secular institutions. That’s a nice, fuzzy statement, which I personally suspect is unrealistic and unworkable, but let’s give it a try.
Our first test: the Pope has made an interesting statement.
Pope Benedict XVI on Monday issued his strongest criticism yet of evolutionary theory, calling it “unreasonable”.
Speaking to a 300,000-strong crowd in this German city, the former theological watchdog said that, according to such theories derived from Charles Darwin’s work, the universe is “the random result of evolution and therefore, at bottom, something unreasonable”.
He has also just spoken out against secular societies—it seems that secularism is a greater problem than radical Islam.
But the section on Islam made up just three paragraphs of the speech, and he devoted the rest to a long examination of how Western science and philosophy had divorced themselves from faith — leading to the secularization of European society that is at the heart of Benedict’s worries.
I presume we all going to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in agreement that the Pope is wrong, he has completely misrepresented evolutionary theory, and that he should not be concerned about secular society—it is every person’s privilege to refuse to participate in any religion? We should all deplore his fallacious intrusion into a scientific matter, and all of us who are together on the side of science should unambiguously repudiate his opinion.
In the spirit of our shared community, I’ll step aside and refrain from chewing out the Pope, and defer that privilege to my colleague, Ken Miller, who is always willing to draft letters criticizing those who harm the cause of getting the public to recognize the validity of science. Perhaps he can draft a rollicking good letter telling the Pope where he can get off? I think it should definitely mention that Pope Benedict’s clerical status gives him absolutely, positively no credibility or status in assessing biological issues, and perhaps points out that we all stand as one against efforts to undermine science, whether they’re made by a creationist pope or some uppity god-hating atheist.
It should be something we can all agree on.
To unity!
I think we might be going about this from the wrong angle. Wouldn’t it be more fun to instigate an American Catholic schism? That’d fix his gold-covered wagon but good.
UNITY! Indeed!
I think we can all agree that “the universe is “the random result of evolution ” is one of the stupidest statements since the whole dead god on a stick thing…..
Maybe we can draft a letter from all the theist and have them complain that the pope should not upset the delicate balance of their sensibilities. OH I’M GONNA FAINT!
We could probably enlist some baptists to make nasty remarks about the pope as well….
This is the exact sort of anti-science that we should be dealing with. And as I’ve argued before, kow-towing to the religious superstitions of people isn’t going to help, for precisely the reason that your legitimizing the same mentality we all want to exterminate from the face of the earth before it manages to destroy us as a species.
I’m not expecting Ken Miller to do anything like you prescribe, but he can always prove me wrong.
I quote from the New York Times, which quotes the Pope’s words directly:
So fear of God is at the heart of modern atheism. Do you feel particularly afraid, PZ?
I must concur with the call to unity. I urge all theists to abandon their foolish doctrines and join the cause of rationalism immediately.
But, but…Miller is on our side! And the Pope has just aided and abetted the creationists! And we’re all going to be together from now on!
Don’t disillusion me already.
Miller is on Miller’s side. That side seems to include an awful lot of apologetics for irrational beliefs, special pleading galore – and most damning, misrepresentations of the nature of science.
It’s sure not my side. Who here is on Miller’s side? You should step forward (metaphorically speaking) and be counted.
PZ, where do you get these sources? They really aren’t reliable. This one is translating the very same homily you’ve already commented on in a different place, based on a different source and a different translation. And it’s just paraphrasing badly what it doesn’t translate. It looks like a source interested in trying to recruit the Pope as a supporter of ID and prepared to misrepresent his words to make him look like one.
The Pope just didn’t say that “according to such theories derived from Charles Darwin’s work, the universe is “the random result of evolution and therefore, at bottom, something unreasonable”.” He didn’t even mention Darwin at all.
What he did say, as I’ve pointed out before, is that if we deny that the universe is created by “Creative Reason,” then we are “nothing more than a chance result of evolution and thus, in the end, equally meaningless.” This is not to say that evolution itself means that our lives are meaningless. As I pointed out previously, to deny that we are “nothing more than X” is not the same as to deny that we are X. According to the Pope it is the combination evolution + atheism that yields this conclusion.
Of course this isn’t something you agree with. But it’s being misrepresented in the reporting you link to as if the Pope were saying something very different from what he actually said.
He said that if we’re the result of random processes, our lives are meaningless.
It’s quite clear that we’re the result of random processes… so he is in fact saying that, without God, we’re meaningless.
You can sugarcoat it all you like, Mr. Kremer, but you can’t hide the bitter taste.
What is at the root of atheism is the fact that there is no God to protect us.
Many of those natives who obeyed the ancient meme about ‘run to the hills when the ocean recedes’ saved their lives in the big tsunami. Those who knelt and prayed were less fortunate.
PZ, look, I’m just trying to point out over and over again that you’re relying on news reports of what the Pope said that are often misleading. It’s like me relying on Chicago Tribune reports of biological discoveries — important subtleties are going to go missing. What is happening in all these reports is that things are being distorted in order to make a newsworthy story or good headline, and also sometimes to push a particular agenda (the last piece you linked to was clearly a conservative Italian site interested in linking the Pope to ID — mentioning Schonborn’s article but neglecting to mention the upshot of the recent meeting of the Pope with former students is a giveaway).
I don’t agree with you, as a Christian, on many things. But I am making one simple assumption.
I assume you are interested in the truth.
I assume that it is an interest in the truth that led you to biology.
If you’re interested in the truth about what the Pope says — even on purely pragmatic grounds — you might want to use more reliable sources. Like what he actually says and writes.
I think you would find that the truth is just more complicated than you think, and than would fly in most newspaper reporting.
PZ: That’s a pretty sly challenge you’ve got going there. I agree that the Pope’s statements as reported appear to be not just wrong, but wrong-headed. Not only does it falsely identify evolution with mere chance, but it appears to blame one good thing (science) for another good thing (secular government). So, yes, we should be unified in pointing out the shortcomings of those statements. I would be horrified if they were elevated to doctrine in some encylical; teaching evolution in this country would become even more difficult!
Now, as I’m sure you’re aware, one of your more avid posters of late (Michael Kremer) has suggested that from his point of view as a Catholic a lot of this shift is less ideological than a question of an authoritarian personality given unprecedented scope. I received the impression that MK himself felt that the former Cardinal Ratzinger’s view of the papacy was unrealistic.
I would be interested in hearing MK discuss this further, in light of his apologetics. He seemed to suggest that, where JP2 might have tried to use his moral capital to persuade, B6 seems to wish to dictate.
If so, that’s not going to go over too well with many American Catholics, who are already rather more independent than much of their brethren worldwide. Exhibit A: Ken Miller, who has stood up to the hierarchy before, as in this op-ed piece:
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/catholic/projo.html
So, should the present pontificate indeed agressively push ID, it would not surprise me at all if folk like Dr. Miller air their misgivings, and continue to defend evolution. In fact, I’d be surprised if they didn’t.
In unity…Scott
Caledonian,
I’m sorry, that is not what he said. It is only what some unreliable news source said that he said.
What he said is that if we’re nothing more than the result of a random process of evolution, our lives are meaningless.
He said that if we’re the result of a random process of evolution, and there is no Creative Reason as the source of the universe in which this random process takes place, then our lives are meaningless.
I’m not sugarcoating. I assume you’ll think that’s as much BS as the other. But they aren’t the same thing.
Come on Miller…what are you afraid of tough guy? The Pope? Hahahahahahahaha…that is too funny.
The Pope Dude:
“Only this God saves us from being afraid of the world and from anxiety before the emptiness of life.”
Sounds eerily similar to the cry of a drug addict.
Creative Reason isn’t a random process. Reason is in fact a very orderly process, although as thought it does require a certain amount of randomness to function.
Let’s drop the euphemisms, shall we? By ‘Creative Reason’ Ratzinger refers to an intelligence which he believes designed and shaped the development of the universe in general, life more particularly, and human beings especially. Intelligent design (to co-opt the term) is not a particularly random process.
He’s denying that we are the result of natural selection operating upon genetic diversity, and suggesting that those who claim there is no design in the universe strip live of meaning in the process.
You can’t sugarcoat that, no matter how frantically you apologize for it.
Just out of curiosity, have any atheists here been smited by an invisible sky daddy?
I don’t want to get too deep into worshipping Dawkins if there are risks involved.
I do hope Michael is right– but it would be nice if such egregious misreadings were forthrightly and swiftly corrected, rather than allowed to persist as politically useful ambiguities. Setting that aside, the Pope’s position, as Michael represents it, still offends me. It makes me want to say, “Don’t tell me my life is meaningless. Don’t even tell me I should think it is, just because I’m an atheist who believes in evolution: There is no non-question-begging reason to draw such a normative conclusion from the descriptive facts about this world we find ourselves in!” Finally, we have the ‘randomness’ trope, thrown out as a cheap account of evolution. It’s very hard to let that slide by, when the Pope is borrowing it from ID theorists and creationists, who constantly invoke it as part of their arguments-from-incredulity against evolution.
Bryson Brown: Right on!
Hear that? Refusing to take things on faith makes it impossible to develop a full understanding of reality. The man just rejected the very essence of science.
I think you’re the one who lacks comprehension here. I’ve checked several sources, and there is agreement on the general sentiment. Do you understand that we atheists think there is a random component to the universe, but that that does not mean we consider our lives meaningless?
Maybe we need to get back basics:
Creationism: bad because it’s an irrational adherene to Bronze-Age creation mythology without evidence or despite contrary evidence.
Religion: the general adherence to irrational beliefs without evidence or despite contrary evidence.
Both are problems and one is a subset of the other.
This, he said, has closed off the West from a full understanding of reality, making it also impossible to talk with cultures for whom faith is fundamental.
… whereas a belief that, e.g., Catholics are the Servants of Satan tends to lead to truly productive dialogue.
Scott,
You’re misreading me.
I think that there has been a tendency to portray B16 as an dictatorial personality based on his behavior when he was in an “enforcer” position in the Vatican. This tendency has colored a lot of the reporting on B16 that, for example, PZ has been relying on.
The distortions of what B16 has been saying have been coming from both the left and the right — both side wanting to portray him as the wingnut that he actually is not (at least in the Catholic context).
In fact I don’t think B16 has been particularly dictatorial at all. I think if you actually read what he says, instead of relying on news reports about it, you will encounter a very subtle and impressive intellect (just as Peter Schuster said after the meeting with the Pope and his former students).
I think where JPII was trying to persuade, B16 is trying to argue — rationally. You may not buy his arguments. Fine. But he is not merely dictating.
I’m an American Catholic, Scott — I have my own troubles with some aspects of the Church’s teaching. But I don’t feel this Pope to be more dictatorial than the preceding one. B16 has actually done some interesting symbolic things with his papacy that I like, like removing the crown from the papal coat of arms, and, early on, stating that the claim of infallibility is one that a Pope can only make very rarely.
On Ken Miller: he was standing up not to B16 or even to “the hierarchy” (the Vatican is not so monolithic). He was standing up to Cardinal Schonborn, one particular member of the Vatican hierarchy — even if a friend of B16. But what I want you to notice is this: Miller’s understanding of B16 is very much like my own. See his piece “Darwin’s Pope” at http://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/bulletin_mag/articles/33-2_miller.html.
That’s not Miller standing up to the Pope. It’s Miller standing with Ratzinger and insisting that he’s been misunderstood.
From today’s New York Times: it reports “Pope Assails Secularism, Adding Note on Jihad”. In a mass at Regensburg in Germany on September 12, broaching the issue of the delicate relationship between Islam and the West, he reportedly said that “violence, embodied in the Muslim idea of jihad, or holy war, is contrary to reason and God’s plan, while the West was so beholden to reason that Islam could not understand it.”
To be honest with you, I had a hard time getting past that first paragraph of the report. There are so many discrepancies right there. Let me look at the phrases, one at a time.
And at least, on the face of it, these Holy Wars, Crusades and the jihad, were to be waged between followers of discordant religions. What about the European Wars of Religion, fuelled by religious intolerance and extreme political ambition, where Catholics and Protestants engaged each other repeatedly in civil wars and military incursions?
What face does His Holiness have to put the blame squarely on the shoulder of Muslims for the ‘holy war’? Holy wars, the unholiest of events borne out of organized religion, do not follow any rational thought or embrace any constructive ideas, totally like the parent religions. There may be multiple and complex underlying causes, but these are undoubtedly fought primarily on religious grounds – as a means of expressing the faiths of the adversaries in the mode of comparison. “My religion is better than yours.” And to this day, this is the central teaching of all major Western organized religions. All thoughtful insights, compassion, contemplation, service to mankind, self-abnegation are just hogwash. These are qualities of a good human being, to inculcate which no religious edict should be necessary, but those edicts are firmly put in place for these religions, no less in the ever-looming shadow of a vengeful, punitive deity and the constant warning of eternal retribution, because otherwise, how can the power over millions of lives be asserted?
The Papal speech “distilled many of Benedict’s longstanding concerns, about the crisis of faith among Christians and about Islam and its relationship to violence. And he used language open to interpretations that could inflame Muslims, at a time of high tension among religions…” Does it come as any surprise? Fundamentally, he shares the same ground as a Qu’ran quoting, venom-spewing, fatwah-imposing Islamist cleric. Which is why “he devoted the rest (of his speech) to a long examination of how Western science and philosophy had divorced themselves from faith — leading to the secularization of European society that is at the heart of Benedict’s worries. This, he said, has closed off the West from a full understanding of reality, making it also impossible to talk with cultures for whom faith is fundamental.”
‘Secular’ has been treated like a four-letter word. The Merriam Webster defines it as ‘not overtly or specifically religious’. Wait! That’s right! It’s a danger to the maintenance of a creed-based hegemony. If secularism raises its head, people will no longer feel the need to adhere to a set of pretentious, dogmatic rules, and may actually acquire knowledge, embrace other cultures, spread goodwill, and – horror of horrors! – go on with their lives without the spectre of eternal perdition! How can this allowed?
Very understandable from His Holiness’ point of view, I suppose. This congregation of multiple organized religions, even if they theoretically stem from the same lore, is anathematic to his chosen agenda, which is imparting an essentially Catholic Christian fundamentalist outlook to everything. Which is why he dislikes secularism like hell; it does not find any consonance at all with his warped, myopic, unilateral world view. He cannot understand or believe that in order to be a good human being, it is not necessary to be force-fed dollops of religious mumbo-jumbo; a healthy, reasoning, secular outlook – free from the inherently restrictive pre-conditions of organized religions – can achieve a lot of good in this world.
He has sounded his take on atheism, too: “being afraid of God… is ultimately at the root of modern atheism,” he said. “Only this God saves us from being afraid of the world and from anxiety before the emptiness of life.”
Therefore, Prof. Myers and my fellow Pharyngulaphiles, His Holiness enjoins us to shun atheism in order to get a relief from the emptiness of our lives, by filling it up with as much rubbish as possible. You know what to do, don’t you?
“I think where JPII was trying to persuade, B16 is trying to argue — rationally.”
Wait, where’s the rationality? I think I missed it.
So, here’s what we get if we try to actually look at the pope’s full comments in their actual context, instead of focusing on a snipped half sentence.
First off, note the interesting word difference between this version and the one you quote, which I assume is the result of different decisions in translation. The substitution of “unreasonable” for “meaningless” in particular sticks out– makes quite a large difference in the meaning of that sentence, doesn’t it?
Second off, I note that while there are several things in this paragraph that I for one fundamentally disagree with, or find silly or ignorant, the things that paragraph is saying still seem to me quite clearly different from the things the blockquotes at the top of this blog post paraphrase it as saying. In context, this is not an attack on the theory of evolution even tangentially; it is an attack on philosophical materialism.
Ok, Catholics, explain to me why we should be respectful at all of your beliefs when your supreme leader says something like this:
“Only this can free us from being afraid of God — which is ultimately at the root of modern atheism,” he said. “Only this God saves us from being afraid of the world and from anxiety before the emptiness of life.”
Oh, ok, *we’re* not being rational! We’re like scared children saying that the monster can’t get us as long as we don’t believe. Except that he does exist, and he’s apparently not a monster. Never mind that the Bible tells you to fear God, oh, about a million times, *and* “Fear of the Lord” is one of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
If you guys don’t start denouncing this stuff pretty loudly (needlessly inflammatory or completely nonsensical, take your pick), we’re going to start to think that you secretly believe this. After all, the Pope is your conduit to Heaven, and if you trust him to speak to God for you, you can certainly trust him to talk to the unwashed atheist/secular masses.
PZ: I repeat, you can check all the sources you want, they are likely to be unreliable as half a dozen Midwestern newspapers reporting on some complicated finding in biology. There will be oversimplification. In addition, I think any reporting on this Pope is often colored by ideology (of both left and right).
Look, it’s very simple. Here’s a link to the actual text of the Pope’s homily:
http://www.oecumene.radiovaticana.org/en1/Articolo.asp?c=94805
You can see what he actually said there. I have repeatedly quoted it.
And you might look at the piece by Ken Miller, “Darwin’s Pope,” which makes the Pope’s position clear as well:
http://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/bulletin_mag/articles/33-2_miller.html
As I said before I don’t expect you to like what you read in either place, but if you read carefully (more carefully than your average reporter) you’ll see that it’s not just the claim that if evolution is true, human life is meaningless, or anything as silly as that.
Andrew McClure: Thank you. That is what I have been trying to say (although I agree with lots more of what he says than you do).
The Pope makes two separate points which are mutually exclusive: that secular society lacks some aspects of a religious society and that evolution is “unreasonable.” You’re free to agree with one of these statements and not the other, or either, or neither.
Come on, this is simple language we’re talking about here. This is a poor test of the strength of cooperation, and not to be taken seriously.
Brian: I don’t care whether you dis me for my beliefs. I just think that if you care about the truth, you won’t dis us for having beliefs we don’t have.
This is more-or-less true, although the “at least in part” is incorrect.
Um… no. If God doesn’t exist, He never was necessary in our lives. The emotional need to believe in a god is likely to remain whatever science does.
What the hell?
I spoke too soon. What. The. Hell.
So evolution is meaningless, and if the structure we see in the universe arose from randomness instead of imposed from above and an all-powerful ‘Creative Reason’, then existence and everything about existence is meaningless.
Sweet merciful Buddha on a pogo stick, this is truly sick stuff.
MikeQ:
He does not make the “point” that evolution is unreasonable. Again, if you read what he actually said — as posted by Andrew McClure — and read it carefully — you’ll see that.
Michael Kremer wrote:
Yep. I think you and Mr. Andrew McClure are probably right about this. Oddly, the Vatican Information Service’s account of the speech, http://212.77.1.245/news_services/press/vis/dinamiche/d1_en.htm , has elided the part about evolution. That’s kinda weird.
Michael:
Would you care to elaborate on what was wrong in what I said? It’s a pretty clear part of Catholic doctrine to fear the Lord. And if you don’t think the Pope speaks for you, why be Catholic? Why not Unitarian? Or Deist?
The Pope has claimed that attempts to understand the world without including God have failed. As he points out, that’s pretty much all of science since the Enlightenment.
Persisting with a failed methodology seems pretty unreasonable to me. It’s clear what Ratzinger is saying about science, and not only is it grossly untrue, it is absolutely indefensible.
I don’t expect that to prevent the faithful from defending it, though. It’s what they do.
Ah, the sophistry of theologians.
It’s a misrepresentation. Even if you do not believe that chance played a role in our evolution, do you understand that it still does not mean that our lives are meaningless? This is the same stupid crap Miller was going on about, equating naturalism and materialism with a lack of meaning in our lives, and it’s wrong.
Therefore, Prof. Myers and my fellow Pharyngulaphiles, His Holiness enjoins us to shun atheism in order to get a relief from the emptiness of our lives, by filling it up with as much rubbish as possible. You know what to do, don’t you?
(removes headphones blasting Zappa’s ‘Dumb All Over’)
Did you say something?
Ken Miller:
“Biological evolution fits neatly into a traditional Catholic understanding of how contingent natural processes can be seen as part of God’s plan, while “evolutionist” philosophies that deny the Divine do not.”
http://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/bulletin_mag/articles/33-2_miller.html
Maybe Miller should have realized that the Catholic Chruch has no compelling reason to embrace evolutionary theory (it survived for a long time without it, after all). He should also have realized that the Church will happily trash science if the trashing will create a good/evil divide that can be used to attract more converts to Catholicism or cement the faith of those already in the Church.
I think there’s one coming, Dustin. American Catholics routinely ignore the ban on contraceptives, even in many families that are otherwise devout. The new priests coming out of the seminaries tend to be zealous conservatives (the shock troops of EWTN, pro-life lobbying, and that travesty in Florida over Terry Schiavo). They’ll cause divisions in the parishes to which they are posted. All that’s lacking is some spark to light the fire. I don’t yet know what that will be…
Biological evolution fits neatly into a traditional Catholic understanding of how contingent natural processes can be seen as part of God’s plan
… as neatly as the impossibility of a female Pope, I suppose.
That’s odd. The Pope’s opinion seems at odd with his clergy. How annoying, I thought the Church was finally coming around.
Ross
Using Aggresive Memetics Since 2006
The origin of human beings, and life in general, is not a matter for faith. It is a matter for science.
The Pope should refrain from speaking about matters outside the bounds of his faith.
Kremer, you’re ludicrously, amusingly overexplaining this. Whichever interpretation you use leaves us with the core conclusion that evolution as described by science cannot be correct, because Ratzinger doesn’t like what he thinks it implies about Life, the Universe and Everything. “Creative Reason?” This is at best watered-down Intelligent Design. “Unreasonable” and “equally meaningless” are equally anti-science.
PZ Myers says:
This is correct. So why the plague do you lead out with a subtle misrepresentation of what the pope says, and pretend that it is something to which Miller ought to object?
I get so frustrated with this kind of distortion. You don’t need to misrepresent people in this way. You’ve got a perfectly sensible position with respect to naturalism; a position that I share. You got a perfectly sensible basis to disagree with Miller, and to argue against his position.
You don’t need to misrepresent the other side to make your case. You did it with Miller, with the stuff about censorship and atheist burning and attacks on persons. That was all a pile of codswallop; and it missed the real basis of meaningful disagreement on whether or not God exists or even makes sense. You’re doing it with the pope. There’s an excellent basis for arguing that the position of the pope — which he seems to share with Miller, as you belated acknowledge here — is all wet. But instead, you end up with a subtly different attack on a strawman.
Perhaps you were mislead by a newspaper report. It’s easy to do. If this is the case, ‘fess up and aim your rhetorical scapel at the real thing.
Cheers — Chris
Brian,
I apologize. I was reacting to your claim that we Catholics don’t have a right to our beliefs being respected, in the context of this blog discussion where the starting premise is a misrepresentation of those beliefs.
But as to your examples.
(1) Yes, the Pope clearly said that atheism is motivated by a fear of God. And yes, ultimately he thinks it is atheism that is irrational. (Of course this is exactly what many people on this blog will say about religious belief — irrational and motivated by childish fears…)
(2) And yet “fear of the Lord” is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
So, don’t the atheists, if so motivated, have that gift?
No — because the “fear” in (1) and in (2) are different things. The “fear” the Pope sees in atheism is a fear that, after all, there might be a God, and I might then have to give up my independence and claim to establish my own meaning. It’s the fear of having to be humble. The “fear” involved in the “fear of the Lord” is primarily a fear of sundering one’s relationship with God by offending him through acting against the good.
But — I am not going to go further with this. I have foresworn trying to defend my faith on this blog.
True humility is admitting what one does not know. The Church does not espouse humility, it espouses submission. Rather like Islam, actually.
rrt,
what Chris Ho-Stuart said.
GWW said:
I didn’t do it!
Just to make sure, GWW, I hope your eyes were open… did you by any chance go through my post? I got so worked up by what I read in the NYT article, that I wrote down whatever came to my mind.
I see now it was kinda long…
386sx wrote: Yep. I think you [Michael Kremer] and Mr. Andrew McClure are probably right about this.
P.S., I’m sorry to hear you guys have that fear about establishing your “own meaning”. Lol, religion people are hilarious sometimes.
It’s not a misrepresentation. PZ is quite right about the implications of Ratzinger’s speech. Evolutionary theory is indeed godless, and Ratzinger just dismissed godless scientific theories.
You don’t need to misrepresent people by claiming they’ve engaged in misrepresentations, Chris Ho-Stuart. All you need to do is present the evidence that supports your desired position. I’m sure it will be a fascinating presentation.
That an adult human being can ever have such a thought is enough to make you question their very sanity.
I’m not sure I agree with this. It wasn’t 2 years ago i read a paper by a bishop stating the catholic seminaries are being overrun with homosexuals who felt safe there. I don’t see alot of right wing thought in that group.
Also it should be mentioned that a large contigent of catholics find the churches policy on divorce abhorent and seek to change it every few years. Only a very conservative top has prevented this change-which I think would be positive for millions of catholics.
American catholics are generally so in name only. They pick and choose and most don’t listen to the Pope as an authority but more a symbolic figure. At least those i know.
The difference is atheism is a default. It IS irrational to believe what he does. You can’t rewrite the rules of reason and logic to fit your beliefs. He IS a catholic because his parents are catholics. WHy is he not muslim?
And he is wrong and so are you if you think atheists are afraid of a god they don’t think exists. That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Do you fear the FSM? Or Zeus? Allah?
With this line of argument he has clearly proven he is not infallible.
Caledonian:
If you’re presented with two textbooks in evolutionary biology, and in one of them there appears the sentence “there is no God” whereas in the other there is no mention of God whatsoever, would you say that the second book is incomplete? That it has left out an essential tenet of evolutionary theory? An essential premise, or conclusion, of the science of biology?
If so, I’d say you’re nuts. To my mind the sentence “there is no God” has no place in a biology textbook, just as the sentence “there is a God” has no place there.
I misrepresented the pope? I found three sources for the homily, and have quoted two. I’ve read the official Vatican transcription. I put links to the cited sources. I did not interpret the first statement at all in my post: I linked to it and said it was “interesting” and wrong, and suggested that someone else write a strong criticism. Don’t I have to interpret it to be guilty of misinterpretation? Are you suggesting that the Pope is not a creationist? The second quote is rather plainly saying that the Pope doesn’t like the secularization of western nations — is this also somehow wrong?
And I’m sorry, but I disagree that I misinterpreted Miller. Miller’s argument was an absurd attempt to blame atheists for creationism: that the creationists wouldn’t believe in that nonsense if it weren’t for godless secularists provoking them with their disbelief in gods. It was a silly rationalization to place blame where it doesn’t belong, and off of the ideological, religious underpinnings of creationism.
It doesn’t matter what *I* say. It matters – at least to Catholics – what the Pope says, and he says the second book is necessarily incomplete. So are the physics textbooks, and the chemistry textbooks, and so on and so forth. According to him, there are missing elements in our equations, gaps that God is needed to fill. That’s news to scientists, I think, who have accomplished and learned more since the Enlightenment than the entirety of human civilization before then.
You’re quite right about the appropriateness of phrases in textbooks, though. The nonexistence of God is derivable from elementary scientific principles, which really don’t need to be reviewed in so specialized a tome as a biology textbook. “There are no supernatural things” is too basic a point to be made there. It should be in the basic general science textbooks, where it belongs.
“But, but…Miller is on our side!”
No, not if “your side” is atheism. Miller isn’t an atheist.
Did you really expect the Pope to come out saying that atheism is cool beans? Of course he’s going to slander atheists. You wouldn’t have much of a church without that, and nowhere near as many funny hats to wear.
Kremer, I’m sorry, but I’m with Caledonian on this. If your objection is purely that PZ’s original comment was based on a slightly-off interpretation/translation of the Pope’s comments, fine. I can’t confirm that, but from what I read here that sounds quite reasonable.
But you seem to be implying that PZ knew very well it was “off,” and to me far more importantly, that the different interpretations matter. I made my original comment precisely to point out that it doesn’t.
I like what E.O. Wilson (who calls himself a “provisonal deist”) is doing – he wants to play nice with evangelicals to save the planet.
It’s much more admirable than what Miller is doing – trying to convince the Pope to embrace evolution so that Miller won’t have to feel discomfited by his chosen faith.
Wilson’s new book:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060904&s=wilson090406
I just can’t wrap my head around all this back and forth BS regarding what the Pope did or did not say. The fact is the Pope has a set of beliefs. Those beliefs are at odds to any atheistic view. When he speaks in support of his agenda, he will by default be opposed to atheist or secular thought. All PZ is doing is pointing out the obvious misrepresentations that the Pope uses. The Pope will always misrepresent – he can’t help it. Unless of course he de-converted himself….The point is that matter how many conditional ‘ifs’ the Pope uses or who carefully he tries to phrase his arguments, the faithful who hear his words will ignore those ‘if’ and ‘therefore’s’; they will instead only hear:
atheists…. mumble…. no faith…. mumble…. godless…. mumble…. meaningless lives…. etc…. etc…
The problem, as PZ points out, is that those who cuddle up to the Popes views will find a way to use his words to draw a line between themselves and those damned secular, godless, immoral, atheists (w/ meaningless lives). It is this kind of tribalism on the part of the religious that seriously jeopardizes any form of “coalition building” between people like PZ and Ken Miller. I do not deny that politics makes strange bed-fellows; the problem is at some point the staggeringly different views between the faithful and the secular will rear up and tear apart whatever fragile cease fire is forged. We (as rational atheists) might win a battle or two but we chance losing everything else we have gained in the past.
It is certainly just as possible for atheists to fall into the kind of tribalism that hounds organized religion. I just hope that we can recognize this in ourselves and not let it make us into something we are not. And we should never have to hang our heads and apologize for being atheist as though we are the ones who are evil and wrong. We should not have to stand idly by wringing our hands and asking the religious moderates to please, please just accept us and let us ride your credibilty to the masses….Fuck that.
And everyone hates to group themselves with me, so if rrt feels it necessary to do so, you know he’s concerned about the point.
Maybe you should go back and reread the initial post and the responding comments, Mr. Kremer. I don’t think they say what you think they so.
I agree entirely.
But for the moment, I’m less interested in whether the pope is right than whether the pope is accurately quoted.
In the meantime, while I find it saddening both that the pope takes apparent offense at science “making God unnecessary” (if science makes God unnecessary, this is not science’s fault) and that the pope is harping on whether the end product of evolution is a “chance result” (is he saying evolution has to have a preordained direction to make him happy?), and I think the strength of these comments is enough to conclude that the new pope is less of a friend of science than the last pope, I disagree that these are creationist statements here. What he is saying is more about using the presence of naturalistic explanations to phenomena to conclude things about the existence of a supernatural. Unless he outright says that evolution is not explainable by natural law and random chance tempered by circumstance, and I don’t think his statement unambiguously says this*, this is not an attack on science, it is an attack on certain philosophical extensions of scientific knowledge.
* The Catholic church has in the past repeatedly made statements along the lines that science explains the origin of man’s body, but not his soul or spirituality; it seems as reasonable as anything to me to interpret the pope’s comments here as a mere continuation of that. The way I see it, from the perspective of someone who doesn’t believe in ghosts, it is in no way problematic for someone to claim that science can’t explain ghosts.
rrt,
I don’t think PZ knew it was off. I don’t doubt his sincerity. He read it in the newspapers. Fine.
But I have been trying to point out to him over a number of recent posts that he isn’t getting good info about the Pope’s views by basing what he says on newspaper reports.
I started on this little campaign for the truth (I only mean the truth about what the Pope says and thinks, here) when PZ posted that the Pope was about to get all nasty on uppity scientists, based on an article from the Guardian about a meeting the Pope was going to have with some former students to discuss evolution. The Guardian said that the Pope was about to put the Church on the side of ID. I knew that that wasn’t going to be what was going to happen at that meeting, for lots of reasons, and I tried to tell PZ so.
As things turned out, I was right. But it seems as if PZ keeps looking for pieces that will confirm his hunch that the Pope is actually just a stupid creationist, or a dupe of ID at best, someone Ken Miller should be ready to criticize (as PZ says in this post). In fact, the Pope and Ken Miller seems to be in just about exactly the same place, if you read what they both say and don’t just go by the news reports.
Look, I know that PZ thinks that the Pope’s actual view is dumb too. I don’t agree with you all, but I do agree with Chris Ho-Stuart that if you want to criticize the Pope, you’re better off engaging with his actual views.
Anyway, it’s late, and I have to stop.
Joe Ratzi is not a creationist unless you want to equate “creationist” with “theist”. And yes, as soon as you realized that he did *not* claim that evolution was “unreasonable” but simply made the typical (boring) theistic claim that it robbed life of “meaning” (whatever that is) you should have updated the blog entry to correct your previous misunderstanding. Joe has said enough stupid things in reality to criticize without relying on bad translations to create false controversies.
Michael: You’re well within your rights to forswear defending your faith in here (Pharyngula is not kind to theists). I’m not attacking your faith, however, I’m attacking your religion. It’s fine to say that atheists are afraid of a loss of independence in a world with God. However, to go on to say that God is the only way not to be afraid of the “emptiness of life” is completely contradictory. Either God is filling the emptiness with purpose or we are. We can be afraid of having to fill the emptiness ourselves or afraid of having the emptiness filled for us but not both at the same time.
What Ratzinger is doing here is merely insulting; a schoolboy taunt of “You’re afraid to do it!” – which doesn’t lead to the most measured of responses. He’s doing exactly what PZ is – picking inaccurate, inflammatory words to describe people. Miller is *not* a creationist, and neither is the Pope. The difference is: PZ doesn’t speak for me.
Miller is a Christian, who accepts the material facts of evolution. He just thinks that there is some kind of divine designer behind the whole thing, and that the purely material description is incomplete.
The pope is a Christian. He is not a scientist at all, but seems to be duly cautious about making any objection to the material facts of evolution. He just insists that there is some kind of divine designer behind the whole thing, and that the purely material description is incomplete.
I disagree with both of them. I have not seen any comment from either of them that disputes the basic material facts of evolution; but I do totally disagree with the notion that there is any kind of divine designer at any level, and I think a purely material description is the only kind that matters. We don’t know all about evolution as yet, but theology and religion offers absolutely nothing whatsoever to tell us more.
Indeed, the general effect of theology and religion is to lead many people to reject many of the material facts of the matter. Theists who manage to get the details right do it despite their beliefs, not because of them. When it come to addressing those material errors, Miller and I are on the same side. I’m a “strong” atheist (I am don’t merely lack belief; I am sure God does not exist, in so far as I am sure of anything.) But I’m also a genial atheist, who likes a debate but dislikes animosity.
Perhaps some people just think we ought to cut to the chase and tackle all religion directly, as the source of so much confusion. Fair enough; it’s not my approach, but I don’t have any problem with others focusing on religious fundamentals rather that empirical details. My concern is not that people attack religion; but that too often the attack shows the kinds of irrationality and fallacies that anyone from any side should avoid. (And by the way; I am active in debate with theists; and am just as critical of irrational or fallacious arguments from defenders of religion.)
Some people here just can’t manage to disagree with someone without saying that they are “misrepresenting” the matter. Technically, I suppose that’s right; but I suspect a sneaky desire to slip in a word that carries an implication of deception and dishonesty. Frankly, I despise those kinds of rhetorical tricks, and I don’t think we need to stoop to that level.
As far as the material facts of evolution goes, Miller is on the money all down the line; and the pope is noncommittal. I don’t qualify my support of Miller’s information on the material facts of evolution by forever bringing up my position on God’s non-existence. Actually, I am pretty darn certain that by fixing up the material facts, the attempted reconciliation with God becomes harder and harder; but it’s a distinct question.
The idea that there is an actual inconsistency between Miller and the pope is invalid. It’s based on sloppy and tendentious readings; which is annoying because of all people we naturalists ought to be showing a higher standard.
As for misrepresenting Miller as “attacking atheists”. Yes, I stand by that absolutely. Particularly as it was combined with ideas of witch burning and silencing. In context, there’s no way to see Paul’s comments with respect to “attacking atheists” as anything but sloppy misrepresentation. Perhaps he really doesn’t get it; perhaps he knows it’s a distortion but likes it for the rhetorical impact. I don’t know; but it’s certainly wrong.
There is a difference between attacking people, and attacking their ideas; and Miller was doing the latter. In the comparison between Ken Miller and Paul Myers; I agree with the basic position of Myers, but am frustrated at how he defends it with invalid excess. I disagree with the position of Miller; but aspire to follow his example for making case while trying to maintain a fair representation of those with whom I disagree.
Cheers — Chris
You always have to love the kind of apologetics that relies on semantic quibbling about what someone or something actually said. The fact is that the Pope chastized evolutionary biology by making the common theist claim that it voided all “meaning” in “life”. Simply because he didn’t come right out and explicity state that it was false doesn’t mean that PZ “misinterpreted” him. Given the fact that religious people have an obnoxious predilection for ideas that are emotionally comforting, we can pretty much discern where exactly the Pope stands on this and why he does so as well.
Get off PZ’s case people.
the argument is not genuinely that. indeed, for a Master Theologian, in public utterance, the Papal Mouth is amazingly ignorant of the theological landscape. i’ve sketched it, relying primarily upon the efforts of John Haght, theologian of Georgetown University.
the “united we stand, divided we fall” dilemma is a curious feature of democratic and quasi-democratic systems. i find it quite perplexing. in order to achieve my personal larger goals, i need to compromise them. in contrast, a zealous religious competitor can subjugate their personal ambitions to The Greater Good. in doing so, they prostrate and eliminate their individuality and humanity. i’m thinking that maybe the economic history of the United States is after all primary.
anyway, we can play that game, unifying, splatting down divisive but probably important issues. or, we can disengage, as i’m ever more inclined to do. after all, the rational ought to have, encounter to encounter, an advantage over the irrational. it may not turn out well, but, realistically, there are limits to what we can achieve.
maybe we ought to concentrate on ourselves, those we love, and gain advantages where we can, protecting ourselves, letting the rest rot.
The Pope is a minor problem compared to our Glorious Pope George.
“”A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me,” Bush said during a 1 1/2 -hour Oval Office conversation on cultural changes and a battle with terrorists that he sees lasting decades. “There was a stark change between the culture of the ’50s and the ’60s — boom — and I think there’s change happening here,” he added. “It seems to me that there’s a Third Awakening.”
The First Great Awakening refers to a wave of Christian fervor in the American colonies from about 1730 to 1760, while the Second Great Awakening is generally believed to have occurred from 1800 to 1830.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/12/AR2006091201594_pf.html
Michael Kremer: I appreciate your correction. I’m sorry if I misrepresented your view as to the style of B16’s papacy. Since I’m not a Catholic myself, I’m probably insensitive to nuance. I appreciate also the time you’ve taken to defend your views.
However, I’m not persuaded by your somewhat-muted defense of His Holiness. One would have to believe that Cardinal Schonborn is both insensitive and ignorant not to see his op-ed pieces as trial balloons for a more ID-friendly Church teaching on evolution. I found the Cardinal’s subsequent ‘explanation’ of his views unconvincing, to say the least.
I note also that His Holiness has never bothered to publicly address the substance of the letter sent last year by Miller, Ayala and Krauss, which specifically asked for reaffirmation of the teachings found in JP2’s 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy. Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect that the Holy See would deign to respond, but without such clarification you can expect that any future pronouncements from Rome referring to evolution are going to be viewed with suspicion.
And let’s face it: if a believer (like me) is carrying these nagging doubts about the Church’s intent, how do you expect non-believers to respond?
Cordially…Scott
Great white wonder hit it spot-on when he(?) said:””Only this God saves us from being afraid of the world and from anxiety before the emptiness of life.”
Sounds eerily similar to the cry of a drug addict.”
EXACTLY!
Religion is a self-inflicted drug.
This is where Dawkins’ idea of a meme is useful ….
Too many other comments to make on such short time, but just wanted to commend both Brian and Chris-Ho Stuart for seeking, in different ways, a measure of consistency on how we evaluate claims made by or about Miller and the Catholic hierarchy.
Oh, and Caledonian: I’m sure that most people here have no problem standing with you on the issues. As you might have noted, I praised your analysis on another thread that laid out some key distinctions between science and religion. Are you ready for that nitric acid bath yet? :)
“Religion is a self-inflicted drug.”
My only quibble is with the word “self”.
The idea of anyone trying to explain and rationalize this exceptionally stupid Pope’s rambling qualifications, excuses, exceptions, and half-truths is the reason I bother to read through these useless threads discussing his latest infallibility.
Miller is a fine man, who believes things I can’t understand him as taking at all seriously, except in the personal, spiritual sense (Jesus rose from physical death? And flew up into the sky? And what the fuck is it with these “sin” thingies he packed along – not to any noticeable effect, by the way? Gimme a break!), but this Pope is simply a manipulative, deceitful, Machiavellian shit.
It’s a shame the Pope can denounce science so loudly, but can’t work up the same fervor for denouncing church leaders that molest children. How is it that the church still has credibility with it’s members anymore? It must be the Pope’s hat. People LOVE that tall hat.
“How is it that the church still has credibility with it’s members anymore?”
When you convince people that you’re in charge of whether or not they spend all eternity in unbearable torture, they tend to grant you a lot of slack on other stuff.
YES, HE DOES. He says evolution is “unreasonable” unless you attach to it A Particular Version of Really Big Father Figure.
About the “fear” thing: Kremer, why are you afraid of Ishtar? Olorun? Amaterasu? Quetzalcoatl?
I wonder how people would react if a central Muslim leader came forth and publicly stated that the lack of belief in mohammad and jihad must make peoples lives meaningless. Or how Hindu’s would react if the pope had said that the belief in many gods and not the only true god renders one’s life meaningless?
It’s amazing to me when people say that atheism and atheists are somehow protected or favored.. Not that anyone has said that here but I’ve heard it a few times before. If we even make fun of religion we are hateful but if they call us misguided lost fearful children they mean the best.. :p double :p
PZ, your post slips over from a discussion about working with theistic evolutionists, such a Ken Miller, in the battle against creationism and intelligent design to whether that entails working with the Pope.
As far as I’m aware, the Pope is not active in that movement, but many Catholics are.
The Pope is against birth control, but many Catholics oppose the Pope’s position. Surveys show that many Catholics us birth control themselves.
The Pope is against abortion, but many Catholics do not agree.
I have not studied the Pope’s latest statement on evolution carefully, but I don’t think I’m ready to hand the Discovery Institute a victory it badly needs and wants right now by declaring — perhaps falsely — that the Pope has embraced creationism or intelligent design. There is much evidence to the contrary.
My quick first reading of the statement you cite seems to indicate that the Pope is talking not about the science of evolution but about metaphysical conclusions some — like myself — draw from it.
I think some of those writing here who want to throw Catholics overboard may wish we had more rowers later on.
As I point out on my blog, the pope isn’t against the Darwinian idea of common ancestry and has made that clear. He is rather against the ‘neo-Darwinian’ idea that the diversity of life on earth occured through unguided evolutionary changes with random origins and results. The latter idea, but not the former, is incompatible with Christian teaching, so he can’t be blamed for criticizing it (he is the pope, afterall).
but I also think skepticism is warranted on scientific grounds. Afterall, until we understand all the details of genetic mutation and other processes involved in evolutionary change, can we really claim this change is completely random? I’m not saying its completely pre-determined and I reject the idea of a God who actively pushes evolution in one direction or another, but it could be that there are very real constraints on what kinds of mutations can occur, greatly diminishing the number of possible outcomes. If that turns out to be the case, then evolutionary theory and Christian teaching won’t be incompatible.
Really? All that noodling about with “quantum indeterminacy” to supposedly give god an opening for arbitrary interventions is “on the money” with non-theologically-influenced science? That’s a very charitable reading, I must say.
That conclusion in no way follows from your premises. Christian teaching requires the existence of a super-powerful intelligent being who purposefully intervenes in the world, not merely “very real constraints on what kinds of mutations can occur”.
Well according to one Catholic fundie nutjob in the VAtican that makes them Protestants then. Which if carried to the extreme end means virtually all Catholics are such.
I find this argument laughable. Essentially this is Millers argument and it is so full of holes that to call it compatibility is to make the word meaningless. But if people wish to pretend have at it.
Three things I don’t like about the Catholic Church:
1) It treats women like second-class citizens.
2) It bashed gays.
3) It makes simplistic, wordy pronouncements about “Creative Reason” that are complete bullshit. Tons of dumb books containing half-baked philosophies exist. A well-stocked university library is full of them. Almost anybody can make one up.
Scott Hatfield .. “Michael Kremer: I appreciate your correction. I’m sorry if I misrepresented your view as to the style of B16’s papacy. Since I’m not a Catholic myself, I’m probably insensitive to nuance. I appreciate also the time you’ve taken to defend your views.”
Scott I grew up a Catholic so I think I understand what you are hinting at. You must understand the Catholic was well Catholic and so unlike narrower self-selecting sects had to cope with people of real intelligence (Like Michael Kremer obviously is). It has had lots of practice at apologetics and has built up a complex theological structure. (But I still wonder what the word “theology” is supposed to mean. Maybe one of you believers can explain it me. It seems to be something like a branch of mathematics – logical structures built on axioms, but I’m not quite sure.)
None the less, even (or especially) in it’s raw form the Pope’s form looks quite clumbsily formulated (and relatively easy to refute). I would have expected something subtler. (I assume it was spoken in German – I understand German can anybody point to an original?)
Micheal Kremer:
“No — because the “fear” in (1) and in (2) are different things. The “fear” the Pope sees in atheism is a fear that, after all, there might be a God, and I might then have to give up my independence and claim to establish my own meaning. It’s the fear of having to be humble. The “fear” involved in the “fear of the Lord” is primarily a fear of sundering one’s relationship with God by offending him through acting against the good.”
I cannot read any of this in what the Pope said – surely this is your own interpretation. I agree with you that people are misinterpreting “fear” – I think it is a transaltion of “Ehrfurcht” which is better translated as “awe”. As to what he thinks the fear motivating “modern” atheistism is, I have no clue. But surely your formulation makes no sense, the fear was supposed to be the cause of atheism, not its consequence as I read it. I also think it is very easy to fall into a confusion between A god and THE God. (Hence arguments about ignorance as to the origin and end of the universe – as used – allow the hypothesis of A God, not just THE God). As I saw it well formulated by Michael Shermer, monotheists reject all Gods but one, athiests reject just one more.
My own take on the meaningless issue is this – how does a god solve it. Being the insignificant (one of billions) plaything of a creative reason (whatever that means), doesn’t seem much more meaningful than being just a random (but in terms of the universe rare) result of evolution. Particularly if this God tells me what I’m allowed to do and think (rather than allowing me to be part of the process of making that decision).
To me it seems vastly less meaningful. If each of our individual existences is almost unimaginably improbable, then it is also exceedingly precious. I don’t see any other view that can so effectively encourage respect for the freedom, growth and development of all persons. Most religious traditions do precisely the opposite- there is no respect at all for the individuality, or even life in many cases, of anyone not inclined to knuckle under to the supposed commands of Big Daddy in the sky as conveyed by his priests. (And indeed the most creative and sensitive religious thinkers have always been utterly revolted by precisely this aspect of socially-approved religion- Blake comes immediately to mind. For that matter so does Jesus.)
One of the great sources of sophistry in this debate is the word “random.” Random means two things: Meaning (1): conforming with the laws of probability. Examples: life insurance, gambling and evolution. Meaning (2): Without direction, purposeless. Creationists, as part of their propaganda campaign, and unfortunately, many on this site, conflate the two. We do so at our peril.
While (2) implies (1), the difference between Miller, the Pope, etc. vs. PZ, Dawkins and others, is whether (1) implies (2). Miller and the Pope would say no; PZ and Dawkins say yes.
That is a metaphysical question, and ultimately isn’t subject to test. So in the effort to defend science, which is what this is all about, it would be useful to bracket the metaphysical question and get on with the real struggle, which is political.
I don’t understand this claim that atheists are afraid there might be a god.
I would love to learn that there is, in fact, a benevolent, loving Christian God, who will take people up to heaven for some sort of holiday spa afterlife. God could explain to me — I have no doubt he/she would be patient — how the world works, why things are the way they are (and were). I’d be with the people whom I love and respect. I’d know that my worries were over for all eternity.
Now, some might say “Ah, but you might not go to heaven, you scurvy rapscallion!” Well, that’s bullshit. You don’t know what the requirements are any more than I do. If you want to say “There must be a Creator”, fine. But I don’t buy for one moment that the truth was revealed to you but the Muslims and the Hindus and the Buddhists and the Zeusists are all just confused.
You may say that I’m in denial. I really am afraid there might be a god, and I just claim I’m not. Bullshit again. I’ve had dreams where I meet Jesus (seriously, I have) and we get along just fine. They are really very nice dreams. If I were in denial — if my subconscious was all scared and afraid — I believe the dreams would be very different.
So. Stop trying to get into my head. You don’t know what I believe or why I believe it or what I fear or desire or need or want. It is *incredibly* disrespectful for you to put words into my mouth. Don’t. Just don’t.
(Note that this is the “paranoid schizophrenic ‘you'” — I’m not addressing anyone in this thread specifically. Except maybe that popey guy…)
Pope: With this faith we have no reason to hide, no fear of ending up in a dead end.
Me: At least I know what I’m supposed to be afraid of now. :)
Nance
“Red State Rabble declares that we must stand united against the common enemy, creationism and such anti-scientific forces of unreason that threaten our secular institutions. That’s a nice, fuzzy statement, which I personally suspect is unrealistic and unworkable, but let’s give it a try.” [a fairly well-constructed straw man follows]
RSR is right. God is so closely identified in people’s minds with their parents, there’s no way most people will ever become atheists. Even badly abused children will cry and fight to stay with the parents that would ultimately beat them to death. People don’t *think* about God being a metaphore for their parents, but the clinging to the idea, and the way they talk about it makes it obvious.
People who were abused by their parents often become abusers. The same with people who have an abusive God. Those people have to be stopped. I’m in 100% agreement with this: “We frankly don’t care what his religious views are. It’s his actions that count in our book.”
The Pope’s actions (statements) are deplorable. They should be deplored. Demand that he give up his belief in God? Ain’t gonna happen. Same with Miller and 80% of the population of the US. Ain’t gonna happen. You might as well ask them to shoot their parents. I want to win the evol/crea debate. I want science to win. Demanding people do the psychological equivalent of shooting their parents isn’t going to get us there. Encouraging people to grow up and become independant of their invisible, magic parents might work.
Miller is a scientist first and a believer second. If you are going to be a believer, that’s the correct order. Miller doesn’t live in his parents basement. He has his own life and his own thoughts. He didn’t need to shoot his parents to get to that point. He just needed to learn to think for himself. If he can do it, other people can and that’s got to be enough.
The story in the Christian Post
Well, there goes the Old Testament. And if that book is out, it makes it so much harder to believe the sequel.
On the contrary, it is the denial of a positive claim that is in principle testable- that there is, underlying the observed universe, an intelligence capable of harboring purposes, that has intervened in physical processes that appear undirected. Not only is there no credible evidence for this claim, but a reasonable induction from the history of science strongly suggests that, as the possible “hiding places” for this purposeful intelligence have steadily been whittled away, they will ultimately disappear altogether (if they haven’t already- noodling about in a amateur way with quantum uncertainty is coming perilously close to a reductio ad absurdum of the god of the gaps.)
Declining to believe an ever-more-improbable, and always evidentially unsupported, proposition is just plain good empiricism, not metaphysics.
Why is everyone so concerned about meaning? What meaning has a rock, or a tree, or the rarified gas in the intersteller vaccuum? Life is meaningless. It is merely a state of being. The only meaning life has is the meaning that we attribute to it. I for one am not concerned about this.
Meaningless universe: I can live with that.
Pope’s meaningless philosophy of the Logos: No thank you.
I would like the Pope to fashion a taller, pointier hat for himself. Something along these lines:
http://www.harpers.org/art/cartoons/mrfish/Dunce_350x456.jpg
When he starts growing a little toothbrush mustache, I’ll really start to worry.
Oh, and George, your list of reasons for disliking the Catholic church is missing one important thing, as I’m sure any altar-boy will tell you. :(
The Pope enablers deserve to be trashed too:
“Speaking to a 300,000-strong crowd in this German city,…”
It takes a village to make a Pope. I wonder how many scientists were in the crowd?
Blows my mind that Ratzinger thinks secular powers are something to be scared of. He SERVED UNDER HITLER. He should know better than anyone that religious single-mindedness is at least as dangerous, probably moreso.
People, how many times do I have to say this? THE POPE IS A CATHOLIC! Because of that, he believes many things the rest of us disagree with and many of us find absurd. One of the things he believes is that there is a God who has purposes that unfold in some way or other in the course of nature. There are lots of good reasons for rejecting that view, but none that could possibly appeal to someone who becomes Pope. As far as I can tell (I don’t know if PZ is misrepresenting the Pope’s views or is simply tone-deaf to the distinct music of Catholic rhetorical style), Mr. Ratzinger is saying nothing new. For our purposes, all we can reasonably expect is that he not set himself up as a judge of the SCIENTIFIC merits of science, and I don’t think he did that. He is duty-bound to combat what he sees as an illegitimate leap from what science teaches about the way nature unfolds to inferences about the existence or purposes of God. Most of us here don’t think the leap illegitimate, though in candor we have to admit that it is a leap, but you can’t expect anyone in the religious line, including Catholics, to agree. Within the limits of bedrock Catholic theology, Mr. Ratzinger seems to me to have done all we can reasonably expect. It may not be much, but it beats the alternative.
Bottom line: In the two previous rounds of textbook approvals in Texas, Miller did much more than his share to keep the texts scientific and accurate. In the 1996 round, Miller’s bravura testimony to the board edified thousands in Texas and made it safe for even creationists to vote for science.
By no means did he do it alone — but neither am I happy to see our fellow in arms getting flak from the rear.
Actions count. Miller’s paid his dues, and yours and mine, too.
“God himself is Logos, the rational first cause of all reality, the creative reason out of which the world came to be, and which is reflected in the world.” -B16
non·sense (nÅn’sÄns’, -sÉns)
n. Words or signs having no intelligible meaning: a message that was nonsense until decoded. [check]
Subject matter, behavior, or language that is foolish or absurd. [check]
Extravagant foolishness or frivolity: a clown’s exuberant nonsense. [could be funnier]
Matter of little or no importance or usefulness: a chatty letter full of gossip and nonsense. [check]
Insolent talk or behavior; impudence: wouldn’t take any nonsense from the children. [borderline]
That entitles him to write a bad book and give bad talks, but have everyone pretend they’re good? I thought the sale of indulgences went out of fashion some centuries ago…
I take my stand with Bacon: “Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion”. Trying “reconcile” the irreconcilable- science and full-bore Abrahamic religion- and to appease creationists by sowing confusion with a dose of theistic evolution (but it’s OK, it doesn’t really contradict science, wink wink, nudge nudge) is neither intellectually respectable nor a good long-term strategy for raising the abysmal level of scientific understanding of the average person in this increasingly benighted country.
The pope, as usual, has been veeery unclear and has not spelled out if common descent is true or not. This is a step back from what the previous pope did, which now sounds wonderful, that he simpy admitted that evolution was more than a theory.
Truth is this pope knows perfectly well he has opted for scratching the bellies of creationists and ID-ers.
Further his calling atheism irrational, while painting god as some kind of mathematical conclusion, is just completely silly. I guess faith is just worthless, then.
Steve touches on a point that I keep running into. I can’t conceive of any way to have an involved, intelligent influence upon the universe, causing significant impact upon physical reality, that remains invisible to detection. If it has effects that matter, that I should be concerned about or interested in and therefore incorporating into my scientific models and (to me, at least) personal worldview, then they should be measurable.
There are ways to have real but undetected influences. Perhaps God daily pushes some planets around a star billions of light-years away into really wacky orbits. But so what? Even if true, it makes no difference to this solar system or any within detectable range if my models of planetary orbits incorporated this fact. It has absolutely no effect on me, so I may as well not incorporate it at all.
Ah, but what if God’s influence is on the seemingly random bumping of molecules, a sort of divine “butterfly effect” exerted either once long ago at the Big Bang or regularly throughout history that leads to large-scale physical manifestations of his will, such as hurricanes (or buses) striking the unfaithful (isn’t this sort of Miller’s quantum noodling?)
But again, even if true that takes me back to the original question: So what? Shouldn’t this have noticeable, measureable results, like a tendency for buses to smite atheists rather than good Christians? A silly example, perhaps, but you get the point. Even if the effect can’t be measured because God’s will is unknowable and thus we don’t know what to look for, then again, the effect isn’t measurable and it makes no difference if my models incorporate it or not.
I’ve rambled on quite a bit here and I’m sure this isn’t an original concept…I feel like a freshman in a philosophy class…happy, eager even, to hear comments and criticisms.
No one is asking the pope to become an atheist. No one is asking everyone to deconvert. No one is asking anyone else to shoot their parents. ‘k?
Ed, Ken has done good for us. That does not mean he gets excused from criticism.
No one is asking the pope to become an atheist.
No, people just write letters begging the Pope to be nice to the theory of evolution.
Religion must be an evolutionary adaption, so why get your
underwear in a bunch.
Why not celebrate the wonders of evolution. It’s like obesity or lactose intolerance, or
being red headed. Have some compassion. Develop a drug
and market it, just like “ED”. Maybe nip it in the bud.
Genetic screening is such a wonderful discovery.
Come on, what’s really wrong with a little eugenics.
“No one is asking anyone else to shoot their parents. ‘k?”
it’s a metaphor. It’s why people cling to the idea of even an abusive God. Emotionally they view atheists as orphans. The reason atheists are viewed as bad people is because they have no “parental” supervision.
I don’t think you are demanding that Miller or the pope deconvert. I think you are demanding that Miller at least, not find any relationship between science and his religion. That’s impossible for him because they exist in the same universe.
“Ed, Ken has done good for us. That does not mean he gets excused from criticism”
Who says he does? But I know why Miller criticises Dawkins (and by extension, you). Dawkins pokes sticks at religionists from the safety of England knowing nobody is going to throw a rock through his window. He leaves the rest of us over here to clean up the mess.
If evolution ever has broad acceptance in the US it will be because people manage to harmonize it with their belief in God and incorporate it into their Christianity. It’s not scientific, but we aren’t talking about science, are we? If evolution is ever accepted here it will be because of the efforts of people like Ken Miller and Glenn Morton. Not Dawkins’ methods and not yours. Sorry, but there’s nothing I or anyone can do about that.
Wait!
“Not Dawkins’ methods and not yours.”
I take that back. You and Dawkins are vital because you teach. Teaching is extremely important to counteract 40 years of lies about evolution. Almost 20 years ago when I started debating creationists it was almost impossible to get someone with a PhD in biology to even acknowledge there was a debate. That left us foot soldiers fighting bazookas with sticks and rocks. A lot of what you and Dawkins do is preaching to the choir, but the choir needs to learn the stuff you “preach.” It gives us the ammo we need to push back against all the misinformation ordinary, nonfundamentalist, noncreationist people have about evolution. Miller teaches too. He gives us the language we need to fight back all the religious nonsense around evolution. Don’t get me wrong, I adore you all.
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why it’s safer to do that in Britain, and whether continued appeasement of religious presumption and belligerency is relly a good way to bring the US closer that desirable state of affairs? Or, whether, given the Blair government’s consistent appeasement of religious intolerance of all stripes, the worry Dawkins has expressed, that this happy state may be on the way to being lost in Britain itself, might indeed have some justification? For my part I strongly agree with the sentiments that Larry Moran expressed on a related thread.
But doesn’t it speak poorly of the USA that we need half-breed themselves confused individuals like the above to bring the message to the masses so they can feel ‘safe’?
This isn’t a problem elsewhere and is unique to the USA. To get to the core you have to discuss and challenge why these people are so afraid that their religion is simply fantasy.
Short term you lose, long term you may win as much of the Orient and Europe have done.
Jonathan Badger: Unless he has a different (and heretical!) view than the previous pope, the current one is a creationist, because he denies the evolution of human psychological faculties. What these are to include is never clear, but the point holds regardless. It would be just as creationist to deny that human digestion evolved.
frank schmidt: Why should one’s metaphysics not be consistent with (and better, mutually supporting) one’s science? (Hint: not all metaphysics is religious.)
CJColucci: Of course the pope is a catholic. But the point is rather that many of us wish he (and the others) weren’t. Most of us also think that evidence and inquiry are the best ways (at least in part) to disuade people of the notions we find wrongheaded, and so … here we are.
If evolution ever has broad acceptance in the US it will be because people manage to harmonize it with their belief in God and incorporate it into their Christianity.
“For a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
Medicine go dow-wown, medicine go down.
Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down
in the most delightful way.”
Ah, but do bears shit in the woods? Inquiring minds want to know!
I’m not sure that it would be a victory – The fundamentalist Protestants that make up the body of of Creationism / ID’s “big tent” are generally rabidly anti-Catholic. Most of them don’t accept that Catholics are Christians (though I’ve yet to get a coherent reason as to why not), and they tend to shy away from anything that might, in any aspect seem to be somehow “Papist”. For example, my father-in-law’s church decided not have a service at midnight last Christmas, purely on the grounds that that’s the sort of thing the Catholics do. Not that there would have been anything Catholic about the service itself, of course.
If the Pope were to directly and unambiguously validate ID or creationism as an official point of Catholic dogma, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if fundamentalist Protestants abandoned it, just to distance themselves from Catholicism.
Of course, it’s not worked for abortion, so I may well be barking up the wrong tree.
There are many reasons many protestants distance themselves from catholics. And many are more than sensible theology wise, starting with a faith based vs. works based salvation and progressing up to idolatry.
Opinions and mileage vary.
Why fight creationism?
You’re not going to change the mind of anyone who believes that the KJ is the literal word of God and sees demons everywhere.
By debating creationists, you’re really just giving them a lot more attention than they deserve. You’re effectively bolstering their visibility, and elevating what is an essentially ludicrous issue to the level of something that seems to be taken seriously enough to warrant debate.
If people want to raise their children to be superstitious morons, that’s their right. That’s what freedom is, baby.
Instead of trying to present logical arguments to people who clearly haven’t the ability to reason, focus on your own kids and their friends.
By elevating the debate, you’re making it seem more important than it is – and while doing so you’re only preaching to the clique that already agrees with you. The best approach is to sneeringly ignore the whole thing, and let natural selection take care of the backwards dolts that are produced when ID wins over the public.
You know.. Occationally I have thought about what it would mean if there “was” a god and concluded that if it was true, then:
1. He/she/it would be someone that likes to make up a lot of wildly contradictory mythologies, that all insist they need to convert or kill everyone else to please him.
2. He/she/it literally enjoys making those mythologies so confusing that the more “in to them” you are, the more likely you are to be bigotted, devisive and eventually violent.
3. He/she/it revels in the chaos this causes, for if not, why create the mythologies in such a rediculously easy to screw up way in the first place, let alone refuse to do anything to truely fix it?
Yeah, in those few moments I contemplate the possibility “fear” is definitely present, but it has jack shit to do with with the fear they claim I am feeling or the fear they insist I “should” feel. Its neither, “Someone might be out their watching me!”, or, “Gosh! I shouldn’t do that or daddy will spank me.”, but rather, “What’s that moving in the shadows and will it eat me?” Babbling about how someone “wrote” down the legends wrong or how is people’s fault for “not reading them right”, doesn’t resolve this issue, it just makes item 3 above more glaring.
But the simple truth is, this isn’t any more a sign of my having something missing in my life than if I also contemplated the idea, “What if space aliens are really abducting people and I just don’t remember being one of them?” A lot of things are scary. Its why we watch horror movies. Religion seems to want us to think though that Freddy Grugar is just misunderstood and wants everyone to believe in him. No thanks!, even if he was real.
Oh, and I forgot another option:
4. Or, he/she/it simply wants to see how many people navigate through life to lead sane and relatively normal lived, “despite” everything he/she/it has done to f#$% things up and make that virtually impossible. In which case, we are looking at the villian from Saw, which isn’t a whole hell of a lot better…
It’s not about debating creationism. It’s about keeping it out of the public schools.
I’d add that it is also about keeping good information about evolution and direct rebuttal of creationist claims available for those who can be persuaded by the evidence, who are by no means nonexistent. In the case of creation science/ID, it’s also about establishing that their definitions of “science” and “evidence” are false.
And personally I do think there is, up to a point, an obligation to respond to certain lies. “When others do a foolish thing, you should tell them it is a foolish thing. They can still continue to do it, but at least the truth is where it needs to be.”
I believe there is great merit in Steve_C’s highly practical goal- which after all simply means enforcing the law!- as opposed to the quixotic one of trying to “convert” creationists and their fellow-travelers by practicing appeasement (at considerable cost to intellectual integrity). I wish people like Miller would stick to the former, where they have indeed done excellent work for which they should be lauded.
Trust me on this one–bears shit everywhere.
The Pope, on the other hand…
let natural selection take care of the backwards dolts that are produced when ID wins over the public.
Is that what natural selection will do?
Is that why bacteria and cockroaches are on the verge of extinction, while chimpanzees are taking over the globe?
I think the view expressed in italics makes some assumptions about humans that are not too far off from the assumptions made by religious freaks.
Susan,
I appreciate your clearly written, ever so pragmatic, comments.
Sadly, there is nothing that you or anyone can do that might change the way PZ and those like him approach religion. They see it as something akin to a holy war or maybe see themselves as the shining knights of science out to slay the terrible dragons of religion.
Ed Brayton has a couple of interesting posts on the subject:
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/drawing_religious_battle_lines.php
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/pz_gets_it_wrong.php
PZ,
What’s with this “we atheists” line? Many atheists have and do think life is meaningless. Apparently the only thing “we atheists” agree on is the one proposition that defines us: there is no god or, to the pragmatically minded, the concept of god is not a useful one.
Dennett makes sense, except for the part about smoking:
Q. Do you believe science and religion must be in conflict, or are they ever compatible?
A. I think there is quite a conflict. I’ve never been persuaded by those self-appointed moderates in science who keep insisting there’s no real conflict between science and religion if they keep to their proper bailiwicks. If you look at what the proper bailiwick for religion turns out to be, it’s pretty darn narrow. If you think that religion is a path to any kind of factual truth, on any matter–like the creation of the biosphere, the age of the earth–if you think that religion has anything at all to say about that, or if you think that religion has anything to say about the truths of the stories in its own sacred texts, then you’re just wrong.
[…]
Q. Are you anti-religion?
A. I’m actually not anti-religion. I’m certainly opposed to the presumption that religion is wonderful and a necessary part of human life. I feel about religion the way I feel about music, about art, and about smoking. There are wonderful things about all of them. I don’t smoke anymore. I’m really glad I don’t, and I hope other people don’t smoke, but if they do, that’s fine. It’s not that bad, and some people may really need it. Music and art are better, but people can be addicted to those too.
Q. What would your ideal vision for the role of religion in society?
A. I think the organizational genius of religion, its capacity to muster wonderful throngs of devoted and selfless actors in major moral efforts is something quite wonderful. It played a huge role in the Civil Rights movement, it played a huge role in upsetting apartheid in South Africa, and it played a role in overthrowing the Shah of Iran (though I feel a little differently about that).
Religious teams have done a lot of excellent moral work. On the other hand, religious teams have done a lot of harm. This is a very powerful force that is very hard to control. And I have not been able to figure out myself whether we can have the power without too much risk.
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/187/story_18772_2.html
“Why fight creationism?”
Think of it as “Doom” for intellectuals. :-)
Ignoring them got us into the trouble we are in now. They MUST be answered!
Besides, it’s fun. When people ask me my hobbies I say “crochet, belly dance and kicking creationist butt.”
“Why fight creationism?”
Think of it as “Doom” for intellectuals. :-)
Ignoring them got us into the trouble we are in now. They MUST be answered!
Besides, it’s fun. When people ask me my hobbies I say “crochet, belly dance and kicking creationist butt.”
Many atheists have and do think life is meaningless.
That’s because we haven’t discovered the joy of trolling atheist blogs and whining at them every day.
I read the top 6 stories dated today found in a googlenews search for “Pope Benedict, Darwin”, and couldn’t find anything quoting Ratzinger using the word “Darwin”. I did find the ANSA.it story PZ cites, which indeed quotes material lacking in the Vatican version 386sx mentions – which didn’t make the googlenews cut. (I wonder if there’s an official penalty for censoring or misrepresenting papal speeches? I hope so, if the alternative is the emergence of a Holy Tony Snow.)
Btw, the top googlenews listing was a notably rambling rant from Bruce Chapman at the Disco Institute: go to http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/pope_denounces_evolution_of_th.html if in need of a bit of absurdism.
Absurdism, and one bit of truth:
…whatever they think it means.
Steve LaBonne asks me:
That’s physics; and here I am not willing to endorse Miller so comprehensively. He is going into areas where he has no real background. In my view, attempts to locate free will or consciousness or god or whatever in quantum effects are all pretty silly. With respect to evolution, I continue to think Miller is on the money all down the line, just as I said.
I also endorse Paul’s most recent comment:
I agree. I’m not objecting to being publically critical of Ken, and I have no patience with the idea that we should not upset the apple cart just because he’s effective in the creationism wars.
Sadly, there is nothing that you or anyone can do that might change the way PZ and those like him approach religion. They see it as something akin to a holy war or maybe see themselves as the shining knights of science out to slay the terrible dragons of religion.
Ed Brayton has a couple of interesting posts on the subject…
Why does it matter “how we approach religion”? We approach religion in the same way we approach every claim, and generally come to the same conclusion regarding them as we do Holocaust denial and run-of-the-mill creationism. Instead of addressing this point, you and people like Ed (whose writing I can rarely find fault with elsewhere) dodge it an repeat ad nauseum conciliatory bullshit toward religion and lecture us as to how irrational and militant we are being!
There is one other point I’d like to make on this.
The common argument for appeasing and legitimizing the blind irrationality of religion is that if we do, we might just be able to convince them of something like evolution.
Even assuming that is true, how short-sighted do you have to be to not realize the future consequences of that? Sure, evolution can in some ways be convoluted enough to be made logically compatible with religion. But what do we do when modern cognitive science continues to remove the need for an ethereal soul, or big-bang cosmology continues to remove the need for an ultimate cosmic creator?
There is no way those beliefs will win over the religious, and we shouldn’t have to try to contort in such a way to appease people. When we do that, we lose before we even get started.
Tyler; I’d be curious to see where Ed engages in any contortions. I’m not saying it’s impossible; but he seems mostly to take the same view as I do. Criticising religion by misrepresenting it is bad. Be critical of religion all you like; I don’t mind in the least. I’ll object when the criticism is itself based on a distortion.
Ed has a recent blog about this, at Drawing Religious Battle Lines. And as he points out in the comments; this blog is not a plea for tolerance. It is a plea for rationality. That is my position as well. I don’t mind at all people attacking religion. What gets me is when they use stupid arguments to do so.
Pierce R. Butler wrote:
I think the pope did mention something about “evolution”, but the Vatican Information Service’s news story replaced that part with ellipses for some reason.
CJCollucci … “He is duty-bound to combat what he sees as an illegitimate leap from what science teaches about the way nature unfolds to inferences about the existence or purposes of God.”
I don’t see this at all. I can decide there are no Gods without science. Socrates did. I can also decide that is a God (albeit a limited one who limits himself to statistically insignificant intrusions) with science. The fact that science proves some traditional rational arguments for God (or Gods) invalid is besides the point.
The Catholic Church long ago decided to throw in its lot with Greek Philosophy and so is a bit hamstrung because it is committed to both logic and God. It has to accomodate both to be true to its tradition (unlike some American churches).
I think this Pope should just shut up. He can’t open his mouth without putting his foot in it.
Case in point (if you can read German):
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,437215,00.html
reason:
You can find the text of the Organization of Islamic Conferences press release to which the Spiegel article you linked to refers, under “press releases” here:
http://www.oic-oci.org/
no German needed.
You can find the text of the Pope’s lecture to which the OIC is responding here:
http://www.oecumene.radiovaticana.org/en1/Articolo.asp?c=94807
Interestingly you will see that:
Islam is not the main target here; the Pope characterizes his lecture as an “attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within.” The characterizations of Islam that the OIC objects to all come from quotations from a 14th century Byzantine emperor and the Pope uses them to set up the idea of God as Reason which comes from the connection of Christianity to Greek thought, that you rightly point to. So the Pope is trying to defend a view of reason according to which the commitment to “God and logic” can be sustained. This commitment goes back to John’s gospel in which God is identified with logos (reason).
I agree that the Pope was not being very diplomatic in putting the anti-Islamic quotations front and center, but in fact they lead into a wider discussion that touches on many themes raised on this blog (a discussion which most readers here will think is fuzzy-headed at best…)
reason: “I can decide there are no Gods without science. Socrates did.”
What is your evidence for this?
reason: I mean: what is your evidence for the claim about Socrates?
– posted by Chris Ho-Stuart
So, Mr. Ho-Stuart, you believe that human mental function cannot arise from mere physical interactions and that it could not have developed through a process of evolution? You believe that intercession from a supernatural force was necessary for the origination of human beings? That’s what Miller believes.
Caledonian,
I think you are confusing the mind and the soul. A common confusion since Descartes, but a confusion nonetheless.
Micheal Kremer…
you are correct I expressed myself a little clumsily. I should have said I can reject the existance of the Gods (as known) without science. It is not possible purely from reason or science to prove the existance or not of some Metaphysical God concept. But the specific you are about that God the less likely it is, and the more likely it is to be disproved either scientifically, or as with Socrates by sophistry. (Note I used the word “decide”, I made no implications about the truth of the position.)
Many people have decided that they don’t believe in God after reading the Bible because the personality of God changes during the Bible (and is sometimes abhorent). You can have logic and consistancy, or belief in the literal truth of the Bible not both. Not that I am accusing you of such simplicity.
Don’t be stupid. If the soul has no affect upon physical behavior, and the physical world does not interact with the soul, it cannot be said to exist. Miller believes in the existence of the soul – more to the point, the Pope does, and says that human mental phenomena cannot be understood without reference to God.
Are you denying Catholic doctrine on this matter, Mr. Kremer?
Where does the Pope say “human mental phenomena cannot be understood without reference to God”? (In a sense in which rocks can be understood without reference to God; of course in one sense, the Pope thinks nothing can be understood without reference to God.)
What I think you’ll find is a doctrine that each individual human soul is created by God. I am not denying this. But I think it is a mistake to say that soul = mind.
To illustrate my point about being able to reject God without science, my own questioning started by looking at how many different Gods there were and wondering why I should pick any one of them as the one I believed in. Nothing to do with science I’m afraid PZ.
No, what I found was a doctrine that conscience, moral evaluation, and rationality itself could not exist without divine intervention.
Answer the question, Mr. Kremer.
Caledonian — I don’t think I reject any Catholic doctrine on this matter. But you’ll need to show me what you found (i.e. provide sources — not just your say-so). And you’ll need to show me where divine intervention specifically is needed, as opposed to divine concurrence with the operation of natural processes. What I know is that JPII has said that divine intervention is needed for the creation of the human soul. I don’t think this means that human rationality is a product of a specific act of divine intervention. I also don’t know what exact doctrinal standing this teaching has, though I don’t think it’s one of those pronouncements that’s supposed to be infallible (Catholics don’t believe everything the Pope says is infallible — very strict conditions have to be met for infallibility). It is also true that Catholicism teaches that the ultimate source of the universe is “Creative Reason” as the Pope recently said, and that without this rationality would be impossible. But that is not saying that divine intervention is needed to produce human rationality.
If you surprise me with something I don’t know about, well, I may have to think over any response. But I am not one of those Catholics who thinks that the Church’s teaching can never change. I don’t think I am rejecting Catholic doctrine by asserting that the earth travels on an elliptical orbit around the sun, whatever was taught several centuries ago. I do think the essential truths of the Catholic faith won’t change. And I think there is some version of the idea that God creates the human soul that will remain in the end.
Let me rephrase that question in a way you can’t deflect, Mr. Kremer:
Do you accept the idea that human beings could not have entered their present state without external supernatural intervention?
Caledonian,
OK, yes, I accept that. And I accept other forms of external supernatural intervention as well. Such as miracles, Virgin Birth, the Resurrection….
I’ve already said so at other conversations you’ve been party to.
I just don’t think this means I can’t do any neuroscience.
Are we done now? I am, anyway. Have things to do.
Fascinating, Mr. Kremer, because that means you are a creationist. Just as Miller is a creationist.
If you believe that a supernatural influence can affect human neural function, then you cannot allow that belief to affect any of the thinking you do about neurology. Only then can you practice neuroscience.
And if you don’t allow the belief to affect your thinking, how is it even meaningful to say that you have it?
I’m afraid you can’t do neuroscience either. Science rejects supernatural influences. I’m sure you could be a perfectly suitable technician… if you do what you’re told.
I quoted something the other day on this matter:
I got this from Frederick Crews’ Follies of the Wise. Searching for the source, however, I see the same quote with “spirit” replacing “mind.” I think the interpretation as “mind” is still correct though, otherwise you can’t make sense of the use of “epiphenomenon.” For the “spirit” not to be an epiphenomenon it would have to perform some physical function. This an argument usually associated with the mind.
What I’m struggling with here is (paraphrased):
“Without ‘Creative Reason’ rationality would be impossible. But that is not saying that divine intervention is needed to produce human rationality.”
I don’t understand this. If you can’t have rationality without a Creative Reasoner behind the universe, then how can you have human rationality without the Reasoner?
“The Catholic Church long ago decided to throw in its lot with Greek Philosophy and so is a bit hamstrung because it is committed to both logic and God. It has to accomodate both to be true to its tradition (unlike some American churches).”
Indeed. The current pope, who obviously doesn’t know much about science, makes a similar strawman for science in an effort to make it seem as weak as his theism.
“In this sense, historical-critical exegesis of the New Testament restored to theology its place within the university: theology, for Harnack, is something essentially historical and therefore strictly scientific. What it is able to say critically about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and consequently it can take its rightful place within the university. Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant’s “Critiques”, but in the meantime further radicalized by the impact of the natural sciences. This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology.”
Even if some practisioners believe in analoges to platonism, there is no need for it in science or math, and science gives its own confirmation.
“On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature. On the other hand, there is nature’s capacity to be exploited for our purposes, and here only the possibility of verification or falsification through experimentation can yield ultimate certainty. The weight between the two poles can, depending on the circumstances, shift from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J. Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.”
The religious insistence to take aposteriori philosophy and observations and claim them to be apriori is mistaken. This is how they model their own faiths to suit their philosophy, but it is wrong there and it is wrong here. Axiomatisation is modelling, and modelling is better done based on observations instead of blindly. The confusion of mentioning positivism with science shows that the current pope is not up to the current society.
Reason:
I can’t tell if your disagreement is with me or with the Pope.
The primary impact of Ratzinger’s speech has been to add to the “clash of civilizations” by provoking Muslim wrath: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5347876.stm
Possibly this was inadvertent; certainly it was predictable that quoting a Crusade-era emperor that “Muhammad brought … things only evil and inhuman” would generate a backlash.
My current hypothesis is that the Pope (or his speechwriters) intended to speak out of both sides of his mouth at the same time with his comments on Islam & evolution alike. So, the more backwards among his audience could find their prejudices stoked, while the realists would, presumably, emphasize the vagueness and rhetorical distance between what was said and what was purportedly meant.
Now, of course, the verbal tap-dancing will be devoted to the more consequential issue of trying to appease the Islamic leaders (themselves apparently eager to stone another scapegoat). On the scientific/metaphysical comments, we may never hear a Vatican clarification – which in any case would be anything but.
I don’t know how often I have to say it (maybe I need to post the words every day), but you can be a Christian and be an excellent physicist, neuroscientist, evolutionary biologist, plumber, dancer, almost anything. I have the utmost confidence in the ability of human minds to encompass contradictory ideas, partition conflicting notions, and accommodate the most bizarre ideas…while still allowing the individual to function. Ken Miller and Francis Collins are most commendable scientists. It’s just that they’ve also got a theological module in their heads that is a ridiculous tripe-generator.
poke: the French word translated variously “mind” and “spirit” is “esprit.” Nicely ambiguous, I’m afraid.
rrt: Catholics believe that there is divine involvement in the universe at every moment — what theologians call divine concurrence. God sustains the universe in existence and it is because of this that the universe exhibits a rational structure. This does not require divine intervention, which is the specific imposition of God’s will to bring about a specific result (even one contradicting the usual laws governing the universe, a miracle).
Caledonian: But the Catholic Church does teach that a specific intervention is needed to create the human soul. So, you are right that there is a dimension of creationism here. And it is worse than he thinks in that this intervention is supposed to occur for each new human being, not just once.
Anyway, I apologize for my quick response, but I really do have other things to do and felt I didn’t have time to continue this. Now I will probably say too much.
You let me off too easily by asking only “Do you accept the idea that human beings could not have entered their present state without external supernatural intervention?” You could have been more specific and asked whether I believed that God had to create specific new entities (human souls) in order to bring us to our current state. I will try to say more and then I will quit.
So — this gets too complicated for a blog post, but I do find there are aspects of Church teaching that I don’t fully understand, where I think the teaching itself is the result of trying to fit the essential truths of Christianity into a particular philosophical framework. This seems to me like one of those cases, another being the explicit doctrine of transubstantiation. As a Catholic, I take it that I have to believe that in these teachings there are real truths, but that I have to work to try to understand these teachings in the light of everything else I know about the world. (This may lead to my being labeled a heretic by the ultraorthodox, but I don’t think I am.) As a philosopher I am uncomfortable with dualist positions reminiscent of Descartes; and I have never been clear on Aquinas’s attempt to take over Aristotle’s conception of the soul and combine it with a view in which the soul can survive after bodily death. As a Christian, I know that the resurrection was not a matter of survival of the death of the body, but of the raising of the body — at its heart, Christianity is not dualist in that sense (though it is certainly not simply naturalist).
So, faced with a teaching like about the special creation of each human soul, I do my best to understand it and see what truth I can find in it. My faith is still a work in progress — the best I can say about this right now is that the doctrine of the human soul is meant to do several things that might not require the specific metaphysical baggage accumulated around it — (1) defend the idea of the unique value of each human being (2) reject any materialism or naturalism that would say that we are “nothing but” our bodies (in philosophy this is eliminativism about the mind as represented by the Churchlands) and (3) reject any naturalism that would say that God has nothing to with human life. Positively I think it is meant to get at the idea that God enters into a relationship with each human being, that each of is called by God “by name” that is as individuals, that we have a capacity to know God and so enter into relationship with God. Myself, I would be perfectly content if it turned out that this very capacity could be explained in evolutionary terms (as I understand is in fact happening). I would not see this as undermining anything essential in my faith.
I don’t expect Church teaching to remain fixed in all ways forever, I expect it to develop so as to accommodate any truths natural science provides. I do expect this to be a slow process. And I do expect a recognizable core of doctrine to remain.
Still, I am left with another problem you keep bothering me with: miracles. My general view is that miracles are no problem for science if they occur rarely enough. You may think that’s crackers, but anyway, I can’t make that fit with the idea that something like a miracle occurs each time a human being comes into existence. So I don’t think that is what should be understood by the claim that God creates the individual human soul. But I don’t claim to understand this fully. I am, after all, not omniscient!
But, you might ask, why do you even try? If you don’t understand, give up on it? Why think there’s some truth there? Short answer: Because the teaching comes from a tradition that I believe I have reason to trust. And because when I have tried to think through teachings I don’t understand to see what truth they hold and convey, I have found this valuable and fruitful in my own life.
In the quote from Benedict that made the headlines, he clearly identified the problem as one of people being ‘frightened’ by the implications of a secular world. I don’t think he could state any more clearly that his aim is to provide comfort rather than truth.
Have a drink from the cup if that is what you are looking for, but let’s not carry the charade on that he was misunderstood. He knows perfectly well, and was being quite frank about the fact that he is offering to provide comforting delusions for cash.
Michael:
I respect your desire not to go on forever here, so although there are some specific items I’d question and/or disagree with in the above (I’m especially curious about the “capacity” you believe is being explained in evolutionary terms), I won’t press those at the moment.
Regarding your explanation about divine intervention, thanks, that clarifies for me somewhat. It seems we have different definitions of the phrase.
Caledonian wrote: “…Miller is a creationist.”
Dobzhansky once claimed, somewhat clumsily, that he was “both an evolutionist and a creationist.” Would this architect of the Modern Synthesis also end up in the crosshairs, Caledonian? I wonder.
In any case, I’m pretty sure that both Caledonian and Dobzhansky’s use of the term ‘creationist’ is pretty loose and fails to convey the theological distinction its advocates have in mind.
It is this distinction, rather than the vague assertion of belief in a creator, that is the source of our headaches in science education. It is not believers in general that want to boot evolution out of the curriculum; it is those pushing special creation who do this, motivated by their commitment to a radically literal reading of the whole Bible, including Genesis.
Those who don’t share that view of scripture have little if any problem with the teaching of evolution, and it seems a bit of stretch to lump all of those folk (including enthusiastic evolution advocates like Miller) as creationists.
Besides, it’s interesting to note that even some famed atheists (Fred Hoyle and Francis Crick come to mind) have put forward (ill-founded) arguments against the sufficiency of the evolutionary process, suggesting that the apparent design we see in nature is the product of an advanced intelligence, albeit an entirely natural one. We might say that their arguments are eccentric and ill-informed, but would we really call them creationists?
Sympathetically…Scott
sonity wrote: “If people want to raise their children to be superstitious morons, that’s their right. That’s what freedom is, baby. ” Freedom to warp young minds and lower their chances of understanding the universe properly? Hum.
reason: In the interest of accuracy – Socrates was not an atheist. See (for example) Plato’s apology.
Michael Kremer: Except of course that “logos” is extremely ambiguous. I’ve always (since learning some Greek) read John 1 as a pun.
Crick was joking when he talked about panspermia. He was well-known for having an odd sense of humor that others often didn’t “get”. (He was very enthusiastic about the progress in work on chemical evolution, especially the “RNA world” hypothesis.) Hoyle WAS an out-an-out creationist, who even employed the forehead-slappingly stupid tornado-junkyard-747 “argument”.
Interesting. By my standards, that person is by definition failing to function. Weakly in the most general sense of the word, but spectacularly so in the attempt to make one’s understanding of the world as accurate and complete as possible.
A person who regularly separates uncomfortably unpleasant ideas within his mind will tend to do so again the next time an unpleasant contradiction comes up… and that tends to cripple their ability to do science on that subject. I’ve seen it happen with researchers who couldn’t let go of a pet theory but didn’t experience enough social disapproval feedback to cause them to discard it as unfashionable. With suffiently fervent believers of all types, they never let go of the belief – and that is in direct conflict with the scientific method.
Some people believe in a limited form of special creation but do not interpret the Bible literally in general. These people are generally hostile to scientific examinations of the things they believe were specially created. Psychology is a fledgling science, just barely out of the egg and with only a few meager feathers to its credit, but it is a science, and like all sciences it necessarily rejects the concept of the supernatural.
How do you think Miller would react to his children being taught that ethical principles arise entirely from the natural world, and that the human mind is a purely natural, physical phenomenon, Mr. Hatfield?
This is still going on? lol
Seriously though. The latest MIT Technology Review, Sept/Oct 2006, includes some interesting articles.
1. pp17 Seeing Music. Some developed a software system that can analyse music and determine how it progresses from note to note, as well as from order to dissonence. It can tell you *exactly* why you like both a modern pop song and something written by Chopin. Well, at least why they both sound enjoyable, instead of bad. Still doesn’t say why human brains process it that way, but it does show that what we “like” is based on consistent rules, which everyone shares, with some variation. This kind of lands in the whole, “Science can’t explain why I like cheese!”, argument… lol
2. From their list of top 35 researchers (the TR35) pp55 – Alice Ting, who has developed a way to literally watch a cells inner processes, by tagging the proteins with fluorescent markers, then watching where things go.
3. pp72-74 The Art of the Possible – Using genetic algorythms to find the most “fit” solution, though not the best. The example given is a mail delivery company that kept trying to find the “best” path for its carriers, with some of them always complaining, and often slwoing down, making the “efficient” routes take less time than the originals. They would able to generate a general list of routes, based on suggestions from the carriers, them mutate those into new paths, ask what they liked/disliked on those routes, then mutate them more, until they found the optimal solution for the business (which wasn’t the optimal solution you would have come up with by simply finding the fastest routes).
4. And one to tweak the “69 cures from adult stem cells” delusion crowd, pp86 – Growing Brain Cells. Using drugs and Embrionic Stemcells to regrow nueral tissue, as a possible means to reverse Parkinson’s and other diseases. The animal subjects showed an 80% improvement from treatment. Unlike the entirely fictional patients in most of those 69 adult stem cell projects…
5. Same page – Stem Cell Mix Helps Paralyzed Rats Walk. Not clear which “type” is being used in this one.
The rest of the articles are interesting, but don’t really butt heads with the whole evolution/stem cell/creationism arguments.
Steve LeBonne: I’m going to respectfully disagree. You’ve made claims about Hoyle and Crick that seem hard to credit.
1) Crick *joking* ? Steve, when exactly was Crick joking? Was he joking when and Leslie Orgel published their original joint paper in Icarus (“Directed Panspermia”, 1973)? Perhaps he was continuing a private joke when he and Orgel collaborated in 1981 in an entire book (“Life Itself”) that prominently featured the idea?
You know, in the world I live in, if a scientist, no matter how prominent, put forward an idea disingenuously to that extent we would call what they were doing a hoax.
Is that what you’re suggesting? Come on!
2) Hoyle a creationist? It’s true that his 1981 book ‘EVOLUTION from Space” has the subtitle ‘Cosmic Creationism’ but if you read it or ‘The Intelligent Universe’ (1983) you will not find any endorsement of special creation, progressive creationism or even theistic evolution. His usage of the term ‘creationism’ here was non-standard and eccentric in a way that was really typical of Hoyle’s views.
True, Hoyle *was* skeptical of the sufficiency of evolution by natural selection to explain life’s diversity, and it’s an unfortunate fact that he provided ammunition for real creationists, but what he proposed never actually appeals to the supernatural either for the origin of species or the origin of life.
As for cosmology, Hoyle’s position late in life seemed to be that the universe appears to be ‘fine-tuned’ in a way that implies intelligence, but (significantly) he declines to identify that intelligence with a supernatural cause and in the final chapter of ‘The Intelligent Universe’ makes the following pointed declaration: “I am not a Christian, nor am I likely to become one as far as I can tell (p. 251).”
Now that doesn’t sound like someone who’s pushing special creation or Biblical inerrancy to me! I prefer to think of Hoyle not as a creationist, but as someone who held eccentric views on evolution and the anthropic principle.
I’ve seen assertions by some creationists that Hoyle ‘converted’ into some sort of theist, but I don’t put too much stock in them. Sounds like another ‘Lady Hope’ story to me.
If you have more information on Crick or Hoyle that speaks to this, I’d love to hear it.
Sincerely…Scott
Caledonian, thanks for replying. You make some good observations. Let me reply to them one at a time.
1) I agree that there all sorts of creationists, and that not all of them buy into a strict and seamless Biblical literalism. But most of them have this characteristic: they are eager to promote their views because of their desire to protect whatever understanding of scripture they do have, so eager that they fall all over themselves in their attempts to appropriate the non-standard views of people like Hoyle and Crick. But their practice of ‘quote mining’ doesn’t make them scientists, nor does it mean that Hoyle and Crick are endorsing their views, much less their motivations.
2) I agree that psychology is a fledgling science, and that in order to reach its potential it must exclude the non-falsifiable hypothesis, as in the supernatural…or the superego. I’m sympathetic to E.O. Wilson’s view that over time the social sciences and the humanities will be naturalized.
3) Finally, you wrote: “How do you think Miller would react to his children being taught that ethical principles arise entirely from the natural world, and that the human mind is a purely natural, physical phenomenon, Mr. Hatfield?”
I would say that I can’t speak for Ken Miller, but I have met him and corresponded with him on evolution education. I’ve found him to be accessible and surprisingly generous with his time. If you ask him this question, he might even respond. And, if he doesn’t, he’s got an entire web site about evolution education that is a pretty decent resource, here:
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/
On the other hand, if you asked me this question, I would answer that I want my kid to know that there are good reasons to believe that human consciousness, like a lot of other complex features, is an emergent property of a natural system. I would want him to know that while science is not a belief system, it does embody certain values and I would want him to explore questions like this in way that is consistent with those values, especially when it comes to evaluating dogmatic claims not based on evidence.
Or, as Ken Miller himself has written, “EVERYTHING in science should be approached with critical thinking and an open mind.”
Thanks again…Scott
I never said Hoyle was a Biblical Creationist. You yourself just cited some of the damning evidence that he was in fact a small-c creationist, so there’s nothing I need to add.
And really, think- do you suppose coauthor Orgel- one of the leading origin-of-life researchers- is also serious about panspermia? Crick and Orgel were half-seriously playing with- not seriously proposing- the idea at a time when the chicken-egg problem of proteins and nucleic acids looked potentially insuperable, but they quickly dropped it when the discovery of catalytic RNA shhowed the way out of that impasse.
Miller believes that certain things which the definition of science requires that it include are in fact outside of science. Your point is, sadly, futile.
Why shouldn’t everything be approached with critical thinking and an open mind?
P.S. The point of the directed panspermia hypothesis was NOT that an intellgence is necessary for life to originate- but that, since from what was known at the time conditions on he early Earth didn’t appear right for the origin of life from what was known of the possible chemistries at the time, perhaps life originated in a naturalistic, darwinian way on some other planet where conditions might have been much riper, and advanced inhabitants ot that planet later seeded the universe with life. So it was never a quasi-creationist hypothesis at all, it jsut moved the entirely natural origin of life off the earth to some unspecified other location.
P.P.S. Crick in his own words:
“In a way, it was probably a mistake to write the book,” Crick said in a 1995 interview. “Not everybody really read it, which if you did pointed out that directed panspermia was just an idea, something to be considered. The book was actually quite reserved about the whole thing. Of course, if you only glanced at it, you could have gotten the idea that I was a bit nutty.”
Not that he regretted the fuss. Ideas, he said, were the currency of science.
“The important thing is that you have lots of ideas and that you learn most are going to be wrong,” he said. “The trick is to figure out which are the most promising and work on those. A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much. It’s the person with just one idea who is a menace because he won’t give his idea up.”
I don’t know what statement of dead Karol you referring to — he was on record as stating that evolution is “more than a theory”, which, although it may not sound like a ringing endorsement, is probably the most pro-evolution statement ever made by a major religious figure. Of course he believed that human nature was ruled by “souls” and not just psychology, but that’s a part of nearly every version of theism.
But it is just silly to say that someone who believes in a soul is a “creationist”. Creationism means a belief that a deity created organisms in a completed form and no evolution (at least outside “kinds”) happened. Neither Karol, nor Joe, nor Ken Miller believed or believe this. It’s fine to say that there is no good reason to believe in souls or deities, but lets keep “creationist” a meaningful term to describe a particular irrational belief and not turn it into a meaningless insult such as “fascist” and “communist”, which rarely refer to actual members of Fascist or Communist parties nowadays.
Steve: This is a longish reply, but I appreciate the Crick quotes that you provided and decided to delve deeper into the matter.
Can we agree that Crick was not *joking* in his collaborations with Orgel, but that panspermia was presented speculatively, as ‘food for thought’ so to speak? It is surely not Crick’s fault that creationists and others misappropriated his ideas to feed their propaganda. That sort of thing is probably not avoidable; the same thing happened to Gould and Eldridge with punk eek, for example.
Besides, in Crick’s favor it should be pointed out that panspermia is no longer considered as ‘far out’ as when he proposed it. There seems to be a growing consensus that comets ‘seeded’ the early Earth with liquid water and other raw materials, for example. Also, since the early 1980’s our knowledge of extremophiles has widened to the point that the long-term survival of life in space is more credible.
I also agree that directed panspermia as proposed by Crick and Orgel never implied that the director was a supernatural cause. Hoyle is a more ambiguous case, however, because he was not just a skeptic as to chemical evolution on Earth. He also looked at the apparent ‘fine tuning’ of the universe and concluded that something appeared to have ‘monkeyed with the laws of physics.’
Now, what to do with the case of Hoyle? To me, it does violence to the term to characterize Hoyle, a life-long atheist, as being a creationist. Hoyle had no sectarian agenda to push, never supported creationism in public schools and never affirmed that the apparent design implied a supernatural Designer.
In fact, there is a public record that says quite the opposite—the Mclean case (1981), whose records in part can be viewed here:
http://www.antievolution.org/projects/mclean/new_site/index.htm
In this case, Hoyle’s colleague Wickramasinghe was called to testify by the creationist lawyers and presented an account of the work of himself and Hoyle, but rather pointedly decliend to endorse ‘creationism.’ Here’s what Wickramasinghe said, under oath:
“The notion of a creator placed outside the Universe poses logical difficulties, and is not one to which I can easily subscribe. My own philosophical preference is for an essentially eternal, boundless Universe, wherein a creator of life somehow emerges in a natural way. My colleague, Sir Fred Hoyle, has also expressed a similar preference.”
So, apparently, for Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, the creator is definitely lower-case, a natural cause, not upper-case, a supernatural Creator. It’s an eccentric view that cries out for context, doubtless shaped by Hoyle’s unsettling experience of watching the Steady State Model that he had so publicly championed wither on the vine as data mounted in support of the ‘Big Bang’, ironically a term of his own derisive coinage. This data and his personal history as an atheist critical of evolutionary theory seems to have backed him into a corner late in life. His ‘intelligent universe’ seems to be a last-ditch attempt to reconcile these increasingly contradictory strains, one that has never been all that well-regarded, much less influential.
For that matter, do the creationists regard Hoyle as one of their own? Based on a Googling of ‘Hoyle creationist’, it seems that they don’t.
At AIG, for example, Demme and Sarfati complain that Hoyle’s cosmology “requires ongoing episodic creation by some intelligent force *within the universe* (a complete denial of a six-day Creation ex nihilo by a transcendent, personal God).” The ‘Creation Science Super Library’ classifies Hoyle as an ‘evolutionist’ while at ICR, John Ollier characterized Hoyle’s ideas as a “remarkable mutation of neo-Darwinism.”
If Hoyle denied them and they don’t want him, why would we lump Hoyle in with the science-deniers and call him a ‘creationist’? Just because he used the word ‘creation’ to describe his ideas? Shoot, even Darwin referred (to his later regret) to the Creator in some editions of the Origin, but we don’t make the habit of referring to him as a ‘creationist.’
At any rate, while I demur on this minor point, I appreciate your reply and affirm, with PZ, unity against creationists. Peace…Scott
Caledonian: Your logic here is impeccable. I agree that futility follows *if* I accepted *your* apparent formulation of what science is and how it is to be practiced. However, since neither the community of scientists or that of philosophers appears to have reached consensus on that point, I prefer to remain, for the time being, agnostic with respect to that question!
You are certainly right to ask why we would delimit critical thinking to science, and I would tell that to my son as well. And, out of respect for his own critical faculties and conscience, I would urge him not to take my word for it, or Miller’s word for it, but to think for himself. Cordially…Scott
Well, we’re at the verbal quiblling stage really, but yes, religious Creationists have found Sir Fred a useful quarry for quote-mining. Especially, as I said, his notorious 747 / junkyard “argument” against abiogenesis.
Maybe “joking” was not quite the word for what I was trying to convey about Crick, but with his amazingly fertile mind he had a lifelong habit of tossing out all sorts of ideas, to many of which he didn’t necessarily feel any sort of commitment.
As for Miller, as someone else already said, it is not more scientifically respectable to call into question the completely natural origin of the higher mental functions- as all theistic evolutionists incuding Collins and Miller do (it’s a hoary tradition, going right back to A. R. Wallace), because that’s exactly where their religious commitments really start to bite- than to do the same for the digestion.
Steve: Thanks for your reply. I think, after rereading our posts, that we are actually in substantial agreement.
Regarding Miller, my memory is fuzzy as to whether or not he believes (as Frances Collins apparently does) that distinctively ‘human’ mental features can not be explained naturalistically. I’m not sure that’s his position, or even the position of the RCC, though I’m sure that you would be quick to point out that notions like a ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ that they might invoke are conflatable with consciousness, and that the Church’s position on the soul conflicts with naturalism. I don’t take that view, so I don’t have the conflict…Scott
That is a lie. The method has been established for centuries. Perhaps you think that by flattering me your lie can pass unobserved, but this is not the case.
Calling that a “lie” dilutes the meaning of the word “lie” to the point of uselessness.
The scientific method has indeed been established for centuries, but the practice of withholding belief for all unprovable aspects of reality; for philosophical naturalism, is not universal among all scientists, else there would be no theistic scientists at all anywhere.
You may well disapprove, but those are the facts of the matter. Are they not?
Caledonian: I would never ask you to go easy on me just because from time to time I acknowledge where I think you’re correct, passionate or well-spoken. By all means, fire away when you think I merit it. However, about this ‘lying’ stuff….(ahem)
It seems to me that science is what scientists do, and in doing science they are guided by many of the same rational principles/strategies that non-scientists can use to solve non-scientific problems. But when you talk about “THE method”, what are you talking about? Are you talking about Descartes’ “Rules for the Direction of the Mind?” Bacon’s system of “true and perfect Induction?” Pierce’s ‘abductive inference’? Logical positivism?
The existence of all these examples (none of which completely agree in elements or emphasis)suggests that it is unlikely that there is one “scientific method” in which every particular is agreed-upon. Shoot, I’ve even found *this* hyped-up ‘system’ that claims to lay out the “SM-14 formula” consisting of “11 stages and 3 supporting ingredients” of science:
http://www.scientificmethod.com/principles.html
Somehow I doubt this is “THE method” you had in mind, and I’d be willing to bet that any sufficiently detailed formulation you put forward would not be unanimously endorsed by all working scientists, much less the philosophers.
However, if you can provide me with a statement of “THE scientific method” that, say, two major scientific organizations (ex. AAAS, NAS, Royal Society of London, etc.) both subscribe to as gospel, I might recant. As Karl Popper once said, “The wrong view of science betrays itself in the craving to be right.”
So I could be wrong, and if said something that you can provide reasonable evidence to the contrary, I’ll admit it. If that happens, I’m hoping that you can be charitable enough to admit that I wasn’t trying to “lie” to you. Honestly! ….Scott
You are a liar and a fool, using politeness and vapidity as a defense while you snipe at valid arguments.
Scientists do things that aren’t science all the time – sometimes they even get in trouble for passing off non-science as science.
Caledonian:
Hey, you’re reading something into my post that’s not intended! OK, sure, people with scientific credentials can sometimes attempt to foist pseudoscience on the rest of us. But we wouldn’t say that in doing so that they were acting as scientists, would we?
Jonathan Wells has a doctoral degree and his name appeared on a paper or two, but I’m sure you don’t regard what he’s doing now as practicing science, much less regard him as a practicing scientist?
On the other hand, scientists don’t all follow the same script when they’re trying to do science, and this diversity is going to make it difficult sometimes to decide what approach is most appropriate. From time to time, we’re going to see outlier research programmes that pushes the envelope, and some members of the scientific community will ask: is it science, or not? String theory’s a good contemporary example of that.
Since that’s the case, it seems to me that is that neither your opinion nor mine is likely to be a perfectly reliable arbiter of what constitutes good science or not. It’s the scientific community, not Scott Hatfield, not Caledonian, that will ultimately determine what good science is or isn’t.
With that in mind, I remain interested in the question of whether or not the scientific community has settled on some definitive formulation of ‘scientific method.’ If they have, they should inform the writers of high school science textbooks, most of which offer ‘cookbook’ treatments that differ both in elements and emphasis. My skepticism of the former remains. If you can take a break from invective, you might want to address the substance of my prior post, rather than its’ style.
Also, it seems to me that you have confused an attempt to cultivate a productive exchange of views with some sort of weakness. I’m not playing “defense” when I post, though; I’m in the batter’s box. I’m going to try to hit the things I see in the strike zone, but if someone tries to get me to ‘chase a pitch’ that’s outside the zone, I’m going to let it go by. You, on the other hand, hack at everything, including pitches in the dirt. That’s fine: a lot of very good hitters are free swingers, but that’s just not the way I hit.
In other words, I’m perfectly capable of responding as uncivilly here as anyone else. I simply choose not too, for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it’s not my style.
You keep doing whatever works for you here, and I’ll continue to read and respond as I see fit. No one’s forcing you to engage, and I appreciate those occasions when you share something other than spleen….Scott
CJColucci
“Reason:
I can’t tell if your disagreement is with me or with the Pope.”
I’m not sure either. I’m not sure that you are accurately depicting what the pope is doing (I think he is doing something stronger than that – he is arguing for the NECESSITY of God in science). And even if he is arguing against this particular logical leap, I think he would be missing the point, the case against God is not just science (and vice-versa). And I don’t think in science he has identified the “enemy” correctly. It is scepticism.
Keith Douglas
“reason: In the interest of accuracy – Socrates was not an atheist. See (for example) Plato’s apology.”
Maybe. Is it ever clear what Socrates (really) believed? But I didn’t actually say he was an athiest, I said he rejected the Gods (as understood at the time) without science, the same as I questioned the existance God(s), by noticing how diverse the views of others are about God(s). Same process – different conclusion(?). He apparently accepted them by redefining them. (Man in image of God, or vice versa which seems more likely?)