This is not a dilemma for the church

William Saletan highlights an interesting study in reproductive biology.

In a paper presented to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, Dr. David Greening, an Australian infertility expert, reports that 81 percent of the men in his study significantly improved their sperm quality, as measured by DNA fragmentation, through a simple one-week program.

The program was so easy that even the average guy could follow it. According to a summary of the study, “The men were instructed to ejaculate daily.”

He presents it as a conflict for religious organizations like the Catholic church, which frown on masturbation. Unfortunately, Saletan gets it wrong. The Catholic Church can still condemn masturbation as sinful and urge their followers to procreate madly because there’s nothing in their doctrine to favor quality reproduction. To the simple-minded, human beings are all r-selected. Pop ’em out and let God sort ’em out should be their motto.

One rotten apple

I recently argued that to scientists, accuracy is the most important element of a story (surprising, no?) in response to a journalist trying to claim that character and plot were more important. I also tried to make the case that accuracy and an interesting narrative aren’t mutually incompatible — and I should have added that accuracy ought to be the number one priority for science journalists, too.

In case you’re wondering why so many scientists are distrustful of science journalists, you should take a look at this account from Ben Goldacre. A masters student in psychology gave a talk at a science conference to present her preliminary findings, which, sad to say, were picked up by the Telegraph.

Here’s the title of the Telegraph story.

Women who dress provocatively more likely to be raped, claim scientists
Women who drink alcohol, wear short skirts and are outgoing are more likely to be raped, claim scientists at the University of Leicester

Here’s the actual title of the press release from the University of Leicester describing the work.

Promiscuous men more likely to rape

There seems to be a significant discrepancy in emphasis, yes?

Goldacre called up the student researcher, and got the straight story: the Telegraph title is factually wrong, they found no statistically significant result corresponding to that claim. And here’s the reaction of the investigator:

When I saw the article my heart completely sank, and it made me really angry, given how sensitive this subject is. To be making claims like the Telegraph did, in my name, places all the blame on women, which is not what we were doing at all. I just felt really angry about how wrong they’d got this study.

I think science journalism is valuable and important, and in order to earn the trust of both scientists and the public, it needs to make honest, accurate reporting its chief value. Lately, there have been too many instances of a violation of that trust — and bending a story to more comfortably fit a common and erroneous stereotype is a perfect example of bad reporting.

It probably does produce more contented readers, though. Or at least, in this case, contented male readers.

Unscientific America and those awful atheists

To return to Unscientific America again, I hardly touched on chapter 8, where they express their dismay at those uppity “New Atheists”. I am not going to address his personal criticisms of me — there’s no point, you obviously know I think he’s completely wrong, and the uncharitable will simply claim my disagreement is the result of a personal animus — so instead I’m only going to address a couple of other general points that Mooney and Kirshenbaum get completely wrong. They plainly do not understand the atheist position, and make claims that demonstrate that either they didn’t read any of the “New Atheist’s” books, or perhaps the simple ideas in them are too far beyond their comprehension.

This is a basic one, from philosophy of science 101. There are several different ways to derive a naturalistic position. Mooney and Kirshenbaum sort of get it right, although I disagree with some of the details.

Modern science relies on the systematic collection of data through observation and experimentation, the development of theories to organize and explain this evidence, and the use of professional institutions and norms such as peer review to subject claims to scrutiny and ultimately (it is hoped) develop reliable knowledge. A core principle underlying this approach is something called “methodological naturalism,” which stipulates that scientific hypotheses are tested and explained solely by reference to natural causes and events. Crucially, methodological naturalism is not the same thing as philosophical naturalism—the idea that all of existence consists of natural causes and laws, period. Methodological naturalism in no way rules out the possibility of entities or causes outside of nature; it simply stipulates that they will not be considered within the framework of scientific inquiry.

Following this, he proceeds to damn the “New Atheists” for “collapsing the distinction” between methodological and philosophical naturalism, and argues that Dawkins is taking a philosophical position and misusing science to claim it “entirely precludes God’s existence.”

One big problem: we don’t. Oddly enough, this is one of the most common canards used by theistic critics, that we’re demanding a kind of philosophical absolutism, yet Mooney is an atheist. The “New Atheist” approach is firmly grounded in methodological naturalism; it’s an extremely pragmatic operational approach to epistemology that leads us to reject religious claims. None of us make an absolute declaration of the impossibility of the existence of a deity, either.

One strand of this view is simple empiricism. Science and reason give us antibiotics, microwave ovens, sanitation, lasers, and rocketships to the moon. What has religion done for us lately? We have become accustomed to objective measures of success, where we can explicitly see that a particular strategy for decision-making and the generation of knowledge has concrete results. I’m sorry, but faith seems to produce mainly wrong answers, and in comparison, it flops badly.

Now, now, I can hear the defenders of religion begin to grumble, there’s more to life than merely material products like microwave ovens — there’s contentment and contemplation and a sort of subjective psychology of ritual and community and all that sort of thing. Sure. Fine. Then stick to it, and stop pretending that religion ought to be a determinant of public policy, that it can inform us about the nature of our existence, or that it provides a good guide to public morality. Get it out of our schools and courthouses and workplaces and governments, take it to your homes and your churches, and use it appropriately as your personal consoling mind-game. And stop pretending that it is universal and necessary, because there are a thousand different religions that all claim the same properties with wildly different details, and there are millions of us with no religion at all who get along just fine without your hallowed quirks.

The other strand is reciprocity. We atheists and scientists have ideas that we are expected to explain and support with evidence, and we are accustomed to being jumped on with sadistic vigor if we fail to provide it. We merely apply the same methodological standards to religion. We do not insist a priori that gods cannot exist, we instead turn to all those people who insist that they do, and ask, “how do you know that?”

Would you believe that for all the fervor of their certainty, none of them have ever adequately answered the question?

There is no philosophical or metaphysical certainty on the part of us “New Atheists”, and we have no problem admitting it. Dawkins wrote it down forthrightly in his book when he scores himself as a 6 on a 7-point scale of atheism: “6. Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. ‘I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not
there.'” It’s genuinely remarkable how many people say they’ve read his book, and then walk away to claim that Dawkins says science “entirely precludes God’s existence.”

I agree entirely with Dawkins’ sentiment. I also turn it around to use an agnostic sentiment on religious interlocuters: “I don’t know for sure, and you don’t either, so why are you being so high-handedly specific in your claims that god was a Jewish carpenter, or his prophet was a polygamist with a flying horse, or that Ragnarok is imminent? Give me a method for evaluating your claims, tell me what rational reason you have to believe that, show me the evidence!” And then they don’t. I’m just supposed to have faith.

It doesn’t even have to be some weirdly specific, quirky bit of historical fiction — even the vague claims fail on epistemological grounds. How often have you been told that “God is love”? How do they know? What does it even mean? It’s just feel-good babble. If it makes you feel good to think it, go ahead…but please, let’s not have this standard of unsubstantiated wishful thinking be regarded as a useful contribution to philosophy, or science, or morality, or poetry, or social cohesiveness, or much of anything other than a trivial activity, like the twiddling of your thumbs that you do in idle moments.

Now notice: Mooney and Kirshenbaum are busily carping at these ghastly “New Atheists” for imagined transgressions against reason and the appropriate application of science, but what do they have to say about Christians who believe that crackers turn into Jesus in their mouths, or that a magical ensoulment occurs at fertilization to turn a zygote into a fully human being, or that children should be kept in ignorance about sex, or that woman’s role is as subservient breeder, or that using condoms to prevent disease is a violation of a divine dictate that the only purpose of sex is to have babies, or that people who love other people of the same sex deserve stoning, or at least to be unable to share insurance policies? Compared to the “New Atheist” insistence that remarkable claims about magic sky fairies ought to be regarded as patent nonsense, those can be rather destructive to society…and also negatively affect the acceptance of science. Rick Warren surely deserves as much condemnation as Richard Dawkins.

But no. The book is silent on the people who directly oppose science politically, culturally, in our classrooms, and on our radio and television. They aren’t the problem, I guess. If only we could clear away the distracting Atheist Noise Machine, train a generation of science journalists to stop bashing religion (as if they do now), and presto, the populace will obligingly stop shaking their angry fists at science and will lie back and accept that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, that the climate is changing and we need to take political action, and oh my yes, gay people can have their civil rights, too.

Oh, wait, I’m over-generalizing. They do say something about those people who believe in talking snakes, angels, and the power of mystic mumblings.

The American scientific community gains nothing from the condescending rhetoric of the New Atheists—and neither does the stature of science in our culture. We should instead adopt a stance of respect towards those who would hold their faith dear, and a sense of humility based on the knowledge that although science can explain a great deal about the way our world functions, the question of God’s existence lies outside its expertise.

Respect faith. Be humble. Pretend that all those beliefs are unquestionable.

Bull…oh, excuse me. Mooney gets rather pearl-clutchey when strong language is used. I shall restrain myself (and you commenters, too, please: I normally trust you all to cope with adult language without too much concern, but apparently a couple of authors with very delicate sensitivities will be reading this and counting your four-letter words).

Look, the only reason “the question of God’s existence” is in any way outside the domain of science is because it is such an amorphous subject that the believers will always rapidly move its definition beyond testability when pressed. However, they also claim that these deities had major material effects on the world — and most also claim ongoing, direct participation by their favorite god on their personal universe. Those are not beyond the realm of science! If absolute knowledge of this superbeing’s existence is out of our reach, we can at least easily push him/her/it/them back into a fairly tenuous connection with the world, to the point where they are irrelevant.

And if science can’t say a thing about the existence of gods, sweet jebus, Mooney, be consistent and admit that the jabbering, sanctimonious priests can’t either! Why we should respect their fairy-tales and complete lack of humility while you castigate godless science for relying on mere evidence is incomprehensible.

The essence of what Mooney and Kirshenbaum recommend in their book is that science must cut off its own balls, science must wear her corset cinched tight, science must not dissent from the masses, science must be obliging and polite, because that is the only way the public will accept it.

I rudely disagree.

There is nothing condescending about appreciating that almost every human being, even the most god-soaked, has a functional mind and that maybe they can actually learn about science and a scientific way of thinking that makes their myths untenable. There is nothing condescending about being uncompromising in our expectations and trusting that others can hear and think and express their own ideas. There is something deeply condescending about setting aside a big chunk of people’s experience and telling people that they should not question it.

Science is a sublimely human activity and a central part of the best of Western culture…and of every culture on earth that aspires to be something more than a collection of dirt-grubbing subsistence breeders, propagating for the sake of propagating. It’s what gives us the potential to reach beyond making do, that gives us the leisure and freedom to flower in the arts and explore the diversity of human experience. Even institutionalized religion itself is an incidental byproduct of the first clever dicks who thought to reroute the flow of a river to irrigate fields and led to centralization, urbanization, hierarchies of leadership, accounting, writing, and the whole avalanche of change that followed. It’s important. Mooney and Kirshenbaum know this; it’s what their whole book is about.

In order to be what it is, though, science must live. It’s a process carried out by human beings, and it can’t be gagged and enslaved and shackled to a narrow goal, one that doesn’t rock the boat. Imagine they’d written a book that tried to tell artists that they shouldn’t challenge the culture; we’d laugh ourselves sick and tell them that they were completely missing the point. Why do you think some of us are rolling our eyes at their absurd request that scientists should obliging accommodate themselves to a safe frame that every middle-class American would find cozy? They don’t get it.

Somehow, they think that Carl Sagan’s great magic trick was that he didn’t make Americans feel uncomfortable. I think they’re wrong. Sagan’s great talent was that he showed a passion for science. People made fun of his talk of “billyuns and billyuns”, but it was affectionate, because at the same time he was talking about these strange, abstract, cosmic phenomena, everyone could tell he was sincere — he loved this stuff.

Another example: Feynman. Watch the man, and what is the impression he makes? Absolute joy. He’s laughing at the universe. People love his lectures because he’s cocky and bold and doesn’t hesitate to show you where you’re wrong.

For a less openly abrasive case, how about E.O. Wilson? In his talks, he seems to be a soft-spoken gentleman who’s willing to concede quite a bit of respect to everyone — but read his work, and there’s a steely spine there, too, and if you get him talking about ants, you discover he’s cheerfully obsessive.

Mooney and Kirshenbaum’s prescription for improving the fate of science in this country is to train young scientists to be more media- and politics-savvy, to build a generation of cautious barometers of the public mood “capable of bridging the divides that have led to science’s declining influence.” And perhaps we could get more support for the arts if young artists were taught to favor bucolic photo-realism, if poetry was required to be in greeting card meter, and if all music was appropriate to elevators? We’d surely have a new renaissance if the NEA only funded art that a conservative senator would find inoffensive!

I recommend something different. Our next generation of great science communicators should be flesh-and-blood people with personalities, every one different and every one with different priorities, all singing out enthusiastically for everything from astronomy to zoology, and they should sometimes be angry and sometimes sorrowful and sometimes deliriously excited. They shouldn’t hesitate to say what they think, even if it might make Joe the Plumber surly. If you want to improve American science and the perception of science by the public, teach science first and foremost, because what you’ll find is that your discipline is then populated with people who are there because they love the ideas. And, by the way, let them know every step of the way that science is also a performing art, and that they have an obligation as a public intellectual to take their hard-earned learning and share it with the world.

Face the fact that some of us (but definitely not all of us) will be so smitten with this wonderful, powerful way of thinking that we’re going to follow our bliss and laugh at the hidebound ritualists who expect us to respect their superstitions, and at the prissy wanna-be moralists who demand bloodless conformity. You will not generate new Sagans by insisting on deference. You will not change a culture with a declining appreciation of science by demanding that scientists respect the beliefs of people who despise science the most. Mooney and Kirshenbaum single out the increasingly vibrant atheist sub-culture as something that needs to be muffled, and that’s symptomatic of the failure of their suggestions: what other ideas should be stifled lest they disturb American complacency? And shouldn’t shaking up that complacency be exactly what scientists do?

Best criticism of Cynthia Dunbar yet

Dunbar is the creationist, anti-education kook that Governor Perry of Texas is considering putting in charge of the state board of education. Slacktivist explains the problem with this — putting someone who wants to destroy the public education system in charge of the public education system is like making an arsonist the fire chief.

And actually, it’s not as much a criticism of Dunbar — she’s an out lunatic — but of the system in general, that a leading politician would think this kind of appointment is at all appropriate.

Dennett and evolutionary christology

All the cool kids are currently attending the big Darwin festival in Cambridge, which sounds like it has been a lot of informative fun. A couple of the sessions, though, are funded by the Templeton Foundation, which sounds much less fun. Fortunately, Dan Dennett has taken a bullet for the team and attended those meetings, and files a report on location — he describes it as “wonderfully awful”, with some exceptions. I wouldn’t mind listening to Pascal Boyer talk on religion, but the rest…I shudder.

Here’s his account.

I am attending and participating in the big Cambridge University Darwin Week bash, and I noticed that one of the two concurrent sessions the first day was on evolution and theology, and was ‘supported by the Templeton Foundation’ (though the list of Festival Donors and Sponsors does not include any mention of Templeton). I dragged myself away from a promising session on speciation, and attended. Good thing I did. It was wonderfully awful. We heard about the Big Questions, a phrase used often, and it was opined that the new atheists naively endorse the proposition that “There are no meaningful questions that science cannot answer.” Richard Dawkins’ wonderful sentence about how nasty the God of the Old Testament is was read with relish by Philip Clayton, Professor at Claremont School of Theology in California, and the point apparently was to illustrate just how philistine these atheists were–though I noticed that he didn’t say he disagreed with Richard’s evaluation of Yahweh. We were left to surmise, I guess, that it was tacky of Richard to draw attention to these embarrassing blemishes in an otherwise august tradition worthy of tremendous respect. The larger point was the complaint that the atheists have a “dismissive attitude toward the Big Questions” and Dawkins, in particular, didn’t consult theologians. (H. Allen Orr, they were singing your song.) Clayton astonished me by listing God’s attributes: according to his handsomely naturalistic theology, God is not omnipotent, not even supernatural, and . . . . in short Clayton is an atheist who won’t admit it.

The second talk was by J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, a Professor of Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, and it was an instance of “theological anthropology,” full of earnest gobbledygook about embodied minds and larded with evolutionary tidbits drawn from Frans de Waal, Steven Mithen and others. In the discussion period I couldn’t stand it any more and challenged the speakers: “I’m Dan Dennett, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and we are forever being told that we should do our homework and consult with the best theologians. I’ve heard two of you talk now, and you keep saying this is an interdisciplinary effort–evolutionary theology–but I am still waiting to be told what theology has to contribute to the effort. You’ve clearly adjusted your theology considerably in the wake of Darwin, which I applaud, but what traffic, if any, goes in the other direction? Is there something I’m missing? What questions does theology ask or answer that aren’t already being dealt with by science or secular philosophy? What can you clarify for this interdisciplinary project?” (Words to that effect) Neither speaker had anything to offer, but van Huyssteen blathered on for a bit without, however, offering any instances of theological wisdom that every scientist interested in the Big Questions should have in his kit.

But I learned a new word: “kenotic” as in kenotic theology. It comes from the Greek word kenosis meaning ‘self-emptying.’ Honest to God. This new kenotic theology is all the rage in some quarters, one gathers, and it is “more deeply Christian for being more adapted to Darwinism.” (I’m not making this up.) I said that I was glad to learn this new word and had to say that I was tempted by the idea that kenotic theology indeed lived up to its name. At the coffee break, some folks told me my question had redeemed the session for them, but I would guess I irritated others with my persistent request for something of substance to chew on.

After the second set of two talks, which I was obliged to listen to since the moderator promised more responses to my “challenge” and I had to stay around to hear them out, there was another half hour of discussion. I did my duty: I listened attentively, I asked questions, and the theologians were embarrassingly short on answers, though one recommended David Chalmers on panpsychism–a philosopher, not a theologian, and second, nobody, not even Chalmers, takes panpsychism seriously, to the best of my knowledge. Do theologians?

The third speaker was Dr. Denis Alexander of Cambridge University, and he had some interesting historical scholarship on the varying positions on progress and purpose offered by thinkers from Erasmus Darwin-who had surmised that all life began from a single “living filament” (nice guess!)-through Darwin and Spencer and the Huxleys and on to Gould and Dawkins (and me). Particularly useful was a late quote from Gould’s last book (p468 if you want to run it down) in which he allowed, contrary to his long-held line on contingency, that evolution did exhibit “directional properties” that could not be ignored. The conclusion of Alexander’s talk was that it is nowadays a little “more plausible that it isn’t necessarily the case that the evolutionary process doesn’t have a larger purpose.” That is certainly a circumspect and modest conclusion. The fourth speaker was the Catholic Father Fraser Watt (of Cambridge University School of Divinity, and a big Templeton grantsman, as noted by the chair). He introduced us to “evolutionary Christology.” Again, I’m not making this up. Evolution, it turns out, was planned by an intelligent God to create a species “capable of receiving the incarnation”–though this particular competence of our species might be, in Watts’ opinion, a “spandrel.” Jesus was “a spiritual mutation, ” and “the culmination of the evolutionary process,” marking a turning point in world history. A member of the audience cheekily asked if Father Watt was saying that Jesus’s parents were both normal human beings then? (I was going to press the point: perhaps Jesus’s madumnal genes from Mary were the product of natural selection but his padumnal genes were hand crafted by the Holy Spirit!–but Father Watt forestalled the inquiry by declaring that he had no knowledge or opinion about Jesus’ parentage–something that his Catholic colleagues will presumably not appreciate.)

Afterwards I was asked if I had enjoyed the session, and learned anything, and I allowed as how I had. I would not have dared use the phrase “evolutionary Christology” for fear of being condemned as a vicious caricaturist of worthy, sophisticated theologians, but now I had heard the term used numerous times, and would be quoting it in the future, as an example of the sort of wisdom that sophisticated theology has to offer to evolutionary biology.

I had an epiphany at the end of the session, but I kept it to myself: The Eucharist is actually a Recapitulation of the Eukaryotic Revolution. When Christians ingest the Body of Christ, without digesting it, but keep it whole (holistier-than-thou whole), they are re-enacting the miracle of endosymbiosis that paved the way for eventual multi-cellularity. And so, dearly beloved brethren, we can see that by keeping Christ intact in our bodies we are keeping His Power intact in our embodied Minds, or Souls, just the way the first Eukaryote was vouchsafed a double blessing of earthly competence that enabled its descendants to join forces in Higher Organizations. Evolutionary theology. . . . I think I get it! I can do it! It truly is intellectual tennis without a net.

There is another Templeton session on The Evolution of Religion, with Pascal Boyer, David Sloan Wilson, Michael Ruse and Harvey Whitehouse. Dr. Fraser Watt, our evolutionary Christologist, will be chairing the session. It will be interesting to see how docile these mammals are in the feeding trough.

The second Templeton-sponsored session (at the Cambridge Darwin Festival) was more presentable. On the evolution of religion, it featured clear, fact-filled presentations by Pascal Boyer and Harvey Whitehouse, a typical David Sloan Wilson advertisement for his multi-level selection approach, and an even more typical meandering and personal harangue from Michael Ruse. The session was chaired, urbanely and without any contentful intervention, by Fraser Watt, our evolutionary christologist. (I wonder: should “christology” be capitalized? Ian McEwan asked me if there was, perhaps, a field of X-ray christology. I’ve been having fun fantasizing about how that might revolutionize science and open up a path for the Crick and Watson of theology!)

I learned something at the session. Boyer presented a persuasive case that the “packaging” of the stew of separable and largely independent items as “religion” is itself ideology generated by the institutions, a sort of advertising that has the effect of turning religions into “brands” in competition. Whitehouse gave a fascinating short account of the Kivung cargo cult in a remote part of Papua New Guinea that he studied as an anthropologist, living with them for several years. A problem: the Kivung cult has the curious belief that their gods (departed ancestors) will return, transformed into white men, and bearing high technology and plenty for all. This does present a challenge for a lone white anthropologist coming to live with them for awhile, camera gear in hand, and wishing to be as unobtrusive as possible. Wilson offered very interesting data from a new study by his group on a large cohort of American teenagers, half Pentecostals and half Episcopalians (in other words, maximally conservative and maximally liberal), finding that on many different scales of self-assessment, these young people are so different that they would look to a biologist like “different species.” Ruse declared that while he is an atheist, he wishes that those wanting to explain religion wouldn’t start with the assumption that religious beliefs are false. He doesn’t seem to appreciate the role of the null hypothesis or the presumption of innocence in trials. We also learned tidbits about his life and his preference–as an atheist–for the Calvinist God.

She’s gotten a little chunky over two millennia

i-77b032163fe30bf6fc5f64ad8d59c2d9-treestump.jpeg

Some Irish workmen were cutting down a tree, and lo and behold, the stump supposedly resembles the Virgin Mary, although how they found a hymen in that lump, I don’t know. The real source of amusement, though, is the way it has put the local Catholic church representatives in a dither.

Local parish priest Fr Willie Russell said on radio station Limerick Live 95FM yesterday that people should not worship the tree. “There’s nothing there . . . it’s just a tree . . . you can’t worship a tree.”

I hope the Irish druids are going to be rightly upset at this horribly offensive slur against their faith.

A spokesman for the Limerick diocesan office said the “church’s response to phenomena of this type is one of great scepticism”.

R i g h t. That would be a first.

“While we do not wish in any way to detract from devotion to Our Lady, we would also wish to avoid anything which might lead to superstition,” he said.

Says the fellow with a fine collection of saints’ feast days, magic crackers, sacred relics, and chants and rituals to invoke supernatural powers.