I’ve stayed away from the current round of accusations and counteraccusations about accomodationism between religion and science. This is because I am a wishy washy Chamberlainist fencesitting Laodicean. But I am impressed by a few bloggers’ posts on the matter. First, what’s the background?
For many years there has been a divide between those who are not religious but think that promoting science should not exclude the religious, and those who are not religious and think that no defence of science should ever admit a religious believer at all. That is not quite the way they would put it of course, but the divide is between “accommodationists” and “exclusivists”.
Accommodationists hold, for various reasons, that when defending science, such as evolution (but not always), defenders should not assert that science is in opposition to religion. Instead, they should merely defend science.
Exclusivists, on the other hand, hold that science and religion are incompatible, and that to defend science one must, perforce, assert this incompatibility.
Each has a story about the motives of the other. Accommodationists think that exclusivists are being, variously, aggressive, militant, fundamentalist or just strategically stupid. Exclusivists think that accommodationists are being, diversely, incoherent, cowardly, stupid, or dishonest.
Much fun all round. So before I list the posts that I think approach the matter sensibly, a few points from moi:
- It is not the task of those who are not religious to find ways for the religious to harmonise their religion with science. That is the task of any religious adherent who wishes to live in the real world. But one may discuss whether it is possible, and if it is, conceptually, point out how, without thereby taking an advocacy role for religion. This is something that exclusivists think is just wrong. If I, as a non-religious person, think there is no evidence for some religious belief, I must therefore, on pain of self-contradiction (or self-immolation, or something) insist that nobody else can make the claim that their religious belief is consistent with science. Accusations of being a “religion lover” are uncomfortable echoes of previous intolerance.
- This is not just about strategy, but it is in part about strategy. The fact is that most people in society – whose taxes fund science, and whose governments decide on what science to fund – are religious or favourably disposed towards religion. A religious milieu is part of the ecology of science, so to speak. Making science the enemy of religion is going to have a single outcome, one that we can all predict. It won’t be the death of religion.
- As a point of fact, many people who are scientists are, actually and honestly, religious. Many religious are in favour of science. Why, then, should I insist that they give up one or the other? If I am trying to convert them to my way of thinking, that might be the way to go, but converting people to or from religious positions is not science; at best it’s philosophy, and at worst it is religious proselytising. Sure, atheism is not-pro-religion, but that doesn’t mean it is automatically not a religious position, and science, so far as I can tell, can only talk about empirical matters and their implications. So if to be religious means one admits of miracles, and science cannot either disprove miracles or accept them, one exceeds the bounds of science to insist that no miracles ever happen.
- All that notwithstanding, I fully concur with those who think that a science-defending institution or professional association, should make no assertions that science is compatible with religion either. That is, as I said in point 1, for the religious to sort out. Coincidentally, many religious bodies have done exactly that.
- Science and religion are not both seeking knowledge of the same things. The religious often make that assertion, that they are different epistemes or ways of knowing. If religion knows anything qua religion, it is nothing that can be investigated empirically, and when religion and science coincide on a view, it is an accident on religion’s part (or just common sense). In every case when a religious authority has asserted something about the physical world that is testable and novel, it is wrong. I know of no contrary examples. So what religion knows, if anything, is its own domain and topics, not those of science.
- Science and religion have never had “non-overlapping magisteria”. I know why Gould invented this, as a pluralist trying to effect a rapprochement, but it is just false. But likewise, there has never been a “warfare of religion against science”. The fact is, religion and science are like dancers on a crowded floor; sometimes they jostle each other for space, sometimes they are aware of the other and try to avoid conflict, and sometimes there’s just a bar brawl. Scientists often make religious pronouncements that are well outside the domain of their competence qua scientists, and theologians and clergy much more often make claims about science that are so silly they are funny, or would be if religion didn’t have the kind of political power that it usually has.
So, what’s set off the current round of claim, accusation and abuse? Jerry Coyne, a noted evolutionary biologist, wrote a piece in the New Republic and Chris Mooney, a science journalist who I like even if I don’t fully agree with everything he says, responded. Coyne is an exclusivist. Mooney a strategic accommodationist. The toing and froing can be found at their respective blogs (Coyne is a rare bird – a leading scientist who blogs). Mooney has been criticised by PZ Mashedpotato, Larry Moran at Sandwalk*, and various others.
What strikes me as regrettable is that this got personal very quickly. I’m not pointing fingers, but it does seem to me that exclusivists attack at the drop of a hat, calling people unscientific, ignorant, stupid and the like very quickly, for no more reason than that the person concerned disagrees with them! Okay, that’s perhaps what passes as debate these days – I blame debating rules as taught in schools – but such punditry does nobody any credit.
It is my opinion, for what it’s worth, that those who are accommodationists are not being cynical. I say this as an obvious accommodationist; it’s something I have argued for for years. We hold that it is better to not try to make science do what philosophy cannot, and eliminate all possible arationality from public debate by force majeure. And we hold that many good people, who think as well as the best of us and better than most, honestly think there is no conflict between science and religion. Sure, it is also the case that we should not alienate voters/funders/possible allies, but that’s not the main point.
Only those who are completely without self-knowledge think they are entirely rational on every subject, and that this licenses attacking others for their perceived failings in that respect. I know I won’t change their mind either.
Finally, let me say that the answer to the problem is not to shut anyone up. Exclusivists should put their case forcefully. Accommodationists should likewise. As I once said about public atheists, they should say as much as they can. I’m a Millian liberal, and free exchange of ideas is the best solution for society, not the suppression of any view. So when accommodationists or exclusivists insist the “other side” should be quiet, I demur. The more voices, the better.
Some good posts:
Coyne lists the posts to that time here.
Mooney lays out his creed here.
Josh Rosenau gets all sensible here and here.
Quodlibeta likewise.
Lawrence Krauss lays out the exclusivist argument well here.
* Yes, he who thinks I am an asportist, when in reality I am an anexercisist. I wish people would get the distinction straight…
RE: “it does seem to me that exclusivists attack at the drop of a hat, calling people unscientific, ignorant, stupid and the like very quickly, for no more reason than that the person concerned disagrees with them!”
Oh yes? Please point me to one of my posts where I have done this. Or, let me know where Rosenaus, Krauss (note spelling), Dawkins, or Harris have ever used the words “ignorant” or “stupid”. Your criticism is completely without force: all of us “exclusivists” have concentrated on the ideas, not the people floating them.
Now did I say you did this? I was even careful to say I wasn’t pointing fingers. In fact I had others in mind when I wrote that. And I still won’t point fingers.
Oh, and thanks for pointing out the typo on Krauss’ name.
How convenient. You can now tell absolutely anyone you might have accused of “calling people unscientific, ignorant, stupid and the like” that of course it wasn’t them you were talking about. Don’t act too surprised, though, when people call that transparent ploy intellectually dishonest. (And note how that’s about the argument, not the person.)
” Now did I say you did this?”
You implied it:
“Coyne is an exclusivist…exclusivists attack at the drop of a hat, calling people unscientific, ignorant, stupid and the like very quickly.”
Considering this statement
“it does seem to me that exclusivists attack at the drop of a hat”
The above replies are pretty funny!
I keep putting off my return to blogging… but in the meantime; you’ve said the main thing I would have wanted to say:
“Finally, let me say that the answer to the problem is not to shut anyone up. Exclusivists should put their case forcefully. Accommodationists should likewise. As I once said about public atheists, they should say as much as they can.”
On the substance of the matter, of course; the positions not the persons.
Nice post, John. I’ve been pretty turned off by the discussion over at Phyrangula, where it does indeed seem that what passes for debate is chest-beating and insults towards those who diverge from the groupthink. What really troubles me about many of the ‘new atheists’ (Dawkins and PZ included) is how philosophically unsophisticated their arguments are, and how quick that crowd is to assume that people with religious convictions are automatically ‘stupid.’ Thanks for bringing some calm reason into the discussion.
The facts wouldn’t cause you too much harm on this issue, so don’t fear them so much. If you name both PZ and Dawkins as part of that “crowd” then you would better read what they have said about the level of intelligence of people with religious convictions.
oops – ‘Pharyngula’
I kinda like Phyrangula. It sounds like some kind of tongue condition.
Philosophically, I think that the last forty years of philosophy has been exploring the “new” atheism (under the rubrics of “physicalism”, “monism” and so on), and these discussions have been ignored by the public face of atheism today, which seems to be rerunning the arguments of the late nineteenth century. There’s a lot more interesting questions out there.
What amuses me about the accommodationism debate is that it’s a classic example of the Overton Window in action. A whole class of actors (i.e., creationists and religionists) have been summarily eliminated from the debate, and formerly extreme positions (remember when “The Republican War on Science” was a radical and controversial book?) are now the mainstream.
What’s especially interesting to me, as a longtime reader of science and lefty blogs, is that I know that all the major players in this debate know what the Overton Window is and how it’s supposed to operate. Yet in order for it to work, they either have to pretend that they’re unfamiliar with the concept, or that in this particular case, it doesn’t apply for some unspecified reason.
Surely I’m not the only person who sees Mooney et al and Coyne et al engaged in an elaborate pas de deux, working together to change the terms of the debate. It’s a partnership, not a rivalry.
I like the reference to the Overton Window a lot. I hadn’t previously encountered it, so here’s a link to the Wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
and a nice post on it:
http://www.correntewire.com/the_overton_window_illustrated
HP, I know that this doesn’t really address your comment, but I want to address the concept of this ongoing debate being a rivalry.
Even though the tone gets heated, I’m pretty sure that most of the people involved in the debate don’t consider it a rivalry. Rather, it’s a difference of opinion, which is being debated.
Some of the people involved genuinely don’t like each other, but it’s my impression that most of them get along very well.
Personally I’m 150% exclusionist and I think that nobody who doesn’t have at least a masters in astrology should be allowed to comment on necromancy and that Dragon Masters should be excluded from the alchemical debates on the Philosophers Stone.
I have a lot of respect for the “Orzel Position.”
http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2009/06/why_the_silent_majority_is_sil.php
It’s defensible and it directs your own energies back toward your own interests. “The best revenge is living well.” In this case; the best offense is teaching well.
Great post–both this one and your previous post on definitions of atheism. This particular debate is one that I personally find tiresome. I’m sure it’s a good thing it’s going on, but I’m also not interested.
When I started to leave a comment here before it turned into a dissertation and ended up as a blog post. I’m going to try to keep this short. My attitude towards people’s personal views is best summed up by Hunter Thompson: “…I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don’t bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I….” As long as those views don’t interfere with the work they’re doing (scientific, historical, scholarly, whatever) then those views don’t matter to me. Nor do I see any purpose in going out of my way to insult those views to make some kind of rhetorical or philosophical point.
I do find it annoying that certain people want theists to be scientifically wrong. By this point, most theisms have insulated themselves pretty well from science (philosophically for the sophisticated, politically and culturally for the fundamentalist types). The most you can really say scientifically is that religious ideas are unscientific.
The thing is, of course, that science just rejects or ignores unscientific ideas. You can insist on that procedure being true in some metaphysical sense, rather than just pragmatic, but it doesn’t seem like a good idea to be a prick about it.
Really, isn’t it enough theists be philosophically and religiously wrong? Do you really need to try to make them scientifically wrong too?
This summary is completely backwards in regards to the facts. Coyne’s initial complaint was that the NCSE was NOT “merely defending the science,” but actively promoting the belief that science and religious faith are entirely compatible, i.e. taking a philosophical stance on the issue. It was Coyne–the Exclusivist–who advocated a return to neutrality, not the Accommodationists! Coyne explicitly stated many times that he did not want the NCSE to equate science with atheism or adopt his philosophy. Here is Coyne addressing this same accusation from Kenneth Miller:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/science-vs-theism-a-debate-with-kenneth-miller-part-ii-out-of-context/
Why is it every single Accommodationists has to get the Exclusivists’ arguments wrong before they’ll address them? Just once I’d like to see someone criticize Coyne, PZ, and the other non-compatiblists on the merits of the arguments they actually make, rather than a misrepresentation of their position. #4 looks like it’s something Coyne would have written on this subject, since that’s been his point from the beginning.
In the end, this is about increasing the understanding and hopefully the acceptance of evolution by the general public. The problem is how best to accomplish this – do we first change a person’s understanding of theology so they can become more accepting of science or do we change their understanding of science so they develop a more accepting theology? I see these debates as a way for people to clarify their woolly thinking on how best to proceed; we don’t have much research to go on. I guess if I were to be pinned down, I would say success depends on the truth claims of religion being reinterpreted as metaphor. That is just a guess and I would like to see an organization like the NAS fund some research on teaching strategies instead of producing brochures.
Jerry, are you cereal?
Here’s Dawkins from his Telegraph article “Bible Belters.” He opens:
There is much fluttering in the dovecots of the deluded…
and goes on to characterize the Bible Belt as “the reptilian brain of southern and middle America.” In case it wasn’t perfectly clear he was strictly referring to the religious members of that particular community, he makes the contrast explicit by calling the atheist minority “the ranks of the thoughtful.”
But I guess since Dawkins didn’t actually use the words “ignorant” or “stupid,” then John W. is just being slanderous to imply such a thing.
My position is the following …
When people claim that their religious beliefs don’t conflict with science I don’t just take their word for it. I ask them about their specific beliefs and how they jibe with science as a way of knowing.
As it turns out, most religious people who make the claim are unable to defend it very well. I find the debate very interesting as it helps me define my own views on what science is and what, if any, limits it has.
I understand that some people aren’t interested in exploring the validity of the claim that certain religious beliefs are compatible with science. That’s fine, but the the unwillingness to debate the issue doesn’t make the claim valid.
I’m interested in whether it’s true that science and religion are compatible. The accommodationists seem to advocate the position that we shouldn’t debate that point. They hardly ever address the actual questions such as whether the belief in life after death or the existence of a universal morality is scientific or not.
In closing, I’d like to thank John for realizing that scientific organizations are just as wrong to say that science and religion are compatible as to say that they’re not. That’s a much more reasonable accommodationist stance than the one taken by many of his fellow accommodationists.
Yes, Larry, and I am of that opinion after your discussion earlier this year, as a result of thinking through the matter. NCSE is wrong to assert that religion and science are compatible. They are not wrong to assert that many religious organisations think that religion and science are compatible, or that many scientists are religious. The former requires an evaluative judgement, while the latter are statements of fact.
Josh Rosenau has another good post here:
http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2009/06/what_is_compatibility.php
… where he makes the point that science and religion are closer to “orthogonal” than “compatible.”
And PZ (despite some derogatory language) has a good one here:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/scienceblogs/pharyngula
… where he makes the best argument I’ve seen to date for incompatibility.
I just ran into Abu Yakub Sijistani Ismali missionary and Neo-Platonic philosopher who died around 971 a.d.
His view seems to have been that discussions that concern God or the Divine fall outside of known reality and are not considered a subject fitting for science.
I like that perspective.
I don’t think science should make an enemy of religion. I think that poor and substandard education is the enemy of science and the enemy of religion, as this is the factor I feel leads to more extreme’s of thought and belief.
When people claim that their religious beliefs don’t conflict with science I don’t just take their word for it.
…pretty much the nub of some of the accommodationist vs exclusionist discussion, I would think. And my question is “Why not?” I can envision reasons that are protective of science education and the “scientific literacy” of the general population, but not many that have much to do with protecting science itself from any real challenge from ill-conceived individual ideas about reconciling religion with science. I would say: save your energies for those who claim that their religious beliefs DO conflict with science … and do their best to prevent accommodation.
One thing I have realized is that people have very different agendas and goals (whether accomodationist or exclusivist). However, when approaching the debate person #1 assumes person #2 has the same agenda/goal and thus person #1′s argument will often be completely off target because person #2 is having a completely different discussion even though the vocabulary is similar.
I think this pretty much is depicted by ckc (not kc)’s response to Larry. (but I could be wrong, I do have my own agenda too)
I am an accommodationist in the strict sense that I think there are classes of religious beliefs that science in of itself has no bearing on. That being said, when you examine the content of the great majority of people’s religious beliefs, they tend to hold not insignificant beliefs that science does negatively reflect on. Religions tend to make empirical claims that are demonstrably dubious via science.
Beyond that, I’d add that the fuzziness of the term “religion” is causing problems here. It’s not clear to me that religion qua religion is a distinct way or ways of knowing from science. I’m not sure it’s an epistemology at all so much as a loose categorization of certain types of beliefs people have that are justified in different ways, some unique to religion, some not. Indeed, scientifically structured arguments are foundational to many of the most widely accepted attempts at theistic/religious justification.
While it fails to be rationally viable, the design argument Dr. Wilkens has a great deal of experience dealing with is the kind of a posteriori argument that has pretense to science. That is to say, if it were sound, we’d rightly call it science.
As science is a method not a theology or philosophy why do some atheists insist on equating a naturalist method with a naturalist/materialist philosophy?
To answer one of morans questions, the limits of science is the limits of the natural/material universe, it is so limited by its method.
It is strange that moran is happy to admit that he goes around picking fights with people who don’t attack scientific endevours/understanding, perhaps he just likes argueing woth or denigrating others he feels are inferior to him.
But back to the issue, why do some atheists wish to evangelize their beliefs, for the same reason that politicians do I guess. It helps them garner a perception of authority and followers.
Why are some downright rude, perhaps it is frustration that their message of universal themness hasn’t caught on with the genral populace or that they haven’t been accorded the respect they think they deserve.
That isn’t difficult. Science practices methodological naturalism which – apart from being almost as difficult to say as the name of that Iranian president chappie: Armoured Dinner Jacket – does not assume the existence of a creator per the Demon Barber of Ockham. This makes it atheist according to the ID/C crowd and there are scientists who like nothing more than annoying IDiots that are more than happy to agree with them.