Dawkins Does a McLuhan
Jerry Coyne took a few minutes from all the fun he was having at the Boys’ Atheists jamboree to do a quick post on Dawkins and accommodationism.
An alert reader called my attention to two blog posts by Josh Rosenau and Chris Mooney/Sheril Kirshenbaum, both claiming that Richard Dawkins explicitly voiced accommodationist views in a Newsweek interview. “He’s changed!” they say.
Has not, Jerry says.
Well, I know Richard Dawkins. I am at a meeting with Richard Dawkins. I just discussed these accusations of accommodationism with Richard Dawkins. And I can tell you, Chris, Sheril, and Josh, that Richard is not one of you.
And, satisfyingly, he includes Richard’s written confirmation that he is no accommodationist:
How utterly ridiculous. All I was saying is that it is possible for a human mind to accommodate both evolution and religion because F. Collins’s mind seems to manage the feat (along with lots of vicars and bishops and rabbis).
Then Jerry expresses a hope which seems unlikely to be fulfilled…
Now that Dawkins has verified this, it would be nice to see Rosenau, Mooney, and Kirshenbaum correct their postings. And they need to stop pretending that the existence of religious scientists and religious people who accept evolution proves that science and faith are compatible. We settled that issue long ago. The issue is philosophical compatibility.
As I pointed out in the comments, Mooney did once grasp this point, though without admitting he had grasped anything new, or changed his thinking, or learned anything from his critics, much less apologizing for maligning them for weeks on end. I pointed out this oversight at the time, but fat lot of good it did me. Anyway he lost his grip on the point again, and now he’s just back at the same old stand.
It’s just lucky I’m not in a position of power. I’d have denied them Internet privileges until they learned to behave like adults.
Josh Rosenau has been far more obliging/explicit on this. He seems to endorse the idea that the “brute force compatibility” argument is not a mere facile conflation with the epistemic compatibility argument, but rather is superficial evidence in favor of it. The “superficial evidence” argument is very different from what Scott seems to have argued (and, vicariously, Mooney), where the philosophy doesn’t really even get a chance to come up to bat.
I’m happy to grant Rosenau that point, because I assume (quite charitably) that from the nature of the intellectual profession cognitive dissonance would carry a high personal burden. Or, at least, I can’t assume outright that folks are merely living dual lives. But the real evidence would be if the theologically minded scientist were to provide some compelling arguments that actually dealt with the lines of skepticism that are by now familiar.
Josh Rosenau can at least see the point we are making, though maybe not the point of making that point. But his use of the Dawkins interview in this latest round seems pretty desperate.
With some of these other people, I’ve decided that they are so thoroughly wrongheaded as not to merit debate.
One of the key moments of the Dover trial was the admission by Behe that, under his definition of science which included supernaturalism, pseudo-scientific beliefs, such as astrology, could be allowable in the science classroom.
I think the accomodationists are making the same mistake with their rather loose definition of ‘compatible with religion’.
Some theistic scientists do good science therefore, according to the accomodationists, theism is thus compatible with science.
Guess what, NCSE, some creationists and ID supporters also do good science.
Are creationism and Intelligent design therefore compatible with science?
The more I see of their attempts to support their position, the more the defenders of the compatibility of science and religion look like they’re engaging in a peculiar form of apologetics.
Yes, I’m serious. Consider the nature of standard Christian apologetics. The apologist begins by assuming the truth of the conclusion to be demonstrated (the existence of a creator God, the divinity of Christ, or whatever) and proceeds to build a web of rationalizations in support of that predetermined “conclusion” – which of course is not really a conclusion at all because it is always assumed to be true in advance and never treated as a questionable claim standing in need of support. This is not any sort of genuine reasoned argumentation, but rather is a shoddy imitation of it intended to mislead those who know no better (which often includes the apologist him or herself).
Now let’s look at the defenders of the compatibility of science and religion. They persist in twisting and switching definitions of what compatibility means (equivocation), incorrectly characterizing the positions and arguments of others (distortion), and clutching at any shred of apparent evidence no matter how thin to shore up their already-determined-in-advance “conclusion” while ignoring counter-evidence and counter-arguments (confirmation bias) – all tried-and-true tools of rationalization/apologetics. And why are they using these tools? To defend a position they are committed to in advance of and quite aside from any arguments.
So why such a rigid commitment to the compatibility of science and religion, such that it must be preserved in the face of all objections and evidence to the contrary? Ultimately, it’s about what they think is a strategic need: If science is seen as opposed to religion – which really must means, if science is tied too closely to atheism – they think it will harder to defend science against its creationist attackers. And maybe they’re right; but I doubt it. I doubt it because there are facts of the matter at stake in the compatibility of science and religion, and any strategy that hinges on ignoring the facts of the matter is doomed to fail (a lesson one could only hope that people who lived through the Bush years might have learned). So what are the facts of the matter about science/religion compatibility? They lie in the intersection of science and atheism.
The main reason why the overwhelming majority of atheists are atheists boils down do this: There’s simply no evidence for (or other reasons to believe in) the existence of any god or gods. Such forthright denial of supernatural claims (claims that many people want very badly to believe are true) simply because evidence and reason doesn’t support them springs from atheists’ commitment to certain epistemological values: In general, atheists’ rejection of supernatural beliefs is deeply rooted in the view that it is right and good – or at least better than any alternative ever suggested – that one allow evidence and reason to shape one’s beliefs, and that the strength of one’s conviction about the truth of any claim should be proportional to the evidence and reasoning which supports that claim. Such respect for evidence and reason also demands openness to new evidence and reasoning: One must necessarily change the degree to which one is convinced a given claim is true in response to new evidence and reasoning relevant to that claim.
These epistemological values are the exact same values that govern science, which is why atheism and science are so closely intertwined. These epistemological values are also directly opposed by any view of the world which says it is permissible (or even good!) to believe or live by or otherwise embrace claims about the world without substantive evidence for them, or even in spite of substantive evidence to the contrary, and to cling to those claims in the face of all doubts – in a word, faith. This is why faith and science are incompatible, no matter how many individual people manage to embrace or ignore or compartmentalize away the serious cognitive dissonance involved in holding and living by these directly opposed values.
There are lots of arguments why the epistemological values at the heart of both atheism and science are good values to embrace and live by, speaking both practically and morally. There are also good arguments why the devaluation/rejection of epistemology at the heart of faith is – at the very, very least – pragmatically problematic and morally questionable. But those are arguments the accommodationist feels must be avoided at all cost: Even though every accommodationist will acknowledge (if pressed) that the epistemological values of science are in fact valuable and good beyond just the scope of science proper, they are desperate to deny the logical implications – for the very same standards of judgment which reveal the value of scientific epistemology also reveal the profound disvalue of faith.
Er. “- which really just means…” not “- which really must means…”
G Felis, I tend to agree with you for the most part but I would put a slightly different emphasis on it. First, regarding atheism – I think you are slightly overstepping the mark here. Atheism is not necessarily linked to scientific rationalism. Most scientific rationalists tend to be atheist/agnostic and vice versa but it is certainly possible to be an atheist and not be a scientific rationalist (I could point you towards the likes of Bill Maher and his medical woo support).
Second as regard apologetics. While I think what accomodationists do is pretty much indistinguishable from apologetics at a practical level, the difference I see is that religious apologetics actually believe what they are saying. Accomodationists, when pressed (and you have to press them very hard!) do not. The most telling point is that you can occasionally (albeit rarely) get an admission that their answers to questions of ‘is religion and science compatible?’ are examples of political pragmatism.
To my mind political pragmatism means all semblance to honest intellectual debate goes out the window. Misrepresentation, selective quoting, ignoring counter-evidence, misdirecting questions, setting up strawmen – all are part and parcel of political rhetoric as compared to an honest scientific debate. When I hear someone admit to being political with the truth I see it as an admission that they think it is acceptable for them to be less than open and honest. It has the end result of making serious debate impossible. Then again when you have an indefensible position the last thing you need is a serious debate.
G. Felis:
In general, atheists’ rejection of supernatural beliefs is deeply rooted in the view that it is right and good – or at least better than any alternative ever suggested – that one allow evidence and reason to shape one’s beliefs, and that the strength of one’s conviction about the truth of any claim should be proportional to the evidence and reasoning which supports that claim.
Amen brother, Amen.
Peter, I used to call myself an apatheist agnostic as well. I’ve sort of moved on, but I won’t complain if anyone takes that position.
The problem I have with the quote is that it makes strange bedfellows with this “many ways of knowing” stuff. So religious claims have no intelligible truth-conditions, not even alternate kinds of intelligible truth-conditions. So where do we get off calling these claims “ways of knowing”? They’re not even intelligible claims anymore.
You and I have discussed this before.
What I do not quite understand is how describing yourself as an apatheist agnostic describes a person’s opinion on the existence of god. Agnosticism and atheism are not mutually exclusive and not be interested in whether gods exist likewise does not actually indicate if that person believes in gods or not. Sure they are hardly likely to fundamentalist or evangelical in their beliefs, but being an apatheist agnostic does not seem to rule out belief in somekind of deity.
Rosenau indeed seems to indicate he does have some kind of deistic belief, as he has said he is not an atheist.
It doesn’t. For apathetism, that’s quite the point. The idea is to say that the discussion is futile, as are deliberations on it, short of “we can’t know, so I’ll stop there”. The informed moratorium exhausts ones beliefs on the matter. If it doesn’t then the term “apatheism” is empty.
The question of belief in God(s)’s existence just does not arise for the apatheist. If you insist that atheism is entailed by the lack of belief (even when a person has godly intuitions that fall short of belief), then it is only in a cheap nominal sense, not terribly engaged with the facts of language and psychology. By analogy, the statement “Either the cat is black or it isn’t” is quite besides the point when there’s no cat. Oh sure, we can insist that the lack of a cat shows the cat isn’t black — for the cat isn’t anything. But this conclusion occurs through an applied heuristic that we take for granted, it does not arise through an actual concern with the facts about psychological states and goals of the person, the failure of artificial languages to map onto natural ones, the expressive power of natural languages, relevance to the conversation, etc. This is not a demonstration of a feeling for reality, it rather shows an indifference to what matters.
Josh has just posted another long rambling something or other. He is really trying hard to make excuses for not thinking deeply about this issue.
“quite beside the point when there’s no cat.”
Ah. Now this raises an interesting question. Is it really possible to say there’s no god in a culture in which god-talk is pervasive and relentless and often demanding? In some sense there is a god, or a ‘god,’ as a construct and an imposition. But that ‘god’ doesn’t actually exist. Yet it seems not quite right to say there’s no god in the way there’s no cat (if there is no cat) to be black or not black.
Why does Josh go on at such length?
Oh gawd – he goes on and on and on, all just to reinvent the wheel. He starts off by announcing that he doesn’t know what accommodationism means! Well then why did he use the word in yesterday’s post?!
Obbb, I guess that’s part of why I find it useful to talk about different ‘ways of knowing’. I’m happy to say that when we’re talking about “God” we might be talking about one of the following things: a) the omnicreature who invented everything, b) an abstract sense of moral authority, c) the thing that makes me feel better when I do various things in its name, d) the ideological device used to socialize people into stable behaviors, to exploit and defame the innocent, etc. Outside of ancient Egypt, the nonexistence of Mr. Cat along the lines of (a) doesn’t leave a cat-sized hole in any of those other ways of knowing, but that’s because we happen to be in a lifeworld (b-d) that could do without cats just as well.
These different “ways of knowing” are also what motivates my quietism, because consistent with (b-d) I get to say things like “My God hates your shitty religion”. So far I’ve been treated more as a refreshing scamp than a dirty horrible atheist rascal. I don’t know if it’s effective at getting any points across, but then again, I don’t pretend to be a very good activist.
Also… darn, I just explained my take on the meaning of “accommodationism” over there yesterday. Maybe I wasn’t clear or was being idiosyncratic, but I essentially define accommodationism as the opposite of activist atheism — hell, secularist activism for that matter. I argued that the epistemic incompatibility thesis pops up as part of it, but isn’t really necessary. The key dispute is strategic and cultural, like whether or not we ought to shut up for taking pride in inconvenient beliefs.
Sigmund: “Atheism is not necessarily linked to scientific rationalism.”
Quite – hence my use of qualifiers like “majority” and “in general.” Yes, there are atheists who just never think about the matter at all, or who were simply raised to dismiss god beliefs without any epistemological commitments intertwined with that raising, or who are knee-jerk contrarians who can’t tell a bad popular idea from a good one and just reject any belief that seems to mainstream to them. (The last is Bill Maher all over.) But I think all such atheists added together still comprise a decided minority. I also freely admit that such a perspective is mere opinion, albeit informed opinion, because I have no idea where one would find objective data to support a stronger claim either way the matter. At the very least, it seems clear that all of atheism’s most public spokespeople and activists and authors share the epistemological commitments I described – and those are the people with whom the accommodationists concern themselves in such perpetually overheated and confused ways.
So even if atheists with no particular epistemological commitments were in the majority, the essential unity of the epistemological values of science and atheism (where atheism is informed by epistemological values at all) would still stand, and accommodationists would still have conniptions trying to deny/avoid/muddy the inconvenient fact of that unity.
In that light, I think your use of the phrase ‘political pragmatism’ is not quite on target. Political pragmatism (as opposed to political idealism) does sometimes involve dishonest arguments and manipulations of public opinion and such, but it also involves such key components as recognizing the necessity for political compromise and a strategic approach to actually achieving concrete political goals. Rigidly and dishonestly clinging to a strategy that ignores facts leaves little room for compromise and has no chance for success, so if accommodationists are engaged in any kind of political pragmatism at all, it’s a woefully shoddy example of it.
All of you simply must take a gander at Mooney’s latest post. He’s going on again about Pluto, promoting a book that argues it ought not have been “demoted.” Transparently in service of defending his indefensible citation of Plutogate as a serious example of Bad Stupid Scientists, he actually writes:
“When the International Astronomical Union voted in 2006 to evict Pluto from the roster of planets in our solar system, little did they expect the public outcry that would arise.”
“When the New Horizons spacecraft reaches Pluto in 2015, we’ll know more about this “underdog of the solar system.” Even then, the furor is bound to continue.”
Even people who’ve defended his intellectual dishonesty while screaming bloody murder at MILITANT ZOMG!11! New Atheists are showing up in his comments and scratching their heads.
Mission Control tells me Laurel Kornfeld is on final approach, and will be making touchdown in the comments within two hours. I’ll be checking back this evening, after going to see David Sedaris. Sometimes one needs intentional humor as a diversion.
Oh nooooooooooooooooooooes!
Ooh, David Sedaris, lucky you.
» Russell Blackford:
Josh Rosenau can at least see the point we are making
Now he even gets that it’s about neutrality—and immediately drops the ball again.
We really have to stop slathering the bear grease and olive oil on these points – we’re obviously making them much too slippery.
Ha! Sure enough, Laurel has landed.
God…”the fascinating story of the underdog “planet” that everybody in America loves”
Pu-leeze! I’m in America and I don’t love Pluto! See how easy that is to falsify? So don’t say dumb stuff like that!
What has happened to Mooney?
Yes, she has landed! And within minutes of my post here predicting her touch down. I should have made a friendly wager with you fine folks.
Sedaris was hysterical, as you knew he would be.
OB wrote:
I don’t know, but I confess I’m gratified that so many people are asking that question. There really is a salient difference between the Mooney of The Republican War on Science and the Mooney of today. TRWOS really was a good book, and I was a sincere admirer of his work. I soured on him when he joined up with Matt Nisbet, and sold his intellectual soul out to the politic. . errr. . .communicators. Supposedly, he and Nisbet are no longer on the same intellectual wavelength, but I can’t see any difference.
Several longtime Scienceblogs commenters (me, Matt Penfold, and others), tried to get Mooney to explain this shift. We never got any answers. Even when we started out very politely, making it clear we were admirers of his work, for goodness’ sake, he didn’t answer, or rebuffed us, or spewed word salad in pixels and cried about how he didn’t understand how people could be so thick/mean/venal.
Ophelia, Russell Blackford, and others came along, and worked really hard to give him the benefit of the doubt and engage him substantively. We all know the results. I was one of the people who’d given up on him long before that (out of long experience), and had nothing but tart, acid things to say. I hope my sharp tongue, in retrospect, doesn’t seem as hasty or out of context as it might have before others had their fill of Mooney’s brand of dissembling.
Oh, lordy, Josh…I could write a book on all that. All about perceived benefit of the doubt and perceived bullying and meanness and aggression – with a tragic ending in which the stage is littered with corpses.
I call dibs as co-author on that hypothetical book.
(In your face, Stangroom!)
A friend of mine yesterday was wearing a shirt that said, “It’s okay, Pluto. I’m not a planet either.” I got a good chuckle out of that. Of course, the humorous side of the issue would probably just be lost on Mooney.