In the new order there will be Unity
Just for the sake of keeping track of the twins’ escalating malice and finger-pointing and vindictiveness, let’s have a look at something they teasingly call ‘A Call for Peace in the Science/Faith Battle’ (hahahaha that’s a good one when you see how they go about it). They wrote it in late July, touchingly, for a column at Beliefnet called ‘Science and the Sacred’ which is normally reserved for the boffins at BioLogos.
They start off by saying ‘the supposed “conflict” between science and religion’ is so unnecessary, but they don’t waste much time on saying that because they’d so much rather get down to saying how awful the “New” atheists are yet again. The latest ‘incarnation’ of the conflict is ‘particularly bitter and nasty,’ they say, mopping their streaming eyes. Then it’s down to business.
Today, the conflict pits the so-called “New Atheists”–Richard Dawkins, the science blogger PZ Myers, and many others–against not just conservative religious believers, but many others as well. For the New Atheists are willing to mix it up with anyone, even fellow atheists and agnostics, who question the need to repeatedly challenge the beliefs of the faithful, or to have an ongoing conflict over science and religion.
Who question the need? Hmmmmmmno – I don’t think most “New” atheists feel any need to ‘mix it up’ with people who just question things. Questioning is what the twins don’t do – the twins announce, and then when their announcements are themselves questioned, they ignore the questions and just repeat the announcement about ten more times. It’s at that point that the “New” atheists start to feel like ‘mixing it up,’ or at least, like pointing out how unwilling the twins are to back up their claims when asked.
There is so much important work to do, and in this context, how can it possibly help to have leading scientists and science defenders busy assaulting religious beliefs?
Let’s see…by making some alternatives to religious beliefs more widely and readily available, which would itself do some of that work that needs to be done? That’s how; one how, anyway.
Put simply, it can’t. So we decided to take a stand. It has cost us with some former allies…
Yes you see that’s just it – put simply, you don’t know whether it can or not, and you haven’t made a case, and just saying it – even simply – doesn’t make it so. And what you decided to take a stand on was the legitimacy of atheists saying atheist things, which you want to undermine and do away with, so your stand is a shitty stand, so it’s just too damn bad that it has ‘cost you’ with former allies. Anyway how did you expect former allies to react when you keep pointing your quivering fingers and calling us names in the mass media? With hugs and cups of hot chocolate?
[W]e said it strongly: The New Atheism has become a counterproductive movement, dividing us when we ought to be united…Atheism is a philosophy that goes beyond mere science–a philosophy that its adherents have every right to hold, but that will never serve as a common ground that we can all stand upon.
Note the fascism – we ought to be united. All of us, on everything, so dissident ideas – which divide us – must be stamped out. We have every right to hold the philosophy of atheism but we can’t all stand upon it so despite the every right thing we the all-knowing twins got busy trying to stamp it out just the same because we all have to stand on the same ground god damn it.
The common ground, instead, must be science in its broadest sense–a shared body of facts we can all agree about…
Ah yes – none of that pesky inquiring mind business, none of that testing and re-testing and peer review and trying to falsify and checking for bias – fuck no – science is a shared body of facts and we can all agree about it – in the wonderful Gleichschaltung to come.
The New Atheists, although loud, don’t represent all scientists or even all atheists–much less all of the country.
Indeed not – the “New” atheists, the loudmouth bastards, are a tiny minority, so let’s all get together and bully them. We hate minorities! We hate those god damn dissenting minorities that have the gall to not stand on the same ground with the rest of us! Start collecting your stones.
So all we need is for the “silent majority”–often diffident, often drowned out by the extremes on either side–to get louder.
And then we can drown those horrible dissenting monsters out. Hooray!
Next time you see the news media cover “science versus religion” as if it’s a battle, write or call in and say why that’s simplistic. The next time you find a scientist criticizing religious belief, email or call up and ask why it isn’t enough for us all to agree about the facts of science.
Yup – that’s the ticket – next time you find some atheist scientist talking sciencey atheism, get busy and harass that atheist scientist. Pretty soon they’ll all get tired of it and give up and we’ll have universal religious harmony from sea to shining sea. Doesn’t that sound peaceful?
“Why it isn’t enough for us all to agree about the facts of science?”… Er… He doesn’t understand does he? And yet he doesn’t seem to realise that he doesn’t understand… No wonder they’ve lost former allies. I understand that Beliefnet is a different pulpit to preach from, but this particular sermon is so incoherent, and indeed anathema to so many things Mooney once claimed to stand for. It’s truly staggering. The call for unity and consensus! He was once something of a rabble rouser. It’s quite sad.
What I want to know, is what is this so-called atheist philosophy? Where is this common core of beliefs that all atheists adhere to?
I taught them the word “diffident” after using it over the past month ad infinitum at the Intersection. I really have had an impact! *wipes away tear*
Mooney frequently absorbs vocabulary without grasping it’s meaning. He borrowed “cognitive miser” and “framing” from Nisbet, and “literal minded” from Olson, without much consideration as to what those terms mean.
Why don’t M&K brag about this article in their blog?
Personally I had to gasp when the twins went ahead and called science a common body of knowledge. Science is not a common body of knowledge but the only method we have available to us to generate knowledge; the body of knowledge is the product of several centuries of using the Scientific method. Not getting that is quite simply as wrong as wrong can be.
Also wrong, if I can follow up on Kallan’s point, is the idea that there is no ignorance left to fight. I was quite taken with this from AC Grayling’s recent contribution of CiF:
Clearly, the Colgate Twins must be counted amongst those who claim to have the truth, along with their silent majority of well-wishers – if they were not so silent.
What I can’t understand is that they seem to be simply blind about what is going on around them. The mad mad world of fundagelical religion in the US, the choke hold of the RC church in Poland and several Latin American countries, the increasing intrusion of the church in political processes (threatening excommunication, opposing reasonable legislation to which the dwindling population of Christians may be opposed), cultural respect being demanded and given for ethnic groups which treat women, gays, and dissidents appallingly, etc. etc. And we are, in the name of science, to make nice to all this shit!
The Gleichschaltung the Colgate Twins recommend is much more than sciency consensus. They want to include religions in this Entente Cordiale (or uncordiale) too. So, Francis Collins’ appointment is a step in the right direction (now that’s a classy original metaphor!)
“We found this out by accident at first–a science journalist and marine biologist, neither of us is personally religious. We were merely science bloggers, and slowly we became aware of something striking happening in our particular sphere of the Internet over the past several years.”
That’s strange.
I could have sworn that the writer of that piece only last month was posting explanations for why he has changed his mind from a stance almost identical to the one he now criticises – due to his reading more history and philosophy and deciding on a more ‘pragmatic’ approach.
“I taught them the word “diffident” after using it over the past month ad infinitum at the Intersection. I really have had an impact!”
Heh! Yes I think I spotted something I had taught them too, a month or so ago – I can’t remember what it was now.
They pay a kind of attention, but…well, it’s not enough.
“Personally I had to gasp when the twins went ahead and called science a common body of knowledge.”
Have they actually read anything by Carl Sagan?
The idea that atheism is a philosophy is one of my pet peeves. Atheism, defined any which way you like, is just a conclusion, it is not a philosophy. There are any number of ways to arrive at an atheistic conclusion – some emotional, some intellectual – but atheism is just not, by itself, a foundational philosophical idea.
Mooney picked up the word “blunt” from OB in describing one possible way for a believer-scientist to “reconcile” a scientific outlook with religious beliefs.
Mooney: “It seems to me that Scott is just making the blunt empirical point that a lot of people reconcile the two in some way–which is undeniable.” [quoted in OB’s “Notes and Comment” entry from 11-07-2009: 17:00:00]
But M&K are now politically committed to viewing science as a body of agreed-upon facts rather than as an epistemology, a process for rigorously and thoroughly justifying claims about events in the world and the causal connections between them. If the nature and substance of science lies in the methods by which matters of fact are justified rather than the facts themselves – and it does – then people who go around claiming to know things that they cannot in any way justify would obviously be doing something quite contrary to the nature and substance of science, wouldn’t they? M&K can’t possibly acknowledge that the history and current practice of science is entirely about the triumph of better epistemology over worse epistemology when they are trying to pretend that science is perfectly compatible with faith, the worst possible epistemology.
At least M&K have the good sense not to contradict themselves outright: But they’ve adopted a position on the compatibility of science and faith that absolutely *requires* them to distort the nature of science beyond all recognition in order to avoid that self-contradiction. I suppose, like all ideologues, they have (at some level, not necessarily consciously) decided that their cause is worth the price of honesty and intellectual integrity. What I can’t understand is why?
I think M&K feel very lonely at the moment. They have pissed off very many people and the little support they have received is lukewarm, especially from people with a PhD. I don’t think even mainstream religious people get aroused from their “new atheist”-bashing.
It seems that unlike M&K, most accommodationists and “compatibilists” agree with the “new atheists” that a wide consensus regarding the compatibility of science and religious faith is impossible. I hope the remaining friends of M&K would have the heart to remind them of the realities of a pluralistic society.
Adding to my previous post: maybe M&K are not actually dreaming of a true consensus regarding “compatibilism”, they just want scientists to join them in building an illusion of such. Both approaches are very naive, IMHO.
I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt as to their true long term intentions regarding the place of science in culture. On the other hand their recent antics suggest they have an ulterior short term aim, one which reminds me of that old quote by Margaret Thatcher:”No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well”
In their case its more a case of celebrity rather than money.
As such ‘instigating’ (well it works in this context!) a culture battle with the ‘new atheists’ in which S and M ride in as the voice and telegenic face of moderation is very much to their advantage. I wonder if the appeal of Sagan to them is that his fame allowed him to communicate to a greater number of people (rather than his communicative skills making him famous).
Ah, thanks, TDF! That was it.
“the voice and telegenic face of moderation is very much to their advantage”
I think maybe they see themselves as the Obama of science&religion – uniting us all, yes we can, etc etc.
Maybe they are not too blind to realize that a variety of approaches are required to reach the goal of scientific literacy for the public (the public not being a monolithic entity and all).
Maybe they view their current role as a valuable strategic component of a larger plan. They may be trying to play the ‘good cop’ to the new atheists ‘bad cop’.
But they evidently just don’t understand how ‘good cop, bad cop’ is supposed to work. Holding back the ‘menace’ of the big, bad atheists to gain the trust of the faithful is only half the job. They just can’t seem to bring themselves to ask anything of the faithful in return.
The bitter irony is that Richard Dawkins, who they have nothing but contemptuous words for, makes an excellent ‘good cop’ in my opinion. I had read several of his books on popular science before I knew anything about his personal opinions on theological matters. The books were fantastic. They communicated a lot of great scientific ideas and history I had missed in my formal education.
That is why I can imagine Dawkins as being an effective ‘good cop’. I find it hard to believe anyone can read him and not be impressed by how sincere, honest, and direct a thinker he is. And once he has earned a readers trust and respect with his science it seems it would be difficult to dismiss his metaphysics out of hand.
Ha! Now it occurs to me that Mooney may be trying to play the good cop, but it is for the other side! After building up some credibility with his previous book now he is trying unsuccessfully to use that capital to buy the silence of the new atheists.
I Guess no matter how I come at this I just can’t see the efforts of M & K as sensible or effective.