I’m offended. I’m offended by the sheer stupidity, the voluntary stupidity – the non-thought, the hostility to thought, the chosen crudity. It’s from a reporter called Cathy Lynn Grossman, who is responsible for the “Faith and Reason” blog at USA Today. She is also a Templeton Fellow 2010, which makes her a classmate of Chris Mooney’s. was also a Templeton fellow in 2005 – the inaugural class.
She was of course reacting to Jerry Coyne’s piece declaring that science and religion are not friends. “Reacting” is all she did.
Move over Richard Dawkins. Yet another scientist is weighing in on science vs. religion and wheeling out his most outrageous language for his point
She tells Dawkins to move over then says “yet another” scientist is joining in – is more than one really “yet another”? Is two such a vast number that a reporter gets to roll her eyes at the exhausting flood? She probably had more than one in mind, but then it was stupid to tell Dawkins to move over as if he had been in solitary possession, wasn’t it. It’s just lazy cliché-mongering without actually thinking about the meaning.
And then what is so outrageous about a scientist “weighing in” on science v religion? It’s a subject that scientists have a stake in, surely, so why shouldn’t they write about it? No reason – Grossman just wants to convey an impression of impertinent intrusion without the bother of actually arguing for it. And then how does one “wheel out” langugage? And what is so “outrageous” about Coyne’s language, anyway?
Well it’s that unlike Chris Mooney (whom Grossman praises without mentioning the shared Templetonian history), Coyne “sees no reconciliation.” I suppose that could be because he doesn’t particularly want to share his lab with the theology department.
Coyne, whose latest book is Why Evolution is True, takes the Monday USA TODAY op-ed Forum spot to blast faith as an enemy of truth, an oppressive social force and the impetus of all evil rather than evil’s nemesis.
Notice all the veiled accusations of aggression – Coyne “takes” the op-ed spot, as if he had seized it by force. (How? Did he recruit his grad students to storm the building and tie up the editors?) And then there’s that favorite verb of Mooney’s to describe what enemies are doing – Coyne “blasts” faith. That’s faith-speak for “criticize.” And as for “evil’s nemesis” – tell that to generations of children raped by priests, tell it to the women whipped for showing a bit of hair or stoned to death for talking to a man, tell it to the women and children tortured to death as “witches.”
Coyne argues we must clear vision from the fog of belief and religious structures that nourish communities of faith. No common awe for the dazzling sunrise here.
Oh really – no awe for the glaciers on Denali? No awe for the Galapagos, for the Mojave, for the sunrise over Lake Michigan?
She’s a good example of the harm faith can do to the mind.
Comments
25 responses to “Leprechauns”
If she thinks Coyne lacks the capacity for awe, she should mosey over to WEIT and read his “Bucket List” post. Just sort of as background. But that would require that she do actual, like, journalism instead of just spouting off-the-cuff crap.
Of course, IIRC this is the same ninny who last week was wondering if IVF children possessed souls — a question I didn’t know even the religious were much worried about.
That’s it?! She writes for a major newspaper, takes on a respected author and professor, AND gets Templeton dollars for doing this, and that’s all she could muster?
Was anyone else looking for the “next page” link, thinking she had to have something more to say than just that? (I mean, I’m glad there wasn’t more, but at the same time I can’t believe that’s all there was. Pathetic.)
Ha! I grabbed the second comment spot after that was published online, begging to differ with her assertion (clearly she’s never read any Sagan!). For me, personally, understanding how a sunrise works makes it MORE awesome, not less so, and I assume this is true of many people. Indeed, looking at something for a minute and then shrugging and saying “Dunno, goddidit,” doesn’t seem like a very awed reaction at all, personally.
I know — maybe she should hook us up to some neurological equipment and see if atheists have noticably lower brain activity in areas associated with arts and asthetics. Then her point might have a modicum of merit. Until then, I can’t begin to understand how believing in a sky-daddy could possibly be a prerequisite for being able to admire a sunrise.
When people say “it’s not that simple” they should really point out why. They bring to mind an image of two hikers, lost, searching for home. “Can’t we get through there?” One asks. “No,” his/her friend replies, “It’s too complicated.” He/she then proceeds to stand, rooted, flaunting a quizzical expression.
Vaguely O/T – Do you think this applies to everything? Love, for example, was once seen as a mystical, ennobling emotion. Do you think the knowledge that it may well be a mammalian urge dependent upon levels of serotonin and oxytocin makes it more awesome?
A yes, now I understand a little better what is going on. The correct framing is used “science vs. religion” and not “science and religion”.
Correct. The framing is “science vs. religion” remember?
All of which are true. Faith really is the enemy of truth, an oppressive social force and impetus of evil. One trick played by ‘evil’ is that it dresses itself up as ‘good’.
Cathy Lynn Grossman is more concerned about being awe inspired than either truth or ethics, which tells us something about how she engages discussion with her audience. Nevermind Mr Hitler about the holocaust, where are the curtains? Why the use of so much black and white, why not a little more colour on Nazi uniforms?
I don’t take Grossman’s deliberate distraction seriously, it signals nudges and winks to those in solidarity than saying anything honest or rational. Look, another scientist concerned with truth and justice rather than a baby’s smile, and isn’t the absence of any consideration for a smiling baby evidence enough that scientists are bad? Grossman’s amusing lack of argument really does display complete nihilism. She doesn’t value anything other than her aesthetics and perhaps a little financial incentive.
Since there is essentially nothing in that article other than a nudge and a wink, I went through her other articles for inspiration. Her other infamous article about Test tube babies offers another nudge and wink through a series of inane unanswerable questions that do not inspire rational arguments but only inspire a kind of revulsion where the emotive term ‘baby’ is abused for a group of cells, and then jealously wags her finger at those selfish people who can’t have a baby naturally! What we have here is hatred disguised as love.
I then turned to her latest article about gays (note not gay people or homosexuals but ‘gays’). Then she begins with another thought provoking question “What is true tolerance?” which rings a bit like “Why am I a bad person?” (or “why am I not loved? Please love me”). Can humans possibly have sympathy for bad people? Like this question never came up before, as if Jeremy Bentham never existed.
It seems for Grossman, thoughts are questions, which is nice. Rather, I think thoughts tend to answer questions unless questions have no real answers. After further reading I see that her questions are all drenched in guilt and self-pity. “Why am I bad person?” rings soundly. You see, catholics are bullies with tender hearts. While looking for any excuse for self-justification, this is how Grossman rationalises herself. She might be a bully, a bit intolerant, but beneath all this is a tender loving woman. Or is she being selfish?
Her final questions signify her real psychology: “Can we muster some sympathy, empathy, even love, for the people with whom we disagree?”. Grossman wants to be loved, she wants to feel connected, made to feel she is not a bad person. She finds only connection with other Catholics, in solidarity but yet feels no real love from them. Because it’s not love but hate, faux-love masking deeply troubling self-loathing, self-pity and jealousy. This the sad human reality behind the ‘nice’ mask. Something that ex-Catholics probably recognise.
You see Cathy Lynn Grossman, love is not something you take selfishly, but something you give freely.
Vaguely O/T – Do you think this applies to everything? Love, for example, was once seen as a mystical, ennobling emotion. Do you think the knowledge that it may well be a mammalian urge dependent upon levels of serotonin and oxytocin makes it more awesome?
Love can be understood as such and STILL be an ennobling emotion — the two are in no way mutually contradictory. That’s a false dilemma — I don’t have to choose between the two.
In other words, you seem to be starting from the assumption that simply knowing about something somehow removes all of the emotional effects of that thing on a person — which isn’t at all true. I see ithe equation as 1 + 1 = 2, and 2 > 1. Your view seems to be that 1 + 1 – 1 = 1, which is also true, but I don’t think that “-1” is automatically attendant on that “+1.”
This woman is so marginally literate that one has to wonder about Templeton’s having chosen her as a “fellow”. Templeton is trying to assimilate religion to sophisticated, intelligent pursuits like science — right? Well, then this “fellow” has not done them much good.
But, more important, notice how MOONEY IS NOT HELPING! Jerry doesn’t make any encompassing, “Join me in this spiritual moment of watching the wonder of a sunset,” so there’s something wrong with him trying to express what he believes, with good reason, to be the truth.
Carol Lynn Grossman is quite evidently irrelevant to intelligent discussion, but Mooney pretends not to be. But his form of framing means that others can play the “You’re not doing this right” game. “You want to know how we think you should talk about religion? Look at Mooney.” So Mooney has become a a serious impediment to communicating clearly the importance of criticial thinking. Notice the reference to “the common spiritual ground of awe at creation.” (my italics) Hey, we have this in common, right? Mooney says so. So why are you waxing all poetic instead of blasting away at religion?
And, remember, this is the woman who, a week ago, questioned the personhood of all those people born as a result of in vitro fertilization. That’s the quality of this woman’s mind. And she finds common ground with Chris Mooney. This constitutes a big problem for free thinking. Mooney is clearly a roadblock that needs some serious blasting!
Heh. Good point. This is Mooney Not Helping.
It’s rather appropriate to hear this fairly tired complaint today because I managed to watch last nights <a href=”http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mgxf”>Horizon program on the BBC</a>. Tell you what, hearing various physicists explaining their cosmologies, and highlighting the problems with their opponents positions and the experiments they might use to resolve them was oodles more exciting than all of those silly little propaganda pieces where believers try to buttress each others delusions. No petty “respect” here, just robust argument and I dare say a dash of genuine wonder and enthusiasm.
Sometimes it’s really hard not to feel oceans of love for the very real gift of a publicly funded broadcaster. It won’t last, but I’m feeling like sharing this brief little puddle of warmth and good feeling towards humanity.
@ Guy Montag
I am watching the same programme! I also feel all warm and fuzzy listening to music!
@ Eric Macdonald
I too think Mooney is clearly intelligent and coherent. But money is a good enough incentive to not help! I think his arguments can easily be demolished if confronted without interference from some bulldog moderator.
And just read a few of the faithy comments on that post for some perspective on the claims that religion is mostly harmless, the vast majority of believers are moderate and don’t believe any nonsense, religion is not a major problem, beliefs are private, and all the rest of the litany.
Like this charmer:
Conceiving life outside a womb, oh noes!! That will have negative effects on humanity in some way. I have absolutely no clue in what way, but it will, it will, it will. The devil gonna gitcha.
I think very much that kind of thing.
Religion (speaking as one who used to be fairly devout) provides a sense of connection to the larger universe — a big, flashing “You Are Here” arrow in the immensity (except we know those claims are bogus).
Knowing how the sunrise works absolutely makes it more awesome. Stop and force yourself to think that it isn’t just a big fiery thing coming up over the horizon, it’s actually an immense sphere of fusing hydrogen, and you’re standing on a large rocky sphere that is rotating that way at airplane speeds, while revolving about it at speeds ten times that, both hanging in an immense nothing, and the relative scales of it all are pretty much impossible to grasp intuitively. If that’s not a mind-blowing trip then you’re the one with no capacity for awe. And if you refuse to contemplate it at all then you’re a small-minded coward.Understanding where I sit in the cosmos, in this fleeting moment on this tiny sand-grain, made of recycled supernovae stuff that got the trick first of reproducing itself, then of thinking about itself, and how that connects to everything else, is immensely awe-inspiring. Science also provides a “You Are Here” arrow — just not as gaudy and self-important as the one religion is selling.
From the box on Grossman’s RHS:
Like a Christmas tree it seems. And a fidgety one at that. The mind starts to boggle here, and we are not even into the main course. A open-air stadium full of Hindus, Buddhists, Animists, Zoroastrians, Christians, Jews, Muslims etc all talking to each other about visions and values, faith and ethics would surely generate enough electromagnetic radiation to be visible at the far end of the Universe.
This is an Irish stew. Attractive lumps poke their heads here and there above the corn flour thickener of the general soup. Dazzling sunrise, awe, nourishment, community; hooray for all that. But then HE gets into it. After HIM comes gray, fog, black-and-white, awful.
But then, salvation: gray can be good, as in the cerbral cortex. And the invitation directly follows to the reader to see what Jerry Coyne clearly cannot: subtlety, interplay of light and shadow, fine detail. Doubt is cast also on the proposition that science is a force for the good. But one little certainty invitingly shines forth in all this upping of lights: Coyne can be dismissed.
I think a case can be made that any scientific discovery can be put to a good or an evil use; however those terms might be defined. Religion likewise, particularly since part of its role in history has been in uniting the oppressed against their oppressors. However, a strong case can be made that it has mainly been the other way.
One question remains however. Amidst all the fidgetacious lighting up, is Grossman even dimly aware of how crass she is?
So I guess her Buddhist readers dismiss her views on “values, faith and ethics” more quickly even than the atheist ones do, because from their standpoint she has no practice from which to gain any insight at all into these things? I mean, if her goal is coddling the religious, wouldn’t it be wise of her not to alienate one entire religion right off the bat, before she even says anything?
“Do you think the knowledge that it may well be a mammalian urge dependent upon levels of serotonin and oxytocin makes it more awesome?”
No, but I definitely prefer thinking of it as something that happens for definite reasons (even if not always rational ones), as opposed to something that just magically strikes people. I might as well ask “Is it better to think of love as a mystical, incomprehensible affliction that civilizes self-centered creatures like you, or a part of your own human nature that takes joy from the well-being and companionship of your friends and family, an inheritance from your lovingly social ancestors?” I feel like a lot of reality is emotionally neutral until you frame it; if you put one option in flowery language and the other in technical language, it’s not surprising that the former sounds better.
More on topic: this little complaint of Grossman’s is a terrible bit of work; I’d expect something like this in an offhand blog comment rather than an actual main article. It has essentially no substance, it’s dishonest, it contains a pretty terrible pun about gray matter, and it doesn’t even look like it’s been properly copy-edited (which would take what, a minute at most?).
Not that any of her other work is much better.
Seeing as we keep raising the question of how to think about love given a commitment to materialism (or to be more precise physicalism), is it wrong to point out that while I could give an account of my emotional attachment to a person through a complex description of neurotransmitters or, love talk frankly does the same job in fewer words. Sure, I need to assume you’ve roughly similar experiences to me in order to get it to work, but I’m reasonably optimistic that you do so until I find something that works better, I think I’ll keep those terms thank you.
As for the quality of Grossman’s contribution, I have to admit I’ve been horrified quite simply at how bad these people’s arguments are. It’s not just Grossman, it’s all of them. Anybody have any suggestions as to how I can say that I’m dismissing them on perfectly reasonable grounds while avoiding sounding like some of the more crazy types who start every discussion by explaining hoow that the Gnu Atheists apparently aren’t very good at theology?
You wouldn’t let a madman with an axe perform heart surgery in a hospital, but there’s no stopping a Catholic from instantaneously stealing the thunder of every positive article that ever gets written.
This is either nomination or an example of someone who really doesn’t get out much. The Urban Dictionary is just a click away…
Erm. Er. Erm.
Add IVF treatment to the mix. As this example shows:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/may/06050903.html
Yes, Science vs. Religion again.
She doesn’t like a scientist commenting on science and religion, but for a “journalist”, it’s okay? Is there some kind of logic behind that?
Grossman was the psycho who actually asked, in the same USA Today “On Religion” space, whether IVF babies should be considered really people. With an apparently straight face.
Honestly, this article marginally improved my opinion of her. Prior to this, everything I’d heard from Grossman suggested she was both stupid and unapologetically violently bigoted. This article only suggests she’s stupid.
Well it is in fact a blog post, not an actual main article. That should be some consolation, at least!
She apparently writes the blog in addition to doing articles.
@Ophelia
I see. That is some very mild consolation. Very mild.
[…] lordy, it’s Cathy Lynn Grossman again. Again? Yes, there was once before. She’s a Templeton “Fellow,” too, class of 2005. Her schtick is to point in […]