Karl Giberson and Lawrence Krauss seem to see things differently. (Now there’s a surprise.) Giberson tells us that science and religion aren’t in tension at all at all.
A religious scientist functions routinely as a scientist in the lab, perhaps looking for the gene that causes hyperbole. While they are engaged in this search they believe that God is the creator. On regular occasions this scientist goes to church, where he or she sings hymns, listens to sermons, volunteers at the soup kitchen, takes communion, and puts money in the offering plate, all the while believing that the scientific picture of the world is accurate. Occasionally this religious scientist may even daydream about finding that gene for hyperbole while listening to the sermon. At no time do the co-existing mindsets conflict or create cognitive dissonance.
Well one, he doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know that about any religious scientist other than himself, and he may not know it about himself. He could be kidding himself, or forgetting, or exaggerating. And two, if the co-existing mindsets never conflict or create cognitive dissonance, then that’s a sign that the religious scientist is not thinking properly. They should conflict or create cognitive dissonance. One of them is based on evidence and inference, and the other is based on just Believing. The second is inferior to the first.
Consider the results of a 2009 Pew Survey: 31 percent of U.S. adults believe “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.” (So much for dogs, horses or H1N1 flu.) The survey’s most enlightening aspect was its categorization of responses by levels of religious activity, which suggests that the most devout are on average least willing to accept the evidence of reality.
You see? That is cognitive dissonance, the very thing that Giberson said “the religious scientist” simply doesn’t have. Being unwilling to accept the evidence of reality is that tension. Giberson of course means that in practice he walls the two off from each other, and he does accept the evidence of reality when he’s Doing Science. But he also means that he (and others like him) simply never notice the wall. Well if they don’t they should, and Giberson can’t know that none of them do in any case.
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31 responses to “Wall? What wall? Do you see a wall?”
So we’re all going to reprise our WEIT postures? Ah, what the hell.
This is true only to the extent that there is no cognitive dissonance in acting. If the religious scientist actually believes the truth claims of the religion in which they worship, then there is cognitive dissonance indeed, because they are choosing to abandon the skepticism that they bring to every other truth claim. How many times do we have to reference Natalie Angier’s account in her Edge debate with David Sloan Wilson?
Poor Dave Chernoff. How he must wish he’d never said that shit.
I’m thinking Giberson is on the make. Hyperbole? Ha!
He’s already been bought and sold to NOMA.
Even a theologically refined NOMA is still full of it.
“On regular occasions this scientist goes to church, where he or she sings hymns…”
He/she arrived at this particular church in exactly the same manner as he/she arrived at an inference, hypothesis or conclusion; by exhausting all alternative possibilities. That is not just all alternative denominations, but all alternative religions. He/she has has picked out this final and concluding religion in much the same manner as he/she would the gene for hyperbole from the full range of candidate genes.
Yeah, right.
I love the above referenced Natalie Angier’s piece at Edge and have linked it often.
I wonder how Chernoff responded when shown how differently he treats the two superstitions. He was probably unaware that he had two different standards, but an honest man would be glad to be shown his biases and rectify them. Accommodationism is about forcing scientists into the role of Chernoff– or else be labeled, “shrill”, “confrontational”, etc. I’m glad Krauss is not afraid to declare that the emperor is naked.
I have to correct the above piece regarding the Chernoff quote to remind everyone that it is false.
He didn’t say exactly what is written above.
The passage actually contains the answers by two scientists to two separate questions. Chernoff does say the silly stuff about religion but the contrasting skeptical point about astronomy is the answer of a different astronomer – Dave Kornreich.
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=271
In other words it is not one person judging religion and astrology using different standards (which is the point of the piece).
To be fair to Natalie Angier, this is the first time I have seen it mentioned that it was Chernoff who made both answers – the previous times I have seen the piece it hasn’t been clear who makes the second quote and could easily have been a different astronomer.
Perhaps Ken got the quoted piece second hand and altered from Angiers original reply?
Anyway back to the matter at hand, Gibersons piece avoids mentioning any of the reasons why the gnu atheists point out the problems with the conflict between religion and science.
I’ll give him a hint – it’s got nothing to do with scientists singing hymns (I’ve seen it reported that Dawkins occasionally did this in the chapel in Oxford). In fact his description is pretty much one of a deistic scientist who enjoys the pomp and community of church life – something that has never been a major issue as far as I can recall.
What he doesn’t mention is the fact that the scientist, in looking for the gene for some trait will most likely have to use cell lines derived from embryonic tissue – something many churches say is wrong since God has told them this (or so they claim). Now, of course, the scientist may choose to ignore many of the church teachings, such as that about embryonic tissue, stem cells, in-vitro fertilization, contraception, gay rights and so forth (and I suspect most ‘religious’ scientists do) but to accept this is to accept the reasoning behind the rejection – that these church teachings are ludicrous, discriminatory and are based on arbitrary interpretations of old mythological texts.
By the way, NOMA is being used here in its usual way – as a weapon against science. It is virtually never used by the religious amongst their own kind – for instance Francis Collins explicitly rejects it as being too restrictive for his own beliefs.
Ooops, I’ve just found the original Edge debate page and it looks like Natalie Angier is the one who got it wrong!
Yes, I just checked the original text, and she cites both people: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/angier06/angier06_index.html
Thanks for the correction.
With Giberson and other accommodationists, however, the disparity comes from a single person “keeping two sets of books” as Ophelia says. These people do not treat religion the same way they treat other pseudoscience or superstitions– or even other religions that they find wackier than their own. The latter are fodder for scientific scrutiny, criticism, or dismissal –as warranted. But their own faith is in an untouchable magisteria of it’s own. When this discrepancy is pointed out, accomodationists become increasingly uncivil telling anyone who will listen how “uncivil” those “gnu atheists” are– they “hurt the cause” dontchyaknow?
Ah… I guess there’s several sources:
In my link above, she quotes 2 people, but not Chernoff
(forgive me if I mess up block quotes here):
<BLOCKQUOTES>Consider the very different treatments accorded two questions presented to Cornell University’s “Ask an Astronomer” Web site. To the query, “Do most astronomers believe in God, based on the available evidence?” the astronomer Dave Rothstein replies that, in his opinion, “modern science leaves plenty of room for the existence of God . . . places where people who do believe in God can fit their beliefs in the scientific framework without creating any contradictions.” He cites the Big Bang as offering solace to those who want to believe in a Genesis equivalent and the probabilistic realms of quantum mechanics as raising the possibility of “God intervening every time a measurement occurs” before concluding that, ultimately, science can never prove or disprove the existence of a god, and religious belief doesn’t—and shouldn’t—”have anything to do with scientific reasoning.” How much less velveteen is the response to the reader asking whether astronomers believe in astrology. “No, astronomers do not believe in astrology,” snarls Dave Kornreich. “It is considered to be a ludicrous scam. There is no evidence that it works, and plenty of evidence to the contrary.” Dr. Kornreich ends his dismissal with the assertion that in science “one does not need a reason not to believe in something.” Skepticism is “the default position” and “one requires proof if one is to be convinced of something’s existence.”</BLOCKQUOTES>
*note to self: press “preview”*
It looks like she used the original quotes in a 2004 essay but made a mistake with the names of the scientists in her 2007 debate with David Sloan Wilson.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/angier_wilson07/angier_wilson07.html
Good Sleuthing, Sigmund.
This sentence from Kiberson is particularly telling:
Notice that he does not mention anything even remotely supernatural. The closest he comes is saying that the scientist takes communion, but you do not need to believe in the supernatural to participate in religious ritual (I happen to rather enjoy lighting the Channukah candles for example… probably it helps that all of the god-ass-kissing is in a language I don’t understand!).
Because of Giberson’s careful omissions, his assertion that there is no cognitive dissonance seems superficially plausible. In fact I imagine there probably are quite a number of dissonance-free “religious scientists” in the sense that they go to church regularly and do all the ritual and community and charity work, but at the same time don’t believe the supernatural hooie for an instant.
But of course that’s not what we’re talking about. How much different Giberson’s assertion would have sounded if his premise had been the following!
That’s the cognitive dissonance part of it. Giberson simply omitted those aspects of “being religious” which don’t happen to conflict with a scientific worldview.
Consider the closeted self-hating homosexual in a sham marriage. On regular occasions, he shovels his driveway, pays the family bills, goes to work, and lavishes love and attention his children, all the while being sexually attracted to men. No cognitive dissonance there, right!
The resurrection of Jesus after 3 days is a clear violation of thermodynamics. Once you discard science on one thing, why stop? I mean, why not go on to accept an apparent age for the universe, a literal Adam and Eve, flood geology, and the rest? Why look for the minimum number of violations, when you could go hog wild? What distinction am I missing here, that makes Giberson care at all about science? If I had to guess, I would say that he is sensitive to criticism, and dearly loves gaps.
Really good point James, I might not have noticed it if you hadn’t pointed it out. Thanks for that.
Ah yes – excellent point, James, ably seconded by ennui. That is indeed telling.
That’s similar to the point I made about the Templeton Foundation and its overarching claim that there is no cognitive dissonance. I pointed out that religious scientists don’t in fact operate that way at the coal face. If there really is no c.d., why is that the case? If the two really are compatible in more than the stupid “I can do both” sense, then why don’t religious scientists sprinkle a little god in with their data?
I recently read Coyne’s Seeing and Believing piece from 2009. To give myself a compliment, his arguments were rather similar to what I’ve thought and written on the topic. So Giberson was fresh in my mind, and reading the article above reminded me that Coyne already addressed that in 2009,
When it comes to religion people invert their philosophy of science.
On any other topics we can form hypothesis and then discard them.
But when it comes to science we cannot even form the hypothesis that perhaps there is an overlap. No, we have to accept the postulate that they do not overlap.
One can test these things, so there is no point to even concede something before it is shown.
The statement that scientists are unaffected by their religious attitudes, for example can be tested. But we are in lala-land of assertions without proof.
Here is a possible test hypothesis:
Grab astronomy text books and check how they talk about the big bang. Do they describe it as the moment of creation, do they describe it as a spatial singularity about which we know very little, etc? Then correlate these against their professed religiosity.
My hypothesis is that one will see an effect. In fact one might even be able to discover which astronomists really are ideologically closer to creation myths than others based on that test.
Anecdotally there are already data points: Tipler, Thirring, …
So why do we get this unscientific babble about a perfectly scientific question?
Well, because we are not supposed to ask that question…
It’s occurred to me that being a religious scientist could be a pretty good gig. For one thing, you’d be understood to be especially righteous because you’ve been able to resist the corrupting influence of the scientific community (which must be especially corrupting, else why have so many rejected God’s grace?). And if you’re less productive than some? Hey, you just know there’s bias against believers. Look what they’ve done to the good Professor Behe. (Actually, don’t. I know the man, and he’s treated pretty well.)
Why doesn’t this regular scientist go to the mosque or to the temple? Perhaps then Giberson would admit that the scientist could be completely wrong in his religious views.
Deepak: “Why doesn’t this regular scientist go to the mosque or to the temple? Perhaps then Giberson would admit that the scientist could be completely wrong in his religious views.”
Because the scientist has been to mosques (Sunni, Shia, Sufi etc) and temples (Buddhist, Hindu, Bahai etc) as well as the full spectrum of churches, weighed up the claims of each and has made a selection of the particular one that meets the scientific criteria.
As this process takes a lot of time, travel and thought, the scientist is inevitably old, and very wise.
Yeah, why doesn’t the hypothetical regular scientist read the horoscope with his morning cup of coffee– or forgo the coffee, altogether, because the “words of wisdom” from his Mormon theology advise against it?
From The Onion, natch.
I’m sure it’s possible to compartmentalize science and religious belief. You can be a scientist and a believer.
You just can’t be a very good scientist, merely a jobsmith. Hence the 7% at the highest level. And let’s not forget that Collins was a mere administrator, who took over after the project was set up by his predecessor.
I’m going to have to defend Collins on this. He was involved in some serious medical genetics work earlier in his career. Joshua Lederberg and David Baltimore are among other distinguished scientists who made administration a big part of their lives.
Yes, credit where credit is due. Collins is by all accounts a very good administrator. A veritable Hermes among scientists.
Biologos is Hermoea
Hermes was also credited with bringing dreams to humans and guide their souls down to the underworld.
Administration and religion are compatible.
I don’t see any threat from scientists who also “do god”. Most people under 50 who haven’t any background in religion often misunderstand why SOME scientists insist on believing. Gregor Mendel understood ( I think!) that both science and religion were in the business of transcendance, and didn’t see, thus, any separation wal between the two. Einstein understood this as well, and those senitments deepened in tandem with the scientific progress he was making. And Galileo, as I found out much too my surprise recently, was an extremely pious and believing Catholic whose demonstrations of faith gave pause for thought to those thinking of executing him for heresy.
Science and religion ( although the term “spirituality” is perhaps more apt) have many points in common. Both require a great deal of thought, contemplation, introspection and mental concentration if the mysteries of transcendance ( scientific or religious) are to be grasped and understood.
I have to disagree. Religion requires none of the qualities you list, not thought, nor mental concentration, or the others. Religion requires submission to authority, and the passivitiy to accept the dogma of the church, no matter what. If you want to call it “spirituality”, that merely requires you to leave common sense behind. And what are these mysteries of transcendence that you speak of? Just what is science supposed to be transcending?
Just what is science supposed to be transcending?
No two human beings are identical, not even identical twins. However ALL humans, even those who lived 10,000 years ago and 1000s of miles away, possess very similar DNA.
That DNA, that ‘germ’ , allows ALL humans to be humans and to interbreed with each other and transcends , thus, individual physical and “racial” differences.
My great grandparents may be dead, but their DNA, or at least some of it, is still around.
Is that the kind of transcendance Shifter was talking about? Shifter linked it with mysteries. DNA isn’t “mysteries.”
It’s usually a silly hand-waving word, like “spiritual,” meant to mean everything and nothing.