Another sober reasoned argument
Oh no he didn’t, did he? Seriously? Again?
Yes, he did. I know it’s hard to believe, but he did. Yet again, the same thing – the self-obsession, the artless confiding of boring trivial details about his precious Self, the pompous kvetching, the wondering why he can’t stop, the repetition, the childish sneering, the bad reasons.
By now you know who “he” is – Michael Ruse, of course. Michael Ruse pitching yet another absurd embarrassing fit about the dreaded nooo atheists and their failure to do what he tells them.
He’s desperate for attention, so I shouldn’t give it to him, but on the other hand, he’s also publicly self-destructing, so if he gets more attention who knows, maybe a mental health professional will intervene.
Now…heeeeeeere’s Rusey.
I keep swearing off talking about the New Atheists, but like quitting smoking it is easier said than done. It’s not really that I object to their criticizing me non-stop. I do rather belong to the school of “so long as you spell my name right” – although interestingly, given that I have a name of only four letters, the misspellings are rife. (Russe, Russo, Rose, Roose, Rooze, Rouse, and many more.) In fact I take a certain pride in the fact that our blog, Brainstorm, thanks in no small degree to the splendid efforts of my fellow blogger Jacques Berlinerblau, seems now to be even more hated than Biologos, a Templeton Foundation-supported, Christian blog, founded by Francis Collins, now head of the National Institute of Health.
Good mix of self-importance, anger, vanity, and surrealism, isn’t it.
The latest outcry is by one of the junior New Atheists (in other words, not one of the big four of Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris) writing from Australia – picked up and intensified (especially in the nastiness towards Jacques and me) elsewhere.
And so on, blah blah blah blah – nearly identical to the ones we’ve seen about five times in the last few months. The New Atheism is playing into the hands of the Religious Right; the only thing to do about the Religious Right is let it have its way in everything, like an angry baby twenty feet high; therefore The New Atheism is the enemy.
That’s all bullshit, frankly. If that were really the reason he would try hard to convince us. He doesn’t do anything remotely like that – he jumps up and down in front of us screeching insults and saying “tryandgetme!” I don’t believe for a second that he does all this McCarthyesque blackguarding because he thinks we’re the stepping stone to theocracy.
What a chump. Honestly.
Kind of nasty to link to Russell’s post but not give his name, just the epithet “Junior New Atheist.”
And utterly typical.
Well, my Sunday evening was gnubashing-free until this.
What more should he expect from we “invective-based lifeforms”?
Oh, you’re just pissed that he’s now specifically called out Jason and Russell as junior news, and not youse. :)
Andy. Don’t worry. It’s Holy Week. So we’ll be getting at least three more, wholly unnecessary, weak articles bashing the gnus before Easter ;) Sorry.
This is essentially the same article Ruse (rhymes with obtuse) wrote last December, and answered by Ophelia, Jerry and Jason. Didn’t he notice? And he forgot to promote his books!
I’m curious – has Ruse ever criticized Francis Collins for talking about God while acting his NIH role?
I follow Jason and Russell, but who’s Ruse?
I’m going to answer it, of course, when I can grab a bit of time, but I’m more amused than anything else.
@Jeff: Michael Ruse is a formerly respectable and respected philosopher specializing in the history and philosophy of biology, now a full-time raver who perceives windmills to be giants and humble inns to be castles.
Actually, the analogy is far from perfect: When Don Quixote lost his grip on reality in his twilight years, he was fairly charming and amusing in spite of his vainglorious ravings. Ruse? Not so much.
I am surprised that some of the other Brainstormers don’t kick up a stink about certain parties making a regular laughingstock of the “best minds” claim.
Amusing and very apt. We mustn’t disturb the baby.
He doesn’t pay any attention at all to people who disagree with him, does he? Ruse is becoming almost Mooneyesque in his ability to ignore criticism and tiresomely repeat the same old claims, as if no one had ever made a counter-argument.
Grr. Why does The Chronicle give him (or Berlinerblau) a soapbox? It’s irritating. I feel like they’re turning into the HuffPo of academic journalism.
And are the misspellings really “rife”? Where has it happened?
Where are the junior accommodationists? Looks like we’ll outlast them if nothing else. Do you ever wonder if anyone reads them but us? I do.
Sadly, or maybe I’m lucky, the link appears to be timing out for me at the moment. However, it is rather funny that out of this latest cycle Ruse picks on Russell’s two part post which is fairly sober – and if not neutral, certainly far from invective based – summation as the place to start.
tbh, it’s actually quite hilarious how badly Ruse needs to lurn internet. Never mind ideas of polite philosophical discourse, or academic niceties, he’s not even doing netiquette right. And when your average 20 something digital native could look at what’s going on and tell you you’re getting pwned, it’s a sad day for a guy who has written some stuff worth reading, by all accounts.
I really don’t know what to make of it all. The comments sections everywhere where this stuff pops up are filled with plenty of posts politely putting forward counterarguments, and yet and still he goes on.
If this were a forum, and he’d started a thread, The Picard facepalms would have been out in force a couple of threads ago, methinks. I’m sure we can rely on Jerry to bring the lolcats.
I wonder how many people actually read it – Jerry’s post on my two-parter sent quite a lot of traffic my way. Ruse’s almost none so far. Admittedly, it’s early days…
Ruse says:
While I disagree with most of his judgments here (Dawkins arguments are good enough to reach sound conclusions, Dennett doesn’t need memes for his arguments that ideas can survive and reproduce without being true or even fitness-enhancing for the hosts, Harris is right to promote science as a source of values even if he stumbled over how that works) I think this is better than many accommodationist attacks. It’s substantive, and he’s making points that are worth exploring.
I don’t think much of his argument that “meshing atheism with evolution” is a form of religious entanglement with the state. Because we atheists think evolution points to a godless nature doesn’t mean that educators have to endorse that view by teaching science. That’s a bit misleading, and it also burden atheists with not speaking in public because of what some people might think. Why should that burden fall on atheists? We aren’t asking educators to do anything they shouldn’t be doing.
Miranda:
Just wait. Next week they’ll give prime space to Deepak Chopra, or run headlines about the Jersey Shore cast, and the transformation will be complete.
Exactly. He’s doing something there: it’s part of the whole Oh the gnu atheists are after me again (get it? because he’s so doggone famous) schtick. He’s trying to nudge the reader into concluding that he’s something of an influential thinker (a righteous thorn in the side of the evil gnus!) who gets written-up often. It’s strange. He’s strange. But yes, I’d like to see some examples of people misspelling his name in print. They should be all over the place, right? I’m thinking he’s exaggerating to make it seem like everyone’s writing about him.
Maybe he’s confused and thinking of all of the people who misspell PZ’s last name….
What a chump! Those people were obviously talking about me.
This is incredibly foul stuff:
“The way fundamentalism—scientific creationism, creation science, intelligent-design theory—has been kept out of the biology classes of the nation is by drawing a line between science and religion and arguing that it is a violation of the First Amendment to allow religion (scientific creationism, etc.) into the classrooms. If you blur the science-religion distinction, specifically if you mesh evolution and atheism, then I just don’t see how you can continue that strategy.”
The reasoning here is that no religious claims may be subjected to scientific scrutiny. None! To note that Genesis is an unreliable guide to astronomy and biology is a threat to the teaching of science, because science may not threaten orthodoxy. When Paul asserts that everyone perceives God directly in their hearts, we may not point out that our hearts are just pumps made mostly of muscle without feedback to the brain.
This is of course not quite what Ruse says. Instead he says that we may not share with the public the result of considering the idea of god as a scientific question. We may consider it privately, or with a small group of like-minded friends, but if we take it outside we might frighten the horses. He’s quite explicit: no one speaking for science may question religion.
The guy is clown, but I’m thinking the best response to the various clowns out there, who produce no substance or content whatsoever is to stop feeding them, stop giving them the attention, stop listening to them. I think we need to concentrate on our real targets: irrational organizations and its leaders.
I think the more attention we give them, the more clowns will come out of the closet with their stupid shitty grin, attracting attention away from real problems.
ernie keller,
“I don’t think much of his argument that “meshing atheism with evolution” is a form of religious entanglement with the state. Because we atheists think evolution points to a godless nature doesn’t mean that educators have to endorse that view by teaching science. That’s a bit misleading, and it also burden atheists with not speaking in public because of what some people might think. Why should that burden fall on atheists? We aren’t asking educators to do anything they shouldn’t be doing.”
Well, the issue is that strong incompatibilist positions seem to suggest that if you teach science, you essentially teach atheism, because one cannot accept science and religion at the same time. And not just specific religions, but religion in general. So, I think it not unreasonable that if, say, people argue that if one understands evolution that one then cannot believe in God (because it refutes God) then one might be teaching a position about religion. It’s an anti-religious position, but obviously still a position about religion. And that’s not allowed in a public school, or in a secular society; the state may not advocate any specific position on any religion, pro or con.
Now, the incompatibilists can say “But it’s true!”. And while that is, a think, a position that is not as obviously true as they think it is, it is a reasonable reply that must be addressed. And while I disagree with Ruse’s holding them in contempt, I do think his summary raises an important question:
“And until I get some sense that the New Atheists are going to show why their present strategy does not spell disaster down the road, why it is that they can mesh science and atheism as they do and not get into trouble in the courts when it comes to keeping creationism out of the schools …”
If it is true that teaching science implicitly or explicitly encourages an atheistic view, how do incompatibilists suggest dealing with the fact that public schools are not allowed to advocate for any religious position, even atheist ones? It certainly does seem reasonble for theists to complain if the curriculum of public schools advocates for a position opposed to theirs directly, and so they would be right to demand, then, that either those scientific theories/positions be dropped — which is a non-starter, and rightly so, for science — or that they get an opportunity to advocate for their position directly as well. If it is just indirect in that it challenges specific religions, that’s fair enough; science teachers can then always just give them the facts as science sees it and refer students to their religious authorities for how that impacts religion. But that’s closer to a NOMA position or accomodationist position than an incompatibilist one.
Now, it may be the case that a lot of the incompatibilists aren’t actually holding the view that science is advocating, directly or indirectly, an atheist view, and so in that case perhaps some clarification is required. But judging by some statements it does seem that this is how some incompatibilists view science, and then I do think they owe it to themselves and to everyone to form a plan to ensure that this “truth” doesn’t end up impeding scientific education, which they all want to protect.
You know Russell didn’t mention Ruse at all in either of the two posts so why this oblique attack unless to try to draw attention to Ruse? Ultimately it seems to have done that but it’s the wrong kind of attention – he doesn’t seem to have many supporters. All this whining and petulance seems to me about nothing more than selling Ruse’s books, sales of which don’t seem to be up there with those of ‘new’ atheists.
Amusing that he dragged in Berlinerblau to stand at his side during this monstrous attack. Berlinerblau wasn’t mentioned in any blogs that I read. Although given that he is so undistinguished a figure that isn’t surprising. I’m thinking that the health department needs to go check what’s in the water coolers over at the Chronicle of higher Education.
@13
That’s right. It’s the old Lenny Bruce quip about attending American Nazi lectures and there’s nobody there but Jews.
sailor1031,
Jerry Coyne — the link in the “elsewhere” from your quote — named both as he — unlike Blackford — did indeed decide to name names. So your comment does seem to miss that Coyne — in referencing Blackford’s article — did absolutely name them as people that it would apply to, and Ruse was at least in part replying to that.
Verbose Stoic said
No. The incompatibilist position is essentially one of opposition to interventionist deities. A religion that involves a non intervening God (such as deism) or nature as God (pantheism) is ‘compatible with incompatibilism’ (!)
Nonetheless we incompatibilists would not advocate teaching about these religions within the science class and we don’t advocate teaching ‘there is no God’ in the science class either.
Russell@15: I’ve read Ruse’s nonsense, but didn’t click the link because I’d already read your two-parter. These days I mostly read Ruse and Hoffman for the lulz, and Berlinerblau, just in case I missed what Hoffman wrote.
Verbose Stoic said
Since I’ve heard Richard Dawkins make a similar point in the past I guess its not too far from an incompatibilist position either. I don’t get your reasoning here.
It’s not just science. Any factual historical subject that is taught properly will conflict with some religion teaching.
At the same time certain subjects may conflict with strict atheistic views (for instance works of fiction in a literature class may contain elements that defy the laws of physics!) – although I don’t advocate protesting against these!
@Russel Blackford in #15:
What, you thought Ruse’s readers would click on your link and risk finding out that your post was entirely reasonable? ;)
Sigmund,
I say that that attitude is closer to NOMA than to incompatibilism because it pretty much sets up a line between science and religion, where science works on what it works on and leaves how that impacts religion up to the religions themselves. There’d be no direct impact on religion from science, nor would science try. Whether Dawkins agrees with that or not wouldn’t change that argument.
Also, confliciting with some religion is too weak for the claims that many incompatibilists make, as they argue that science and religion conflict importantly in principle, not just in practice.
Also, I think your claim that something that, say, contradicts the laws of physics is in some way importantly atheistic is an example of the sort of claim that would give Ruse — and myself — pause; agreeing or disagreeing with the laws of physics seems neither particularly atheistic or theistic, but presenting it like it is makes science look atheistic, and thus to be taking a position on religion at least implicitly. And your example really does highlight why I think the idea that science is atheistic in principle is not correct.
@Verbose Stoic in #22:
The fact that a particular scientific statement agrees or disagrees with a particular religious viewpoint does not necessarily make teaching it amount to advocating for a religious position. If you’d accept that argument, you couldn’t teach anything as science anymore, because there will always be a religion somewhere that either endorses or opposes it. Evolution is already endorsed by the Catholic Church, and by explicitly religious organizations like Biologos – and nobody sees that as a potential constitutional problem. Why would endorsement by atheists of evolution be any different?
Yes, schools should be as neutral as possible on religious topics, but they shouldn’t be so neutral that they have to stop teaching everything that could possibly contradict religious beliefs somewhere out there. That would make a mockery out of the very concept of education.
Besides, Ruse’s line of argument reduces to “if the conflict theory is true, there will be conflicts”. The fact that we already see conflicts – and that Ruse sees even bigger conflicts on the horizon – doesn’t exactly contradict the conflict theory, does it?
Verbose Stoic,
You’ll have to elaborate more. My example of complaining about a work of literature clashing with what we know about the laws of physics was a joke on the idea of atheism being analogous to the strict observance of the laws of nature as we know them. Of course no (sane) atheist would complain about a work of fiction in which this happens because we understand the difference between fiction and fact. Literature can contain fiction. Science deals with facts.
I think you are mixing up NOMA. Gould’s definition put science on one side and religion on the other. That would be all very well but Gould chose to draw the borders in a very arbitrary manner with religion getting a monopoly on matters of morality (why, he never explained). Besides, strict NOMA has rarely been advocated by religious authorities since it immediately limits what they can say about the natural world (nothing!).
If religionists stuck to keeping religion as a subject that didn’t overlap the natural world then we would have no problems.
Deen,
“The fact that a particular scientific statement agrees or disagrees with a particular religious viewpoint does not necessarily make teaching it amount to advocating for a religious position.”
I absolutely agree. I think the issue comes in more when you talk about scientific and religious viewpoints in general. If the scientific viewpoint is atheistic — as, it seems, at least some strong incompatibilist positions imply — then that does cause a problem if science classes promote that viewpoint.
Accomodationist positions, essentially, assert that there is no necessary conflict between scientific and religious viewpoints, and that at best you get disagreement-style conflicts. A lot of incompatibilist positions take this conflict, as I said, to be more in principle and far deeper. There may be a problem with that deeper conflict, if it exists and if that’s what incompatibilists really accept.
Complaining that Blackford is being harsh to him? Well, aren’t we a precious little flower?
Looking forward to just forgetting about this now. Was Ruse worth the bother at some point? Meh, maybe. But I’m not holding my breath for him to get any better. At this point I won’t even find it regrettable if he fades into obscurity.
@Verbose Stoic in #30:
Science doesn’t even need to try to have an impact. Just by being around, and working on what it works on, science has had, and will have, an impact on religion. This will only stop when all religion stops making claims about how the world works. The goal of science has never been to refute religion, or erode religious beliefs. It just followed the evidence where it lead, which just so happened to be mostly away from religious teachings – something early Christian scientists surely didn’t expect to happen.
I don’t think schools should get into the habit to explicitly point out when science impacts religious claims. But I don’t think schools should try and avoid the impact either. That’s what I think neutrality towards religion means, or at least what I think it should mean – and it’s not an accommodationist or compatibilist position at all.
Sigmund,
My point was that suggesting that holding to the laws of physics as we know them was a strict atheist position is what’s problematic; atheists can indeed disagree with the laws of physics or any currently known laws of nature, even for reasons other than scientific ones. For example, it is a perfectly reasonable atheist position to hold that determinism cannot be true even if that seems to follow from what the current laws of nature suggest because there is definitely free will. And on the flip side, many theist views can indeed hold to the laws of nature, at least most of the time. The conflation of science with atheism is precisely the problem that I think Ruse rightly raises.
Deen,
I agree with the neutrality of science classes and that that is not in and of itself an accomodationist position, but I think the question here is if strong incompatibilist positions mean that science — and therefore science classes — CANNOT be neutral. I’m not sure what the answer is, but I do think that some incompatibilist arguments do suggest that that neutrality is actually impossible. And it does seem to me that a lot of accomodationist arguments are nothing more than pleas for neutrality.
Verbose Stoic said:
I don’t see that the scientific viewpoint IS atheistic. It is simply the best factual description we have got for the natural world. Is it scientific to say that the Earth is a sphere rather than flat? I guess the answer is yes, but is it atheistic? I’d say no. It happens to be the view that most atheists agree with but it is not a necessarily atheistic view itself. The same thing with views of evolution and biology. The only views that are necessarily atheistic are that there is no evidence for the existence of a God.
If Blackford – and, by the logic of his micro-epithet, Benson and Coyne as well – are “juniors”, then what would he reserve for the even lesser-known ranks of gnus? Tadpole atheists? Speck-of-dust-on-my-right-sneaker atheists? Quantum atheists? John Q. Atheist IIIs? He’s really enjoying the attention, though. It’s a funny kind of love he’s got.
@Verbosestoic: yes of course I know that. My point was that Russell, who was the first object of Ruse’s attack (the junior gnu) did no such thing.
@Vervose Stoic in #36: I’ve told you what I consider to be “neutrality”: it’s presenting science without regards of whatever impact it may or may not have on religion. That is not the same as “neutrality” in the sense that science either can’t or isn’t allowed to impact religion. I would indeed agree that neutrality in that sense would be impossible to achieve. I don’t even think it would be desirable to try.
And I would argue that accommodationist arguements often go beyond asking for mere neutrality, but amount to explicitly endorsing certain religious viewpoints. Arguing that science and religion is compatible can itself be seen as a religious position too, as it only serves religion, not science, if they were.
Can quantum atheists do quantum jumping?
I can’t promise to help with that. I could ignore him, but so far, the desire to point out his absurdity outweighs the desire to ignore him by a considerable margin.
As I wrote in response to Ruse’s argument many years ago, he fails to distinguish between purpose and result. To use the same example I used then, if a semester’s classes on meteorology caused a student to shed his belief in the god Thor as the cause of thunder, that result, desirable or not, is not the purpose of the teacher. Her purpose is to teach the science of meteorology, whatever the various results among her students. The same principle applies in any science subject: the purpose is to teach the science as it is currently understood; the results will vary from a hostile retreat to faith (How great Thou art!) to an enlightened new understanding (how great it is!).
If any of the commenters here are near Bath, England, there is a potentially amusing talk on Tuesday 19th April, 7:30 PM at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution.This sounds like a great opportunity for any budding Hitchens’!The Rationality of Belief in God – No Argument NeededExcerpt: “belief in God can be perfectly respectable even in the absence of sound reasoned arguments”Presented by Dr Oliver Crisp, University of Bristolhttp://brlsi2.org/posterimages/2011/110419%20God%20662.jpghttp://brlsi.org/diary.htm
Well, we’re still mixing it up on Ruse’s comment thread.
Commenter utelthideedenoi doesn’t like Ophelia and me much:
And to our gracious hostess:
Insofar as it’s true that I’m a guard dog lackey fanboy, I totally blame Josh Slocum.
Does utelthideedenoi agree with Polly-O?
I’m imaging a class in which evolution is described, and a pupil asks “is there a need for any other influence on the development of species?”.
Does secularism in the USA mean that a teacher would have to refuse to answer that question?
That I’m even having to ask this seems pretty weird.
Sigmund, that would be interesting. Don’t know how we could check whether Wally (or, ahem, Rüzh) has reached back into his sock drawer. Whoever he is, he’s posted another winner:
Well, then. Time to stop feeding that particular troll.
“Junior New Atheist”, heh. It’s just so casually snide, isn’t it?
But here’s the thing. In thinking this over, I’m wondering if you aren’t raising Ruse’s consequence by writing about him and linking to his blog? It isn’t that he doesn’t have a vigorous intellectual thrashing coming–as do Hoffmann, Berlinerbrau, Kazez, Rosenau, Stangroom, etc.–it’s that you’re arguing with cowards and mental pygmies. They love the attention, it increases their blog traffic, and it tends to encourage them to think that they’re players in the argument. There is a reason that they’ve been toiling in obscurity, here to now. Would it not be a good idea to allow them to continue to do so?
Argh, that “utelthideedenoi” chap (who indeed does agree with Polly-O!) is really starting to piss me off. I’m a rather mild-mannered creature. It takes a lot to make me angry. But one thing that is sure to do it is abusive anonymous trolls like “utelthideedenoi” slinging completely nasty personal attacks at my friends. What a dickish dick from the land of dicks. ARGH.
And yet we have “mavprof” accusing Ophelia and rieux of being “abusive” in their comments. Yeahhhh… Good lord.
By the way, you’re kicking some major ass on that thread, rieux. Fantastic comments. You win the internet today :)
@Verbose Stoic
Can you be perfectly clear what you are saying? I’m not sure i’m getting it, I think your saying that if it becomes a consensus that science and religion are not compatible then science can’t be taught in schools anymore. Is that it?
Either that or your suggesting science teachers are telling students that their religions are wrong because science says so. Or simply that teaching things like evolution and the real age of the earth is somehow the same thing. Is that it?
Thanks, Miranda.
For whatever it’s worth, I did a quick search on the Chronicle site for mavprof‘s other comments; his manner is consistently genteel, but there’s a fair amount of stuff in there communicating his identification with, or at least sympathy for, the Tea Party (sort of ironic, given his defense of Rüzh) and for climate change denial. Not the worst person to pick as an opponent.
Jeezis! I hadn’t seen the latest outpouring. Whaddya know, one of Ruse’s fans turns out to be a bullying anonymous sexist thug. Now there’s a surprise! Brilliant that he (given the sexism I’ll assume it’s a he) calls Rieux faceless – what does he think he is?!
I agree with Polly-O indeed…
@Ophelia – Maybe we could work on our quantum atheistic tunneling skills. Who knows when it might come in handy.
How do you actually manage to read Ruse?
All I get is wank,waah,wank, waah
VB:
Could you maybe give an example?
Here’s an example of how an incompatibilist might handle the 6000 years question:
“Well, the scientific evidence seems to converge on the answer that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old and the universe is about 13.5 billion years old. There’s really no scientific evidence that the earth is only 6000 years old and there’s a lot of scientific evidence against that assertion. To believe that the earth is 6000 years old, you’d have to ignore all the scientific evidence we have about the age of the earth.”
See, VB, “religion” is underdetermined. Any particular religion might or might not contradict any particular scientific fact. For example, let’s take a hypothetical event: a kindergartner wakes up from nap time freaked out by a dream. The teacher tries to console the child, saying, “Don’t worry, it wasn’t real.” But that contradicts the religious beliefs of the pirahan, a tribe of Brazilian hunter gatherers, who believe that dream reality is in fact every bit as real as waking life. Was it therefore unconstitutional for the teacher to try to console the child in that particular way?
Incompatibilists aren’t talking about the contradiction between particular religious beliefs and scientific facts. I remember having tried to explain this to you several times now. We’re talking about incompatibility between the methodologies, essentially that religious beliefs can only ever be incidentally true (which they sometimes are) while scientific findings converge in a surprisingly systematic way towards actual knowledge about the universe. The incompatibility is purely epistemological, and since high school science classes don’t usually delve into philosophy of science the epistemological conflict is completely irrelevant to actually teaching science. I can say, “Science has reliably led to new, factual knowledge” without pronouncing on the failure of religious faith to do so.
An incompatibilist might not be able to teach a high school philosophy course in line with the first amendment, but incompatiblism is orthogonal to the actual practice of science. As you accomodationists are so fond of saying, there’s no lack of first-rate religious scientists. And as Feynman said, philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds (and I don’t think he was being denigrating, I think he was just pointing out that science does what it does regardless of what philosophers think about it). Incompatibilism is a philosophical viewpoint, not a scientific one. (Actually, some gnus might disagree with me there; I’ve seen some argue that the success of science and failure of religion to explain the natural world amounts to a scientific experiment testing the relative efficacy of the two with science winning handily. I think this is circular, though, and would still describe incompatiblism as a philosophical position, however sensible I think it is.)
Well, I’m not sure why, but I’ll gladly take the blame. Also, as you might expect, I agree with Joshy-O!
To be fair, some of us actually are talking about, among other things, incompatibilities between particular scientific findings and particular religious beliefs and also about what meta-inductions can be made from them and whether any inferences can be drawn from the way theologians handle them. The fact that religion and science have different epistemologies doesn’t actually concern me that much – I could imagine a world in which those methodologies converge on the same results. The interesting thing is that we don’t live in such a world.
” I could imagine a world in which those methodologies converge on the same results.”
I guess it should if what a specific religion teaches is true. An argument from authority could still be correct if that authority knows their stuff and real God that created everything and wrote the details in a holy book should be one who knows their stuff.
@Russel Blackford in #59: but aren’t you using an empirical observation to conclude that religion does not lead to reliable knowledge?
I throttled back a bit to avoid flooding, and then got busier than I expected. This reply will focus more on Dan L.’s comment, since it seems to encompass most of the concerns. However, I would like to point out that I’m not arguing that Ruse is right, just that there may be a question here. If people do want to stick to science being neutral wrt religion, at least in general, then I see no problem and would hope that he would equally see no problem. But some of the confusion over what I’m saying is because I’m being deliberately vague since I’m not precisely sure which views are problematic and which are actually held by incompatibilists.
I’m not suggesting that any contradictory claim that a specific religion currently makes that might conflict with any current scientific claim is in any way an interesting incompatibility. I suspect that some incompatibilitists rely on those sorts of arguments far more strongly than they should, but I think any issue of incompatibility worth thinking about is at the overall philosophical/worldview level, and have never suggested otherwise.
But, to give Dan L. his example, here’s one that I think might — at least in its strongest sense — cause problems, from Ken Pidcock’s comment on Ruse’s article:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/new-atheism-redux/34321#comment-187221913
“C’mon, let’s be honest. Not are compatible, but can be compartmentalized. And I’m fine with that. I would never suggest that any scientist’s contributions are diminished by religious belief, but we shouldn’t be asked to affirm that the combination is somehow logical. ”
A similar argument was referenced on the (sadly not updated) Accommodation Watch site, talking about what John Pieret had said about Coyne:
http://accommodationwatch.blogspot.com/2010/08/what-is-philosophical-consistency.html
The idea is that if science expresses a worldview, and if that worldview is incompatible with religion — ie it is an anti-religious worldview — then there might be issues with teaching science in general. And the idea quite frequently tossed around that the only way that scientists can be religious is either to compartmentalize or suffer cognitive dissonance (or both) is in fact an indication of this type of argument. You either use a scientific worldview or a religious one, and there’s only room for one worldview. Add in Larry Moran’s good argument that science by definition is skeptical and that faith certainly isn’t, and we have a conflict over worldviews … but then allowing a course to actually espouse a specific worldview when one can only have one worldview consistently is at least potentially problematic.
There are ways around this. One of them is to simply deny that you can only consistently have only one worldview. When you’re doing science, you certainly use the scientific worldview — which may include skepticism — but when I’m doing philosophy I should use the philosophical worldview, when doing mathematics the mathematical, when doing religion the religious, and so on and so forth. This is my reply to Larry Moran in that I think that there are definitely times when it is not the right thing to act skeptically, and that perfectly valid “ways of knowing” reject skepticism because it makes sense in those cases to do that. This, of course, is a view that there can cause absolutely no issues with freedom of religion. But this starts to sound like NOMA. And some incompatibilists will argue that there still might be clashes over certain facts, and so it cannot actually be practiced. But my point is that this “incompatible worldviews, and it is inconsistent and irrational to hold incompatible worldviews” does seem to potentially create a problem, and as such it would be a good idea for incompatibilists to understand and explain how it either doesn’t or how they plan to work around that problem, even if they’re right.
@Verbose Stoic: I think you’re asking for an impossible standard of neutrality. After a point, it becomes ridiculous to ask for complete worldview-neutrality. Heck, even the idea that education should be religiously neutral is part of a particular worldview, and so is the idea that the state should offer education to all children to begin with.
Science works, which can be independently confirmed by people from a wide variety of worldviews, including many religious ones. That should be plenty enough reason to teach it. Nobody is arguing that schools should promote atheism or even naturalism, or teach incompatibilism. As long as schools don’t do this, it really shouldn’t matter that there are people in society who publicly hold views like atheism, naturalism or compatibilism. There are people in society who think religion is true, and hence that naturalism is false – many of whom are advocating this to be taught in schools. I think it would be much more important to ask them to rethink their arguments.
Deen,
You somehow missed a large part of my comment where I talked about a way out which is by accepting that one need not claim that someone must apply a worldview universally, and that therefore you can have a scientific worldview that is used in science, and other worldviews that are used elsewhere. So I’m clearly not asking for worldview neutrality. And I do think that science itself has or is a particular worldview. I also agree that science can be used by multiple worldviews, but would indeed argue that those worldviews are not a scientific worldview. You can include scientific facts in a worldview without making that worldview interestingly scientific (see philosophy for the best example of this).
If, as I said, the scientific worldview assumes skepticism, then I definitely think that there are cases where the scientific worldview will not necessarily do what you want and that other reasonable worldviews are possible even if they accept scientific fact and knowledge.
Do I have to turn in my atheist card if I don’t hate his blog? I didn’t even know the name of it until now.
@Verbose Stoic: no, I didn’t miss it, I just tried to explain why I think it is irrelevant. The suitability of science as a teachable subject in public education should be decided on the merits of science itself – and the same should go for teaching skepticism. It shouldn’t depend on the precense of people who value science or skepticism above other approaches – just like it doesn’t depend on the presence of people who value other approaches over science. Not everybody values science or skepticism the same, and that should be OK in a pluralistic society. School should not be in the business of telling kids how to value science – it should just teach science.
However, that does not make people who do put extra value in science or skepticism wrong to promote their views (or their values, if you will) outside of the school system. It still seems to me like atheists are the only group of people who are asked to reconsider defending their views and values in public, while religious people who do the same get almost automatic respect. And I still have difficulty understanding why other atheists would take part in perpetuating this double standard.
@Jolo5309: if you were a real atheist, you’d know there isn’t any atheist authority that can assign and revoke “real atheist” status. Since you clearly didn’t know that, I guess that means handing in your atheist card… oh, wait. ;)
Deen,
Well, it seems to me that strongly religious people would like religion taught in public schools, and their religion especially. This is at the heart of the attempts to get creationism taught in science classes. One way for them to do that is to claim that the “secular” public school system is indeed teaching a position on religion. If they can demonstrate that, then they can say that the public school system has two options if it wants to maintain separatation of Church and State: either they stop teaching that anti-religious position or they start teaching the religious positions as well. This is the only way public schools can remain inclusive, which I think we can all agree is a requirement for them.
Now, simply teaching something that contradicts a religion doesn’t count as teaching a position on religion. The courts have, in fact, been very clear about that. But now there is a question about whether teaching science means teaching a worldview. And if it means teaching a worldview, and that worldview advocates an anti-religious position well, then, that might well be a different matter. And that, it seems to me, is what Ruse is referring to: if you in any way make it seem like teaching science means teaching a position on religion, even if anti-religious, then you may well have problems.
But the last sentence of Ruse’s post makes it seem like his view is not to say “Just shut up about that”, then. And that is certainly not my view. However, I think it reasonable to ask what people who care about keeping, say, creationism out of schools are going to do if this comes up as a result of their philosophical positions about science.
There are ways to solve the problem, and the one you seem to support is the idea that teaching science is not teaching that worldview at all. And that’s what I think as well. But I think that it’s reasonable to look and the underlying issue and make that explicit, instead of just ignoring that issue to call out Ruse.
It’s only anti-religious to those who don’t understand the distinction between a-religious and anti-religious. As for your alternative, I am not opposed to schools teaching children about the existence of religion, and about the tenets of some of the major ones (just not in science class). Religion exists in our society, and kids need to understand how it operates. Of course, in the current political climate it would be difficult to ensure it would be taught fairly, or critically, but in principle I would be in favor of it.
Of course, many religious people would be opposed to that. Exposure to other religious views is one of the surest ways for people to lose their faith too. I don’t know how the US constitution would deal with this, but from an ethical standpoint, I think it’d be more problematic to block children from getting this information than to teach it to them.
I do not like your implication that this is what is going on here. The problems with Ruse’s ideas have been pointed out to him many times, including by legal scholars. At this point, calling Ruse out for not engaging with his opponents in a fair manner seems entirely justified to me.