Author: Ophelia Benson

Other people have been disputing BioLogos guest poster Loren Wilkinson; I’ll just add a footnote or two.

The BioLogos Foundation, with its commitment to the “integration of science and Christian faith” is one of many signs that the 150-year-old idea of a “warfare” between science and religion is ending. 

You wish. It’s actually just a sign that the Templeton Foundation has a lot of money, much of which it spends on a great many organizations and conferences and books devoted to creating “signs” that science and religion are deeply in love. The BioLogos Foundation isn’t some independent phenomenon that just happened without any interested parties helping and funding – it’s the product of a well-funded agenda. It’s disingenuous to look at it all wide-eyed and pretend to think it’s a portent. It’s not a portent, it’s a concerted effort.

The warfare language implies that there were two kinds of knowledge: “religious knowledge”, established only by emotion and authority, and scientific knowledge, established by experience, experiment and testing.

No. No no. No no no no. That’s not the idea at all. The warfare language implies, and often says, that there is knowledge on the one hand, and dogma on the other. That’s pretty much what the warfare is. The two are in tension. The two don’t mix well. When a cleric says women must be subordinate to men because God said so, actual knowledge has nothing to do with it. The cleric doesn’t know what “God” “said” any more than you do or I do; the cleric is just passing on some dogma as a way of backing up a stupid prejudice.

I see part 2 is posted. Dear oh dear, more reading wading to do.

Eric explains why he writes about religion.

Suddenly, I find myself reading more and more about religion, and, since I spent a lifetime in the church, and am trying to put this behind me, I need to explain to myself, sometimes, why I am doing so. For now, instead of trying to give an account of myself, as St. Paul would have said, for the faith that is in me, I write to oppose religion, and all, or pretty much all, that it stands for…I oppose religion because I find that it diminishes — and cannot fail to diminish — us as persons.

He zooms in on the religious tendency to try to mandate a “religious” view of the body without regard to the actual experience and feeling of the person who inhabits the body. He does not like it.

I don’t want to be told that I must find my body, which has been reduced to this, to be a sacred home, when it’s just not possible for me to see it in this way; and I don’t want people like Ackerman or Ziettlow to play their religious shell game with me, and tell me that I must simply give up the conceptions of a lifetime and find my dignity in something else.

That resonates very strongly with me. Our conceptions of a lifetime are ours, and religious people have no business trying to make us alter them. Doing so is a form of tyranny.

None of this is to say that people should not be treated with respect and dignity, no matter what their condition or stage of life. But it is to say that religious conceptions of the sacredness of the body are only applicable to those who find this language helpful, and it is, as Dworkin says on the same page, “a devastating, odious form of tyranny” to make “someone die in a way that others approve, but he feels is a horrifying contradiction of his life.” It is the implicit tyranny of Rev. Ziettlow’s remarks that I find so objectionable, because religious conceptions just are the kind of thing that people believe it is appropriate to impose on others, and that is, to a large degree — aside, of course, from the ineradicable epistemological problems of all religious beliefs — the most objectionable thing about religion. Religion believes itself in the possession of absolute knowledge, applicable to all people, always, and everywhere. That’s why I write about religion, because it is an affront to human dignity and a continuing threat to human freedom.

Yes. Exactly. It is the tyranny and the imposition that is so profoundly objectionable. That’s the fuel of gnu atheist wrath – we all resent the imposition and the tyranny. We all squirm when it tries to grab us, and we all want to drive it back into a safe corner where we can keep a wary eye on it.

I wrote an article about this last summer. I wrote it at the invitation of Adam Lee of Daylight Atheist, but he rejected it. I might post it here one of these days.

Just look at the Telegraph’s bland concealment of the nasty truth about misogynist Anglican clerics converting to Catholicism. Look at the jolly personable “we’re just a buncha nice guys” photo, look at the tactful phrasing:

The most Rev Vincent Nichols, leader of Catholics in England and Wales, ordained Andrew Burnham, former bishop of Ebbsfleet, Keith Newton, ex-bishop of Richborough, and John Broadhurst, former bishop of Fulham, as Catholic priests at a service at Westminster Cathedral in London on Saturday.

They are the first members of an Ordinariate specially set up by the Pope, for groups of Anglicans who wish to join the Roman Catholic Church while retaining aspects of their Anglican heritage.

Paras 1 and 2. It takes until para 8 for the paper to admit which “aspects of their Anglican heritage” we’re talking about – para 8 out of a 12 para piece. Lots of people read the first 2 or 3 or 4 paras of a newspaper piece without bothering to read the whole thing. If a vital bit of information is held back until para 8, the newspaper is playing games. Behold paras 7 and 8:

The ordinariate is expected to be joined by up to 50 Anglican clergy and two retired Church of England bishops.

Its formation comes after the Church of England voted last summer to press ahead with legislation to consecrate women bishops, a move opposed by Anglo-Catholic groupings within the Church.

Those ever-so-congenial laughing guys in the photo are men who want to go on keeping women out of their powerful boys’ club. And the Telegraph hopes no one will notice.

Just imagine, some people see handing over medical care to god-botherers as a bad idea.

“Physicians are being told they must refuse to provide certain services even when they believe their refusal would harm their patient and violate established medical standards of care,” said Lois Uttley, who heads MergerWatch, a New York-based group that fights the takeover of secular medical centers by religiously affiliated hospitals.

Church officials, bioethicists and hospital officials counter that the facilities are guided by directives calibrated to deliver state-of-the-art medical care without violating religious and moral beliefs.

But they shouldn’t be guided by directives calibrated to avoid violating religious beliefs. Period. Religious beliefs have nothing to do with decisions about what the best medical care would be, and they should stay out of it. Doctors, nurses, hospital administrations, ethics committees have no business imposing religious beliefs on other people.

Disagreements between dioceses and hospitals, as well as cases in which patients do not receive needed care, are exceedingly rare, they say.

They should be non-existent. Exceeding rarity doesn’t make them ok.

“We have literally hundreds of institutions that care for men, women and children every day and provide excellent care, especially to the poor,” said Richard M. Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities. “We always do so with respect for each and every life in our care.”

No you do not. That is not true. That is exactly what you don’t do. That is a falsehood. One of your bishops in particular, and your whole vicious Conference in general, insists that in a case like the one in Phoenix the mother must be allowed to die along with her fetus. Don’t tell falsehoods about your murderous policy; tell the truth about it so that everyone will know exactly what is at stake here.

Since 1971, Catholic hospitals have been guided by the Ethical and Religious Directives , which detail religious and moral justifications for care extending from conception to death. The interpretation of those directives is the responsibility of ethics committees at the hospitals, and the final arbiter is the local bishop.

The local bishop has the final word on policy for all Catholic hospitals in his diocese. The local bishop can set aside medical judgment any time he wants to. That’s an appalling arrangement.