Author: Ophelia Benson

Chris Mooney is still at it, telling ‘scientists’ what they must do. They must learn to ‘communicate’ better. They must also learn to reassure trembling theists better. They keep not doing that, and Chris Mooney is getting pretty tired of the way they don’t listen to him.

…at its core, the objection to evolution isn’t about science at all, but about perceived threats to faith and moral values. The only way to defuse the conflict is to assuage these fundamental fears. Yet this drags many scientists out of their comfort zone: They’re not priests or theologians and don’t know how to sound like them. Many refuse to try; others go to the opposite extreme of advocating vociferous and confrontational atheism.

Isn’t that irritating? Mooney keeps telling them, yet they go right on being atheist and saying why they are atheist. It’s so perverse and obstinate and naughty. After all Mooney has infallible knowledge of what is the right thing to do and what actions will cause what results, so it’s just unconscionable that ‘scientists’ won’t obey him.

Ironically, to increase support for the teaching of evolution, scientists must join forces with — and show more understanding of — religion. Scientists who are believers also need to be more vocal about how they reconcile science and faith.

They must, you see – not they could, or they should, or it might help if they; no, they must. According to Chris Mooney. That’s how we know he has infallible knowledge of what will cause what to happen – it’s because he’s so bossy.

In other words, what’s needed is less “pure science” on its own — although of course scientists must continue to speak in scientifically accurate terms — and more engagement with the concerns of nonscientific audiences. In response to that argument, many researchers will say: “Why target us? We’re the good guys. And if we become more media savvy, we’ll risk our credibility.” There is only one answer to this objection: “Look all around you — at Climategate, at the unending evolution wars — and ask, are your efforts working?” The answer, surely, is no.

The answer is ‘no’ if and only if your definition of ‘working’ is one peculiar to Chris Mooney. What he means is not ‘are your efforts working?’ but ‘are particular things going the way I would like them to go?’ and it simply is not written into the structure of the universe that scientists as such are obliged to do whatever will make things go the way Chris Mooney would like them to; not even if Mooney’s wishes are on the whole sensible wishes. Mooney does have sensible wishes, but they’re not the only possible wishes, and his version of ‘working’ is not the only possible version of ‘working.’ Scientists spending their time being scientists rather than being ‘media savvy’ suck ups and soothers and appeasers makes a lot of things ‘work’ and it may just not be on the cards for them to add political maneuvering to the menu. It’s also just not as obvious as Mooney thinks it is that if scientists did do that, the things Mooney wants to work would work. He has great and unexplained certainty that it is obvious, but pretty much no one else does.

On other topics, including evolution, scientists must recognize that more than scientific matters are at stake, and either address the moral and ethical issues themselves, or pair with those who can (in the case of evolution, religious leaders and scientists such as Giberson and National Institutes of Health chief Francis Collins).

Bossy. Bossy bossy bossy. He really should do something about that – being an expert in communication and all. It’s way off-putting to have a young fella like him telling you what you must do, especially when what you must do is something as rebarbative as either trying to talk ‘moral and ethical’ sludge to theists or pair with Karl Giberson or Francis Collins for the purpose.

Maybe what ought to happen is that scientists ought to start writing articles for the Washington Post telling communication experts what they must do to make things work. That would be entertaining.

The BBC is disgusting at times. It had to report on this al-Shabab guy trying to kill Kurt Westergaard so therefore it had to make sure you didn’t get the wrong idea and think it, the BBC, didn’t think Kurt Westergaard deserved it, at least a little bit. That would never do. So it includes a sidebar of ‘analysis’ which ends with this even-handed bit of slime:

Moderate Muslims in Denmark have condemned the attack on Kurt Westergaard, but they still believe his drawing was sacrilegious.

Muslim nations are attempting to outlaw what they call the defamation of their religion.

Mr Westergaard came out of hiding last Spring, saying he wanted to defend freedom of expression.

Some independent religious scholars argue the cartoonists were wrong to offend Muslims and say the drawings made dialogue impossible.

Notice the failure to point out that some ‘independent religious scholars’ (whatever that is supposed to mean) and some other kinds of people argue that on the contrary the cartoonists were not wrong to draw cartoons about Mohammed; notice the ‘wrong to offend Muslims’ as if what the cartoonists did had been to ‘offend Muslims’ as opposed to drawing cartoons; notice that any satirical or political or otherwise substantive cartoon can always ‘offend’ someone; notice giving the stupid evasive anonymous smeary ‘the cartoonists were wrong to offend Muslims’ claim the last word; notice doing that in an article about the attempted ax-murder of a 75-year-old cartoonist in his own house. Notice, and be disgusted.

Oooh look, I get to be on a list. Usually when there’s a list, I don’t get to be on it, which is probably perfectly sensible because there are better people to be on it, except when one looks closely at the list one notices that everyone on it is of just one gender, and it happens to be not the one that I am of which, and at that point one begins to wonder, is there a secret invisible subliminal hidden sub rosa unconscious criterion for being on the list that the maker of the list would probably not admit to but that nevertheless somehow just made it be that only people of one gender were good enough to be on the list.

Or to put it more bluntly, which I feel like doing because this kind of thing is getting increasingly on my nerves, is it really that difficult to draw up lists that are not 100% totally all male? Is it really? Is it really that hard for people to remember that there are female atheists too and some of them are well worth listening to or reading?

Because the trouble is (and this is hardly a news flash), the more people go on remembering just the men all the time when lists of atheists are drawn up, the more the women will be ignored and forgotten and the lists will go on being all male and the women will be even more ignored and forgotten and the process just goes on like that forever. I mean, fucking hell! Does this have to be spelled out at this late date? This is well known and has been well known for my entire adult life, and I’m 153. People choose people like them, so everybody else gets overlooked, so people already in a position to draw up lists and invite people to conferences choose people like them and all the other kinds of people just go on being locked out forever. You have to make the effort to seek out people not like you in order to correct for your own bias in favor of people like you so that other kinds of people will get a god damn chance. Is that so hard to understand?!

I beg your pardon. I mustn’t be so vehement. (Or wait, maybe I must – maybe there will be a contest for ‘Most Vehement Atheist’ some day and maybe if I am really really vehement I will get on the list even if the list does not specify ‘Most Vehement Female Atheist’ and then we would know Progress was Being Made.) It just did seem pathetic that a guy drew up a list of most vocal atheists of 2009 and every single one of them was a guy and he apparently hadn’t even noticed until commenters pointed it out. Come on.

Never mind, commenters did point it out, and they were sweet and astute enough to mention me among other people when they did it. But still it seems pathetic that it has to be pointed out. Yo, dude, could you really not think of even one woman worth including? Seriously?

Mark Vernon is playing the same old hurdy-gurdy.

The Oxford church historian tells of a ‘wise old Dominican friar’ who informed him that God is not the answer. Rather, God is the question…First you’ve got to ask what you mean by the word ‘God’. And there is a quick answer: we don’t know what we mean by the word ‘God’. God is a mystery. ‘The word “God” is a label for something we do not know’…

A mystery is different from a problem; a problem can be solved, science does that, science does it well, but a mystery is different. And God is one of those. Aquinas said God can’t even be said to exist. Talk about mysterious!

That’s how much of a mystery God is. Inherent in any decent conception of divinity is the notion that the divine is not a thing in the world, like everything else, because God is the reason there are things at all. God as the cause of existence, not something that exists.

It’s a mystery, but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about it; oh nooooooo. We can talk about it a lot! Why would we want to?

Again, the “why” is simply answered: because existence is so extraordinary. You see, if you believe the question of God is worth asking then it’s because you’ve sensed that life might have meaning, that the cosmos is for something, that there might be an explanation beyond chance as to why there is something rather than nothing. To ask of God is to raise these questions.

No doubt, but to raise these questions is not necessarily to talk about (or ‘ask of’) God. It is entirely possible to talk and speculate about life, and meaning, and the cosmos, and purpose, and why there is something rather than nothing, without talking about ‘God.’ You may not want to; you may think those vague suggestions are too generalized and shapeless and in an odd way parochial to be worth talking about; you may suspect that those aren’t real ‘questions’ but rather pretend questions shaped by the need to find reasons for thinking ‘God’ is real; but all the same you can. It’s the weird imperialism of goddy types that makes them think all questions of that kind are inextricable from God-talk. Being hammers, they think everything is a nail. But it isn’t.

So, second, how can God be talked of? It’s called the negative way, or the apophatic – saying what God is not. Whatever God might be, God is not visible: God’s invisible. Whatever God might be, God cannot be defined: God’s ineffable. Nothing positive is said. But nonetheless something is said of God. Similarly, the often forgotten motivation for the formulation of doctrine is the aim of not dissolving the mystery of God. When Christians say God is three in one, they assert what they take as a meaningful contradiction. And that’s the point. If you accept it, you accept a mystery.

God’s ineffable, but we get to go on and on and on effing anyway, and people say God is one and God is three and you just have to lump it and that’s because they don’t want to dissolve the mystery of God so the thing to do is to talk complete bullshit because by gum that preserves the mystery of God, and it lets you go on talking, too. In other words anything and everything, anything goes, it doesn’t matter, it’s a mystery and ineffable so nobody can say ‘Eh that’s nonsense’ and we can just go on blathering forever without ever having to check our data. As Mark Vernon does for another three paragraphs.

There’s something terribly childish about being satisfied with that kind of thing. Why bother? Yes, sure, you can do that, and go ahead, but why go proudly public with it in the Guardian’s blog? Why say it aloud as if we were supposed to be impressed? I’m impressed by people who really find out things, not by people who just spin words about ineffable trinities.