Author: Ophelia Benson

I pretty much never link to the Daily Mail – but just this once…

‘We spend our lives here educating a new ­generation to understand that rational behaviour requires us to reach conclusions and make ­decisions by examining evidence.

‘Yet now we have the heir to the throne demanding — not in a ­throwaway remark, but in an entire book to which he has just put his name — that we should reject science and evidence in favour of following our instincts. This is surely disturbing.’

Then a bit from that book shows how and why it’s disturbing:

‘Having considered these questions long and hard, my view is that our outlook in the Westernised world has become far too firmly framed by a mechanistic approach to science.’

He continues: ‘This approach is entirely based upon the gathering of the results that come from subjecting physical phenomena to scientific experiment.’

As opposed to just looking into one’s heart; yes, so it is, and so it should be.

Some of his phrases are ­messianic: ‘I would be failing in my duty to future generations and to the Earth itself if I did not attempt to point this out and indicate possible ways we can heal the world.’

Obsessively convinced of his own rightness, he views his ­critics with the weary ­resignation of an early Christian martyr: ‘It is probably ­inevitable that if you challenge the ­traditions of conventional thinking you will find yourself accused of naivety.’

As if he knows “possible ways we can heal the world.”

Charles insists upon addressing a range of issues wider and deeper than any ­mortal man — unless he has a mind of genius, as the Prince certainly does not — can sensibly encompass. Some of his book reads like the ravings of a Buddhist mystic.

I once incurred princely wrath by suggesting to him that he would be judged by what he is rather than by what he does — that being heir to the throne is not a government office.

…

Rural grandees such as ­himself may have enjoyed times past, but peasants certainly did not.

The industrial growth which he hates has brought huge benefits to mankind. He seems oblivious to the ­tension between his grand vision about how others should live and his personal financial profligacy; his enthusiasm for using helicopters and keeping every light blazing in Clarence House at all hours.

He thinks he’s genuinely Special, as opposed to being just notionally Special by an accident of birth. It’s very silly of him to think that.

I’m breaking it into pieces, because it’s a large subject. Thomas Dixon also said

 I stand by my emphasis on the political aspects of all of this. Claims about the nature of reality and who has the authority to discover and describe it, and by what methods, are questions about power, and thus political. I don’t say that the Scopes or Galileo cases were nothing but politics, but I do say they were political.

That’s true, but incomplete. That’s where the postmodern turn does its turning: in treating that idea (despite the disclaimer) as if it were complete, or if not complete then of predominating interest.

The claim itself is in fact political. It’s a useful claim; useful to people who want to make science a matter of power rather than one of inquiry and evidence, of politics rather than truth. Yes, of course, priests and scientists are in some sense competing for “power”; their rivalry is certainly political (though a good deal more political on the religious side than the scientific side, which is not surprising, since politics and power are all religions have); but science, at any rate, is fundamentally about something else, so making power central just does obfuscate the real issues.

Power and politics are ultimately irrelevant, because whoever wins, whoever is stronger, the truth is what it is. Power can decide “the truth” but it can’t determine the truth.

Meta times 3 because commenting on Thomas Dixon’s comments on Eric MacDonald’s review of Dixon’s book. Dixon says, in reply to Eric’s reply to him, that it is becoming clear how their approaches differ.

I think the bottom line is that I’m not happy to generalise about ‘religion’ in the way that you want to, nor to treat all ‘religion’ as if it were at one, extreme end of the spectrum in terms of scriptural literalism and authoritarianism; nor to suppose that there is just one ‘paradigmatic’ singular relationship between religion and science.

The trouble with that is, for some purposes it is necessary to generalize about religion in that way. Granted, religions differ, and the word can refer to different things – but when the subject under discussion is science and religion and whether there is or is not a conflict between them, then it becomes necessary to focus on the areas where there is conflict or potential for conflict. Otherwise the real issues are simply evaded, and what’s the point of that? Apart from a public relations exercise, that is.

Believers and fans of religion like to do that, of course. There is no conflict between science and, say, liking to get together with people to sing churchy music once a week. Indeed not. But there is conflict with religion understood in other ways, and that’s what should be addressed, not the parts that pretty much everyone agrees are not in conflict. Religion-as-ritual is not the issue, so discussions of Science&Religion really aren’t about religion defined that way. The site of the conflict is epistemology, so that’s the place to discuss it.

If you want to give yourself a shock, just search for Tony Walsh on Google News and behold the torrent of Irish coverage. Then start to read some of it. Read Mary Raftery’s article in the Irish Times.

Archbishops, bishops, chancellors, vicars general, parish priests – the list of senior clerics who knew of Walsh’s serial sexual abuse of children is virtually endless. From the very first complaints brought to the archdiocese, a bare two days after Walsh’s ordination in 1978, and for the succeeding 17 years, these pillars of the church sat on their detailed knowledge of Walsh’s abominable predations on children, shielding him from the law, deliberately deciding to keep his crimes hidden from the civil authorities. In the course of those 17 years, until the archdiocese finally decided in 1995 to co-operate with Garda investigations, Walsh abused well over 100 children according to the chapter published yesterday. Here we find out that archbishops Dermot Ryan, Kevin McNamara and Desmond Connell all had detailed knowledge of Walsh’s criminal activities.

…

Bishop Eamonn Walsh (a trained barrister, incidentally) was sufficiently well-aware of the criminal nature of Walsh’s activities to know that he should be reported to the Garda; and second, that Bishop Walsh did not report him, and nor of course did any of his fellow bishops. It consequently shows an extraordinary detachment from reality for Bishop Walsh to have claimed last year that merely suggesting that gardaí be informed of crimes committed in some way excuses or exonerates him from responsibility for his part in the culture of cover-up in the Dublin archdiocese.

Senior people. Masses of them. With detailed knowledge of what Walsh was doing. And they sat on it. For seventeen years.

Amen.