An old pal of mine, the splendiferously morphogenetical Don Kane, has brought to my attention a curious juxtaposition. It’s two articles from the old, old days, both published in Nature in 1981, both relevant to my current interests, but each reflecting different outcomes. One is on zebrafish, the other on creationism.
1981 was a breakthrough year for zebrafish; I think it’s safe to say that if one paper put them on the map, it was Streisinger et al.‘s “Production of clones of homozygous diploid zebra fish (Brachydanio rerio)”1. George Streisinger was the father of zebrafish as a model system (and also a wonderfully nice guy, enthusiastic and passionate; everyone who knew him misses him), and what he had worked out was a technique for generating clones of isogenic fish that were homozygous at all loci. This is an extremely useful trick for doing genetics: it simplifies the genetic background of a complex vertebrate, and it allows you to, for instance, maintain mutations in heterozygous colonies and generate homozygous progeny fairly easily. That set the stage for future research and generated a great deal of interest in our little animals.
Twenty five years ago, there were few people working on zebrafish; George Streisinger’s lab was the leader, Chuck Kimmel (both at the University of Oregon) had only recently switched over, and we developed a bit of a reputation for vigorously proselytizing our organism at scientific meetings—every talk began with what we called the zebrafish litany, a recitation of its advantages (“optically-clear-rapidly-developing-identifiable-neurons-genetic-tools”). I remember one conversation at the Friday Harbor development meetings when Robert Ho, who was at that time working on leech development, took us to task for being so damned annoying. (Robert, by the way, has since converted and now works on zebrafish, too. I’m sure he’d still say the experimental model is a convenience, and it’s the questions that should engage us.)
From two labs, there are now hundreds; the ZFIN database lists over 4000 people doing zebrafish research. That’s a big change. You can scarcely open a developmental biology journal anymore without stumbling over heaps of new research using that little animal. More than that, there have been huge advances in development and evolution since the beginning of the evo-devo revolution in the 1980s, and I’m just astounded at all the stuff we know now that weren’t on the books when I was in grad school. We didn’t talk about homeoboxes or Hox genes, for instance; they weren’t identified or named until 1983. (We had to learn about homeotic genes by reading about the purely genetic experiments of the scarily smart Ed Lewis, and struggled with Ubx and bx-c and experiments with complex epistatic interactions, the elaborate logic puzzles and math of abstract genetics).2 Zebrafish are a tiny part of a story about an explosion of new information in molecular genetics and development, and the growth of new ideas and data that support evolution.
Science changes. Those last twenty five years have been a period of remarkable success and growth of the field.
In the same issue in which George Streisinger published his seminal work, though, there’s an editorial which could have been written today. Nothing has changed; if anything, I think we’ve slid farther back.
1981 was also the year of McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, a trial like the recent Dover creationism trial, and like the Scopes trial before it, that hammered away at the attempts by creationists to insert religious dogma into our public school’s science curricula. I didn’t really notice. I read Gould’s accounts of the trial, but otherwise, creationism was just an irritating obstacle. I don’t recall this particular opinion piece at all, but then I suspect I didn’t look at anything else in the journal, since I wouldn’t have gotten past George’s paper. When Don Kane noticed it, though, and passed it along, I was like, all “Whoa. Deja vu.”
The piece is titled “Does creation deserve equal time?”, and it was prompted by the events in Arkansas and the fact that the British Museum had opened on exhibit on the origin of species that gave pride of place to Darwin’s ideas, but also highlighted the Genesis creation myth as another way of “accounting for the diversity of species”. You will be relieved to know that the conclusion is unambiguously negative, that creationism does not deserve equal time, but along the way it gives us the usual platitudes about accommodating religion. Here’s an excerpt; seriously, this could have been written yesterday, it’s just that the bland obtuseness of its story is a little more obvious with hindsight.
The issue is not a simple extension into this century of the fierce rows about God and Darwinism that occupied some of the Victorians, especially in Britain. Then, with religion firmly entrenched and sometimes backed by the force of law, it was natural that people such as Huxley should have seized on Darwinism as a way of substantiating their long-standing disbelief. Now, with the shoe on the other foot—religion less widely practiced and in most places disestablished—the argument is different and more subtle. The scientific community is no, as popular legend has it, monolithically irreligious even if card-carrying believers are proportionately fewer than in the general population. And the fact that science and religion can coexist is a sign that, behaviourally, science and religion are not always antithetical. People, it seems, can spend their weekdays in laboratories observing phenomena which they suppose are causally determined and Sundays on their knees, believing that some events are differently arranged. (Sects differ in their estimates of the importance of physically non-causal events, as evidenced by their differing assessments of the function of prayer somewhere between the extremes of cathartic wish-fulfillment and putatively effective interruptions of causal processes.)
To many professional people, this awkward philosophical compromise is offensive, but mistakenly. It is not even a philosophically untenable position to suppose that the present world is well-determined, but that it was all set in train in, say, 4004 BC, the year that Bishop Ussher figured out the world began. Continuing inspired non-causalism is harder to accommodate, but even that circle can be squared in the mind of many people, professional scientists included. But much of modern religion is drawn in such a way that inconsistency crops up less openly. In any case, in most fields of scientific inquiry, the supposed conflict between science and religion is entirely irrelevant.
Such comfortable confidence! Oh, to go back in time and give this fellow today’s newspapers, where the creationists continue the same old battles under different names, where evolution is marginalized in the schools, where Ken Ham opens a multi-million dollar creation ‘science’ museum, where our president and other government officials are sympathetic to giving creationism equal time, in which he could make the acquaintance of Sir Peter Vardy. He’s so certain that religion is on the wane that he feels safe in patting them on the head and reassuring them that even a young earth is philosophically tenable. No conflict! Science and religion irrelevant! Science and religion coexist!
What a clinker.
Science rockets along, but so does the general ignorance of the public, fostered by the dogmas of religion. The situation worsens over these decades; you’d think that a continued lack of success would suggest that just maybe the old tactics of appeasement aren’t working, and perhaps we should all stop feeding the theological beast these mollifying scraps of heartening comfort. Religion, especially the fundamentalist cults, is unscientific, impractical, unsupported by the evidence, and antithetical to scientific thought. It may not be an absolute barrier to science, but it sure is a handicap.
You’d think we could learn a little from history, too. The author mentions the “fierce rows about God and Darwinism” that took place in Victorian England, and then casually notes that now religion is “in most places disestablished”; isn’t there a lesson in that? Could there possibly be a causal relationship between prominent battles against religious belief and the weakening of the influence of religion? Could there be a relationship between the namby-pamby apologies for religion represented in that editorial and the current regrowth of the power of superstition?
Isn’t twenty-five years of failure enough? Probably not. I wouldn’t be surprised to open Nature in 2031, and read an editorial deploring the renaming of the museum to the “Natural Theology Museum”, but taking comfort in the fact that the word “natural” still comes first, and carefully explaining that there really shouldn’t be any conflict between science and religion, anyway.
I expect that’s what we’ll see, unless more are willing to stop making excuses for religious nonsense and fight back.
1Note the nomenclature. There was quite a bit of back-and-forth between George and the editors of Nature. George insisted the fish was the “zebrafish”, one word, and those crazy Brits were sure it had to be two, “zebra fish”. Editors win. There has also been a taxonomic revision since, and the proper genus name is no longer Brachydanio, but Danio.
2These are the nerd equivalent of those old stories that usually begin, “We had to walk five miles to school! In the snow! After we’d milked the cows!”
Streisinger, G., C. Walker, N. Dower, D. Knauber, and F. Singer (1981) Production of clones of homozygous diploid zebra fish (Brachydanio rerio). Nature 291: 293-296.
Don’t you mean (fn2), “10 miles to school and back. Uphill both ways.”
I agree, and I think it’s happening. Atheists, humanists, and secularists are fighting back everywhere. We just need to keep them interested and fighting, which I think we can. I’m pretty hopeful that after we depose this idiotic regime things will improve.
The problem is that most “believers” are believers only in the sense that the rituals, social aspects, and platitudes give them “warm and fuzzies.” Thus “religion” seems like an OK thing to them. A thing they should keep alive in their children, etc. To them: “No damage done! what’s the harm?”
They don’t think to how religion and this god belief thing diminish the mind of man. A collective mind that could soar above prejudice, tribalism, silly worry about inconsequential things, fear of discovery, and fear of truth. How religion and this god belief thing allow so many evils to be excused, and how they allow tyrants to be king. No these moderate, rational believers don’t think to these things. Nor do they think to how they (the core of the support of religion) are implicated in the throttling of the human mind and its noble endeavours.
Has the proportion of atheists, agnostics, and non-religious folks increased or decreased in the US since 1981?
Reading the editorial is a lot like reading Jeremy Bentham’s work on logical fallacies. He could have written it today, the way he decries how dirty politics has become. In Bentham’s case, the rate of logical fallacies is likely the same. I doubt the rate of creationist devotion is the same today.
Those of us who lived through the “victories” of Arkansas and Louisiana can’t help but be amused at the fuss over Dover PA. The opinions of judges aren’t going to change any hearts and minds. If that were possible then the debate over abortion would have been over with Roe v. Wade in 1973.
The conflict between science and religion cannot be decided by lawyers in court. Those who think otherwise are naive. While they’re celebrating the Judge Jones decision, good science education is still being suppressed in the schools and millions of people still don’t accept evolution.
The important thing about Dover is that the good guys won, and the bad guys lost. It’s worth celebrating, but few seem to consider that it’s like playing Russian Roulette — yeah, be happy when you pull the trigger and your brains don’t splatter the wall, but the smart thing to do is to STOP PLAYING. They only have to win once. We have to win every time. That’s a very stupid game.
We ought to be the ones on the offensive. We ought to be forcing them to move back a step at a time. Instead, we stand in place, watch as they get ready to throw more and more force at us, and call it a great victory when they don’t knock us down this time…and then we settle down into the same place and watch them get ready to do it again.
It’s very depressing.
Perhaps, but between the Victorian era and today there was also several other rather more significant events which eroded religious belief. 1) The First World War, 2) the rise of atheistic ideologies such as Marxism, and 3) the Holocaust. As much as it would flatter a biologist like myself to believe that millions of people changed their entire world view from reading Huxley, et al., I rather doubt it.
I didn’t realise that slimebag crawling Tony B. Liar (our wonderful Prime Minister – also called the Dear Leader) had twisted Lillibet’s arm to get VARDY knighted!
Ughhhhhh!
Perhaps, but between the Victorian era and today there was also several other rather more significant events which eroded religious belief. 1) The First World War, 2) the rise of atheistic ideologies such as Marxism, and 3) the Holocaust. As much as it would flatter a biologist like myself to believe that millions of people changed their entire world view from reading Huxley, et al., I rather doubt it.
(Emphasis mine)
It would be entirely unreasonable to think that, but my impression is that that’s not what PZ is claiming. I think what PZ is claiming is that scientists is Europe aren’t constantly goaded into appeasement, lectured on the legitimacy of religion and told to stop being so militant (as we are here) for precisely the reason that they do not bend over backwards to accommodate religion. That contributes to (though doesn’t in and of itself create) a cultural atmosphere that doesn’t automatically confer legitimacy to superstitious nonsense as ours does.
America also had it’s bouts with global conflict and Marxism and was also witness the horrors of the Holocaust. Yet we suffer much more from the strong-arm tactics of the religious than Europe does.
I think the real difference in Western Europe compared to the US is a huge head start. European intellectuals began fighting a couple of hundred years ago the battles that have never yet been joined in the US, where nervous appeasement of the godly has always been the rule. I’m with PZ- better late than never.
PZ wrote: “We ought to be the ones on the offensive. We ought to be forcing them to move back a step at a time.”
Larry Moran wrote: “…good science education is still being suppressed in the schools and millions of people still don’t accept evolution.”
Right! And the only way to win, gentlement, is to take the argument to the trenches—which is to say, the pews. Relying exclusively on the public schools to win this battle for you is too little, too late. A certain fraction of the population has already been inoculated against evolution by the time I get them and, if numbers are any judge, that fraction is having more babies than the rest of us!
Dilemma: How to engage the religious? If you believe religion is self-evidently wicked, you’re a poor advocate in that forum; you aren’t going to be able to get evolution a fair hearing. On the other hand, if you don’t have that view, if you’re inclined to accomodate, you’re still not going to be able to get a foot in the door in some churches. What to do?
Answer: engage the churches you can and don’t just promote *tolerance* for evolution—promote a general engagement with science, citizenship in a secular society and a rejection of a literal reading of Genesis. In other words, preach *values* as well as facts. As a group, the churches are not in the fact-finding business, but they are manifestly interested in values.
E.O. Wilson’s new book (“The Creation”) shows the path that committed evolution defenders can take. In a series of imaginary letters to a Baptist pastor, Wilson neither glosses over or dwells on the theological differences between himself and Christians. Instead, he invokes their shared core values in behalf of the preservation of biodiversity.
A similar approach can be used to ‘build bridges’ in support of the core values behind democracy, education and a secular society. I believe that millions of believers can be reached, including many within the evangelical churches. Already I sense that, within some of the mainline churches that there is a growing awareness that creationism is essentially a sectarian movement within Christianity, one that proceeds from unusual and extreme doctrinal positions that border on heresy and which threaten not just evolution education, but democracy.
We should do everything we can to foster this understanding.
Assertively…Scott
What makes it so futile to try and appease creationists is that they aren’t looking for answers, they’re looking for scapegoats on whom to blame (terrorism/immorality/weather/whatever).
After all, God is supposed to be in control, but you can hardly blame HIM for the unchristian state of affairs. Right? Much easier to say “evil Darwinists” are to blame for pushing God out of the picture.
Yes, because the wars, Marxism, and genocides happened *over there*. The US was only superficially involved, and so wasn’t as affected. American individuals (such as Hemmingway) certainly found their faith shaken by what they experienced, but the death and destruction were only images in newspapers for most Americans.
“I remember one conversation at the Friday Harbor development meetings”
Is that Friday Harbor, Washington where UW has its lab?
Yes, because the wars, Marxism, and genocides happened *over there*. The US was only superficially involved, and so wasn’t as affected.
True enough for WWI and WWII. But large amounts of Americans were drafted into those conflicts, so they were certainly affected by their horrors even if not as much as native Europeans. Marxism didn’t just happen in Europe, it was huge in America through the Communist and Socialist Labor Parties in the 20th. century, not to mention to various anarchist federations that weren’t strictly Marxist but very much atheistic. Ditto for the Holocaust.
All I’m saying is that the fact that Europeans have a less lacsadaisical attitude toward religious nonsense contributes to the lack of prevailence of religion there. I’m not saying other things didn’t have an effect.
‘…and then casually notes that now religion is “in most places disestablished”; isn’t there a lesson in that? Could there possibly be a causal relationship between prominent battles against religious belief and the weakening of the influence of religion?‘
There could, but not the one you think. ‘Disestablished’ has a precise technical meaning, and that meaning is not ‘weakened in influence’. England is one of those few places that still has an established religion, and yet it is probably the most secular of all western European countries. (The Scandinavian countries are also very secular, and also have established churches.) By contrast, religion has always been disestablished in the USA, by constitutional fiat; and yet….
If one wants to emasculate the church, persecuting the clergy probably won’t work as well as putting them on the state payroll.
While I strongly suspect that you’re being facetious here, I figured I’d still argue against the idea.
Europe’s secularism, arising from the Enlightenment, can be seen as a reaction to many hundreds of years of religious dominance; those hundreds of years being filled with the depredations of terrible religious wars. Between the wars, and after the wars ended, the churches had sufficient power that they could order executions to be carried out on purely religous grounds. Having a visceral sense of the evils of religious dominance, the people have gradually drifted away from a society where religion dominates. In addition, the material benefits that the people have, in the form of economic abundances of food and entertainment, have reduced the stresses that might lead to turning to tribalistic support of various ideologies (although there are of course notable counterexamples of various economic failures leading to a resurgance of adherence to various tribalistic ideologies).
Anyway, giving religion that kind of power will probably lead to things getting worse before they get better.
PZ and I are on the same page here. The f****** born-agains cannot be appeased and must fought tooth and nail with no quarter asked or given. However, let’s fight one battle at a time; lets fight the Wells, the Behes the Berlinskis and the other whackjobs at the discovery institute and defeat them, and lay off the Ken Millers who are our allies in this war. We can sort out the differences with the Ken Millers after defeating the creationists.
Guys,
I think we need to define our targets a little more closely. There are many many religeous people who just want to get on with their lives and not interfere with anyone else. Good for them, I see no reason to try and actively change their minds about their god(s) if it helps them be part of a secular society.
Funamentalists of any religion (who want everyone else to live by their often peculiar standards) should be argued with, resisted, mocked, fought against (if they offer violence), and prosecuted if the break any laws. That’s enough of a target to expend our efforts on.
Chris Smither’s ‘little educational tune” _Origin_of_Species_ played on the NPR radio show Weekend Edition with Scott Simon, today,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6083209
and can be heard (Windows streaming media) starting about 7 minutes in.
Click the “listen” button on the page, with Javascript and popups allowed for npr.org.
If one wants to emasculate the church, persecuting the clergy probably won’t work as well as putting them on the state payroll.
Hey, they’re already on the payroll, so I guess, as Herbert Hoover once said, “Prosperity is just around the corner.” Or, as Pres. Bush once said, “We’ve turned a corner, and we’re not turning back.” I think it was Emperor Nero who once said, upon the completion of the violin, “Everything that can be invented has been invented, therefore, heavier than air flying machines are impossible.” So relax people, everything is going to be okay.
I’ve got to say that Scott Hatfield has a good point. The reality is that we need win over these folks. They are not going anywhere. In my situation, I have many creationist friends. I don’t hate these people, they are not total idiots and they are not crazy either. I need to find a way to deal with them so that I am not either “in the closet” or at odds with them (that’s how it is now). I have always gone the tolerance route but on it’s own, that just doesn’t work. The tolerance is not returned and it just puffs up their self righteousness. It’s true that I share a lot of “values” with these folks. These are the things that draw us together. We need to build on the positive and stand firm on science. We need to teach rather than fight. We need to call them on it when they say really whacky things (I’d give some example but then this would go on for pages). These folks are very isolated from ideas unlike their own. They only get propaganda that makes science look crazy. Maybe we need to remember what they have forgotten and be humble and try to reach out. Well, I’m not sure I have the nerve to try it out but I am inspired.
We don’t have to be mean about it, but there is absolutely no advantage, and in fact it is simply wrong, to “accomodate” lies and liars. Creationism (as a “movement”) and its newest political viral form of ID are easily shown to be prefabricated lies intended to deceive the less-interested and/or anti-intellectual.
As with bigots, they of course are allowed to believe and preach – if they have the guts – their bullshit, but not with public funds and not as fact.
Goddogtired (funny handle!):
I agree. The accomodation I speak of is not one with those who would say anything, do anything to push their agenda. Remember, I think we should build common cause with religious people not so much on their scientific literacy (which is often non-existent) but on the core values they are likely to share with us. One of those core values has to be integrity; we shouldn’t play ball with those who deliberately lie or use misleading arguments, which is to say the *vast* majority of the professional creationists.
Most of the folks in the pews don’t fit that description, however. When they trot out a misleading argument or say something which is false, it’s because they are repeating something they’ve heard the ‘pros’ do. When that happens, we should ask them where they got the argument and then explain that their source is probably not being straight with them, and why.
That’s a tough sell sometimes, because they may have met the source and were much impressed by their displays of ‘religiousity’. You have to have rhetorical skill, and (which is harder) you have to show empathy. But there’s a way to do it that respects our target audience (the deceived) while not letting the deceivers off the hook. It can be done.
Sincerely…Scott
Scott
I have argued before–and it corresponds to some comments here–that most believers in the U.S. are what I would call “apathetics”. They go through the motions in order to get along in their lives both personally and professionally but don’t really put much stock in the theology or ideology.
With these people you don’t really need them to take a public stand, probably they won’t, but just do enough to convince them that it is in their best interest to support science.
E. O. Wilson – SciFri Podcast – 2006090825
http://media.libsyn.com/media/sciencefriday/scifri-2006090825.mp3
I recall Wilson saying
When asked about ID and “culture wars”, Wilson dismisses them in a few sentences, saying in effect it far more important for our quality of life and our survival to find those areas where secularists and religious people can find agreement and affect change.
See also http://tinyurl.com/htp3t the NPR page for Edward O. Wilson, Bridging Science and Religion.
In this disicussion on “Talk of the Nation,” in addition to Wilson, there is a guest who is a Southern Baptist preacher who has changed his point of view enough to become an evangelist for preservation of biodiversity.
Hi Scott,
That is exactly the argument that E. O. Wilson is making. To many I suspect this is taken as some sort of vile appeasement — much like the GWB administration sees the left as appeasing the terrorists.
Wilson speaks of the strong positive reaction to his most recent book (The Creation: A Meeting of Science and Religion, September 2006, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.) he has had from evangelicals, many of whom have strong feelings about taking care of “God’s creation.” In one of those talks I linked to above, he says very clearly that, given the grim prognosis for biodiversity (one half of plants and animals becoming extinct this century) and the overwhelming number of religious people out there and the fact that most of those religious people share many of the same values with nonreligious people, the only rational course is to focus on the shared values and work together fix our planet.
That argument seems so solid to me I continued to be baffled by the attitude here toward labeling all religious people as “idiots” and “fools.” What is Wilson saying, what are you saying, that so enrages the “militant atheists” (for want of a better term)? How does his (your) argument fail to convince?
New York Times, Oct. 1969:
Evolution Stirs Coast School Debate
Oct 12, 1969, Sunday
By STEVEN V. ROBERTS
The teaching of evolution has become an issue in the public schools of California.
Several members of the State Board of Education objected Thursday to proposed guidelines for high school science courses.
The guidelines, they complain, presented evolution as a fact, not as a theory, and made no mention of the belief that the universe was created by God.
“Evolution should not be accepted as a fact without alluding to creationism, which is felt to be sound by many scientists,” said Dr. John Ford, a physician from San Diego.
Dr. Thomas Harwood, a physician from Needles, added: “I believe in the creation theory, not evolution. You people should try to find out more of a scientific background of creation. A lot of evolution theory is shot through with holes and there are many discrepancies. You don’t include the negative aspects of evolution.
…
It doesn’t matter how nice we are to them, these people will never stop.
Meanwhile on the subject of appeasement, the CC has been forced to make excuses for its head’s Regensburg lecture.
“Earlier Saturday, the head of the Roman Catholic Church said through a representative that his speech had been intended as a rejection of religiously-motivated violence from any side.” ( http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2175962,00.html )
What did the head say? “The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent.” ( http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html )
Apparently the head is speaking out on fundamentalism and terrorism. Why he does so is not clear. A church is not an humanistic independent organisation who can try to act nonpolitically.
“That is the sort of thing his predecessor would never have said. The overriding preoccupation of John Paul’s papacy was communism. For the Vatican, as for the United States until the 1990s, Islam was a potentially valuable ally in the struggle with Marxism.” ( http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1874274,00.html )
It is well and good that muslims tries to get an apology for the offence made to them. But the CC head also said “Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.” Why don’t humanists worldwide rate an apology for the likewise offensive suggestion that they are acting unethically?
“Under Benedict, the key issue, in Vatican-speak, is not ‘dialogue’ but ‘reciprocity’. … Benedict has made it clear that he sees freedom of worship as merely a start and that, for there to be full reciprocity, Catholic priests will need to be free to fish for souls in Muslim lands.”
So if we take our morals from the CC, we shouldn’t propose dialogue but work for our goals, and make excuses only when necessary. Isn’t that quite like what PZ is suggesting?
If it’s ‘dialogue’ you’re seeking, you’re free to volunteer to refute the endless stream of creationists who pop up at the various Internet education sites.
Since most of them will never ever argue rationally or give up their cherished beliefs, you can even continue that ‘dialogue’ indefinitely. What fun!
This is not the right thread. But there was a recent discussion here about Nazi’s links to the Lutheran Church, and here is a link on that, from the Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/15/AR2006091500979.html?referrer=emailarticle
Caledonian:
Well, of course, there’s little point in that! Most of those folks on-line are ‘pro’s’ in the sense that they are part of a cottage industry within Christianity eager to make a buck. Many of these even know that what they are selling is garbage, but they’ve found a niche market and they’re determined to exploit it. If you know the in’s and out’s of how they market themselves, it’s not too hard to figure out where their hearts are.
Again, since I recommend appealing to core values we have in common, we should make no peace with any outfit that’s making money peddling lies. Integrity is a core value, and we shouldn’t accomodate people who knowingly lie and use bad arguments. Instead, as I’ve said, we need to explain to those who will listen not only that the arguments are bad, but that those who make those arguments are not driven not by science, but by an ‘off-brand’ theology that most Christians will reject upon examination….Scott
“It doesn’t matter how nice we are to them, these people will never stop.”
Just so. Look, the discourse concerning the “religion problem” that is ongoing on this blog never seems to dig very far into the underlying question, which is why so many people persist in finding religion appealing and persuasive, and science, logic and rationality not. Until the powerful non-rational motivations that compel the religious hordes are well analyzed and accounted for, we the “rational atheists” are not likely to get anywhere positive with them, and will remain an anxious minority.
Religious people of whatever sect derive a host of real and imagined benefits from their convictions, including emotional succor, life everlasting, forgiveness, social relevance, financial support, and a whole lot of other things as well. One can’t much blame them for their tenacity and outrage at atheism when all atheism seems to offer is “nothingness.” And let’s face it, a satisfying cerebral appreciation of life, the universe and everything scientific is well beyond the intellectual grasp of many, perhaps most, ordinary people. Rather, the great majority of religious people are indeed sheep, and are often easily led by those who do not have their best interests at heart.
In short, we the unchurched are going to have to come up with a better offer, or it’s no sale.
It has been my experience, limited as it is, that the “folks in the pews,” while usually not deliberate liars themselves, tend to believe those lies pretty completely. When the creationist leaders accuse science of supporting atheism (which it actually does, like it or not), and atheism of being the source of all evil and suffering in the world (which it isn’t), these folks buy it. That means that if you stand up for science, they automatically close their minds against you. And it doesn’t matter what you say, if you support worldly evidence over faith, most will never accept that you share any of their values.
Sorry about the rant.
Also, don’t try to point out their leaders’ dishonesty by opening with: “Kent Hovind is a lying bastard.”
Trust me, they won’t listen after that.
How do you suggest to fight them and force them to move back?
Anyone who considers Kent Hovind to be their leader isn’t going to hear anything you say no matter how you say it.
Glad to see Vardy on PZ’s radar. When a Liberal Democrat MP raised the question of creationist teaching at Vardy Schools in Prime Ministers Questions (a once weekly halfhour of playground antics in the Garndmother of Parliaments where the MPs havee a balloted free-forall at the PM) he defended the Vardy schools under the flag of good results and choice. Yes, that’s the leader of Britain defending the teaching of creationism in the 21st century. BBC story from 2002 here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/1872331.stm
By inducing the government to actually enforce the principles it is supposed to adhere to, and removing all religious rituals and acknowledgements from the political sphere. That is, abolishing pre-Congressional prayers, “In God We Trust”, the religious aspects of the Pledge, and so forth.
I’ll try my point again (though some seem to have similar thinking):
We will NOT make headway until the ordinary majority so-called believer sees a downside to religion and believing. For now it is feel-good city for them. We are the whinning babies.
They are above the fray.. living secular lives. Their children learn real science, in good schools; they go to real doctors, etc. BUT they also get to say “I’ll pray for you” instead of really taking something out of their “pockets” for real. Not bad!
When the real middle-class average American feels negative consequences, you will see religion tumble like the house of cards it is. We’d just like reason, logic, and integrity to make it happen sooner! Don’t give up that fight .. but be forewarned.. people do like dem “warm and fuzzies!”
No, the whole idea is to get the government to do that. Beating back the religious rights obviously involves securing civil rights for atheists, but the question is how to secure these civil rights.
It seems to me that while I was talking about agressively making common cause with those in the pews in the interest of containing creationism, others are talking about containing organized religion itself.
No matter. My prescription would be the same: appealing to shared core values. The growth of science and technology (and hence the economy) depend, to some degree, on a dissatsfaction with current theories/models. In that light, principled skepticism is a virtue and the freedom to challenge any and every existing paradigm is not merely consistent with religious freedom, it is a highly desirable quality worth cultivating and one consonant with the increasing diversity of the American public.
Therefore, tolerance and respect for free-thinkers should be a core value. I don’t have to personally assent to skepticism on any point to see the value of that trait to society as a whole!….Scott
Re: Scott Hatfield’s comments.
I do not believe this strategy to be viable over time for two reasons:
The more effective strategy, in my opinion, is to continue to ensure that proper science standards are built into the mandated curriculum in every state in the U.S., to develop and strengthen a media campaign promoting awareness of the value of science, and in general, to do everything in our power to make science accessible to non-scientists. Keep science and reason in the center of public discourse, particularly when the idiot journalist pops up with the inevitable question of “teaching the controversy. Focus on the moral and ethical values of skepticism and rational inquiry. Make the religious pontificates define themselves in terms of you, do NOT define yourselves in terms of them.
That’s my $0.02. I has spoken.
I’m completely in agreement with Scott Hatfield.
Maybe choosing to go into the churches and plainly explain what the theory of evolution entails would be difficult and open a person to abuse, but doing so has benefits.
If nothing else, it’s our choice of battlefield, not theirs. Choosing the battlefield is still an important part of a fight. Not because you can always choose the most defensable ground, but because if you know the field you can plan around it. Right now the ground is being chosen by the creationists, and they are choosing to battle in the schools under the slogan of ‘teach the controversy’. Their second line of defense, once local parents have complained, is in the court system. They are losing in the courts, but the courts are not their primary battlefield.
We don’t really know how many schools are teaching creationism without it being noticed. That’s their battlefield, and we can only take it away from them by putting monitors in every classroom. We have to educate the parents to pay attention to their children’s teachers. We can only stop them when we spot them.
However, taking the fight against creationism to the churches is the battleground we should aspire to. Not to tell the churches that they are wrong. Not to tell the people in the pews that they are idiots. But instead to explain to them what the theory of evolution is, what the evidence is, and why it’s not a threat to their faith.
Like others on this thread have pointed out, the vast majority of the people in church are not particularly concerned about what happened 4000 years ago. They want the warm fuzzies religion provides. They can get that while still understanding evolutionary theory. They may have to believe in contradictory things, but they are already well-trained in that art.
Approach the worshipers, speak to them in a calm, reasonable manner, don’t directly insult them, help them to understand. Then come back to Pharyngula and kvetch about the IDiots in the audience. ;)
Cheers,
-Flex