I have mixed feelings about EO Wilson’s book, The Creation(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It’s wonderfully well written, it’s on a subject I care about and that Wilson is clearly passionate about, and it’s trying to straighten out religious people on an important matter, but it’s also written directly to an audience of which I am not a part. I found myself alienated by the style, and despite my appreciation of his effort, simply wasn’t able to finish the book. I’m going to have to try and wade through those last few chapters sometime, though, when I’m feeling charitable enough to be able to cope with being addressed as a Baptist minister.
Still, though, I agree that Wilson deserves to be awarded a Green Book Award for The Creation—we can’t afford to wait for all the Baptists to commit apostasy before we draft them to support biodiversity. Let’s hope he wins many more, and especially let’s hope more religious organizations start acknowledging his ideas!
We have a considerable amount of empirical evidence that some scientists can, on a personal level, reconcile their work with their religious beliefs. (We also have a whole lot more empirical evidence that without rationalization, science and religion can clash horribly. Exhibit A: the entire creationist movement.) This may, in a sociological way, provide some benefit to the scientific enterprise. For example, when Francis Collins claims that a human trait like reasoning ability or moral behavior is evidence of divine handiwork, I don’t have to accept that as given. Instead, I can take it as a “red flag” indicating that here we have an interesting problem to solve.
(Whatever its emotional appeal, of course, Collins’s solution to the problem of morality is not philosophically satisfying. We may be moral beings because Jehovah willed it so, or because the Invisible Pink Unicorn touched us with His magical horn, or because the royal house of Tau Ceti IV likes to eat Earthlingburgers and wants us lily-livered in the face of their invasion!)
Mechanisms like peer review establish a kind of reciprocal accountability in the scientific community. Frauds and bad ideas are, over time, winnowed out. While I habitually distrust such jargon being used to lend a spurious air of rigor to social proclamations, I think it’s fair to say that science has an emergent property of integrity. The community as a whole can be just a bit more honest than its members. It is also, for the same reason, less theistic.
And while we’re thinking about the properties of organizations versus individuals, EO Wilson has made me wonder about something else, too.
We know that many people do, as individuals, reconcile science and faith, reason with mysticism. Through some unknown mechanism, we can compartmentalize our minds and ask a different kind of question on Sundays than during the work week. Some such “compartmentalizers” have been effective agents in the struggle against creationism. Their efforts to support the truth should not be neglected. I think it’s entirely right to list their names and offer them our gratitude, but I believe trotting out a list of religious evolutionists at every opportunity may blind us to a more serious problem.
If, as the evidence suggests, people can compromise between their scientific training and their religious heritage, why cannot the churches do the same? The shady dealings and outright lies of the creationist movement are apparent to anyone who examines the evidence. That’s how you defend something fundamentally untrue: you lie. You make up lies of your own or blindly repeat those of other people. Why, then, do we not see the mainstream Christian denominations issuing stern rebukes of the Intelligent Design advocates? Taking a slightly broader perspective, if the beauty of a DNA helix or a spiral galaxy lends support to the subtlety of God and the glory of Creation, why don’t we see murals of galaxies going up in all the churches?
Instead, we see either silence or — in the worst cases — collusion. Does the protestation of shared faith shield creationist liars from reproof?
“Trust not in lying words, saying: The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, it is the temple of the Lord.” — Jeremiah 7:4
You may like this:
http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/2/9/94229/04000
Her magical horn.
(Blessed Be Her Holy Hooves)
Correction accepted. (Although a goddess taking the pronoun He makes no less sense as being both invisible and pink.)
Blake Stacey wrote,
Does Evolution Sunday count?
I haven’t read Wislon’s book (yet?). Can you explain in more detail what in the style made you feel uncomfortable or alienated? Thanks.
Donna
The most innovative and successful businesses create new markets. The best teachers know their audience–they teach by using their audience’s metaphors and by appealing to their values.
Wilson knows that believers are our untapped target audience. It takes a truly great teacher to begin this dialogue. More power to him.
Getting Things Done in Academia
advice for graduate students in the sciences
The book is written explicitly to recruit the evangelical/fundamentalist community to come to the aid of planet earth. Wilson often directly addresses the reader as “Reverend”, for instance, and the whole thing is written in the second-person form. It’s a little off-putting if you don’t fit his intended audience.
As always, I think Blake Stacey makes some excellent points. I agree absolutely that mainstream Christian churches need to start distancing themselves from the Intelligent Design advocates. It is bad science AND bad theology! I am encouraged by the pro-science (and pro-Darwin) attitudes found in the Episcopal Catechism, to be found at the following:
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/19021_58398_ENG_HTM.htm
It’s a start! I wish the Presbyterians would follow this lead. And thank you, Blake, for your recognition of the value of those of us who are trying to effect this change from the “inside.”
SteveT,
What problem do you have the the PC(USA) position? The GA ruled, waaayy back in 1969, that
To me, a scientist and an elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA), this seems like a sensible position.
Steve
SteveT, I’m nominally Episcopal, and I agree that those attitudes are encouraging, but the impending schizm between the liberal-American flavor and the Anglican Communion (on the issues of female clergy and openly gay clergy) is not.
SWT,
Although I appreciate the willingness of the GA to declare that evolution and Creation are theologically compatible, I prefer the more explicit and concrete statements in support of evolution (and science in general) that are contained in the Episcopal Catechism. I will note that the Catechism is not an “official” position of the Episcopal Church, while the GA statement IS an official position for the PCUSA, so perhaps what I would really like is a Presbyterian equivalent of that section of the Catechism.
Kseniya,
I am impressed by the willingness of the American Episcopals to allow the schism to occur, rather than back down on an issue of such importance. To stand fast in the face of such a split is a commendable example of their willingness to suffer difficulties rather than compromise their basic principles.
I think the above is an excellent example of a mainstream Christian church standing up to the fundamentalists, even at some cost. Hopefully it’s the start of a trend!
Kudos to E.O. Wilson. I’m afraid though, that he’s going to be preaching to the choir. The Christian (or whomever) picking up his book is already afraid for the future of this Earth.
He wrote another book, many years ago, called ‘On Human Nature’ which talked in a philosophical way about religion (among other things) from the perspective of an evolutionary explanation for human development. The cruel irony of this book (missed by the author himself) is that once you understand where religion is really coming from, you also understand why factual arguments can never reach the true believers.
Certainly, a willingness to put the facts first and the theories second has brought the human species tremendous power to alter the world to our liking, and for this reason, few will disregard science entirely.
But faith, which puts theory first and fact second, has brought us another kind of power, the power to make war. It’s easy to say war is a bad thing; but for most living things, the big competitor is other members of the same species. Historically, the ‘Jesus Camp’ people are right: faith is a real weapon, and reproductive competition is one of the ways that one society comes to dominate another.
Conditions now are different, of course. The next total war will be the last for a very very long time, and reproductive success is threatening to break the ecosystem that supports it. It would seem that the time has come to walk away from faith.
Well, good luck with that, because my understanding of evolution is this: when change is rapid, species do not ‘evolve’ a new set of characteristics to match the new set of conditions (Lysenko); instead they become extinct, and are replaced by others, already possessed of the ‘right stuff’.
The collapse of civilization, if it comes to that, is going to push our species through a very nasty ‘bottleneck’. The really bad news? The remnants who go through that bottleneck are just as likely to be ‘true believers’ as ‘free thinkers’.
Not if we do unto them before they do unto us.
I am beginning to believe that we’re rapidly approaching the point where that will be the only hope of survival.
I am impressed by the willingness of the American Episcopals to allow the schism to occur, rather than back down on an issue of such importance. To stand fast in the face of such a split is a commendable example of their willingness to suffer difficulties rather than compromise their basic principles.
very similar to what happened with the Lutherans a few decades back.
I suspect debates like this continue to run hot within most protestant denominations within the US (that haven’t already split, that is).
Careful, PZ, comments like “we can’t afford to wait for all the Baptists to commit apostasy before we draft them to support biodiversity” might get you labeled an appeaser. :-)
RLaing writes: The cruel irony of this book (missed by the author himself) is that once you understand where religion is really coming from, you also understand why factual arguments can never reach the true believers.
That’s only the case if the “true beleivers” are as large a portion of the population as the media reports (which I doubt) and that they are not influenced by those religious people who some ability to open their minds.
For myself, when I heard Wilson speak on NPR about this book what struck me was how clear he was about being a nonbeliever (in God) and the depth of feeling he has for preserving the biodiversity of the planet.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5788810
They even bring a Southern Baptist minister on the program, a guy who has been “converted” by Wilson’s line of reasoning.
Unfortunately also Wilson is (unfairly) smeared with the supposed “sins” of sociobiology.