I know that Guy Consolmagno, the Vatican astronomer, is a nice guy, and that he supports good science…but he’s also a wackaloon who makes twisted rationalizations for god-belief. In a recent interview, that tendency is on full display.
Despite people often having the “crazy idea” that science and religion conflict, science is “really one of our best principles for getting to know God,” he told CNA.
So now god is a material, natural entity? The kind of thing that science can study? Someday, we’ll get one of these guys to actually define concretely what they mean by “god”. Not this time, though! Consalmagno is just full of squinky evasive fluff in this interview.
During his talk, titled “The Word Became Flesh,” the planetary scientist explained that modern atheists tend to understand God as being merely a force that “fills the gaps” in our understanding of the universe.
No, we don’t. I understand god as the nebulous nonsense that believers try to impose on our understanding of what we do know. Every time we call them on some babble they make about how the world works, though, they willingly and enthusiastically flee into the gaps.
I call the gaps in knowledge “gaps”. I don’t call them “gods”.
“To use God to fill the gaps in our knowledge is theologically treacherous,” Br. Consolmagno said, because it minimizes God to just another force inside the universe rather than recognizing him as the source of creation.
Oooh, “theologically treacherous”. That’s a good thing, right? I’d love to sneak up behind Theology in the dark and stab it in the kidneys.
Those who believe in God should not be afraid of science, but should see it as a an opportunity that God gave humanity to get to know him better.
No god “gave” us science. It is hard work and human effort that enables science — and what we see is a universe with no need for any deity, anthropomorphic or otherwise, and especially no need for the bizarrely quaint and exceedingly silly dogma of Jesus.
Br. Consolmagno said that he believes in God, “not because he is at the end of some logical chain of calculations” but because he “experienced what physics and logic can show me but cannot explain: beauty and reason and love.”
Oh, crap. Isn’t Consolmagno supposed to be one of the smart ones? So why is he trotting out this same stupid bullshit that Joe Doofus splutters every time he encounters an atheist? I experience beauty and love all the time; they are part of my perceptions and experience, are responses of my mind and brain, and are not invoked by some mysterious supernatural force. Dogs know love, and I suspect they recognize beauty (which is very different from our sense of beauty) — are these senses instilled by a god of dogs? I don’t think so.
The primary difference between him and atheistic scientist Stephen Hawking is that he recognizes that God is not another part of the universe that explains the inexplicable, but rather “Logos” and “Reason itself.”
The bullshit is rising. I’m drowning! Help!
If God is reason, then it does not need me to worship it, and certainly has no anthropic perspective, let alone desires or goals. It just is, like gravity or the weak force, and all the rituals and prayers and magical dogmas are irrelevant and a distraction from the reality — it means that god is the principle that atheists, not Catholics, live by, and we can just repurpose the churches as bowling alleys and dinner theaters, recycle all the bibles and print physics and chemistry and biology texts on them, and dismantle the church hierarchies and put the people to work productively. Consolmagno, for instance, could be a full-time astronomer rather than a part-time apologist for stupidity.
He spoke of the faith needed to embrace Christianity and said that although other world religions and philosophies can give us a rational view of the universe, “only the Gospel could tell us that Reason itself became flesh and dwelt among us” in the form of Jesus Christ.
Wait…what happened to that talk of god being “reason”? Now he’s suddenly meat. And sectarian meat at that.
The Incarnation is remarkable because it happened, Br. Consolmagno said, and also due to the way it occurred. In coming into the world as an infant, God “exercised a kind of supernatural restraint” which still respected the laws of nature.
This is the kind of absurd and fundamentally dishonest inconsistency I find so objectionable in religion. One minute their god is “reason” or the “ground state of all being” or some similar vague cosmic principle, and the next they’re telling us that gravity/reason/language turned itself into bare-skinned baby ape (Why? Because it wanted to!), walked around, appointed a pope, told us that women are unclean, hated a few gay people, slaughtered some fig trees and Mycobacterium leprae, violated a few laws of physics (or played some cheap magic tricks), and told us to follow a set of arbitrary parochial rules and obey a child-raping priesthood, and then vanished off to some paradise in the sky.
I know reason, Mr Consolmagno, and I think your vision of reason constitutes an extreme act of disrespect to the principle, and shows that you don’t have the slightest clue about what you’re discussing.
It’s like the guy who called “The Atheist Experience” in Austin and was briefly at a loss for words when the hosts asked him what evidence believers have for the existence of God. When pressed on the point that there’s no good evidence for believers to present, the caller replied, “Well, at least they have faith!”
Yeah, like that’s worth a lot.
And here’s an example of a faith-rotted mind: Rick Santorum.
Yes, I guess we don’t yet need the 3 persons in 1 gap: gap the father, gap the son, and the wholly gap.
I’m not sure he actually believes this crap — he just needs to spout incoherent nonsense periodically in order to keep his job. I don’t know which is the more generous interpretation, however.
Science is very good at explaining the belief in God, in that primitive peoples would have sought answers to questions like “where do earthquakes come from” and “where do we come from” – not having geophysical or evolutionary science at hand, they’d have projected their own situation onto the universe. Toolmakers in primitive societies were very important – so the world must have been made by a great toolmaker. Alpha males ruled their local social groups – so a great alpha being in the sky must rule the universe.
Comparing the Pope to an alpha chimp is however not a good way for one of his underlings to keep the cash flow active, so don’t expect any discussion of this principle by the clergy.
Ikesolem, you do alpha chimps a disservice with your analogy… ;-)
Of course, I’ve just reread your comment & twigged that you weren’t actually doing that. So now I look like a chimp.
I’ve heard several times that the Vatican “has the finest scientists in the world.” What exactly is this relationship- does the Vatican keep a group of scientists from Catholic universities on retainer? Are these scientists Jesuit monks?
If his “God” chose to be born in order to obey the laws of nature, how come he broke so many of them after he was born???
Water -> Wine
Walking on water
Raising the dead
Raising from the dead himself
And those are just the major ones Christians talk the most about.
Why obey the laws of nature to be born only to disregard them later? Oh, that’s right… Because he CAN.
On another note, why would Reason sacrifice itself to itself to appease itself because some apes didn’t behave (or rather did behave in an entirely predictable manner if one knows anything about them)?
I really hate Just-So explanations of “primitive” societies.
Especially ones that contain dreck like “alpha males”.
Comparing the Pope to an alpha chimp
They don’t call him the Primate of Rome for nothing…
God must be omnipotent, because no matter where I look I can find Him, and who else besides an all-powerful Being would be that good at hide-and-go-seek?
Death rides a pale Buffalo.
crap it should read “God must be omnipotent, because no matter where I look I can’t find Him, and who else besides an all-powerful Being would be that good at hide-and-go-seek?” God damn dyslexia.
I think you should cut the guy some slack. First off, he isn’t talking to you. He’s in the unenviable position of trying to promote, or at least justify, science to his own crowd, the believers. What you’re quoting are his attempts to connect the vocabulary of terms and ideas used in science, to the vocabulary of terms and ideas that his audience has grown up listening to. He’s doing a sales job for reason, using the highly unreasonable language of Catholic dogma. It sounds very awkward and I have no idea how successful it is with the intended audience, but that you or I don’t find it credible isn’t relevant.
Quite, cortesi.
At least he’s saying that if God is Logos, respect reason. The IDiots say that they worship Logos, then they say that the exact same sort of evidence for relatedness that reliably indicates “microevolution” (wherever they draw that line today) has no bearing on the facticity of “macroevolution,” indicating that they don’t care about reason at all. Arguably, they’re blasphemers according to their beliefs.
The point being that if you worship God as Reason, maybe you shouldn’t be afraid to reason. If you don’t accept John 1, he’s not talking to you.
Glen Davidson
Is this that sumfusticated theolurgy we keep hearing about?
The organization he works for is run by someone who knows first hand waht Nazi Germany was like and co-opts that to attack atheists…so yeah no.
Oh sorry. We’ll go sit in the corner. tell us when we’re allowed to speak. I want to use this from now on. Someone bitches about Richard Dawkins? Well don’t he wasn’t talking to you!
NMFP
And he’s doing a shitty job at both promoting science and religion.
Right he is co-opting science to sale catholocism. Shame on him.
I’m sorry but when someone’s job is to provide the plausible denability to people that they require to cold an irrational and harmful allegiance then I don’t care if I’m not the intended audience. Limbaugh isn’t talking to me either but his bullshit does the same thing
@ julietdefarge @8:
“What exactly is this relationship- does the Vatican keep a group of scientists from Catholic universities on retainer? Are these scientists Jesuit monks?”
The latter. The Vatican Observatory (http://vaticanobservatory.org/) is staffed almost entirely by Jesuit monks – although last I heard, they had one diocesan priest working with them. Technically PZ should have said “Brother Consolmagno” or “Doctor Consolmagno” above, unless the “Mister” was deliberate.
The observatory staff splits their time between their observing site in Arizona and their headquarters at Castel Gandolfo south of Rome. They used to be on the top floor of the old papal palace, but they were recently moved into a different building thanks to a generous donation (the Church already owned the building – it used to be an abbey – the donation covered the renovation). Guy was quite happy about this when I visited his new lab last year. The older building had lousy climate control, which isn’t good for the meteorites he’s working on.
One thing I’ve noticed when talking with Guy is that he’s constantly explaining religion to the scientists and explaining science to the religious (although the two categories of people aren’t mutually exclusive, of course). Those two jobs require different vocabulary, and he’s fairly adept at shifting between them, but sometimes it’s a bit difficult for me to know when the language has changed.
And Love turned into a beer bottle and got in a fight down in the Castro, while Logic manifested as a duck and quacked Desire
P Z Myers
Most importantly I think you should finish this excellent poem. I liked where it was going (I think).
davidcortesi @15 No slack cut here, sorry.
Brother Guy Consolmagno, Vatican Astronomer says:
Hello Vatican Observatory? Your claim has been empirically tested and shown to be factually wrong. The members of the National Academy of Sciences disagree: 72.2% do not believe in a personal god, 20.8% have doubts or are agnostic and only 7% actually believe in a personal god
Any statement made in public may be dissected in public by any other party.
Marcus:
There once was a logical Duck…
… why do I keep thinking Altaiir on reading that?
#15davidcortesi: “It sounds very awkward and I have no idea how successful it is with the intended audience, but that you or I don’t find it credible isn’t relevant.”
bullshit
…and you know it, or you wouldn’t be applying your accomodationist contortions with such single-minded verve. What puzzles me is that you think nobody will notice the smell of crap.
I like the god of dogs notion – I’d watch one of their televangelists woofing the Doggospel. Still, would the Dog Messiah have needed to lick his genitals before performing a miracle?
I’m sure he honestly, sincerely believes it every Sunday and holiday, and the rest of the time he simply doesn’t care about the entire issue.
In other words, he’s lying to everyone. I doubt he’s explaining to scientists that religion is entirely a psychological phenomenon, because his job is to try and sell his god. And we know he’s not telling the poor fragile believers that science hasn’t found a god and doesn’t need one.
I need some help here. I looked up Consolmagno on the Comedy Channel and didn’t get a hit. Does he do stand-up? Any appearances on Leno or Letterman?
Any Italians out there know if he has a comedy show in Italy? Is he an internationally known comic or just local? Does he do any other type of comedy such as scatology or insult?
Oops, I shouldn’t have asked about insult, he insults reality.
Poor old God aka Logos, he must be most upset to see how religious rules and teachings so flagrantly violate his intrinsic principle.
PZ this is very well put “If God is reason, then it does not need me to worship it, and certainly has no anthropic perspective, let alone desires or goals. It just is, like gravity or the weak force, and all the rituals and prayers and magical dogmas are irrelevant and a distraction from the reality — it means that god is the principle that atheists, not Catholics, live by,”
I have no desire to learn why the Vatican astronomer believes or says that crap but he must know what he sees of the universe does not match anything that his religion describes as real.
The only thing that can be said in his favor is that he is being a good boy.
I do not want to know what his pain is.
uncle frogy
@27,rr says: “In other words, he’s lying to everyone. I doubt he’s explaining to scientists that religion is entirely a psychological phenomenon, because his job is to try and sell his god. And we know he’s not telling the poor fragile believers that science hasn’t found a god and doesn’t need one.”
Bingo.
The question constantly returns: who’s more condescending? Theists or accomodationists? Here’s the kick: they both gripe about being insulted. Both groups pretend to speak from lofty positions of ethical and moral superiority. Both groups assume a veneer of entitlement and dispensation. And neither group appears to notice the screaming sound of counter-rotating gears of contradiction getting their teeth sheared away.
Theology turns category error into an art form.
Theologians and other apologists are very good at working with the sloppy tendencies of the human mind, and they happily trade on our ability to blur distinctions and engage in doublethink. If A is similar to B in some superficial way, then we can use them interchangeably and pretend we’re seeing a significant connection below the surface. Evidently, we’re not supposed to notice the the abrupt shift in focus where God goes from being a real spiritual person to being a personified metaphor for an abstraction. God is love, and it represents love, and it embodies love, and it feels love, and anything and everything that will allow you to believe in love because you believe in God … and you believe in God because you believe in love.
And to Hell with the unbelievers, who must perforce not be able to understand, want, receive, give, respond to, or believe in “love.”
Let’s trade in clarity for a passionate commitment that rides roughshod over the petty details and divides skeptics into a category of intransigent assholes, okay?
No. Let’s not.
davidcortesi #15 wrote:
Well yes, of course we know this: Consolmagno is trying to reconcile faith with science and speaks to the faithful. But that is precisely why we are not willing to cut the fine gentleman some slack on this issue. When you speak to the faithful and try to convince them their views are reasonable, you forget that the honest obligation of a scientific approach ought to be towards seeking and speaking truth — not spin-doctoring cognitive errors into “truthiness.”
Besides, the more “reasonable” belief in God becomes, the more unreasonable it is to be an atheist. This is not a benign project where they will end up becoming more like us; this is a nasty bit of trickery where we will end up being rejected for being less than human.
I feel sympathy for Consolmagno the way I feel sympathy for some New Age “energy” healer trying to spew their pseudoscientific bullshit to a room of hard-nosed physicians and physicists. Oh, poor thing, they lost their sympathetic audience. Good.
We hear what they think and say about science, and we know what they think and say about us behind our backs. Time to be made accountable to the world at large.
“Science” can too explain love and beauty.
“Science” — being a concept and not a person — cannot experience love nor beauty. Being human, scientists are perfectly capable of having such experiences. As are writers, computer programmers, secretaries, Congresspeople, and every else not suffering from clinical sociopathy.
It’s really annoying to have the two conflated by the religious over and over and over again.
And the set “scientists” is not the same as the set “atheists”. This is merely another way of tarring science as a concept with the scarlet letter.
Which is odd, coming from a purported scientist.
PZ: “I call the gaps in knowledge “gaps”. I don’t call them “gods”.”
THIS
It is uncouth and fundamentally dishonest to patch up gaps in knowledge with the false mortar of knowledge.
To be broadly consistent theists who, for example, might wonder what hand an opponent holds in a poker game must attribute that gap in their knowledge to God. Logically, this can only mean that ignorance of any stripe and wherever it is encountered is already identified by them. The conclusion is clear: it must be a God of non-knowledge. They have themselves characterized it.
@myself @19:
I mistyped above. Guy doesn’t constantly talk about religion to scientists – when I’ve talked with him, and when I’ve seen him at scientific meetings, religion has only come up once and that was in jest. He is a scientist, and quite a good one, after all.
It’s in his more popular writings and interviews that he gets into the science-to-religion and religion-to-science discussions.
Apparently that’s exactly what he tells them. He just goes on to claim that that’s because science is so limited it can’t explain love & beauty & reason, and similar bullshit.
God is Legos and Reason Itself?
Cool! I love Legos! I’m gonna make mine look like the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
[Hey, quit hogging all the white bricks…]
Does anyone else notice how all Christian apologetics devolves into presuppositionalism eventually? His line about God being reason and logos (word, logic, reason, ratio etc.) itself is about as Calvinist as it gets.
In my years of analyzing these things, I came to the conclusion that these people, before they go to debate or even make a statement, are impervious to reason because they already take their beliefs as axiomatic.
I would almost support America’s present war in Afghanistan if our “leaders” promised to fund it by invading the Vatican, slaughtering everything wearing priestly garb, and confiscating the loot.
And try not to step on one. O.O
PZ… one of your more well-focused, well-defended critiques. Nice job. (Particularly like the ideas of recyling the bibles into science books, and giving Br. Conso–(known as ‘C-Bro’ on the theological mean streets of Vatican City)– a shot at full-time astronomy.
(I feel bad for ‘C-Bro); sounds like he might be a decent guy if he could shake the spirits.)
Aww come on PZ, everyone knows that gaps are hole-y…
Bababoom. Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.
“…God as being merely a force that “fills the gaps…”
I first read that as “…God as being merely a FARCE that “fills the gaps…”
I think I can go with that.
The good MIT graduate Bro. Consolmagno who is no dummy and indeed actually does science – for some reason had a brain-fart in his mid-30’s and went all religious on us.
I feel sad for us (not him – he’s where he wants to be). Why? Because he is otherwise a brilliant man – compromised by the religion mental defect (I mean it – one cannot be a believer like he is being so modern brilliant and not have some psychological problem) – and he cannot give the World his full potential as a scientist. We lose!
He is forced because of this defect to have to share his intellect with rubbish. This is a good example (copied from a Nov 2011 Aostaoggi interview re: intelligent life extraterrestrially). The bottom line is he knows the science but shares his presentation with so much god and RCC dogma shit that he has to be running half speed at best scientifically.
It seems to me that every scientific thing he does requires effort on his part to force fit it into a religious context.
The ramifications (and they are negative) of that are evident to me. Sorry no time to further explain other than via this anology:
You are a master brake mechanic who makes a living doing that (or tries to) and you for some reason are compelled to put your every move and conclusion in terms of gremlins and their effects on brakes. And to make matters worse you must couch your statements regarding this juxtaposition so that a 3 year old can relate to them – AND ENSURE YOUNG AND OLD CONTINUE TO BELIEVE IN GREMLINS EVEN THOUGH IT IS CLEAR THAT THERE IS NO COMPELLING REASON TO – EVEN TO A 3 YEAR OLD. I ask you would you really be an efficient and effective talented master mechanic?
Here’s the excerpt – the juxtaposition of science with bullshit makes me want to cry – this is a man I otherwise can respect – sickening – not that he is religious personally – but he has to inject it into science.
La Chiesa ci insegna che l’uomo è figlio di Dio. Se gli alieni esistessero davvero, dovremmo considerali nostri fratelli?
«Siamo tutti creature di Dio. Qualsiasi essere in grado di “consapevolezza” di sé e dell’esistenza degli altri, e che è libero di scegliere di amare gli altri o di rifiutarli, secondo san Tommaso d’Aquino avrebbe i tratti dell’animo umano, cioè fatto “a immagine e somiglianza di Dio”. Quindi, se gli extraterrestri avessero queste caratteristiche di “intelligenza” e di “libero arbitrio”, non solo sarebbero nostri fratelli ma condividerebbero con noi la stessa “immagine e somiglianza”.»
Secondo gli insegnamenti della Fede Cristiana, Adamo, capo dell’umanità, ad un certo momento ha rotto i rapporti di amicizia con Dio ed è stato cacciato dal Paradiso terrestre, trasmettendo ai suoi discendenti le conseguenze di quel suo peccato. Poi venne Gesù, il Figlio di Dio, che si è incarnato e con la sua passione e morte in croce ha riscattato l’umanità riconciliandola di nuovo con Dio. In che modo i possibili extraterrestri potrebbero entrare nell’opera redentrice di Cristo?
«Per ora non sappiamo niente riguardo la natura e la storia dei possibili abitatori di mondi sconosciuti nello spazio. Una cosa è certa: il centro della fede è che Gesù è il Figlio di Dio, fatto uomo, e che per mezzo di lui e in vista di lui tutto è stato creato. Quindi, ogni realtà creata, ogni realtà intelligente e libera che si trovi nell’universo ha sempre un riferimento fondamentale e radicale con la creazione da parte di Dio e con l’evento di salvezza che si realizza in Cristo».
On refection I need to explain what struck me reading the article I referenced (the bit I copied).
We is actually “insisting” that if there is “intelligent life” it has to be like us who are made in the image and likeness of god.
Stop and think about how that is so CONTRARY to scientific thinking. Not because it has god in it – but because it has a dogmatic driven a priori assumption in it.
I haven’t time to explain – hope you see my point.
Yes, of course. Wait! Oh no.. that means cephalopod beauty is instilled by… Aaaaaargh!
runs off screaming
Actually I’m going to agree with him here. In the same way that we understand Santa, Zoroaster & Zeus.
Well it appears he has a problem, since he’s also saying science is “really one of our best principles for getting to know God.” Which might lead one to believe that he has actual scientific evidence that a god exists.
@#11 Brownian:
Is it entirely dreck? I thought it was pretty uncontroversial, except among the political-primitivist fringe, that tribal societies in general were/are anything but egalitarian and have informal male-dominated hierarchies.
I can appreciate the limited attention that people are giving to the hoggling that Ikesolem is doing, but there’s a point at which the shit xe writes becomes bothersome.
A part from Brownian and me, Ikesolem is getting what looks like a free pass on that ‘dreck’.
Catholic apologists are upset by atheist assertions that religion is not rational. Their response is to echo Aquinas’ rhetoric that faith and reason are compatible and never at odds. This of course was the sophist who pondered how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.
Aquinas’ brand of “reason” came to rejected by Catholics such as Occam, to say nothing of what Reformation and Enlightenment figures might have said about it. It is not good enough that one make deductions. To say “If the snake in Genesis could talk, it is rational to deduce that it could sing” is perhaps a primitive form of reason, but it hardly proves anything, much less demonstrates that the snake existed.
But this is what Thomism and theology in general amount to. One can ostensibly employ “reason” to discuss God’s role in nature, but this would fall under the category of science fiction. Christian apologists seem incapable of comprehending that science is not solely governed by reason, it also involves empiricism. One must provide evidence for their theories, or move on. The existence of God is not a verifiable theory, much less a fact that science has demonstrated. That must be why most scientists are atheists.
Retreading Aquinas’ garbage proves nothing, sorry Catholics.