Ayala fires a shot across the ‘New’ Atheist bows

The London Times has a piece on Ayala’s Templeton prize, and it annoys me early:

Professor Francisco Ayala, who won the £1 million Templeton Prize for scientific thought,

Say what? There’s no amount of science you can do that will win you a Templeton prize. It’s a prize for religious apologetics, nothing more.

And then Ayala reveals why he won the prize. Not for science, but because he doesn’t like those annoying atheists.

said that attacking religion and ridiculing believers provided ammunition for religious leaders who insisted that followers had to choose between God and Darwin. “Richard Dawkins has been a friend for more than 20 years, but it is unfortunate that he goes beyond the boundaries of science in making statements that antagonise believers,” he said.

That Dawkins antagonizes believers is a given, but then, antagonizing them is a trivial exercise — run a sign past them that says “Don’t believe in God? You aren’t alone” and they’ll scream “oppression!” Many of us are quite happy to antagonize deluded believers in superstition, and we aren’t too happy with scientists who suck up to them instead.

But that other comment about going “beyond the boundaries of science” is a curious one. Where? I think that when you invoke an invisible, undetectable ghost in the sky who diddles quanta or turns into a man who raises the dead, then you are going beyond the boundaries of science. When someone points out that there is no evidence of such activities, that the claims of supernaturalists are contradictory and unreasonable, or explains that the material claims of priests are fair game for critical examination, they are actually operating entirely within the domain of science.

I would like to see a specific example from Ayala of an invalid scientific argument from Dawkins or any of the other ‘New’ Atheist scientists — or is it his belief that antagonizing believers is sufficient to make a claim unscientific? In which case we’d have to argue that the Catholic Church was acting ‘scientifically’ in their treatment of Galileo.

Ayala has more Templeton-worthy comments to make.

The professor, who was born in Spain and is a naturalised American, says science and religion cannot be in contradiction because they address different questions. It is only when either subject oversteps its boundary, as he believes is the case with Professor Dawkins, that a contradiction arises, he said. “The scientific fundamentalism proposed by Dawkins implies a materialistic view of the world. But once science has had its say, there remains much about reality that is of interest. Common sense tells us that science can’t tell us everything.”

Again with the boundary. Where is this boundary, please, and where does Dawkins cross it? Be specific.

It is absurd to claim that science and religion can’t be in contradiction. Look at Ken Ham’s Creation “Museum”; that’s pure religion through and through, and it is clearly in contradiction with science. QED. Perhaps Ayala wants to claim that his religion (if he has one) is not in contradiction to science, but that’s also bogus; science obtains its information from empirical observation of the real world, not magic and not revelation and not the interpretation of sacred texts. Almost every religion proposes an alternate source of information from a supernatural entity; science challenges those explanations.

What aspects of reality are not subject to science, or materialism, or natural investigation? I’d like to know. Is Ayala proposing ghosts or angels or gods capable of intervening in the world? (I will do him the credit of assuming that he’s not going to trot out the idiotic claim that love is not natural, which is the usual inane example that gets thrown at us.)

One interesting thing about Ayala is that he always avoids the topic of his own personal beliefs about gods, which he claims is to avoid biasing people about his views, but which instead to me looks like intellectual cowardice: if you will not lay your ideas out on the table plainly, no one can criticize them. Here’s a standard disclaimer from Ayala in a Spanish source (google translation).

Question. In his youth he was ordained a Dominican priest. Are you still a man of faith?

Answer. Never answer that question. Do not want any of the parties, faith or religion, influence how people perceive my views.

Either he’s one of those faitheists, who doesn’t personally believe but thinks other people should, or he holds a few ideas about gods that he knows are indefensible. Either way, I’m unimpressed. It means he’s going to hide his opinions safely away, and as we can see in the Times article, snipe away at atheists (we already know he won’t snipe at his fellow travelers in the Templeton world, which hints at where his loyalties lie already.)

He also gives two of the usual NOMA arguments for religion: that it’s domain is answering the “why” questions and providing morality.

Science and religion are two windows to look at the world. The world is watching it. But what is seen from the windows is completely different. Religion is the meaning and purpose of life and moral values and science attempts to explain the composition of matter, the origin of organisms. Areas are different, but not at odds. It is possible to maintain a scientific position and being religious.

Total nonsense.

An answer on the meaning and purpose life built around an untestable and often falsified proposition is no answer at all. I could declare right now that the meaning of life is found in the worship of Saturn, which is where the aliens who created life on earth reside, and where our souls will return at death, and sure, it is an answer, but it’s wrong and it’s a lie. Christians can declare that the meaning of life is found in Jesus all they want, but I don’t believe it (and neither do the Muslims or Hindus or Shintoists), and it isn’t a good answer, since they’ve got no reason but tradition and fear to back it up. Religion is a free-floating myth, completely wrong and therefore invalid as an answer.

As for morality…what a joke. Has he looked at the ethical shambles of his former church? The child abuse revelations keep pouring out. We cannot possibly take religion’s leadership in moral issues seriously — the purpose of the church is to maintain power and an exalted status for its leadership, not to provide any insight into the beneficent desires of a heavenly patron of our species. Unless, of course, the message is that raping children is a good and kind act.

Anyway, now you can see why Ayala won the Templeton Prize. He’s a master of the non-committal waffle, the pious denial of any problem with faith. He’s definitely not acting on the side of science in his declarations about religion, because science tends to be a bit more open and bold than that.

I’ve always wondered what he looked like

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The regal figure to the right is Terrill Dalton. He had a vision that revealed that he, personally, was the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ’s dad. Who knew the Holy Ghost would look a bit like the Pillsbury Doughboy?

Anyway, the Holy Ghost has come down a bit in the world. He’s now living in a collection of campers and vans on a 5 acre lot in Montana, leading a breakaway Mormon sect that was too crazy for Utah.

Members of the Church of the Firstborn and General Assembly of Heaven had fled to Idaho from Utah last year after their large home in a Salt Lake City suburb was raided by federal officials investigating claims of child sexual abuse and assassination threats against President Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Thomas S. Monson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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He also has a webpage with an anorexic Jesus and a mushroom cloud background; he’s been busy rewriting the Bible, which is good — a hobby might distract him from the molesting children and assassinating people gigs.

And the Templeton Prize goes to…

…a politically brilliant choice, Francisco Ayala. He’s a former priest who has argued for respect for religion while not going quite as far as some of the other possibilities in endorsing it, he’s been fairly circumspect about not presenting ridiculous rationales for religion, but he’s also an excellent and reputable scientist.

It’s definitely an astute decision. The foundation went for someone whose primary claim to renown is as a scientist, not as an apologist. They are a canny bunch, those rascals — they avoided the obvious targets and picked someone who isn’t quite as easily mocked.

How much support is the NAS willing to give to religion?

Imagine that a well-funded astrology organization were to establish a prize awarding a good chunk of money to a scientist who best affirmed the validity of astrology, all as part of a campaign to bestow a whiff of credibility to the belief that the position of the stars at the time you were born influenced your fate. Astrologers certainly want to pretend that they are scientific, so it’s exactly the kind of thing many of them would love to do; their only problem is that real scientists would laugh them away, and they certainly wouldn’t get the support of any of the major scientific institutions.

So why is the National Academy of Sciences supporting an organization claiming to reconcile science and superstition, and why is the president of the NAS nominating scientists for such an award? It’s exactly analogous; religion has no more validity than astrology, is openly unscientific, and I would argue is anti-scientific, so no legitimate scientific institution ought to be endorsing it. I know that some of their members may be church-goers, but some of them will also be following their horoscope in the newspapers, so that’s still no reason to pander to folly.

Here’s something else that’s odd: we’ve got the Templeton Foundation desperately looking for respect by marrying ancient superstitions to modern science, but we’ve got nothing on the other side. You don’t see American Atheists or the American Humanist Association funding research that would promote the idea that godlessness and science are compatible; they don’t have as much money, for one thing, but also we take it for granted that not invoking supernatural forces is a pretty reasonable thing to do in science. The godless don’t have to strain to wedge their ideas into a domain that excludes them.

We also don’t have an organization awarding a prize to the scientist who “has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s [natural, material] dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works” (that’s the description of the Templeton Prize, with one little change). It would be redundant, since that’s what science does. We also don’t have a major atheist organization giving out awards specifically to the scientist of the year who has made the greatest contribution to actively promoting secularism, even though they could: Dawkins, Harris, Kroto, Atkins and many others would be on the shortlist, easily. Maybe they should, but most atheists aren’t so insecure that they need to make a special effort to show that their ideas are compatible with science.

One reason they should, though, is just to see what would happen when they asked a major scientific institution to host the award ceremony. I predict a very rapid back-pedal from an organization that wouldn’t want to get into a political tangle…a consideration they apparently don’t worry about when what is being promoted is religion, despite the fact that religion is a fraud.

Greece leads the way

Greece is rapidly heading towards economic collapse, and this has finally motivated tho do something that should have been done long ago:

The Greek government has announced it will start taxing churches as part of its efforts to get out of its financial crisis. A new draft bill to be tabled in parliament next week imposes a 20 per cent tax on the Orthodox church’s real estate income, reportedly worth over 10 million Euros (US $14.8 million) a year, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The Greek Orthodox church is squealing like a stuck pig, of course.

However, the Greek government has a debt of €216 billion; belatedly taxing €10 million isn’t going to make much of a dent. Let’s hope Greece isn’t leading the way into catastrophic economic failure.

Very bad form, NAS

The Templeton Prize is going to be awarded soon, and they’ve found a venue for it: the National Academy of Sciences. Please note that last word, science — the Templeton Prize has no connection to that subject. Previous winners include Mother Theresa, Chuck Colson, and Billy Graham — professional frauds. Richard Dawkins has an excellent piece on the subject.

The US National Academy of Sciences has brought ignominy on itself by agreeing to host the announcement of the 2010 Templeton Prize (see below). This is exactly the kind of thing Templeton is ceaselessly angling for – recognition among real scientists – and they use their money shamelessly to satisfy their doomed craving for scientific respectability. They tried it on with the Royal Society of London, and they seem to have found a compliant Quisling in the current President, Martin Rees, who, though not religious himself, is a fervent ‘believer in belief’. Fortunately, enough Fellows made a stink about it to ensure that the Royal will not flirt with Templeton in future. Now Templeton are apparently trying the same trick with the US National Academy. If you know any officers, or elected members, of the Academy, please write in protest.

That’s not my favorite part, though. The Templeton Foundation has invited people to guess who’s going to win.

Well, let’s all guess away to our heart’s content. Which leading scientist has done the most to betray science in favour of his imaginary friend? You can rule out the people they’d privately like to honor (such as Intelligent Design “theorists”) because that would go against the official policy of courting respectability among scientists. Nowadays they target genuinely good scientists (like Freeman Dyson, winner of the 2000 Templeton Prize), whose subversion provides more bang for the (mega)buck than primarily religious figures who happen also to be scientists. In the early days they didn’t even make a pretence of finding a scientist at all: the 1982 winner was the notorious creationist Billy Graham!

“Which leading scientist has done the most to betray science in favour of his imaginary friend?” is exactly the criterion they’ll use. In that case, the shoo-in would have to be Francis Collins. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ken Miller is solidly in the running, though, and if he doesn’t get it now, he probably will in the next few years.

I bet Michael Ruse lusts after that prize, but his drooling is just a little too obvious.

It’s the 21st century, Wisconsin!

A Lutheran church in Wisconsin runs a school (unfortunately). The school council has ‘doctrinal issues’ with the fellow they hired as principal — he seems to think that the idea that men have authority over women is invalid. So they had a meeting to fire John Hartwig, and something at the meeting shocked the audience.

Supporters of Hartwig said they were shocked to learn that women church members would not be permitted to speak during a meeting to decide Hartwig’s fate.

I’d be shocked, too. Except that I’d also be shocked by this, which everyone there seemed to take for granted.

Females do not have voting privileges, but are generally allowed to speak at meetings, according to Klaetsch. Sunday’s meeting was the first time in recent history that St. John’s Council President Don Finseth exercised his authority to prevent females from speaking, church members say.

Please, women of St John’s Lutheran Church of Baraboo, Wisconsin, WAKE UP. Leave that awful institution. Why are you continuing to wallow in a poisonous environment that treats you like scum?

Do Twilight, Harry Potter open door to the Devil?

Wow, I thought Cardinal George Pell was thick…but his second-in-command, Bishop Porteous, sounds like he could be even crazier. They’re hiring an exorcist for Australia, and he’s full of ominous warnings about evil things.

The appointment of a new exorcist by Sydney’s Catholic Church precedes a warning by a senior clergyman that generation Y risks a dangerous fascination with the occult fuelled by the Twilight and Harry Potter series.

Julian Porteous, the auxiliary bishop of Sydney, warns that pursuing such ”alternative” relaxation techniques as yoga, reiki massages and tai chi may encourage experimentation with ”deep and dark spiritual ideas and traditions”.

Twilight isn’t magic — it’s just badly written and mindless. Those spritiual ideas aren’t “deep and dark”, they’re just stupid. And I put exorcism in the same category, as a ridiculous, ignorant practice based on rank superstition. We gain nothing by replacing reiki massages and sparkly vampires with old geezers waving censers and chanting at demons.

And Porteous has been doing just that.

Exorcism is no fantasy according to the church, with the Sydney archdiocese last month appointing an as-yet unnamed priest, suitably ”endowed with piety, knowledge, prudence and integrity of life” to conduct exorcisms, as required by Catholic canon law.

In Rome, the Vatican is preparing its first official English translation of the rite of exorcism, which was promulgated in 1614 and reissued in 1999. Its chief exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth, claimed this month to have carried out 70,000 exorcisms. Bishop Porteous – who has stood in as exorcist for the Sydney archdiocese over the past five years – warns that yoga, reiki massages and tai chi can lead to people being in the grip of ”demonic forces”.

These people are just nuts.

Say no to that old rascal, Pope Ratzi

The Pope is planning to visit the UK. He shouldn’t be welcomed; he should be turned away at the border as an undesirable fraud. There is a petition to sign to let the government know what people think. They make a good case:

  • That the Pope, as a citizen of Europe and the leader of a religion with many adherents in the UK, is of course free to enter and tour our country.
  • However, as well as a religious leader, the Pope is a head of state and the state and organisation of which he is head has been responsible for:
    1. opposing the distribution of condoms and so increasing large families in poor countries and the spread of AIDS
    2. promoting segregated education
    3. denying abortion to even the most vulnerable women
    4. opposing equal rights for lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender people
    5. failing to address the many cases of abuse of children within its own organisation.
    6. rehabilitating the holocaust denier bishop Richard Williamson and the appeaser of Hitler, the war-time Pope, Pius XII.
  • The state of which the Pope is the head has also resisted signing many major human rights treaties and has formed its own treaties (‘concordats’) with many states which negatively affect the human rights of citizens of those states.
  • As a head of state, the Pope is an unsuitable guest of the UK government and should not be accorded the honour and recognition of a state visit to our country.

That first point is far too kind.

But you should be!

Answers in Genesis has begun a goofy little campaign called I AM NOT ASHAMED — they’re apparently collecting videos of people declaring their shameless adoration of Jesus. Ho hum. All I can say is that they should be deeply embarrassed to endorse something so absurd.

They use a little unfortunate language, though.

WE WANTED A MESSAGE THAT WOULD OFFER A CLEAR CALL TO CHRISTIANS AROUND THE WORLD TO STAND UNASHAMEDLY AND UNCOMPROMISINGLY ON THE BIBLE.

Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes is willing to oblige. You too can send in photos of yourself standing unashamedly on a Bible — you don’t even have to wipe your feet.