Last Friday, I took part in a panel discussion on the topic: “What is the role of religion at a secular university? Should we support it, promote it, accommodate it, respect it, or just ignore it?”

The event was moderated by a professor in the department of religious studies who specializes in Buddhism and the panel consisted of the chair of that same department (whose area is Judaism), the director of student activities program that oversees student organizations, and myself. The session began with each of us speaking for about five minutes and then the floor was opened up for discussions. It was a lively session with a sizeable number of faculty, students, and staff present. I am not going to try and summarize the entire discussion since I did not take any notes but just focus on my own impressionistic views, paraphrasing some of what people said.
[Read more…]

[UPDATE2: The Q/A session following the debate has been added below the debate video.]

[UPDATE: I have now watched the video and I think I know why Haught was upset and did not want the video released. Coyne was direct and uncompromising (which anyone who has read his stuff should have expected) but I don’t think that that was the problem. It was because Coyne used direct quotes from Haught to make his argument that theology can only make science and religion seem compatible by using a fog of language and metaphor. By quoting all those passages from Haught’s books, Coyne essentially provided a template and all the ammunition anyone needs to effectively debate Haught in the future.]

The much talked about video of the debate between theologian John Haught and scientist Jerry Coyne is now available. I have not had time to watch it yet but Coyne says that it consists of the two 25-minute talks. The PowerPoint slides that accompanied the talks can be downloaded separately and he recommends that you do that and follow along.

The Q/A that followed is not shown and that’s a pity. I find that the Q/A sessions are sometimes the best part of the talk. They enable the speakers to clarify and sharpen their ideas. In fact, when I give talks I often encourage the audience to jump in with questions at any time and even build in time during the talk for such exchanges.

Haught and Coyne’s talks:

2011 Bale Boone Symposium – Science & Religion: Are They Compatible? from UK Gaines Center on Vimeo.

Q/A session:

Science and Religion: Are They Compatible? October 12, 2011 Q+A with Jerry Coyne and John Haught from UK College of Arts & Sciences on Vimeo.

Yesterday I wrote about the bizarre situation where Catholic theologian John Haught had objected to the release of the video of the debate that he had with Jerry Coyne. That refusal caused quite a furor in the blog world and as a result, Haught has relented.

You can read Haught’s explanation for his initial refusal and subsequent reversal, and Coyne’s response follows immediately after. What I want to highlight is Haught’s extraordinarily patronizing claim that he was trying to protect our delicate sensibilities from being offended by having to listen to what Coyne had to say.

But let me come to the main reason why I have been reluctant to give permission to release the video. It is not for anything that I said during our encounter, but for a reason that I have never witnessed in public academic discussion before.

I’m still in shock at how your presentation ended up. I was so offended both personally and as an academic by the vulgarity of it all that I did not want other people to have to share what I witnessed that night in October. I still don’t.
…
You should be grateful that I have tried to protect the public from such a preposterous and logic-offending way of bringing your presentation to a close.

It is preposterous to think that the kinds of people who would take the trouble to watch a debate between a theologian and a scientist are like stereotypical Victorian ladies who might swoon and have to reach for their smelling salts. We can judge perfectly well for ourselves who comported themselves well and who didn’t.

All Haught has done is vastly increase the interest in watching the debate. He may want to buy stock in companies that sell smelling salts.

I have said many times before, especially in my series on Why atheism is winning, that religion has lost the argument. Modern science has revealed the poverty of even the most sophisticated arguments for god. As further evidence, Jerry Coyne shares the extraordinary events that followed his debate with theologian John Haught.

On October 12 at the University of Kentucky, I debated Catholic theologian John Haught from Georgetown University on the topic of “Are science and religion compatible?” It was a lively debate, and I believe I got the better of the man (see my post-debate report here). Haught didn’t seem to have prepared for the debate, merely rolling out his tired old trope of a “layered” universe, with the layer of God and Jesus underlying the reality of the cosmos, life, and evolution. I prepared pretty thoroughly, reading half a dozen of Haught’s books (you need read only one: they’re all the same), and watching all his previous debates on YouTube. (Note that he’s sanctioned release of those videos.)

Haught seemed to have admitted his loss, at least judging by the audience reaction, but blamed it on the presence of “Jerry’s groupies,” an explanation I found offensive. I’m not aware of any groupies anywhere, much less in Kentucky!

The debate, including half an hour of audience questions, was videotaped. Both John and I had given our permission in advance for the taping. I looked forward to the release of the tape because, of course, I wanted a wider audience for my views than just the people in the audience in Lexington. I put a lot of work into my 25-minute talk, and was eager for others to see why I found science and religion to be at odds.

Well, you’re not going to see that tape—ever. After agreeing to be taped, Haught decided that he didn’t want the video released.
…
I am deeply angry about this stand, and can see only one reason for what Haught has done: cowardice. He lost the debate; his ideas were exposed for the mindless theological fluff that they were; and I used his words against him, showing that even “sophisticated” theology, when examined under the microscope of reason, is just a bunch of made-up stuff, tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
…
The only good thing to come from this affair is that it exposes not only the follies of “sophisticated” theology, but the cowardice of a famous theologian. (Haught is the most prominent American theologian who writes about evolution and its comity with religion.) If Haught can’t win a debate, then he’ll use all his God-given powers to prevent anyone from seeing his weaknesses. I’ve written to other well-known atheists who have debated theologians, and not one of them is aware of anything like this ever happening.

This is shameful behavior by Haught.

PZ Myers makes the strong argument that this practice is nothing but ritualized child abuse.

It is quite amazing how we accept as normal long-standing practices that, if they were not covered by the protective umbrella of old religions, we would reject with horror otherwise as the actions of cults or barbarians.

The Daily Show has more on the bizarre things that religious people believe and do.

Some time ago I wrote about ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel raining big gobs of spit on a reporter because she was using a tape recorder on the Sabbath and thus violating one of the numerous rules prohibiting work on that day.

Now we have another disgusting story of Ultra-Orthodox Jews throwing eggs and feces at young girls on their way to and from their school, accusing them of sluttishness. What makes this even more noteworthy is that the targets of this abuse, the girls and their families, are themselves Orthodox Jews but they are considered not conservative enough for these god-fearing people.

I am sure that the people indulging in this appalling behavior are convinced that they are doing the will of god. This is what religious devotion can lead to. Deeply religious people can act like jerks or criminals or thugs or even murderers and actually feel virtuous about doing so, because they think that god commanded them to act in this way.

Tana Ganeva points to various data that support this idea.

1. American religious belief is becoming more fractured.
2. Non-belief — and acceptance of non-belief — on the rise
3. Growing numbers of young people who do not identify as religious
4. Hate group that exploited religion to bash gays hemorrhaging funds
5. Getting married by friends

What the last item refers to is that more and more people are not getting married with the trappings of religion, choosing instead more informal, secular wedding ceremonies.

Via reader G. I received this report of a paper that was presented at a DARPA conference on whether, if extra-terrestrial life exists, Jesus would have gone and tried to save them too. The answer seems to be no, partly because it would require multiple incarnations of god and that might be awkward, apparently.

Mind you, this was discussed at a conference sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense.

It is good to know that the US government is keeping up with important theological issues.

I came across this interesting report of a study that says that people who ‘go by their gut’ when solving a problem are more likely to believe in god than people who reason their way to a conclusion.

They correlated religious belief with the way people approached simple problems like: “A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?” People who go with their gut tend to say (erroneously) that it costs 10 cents while those who think it through arrive at the correct answer. The former type was more likely to believe in god than the latter.

One could conclude that this suggests that belief in god depends on people not thinking things through, which is not really surprising. But the authors of the study downplayed this aspect and instead went out of their way to make the results palatable to religious believers, calling the gut-thinkers ‘intuitive’ and saying that intuition and reflection are equally important.

Intuition is undoubtedly important. But it is not the same thing as not thinking things through.

A town clerk won’t sign same-sex marriage licenses because such marriages violate her religious beliefs.

I can understand people trying to get laws passed that enshrine their religious beliefs. But it is strange to me that people think that their religious beliefs let them pick and choose which laws to follow. If you allow a personal religious exemption, then you have to allow every individual’s personal religious exemptions. Are they willing to extend that right to any religious beliefs at all?

The danger of allowing that should be obvious to anyone who thinks it through. Would you allow an employee to not follow a law because it contradicts (say) Sharia law or Wiccan beliefs? Where would that end? Can a Muslim or Jewish employee in a cafeteria refuse to give a ham sandwich to a customer? Can a Catholic checkout clerk in a supermarket or drug store refuse to process the sale of condoms?

I strongly doubt that people would want to open up that mess. The people who ask for these exemptions are effectively requesting the right to nullify beliefs based only on the religion that they belong to.

Parenthetically, I found this pie chart from Balloon Juice to be amusing.