Anti-religious bigotry of scientists

Well, ever since the Templeton Foundation gave an award to Charles Colson some years back its name has been pretty much mud. Add to that the fact that the old philosophical materialism they were intimating is simply not a part of science any more. It is far less cut and dried, a relic of the nineteenth century and thus a debate that is simply anachronistic.

Of course they may also have read some of the things on this blog and a few others on beliefnet and concluded that astrology was one of the kinder accusations they could make.

Western Confucian: This seems to be an Anglo-Saxon or a Western thing. I teach English at one of Asia's top science and technology universities, and there is no bias against religion. There are many committed Christians among the professors and students, including our past two presidents. Even, or rather especially, there is a large Christian presence in biology.

Somebody who spoke to us in Cambridge -- I think it was an atheist (maybe John Gray), but I can't remember for certain -- pointed out that in China today, it's not hard to find hard scientists going to Bible studies, and talking about religion seriously. As I recall, the speaker was making the point that you couldn't very well accuse these Chinese scientists of being sad, deluded morons, as some of the evangelical atheists in the West like to think of religious believers. If one doesn't accept religion, that's one thing, but to decide that all religious people are by definition engaged in idiotic pursuits unworthy of anyone with brains is sheer prejudice.

Well, ever since the Templeton Foundation gave an award to Charles Colson some years back its name has been pretty much mud.

That msy be true but if so it speaks volumes about the small-mindedness of those who think that. Colson was given his award for his work with prisoners, work which includes being the primary and for a long time only conservative voice for true criminal justice reform. When liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, were trying to outdo each other in their advocacy of the American incarceration state, Colson opposed it. He warned that California's "Three Strikes" law and the prison-building binge it necessitated would bankrupt California and come at the cost of more important priorities. Facts have vindicated him.

Until I see the likes of Grayling, Dennett and company spending the night in Angola prison or working tirelessly to combat the national disgrace that is prison rape, I don't give a tinker's **** about what they think of his Templeton Prize or the people who gave it to him.

Rod... all you had to do was add one little word in the title of this thread.

Anti-religious bigotry of some scientists is just more accurate, don't you think?

And, in case you forget why I'm sensitive to some things, just look around at what some people say about (implied: all) pagans.

Among 70's refugees, if William Ayers can be rehabilitated, then surely Charles Colson can.

In any event, if Ayers's crowd hadn't stepped outside the bounds of the law, then Colson's crowd most likely would not have done the same.

And that's to say nothing of Colson's penitence and the good use his put his life to in recent years, as opposed to Ayers.

The Ayers rehabilitation constitutes -- or ought to constitute -- blanket amnesty to everyone from back then, with the possible exception of the guy who sang "Kung-Fu Fighting."

This story reminds me that we should never give up hoping for people. I used to think that A.N. Wilson was beyond hope. He came to the Wade Center (Lewis/Tolkien/Sayers etc collection) just before I worked there, when he was researching his book on Lewis. He was polite with the staff, but later wrote up a very snide and ungracious version of the event. It was obvious that he'd seen it all differently--I worked with the same people, in the same place every day and knew that some of his conclusions about the place were misunderstandings based on prejudice. Anyway, after thinking of him for years as "the enemy" I read on this blog that he's changed his mind about some things after being treated well by Christians...to be clear, I would have felt better about him even if he hadn't announced that he'd come back to the church, even if he'd simply moderated his prejudice and dropped some of the arrogance. That's common to people of all faiths and no faiths, sadly (and no personality is unchangeable)

At my Ivy League graduate school, the Bible studies I attended were filled with scientists and engineers. It was the humanities people who sneered at our pursuits, and very often, I was the lone student from the humanities in these gatherings. In my experience, the scientists (especially mathematicians and physicists) were much more open to the workings of the unseen world.

Does the Templeton Foundation give money to anti-science organizations like the Discovery Institute?

Thank God, you're right, English Student. It's not true, even though it may seem that way.

I really appreciated your comment.

Rod, would you mind if I post a link to the correspondence on Dawkins' website?

http://richarddawkins.net/article,3973,Correspondence-regarding-the-Templeton-Foundation,Richard-Dawkins-Daniel-Dennett-AC-Grayling-Edwin-Cartlidge

It seems only fair to point out that neither Dawkins or Grayson have a bone to pick with Edwin Cartlidge himself--they both seem to have serious reservations about the purpose of the Templeton Foundation. I don't know anything about this organization so I won't comment but to say that the fact that there is such a controversy about whether science and spirituality TOGETHER should be tasked with exploring the "big questions" of human experience suggests to me that it is worth at least having the discussion. I think that very discussion *may* be the ultimate goal of the Templeton Foundation, which is why it surprises me that you result to the easy snark of claiming that ALL SCIENTISTS are at odds with ALL RELIGIOUS PEOPLE. And isn't it a silly notion, among so many radical theists in this day and age, that there is no overlap between the two? I agree with an earlier poster--some of the most spiritually oriented people I know are doctors and scientists.

I think that its least debatable contribution is still a foundation for ethics in a world of powerful and advancing technology.

But that isn't directly related to scientific research, is it?

You also assume that religion, which has been used to defend any number of evils in the world, is actually a useful touchstone for those who are developing ethics. I'm not sure that argument can be sustained.

I think the reality is that religion is slowly but surely losing its grip on our culture and society. Compared to even 40 years ago, it has lost almost all of its influence on my generation at least.(im 21 and from ireland) Also in this age, i dont see how religion can contribute to science in any way

I agree in general, but at some point a person has to draw the line. If I were a scientist I would not waste time with someone who wanted to talk to me about how he thinks dinosaurs and men lived at the same time. Everyone has different lines they draw to avoid wasting time.

Rod, as Franklin pointed out the title of this post comes off as a broad brush against scientists in general.

Freelunch, the Templeton Foundation has given money to Intelligent Design supporters which is part of the reason for the polarizing attitudes about it within the scientific community.

Also, science takes a position of methodological naturalism, not metaphsysical naturalism so it avoids materialism in the philosophical sense.

Spambalaya -

Thanks. I wonder if the foundation will inadvertently turn out to do to certain religious claims what Harry Houdini did to psychics, mediums and other fraudulent spiritualists. To the best of my understanding, Harry really expected to be able to contact the dead, at least at the beginning, but the more he realized it was a scam, the more aggressively he ended up attacking it.

I find the continuing mutually beneficent relationship between extreme sensationalist atheists and extreme sensationalist theists to be utterly utterly absurd. If you both dislike each other so much why not stop giving each other the oxygen of publicity? Every time these articles are written mentioning Dawkins et al. you add a few thousand to their book royalties and convince no one to switch sides.

They do it for the same reason that Jerry Falwell and Larry Flynt used to stage public debates in auditoriums: It's good for the ratings. (Think professional wrestling with a metaphysical bent.)

Ralph Wiggum,

It would suit me if folks -- and especially folks in high places -- had no time at all for either Kissinger or Ayers.

Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out that way -- especially in Ayers's case.

The Ayers-Obama free-pass will come back to haunt liberals again and again.

It's going to be really, really hard from here on out for them to demonize conservatives for being "radical" or "outside the mainstream."

There are pretty much no standards of honorable behavior left when a President can be friends not only with a terrorist, but a terrorist who took up arms against the country that the President serves.

Maybe the only remaining taboo is child molestation, and, once we're done canonizing Michael Jackson, that taboo will be gone too.

Sentient Adult?

"Atheism is the most intellectually insipid and morally rancid metaphysical position it is possible to hold." My my, I think I'll cry.

As for Rod, I have no problem with scientists circling their wagons since The Right is so enclosed you have your very own news network in which to spin your alternative faith-based reality.
You people are not friends and I think not giving you the time of day has merit.

Point actually taken.
Still in this country that's more religious (backward) than Italy or Ireland, I cannot fault these scientists for being selective in whom they talk to.

You asked what religion still has to contribute to the development of science. I think that its least debatable contribution is still a foundation for ethics in a world of powerful and advancing technology.

Betty, that's a contribution to "how science is used in our culture" (an ethical and political question), not the development of science as such. It's a worthy thing in itself, no doubt, but a different question.

.....what about Catholic and Protestant colleges and universities that support scientific and especially medical research?

Right, I went to such a university myself and am all in favor of their efforts. But by "the development of science" I thought we were talking about the content of science itself, not the funding or support of the scientific enterprise. Apart from giving the medieval West a general worldview that was conducive to investigating the material world in certain ways -- which I think is what Christianity contributed to science originally (and very importantly) -- I'm at a loss to think of any way in which religious belief or doctrine, or even a generally "spiritual" attitude toward things, advances actual knowledge in any of the sciences today.

Certainly, there are religious people who are scientists. But are they doing their science at church or in their prayer meetings? I think they're doing it elsewhere, in their labs and research institutes. The attempt to fuse religion more directly into the actual intellectual content of science, for example in the "intelligent design" movement that others have mentioned here, predictably just comes to grief. When it comes down to it, faith is not knowledge; that's why it's called "faith."

Come to think of it, the Catholic and Protestant universities that support scientific research are excellent examples of what I'm getting at. If their religious faith was somehow integral to the science itself, then the scientific work done at such universities wouldn't be readily transferable to secular universities and researchers. In fact, though, any scientific research worth the name that happens to come out of a Christian university will be based on the same existing knowledge that secular researchers rely on, and will be fully understandable and usable at any non-Protestant and non-Catholic university.

This is why there's no "Journal of Presbyterian Physics" or "Quarterly Review of Catholic Cardiovascular Research." In order to be science, research can't be parochial or dependent on any particular religious viewpoint; it has to be secular by definition. Right? It doesn't strike me as "bigotry" for scientists to proceed on the basis of that understanding, which in general will mean ignoring religion as long as they're actually doing their science.

Charles Foster Kane, this is what Rod proposed in a previous post:

http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/01/edge-2009-what-will-change-eve.html
Rod: "I'm interested in researching the connections, if any, between quantum physics, some alternative medicine techniques, and Orthodox Christian metaphysics."

It amazes me how many supposedly literate people don't know what a headline is, or how to read one. People, headlines are not supposed to be exhaustive treatments of the subject, that is what the article is for. Headlines are supposed to be brief summations, they don't have room for a lot of nuance or qualifications, they are to grab attention, not to impart information.

Not that it matters to "Seamus Infidelus" and his moronic philistinism,

Were you not just lecturing us about Argumentum Ad Hominum in the Sanford story? Perhaps I misunderstood you.

"An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the man", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim.

The process of proving or disproving the claim is thereby subverted, and the argumentum ad hominem works to change the subject."

Nope. I understood you correctly. You are just selective where you apply it, it seems.

Does the Templeton Foundation give money to anti-science organizations like the Discovery Institute?

No. They go out of their way, in fact to state publicy that Intelligent Design is not science. However, they fund quite a few ID advocates. They (or rather the Templeton family) also fund quite a few political and religious conservative organizations. I think the scientific community regards them as harmless on the surface, but with an agenda, and are concerned about anything they say or do being taken out of context.

Another poster commented that Templeton seems to be grounded in some 19th century ideas. The use of the word "Darwinism" seems to crop up a lot. This is all well and good if you are commenting on the 19th century Darwin/Lamarck issues. Currently, the term is I would say, mildly perjorative, implying that belief in evolution is some sort of religious belief. As the ID advocates failed to get their beliefs considered "science" in court, they may try to get evolution somehow labeled "religion"

Larry,

It amazes me how many supposedly literate people don't know what a headline is, or how to read one.

With respect, I think your POV is overly optimistic. Too many people, literate or not, react to the subject line without reading the text of the post.

It's the very concept that the NY Post banks on with its front page headlines.

Funny how the word "bigot" used in a different context elicits howls of protest from Rod. I'd have thought that he'd be more careful before slinging it around so freely. I suppose that the thought is "I'm not a bigot, but everyone who disagrees with my views is".

But no matter. I'm a bit surprised that Dawkins misrepresents the purpose of a fellowship. These things are fairly common in academia after all. Perhaps he's unaware of the research part of the project. I'm assuming that the results of that research will be published at some point (most fellowships come with the expectation that the fruits of the munificence will be made available generally in the form of a published paper).

I'd also point out that Dawkins reserved his ire for the Foundation and went to great pains to be respectful to Cartlidge personally.

I understand the reasons given for declining to participate. I think they should have participated anyway, but I do understand the reasons. Many scientists have be dismayed to find their research twisted to support theological positions (the Discovery Institute does this all the time; I'm not personally aware if the Templeton foundation falls into the same category). And as Dennett said, engaging on the topic, even if you are thoroughly convincing, provides a certain degree of respectability some ideas (like "scientific" creationism or astrology) that are throughly unrespectable.

That said, there are a wide range of religious views, and many of them are not incompatible with the results of scientific inquiry at all (I've personally never seen the conflict; my arguments with organized religion are on completely different criteria). But there are some scurrilous people promoting religious agendas (just as there are scurrilous atheists) and these responses may fall under the category of "once bitten, twice shy".

Can religion substantively contribute to the development of science? I wonder what is exactly meant by that - does it mean religion can teach science new methods of discovery? Does it mean religion can reframe the questions science asks in a way which advances securing answers to those questions?

I doubt (although if someone has some other perspective I would love to listen) if religion can substantively contribute to the development of science - science deals with that which is material - measureable. Religious doctrine deals with that which is immaterial, not measureable by the methods of science. Example - in the 1800's two men set out to prove the existence of the soul using scientific methods. They put dying people on a bed which was a scale - weighed them immediately before death and immediately after. The assumption was that the soul was material - and after death it's absence would be shown by a change in weight. They claimed to have discovered a one pound difference in weight - hence the soul weighed one pound. This assumes then that we should find somewhere in the body a organ weighing one pound and of course no such thing has been found - because the soul is NOT MATERIAL - and is not subject to measurement. Every doctrinal issue would run into this same problem.

Religion can I believe contribute in another way - science's great failure is that it cannot tell us what to do with the products of science. Religion or ethics can. I think it must.

"I'm interested in researching the connections, if any, between quantum physics, some alternative medicine techniques, and Orthodox Christian metaphysics."

I am not sure what you mean by this - but if you discover that orthodox metaphysics describes some phenomena in similar ways to quantum physics - than what does that prove? The basis of all science is a testable hypothesis - I genuinely would be interested in understanding what your testable hypothesis is on this subject? If you cannot frame one - then your discussion cannot contribute to the development of scientific inquiry.

If the basis of science is a testable hypothesis, then I gather that astronomy is not science. For much of astronomy cannot be tested, but rather only observed. We have no power to, say, introduce a brown dwarf into an eliptical orbit around a black hole and observe what happens while we reduce the coeffecient of gravity to Z, and so on. We might hope to find such a situation, but then celestial bodies are so remote as to make it impossible to verify and enumerate all the initial conditions before the experiment begins. The universe is too massive. I take it you grant the difference between merely observing what we find, and designing an apparatus with which we test a hypothesis.

Most matter in the universe is plasma, and we are woefully ignorant about the physical laws pertaining to plasma. We therefore, or our scientists do so on our behalf, impute the laws of matter on earth to the rest of the universe.

If by testable hypothesis you use the benign meaning of merely comparing what we think with what we find, then all mankind have been unfailing scientists since the dawn of history and moderns have no advantage over our ancestors.

God is an iron.

If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.

Ironic, isn't it?

h/t Spider Robinson

If the basis of science is a testable hypothesis, then I gather that astronomy is not science. For much of astronomy cannot be tested, but rather only observed. ....If by testable hypothesis you use the benign meaning of merely comparing what we think with what we find, then all mankind have been unfailing scientists since the dawn of history and moderns have no advantage over our ancestors.

Dennis, you seem to confuse testing hypotheses with designing experiments, which are one (but not the only) means of testing hypotheses. Astronomers formulate and test hypotheses all the time, and some of the most famous instances of hypothesis-testing come from astronomy. The Copernican theory was still a hypothesis when Galileo tested it by looking through a telescope and seeing things (like the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus) that were consistent with it but not with the old Ptolemaic model. And it was an observation made during an eclipse, specifically in order to test a hypothesis based on Einstein's theory, that made Einstein world-famous.

Your "benign meaning" is also a bit incomplete. Yes, scientific method is an extension of something that people have always done using common sense. But science as an organized enterprise includes formulating and testing hypotheses in systematic ways, taking and recording careful measurements, publishing the results, and criticizing and attempting to replicate the published arguments of others. It took a long, long time for people to figure out why all of those steps were important.

And yes, as Jon W says, it was a Christian culture that first figured this out. I made a similar point myself on another recent thread. The intelligibility of the universe and so on were important metaphysical assumptions that not every religious culture in the world produced, as were key institutions, like universities, devoted to systematic inquiry.

That said, I'd be very surprised -- for the reasons I stated above -- if one strain of Christianity, like Eastern Orthodoxy, had a specific metaphysical insight that could somehow help advance science as a going concern today. In fact, if I've understood Rod Dreher's cryptic remarks on this, he's conceded that the metaphysical postulate he has in mind is already functioning in at least one branch of science, quantum physics, which means it doesn't need to be introduced there now. I guess the claim is that this postulate, reinforced in its apparent truth by its consistency BOTH with quantum-level observations and with the divine revelation that is Orthodox Christianity, has something to contribute to another field, medicine, that is currently innocent of it. Well, OK, that would be interesting if it happened. I'm skeptical, but we'll see.

Your name, I'm still here and you are correct -- I was just trying to get clear on what we're actually talking about. If you look at my first comment on this thread, you'll see that I was asking a question.

Absolutely, the sponsorship of research is important, as is guiding its uses toward ethical goals, and I think our great religious traditions have contributed very importantly to those efforts. I hope that continues. It sounded, though, from earlier comments of Rod Dreher's that another poster here directed me to, like we were talking about some way in which a religious belief -- specifically, an "Orthodox Christian metaphysics" -- was somehow supposed to inform the research itself, i.e. the intellectual content of science. There's also been some loose talk about how personally religious some scientists are, as if somehow that meant that the science they were doing was itself infused with religious faith in some way. As I said earlier, I'm inclined to think that's impossible by definition, because to the extent that some idea is Christian, it's assuming things about the universe that science can't process or test -- and to the extent that it's not assuming those things it's not Christian in any meaningful sense.

I agree with you that studying the interactions of science, religion and politics in the culture is a worthy thing thing to do. And maybe such a study even contributes to "science" if we include the social sciences. But what advances research in the natural sciences (as I understood us to be discussing originally) are testable hypotheses about nature and how it operates, plus the testing of those hypotheses through observation and/or experiment, followed by the publication and peer-reviewing of the results. I have trouble seeing how Christianity can contribute to any of these procedures because I think that once you assume a personal God who governs nature, you've stepped outside the framework of assumptions that makes science "science" and not theology. (I also think, incidentally, that there are lot of people who throw around what they believe are concepts from relativity or quantum physics and imagine that they can see all kinds of larger implications for them, but who don't actually understand the science in those fields in the depth and detail they demand.) So that's what I'm skeptical about, but again, I'm all for studying the cultural and other factors that are conducive to science being done well and ethically.

It is precisely the case that Galileo did not test a hypothesis. There is no confusion. He observed certain phenomena and concluded that his hypothesis agreed with the observations. Galileo did not construct a test. He opened his eyes, looked around a bit, and concluded that he was right. Much as we mortals have done for millenia. No, "testable hypothesis" means constructing a test, running the test, collecting the data, analyzing the data, and drawing conclusions. And we simply cannot construct tests using the heavenly bodies. There's no confusion at all.

You really would enjoy reading Feyerabend's "Against Method" and it's descriptions of Galileo's flim-flamming his peers until scientific apparatus could catch up with his theories. One case in point, Galileo's tesescope and others at that time often produced double images, like double vision. The quality of the observations was extraordinarily crude. Yet Galileo went ahead and propounded his theories, untested and only crudely observed, and his intuition was shown to be sound.

Clearly "Your Name" is not an astronomer. Astronomers test hypotheses all the time. Galileo was well aware of hypotheses, notably the Copernican model, and certainly understood his own observations as tending either to prove it or not. See his own statements on this, for instance:

http://virgo.bibl.u-szeged.hu/202Library/Galilei%20Considerations%20on%20the%20Copernican%20Opinion/Galileo's%20Considerations%20on%20the%20Copernican%20Opinion%20(1615).htm

As to modern examples, here’s just one -- from a paper in the American Astronomical Society’s Astrophysical Journal. The title is “A CCD Study of the Environment of Seyfert Galaxies. II. Testing the Interaction Hypothesis,” and as you can see, the authors didn’t just make random observations and then report them, but designed them in order to test the aforesaid hypothesis using “a control sample of 45 galaxies” for comparison against the group of galaxies whose behavior they were trying to explain:

…..As far as the origin of activity is concerned, the most popular paradigm the so-called interaction model is reviewed in some detail in De Robertis, Hayhoe & Yee (1997, hereafter Paper I). A working definition of the interaction hypothesis may be stated in the following way: There is a causal link between activity in the nucleus of a galaxy containing a supermassive compact object and disturbances to the host galaxy resulting from tidal interactions or mergers.…..
Thus, it appears at this point that there are a variety of opinions regarding evidence for the interaction hypothesis as an explanation for the origin of activity in Seyfert galaxies. A consensus based solely on observational evidence has not yet emerged. This situation is somewhat surprising, given the degree to which this paradigm is accepted in the literature, at least in the case of Seyfert galaxies.
It was our intention to resolve these observational discrepancies by carrying out a large-format CCD statistical survey of the environment of Seyfert galaxies, the details of which are described in Paper I. …..
The details of this survey may be found in Paper I. Briefly, 33 Seyfert galaxies, or roughly 70% of the CfA Seyfert galaxies between 9h.75 and 21h.5, were selected for this study (excluding NGC 6814 from Paper I). A control sample of 45 galaxies matched to the Seyfert sample in absolute magnitude, morphological classification, and redshift was also selected from the CfA survey. By minimizing such differences between the two samples, it was hoped that a meaningful comparison of the environment would be possible. http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/496/1/93/36863.text.html

In short, no, astronomy is not different from other sciences in its interest in hypotheses that can be tested.

I find very little difference between a fundamentalist Christian bent on arguing the bible is to be interpreted literally, and a Dawkins or Dennett arguing Ultra-Darwinism is all there is. The are both philosophically bankrupt because of hubris and blind ideology.