New Atheists hurt science's advance

The impetus driving the New Atheists is the same that drives the Intellectual Designers and Creationists: how people will understand the workings of the universe.

For the New Atheist, the possibility of a supernatural realm essentially gives license for anyone to claim magical causation over natural. The fear is not unfounded, for the Intelligent Design movement is doing precisely that. For example, they claim the eye is too complex to have evolved therefore God - excuse me, an "Intelligent Designer" - *cough* - used supernatural means to design and introduce the eye to all manner of life on Earth. Yet for Science to accept such a claim based on Behe's (unfounded) complexity threshold would destroy the Scientific Method. Hence the vigilance of the New Atheists.

Likewise the Intellectual Designers and Creationists fear that if theistic evolution is in fact the truth, then society will collectively become selfish and amoral to the point of psychosis, causing civilization to fall. Yet both sides ignore that Roman Catholics, among others, accept the primacy truth of Science (Big Bang, Evolution, etc.) and the primacy truth of the Bible (Morality, Salvation, etc.) - the seemingly impossible! All that is required is admit that 1) the supernatural can not be detected nor refuted by Science, 2) that Science reveals truth about the workings of God's Universe, and 3) Genesis is not a literal accounting of history.

"For the New Atheist, the possibility of a supernatural realm essentially gives license for anyone to claim magical causation over natural."

Problem is, there are those who claim that science disproves cause and effect altogether. R Hampton, wasn't that you that was making that argument to me on another thread?

I love to read popular science books. The ones written for "lay" readers (everyone's a "priest" of something or other) by real academics. So long as they don't require too much knowledge of higher mathematics.

Ants. Jellyfish. Invertebrates generally. Star systems. Trilobites. Plants. You name it, and if it's reasonably well written I'll read it.

But I've noticed something odd about a lot of these books. Many of them include what I call The Last Chapter. In that chapter the author, having shown such great wonders of astronomy or biology or whatever it is, switches over to theology and says, "See there, that proves that there is no God." Well, it doesn't prove it to me.

Dawkins of course is a particularly egregious offender.

I will confine my reaction to saying that just because a man is a brilliant student of marine invertebrates (or, whatever) does not make him a coherent theologian. The Last Chapter typically makes the author sound as much a fool as Aquinas, who thought that females were conceived by the moist east wind, only with less excuse.

Max Schadenfreude,
I said that virtual particles (the something from nothing argument) and quantum decay (in specific, not general) have no cause. On larger scales, cause and effect are valid.

If you are interested in the latest arguments in which physics and philosophy is discussed, read Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality: Russell's Republic Revisited

Science does not need to worry about advancing its cause because there is no one who can stop it.

It really does not matter what folks object to. If it can be done, it will be done.

So let me see if I got this right. Without actually discussing the points, you just quote Mooney and Kirshenbaum as if their "authority" is enough to settle the issue. And the quote you choose is one in which M&K are doing nothing more than quoting Darwin as an authority. (Do you realize that while biologists today have much respect for Darwin, they don't slavishly accept everything he said?) And then you follow it up with the claim that there are scientists who are religious - another appeal to authority without discussing the actual issues. Why not examine the issues involved rather than merely pointing out people hold both kinds of beliefs? Have you never come across a person who held inconsistent beliefs?

I know conservatives like to give weight to authority, but shouldn't there be substance behind it?

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

Sounds wise to me. The more praying, Bible-studying scientists, the better for China. They'll probably discover more than their non-christian cohorts. George Washington Carver is said to have asked God to show him what to do with the peanut, and God showed him! Divine help is pretty cool.

I found it most interesting that in the movie "Expelled", a hard-core darwin evolutionist finally admitted that there had to be some kind of design involved in human creation et al. Except he thought it came from aliens in outer space.

Camels with Hammers:

As David Bentley Hart said in his brilliantly learned: Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies.

"I can honestly say that there are forms of atheism I find far more admirable than many forms of Christianity or of religion in general. But atheism that consists entirely in vacuous arguments afloat on oceans of historical ignorance, made turbulent by storms of strident self-righteousness, is as contemptible as any other form of dreary fundamentalism."

"The greatest atheist of them all, Friedrich Nietzsche, may have had a somewhat limited understanding of the history of Christian thought, but he was nevertheless a man of immense culture who could appreciate the magnitude of the thing against which he had turned his spirit, and who had enough of a sense of the past to understand the cultural crisis that the fading of Christian faith would bring about. Moreover, he had the good manners to despise Christianity, in large part, for what it actually was – above all, for its devotion to an ethics of compassion – rather than allow himself the soothing, self-righteous fantasy that Christianity’s history had been nothing but an interminable pageant of violence, tyranny, and sexual neurosis. He may have hated Christians for their hypocrisy, but he hated Christianity itself principally on account of its enfeebling solicitude for the weak, the outcast, the infirm, and the diseased; and, because he was conscious of the historical contingency of all cultural values, he never deluded himself that humanity could do away with Christian faith while simply retaining Christian morality in some diluted form, such as liberal social conscience or innate human sympathy. He knew that the disappearance of the cultural values of Christianity would gradually but inevitably lead to a new set of values, the nature of which was yet to be decided. By comparison to these kinds of atheists, today’s gadflys seem far lazier, less insightful, less subtle, less refined, more emotional, more ethically complacent, and far more interested in facile simplifications of history than in sober and demanding investigations of what Christianity has been or is."

That is the charge. It is either right or wrong. It has been issued since day one starting with Terry Eagleton’s (non-believer) review of The God Delusion. It strikes me as a rather big lacuna to not have got as far as recognising the shape of the criticism.

Science education and science literacy hurt by Dawkins et al? That is hysterical - did these guys ever like check out our education system? Seems to me that has a whole lot more to do with the utter ignorance of your average high school graduate re: science.

Read someplace - and this could be a questionable study - but something like 70 per cent of high school freshmen could not name the three states of matter! That ain't Dawkins fault.

Jillian and Cecelia I go along with James Balfour below, who describes the parasite like attachment of metaphysical naturalism onto science - where science is defined as the institutionalized project of reasoned systematic inquiry into the natural world.

It is important to note science developed only within a Christian civilization. A civilization that built the university system within the casting out of the reasoning faculties upon the canvas of creation was by faith assured a good return. Why?

Greek philosophy and primitive empirical inquiry had no effect on Greek religion and vice versa. The unmoved mover was so transcendent it was unthinkable it would be concerned with human affairs. Yet with the Incarnation it was revealed by Him that the Greek philosophical reason and meaning of existence - the logos, is in fact a person! A person who is in fact concerned with human affairs. (and much more than that!). Now that was a revolution for reason and philosophy.

Now evidence of this person who is reason and order in his essence, should be found everywhere. And Christians went looking. He is not just the unmoved mover but the loving creator who would leave clues everywhere. In time (social, political, economic developments in place) we formed institutions around this metaphysical supposition, drew human effort, will and sacrifice into the project with the assurance now that the search would be amazingly successful. Without this motivation science could not have got off the ground.

It continues successfully today by following the rules and philosophical suppositions begun at its inception - but too many with only a dangerous little philosophy, a darkened memory make unjustified anti-Christian philosophical pronouncements about the real facts of the entire universe from some facts contained within it. This hostility to Christianity resembles the situation in the ancient world when science and religion had no influence on each other and were in fact often hostile. It ruins the inherent harmony between them It is certainly enough to turn away young men and women, and enough to twist science to inhuman purposes. This process could ultimately be completely destructive if not checked. There are more recent precedents for this: see the effect of Islam on its tradition of science and philosophy - came to a halt in the twelfth century.

James Balfour:

"With Empirical philosophy, considered as a tentative contribution to the theory of science, I have no desire to pick a quarrel. That it should fail is nothing. Other philosophies have also failed. Such is, after all, the common lot. That it should have been contrived to justify conclusions already accepted is, if a fault at all—which I doubt—at least a most venial one, and one, moreover, which it has committed in the best of philosophic company. That it should derive some moderate degree of imputed credit from the universal acceptance of the scientific beliefs which it countersigns, may be borne with, though for the real interests of speculative inquiry this has been, I think, a misfortune. But that it should develop into naturalism, and then, on the strength of labours which it has not endured, of victories which it has not won, and of scientific triumphs in which it has no right to share, presume, in despite of its speculative insufficiency, to dictate terms of surrender to every other system of belief, is altogether intolerable. Who would pay the slightest attention to naturalism if it did not force itself into the retinue of science, assume her livery, and claim, as a kind of poor relation, in some sort to represent her authority and to speak with her voice? Of itself it is nothing. It neither ministers to the needs of mankind, nor does it satisfy their reason. And if, in spite of this, its influence has increased, is increasing, and as yet shows no sign of diminution, if more and more the educated and the half-educated are acquiescing in its pretensions, and, however reluctantly, submitting to its domination, this is at least in part because they have not learned to distinguish between the practical and inevitable claims which experience has on their allegiance, and the speculative but quite illusory title by which the empirical school have endeavoured to associate naturalism and science in a kind of joint supremacy over the thoughts and consciences of mankind."

Arthur James Balfour quite right Jamie thanks. As for his research it probably came to a . . . dead end.

Heh.

Quote was right on the money don't you think?

It is important to note science developed only within a Christian civilization. A civilization that built the university system within the casting out of the reasoning faculties upon the canvas of creation was by faith assured a good return. Why?

Try this for size-

Despite its anti-paganist element (which Nietzsche so despised) popular Christianity became infused with and dominated by conflict-generating elements of tribal and nature deity paganism (which Nietzsche also didn't like). The best tools of pagan rationalism had to be recovered to counter the latter.

Islam reconciled its pagan and anti-pagan elements pretty rapidly and stifled its rationalists quickly. Due to the divisions and diversity of Europe Christianity took longer to negotiate or force a similar compromise. It then found itself stuck with a revived and dispersed rationalist tradition, and despite serious effort was unable to squelch it.

Greek philosophy and primitive empirical inquiry had no effect on Greek religion and vice versa.

Socrates might not agree with that interpretation.

The unmoved mover

And wheeeeeee.... Alice tumbles down the rabbit hole.