Science and Fundamentalism

Posted on Tuesday 11 February 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Nice essay by Connor Wood at Science on Religion, about the Nye-Ham debate. Though he’s a PhD candidate in religion and science, he’d been putting off paying much attention to this debate.

The reason I didn’t get too excited about this religion-science hubbub in Kentucky was because I knew it would be, er, incredibly frustrating. Ken Ham is wrong. Pathetically so. I do not respect his beliefs (although if I met him personally I would try to respect the man). I don’t respect his beliefs because they are false beliefs, and demonstrably so. The people who think the world was created in six days six thousand years ago are Just. Plain. Wrong. That is not what happened. By hinging their beliefs in Jesus, their sense of meaning in life, and their connections with the past on this ludicrous cosmogonical error, creationists are doing more and deeper damage to the life of the spirit in this age than any Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett could ever do for them.

Wood goes on to explain “why fundamentalism exits” — fundamentalism, in the sense of today’s meaning of literal interpretation of the Bible, didn’t exist before the 19th century’s ascendance of science into the realm of meaning; it was a reaction to the raw reading of science as noticing that there is no “meaning” to the universe. And people cannot stomach that.

His conclusion is that both sides need to adjust their stances.

So are you one of those who thinks religion is stupid, and science is great? Wonderful. Keep it to yourself. Every single time you post a comment anywhere that perpetuates this war, any time you snark to a religious person about how science makes his or her worldview obsolete, you are bringing our culture one step closer to epistemological shutdown. And that means we all lose.

Or are you a religious person who believes evolution is wrong, and that the world is 6,000 years old? Stop. Seriously, stop. You’re making a fool of yourself, and you are making a fool of your God. So stop giving the T.H. Huxleys and Richard Dawkinses fodder for their ugly rhetorical cannons. I’m sorry, dinosaurs did not live at the same time as humans. The mountain of evidence against this claim is greater than Everest. Stop believing false things. And who wants such an insecure and brittle faith that the knowledge of mankind’s peripheral position in the great vastness of the cosmos shudders you? If your faith is strong, you can look down the barrel of 14 billion years and not blink. Be strong. Accept that the universe is more complex and strange and unexpected than can be written in a few verses of Genesis or Daniel.

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For Creationists, Intellectual Inquiry is a Sin

Posted on Monday 10 February 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern comments about a new HBO documentary, Questioning Darwin:

The Cruelty of Creationism.

Intellectual freedom is one of humanity’s greatest gifts—and biggest burdens. Our ability to ask questions, to test ideas, to doubt is what separates us from our fellow animals. But doubt can be as terrifying as it is liberating. And it’s the terror of doubt that fosters the toxic, life-negating cult of creationism.

That fear is on full display throughout HBO’s new documentary Questioning Darwin, which features a series of intimate interviews with biblical fundamentalists. Creationism, the documentary reveals, isn’t a harmless, compartmentalized fantasy. It’s a suffocating, oppressive worldview through which believers must interpret reality — and its primary target is children. For creationists, intellectual inquiry is a sin, and anyone who dares to doubt the wisdom of their doctrine invites eternal damnation. That’s the perverse brilliance of creationism, the key to its self-perpetuation: First it locks kids in the dungeon of ignorance and dogmatic fundamentalism. Then it throws away the key.

It’s not about the evidence of course; it’s about the fear that, unless one is living in a magical world dreamed into existence and ruled by a god, there are no rules.

Humans must have been designed by God; if we weren’t, then we’re mere animals, lacking in morality and dignity, consigned to a pitiful and pointless life of struggle and dolor. Evolution, one true believer informs us, is “incompatible with biblical Christianity” because it recognizes the permanence of death and leaves no room for a second coming. Creationists are consumed by repressing the existential panic that often attends acceptance of reality. Instead of confronting that terror, they’ve retreated into an elaborate fantasy.

A world view that abnegates our [presumably God-given] ability to think and reason.

This view isn’t benign or wacky: It’s poisonous and medieval. Creationists reject not just evolution but most of the Enlightenment and pretty much all intellectual development since. Rather than celebrate the brilliance of the human mind, they disparage free thought as dangerous and sinful. Instead of extolling the virtues of creativity and imagination, they malign all unorthodox ideas as immoral and wicked. For all creationists’ insistence that evolution denigrates humanity, creationism is fundamentally anti-human, commanding us to spurn our own logic and cognition in favor of absurd sophism derived from a 3,000-year-old text. It turns our greatest ability—to reason—into our greatest enemy. Using our brains, according to creationism, will lead us to sin; only mindless piety can keep us on the track to salvation.

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Creationists and Curiosity

Posted on Monday 10 February 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Terry Firma doesn’t think the creationists who held up questions about evolution (in that Buzzfeed set of photos last week) were really interested in the answers.

Just (Not) Curious: When Creationists Ask Questions, Are They Interested In the Answers?

It finally occurred to me that asking questions is not at all the same as displaying curiosity. Curiosity implies wanting to know. Some questions, however, are posed to achieve almost the opposite. They are ideological stands, markers of obstinacy presented under the guise of open inquiry.

They’re not about wanting to know; they’re about wanting to stubbornly assert doctrine.

Look at those photos and at the questions the Creationists scrawled on that sketchpad. I don’t want to be harsh, but I’m not sure that what I’m seeing is curiosity.

“How do you explain a sunset if [there] is no God?”

“If we come from monkeys then why are there still monkeys?”

Because if they really wanted to know they could spend 5 minutes of Googling, or an hour reading a book, and find the answers to their questions.

My bleak suspicion is that many of the people in the photos have not actually attempted in earnest to get past a sixth-grader’s understanding of the issues. If they’d read just the first few chapters of Evolution For Dummies even once, rather than the first chapter of the Bible over and over, their questions would already have been answered.

Firma quotes a recent book by science journalist Philip Ball that the underlying issue is that, to some faithful, curiosity is not a virtue, but a weakness.

The central problem with curiosity was that it was thought to be motivated by excessive pride. The accumulation of pointless learning ran the risk not that one would become another Lucifer, but that one would primp and preen rather than bow one’s head before the Lord. … Curiosity, like scepticism, was a sign that you lacked devotion and faith.

Thus does religion perpetuate itself by shielding adherents from interest (and sometimes complete awareness) in the outside world.

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Today’s other Favorite Song – Down in the Hole

Posted on Saturday 8 February 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Of the new songs on Springsteen’s new High Hopes album, this one is especially affecting.

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Today’s Favorite Song — Ghost of Tom Joad

Posted on Saturday 8 February 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

This incredible new version of Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad”, on his new album High Hopes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsU015JWNJs

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Mooney on our not-to-scientific minds

Posted on Saturday 8 February 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s an article by Chris Mooney that captures the essence of my own interest in matters of evolution and cosmology and their religious detractors. (These matters aren’t ‘debates’ or ‘controversies’ except in the minds of those blinkered by religious indoctrination. The science is well established.) This essence is the irony that,

Our brains are a stunning product of evolution; and yet ironically, they may naturally pre-dispose us against its acceptance.

This entails the raft of psychological biases our minds rely on, or are prey to, to make a living as biological beings. But these same biases encourage us to live in a sort of fantasy world in which we interpret the world around us in the most flattering way possible – we are the center of creation, etc. – rather than how reality actually is, as deduced through rational evidence gathering and logical thought.

Mooney’s 7 Reasons Why It’s Easier for Humans to Believe in God Than Evolution are

Biological essentialism
Teleological thinking
Overactive agency detection [the theme of Jesse Bering’s book on this matter]
Dualism
Inability to comprehend vast time scales
Group morality and tribalism
Fear and the need for certainty

He references a book I have on my shelf waiting to be read: Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not, by Robert N. McCauley.

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More Questions and Answers

Posted on Friday 7 February 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Jerry Coyne links the flip side of the Buzzfeed post the other day, this time with questions from evolution-friendly young folk to creationists. He doesn’t need to answer them, but has occasional comments:

[D]o creationists think that all evolutionists (and many of them are religious) are either deluded by evidence or perhaps (misled by Satan?) are in some huge conspiracy to either manufacture evidence or interpret it as supporting evolution? Yes, science has been wrong before, but there’s now so much evidence supporting evolution that it falls into the “unlikely to be proven wrong” category.

Another good set of answers to the creationists is this post from a blogger at Dead-Logic. He has less patience for some of the lame questions (e.g. about the 2nd law of thermodynamics) and is pointed with some of his replies, e.g. “Can you believe in the big bang without faith?”

If you find paw prints in the snow in your backyard, you can rightly conclude that an animal walked through there. That doesn’t take faith. Could you be wrong? Sure. Maybe some guy floated over in a balloon and made fake animal tracks with a plastic animal paw on a stick. But which is more reasonable? The Big Bang is a view based on evidence. Should we find our current understanding to be incorrect, we change it. Faith isn’t about change. Faith isn’t about trying to find better information, or letting go of old ideas once they’re shown to be inaccurate. It’s about holding on tightly to what one believes. Remember how Bill Nye and Ken Ham each answered this particular question during their debate:

“What would cause you to change your mind?”

Ken: “Nothing.” Bill: “evidence.”

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Answers for Creationists

Posted on Thursday 6 February 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Today both Phil Plait at Slate and Mike D on his blog respond to the Buzzfeed listsicle of 22 messages from Creationists who held up questions to those who ‘believe’ in evolution. (‘Believe’ is not the right word; as Plait says, “Because science isn’t a belief system.”)
Phil Plait:

I have found that most creationists who attack evolution have been taught about it by other creationists, so they really don’t understand what it is or how it works, instead they have a straw-man idea of it.

Mike D answers them too, more briefly, and then concludes,

The questions show a total disconnect from reality; most of these people haven’t the slightest clue how evolution, cosmology, or science in general actually works. The only thing they know about atheism is what they’ve been fed by people like Ham, which is to say they know nothing. The only way to think these are credible questions is to be totally insulated from critical inquiry of your doxastic community. Or, to quote Christopher Hitchens speaking to Sean Hannity: “You strike me as someone who has never read any of the arguments against your position, ever.”

[‘doxatic’ refers to logic concerned with reasoning about beliefs]

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The Narcissism of Today’s Homophobia

Posted on Wednesday 5 February 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

[Reposted from Facebook a couple evenings ago]

The Narcissism of Today’s Homophobia

Insightful deconstruction of the motives behind homophobes like Bizzle (who put out an anti-gay version of Macklemore’s “Same Love”, the controversial Best Song nominee that was performed at the Grammys as a dozen or so couples, including some same-sex couples, were married on-stage).

Bizzle’s rap contains all the usual anti-gay bugaboos: gays are uncontrollably lusty; they’re like pedophiles; they violate God’s rules and summon his wrath; they trounce my religious freedom to persecute them; and now they’re becoming violent—oh, but by the way, while I hate their sin, I love them and just pray they’ll become straight like me. Indeed, what’s most marked about today’s homophobia is what a clear expression of narcissism it is, along with how unrigorous its rationalizations are. Homophobic people seem unable to see past themselves, to transcend their most rudimentary emotions and arrive at a place that’s often reachable only if we apply a modicum of reason—often spurred by empathy—to challenge old mental habits.

Instead, homophobes assume that the only natural way of being, for everyone, is straight like them….

The essayist goes on with examples from Peggy Noonan and the Duck Dynasty guy (and he could well have added moralistic dimwit Kirk Cameron, given his reaction to the Grammys).

… The reduction of gay identity to sexual desire, and the refusal or inability to think rigorously about the basis of right and wrong beyond a provincial attachment to religious dogma, have blinded many to the use of simple reason. … And as I’ve argued before, for too many, homosexuality remains the one thing Americans consistently claim is immoral without ever giving a reason why.

My take on this: conservatives, who seem to be overwhelmingly Christian, can’t get their minds around the fact that there are people in the world who are different from themselves. Recognition of this fact, in the popular media, throws them into a tizzy. It conflicts with their assumed privilege that their worldview is the only one that should be acknowledged. And to show these ‘other’ people might actually be *happy* makes them outraged. How can they be happy? Don’t they realize they are *sinners*!?

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Five Reasons Why Secular Humanism Is Winning

Posted on Wednesday 5 February 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Despite the anguishing of right-wingnuts over science and gays, the trend in society is apparently away from fundamentalism.

http://civitashumana.wordpress.com/2014/02/01/5-reasons-secular-humanism-is-winning/.

To summarize:

1, the current generation is more secular than ever
2, religion has become less fundamental
3, modern scientific research is focused on fixing the human condition
4, philosophy has been reclaimed from theology
5, secular humanist principles have market appeal

From item 4:

When philosophers are not forced into religion and can follow their conclusion wherever evidence and reason lead them, the majority come to the conclusion of atheism and naturalism. In fact, about 70% of modern philosophers are atheist, despite the overwhelming majority of the general population still endorsing theism. This is because honest inquiry, for people informed in the correct disciplines, simply cannot support theistic beliefs. The philosophy of the future (if not already the philosophy of today) will be naturalism and secular humanism. For a further study of dominant trends in mainstream professional philosophy, see here.

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