Another Vapid Effort to Claim that Science and Religion Can Get Along

[SecularMotion]

Sociologist Elaine Ecklund from Rice University is known for her constant stream of publications and talks promoting the compatibility of science and religion. Her work is, of course, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, whose goal to show that science and faith are mutually supportive. Ecklund’s spinning of her survey data to emphasize interdisciplinary comity—even when the data doesn’t really show it—is getting quite tiresome. I’ve often written about Ecklund’s spin-doctoring, which always yields conclusions congenial to Templeton’s mission, but the distortions just keep on coming. Templeton dispenses some $70 million a year to get its soothing message out.

Now we have another article on Ecklund’s latest research: “New survey suggests science & religion are compatible, but scientists have their doubts.” This the third piece that the Huffington Post has published on this study since February 16 (the others are here and here), implying that this “compatibility” is of great interest to somebody. Further, Ecklund’s study was done in collaboration with the U.S.’s most important science organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Science—an eternal blot on a group that should stay far away from religion.

In brief, Ecklund’s study canvassed 10,241 Americans: a mixture of scientists, “regular” Americans, and evangelical Christians. And her results, described in the latest HuffPo piece are absolutely predictable given Ecklund’s academic history: Science and religion are friends! People see them as compatible!

But the article starts off with something that doesn’t seem propitious for friendship:

Are science and religion incompatible? That seems like a rational conclusion, especially in the wake of last month’s combative evolution-vs.-creationism debate, which pitted “Science Guy” Bill Nye against evangelist Ken Ham.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117071/elaine-ecklund-says-science-religion-are-compatible-why-theyre-not

[Arugula Latte]

1. Religion tends to be incredibly myopic.

Its myopia is utterly ridiculous in the face of current scientific knowledge about the universe. The big three desert-originated paternalistic monotheisms are focused on the last 2,000 years and on handful of figures who supposedly had/have supernatural powers that defy current-day laws of science (the ability to come back to life and presumably return to Earth 2,000+ years after death, the ability to live to be 900 years, the ability to receive and proclaim the will of the supreme deity -- who just happens to looks like a homo sapien on the planet Earth, which is apparently the most important planet among countless trillions, by the way). These members of one relatively recent primate species on a small planet (Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, etc.) are said to be the most important lifeforms who have ever lived, thus ignoring billions of years of previous life on this planet, even more billions of years of the existence of the greater universe, and billions of other galaxies, let alone planets, many of which presumably harbor or have harbored life, and most likely highly evolved life with intelligence on par or greater than the intelligence of homo sapiens.

[cbayer]

2. An interesting analysis and she makes some very valid points about the usefulness of this

study and it's methods.

But she tends to come at it from the perspective of science trumping religion.

While that is true in some areas, it's not true in others, and the need to have a "winner" and a "loser" really misses the point that both can exist and be of value.

[trotsky]

3. The most important takeaway, cbayer, is what we should do when they conflict.

When science says that a diabetic child needs insulin, and religion says that the child should be prayed for instead, there's going to be a winner and a loser. I know you hate, hate, hate having to think about the real world implications of your "wouldn't it be nice" dreams, so much so that you won't even read this, but this is the conflict. It's real, it's there, and it has to be addressed.

Can both science and religion exist and be of value? Sure, but they will never be EQUAL.

[el_bryanto]

6. I don't think the author of the article would agree that religion can be of value

But it is nice to see that you think that it can.

Bryant

[trotsky]

7. Religion can of course be of value to an individual.

Much like a favorite song or food.

Whether it has value compared to science when making statements about reality, that's another matter.

[el_bryanto]

8. I'd agree - but then I've always felt that science and religion/philosophy

answer fundamentally different questions.

Bryant

[Dorian Gray]

31. 100% agree with this

i'll go further to say that I don't see why they need to get along or be compatible.

[longship]

4. And Templeton funds these studies because that's their mission.

To show how friendly science and religion are. In reality there are all those examples of how and when they are divergent, they are very divergent. Yes, that would be anecdotal evidence, normally inadmissible in science. Nevertheless, one may ask. Why does science have to fight the creationists for decades in spite of not one court victory on the creationist side? And they are still trying, and succeeding, in LA and TX, for instance. And their complaints are almost universally given with religious rationalizations.

Anybody claiming that religion and science are compatible must explain why this isn't incompatibility.

And don't get me started about the myriad of other scientific theories which are opposed solely with religious arguments. The crazy responses to the Cosmos reboot are indicative.

Nobody can credibly make the compatibility claim as long as this situation exists.

[cbayer]

5. I didn't really get the Templeton connection until recently.

I also wonder why Huffpo keeps running this repeatedly.

I agree that they are divergent, but I don't think that makes them incompatible. They just cover very different areas and the less the overlap, the better for both.

Creationism is clearly an area of compatibility and in a situation like that, science must trump.

But most of what religion deals with, science really has no standing, and vice versa.

That's why demands for "proof" about god are as ridiculous as claims that creationism is science. Anyone demanding proof is insisting that scientific methods be used to evaluate a realm which just can't be evaluated by science. Antoher overlap where there just isn't compatibility.

At any rate, when I think of them as compatible, I am using the definition that would say that they can co-exist and both be valid, not that they complement or overlap in any way.

[longship]

9. Well, I agree that they have no common standing.

But the claim that they are compatible must answer about the denialism, almost always framed in religious terms.

I know this is a foreground/background argument (or figure/ground, if you wish). But if it weren't for religion, the biological sciences would not have to be fighting in court for going on 90 years to be able to teach their discipline in public schools. When that opposition goes away, I may entertain the argument that religion and science are not at loggerheads. Note: However, I may not, because biology isn't the only front in the battle.

Anybody making the claim has to respond to these things. That's why I am not an adherent of NOMA (Stephen J Gould's non-overlapping magisteria). They overlap all the time, and in the worst way possible.

[okasha]

11. They are not succeeding in Texas.

The science textbooks adopted for use in Texas public schools last fall are 100% creationism free.

[longship]

12. Well, there's this.

So, TX is doing exactly like LA, putting the creationism into the charter schools, where the creationists think the Constitution cannot touch them.

Read about it here: http://ncse.com/news/2014/01/creationism-texas-charter-schools-0015318

What curriculum is adopted statewide is useless if the local boards are going to ignore it.

Source Slate document by Zack Kopplin: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/01/creationism_in_texas_public_schools_undermining_the_charter_movement.html

Hope that helps you understand what's apparently going on.

[okasha]

13. The creationists influence a relatively small number of schools and students.

Charter schools in Texas--and I'm from Texas and have followed this issue rather closely--are run by corporations, even though they come under the heading of public schools. Some of those corporations are religious. Naturally if unfortunately, they choose religious-influenced texts for their schools.

Meanwhile, the public school systems proper are using straight-up science textbooks. Texas voters resoundingly defeated a majority of the fundamentalist pro-creationism members of the Texas State Board of Education and now a voting majority of the TSBOE rejects creationism in science books. Even the Republicans on the Board are supporting the creationism-free texts. The little light bulbs came on, and they realized that they couldn't attract new businesses to the state if said businesses' employees couldn't find good public schools for their children.

Hope that helps you understand that Texans got pretty pissed off at the shabby treatment their kids were getting from the STBOE.

[longship]

15. That's good to hear.

Now, we've got to band together and fight these charter schools. If they take government $$, they cannot teach creationism. They have to teach the same curriculum as the public schools. They don't get to plead religious freedom on this. Not if they take govt funds.

Thanks for a peek inside, my friend.

[okasha]

17. You're very welcome.

Frankly, I'd like to see charter schools abolished altogether. If churches want to establish religious schools, let them do so openly, and let them compete for students just as other private schools do. Every one of the Catholic schools in my city has a waiting list, and they deliver a steady strem of UIL and science fair winners to highly rated universities each year. At the other end of the spectrum are the charter schools that are nothing but holding tanks for "difficult" kids until they age out of mandatory attendance. We can do better than that. We must do better than that.

[rug]

10. Jerry's metaphysical naturalism tolerates no dissent.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

14. No, that's an obvious falsehood.

Telling people they are wrong is not the same as not tolerating dissent.

[rug]

16. That's an obvious misunderstanding.

Metaphysical naturalists, of which he is one, assert there is nothing that exists outside nature, its elements and its physical laws. Its worldview allows for no other existence, explanation or, as here, inquiry. I.e., it tolerates no dissent. Coyne is, at bottom, an ideologue on this point on which notions of right or wrong are . . . . immaterial.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

18. No, you're simply wrong, I'm afraid.

Not tolerating dissent is when you try to forbid people from dissenting, not when you tell them they are wrong when they do.

[rug]

19. That's simply because he lacks the power to do so.

Mockery and ridicule, which are replete in this article, along with the other fallacies, are the next best thing. If he is unable to stop the dissent, he will attempt to shame the dissenters from dissenting. That is the poison of intellectual discussion.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

24. What evidence do you have for that?

I'm not familiar with all his remarks - has he ever said that he opposes the first amendment? Or that people who disagree with him ought to be silenced?

Talking people who are obviously wrong into shutting up voluntarily (or, better still, changing their minds) is a good thing, and nothing whatsoever to do with trying to coerce people to shut up voluntarily.

[rug]

25. It has nothing to do with the First Amendment.

It has to do with how human beings react to disagreement. Attempting to shut people up, voluntarily or involuntarily, is itself intolerance.

[LiberalAndProud]

30. I understand how the word "vapid" in the title of the article

would be perceived as mocking. I don't perceive it in the bulk of the article though.

I do understand that this is a matter of perception. Would you point to other examples that you found offensive? I ask this for my own edification, as I would hope to avoid that perception when I engage in these conversations. Thanks.

[rug]

33. He's not the best at it but he's comfortable with it..

And her results, described in the latest HuffPo piece are absolutely predictable given Ecklund’s academic history: Science and religion are friends! People see them as compatible!

What? Miracles? Well, science used to consider them, but it never helped our understanding of nature.

Indeed, tests of whether miracles occur (studies of the efficacy of intercessory prayer, investigations of supposed miracles like the Shroud of Turin, and so on) have always shown no evidence that God stuck his hand in. But he could have: all he would have to do is, on one night, to rearrange the stars in a pattern that spelled out “I am who I am” in Hebrew. Science would have a tough time explaining that one!

Quoting Natalie Angier:

I admit I’m surprised whenever I encounter a religious scientist. How can a bench-hazed Ph.D., who might in an afternoon deftly purée a colleague’s PowerPoint presentation on the nematode genome into so much fish chow, then go home, read in a two-thousand-year-old chronicle, riddled with internal contradictions, of a meta-Nobel discovery like “Resurrection from the Dead,” and say, gee, that sounds convincing? Doesn’t the good doctor wonder what the control group looked like?

After all, most religionists pride themselves on modernity, and don’t want to be seen as unfriendly to a science that has improved their lives immeasurably. The real conflict—the one that will be with us so long as religion pretends to find truth—is between rationality and superstition.

[LiberalAndProud]

34. Thank you.

[edhopper]

20. Who's Jerry?

[rug]

21. The OP author, Jerry Coyne.

[okasha]

26. Jerry Coyne wtote the articlr.

SM enclosed it in block quotes to indicate that he was not himself the author.

No one was outed.

[edhopper]

28. Oops

I completely misunderstood.
I'll delete

[edhopper]

22. Seems to me that

there are too questions in play that are very different.
The polls about belief are looking at whether people can be both religious and accept science. That seems obvious, since many people do that. Our President is a believer who accepts and promotes the scientific worldview. The numbers are important politically and culturally for our society, but it's really about peoples views and not a science/religion dichotomy.

The other separate question is that whether what science or religion tells us are compatible. The way i see it, when they conflict, science clearly wins every
time. When religion is used to describe the Universe, it is not compatible with science. If you want to regulate religion to just a philosophical basis to live one's life, then they don't generally come into conflict. (though they might if religious text is quoted, and that text claims some fact that can be investigated).

These are obviously more complex than I stated, but my point is the differentiate the two questions.

[cheyanne]

27. why religion and science have nothing to do with each other

There seems to be some idea floating around that religion and science are talking the same language . . .but they're not. They are self-contained belief systems based on totally different modes of thought.

Take the word "belief"

science: an idea based on repeatable physical or theoretical experiments using the scientific method

religion: an idea based on the revelations of or inspired by a supernatural being known as "god"

or the word "how"

science: an explanation of the process by which something happen

religion: an explanation of why something happens

Both religion and science may stray from such strict definitions of these words.

A scientist may say that because he doesn't need the concept of god to explain the universe, there is no such thing.

Or a religionist may say that because science doesn't include a god, it cannot be true.


Science has never proven a religion wrong . . . to any believer . . .

So what do we do about religions that deny science?

Not much. Fundamentalism arises in times of change. People who have lost their livelihoods, their homeland, their hope for the future will turn to the nearest theory that provides them with a defense to change: the ideal past. And the more change there is the more defensive the religions become.

But the past never returns. An idea never dies but the support for it will dwindle until the next paradigm shift.

[cbayer]

29. Welcome back to the religion group cheyanne.

I see that you posted this as an OP in general discussion and got no responses.

If you want to have a more in depth discussion about it, you could post it here as it's own thread.

[pinto]

32. I think many people are resistant to change or take a reflexive defensive stance as it happens.

Maybe it's a natural reaction to "Why isn't everything as it was before?". Or as you say "the ideal past". Yet it happens. In all walks of life.