State of the Discussion

E.D., you're arguing against a point I'm not making. My point is that fake science and science denial are always bad and are a big problem in modern society. At worst, they're destructive and evil, at best, they're wasteful of limited resources like time and money. And the further point is that the biggest promoters of fake science and science denial have been religious leaders.

What you're arguing is that science isn't always good. I've never argued explicitly that science is always good, and you're presuming it into my argument. It does not follow from the arguments that I have made.

Great, now the hosts are breaking Godwin’s law. Good work.

Andrew, look, for every analogy or tale of the evil's of religion, someone can find a counter. Same with science. Science also lead to the bombing of Japan at the end of WWII. Science is an empty vessel, and can be a dangerous weapon without some sense of morality to guide it. Religion can also be twisted to justify horrible things.

And this is the point. Religion, science, all of these aspects of what it means to be human...they mean nothing until humans guide them forward. They have power to do great good or great evil.

And by the way, that wasn't really breaking Godwin's Law. I wasn't using a Nazi analogy. I was pointing to an example of science being used to do harm. I wasn't likening someone to Nazi's--certainly not evolutionists. I am an evolutionist.

Answer my question Mark.
When have we seen Dawkins lobbying for equal time to expound on his theories after the sermon at Saddleback?
Behave in a manner worthy of respect and we shall respect you.
Otherwise, not so much.

Matoko:
Who do you mean "you"? Stop trying to attribute beliefs that we've never claimed to hold. Again, you have no idea what my personal religious beliefs are, and it is getting really frustrating to have you continue to assume that you do.

Since when did elitist become such a dirty word, anyways? And why solely in the realm of politics? I don't refer to a good doctor or a smart professor as elitists in order to call them out in some way.

Does anyone really believe that an atheist is going to win over a theist? I certainly don't. One may grow tired of the logical gymnastics required to maintain a traditional American theism and start the slide but it's not going to happen because of an atheist.

What is effective is to make sure that there is a political social price for introducing debate founded on an exclusive/exceptionalist view of ones own religion. Western tradition has a long history of regligious wars and abuse. Society has an interest in keeping religion outside of the primary political debate. If one is foolish enough to drag one's faith into a political debate, don't blame others when the object of your devotion is politicised and trashed.

The best answer is for the religious to self-police and make sure that any religious argument in the public sphere maintains a level of civility that you would like shown to your beliefs. A bit of the golden rule. When folk like Pat Robertson are allowed to be public leaders of religion then there can be no reasonable complaint when the same level of discourse is redirected toward religion itself.

Sorry Chris, I completely missed your first answer to my question. Thanks for the info. I've never been to one and am usually looking for interesting things to do in Van on the weekends.

E.D., Mark, full disclosure: I'm a scientist. For me, one of the big problems in this country is science denial. I suspect that's also the case for most prominent "new atheists" or whatever we want to call them. It's not an accident that PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are all scientists in general and biologists in particular. Science has been under attack in the US for the past eight years. Global climate change denialists have been the biggest problem especially since we had one in the White House but creationism has been a problem too, as have, to lesser extents, abstinence-only advocates, AIDS denialists and vaccine conspiracists.

Science denial isn't a cost-free belief. E.D. brought up Stalin in the context of his (Stalin's) atheism, but Stalin was also a skeptic of Darwinian evolution. He called genetics "Capitalist Science", imprisoned prominent geneticists and instituted Lysenkoism, a pseudoscience that he thought was more in line with communist ideals. His science policies caused huge famines and were probably responsible for as many, if not more, deaths than his gulags. How many people do you think will die from George W. Bush's climate policies? Will it be more than from Stalin's denial of genetics?

Right here and now, in 2009 and in the US, the most consistent and prominent pushers of science denial have been conservative Christian leaders advocating for creationism. Some even work denial of climate change into their sermons.

Who is going to push back against this? Moderate and liberal Christians could, but they mostly don't or aren't very loud when they do. Larger denominations are probably too worried about offending their conservative wings. Pope Benedict even recently made some rhetorical gestures in the direction of Intelligent Design, which horrified me because my family is largely Catholic. If moderate and liberal Christians can't be bothered to push back against science denial from their co-religionists, the task is going to fall to scientists. Who are largely atheist. Who include among their rank some assholes like PZ Myers. Who are not going to respect your religion in general, and even less when you elevate science deniers to leading roles.

I am constantly baffled when I see science deniers defended from those mean atheists. Yes, Myers and company are jerks. But science denial is dangerous. Those who advocate it deserve every bit of scorn they get.

Matoko: The Discovery Institute has a budget of a whopping $4 million per year. It is also, as you implicitly acknowledge, the primary vehicle for the push to teach ID in schools. While you may think $4 million is a lot of money, the fact is that this is a relatively small budget for such a prominent organization, and it thus requires only a handful of large donors for its funding. So to say that the Discovery Institute is representative of a huge swath of Christendom outside of a handful of areas is utterly devoid of evidence.

I see things clear.
You are the delusional one Kain.
Look at the law Jindal signed on in Louisiana.
The only thing that law will accomplish is forcing already impoverished school districts to buy the DI's crappy textbook.
Every single congressman signed on that stupid bill, and Gov. Jindal did too.
What im saying is the absolute truth.

The Discovery Institute is a fringe organization and in no way represents the vast majority of modern Christians. Once again, matoko, you paint in the broadest of strokes, eschew evidence in favor of your own bloated opinions, and fail to see the larger picture because you have such a very set vision of how you perceive things to be.

Who started this turf war?
Did Dawkins go into churches and start preachin'?
No.
Keep religion in churches or do teh heavy lifting in unis where students have a choice.
Dawkins is perfectly cognizant of the reasons behind forcing religion on the 7 to 13 year olds.
He envisions it as child abuse, stunting and blinkering young minds.
I do not think the God Delusion is over the top, and Meyers and the wafer were a reaction to a particular situ.
OTOH Derbyshire called "Expelled" a blood libel against science.
Like i said......get off our turf and stay in your churches and bible colleges, or make your bones in academe.
Simple choice.

I see the strong executive argument you offer as a distinction without a difference.

Now would you call Jefferson a strong executive or just a president that may have created a single expansion of presidential prerogatives?

The office has obviously been strengthened over time. But is this growth the result of some political philosophy or the accumulation of power steps here and there? Both of course. And let's not ignore congressional abdication of their constitutional powers. And the Supreme Court has both strengthened and weakened the office, weakended only in the sense of rejucting specific claims.

A recent example of a philosophical call expansion of presidential power is the Dick Cheney David Addington authored call for a strong executive in the congressional minority report they authored in 1987 regarding the Iran-contra affair. There Cheney/Addington wrote in favor of "monarchical" powers for the president going back to British kings. I am sure DOJ authored several memos clearing the way for the recent Bush to spy on Americans, hold detainees without legal service's etc. The list is long and no doubt well know to you.

But this is somewhat off topic with regard to strong executive and populism.

With regard to A. Jackson I must admit great ignorance. The only things I recall about his administration are his removal policy for Native Americans, being PC here, and his fight against the National Bank. So I will not attempt to comment on any relationship you see between him and populism.

Like I said, its all about respect.
Teh believers want religion to have peer respect with Science, and that isn't possible. So as long as teh religious try to force respect, often thru nefarious and dishonest methods, like the Discovery Institute, they will continue to accrue mockery and scorn.
IDT is actually where quantum physics was 50 years ago.
And now look....high schoolteachers in my state need 3 credit hours of quantum mechanics to be certified. ;)
The solution to this problem, to accrue respect, IDT has to behave respectfully. To be a science, act like a science. Offer courses in IDT at unis, endow chairs and fellowships. Granted, IDT wont be taught as part of a science curriculum in the begining.
Give Behe some actual fundage. Fund Hamerhoff, lol. Fund a peer reviewed journal. Fund research and grad students.
Show me a uni that will turn down fundage in this day and age.
Got no tools? Neither did the first quantum theorists.
Cowboy up and build them.

If you want to be treated with respect, behave respectfully.
Dawkins and company are perfectly right to ridicule and mock.

Paul (#82),

I appreciate your taking the time to respond. I followed the link to your blog and I will definitely be checking back there again, really interesting and engaging stuff. At the risk of extending this conversation beyond the point where it is annoying I did want to address a couple of the points you brought up.

First, I think I should clarify my position a little bit. I do not mean to argue that atheists should shy away from a frank and open debate about the existence of God and the relative merits of belief in that existence. I concede that there are some people for whom the debate alone will be offensive, however, I think that there is a middle ground between using kid gloves and the inherently (and I would suggest purposefully) disrespectful tone established by using terms like “insane” to describe believers and comparing a belief in God to believing in the FSM. I want to stress that at this point in my argument I am not yet suggesting that a moderate tone between kid gloves and calculated disrespect is necessarily the right tone to strike, only that an alternative exists (You actually illustrate it quite nicely when you suggest that believers “contentions about the nature of the universe are totally misguided,” this is an uncompromising statement but far less provocative and inflammatory than saying or implying that “people who believe in God are crazy and stupid.” ).

You suggest that Dawkins’ and Harris’ more aggressive rhetoric would be completely unremarkable in the political sphere and I think you’re right about that, but I also think that’s part of the problem. The tone that the New Atheists strike is useful in a number of different ways; it attracts attention and sells books, it solidifies a base, and it helps set the terms and tenor of the debate, after those things have been accomplished, though, I think that the more derisive and hostile elements of the New Atheist’s rhetoric begin to work against them. I suppose that my fundamental criticism of the tone that Dawkins, Harris, and the New Atheists often employ is not that it’s mean or unfair but that it is not an effective way to win over many moderates and change the minds of believers. And I should say, I recognize that the majority of Dawkins’ and Harris’ rhetoric is actually pretty respectful, but both men can’t resist the temptation to twist the knife every once in a while when the opportunity for mockery comes along. The impact of those (comparatively rare) disrespectful elements of Dawkins’ and Harris’ work is so much greater than everything else (they get all the all the media attention and drive the controversy which drives the book sales) that they don’t have to do a lot of it before a large swath of people perceive the two men’s rhetoric as off putting. Dawkins and Harris’ approach is maybe good and useful in debate, but it’s not so useful when you are engaged in a one on one conversation with someone trying to win them over. Dawkins and Harris and their peers on this front have established a tone for contemporary atheist expression, and it is largely combative and disrespectful. That ad campaign you mentioned didn’t arise out of nowhere, it was part of a continuum, and while I suspect that Dawkins and Harris themselves might criticize it as counterproductive it is attributable to an approach to this debate that they helped establish.

Ultimately I think that approaching this topic as one would a political debate has limited usefulness. When I wrote about people reacting to their deeply held and deeply felt belief in God being insulted (not just questioned) I did not mean to imply that their beliefs would whither, quite the opposite, in response to disrespectful (perceived) attack the positions are likely to calcify and become more entrenched and make those believers less likely to listen or be reasoned with. Most people in America occupy a space in the middle of the faith spectrum and are probably disinclined to engage in a debate in the first place. They find themselves just as turned off by combative religious people as they do by combative atheists, but where they encounter many examples of non combative religious people in their every day lives the people who publicly proclaim themselves as atheists are more rare, and their rhetoric can seem almost entirely negative (this isn’t true, but that’s the perception that exists).

And finally, “Supers” is hard to argue with but I can’t help but hear a sarcastic note in there, like a bunch of students in a classroom pointing to the weird kid over in the corner eating paste and wearing his underpants on his head, “look at the ‘Super.’”

Ok I’m done. This was interesting, thanks again. Best Wishes.

Andrew,

So what's the point? So people believe things that have consequence. Everything has consequence. Stalin was an atheist, right? Was it his belief in power and his lack of faith in a power higher than himself that lead to his madness and murder? I don't know. Belief or lack thereof has consequence, and to each individual or situation that changes. Who says that belief in God is any more detrimental than the loss of that belief? We are in muddy waters assigning such certainties to such unquantifiable data. I am vehemently opposed to teaching creationism in school, but far more opposed to the idea that somehow we need to snuff out that viewpoint. There is such thing as the rule of law, and our particular laws should protect us from creationism, and protect our church's as well from the secularism of the State.

Interesting point Bob. I think that by strong executive I was referring more to the expanded boundaries of Presidential power, not the strength of the man in office. As exhibited by our last President, even a very weak man can make great strides in expanding the role of the executive office.

James, very good points on snark. Indeed, it is merely a rhetorical device and as with all rhetorical devices, it serves its purpose. When in Rome....