UPDATE: An alert reader has informed me that the Edge site also contains a “debate” (well, really more of a conversation) between Angier and David Sloan Wilson, which you can find here. Wilson doesn’t seem to care whether religion is true or false, maintaining that the only thing a scientist should care about is whether it originated because it inspired good behavior (e.g., whether it evolved by group selection). That’s a curiously blinkered view, because a). that question cannot be decided since the origins of religion are lost in the irrecoverable past, and b). the question at issue is whether religion is a good or bad thing now. And for a scientist, it should also matter whether religious claims are true. It’s interesting that truth seems to matter more to the science journalist than to the scientist!

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Posting is going to slow down here as I’m busy writing a book, but, like Maru, I do my best. From time to time I’ll put up stuff that I encounter while writing, and the title of today’s “sermon” comes from a book (note—don’t waste your money) in which Alvin Plantinga notes that the real conflict isn’t between Darwinism (i.e., modern evolutionary theory) and religion, but between Darwinism and naturalism. That comes from Plantinga’s crazy idea that evolution could never have given humans the ability to discern things (like the fact of evolution) as true, because evolution only vouchsafes us behaviors that maximize our reproductive success. He posits, instead, that the ability of humans to discern truth comes from a sensus divinitatis installed by God. That, of course, gives us reason to trust our senses, not only about evolution but (of course!) about the reality and salvific properties of Jesus. The problems with this idea are too obvious to discuss.

But I digress. Here’s where the real conflict lies. This is a short excerpt from the best and funniest essay ever written on the incompatibility of science and religion: “My God problem,” by science writer Natalie Angier. In just a few pages she does more than anyone else ever has to puncture the pretensions of people like Nick Matzke, Kenneth Miller, Chris Mooney, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), the AAAS’s DoSER program, and every accommodationist who pretends that there’s no conflict between science and faith.

I’ve recommended Angier’s essay before, but if you haven’t read it, go do so now (it’s on the Edge site).

Here’s the big conflict:

So why is it that most scientists avoid criticizing religion even as they decry the supernatural mind-set? For starters, some researchers are themselves traditionally devout, keeping a kosher kitchen or taking Communion each Sunday. 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? . . . I recognize that science doesn’t have all the answers and doesn’t pretend to, and that’s one of the things I love about it. But it has a pretty good notion of what’s probable or possible, and virgin births and carpenter rebirths just aren’t on the list. Is there a divine intelligence, separate from the universe but somehow in charge of the universe, either in its inception or in twiddling its parameters? No evidence. Is the universe itself God? Is the universe aware of itself? We’re here. We’re aware. Does that make us God? Will my daughter have to attend a Quaker Friends school now? I don’t believe in life after death, but I’d like to believe in life before death. I’d like to think that one of these days we’ll leave superstition and delusional thinking and Jerry Falwell behind. Scientists would like that, too. But for now, they like their grants even more.

And I love this bit, clearly aimed at every mealymouthed accommodationist in America:

No, most scientists are not interested in taking on any of the mighty cornerstones of Christianity. They complain about irrational thinking, they despise creationist “science,” they roll their eyes over America’s infatuation with astrology, telekinesis, spoon bending, reincarnation, and UFOs, but toward the bulk of the magic acts that have won the imprimatur of inclusion in the Bible, they are tolerant, respectful, big of tent. Indeed, many are quick to point out that the Catholic Church has endorsed the theory of evolution and that it sees no conflict between a belief in God and the divinity of Jesus and the notion of evolution by natural selection. If the pope is buying it, the reason for most Americans’ resistance to evolution must have less to do with religion than with a lousy advertising campaign. So, on the issue of mainstream monotheistic religions and the irrationality behind many of religion’s core tenets, scientists often set aside their skewers, their snark, and their impatient demand for proof, and instead don the calming cardigan of a a kiddie-show host on public television. They reassure the public that religion and science are not at odds with one another, but rather that they represent separate “magisteria,” in the words of the formerly alive and even more formerly scrappy Stephen Jay Gould. Nobody is going to ask people to give up their faith, their belief in an everlasting soul accompanied by an immortal memory of every soccer game their kids won, every moment they spent playing fetch with the dog. Nobody is going to mock you for your religious beliefs. Well, we might if you base your life decisions on the advice of a Ouija board; but if you want to believe that someday you’ll be seated at a celestial banquet with your long-dead father to your right and Jane Austen to your left-and that she’ll want to talk to you for another hundred million years or more—that’s your private reliquary, and we’re not here to jimmy the lock. Consider the very different treatments accorded two questions presented to Cornell University’s “Ask an Astronomer” Web site. To the query, “Do most astronomers believe in God, based on the available evidence?” the astronomer Dave Rothstein replies that, in his opinion, “modern science leaves plenty of room for the existence of God . . . places where people who do believe in God can fit their beliefs in the scientific framework without creating any contradictions.” He cites the Big Bang as offering solace to those who want to believe in a Genesis equivalent and the probabilistic realms of quantum mechanics as raising the possibility of “God intervening every time a measurement occurs” before concluding that, ultimately, science can never prove or disprove the existence of a god, and religious belief doesn’t—and shouldn’t—”have anything to do with scientific reasoning.” How much less velveteen is the response to the reader asking whether astronomers believe in astrology. “No, astronomers do not believe in astrology,” snarls Dave Kornreich. “It is considered to be a ludicrous scam. There is no evidence that it works, and plenty of evidence to the contrary.” Dr. Kornreich ends his dismissal with the assertion that in science “one does not need a reason not to believe in something.” Skepticism is “the default position” and “one requires proof if one is to be convinced of something’s existence.” In other words, for horoscope fans, the burden of proof is entirely on them, the poor gullible gits; while for the multitudes who believe that, in one way or another, a divine intelligence guides the path of every leaping lepton, there is no demand for evidence, no skepticism to surmount, no need to worry. You, the religious believer, may well find subtle support for your faith in recent discoveries—that is, if you’re willing to upgrade your metaphors and definitions as the latest data demand, seek out new niches of ignorance or ambiguity to fill with the goose down of faith, and accept that, certain passages of the Old Testament notwithstanding, the world is very old, not everything in nature was made in a week, and (can you turn up the mike here, please?) Evolution Happens.

The difference in the way the Cornell site treats religion and astrology underscores the respect that religion gets in America compared to other systems of delusional thought. Astrology and homeopathy bad; resurrection and virgin births okay.

I believe this essay was first published in, of all places, The American Scholar, but I may be wrong. You may recall that it was Angier’s laudatory review of Sam Harris’s The End of Faith that marked the beginning of public acceptance of New Atheism in the U. S.