About last night’s debate, my colleague Mark Stern at Slate argues that Nye lost the debate just by showing up , and I see that same sentiment from people on social media. But I disagree. We’ve been losing this debate in the public’s mind all along by not showing up. Sure, science advocates are there when this topic comes up in court, and I’m glad for it. But I think that we need to have more of a voice, and that voice needs to change. What Nye did last night was at least a step in that direction, so in that sense I’m glad he did this.

Isn’t Richard Dawkins an advocate? Isn’t David Attenborough an advocate? Isn’t E. O. Wilson an advocate? Weren’t Steve Gould and Carl Sagan advocates? Does Plait really think that in this Era of Evolution, the way forward is to have more debates like the one with Ham and Nye? Well, it’s not that simple. According to Plait, we need not more popularizers like Dawkins (who, I think, has done more to promote the acceptance of evolution than any accommodationist around), but more accommodationists (my emphasis):

But we need more, and it’s not so much what we need as who. Let me explain.

So evolution is not anti-religion in general. But is it atheistic? No. Evolution takes no stand on the existence or lack thereof of a god or gods. Whether you think life originated out of ever-more complex chemical reactions occurring on an ancient Earth, or was breathed into existence by God, evolution would take over after that moment. It’s a bit like the Big Bang; we don’t know how the Universe came into existence at that moment, but starting a tiny fraction of a second after that event our science does a pretty fair job of explanation.

But unless they are the narrowest of fundamentalists, this simply is not true. There is no greater proof of this than Pope John Paul II—who, one must admit, was a deeply religious man— saying that evolution was an established fact . Clearly, not all religion has a problem with evolution. Given that a quarter of U.S. citizens are Catholics , this shows Ham’s claim that evolution is anti-religious to be wrong.

. . .. But Ham is insidiously wrong on one important aspect: He insists evolution is anti-religious. But it’s not; it’s just anti-his-religion. This is, I think, the most critical aspect of this entire problem: The people who are attacking evolution are doing so because they think evolution is attacking their beliefs.

I can’t stress this enough. The conflict over the teaching of evolution is based on the false assumption that evolution is antagonistic to religion. This is why, I think, evolution is so vehemently opposed by so many in the United States. The attacks on the specifics of evolution—the claims about irreducibility of the eye, for example, or other such incorrect statements—are a symptom, not a cause. I can talk about how we know the Universe is old until the Universe is substantially older and not convince someone whose heels are dug in. But if we can show them that the idea of evolution is not contrary to their faith, then we will make far, far more progress.

Phil Plait’s “false assumption” is in fact a true assumption. Not only is evolution antagonistic to religion, but the methods of science are antagonistic to religion. Evolution just happens to be the one branch of science whose implications are sufficiently antireligious to inspire direct, persistent, and vociferous opposition. If you use the methods of science, then your religious beliefs don’t stand up under scrutiny. Indeed, evolution takes no direct stand on gods, but can’t Plait see that its message is anti-God? That is why most evolutionists, and most good scientists, are atheists.

As for the Catholic Church, they are not down with religion in the same way scientists are. Catholic dogma still holds that Adam and Eve were the literal progenitors of all humanity. Science tells us that’s wrong. And if Adam and Eve didn’t exist, and didn’t sin, then what’s the point of Jesus; indeed, what’s the point of Christianity? Catholics also believe in theistic evolution: it is their explicit dogma that humans were endowed by God with a soul at some point in our evolution. Does Plait believe that? If not, then scientific evolution is at odds with Catholicism. As I note in my 2012 paper in Evolution:

Nevertheless, 27% of American Catholics think that modern species were created instantaneously by God and have remained unchanged ever since, while 8% do not know or refuse to answer.

And most of the rest of them are probably theistic evolutionists who buy into the soul business, or think that Adam and Eve really existed.

Note that Plait is engaging in theology here, exactly as everyone who claims that evolution is compatible with religion engages in theology. Try telling a Southern Baptist, a devout Muslim, or a Pentacostal Christian that naturalistic evolution comports perfectly with their faith, and by so doing changing their mind! Even Bill Nye, with his accommodationist palaver at Tuesday’s debate, couldn’t accomplish that task. That is why BioLogos has failed, why the Clergy Letter Project has failed, and why the acceptance of evolution in the last 30 years has failed. (Note that New Atheism, if you date it from The End of Faith, is but a decade old.) During most of that time, the strategy has been one of accommodation (or saying nothing about religion). The reason why the statistics on accepting evolution are flat is not because people like Dawkins tell Americans that evolution is incompatible with their faith; it’s because people have faith, and that immunizes them against accepting evolution.

Plait has a kumbaya touch in his peroration:

That’s not to say I’ll stop talking about the science itself. That still needs to be discussed! But simply saying science is right and faith is wrong will never, ever fix the problem. And this won’t be easy. As long as this discussion is framed as “science versus religion” there will never be a resolution. A religious person who doesn’t necessarily think the Bible is literal, but who is a very faithful Christian, will more likely be sympathetic to the Ken Hams than the Bill Nyes, as long as science is cast as an atheistic dogma. For example, on the Catholic Online website, the argument is made that both Ham and Nye are wrong, and casts science as an atheistic venture. That must change for progress to be made. And who should do this? The answer to me is clear: Religious people who understand the reality of science. They have a huge advantage over someone who is not a believer. Because atheism is so reviled in America, someone with faith will have a much more sympathetic soapbox from which to speak to those who are more rigid in their beliefs.