when accommodationists lash out at atheists

According to David Scharfenberg, Ken Miller is the only sane, rational person in the debate about how evolution should be taught, a debate led almost exclusively by foaming-at-the-mouth irrational extremists on both sides.

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Poor, poor Ken Miller. Despite being a biology professor at a prestigious university, authoring textbooks and a pair of popular tomes dismantling creationist rhetoric against the theory of evolution and having the respect of many non-theists and fellow scientists, he’s doomed to a life as a punching bag for rabid creationists and the vocal breed of atheists cast as convenient villains by accommodationist writers. That’s the gist of an article by reporter David Scharfenberg, who interviewed Jerry Coyne and PZ Myers for their views on Miller’s work and decided that instead of presenting a fair and nuanced view of their thoughts on Miller, he was going to ditch all the complimentary things they said about him and portray the biologists as rabid pitbulls who only have nasty comments about his subject. I suppose preserving the narrative was much more important than the facts…

I’m not sure that Miller is particularly flattered by an article which casts him as “an honorable man” surrounded by mindless lunatics from both sides of the debate, in keeping with the Mooney / Hagerty / Gilgoff / Ruse style of portraying atheists. You see, in the press, atheists are not allowed to hold complex or nuanced opinions. They must be single-minded, condescending, cantankerous loudmouths with nothing of value to add to a debate, the exact counterpart to fundamentalist caricatures and just as dull and unpleasant.

It’s really dishonest and crude, and yet this is exactly what so many reporters today seem to do. They’ll wipe their dirty shoes all over a group of atheists, reduce what these atheists say in interviews down to a few simple sound bytes reinforcing the big story, and refuse to acknowledge that there was anything more to the atheists’ position than what they chose to quote and how they decided to re-interpret these quotes. This is in part how Mooney got his $15,000 grant and a trip to England, and how reporters create controversy where there really isn’t one.

Now you might ask, what about religious fundamentalists? How can you ridicule the coverage atheists get but not acknowledge that the Religious Right gets the same kind of short end of the media stick? Well, we had a chance to hear plenty of anti-evolution activists rant and rave in their own words and on their own blogs. That’s why in my refutations of creationist arguments, I link directly to the source where they’re free to say what they’d like and how they’d like to say it without a reporter in sight. Whatever ignorant statements they make to incur a scathing critique from science bloggers was their choice to make. Although even a friendly reporter might not stop you from being a rhetorical menace to yourself, as the Scharfenberg piece illustrates with this quote from Miller about the potential role of God in our daily lives via quantum magic…

This sly intervention, Miller argues, is vital to the Creator’s project: if God were to re-grow limbs for amputees, for instance — if God were to perform the sorts of miracles demanded by atheists as proof of his existence — the consequences would be disastrous. […] “That would reduce God to a kind of supranatural force and by pushing a button labeled ‘prayer’ you could accomplish anything you wanted. What would that do to moral independence?”

Really, the idea of the universe’s quantum mesh being putty in a supernatural being’s hands is something I’d expect from New Age sophists rather than a distinguished scientist. And let’s be serious, fundamentalists are not just using the prayer button anytime they want, they abuse it at every opportunity. The idea that God isn’t supposed to get in the way seems to just beg the question of why we need a God if we’re not going to directly interact with him. While a kind of Deist, refined watchmaker of a deity might be just fine for Miller and a host of theologians, for billions of people, gods are very personal and they also push that prayer button whatever they get the chance, hoping for a miracle.

This argument about moral independence is an age old way of excusing the inability of the faithful to provide definitive proof for their deity and that faith translates into direct actions by a supernatural entity. It’s a red herring to put it bluntly. But Miller and other accommodationists using theological hand me downs as legitimate reasons to squeeze religion into science is ok because those atheists are just bad people who don’t have a single nuanced or valid opinion in their heads, right?

Ultimately, this kind of accommodationism isn’t about building bridges between facts and faith. If it was, there wouldn’t be a crew of rabid atheist villains in the narrative. Instead, atheists would be treated with at least the slightest modicum of respect and their positive words about Miller and religious scientists would be given the time of the day. Instead, writers like Scharfenberg, Ruse and Mooney are far more interested in pandering to their religious readers with backhanded swipes at the atheist menace. Oh they’re willing to build bridges and have open dialogues, just as long as those icky unbelievers aren’t involved since acknowledging that atheists have something of value to say might tick off their religious readers and result in one less payday.