We all know about creationists lying for Jesus. In fact, we saw an example of that last night when Eben Alexander, debating the existence of an afterlife against Sean Carroll and Steve Novella, deliberately misrepresented a quote of Carl Sagan by taking it out of context.

What we don’t expect is that pro-evolution people would use the same tactic to promote their agenda. Yet they do if their evolution is mixed with religion, as it is in the case of Peter Hess, the “Director of Religious Community Outreach” for the National Center for Science Education (NCSE). That organization, which has done great stuff by keeping creationism out of the schools, is nevertheless committed to undiluted accommodationism, repeatedly telling religionists that their faith is compatible with evolution. That, in fact, is Hess’s job (he’s a Catholic, I believe). In that way they push theology as well as evolution, for such accommodationism effectively tells people what form of religious belief is considered “proper”. (Hint: it’s the form that accepts evolution.)

And Hess, perhaps because of his religiosity, isn’t above doing a little quote-mining to defend that accommodationism. In a new article on the NCSE blog “Science League of America” (an unfortunate title for that site, I think), Hess has accused atheists of arguing that religious people can’t do good science.

Hess’s piece is called “An astronomer for God: William R. Stoeger (1943-2014),” and it’s a paean to a cosmologist and theologian (a Jesuit) who tried to put a religious interpretation on science. Hess plainly admired Stoeger, though I’d argue that praising this kind of accommodationism on the NCSE website is unseemly, as it’s osculating the rump of superstition. Nevertheless, I’ll let Hess have his moment of admiration, which includes these encomiums:

Bill Stoeger was both a brilliant and careful astronomer and an astute partner in dialogue about issues at the interface between religion and science. It was his lifelong conviction that “God is speaking to us not only through Scripture, but also through the beauties, the wonder, the intricacies, and the harmonies of creation, and so what we discover, either about the way our brain works, and how it coordinates our behavior, or what we discover about the biology of the cell, or the chemistry of DNA, or the working of cosmology or physics, all those things are going to tell us, at least a little bit, about how God acts in the world.” [The quote is apparently from a Catholic biologist who knew Stoeger] Father Bill, we bid you fond farewell and Godspeed, in remembrance of and thanksgiving for your contributions to our understanding of so many facets of life in the universe.

That curled the toes of my shoes a bit, but what really upset me—and reader John Harshman—was this statement from Hess (my emphasis):

Biblical fundamentalists and their opponents on the extreme opposite end of the spectrum of belief often share one significant assumption: in order to contribute to modern science you have to be an atheist. That is, you cannot at the same time believe in a personal God and accept the scientific explanations of Big Bang cosmology, of the age of our solar system, and of the evolution of biodiversity on Earth.

Well, I’m not sure whether many Biblical fundamentalists feel that only atheists can contribute to modern science, but I know for damn sure that few atheists, or atheist scientists such as myself, feel that way. Although I think scientists who are religious are engaged in a form of subconscious cognitive dissonance, I’ve never said that religious belief automatically prevents somebody from doing good science. There were many believers, even in my own field (Ronald Fisher and Theodosius Dobzhansky, to name two) who made immense contributions to evolutionary biology. And although I vehemently object to Francis Collins’s touting scientific evidence for God (i.e., “The Moral Law”), I’ve said repeatedly that Collins was a good scientist and that I had no scientific objections to his heading the National Institutes of Health.

But Harshman wanted to know which atheists, exactly, held the views that Hess claimed, and, in the comments on Hess’s post, pressed him relentlessly:

My comment at the end represents Hess’s answer, responding to Harshman, to “which atheists think that religious people can’t do science?: For Hess had put up a response (now altered) that had two names, “Vic Stenger and Jerry Coyne”.

I never said anything of the kind. Hess’s misrepresentation really ticked me off, so I left my own comment after his post.

I waited patiently for Hess’s apology, and instead of tendering one, he simply modified his list of atheist miscreants by striking out my name (I don’t have a screenshot of the earlier version that lumped Stenger and I, but here’s his “apology”):





Well, that’s hardly an apology, and I’d expect a real one from a believer like Hess. After all, wouldn’t Jesus do that? But perhaps we’re learning that accommodationists can be just as devious and manipulative as fundamentalists. (I don’t think I’ve ever distorted a quote.)

So, Dr. Hess, I’m still waiting for you to retract your words, and not simply by striking out my name from your “J’accuse” list.

In the meantime, Hess is hoist with his own petard. After accusing fundamentalists and atheists of behaving the same bad way, he goes ahead and behaves exactly like a fundamentalist creationist.