religious tolerance and the Nobel

Phillip Johnson, emeritus professor of law at UC-Berkeley, has made a second career of arguing against “Darwinism.” The scare quotes are necessary, as the meaning of the word varies wildly depending upon who is using it and in what context. For Johnson it (sometimes) means not just the scientific theory of biological evolution, but also a naturalistic worldview which incorporates that theory as part of a seamless web running from the practice of science to an atheistic and secular religion.

Johnson has become a hero to many religious and cultural conservatives, evangelical Christians in particular; and with a few reservations, I can be classified under each of those categories. But I am also a philosopher of science, and have a bit of experience as a working scientist as well.

And in my professional opinion, Johnson's arguments are those of a lawyer. I don't mean that in a good way: to be more precise, they are spun almost wholly from rhetoric and slippery use of definitions. To be very blunt: If this is the best that evangelical apologists can offer, may God help us, because we don't have much chance of helping ourselves.

(In case you're wondering, yes, I am being purposefully inflammatory. I will be writing more—a lot more—on this subject. But not tonight.)

Yet there are aspects of Johnson's overall case that have merit. It is, for example, difficult to argue against the claim that a presumption of atheism is widespread within the academy, especially when you see stories like this.

Dr. Raymond Damadian failed to be included in this year's Nobel honors for work in Medicine, and feels sore about it. Although he was the inventor of the first machine that discovers cancers through magnetic resonance imaging, the award went to two other and somewhat subsequent scientists, Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield. Notoriously, the Nobel committees never reveal their deliberations (until everyone is long dead) and never change their minds. So, although by having taken out advertisements of protest in the New York Times and the Washington Post may make him feel somewhat better, and draw attention to his bad luck, Damadian seems fated to remain with the rest of us who are not Nobel Laureates. He will join Charles Best of Banting and Best fame who discovered the significance of insulin treatment for diabetes - Frederick Banting and his boss J.J.R. McCleod (who was on vacation at the time) got the award and Best the junior scientist was left out.

But perhaps Dr. Damadian does have reason to feel having been slighted for the wrong reasons. He is not just an inventor, but also a very prominent Christian. And not just a Christian of any bland kind, but a Creation Scientist - one of those people who believes that the Bible, especially including Genesis, is absolutely literally true - six days of creation, Adam and Eve the first humans, universal flood, and all of the rest. It is as least as likely a hypothesis that Damadian was ignored by the Nobel committee because they did not want to award a Prize to an American fundamentalist Christian as that they did not think his work merited the fullest accolade. In the eyes of rational Europeans - and Swedes are nothing if not rational Europeans - it is bad enough that such people exist, let alone give them added status and a pedestal from which to preach their silly ideas. Especially a scientific pedestal from which to preach their silly anti-science ideas.

A bit more on definitions is in order. In a generic sense, all orthodox adherents to the Western monotheistic religions are creationists, in that they believe God to be Creator. But scientific creationism is based on a particular interpretation of Genesis, as described above. Despite the name, a truly miniscule number of actual scientists subscribe to this version of creationism, and many highly visible opponents of evolution—Johnson included—are reluctant to defend it.

This was the first that I had heard of Damadian's slight at the hands of the Nobel Committee. I would probably have blogged the story regardless of source. But what makes the piece quoted above doubly interesting is who wrote it: philosopher of science Michael Ruse, who is one of the most prolific contemporary writers on Darwin and evolution.

I'll be writing more on this and related subjects in the coming months—when I can tear myself away from the politics and warmongering, that is. Stay tuned.