dog daze (II)

Over at The Panda's Thumb, Nick Matzke is raising hackles.

But the very reason that [Michael] Ruse has to pound the table so hard is that a certain segment of evolution/atheism popularizers stubbornly, and in the case of Jacob Weisberg, defiantly, refuses to separate their science and their religious argumentation. Basically, they take the lazy step of saying “Look, folks, it’s science or religion,” and attempt to force people to chose their favorite, rather than actually arguing for their own religious view of atheism. Make no mistake: arguing for atheism is making a religious argument, just like arguing for theism. [Emphasis added]

Is arguing for atheism necessarily making a religious argument? Perhaps not: but even so, those atheists who most strenuously object to Matzke's claim will in general have the greatest emotional and intellectual stake in that position—and as such will ironically have invested in their atheism many of the very religious sensibilities that they claim to abjure. (Roy Clouser develops a related argument in The Myth of Religious Neutrality.)

Matzke continues:

Atheists insisting that evolution proves atheism make it appear as if teaching standard science in biology classrooms is actually state sponsorship of atheism, and this is what motivates creationists/IDists. It is highly doubtful that the evolution=atheism mixture has ever been a significant component of public education in the U.S., but if people who are ostensibly supporting teaching evolution can’t resist mixing in the religious argument for atheism, then it is understandable why the public will continue to be confused.

Continuing the old science-vs.-religion war isn’t going to change any minds that haven’t been changed in the last 100 years, but it will ensure that the political strife over evolution continues for the next 100 years.

I attempted to make a similar point in last week's post: but musing about the “inability of the zeitgeist to maintain conceptual categories much more elaborate than either/or dichotomies” perhaps obscured more than it clarified.

So I will try again. As Matzke says, in public education evolution and atheism are rarely, if ever, explicitly linked. Nonetheless, the public in general believes that there is a connection: there seems no other way to interpret the very consistent poll results. Moreover, the persistence of this belief is due in no small measure to the efforts of prominent scientists—from Sagan to Dawkins to Lewontin to Wilson—who are of precisely the same opinion, and who use (or used, in Sagan's case) their roles as public intellectuals to further blur the distinctions between methodological and ontological naturalisms.

As such, it is hardly surprising that sentiments such as “Both sides ought to be properly taught” have such popular sway: supporters of this position see themselves as defending against an illegitimate encroachment of atheism, cloaked in the authority of science.

They are only half wrong.

This is very insightful. I wish more people took the time to think carefully about very complex issues. These types of issues are of the sort that keep philosophers busy for generations.

I just wish biologists understood that they aren't philosophers and aren't automatically qualified to give disquisitions on ethics, philosophy and theology.

Although evolution and atheism may not be explicitly linked in public education, it's hard to argue against the public perception of the connection because, as you say, public intellectuals use their platform in ways that is inconsistent with their expertise.

On the other hand, while educators may not champion atheism per se, teaching evolution and then explaining how it rids science of "myths" such as [ideas perpetuated by religion] will seem just as much an attack on belief, without having an explicit link to atheism. I don't see that textbooks support atheism, but the textbooks rarely seem to be the problem - public perception on this issue will also be biased by the teaching of the educators themselves.

Jayne,

You're quite correct on that. Textbook authors--at least those who are aiming for the secondary school market--will do everything in their power to avoid controversy, as they want above all else to sell books. So it does come down to the educators.

As I said in the earlier post, the solution (or at least part of a solution) would be for teachers to know some basic philosophy of science, so that they can elucidate the sort of claims that science can and cannot make.

But do I expect that to happen? Not a chance.