University of Chicago atheist biologist Jerry Coyne, at his blog today, summed up Robert Wright’s recent piece in the New York Times this way:

The title of Wright’s piece is “Who created Major Hasan?”, and of course the answer is “America!”

Coyne then went on to attribute to Wright a rather base motive for his lack of patriotism: he wants to win a religious prize! Coyne also got in a Sean Hannity-like swipe at Islam as well:

This is all part and parcel of Wright’s apparent bid for the Templeton Prize, most recently displayed in The Evolution of God. Well, I’m not in favor of stereotyping individual Muslims, but as for Islam, well, it does seem to be an intrinsically belligerent religion.

And if there is any danger of Coyne being unclear, he also said:

Wright explicitly blames American belligerence against Islam as the force producing the Fort Hood shooting spree by Major Nidal Hasan.

Wright’s piece is being wildly misread and given a misleading spin. I’d ask fair-minded readers to actually look at what Wright said in his essay here. Wright does not say in any way, shape, or form that Maj. Hasan is America’s “fault.” Wright is making a sociological and media observation. He is not evaluating America’s essential “goodness” or “badness” with regard to foreign policy. He is not saying that America produced Maj. Hasan.

What then, is Wright saying? It’s simply this: Living in an Internet age means that fundamentalists can magnify emotional responses to military occupations, provoking unbalanced people to rogue violence and acts of terrorism.

Barack Obama’s potential assassination is the proper analogy. Barack Obama occupies the White House (as America occupies Iraq and Afghanistan). Does it screw up moderate and liberal white Christians for Obama to occupy the White House? No. But there is a whole Fox media-Internet subculture of “patriot fundamentalists” for whom occupation of the White House by a black man makes them crazy, and if Obama is assassinated it will probably come from someone steeped in this fundamentalist Internet subcultural. Occupation is a psychologically freighted condition in which people make parental projections (the motherland, the mother religion, the father’s house) and unbalanced people can become violent when their psychosexual boundaries are broached.

It appears that Hasan is one of those people on the fundamentalist Muslim side who cracked. That’s all Wright is saying: fundamentalism in the Internet age spreads malignant viral memes very effectively, and emotionally poisons unbalanced people. And it’s one of the things that Americans have to take into account when deciding what to do about the fact that they occupy two Muslim countries: Iraq and Afghanistan.

What Coyne doesn’t like is Wright’s prescription: If America is going to continue to occupy two Islamic countries, then Americans need to be careful not to conflate Islam generally with fundamentalist Islam in particular (just as, if Obama were assassinated, we would be careful not to equate moderate Christianity or soft patriotism with the fundamentalist brands of Christianity and patriotism that might fuel an assassin).

Here’s the salient passage from Wright’s piece (and that Coyne failed to quote):

One reason killing terrorists can spread terrorism is that various technologies — notably the Internet and increasingly pervasive video — help emotionally powerful messages reach receptive audiences. When American wars kill lots of Muslims, inevitably including some civilians, incendiary images magically find their way to the people who will be most inflamed by them. This calls into question our nearly obsessive focus on Al Qaeda — the deployment of whole armies to uproot the organization and to finally harpoon America’s white whale, Osama bin Laden. If you’re a Muslim teetering toward radicalism and you have a modem, it doesn’t take Mr. bin Laden to push you over the edge. All it takes is selected battlefield footage and a little ad hoc encouragement: a jihadist chat group here, a radical imam there — whether in your local mosque or on a Web site in your local computer.

At Jerry Coyne’s blog today, Coyne takes after Michael Shermer for being a little too cozy with religion:

It always amuses me when an accommodationist tells the faithful that no, there is no conflict between science and religion, at least not if they stopped believing the things that cause a conflict.  In a Darwin-anniversay piece on CNN, Michael Shermer comes out as an accommodationist, and more:  he suggests that people really should modify their beliefs if they conflict with science.

In New Atheistland, accommodating other people’s beliefs (if you think they are false), and giving too much serious intellectual leeway to the question of whether God actually exists or not, are big no-nos. Such things put you in danger of being in “conflict with science”, and renders you a suspicious citizen of New Atheistland (if you call yourself an atheist). And so Shermer said, among other (to Coyne’s mind) ghastly things about religion, this:

If one is a theist, it should not matter when God made the universe — 10,000 years ago or 10 billion years ago. The difference of six zeros is meaningless to an omniscient and omnipotent being, and the glory of divine creation cries out for praise regardless of when it happened.

To which Coyne retorts:

Who is Shermer, I suggest, to tell people what beliefs should or should not “matter” to them?  Try telling this to a fundamentalist Christian, or a devout Muslim.

But perhaps if Shermer had used the word “need” as opposed to “should”, it would not have raised Coyne’s ire? (As in, “It need not logically matter when God made the world.”) Strictly speaking, theism, evolution, and a great age for the Earth are not logically incompatible.

Of course, evolution and an old Earth are logically incompatible with a literalist reading of the Bible, but the literalist reading is, in any case, blatantly false. The first chapter of Genesis, for example, gives clear structural markers of being written as poetry. Specifically, it is written in poetic parallelism (the 1st day corresponds to the 4th day, the 2nd day to the 5th, the 3rd day to the 6th). What we are reading is a poet laying out the world’s stage (on days 1, 2, and 3) and the things that move (the “actors” on days 4, 5, and 6). To put it in Shakespearean terms, Genesis 1 is a poetic expression of “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women players.” And in this profound sense, Genesis 1 is a reflection of this truth.

What Shermer is trying to make peace with are sensible moderate theists, not fundamentalists. It is the people in the middle, not those on the fringes, who will, ultimately, determine the virulence of religion and irreligion. Shermer is trying to reduce religion’s virulence, not embracing fundamentalist ownership of the Bible, and it’s ridiculous interpretations of it. Shermer is right to reclaim the Bible as part of the Western cultural patrimony, and not leave it to fundamentalists to tell us what it means, and the implications to be drawn from it.

And for this, of course, Shermer runs the risk of being demonized as an “accommodationist”, a “theologian”, and a “faitheist” by the confidence atheists who mentally inhabit that very narrow intellectual peninsula, New Atheistland.

Charles Darwin

CYHOEDDWYD “On The Origin Of Species” 150 mlynedd yn ôl i heddiw. Mi sgytiodd llyfr Charles Darwin y byd. Roedd ei ddamcaniaeth yn ddaeargryn drwy Gristnogaeth ar y pryd. Roedd pawb, radeg honno, yn credu mai yn oruchnaturiol y creuwyd y byd a popeth byw. Dangosodd Darwin bod yna esboniad arall, esboniad gwell – esboniad oedd yn dibynnu ar dystiolaeth yn hytrach na ffydd.

Mae nifer yn honni mai Theori Esblygiad Darwin yw un o’r darganfyddiad pwysicaf yng ngwyddoniaeth, darganfyddiad sy’n esbonio sut mae bywyd ar y ddaear wedi amrwyiaethu dros filiynau o flynyddoedd. Wrth gwrs, mae nifer fawr o Gristnogion wedi derbyn y theori. Ni ellir unigolyn gyda unrhyw resymeg a dealltwriaeth sylfaenol o wyddoniaeth ei gwrthod, i ddweud y gwir: mae’r dystiolaeth yn ddi-bendraw

Ond mae rhai, rheini i gyd yn grefyddwyr, yn honni mai syniad felltigedig yw Darwiniaeth – ac nid yn unig hynny: mae hi’n gelwydd hefyd meddai creadyddion. Mae’r bobol yma’n dal i gredu i’r bydysawd gael ei greu mewn chwe niwrnod gan Dduw, a hynny rhwng 6,000 a 10,000 o flynyddoedd yn ôl. Yn wir, mae theori Darwin hyd heddiw yn ddadleuol.

Mae gwyddonwyr, wrth gwrs, yn ei derbyn. Ddowch chi ond ar draws llond llaw o wyddonwyr sydd yn amau’r theori, ac yn dilyn athroniaeth “Intelligent Design”, sydd yn ddim mwy na creadaeth mewn dillad crand. Nid yw’r gwyddonwyr rheini, fel arfer, yn gweithio yn y meusydd penodol fel bioleg, swoleg, geoleg, paleontoleg.

Ond er bod gwyddoniaeth yn derbyn Darwiniaeth, mae’r cyhoedd, mewn ambell i wlad, yn fwy cyndyn. Mae dros 50% o Brydeinwyr yn dweud y dylid dysgu creadaeth ochor yn ochor efo esblygiad mewn gwersi gwyddoniaeth. Dwn i’m pa fath o wersi fyddan nhw: rhai byr, debyg, gan nad oes yna iot o dystiolaeth yn dangos bod Genesis 1 yn llythrennol gywir, fel y taerai’r creadyddion.

Mae rheswm a gwyddoniaeth yn brwydro’n ôl, ond mae hi’n mynd yn anodd ar sawl cownt. Mae llyfray gwych wedi eu cyhoeddi’n ddiweddar: “The Greatest Show On Earth” gan Richard Dawkins, ac “Why Evolution Is True” gan Jerry Coyne – llyfr yr ydw i’n ddarllen ar hyn o bryd.

Ond pam bod pobl mor gyndyn i dderbyn esboniad Darwin? Does yna neb yn amau Theori Germau, sy’n esbonio sut y mae afiechydon yn lledaenu. does yna neb y amau theori Einstein am y bydysawd. Does yna neb yn gwrthod Theori Disgyrchiant. Pam? Maen nhw’n union fel Theori Esblygiad Darwin: esboniadau o sut mae pethau’n gweithio; esboniadau sydd yn cael eu cefnogi gan dystiolaeth.

Wrth gwrs, mae Darwiniaeth yn wahanol mewn un ffordd: mae hi’n theori sy’n cyfeirio ata ni, at ein bodolaeth, at ein gwreiddiau – ac mae hi’n esboniad sy’n datgelu nad ydan ni ddim mor bwysig ac yr ydan ni’n hoffi meddwl ein bod ni.

Ond y gwir yw, rydan ni’n brimat, rydan ni’n famal, rydan ni’n fertebriad, rydan ni’n gordogion, rydan ni’n anifeilaid, rydan ni’n ewcarya … yn ewcarya fel pýs, yn anifail fel pry, yn gordogion fel “hagfish”, yn fertebriad fel crocodeil, yn famal fel morfil, yn brimat fel tsimpansî.

Dyna sy’n wefreiddiol i mi. Dyna sy’n fawreddog. Y ffaith ein bod ni’n perthyn i bob dim byw – a bob dim sydd erioed wedi byw – ar y ddaear. Ac yn hytrach na gorfod credu’r peth heb sail, dibynnu ar ffydd, mae ganddo ni brawf i ddangos hyn – mewn ffosiliaid, mewn DNA, mewn bio-daearyddiaeth ac yn y blaen.

Ond efallai mai dyna ydi’r broblem. Tydan ni – neu’r rheini yn ein mysg sy’n gwrthod derbyn bod theori Darwin yn ffaith – ddim yn barod i dderbyn nad ydan ni’n ddim mwy nac anifail – neu hyd yn oed ewcarya.

I’m not a Darwinian fundamentalist– I don’t think evolution supplants religion– but I understand what motivates alleged Darwinian fundamentalists like Richard Dawkins (though he rebuts the charge): sheer frustration with the intemperance of religious fundamentalists.

I delivered my standard mutual tolerance pitch on this theme in class Friday, making concession after concession to religion. I agreed with William James that religion is a meaning-quest, and as such is among the most important things humans can do… even making full allowance for the residual ungrounded supernaturalism, and frequent absurdity, of the various creeds and dogmas of faith.

But are theistic fundamentalists mollified, do they temporize their hostility to evolutionary theory in the face of such concessions? No. They still spout creationist nonsense, they repeat the confused canard that evolution is “just a theory,” and in the process discover their cozy compatibility with brethren from other traditions. Evolution seems to be the great unifier of  Judeo-Christian and Islamic anti-intellectualism.

Yes, it’s a theory… like gravitation is a theory. And like gravitation,  it’s true if anything is. Jerry Coyne is not a strict fundamentalist, he does not advocate jihad against religion; but like the barmaid and Carl Sagan, he endorses elementary instruction in critical thinking as the best solution. Ours is a time, yet another time, when the fragile candle-flame of reason and respect for natural reality gutters under the assault of pseudoscience and superstition. Time, again, to exorcise our demons.

If you don’t want to listen to Coyne or Dawkins, try Liam Neeson.

Aired 11-15-09

Episode 2 of 3
“Darwin turns his back on scientific celebrity and becomes a virtual recluse, secretly gathering evidence for his theory of evolution. He is almost trumped by a rival book on evolution but finds a steadfast supporter in the young botanist, Joseph Hooker. Darwins faith is shattered by the death of his beloved daughter, Annie, but he is buoyed up by the return from Australasia of one of his greatest allies – the young firebrand, Thomas Huxley. Darwin knows he has found the men he needs to help him when he goes public with his ideas. Hooker and Huxley push Darwin to publish but events overtake everyone when a letter arrives from Indonesia. An obscure collector called Alfred Russell Wallace has come up with an evolutionary theory almost identical to Darwins own. Darwin is shattered and fears that 20 years of his own work
has come to”

(1/6)

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Episode one

At Christianity Today, Dinesh D’Souza reviewed Robert Wright’s book, The Evolution of God (2009), and asks a good question:

Regretting the ‘problem’ passages that seem to justify violence in the Qur’an and also in the Bible, Wright speculates that ‘if we could magically replace the Qur’an with a book of our choosing, or could magically replace the Bible with a book of our choosing, we could probably make Muslims, Jews, and Christians better people.’ But would people actually be improved if they stopped reading these holy books and took up, say, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species or Wright’s own works? I would love to hear Wright answer this question.

Hmm. Not all ideas are created equal, and some ideas are much worse than others, but there is also the law of unintended consequences (which is, itself, an idea), and which D’Souza implicitly exploits here. Imagine there’s no heaven or holy books? Okay. But also imagine what might go in their place.

Nietzsche?

And Appleyard skewers him, returning rhetorical fire with rhetorical fire:

I note also the appearance of this character P.Z.Myers. I’ve never read him before but I now discover he once did me over – ‘How stupid are the editors and managers who keep paying for his badly written lumps of self-contradictory fatuousness?’ Okay, I’m prepared to accept that I may be wrong about everything – I wake up every morning thinking just that – and PZ may be right, but ‘BADLY WRITTEN’! Coming from this sub-verbal sack of shit that’s a bit rich.

And one of Appleyard’s thread contributors nicely deconstructs PZ Myers’s rhetorical maneuvers:

Step 1–Begin by describing a philosophical challenge with a mixture of anger and fatigue, much as you would describe discovering a termite in your house after the exterminator had been through and presumably destroyed them all. The contempt must ooze front and center before you even address the argument so that anyone who might be inclined to take the challenge seriously is forwarned and suitably cowed. Don’t skimp on the insulting adjectives.

Step 2–Deflect the issue from the profoundly philosophical to the mundane by suddenly talking lab gobbledegook about genes, mutations, etc. Use words like phenotype liberally and try to throw in a diagram. Extra points for insisting Darwin himself was well aware of what you are saying and would have agreed with you unreservedly;

Step 3–Insist that any argument that comes within a hundred miles of religion, no matter how ethereal or tentative, leads directly to biblical literalism, preferably as practiced in the American South. Show in one paragraph how it is the root of every atrocity in history, will lead to the end of scientific inquiry and justifies the bombing of innocent villagers by the U.S. Air Force.

Step 4–Bask in the glow of hundreds of one-sentence comments thanking you profusely for your courage and agreeing you have proven there is no need to read what your opponent said to know that the stupid twit isn’t even worth reading.

I myself continue to think that PZ Myers is the most unhinged public figure in the New Atheist movement, but his fellow atheist peers (Dennett, Coyne, Dawkins, Shermer) seem to think he’s the bee’s knees, and speak of him with deep affection. I just don’t get it.

As a reminder of the problem that PZ Myers poses for liberal agnostics and atheists, here are his two blog posts—one promoting iconoclastic gestures toward Catholic communion wafers, and the other narrating his actual engaging in one of these gestures when one of his blog followers scored one for him (from the summer of 2008). How does a person who regards himself or herself as liberal defend this kind of emotional primitivism, incivility, and boorishness?:

Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There’s no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I’m sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won’t be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I’ll send you my home address.

And this one:

OK, time for the anticlimax. I know some of you have proposed intricate plans for how to do horrible things to these crackers, but I repeat…it’s just a cracker. I wasn’t going to make any major investment of time, money, or effort in treating these dabs of unpleasantness as they deserve, because all they deserve is casual disposal. However, inspired by an old woodcut of Jews stabbing the host, I thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffeegrounds and a banana peel. My apologies to those who hoped for more, but the worst I can do is show my unconcerned contempt.

Ironically, I think that John Calvin would have understood PZ Myers.

I think that these two questions, when answered with two yeses, represent the thrust of what Intelligent Design proponents are up to in their critiques of evolution, as William Dembski recently (and concisely) stated at his blog:

The theory [of evolution] purports to give a materialistic account of life’s development once life is already here, but it has a gaping hole at the start since matter gives no evidence of being able to organize itself from non-life into life. The fossil record, especially the sudden emergence of most animal body plans in the Cambrian explosion, sharply violates Darwinian expectations about the historical pattern of evolutionary change. The nano-engineering found in the DNA, RNA, and proteins of the cell far exceeds human engineering and remains completely unexplained in Darwinian terms. Darwin lovers are quick to reject such complaints.  After all, as novelist Barbara Kingsolver declares, Darwin’s idea of natural selection is “the greatest, simplest, most elegant logical construct ever to dawn across our curiosity about the workings of natural life. It is inarguable, and it explains everything.”

Dembski seems to be critiquing evolution on solid grounds here. I know he is an Evangelical, and that he is thus highly motivated to make such critiques, but my question is this: do these lines of critique, with regard to evolution, have at least some validity? I think that they have. If I’m wrong about this, what, as an agnostic, am I missing?

Dembski, in the same blog post, continues:

Any theory that explains everything and that can and must be true is either the greatest thing since sliced bread or the greatest swindle ever foisted on gullible intellectuals. The intelligent design community takes the latter view, siding here with Malcolm Muggeridge, who wrote: “I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it’s been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books in the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has.” Still, it’s easy to understand why so flimsily a supported theory garners such vast support. It provides the creation story for an atheistic worldview. If atheism is true, then something like Darwinian evolution must follow.

I’m not sure which side—the Intelligent Design side or the Darwinist side—will be laughed at, say, a century from now. I suspect that it will be the Intelligent Design hypothesis, at least in terms of its current critiques of evolutionary biology, but it’s hard for me, as a nonscientist, to say. My hunch is that the gaps in evolutionary theory that Intelligent Design currently exploit will be filled over the next century in ways that will make the evolutionary conclusion even more compelling than it appears to be now.

But notice that this is merely a prediction, a guess really. And whether you’re a scientist or not, when it comes to the future, that’s really all we have. In the meantime, a bit of humility might suit all of us—religionist, agnostic, and atheist alike. I think that Dembski often comes across as unduly arrogant and overconfident, as do, say, atheists like Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins. Everybody seems just so darn cocksure, as if the other side consisted of fools. But competing confidence poses should not be mistaken for anything other than that. Maybe at profound and fundamental levels, both sides have elements to their arguments that, a hundred years from now, will be shown to be not just wrong, but spectacularly so.

Let’s see what happens. And keep an open mind.

I have just finished Jerry Coyne’s book, and now got my hands on the audiobook version of Richard Dawkin’s The Greatest Show on Earth. It’s easy to make out the words; he’s such a skilled reader! His wife is great too.

Watch out, one evolutionist coming your way!

Seriously though, I never thought I would find evolution such an engaging subject. It could be the way that JC and RD writes and educates, or it could be because evolution has to do with life, which we are all a part of, or both.

Also reading up on relativity. Did you know that John Moffat has an alternative theory to Einstein’s relativity? It would do away with the need for dark matter.

Oh, and that reminds me that I need to check-up on black holes.

There is still such mystery to life, after all. I’m surprised by my own enthusiasm.

Today in Salon, Camille Paglia, an atheist who obviously hasn’t been paying much serious attention to the post 9/11 New Atheist movement, stumbled upon Richard Dawkins talking about religion on NPR, and having never heard his voice before, she thought he sounded a bit, well, ridiculous:  

I was recently flicking my car radio dial and heard an affected British voice tinkling out on NPR. I assumed it was some fussy, gossipy opera expert fresh from London. To my astonishment, it was Richard Dawkins, the thrice-married emperor of contemporary atheists. I had never heard him speak, so it was a revelation. On science, Dawkins was spot on — lively and nimble. But on religion, his voice went “Psycho” weird (yes, Alfred Hitchcock) — as if he was channeling some old woman with whom he was in love-hate combat. I have no idea what ancient private dramas bubble beneath the surface there. As an atheist who respects and studies religion, I believe it is fair to ask what drives obsessive denigrators of religion. Neither extreme rationalism nor elite cynicism are adequate substitutes for faith, which fulfills a basic human need — which is why religion will continue to thrive in our war-torn world.

The thrice-married emperor of contemporary atheists? In Camille Paglia’s broadside of Dawkins I detect the distinctly catty suggestion that Dawkins’s religion bashing is psychosexual detritus from his wars and disappointments with ex-lovers. Not a nice innuendo, but I suppose that most religion obsessed atheists, however many times they’ve been married or discouraged in love, are, at bottom, brides left at the altar. God has disappointed and disillusioned them, and you never hear the end of it.

Daniel Dennett. PZ Myers. Richard Dawkins. Jerry Coyne. Philosopher Michael Ruse is an atheist too. But don’t sign him up with the above confidence atheists.

Why? Here’s one reason that he gave in a recent essay in the UK’s Guardian:

[H]ow dare we be so condescending? I don’t have faith. I really don’t. Rowan Williams does as do many of my fellow philosophers like Alvin Plantinga (a Protestant) and Ernan McMullin (a Catholic). I think they are wrong; they think I am wrong. But they are not stupid or bad or whatever. If I needed advice about everyday matters, I would turn without hesitation to these men. We are caught in opposing Kuhnian paradigms. I can explain their faith claims in terms of psychology; they can explain my lack of faith claims also probably partly through psychology and probably theology also. (Plantinga, a Calvinist, would refer to original sin.) I just keep hearing Cromwell to the Scots. “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.” I don’t think I am wrong, but the worth and integrity of so many believers makes me modest in my unbelief.

And for sensibly counseling against intellectual hubris, what has Michael Ruse received for his pains? Well, here’s how Ruse characterizes the confidence atheists’ response to him:

Richard Dawkins has likened me to the pusillanimous appeaser at Munich, Neville Chamberlain. Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution is True, says (echoing Orwell) that only someone with pretensions to the intelligentsia could believe the silly things I believe. And energetic blogger PZ Myers refers to me as a “clueless gobshite” because I confessed to seeing why true believers might find the Kentucky Creationist Museum convincing. I will spare you what my fellow philosopher Dan Dennett has to say about me.

I like to hear, in the teeth of opposition, an intellectual of Michael Ruse’s stature holding up for a more modest atheism. It strikes me that Ruse is advocating for a pre-9/11 atheism, a sobered atheism that harkens back to Albert Camus and the grim realities of existence that atheists grappled with during and after WWII. Religion had not poisoned and fucked up the 20th century public sphere—it was secular ideologies that had done that—and an atheism sobered by this fact was, in my view, a saner atheism than contemporary confidence atheism. Camus, sounding for all the world like Michael Ruse today, once said to a gathering of Dominican Friars (in 1948):

I wish to declare also that, not feeling that I possess any absolute truth or any message, I shall never start from the supposition that Christian truth is illusory, but merely from the fact that I could not accept it.

If atheism is as compelling a philosophical position as Dennett & Co. believe it to be, then there really is no need to over sell it, for it will sell itself. The very fact that Dennett & Co. don’t trust atheism to sell itself tells you something about what must be going on beneath the surface of its most aggressive proponents. The evangelical atheist (who I imagine must be repressing a great deal in the psyche to be so confident of so many uncertain things) reminds me of the evangelical religious apologist. The broken wheel usually squeaks loudest, and against obnoxious resistance, Michael Ruse should continue to speak his modest Socratic truth: confidence atheism is intellect divorced from wisdom and humility. In not mixing the intellect with Socratic caution, the New Atheism is folly’s exhibit “A” (just as religious fundamentalism is folly’s exhibit “F”). Put in mythic terms, the New Atheists are rehearsing hubris; they are Oedipus and Jocasta before they crash. And so with Tiny Tim, and as an agnostic, I say to all those who provide pushback against the New Atheists, and try to recall to the world a saner Camus-style atheism, ”God bless them!” (If there is a god.)

And Ruse even looks a bit like a character out of a Dickens novel:

And here’s William Lane Craig, a Christian philosopher, making observations similar to Ruse:

Here’s another great video from the recent AAI Convention. It’s a presentation by Jerry Coyne based on his recently published book “Why Evolution Is True.”

I haven’t read it yet but it has had great reviews. Jerry describes it as complimentary to Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth.

The video is great. Jerry Coyne does present a lot of very convincing information. I don’t see how anyone exposed to this could possible believe that evolution is not true.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1m4mATYoig

Thanks to Richard.dawkins.net: ‘Why Evolution Is True” by Jerry Coyne, AAI 2009

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in last week’s Newsweek, Lisa Miller, the religion editor, of whom I’m not a huge fan in general (though she’s intelligent and mostly reasonable), wrote yet another article on the new atheism and its main leaders, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris (why no Daniel Dennett, the final member of the “four horsemen”?).

I don’t want to discuss her entire article, or some of her specific points, at length, but two of her main points are that these three individuals have unfairly dominated the discussion/debate thus far and that it’s time to move on past the aggression and onto rethinking spirituality, humanism, etc.

regarding the first point, it’s not that these individuals have unduly grabbed a hold of the debate and won’t let anyone else have a turn.  there have been plenty of other books written about atheism — theirs just happen to have been the most successful.  granted, Dawkins and Hitchens were already well known (the former more so, generally) and so there was more attention given to their books, but Harris was virtually an unknown.  he just happened to write two very successful, very persuasive books that caught on.  sure he has done a lot of debating, but he’s also been working on his PhD in neuroscience of some sort and is no media whore.  (by the way, does she know that he doesn’t even like to use the term “atheist”?)

the real reason that they have “hogged” all the attention is simply because people like Lisa Miller won’t shut up about them.  honestly, she’s written at least three or four pieces for Newsweek on them this year already!  and in this vein, you can’t find any broadly appealing piece on the growth of non-religious portions of the country that doesn’t mention “the three” or “the four” (horsemen, that is).  they’ve only been dominating because people like you, Lisa Miller, keep complaining about them.  you are the silver-haired wind in their middle-aged-cracker sails.

and the truth is, she doesn’t appear to have any real clue as to what’s happening in the atheist blogosphere.  there are far louder and much more prolific voices on the internet (PZ Myers comes to mind), and there is a grand variety of atheists out there whose levels of “stridency” and whose views regarding religion vary enormously.  for those atheists concerned more about the undue influence of religion in the public sphere than about winning arguments, there’s Hemant Mehta, your Friendly Atheist.  and then there’s the somewhat overlapping, ongoing debate among professional scientists about how science should relate (or more accurately, how scientists should try to relate science) to religion, aka the “accommodationist” debate.  so here you have a lot of writers, some of whom may be non-religions but that’s irrelevant, who are opposed to the attempts of people like Francis Collins or Kenneth Miller to placate moderately religious Americans by claiming that all’s well between science (read: evolution) and religion.  Jerry Coyne is probably the leading (unconquered) writer in this vein.  there are even non-religious writers/scientists like David Sloan Wilson who see atheism and science as types of religions, further muddying the waters.

anyway, the point is, among atheists and agnostics and secular humanists and the like, “the three” are hardly the most active or the loudest voices.  what about writers like Ian McEwan or Victor Stenger?  it’s one of those, “Well, everyone’s talking about them so they must be the most important” things that endlessly perpetuates itself.

the second point, which is a good one, is also problematic when it comes out of Miller’s mouth because, as I hinted at in the last point, there are tons of writers and groups out there for non-religious people who are doing just that — focusing on re-conceiving our notions of ethics and morality and what it means to be “good without god.”  there is the Secular Coalition for America, a lobbyist group, there’s the Center for Inquiry, and there are all sorts of secular student groups and local communities that have been raising their voices and getting media attention lately.  you know all those billboards going up around the country (and in other countries) and needlessly causing a stir?  well, those poster boys have nothing to do with it.

even the first bus campaign in England was started by a hitherto unknown, Ariane Sherine.  sure, Richard Dawkins donated some funds and took a publicity ride, but he joined after the fact.

and what about the Brights?  it’s a designation chosen by non-religious intellectuals who want a more positive take on their outlook, as opposed to “atheist.”  plus, it’s a more proactive way of understanding the world, not just by what you don’t believe, but by how you think the world can and should be understood.  here you find all sorts of very influential intellectuals, include Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, yes, but also Michael Shermer and Steven Pinker.  in fact, for many people, atheism implies a secular, naturalistic, humanistic outlook.  (fyi, Sam Harris also dislikes the term “bright”; he is very picky.)

speaking of Sam Harris — the entire latter part of his The End of Faith was about the future beyond faith, exploring new areas of human spirituality that go beyond our inherited traditions!  his book was essentially about the very thing Miller says we should be doing instead of what she accuses him of doing!  Jerry Coyne briefly touches on this here.

finally, moving on to a topic/group Miller does cover, there are various humanistic groups out there, represented in her article by Greg Epstein, Harvard’s Humanist Chaplain.  Epstein is the author of the soon-to-be-published Being Good without God, a topic he is very enthusiastic about.  his approach is an entirely positive one, focusing on what “a billion non-religious people do believe” and helping to create renewed sense of meaning and even (gasp) spirituality among non-religious persons.  he is by far not the only person with this outlook of course.  I think of the ethicist Peter Singer or the author Ronald Aronson, who wrote the influential (and on my wishlist) Living without God, or even the sociologist Phil Zuckerman, who write last year’s popular Society without God (also on my list).

in fact, Germany has had a figure like Epstein for a while now in the person of Michael Schmidt-Salomon, a well-known German humanist writer and apologist (who is associated with the atheist camp though he also avoids the term).  he has worked to try to encourage humanism and take the debate and media flurries surrounding the “new atheism” to a “new humanism” (whence the title of this post).

in any case, I do believe that in the case of the non-religions, any media attention is good attention, as more and more people realize they are not alone in their unbelief (as the billboards proclaim), and that they too have a say in what happens in this country and in this world.  and it has also been (or at least will be) helpful (even if still shocking) for people to realize that there are non-religious persons (even atheists!) all around them, and that’s a good thing.  Schmidt-Salomon talks about this, and uses the wonderful German word “stinknormal” to describe how average these atheists prove to be once people take a look at them (Der Sensationswert des Atheismus verglühte im Scheinwerferlicht und man stellte fest, dass „diese Atheisten“ letztlich auch nur stinknormale Leute sind, kaum geheimnisvoller als Mutti Krause von nebenan.)

and hopefully the public attention will continue to turn and focus on this other side of being non-religions.  it’s not all about put downs and arguments  — it’s also about excitement about what we do know about ourselves and this world, along with how we continue to go about understanding both, and creating room in public discussions about science, ethics, morality, policy, the environment, etc., for those of us who don’t feel the need to appeal to tradition or revelation or supposedly unchanging religious values in order to have a reasonable, fruitful conversation about our future.

Freddie, at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, is not a movement New Atheist. He’s just an atheist. And he likes it that way:

[T]here is an elementary consonance between evangelist religion and evangelist antitheism that I find inarguable, that both insist that their adherents have duties and responsibilities that are a product of their theological stance. I chafed early and often against the social expectations of atheism for a simple reason: I dislike being a foot soldier. I cannot work my mind to the headspace necessary to believe that emptiness insists that we must be conscripted into a grand cultural war. I have said before that the real benefit of being an atheist is that you never have to get up early to go to church or temple. I say that only partly in jest: to me, what makes atheism attractive as a practical matter is that it requires nothing of me.

And he makes a great observation concerning what atheism, when you look at it closely, is (and isn’t):

Atheism is not a project. It proceeds towards no goal. It involves no work. Atheism is absence, an emptiness and, often, a comfort with that emptiness. . . . There is a freedom that is breathtaking and terrible in spiritual and theological nihilism that I find singular. But it is not an experience I share with antitheists; they are too filled with their belief in being unfilled, too bent by the force of what they are rejecting to understand or enjoy the awful quiet of actual atheism.

I’m not sure that living in that empty space is tolerable for more than a very tiny ironic minority. History suggests that vacuums do not go long unfilled. Political religion or some other pseudo-religious activity fills the void. But I admire any atheist who finds a functional and happy path in the full terror of unblinkered nihilism. The Buddhist saints somehow manage it. And Camus managed it.

As an agnostic, I’m still trying to keep my options more open.

(This is a post from Jerry coyne’s blog Why Evolution is True. and I thought this post had some great information in it and wanted to share the goodness! Thanks to the writer of this post Matthew Cobb and the blog master of WEIT Jerry Coyne)

And now for something completely different…October 14, 2009 – 12:47 pm

by Matthew Cobb

Well, not completely different. As some of you may know, every week during the academic year, I send out an electronic newsletter to Zoology students at Manchester University, past and present, and to another hundred or so interested people. I just sent out the latest issue of the Z-letter, and one of my readers – Jerry Coyne – replied from Guatemala, or wherever: “Post this WHOLE THING on my website! Including the stuck skunk!” So here you are… If any of you want to subscribe to the Z-letter, send a mail to: cobb at manchester dot ac dot uk

Hello everyone

Here’s the latest Z-letter, with everything from a stuck skunk video to ideas about how morality evolved, including rapping about natural selection… Don’t forget to send in your links! 288 subscribers now!

Matthew

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OPPOSING SLAVERY WITH DARWIN

James Moore, co-author of the recent book “Darwin’s Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins”, will be giving a talk about his fascinating discoveries underlying Darwin’s motivations. Everyone is welcome - the talk will be in Roscoe B lecture Theatre, on Brunswick Street, at 5:30pm on Tuesday 20 October. Anyone with any interest in Darwin should go to what will be an excellent talk.

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RAPPING WITH DARWIN

When I first heard about this Darwin-themed event at the Manchester Museum, I was very doubtful – “evolution presented in the style of Eminem”. But Henry McGhie of the Museum, who’s been heavily involved with it, assures me that it really is fantastic. Baba Brinkman explores the history of Darwin’s theory combining hilarious remixes of popular rap songs with clever lyrical storytelling that covers Natural Selection, Sexual Selection, Evolutionary Psychology, and much more. Friday 23 October at 6pm in the Museum.

Baba Brinkman’s page:

http://www.babasword.com/

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THE END OF THE LINE

The new documentary about the fishing industry which was mentioned in the last Z-letter will be shown on More4 at 10:00pm on Tuesday October 20th.

The End of the Line trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bedirwk95Oc

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WHY SPONGES ARE ANIMALS

I had to address this issue in my second year lecture this morning. I was so amazed by some of the stuff I uncovered while researching the talk that I had to blog about it as Jerry Coyne’s guest blogger. See whether you’re equally convinced.

WhyEvolutionIsTrue.com blog:

http://tinyurl.com/yh99scs

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REMOTE CONTROLLED BEETLES

I had to check the date on this one, but no, it’s not date-stamped 1 April. US researchers at Berkeley are apparently able to radio control giant beetles (up to 20cm long) using electrodes implanted when the beetle was a grub. They can be “flown” round a room using a laptop. Although undoubtedly macabre, it isn’t quite so amazing as it sounds, as the electrodes are implanted into the muscles, not the brain. Stimulating the wing muscles on one side rather than the other would make the animal turn. Controlling the neuronal activity leading to that movement would be a lot more difficult, indeed impossible given our current knowledge. [EDIT - How wrong I was! Now I have been able to read the original article - see below, they did indeed plant electrodes into the beetle's brain, which controlled flight initiation (wing flapping) and elevation (presumably a function of wing vibration speed). Amazing!] However, there are alarming implications of this work, which is being funded by the US military… Sheffield’s Professor Neil Starkey is particularly concerned by this. The work is allegedly reported in Frontiers in INTEGRATIVE Neuroscience (open access, includes movies!)  but I can’t find the original article…

BBC page:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8302903.stm

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ALBATROSS-CAM!

From the EZNews produced by John Altrincham (Leeds): Cameras fitted to albatrosses show that they follow killer whales, perhaps to take advantage of fish flushed to the surface. They also appear to dive in the company of other albatrosses and dive surprisingly infrequently.

BBC page:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8291732.stm

Original Paper in PLoS ONE (open access):

http://tinyurl.com/ygruwwu

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STUCK SKUNK

Oklahoma skunk gets its head stuck in a jar of peanut butter. Will it spray its rescuers?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8306488.stm

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THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY

This is an issue that Darwin (again) was fascinated by, and which is growing in importance. There’s an excellent site by Douglas Allchin of the University of Minnesota which effectively functions as a textbook on the question. Essential reading.

Evolution of Morality site:

http://www1.umn.edu/ships/evolutionofmorality/

Review by me of three books on the question:

http://tinyurl.com/yzclouu

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LIFE

The Big Moment of many people’s week will have been the new BBC natural history series, Life, narrated (but not filmed) by David Attenborough. I found the music incredibly irritating, overblown and unnecessary, but the images are absolutely stunning. (The flying fish were my favourite.) If you’re in the UK, you can still watch it again on line at:

http://tinyurl.com/yghljvv

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THE STRESS OF BEING A PREY

Much of the footage in the first episode of Life was devoted to predation, with scenes of prey animals being chased by hungry predators. What are the physiological effects of such stress on prey animals? An article in a recent issue of Journal of Animal Ecology looks at snowshoe hares.

Magazine article (Sub needed to get past abstract):

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2656.2009.01602.x

Research article (Sub needed to get past abstract):

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2656.2009.01552.x

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ATTENTION TENSION

More from John Altrincham: Spiders adjust thread tension to improve their ability to detect prey on the web.

BBC picture:

http://tinyurl.com/yjnbmgc

Proceedings of the Royal Society article (Sub needed to get beyond abstract):

http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2009.1583

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THE VEGETARIAN SPIDER

Promised about a month ago by Geoff North, editor of Current Biology and assiduous Z-letter reader, this news of a salticid spider from Central America that is vegetarian. Or nearly. Its primary food are small tender shots of acacia leaves, which are guarded by ants as part of an ant-plant mutualism. The spider can jump over the ants and get the buds. Quite amazing.

WhyEvolutionIsTrue.com blog:

http://tinyurl.com/ylpbouo

BBC page, including video:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8302535.stm

Current Biology News & Views article:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2009.08.043

Current Biology research article:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2009.08.049

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MASSIVE DINO PRINTS FOUND IN FRANCE

A huge set of dino prints, covering several hectares, has been found in Eastern France. Some of the sauropod traces are over *two metres* wide. That doesn’t mean that the dino’s feet were that wide, of course. The way that prints are preserved in gloopy mud often means that they are much broader than the animal’s feet.

BBC page:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8294425.stm

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NAME THAT ANIMAL

This sent in by PhD student Neil Buttery, who spotted it on PopBitch, which is obviously what he surfs when he’s not playing Scrabble on Facebook…

http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2Fyjtf2kz

(Jerry in Guatemala) The Mayan city of Tikal, Peten, Guatemala. Atop Temple 2, with Temple 1 in background.

by Greg Mayer

Russell Blackford has posted a picture of his meeting with Jerry at the AAI convention. From the right and behind is not Jerry’s good side. Or at least not a side from which he is very recognizable. And Russell does have a right hand– it only seems to be missing because the podium is the same color wood as the wall behind.

(Added note: in the original post, I spelled Russell with one ‘l’– now corrected. But since one ‘l’ is how Alfred Russel Wallace spelled his name, the error was actually a compliment!)

El día jueves 15 de octubre, el doctor Jerry Coyne dará una conferencia en la Universidad Francisco Marroquín titulada “Why Evolution is True”.  La conferencia es parte de las actividades internacionales que realiza todos los años la universidad y en la misma se explorarán los principios de la genética evolutiva.  El doctor Coyne es uno de los biólogos más importantes del mundo.

El doctor Coyne es ateo, materialista y reconoce que la razón es la facultad que permite a los seres humanos identificar e integrar toda la información provista al hombre por sus sentidos.  Sus estudios en evolución lo han llevado en los últimos años a desmentir las propuestas creacionistas y de diseño inteligente (intelligent design, como es llamado en inglés) que proponen los místicos cristianos como explicaciones de la creación del mundo y la evolución de las especies.

La publicación de su libro Why Evolution is True popularizó y divulgó los estudios que cientificos evolutivos han realizado para explicar al mundo los fundamentos racionales de la existencia, la realidad, la vida y la muerte.  El aporte de Coyne para las ciencias es inmenso; pero también es igual de importante los aportes de Coyne a la filosofía y la lucha contra el poder que los místicos han tenido a lo largo de siglos sobre todos los campos del actuar humano.

Celebro la visita de Coyne y espero poder llevar los dos libros que de él tengo para que sean autografiados.

La conferencia que impartirá estará abierta al público y es gratuita.  La conferencia inicia a las 6:30 pm.  El lugar del evento será el auditorium Milton Friedman, en el campus de la Universidad Francisco Marroquín.(más información)

¡Espero que pueda participar en esta conferencia!

Last week I highlighted both a portion of Jerry Coyne’s report from AAI and independently Andrew Sullivan’s nasty retort to another portion of that same post.  But I never quoted the really fun and on target coinage of Daniel Dennett which got so far under Sullivan’s skin:

Dan Dennett talked about interviews with active priests and ministers who are atheists, and also mounted a hilarious attack on theologians like Karen Armstrong, who mouth pious nonsense like, “God is the God behind God.” Dennett calls this kind of language a “deepity”: a statement that has two meanings, one of which is true but superficial, the other which sounds profound but is meaningless. His exemplar of a deepity is the statement “Love is just a word.” True, it’s a word like “cheeseburger,” but the supposed deeper sense is wrong: love is an emotion, a feeling, a condition, and not just a word in the dictionary. He gave several examples of other deepities from academic theologians; when you see these things laid out — ripped from their texts — in a Powerpoint slide, they make you realize how truly fatuous are the lucubrations of people like Armstrong, Eagleton, and Haught. Sarcasm will be the best weapon against this stuff.

Your Thoughts?

by Greg Mayer

Matthew has brought to my attention an article in Evolution: Education and Outreach by Adam Goldstein that mentions the WEIT blog. It’s apparently addressed to a curiously naive audience, taking great care to explain what a “blog” is, and how the word “post” is both a noun and a verb, and that bloggers often provide “links”, and much more in that vein. It’s curious in another way, too, calling WEIT an anonymous blog, deducing that Jerry is the author only from subtle cues, and the fact that PZ Myers has referred to the blog’s author as Jerry (actually, the Myers post he cites is about the book, and predates the start of the blog). Goldstein must have missed the “About the Author” link up over there to the right.

Besides characterizing what blogs are (and mis-characterizing them a bit, too: as the Darwinius case made clear, posting to the web does not constitute scientific publication), he also classifies blogs as being “professional,” “amateur,” “apostolic,” or “imaginative.” WEIT is “amateur”, but that’s a good thing in his classification. Goldstein says about amateur blogs that

…blogs of this variety are superior to those of other varieties for the purpose of explaining evolutionary science… Those who create the blogs in this category are not amateur scientists; indeed, most are experienced research professionals. Nonetheless, they are not professional bloggers, and their blogs present them with an opportunity to take a lighter, less formal approach to the topics they know and love. For this reason, many posts to blogs in this category are highly informative expository essays on a range of topics in evolutionary science.

I also learned from the article about a bunch of evolution-oriented blogs I didn’t know about (including one by people I know!). PZ is classified as “apostolic”; I’m sure he’ll appreciate the religious terminology!

Of more general interest is that the whole journal, which began publishing in 2008, is available free online, at least through the end of this year. Go take a look.

A poignant two paragraphs from Jerry Coyne’s piece reporting from the AAI that I mentioned Andrew Sullivan maligned earlier:

It’s the first time I’ve been in a group of fellow atheists (and I haven’t detected one sign of stridency or militancy), and it gives one a warm supportive feeling. One of the functions of speaking at these meetings, even if one is preaching to the choir, is to give solidarity to the atheist community, many of whom feel isolated and alone.

Pharyngula reported on Robert Richert’s talk on his experiences in Vietnam, but what P.Z. didn’t mention is that Richert broke down in sobs at the end, while he was describing how one of his fellow soldiers bragged that he had been protected by God, while a Vietnamese woman wailed helplessly as the last blood pumped out of her infant son’s body (he had been hit by a grenade fragment). “Where was his miracle?” asked Richert, with tears streaming down his face. It was an enormously moving moment.

Your Thoughts?

You keep lyin’ when you oughta be truthin.‘ Nancy Sinatra

“Truth” continues, first with a cryptic statement from our authors I consider a howler: “One need not attack science to reject Darwin’s theory of evolution.” No?

Granted, Darwin’s theory of evolution is not to be conflated with evolution per se. It’s not a necessary truth that Darwin’s version, or indeed that natural selection in general,  is a comprehensively correct account of how species originate and evolve on Earth. It’s a contingent matter of fact that Charlie Darwin (and not Alfred Russell Wallace, or even Charlie’s grandpa Erasmus, or who knows who) was the guy who assembled and finally propounded in public the most cogent account of biological nature’s modus operandi. Fact is, though, it has yet to be supplanted after 150 years. It keeps looking more and more elegant and right, as far as it went. It didn’t go far enough to incorporate the facts of DNA and the double helix, for instance. But neither did it block Crick’s and Watson’s way. It was a fruitful hypothesis that has multiplied.

So don’t hold your breath looking for reputable scientists willing to “reject Darwin’s theory” outright. Jerry Coyne speaks for many: “We are the one creature to whom natural selection has bequeathed a brain complex enough to comprehend the laws that govern the universe. We should be proud that we are the only species that has figured out how we came to be.” Why Evolution is True

Ken Miller, a prominent theist, has testified that it’s “the cornerstone of modern biology… a powerful and expanding theory that unites knowledge from every branch of the life sciences into a single science.”  Only a Theory

Theories are not, as Darwin’s critics often fail to grasp, unsuccessful aspirants to factual status. “Facts get interpreted according to theories.” Without theories, there could be no facts. Gravitation is a theory, and most of us would say it’s a fact too. If we’re Humeans, we won’t say it’s an item of certain knowledge; but then we don’t need to say that, in order to stand our ground and navigate it. If we’re pragmatists, we’ll say it’s an extraordinarily useful belief that’s paid its way so far, one we’re perpetually prepared to act on. That’s pretty solid ground.

Fortunately, it gets better in this chapter. “We want to say that truth means something more than “very well confirmed”; it means “the way the world really is.” That’s the presumption, balanced in science by the humble admission that our inquiry into truth is nowhere near completion. That’s why C.S. Peirce– recall him from the James bio: the brilliant but bumptious philosopher James thanklessly helped and publicized– called truth the view which is destined to be arrived at in the vanishingly remote long-run. Meanwhile, we must regard all truth claims as fallible and all disconfirmations as progressive, useful, suggestive, & encouraging. Peirce gave science its best rallying cry: “Do not block the road of inquiry!’

These terms “fact” and “truth” often get jumbled and confused. James is again a voice of clarity. “Truths emerge from facts… the facts themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.” And beliefs require believers, actors, doers. That’s us, the tellers and deniers of truth (and of falsehood), the theoreticians and experimentalists. When we respect logic and evidence and observation, mistrusting unexamined authority, we’re rational. That doesn’t mean we already own the truth, the whole truth etc., but simply that we’re on the road and on our way. We’re giving prejudice and superstition “down the road,” as my country cousins might say.

Sometimes truth runs afoul of our raisin’ (they might add); when it does, scientific rationality stiffens our resolve to stay on track. And scientific humility grants us leave to hit the occasional roadside attraction, in the form of  religious or spiritual speculation concerning matters that may range beyond our trip-tik and exceed the ambit of empirical inquiry: the ultimate questions of life, the universe, and everything. Science makes no advance declarations about this. Darwin himself pointed out that it’s more often those who know little, not those who know much, who are sure that a given inquiry is beyond science.

But the point here is that if we’re going to make time on our trip, we have to get back on the highway. We have to continue asking nature to yield specific information regarding particular matters of fact. Take care of the days, the years will take care of themselves: sound advice for students as well as scientists.

Why be rational? As Carl Sagan used to say, science isn’t perfect but it’s the best tool we’ve got. Acting rationally  maximizes our chances of getting knowledge, enjoyment, satisfaction, and the “occasional ego boost”  that comes from usin’ your noggin.

Not many philosophers have openly embraced irrationality. (Many have courted her, but most often unwittingly or else with great reluctance and discretion.) Soren Kierkegaard, though, defended personal, “subjective truth.” His concern was not with how the world is, but with one’s own– his own– personal commitments in the face of “objective uncertainty.” If we can’t have the whole truth now, he implied, let us abandon the pretense of objectivity altogether and have ourselves a private, impassioned little fling. Let us take a leap of faith.

It’s a profoundly personal approach to faith and belief (less evidently to truth), but paradoxically there’s quite an extensive community of Kierkegaardians out there. (My old classmate George is one of their leaders.) They’re all individuals, they don’t have to follow anyone… but they choose to follow the melancholy Dane. For reasons, I imagine, not “because [they think]  it is absurd.” (Creo quia est absurdum, Kierkegaard liked to say.)

There is something willfully excessive about this view, but also something enticing– especially when weighing Kierkegaard against the philosophical giants of his time (Hegel especially) who were so confident of our human ability eventually to bring Geist, the great aborning  World Spirit of arch-Rationalist legend, to objective fruition.  But must there not be some reason why you or I should decide to “leap,” unless we’re comfortable with making life-defining choices arbitrarily? That really does seem irrational, and not in a good way.

But perhaps Kierkegaard gains in popular appeal by association with the romantic movement, and poets like “Bright Star” John Keats. If a short, intense, passionate life appeals, maybe Kierkegaardian irrationality does too. But still, is a preference for passion purely arbitrary? OK, that horse has suffered enough. I’ll stop.

Nietzsche’s perspectivism has a lot going for it, but “There are no facts” goes too far. Like Kierkegaard, his interest is not in the impersonal, objective truth but in personal passion and the expression of his own creative will. He treated life itself as his artistic canvas, and his personal style as an artful creation. The two great 19th century precursors of existentialism disagreed about God and another world, but their individualistic repudiation of Truth as something larger and more important than themselves is of a piece.

Much in our experience is subjective, but “it’s all subjective” really is a lazy untruth. That’s an ironic charge to lay at the feet of either the great self-styled philosopher of adversity (“What doesn’t kill me” etc.) or the tortured sufferer of “sickness unto death” but it seems accurate. Accuracy: another feather on the scale tipping toward some notion of objectivity as our goal in assessing matters of fact.

You’re on your own with Foucault and Habermas, I developed a blind prejudice against them both long ago. My  bad, I suppose.

W.V.O. Quine (1908-2000) was intriguing and original– I spent part of a party drinking with him in the kitchen once– but I’ve never had any trouble communicating about rabbits (“gavagai!”), even after a drink or two. (I used to wonder, with that string of initials,  if he might not have been a good spokesperson for the Seagram’s label.) His indeterminacy thesis seems overblown, but I’m sure he was right to emphasize holism and the web of belief. Novel experiences invite creative and experimental assimilation. That’s the spirit of science.

Finally, Lord Russell. He often said things he didn’t mean, for the sheer shock and amusement of it. I’m pretty sure he didn’t really mean it when he wrote, “Better the world should perish than I or any other  human being should believe a lie.” That’s on a par with Hume’s pricked pinky, an instigating statement designed to provoke serious “out of the box” reflection. And it echoes Clifford: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”

I’m with James on this, though: “Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf. At any rate, it seems the fittest thing for the empiricist philosopher.”

We’ve all swallowed our share of lies and inadvertent untruths, and peddled ‘em too. Thankfully, the world has survived our collective duplicity and ignorance. We must hope it’s getting better at detecting the truth, and wanting to.

Jerry Coyne, at his blog, summarized Daniel Dennett’s talk this weekend at the big atheist convention ho-down in Burbank, California this weekend (and which I went to) thus:

Dan Dennett talked about interviews with active priests and ministers who are atheists, and also mounted a hilarious attack on theologians like Karen Armstrong, who mouth pious nonsense like, “God is the God behind God.” Dennett calls this kind of language a “deepity”: a statement that has two meanings, one of which is true but superficial, the other which sounds profound but is meaningless. His exemplar of a deepity is the statement “Love is just a word.” True, it’s a word like “cheeseburger,” but the supposed deeper sense is wrong: love is an emotion, a feeling, a condition, and not just a word in the dictionary. He gave several examples of other deepities from academic theologians; when you see these things laid out — ripped from their texts — in a Powerpoint slide, they make you realize how truly fatuous are the lucubrations of people like Armstrong, Eagleton, and Haught. Sarcasm will be the best weapon against this stuff.

And to what Coyne said, Andrew Sullivan today offered this tart take-down:

They’re really charming, aren’t they? It is as if everything arrogant about the academy and everything sneering about cable news culture is combined into one big snarky smugfest. Maybe these atheists will indeed help push back the fundamentalist right. Maybe they will remind people that between these atheist bigots and these fundamentalist bigots, the appeal of the Christianity of the Gospels shines like the sun.

Now, now, Andrew. Love thy nay bear.

Oh, and here’s a nay bear:

And here’s two more nay bears (Jerry Coyne and Russell Blackford at the Burbank atheist conference):

And who is thy nay bear?

I’m coining the term for anybody who puts up a big bear yawn toward things of first-rank importance to you (such as your belief or disbelief in God, or UFOs, or evolution, or Buddhism, or Obama, or whatever). The nay bear is rough with the things you hold dear, and steals your metaphorical loaves and fishes from the trunks of your pampered and polished ideological cars. It’s very important to (at least once in a while) listen to your nay bears, and not push them away all the time, and defame them. We all have our nay bears, and we might be in the role of somebody else’s nay bear, and all of our nay bears are telling us something.

So love your nay bears, even if they take your shirt. Or your fish. This is my evening sermon for the soul (especially my usually narrow shrew of a soul). Good night, nay bears. Good night, soul. Good night. Yawn.