In the discussion thread on my post about PZ Myers and Bill Donahue’s equally shameful behavior last week, commenter Blake wrote:
PZ and Co. aren’t in the business of changing minds because dogmatic beliefs don’t usually change. PZ is in the business of showing the next, undecided generation that religion is worthless at best.
Were Myers and Dawkins merely atheist apologists, I’d simply leave them to it and not bother. But their open contempt for all forms of religion compromises their professional efforts to combat scientific illiteracy, counter pseudo-science like Intelligent Design, and fight anti-science like Creationism. As someone who cares deeply about science education, it breaks my heart to see two such talented science writers waste their talent like this.
Rightly or wrongly, most Americans are deeply religious and find real-life, personal benefits in their religion: it answers theological and philosophical questions, provides them with meaning, and informs their interactions with others.
As my co-blogger Apollo has noted, however, most people are not inclined to care that much about evolution in and of itself. Unless you work in the sciences, you are unlikely to derive any obvious benefit from the truth or falsity of evolution (the key word in that sentence being ‘obvious’). A religious person might find many daily applications for his religion – solace through prayer, strength in the face of adversity, guidance in ethical behavior, etc.* – but few will find so many practical, daily uses for evolution.
When they do think of evolution (and I’m still borrowing from Apollo here), they tend to be resistant to it. Most people, quite understandably, find more fulfillment in thinking of themselves as ensouled creations of a divine intelligence than as imperfect, mortal organisms shaped by the unguided hand of Natural Selection.
It should come as no surprise then, that when asked to choose between an uncomfortable theory with no (obvious) practical application and deeply-held beliefs with clear benefits, most people chose the latter. They are all the more likely to do so when the purveyors of the Uncomfortable Truth delight in disparaging their deepest convictions, however true the former and ridiculous the latter may be.
Myers and Dawkins have absolutely every right to work as atheist spokesmen and as popularizers of science. I have no interest in silencing them, or in telling them to keep their non-sciencey thoughts to themselves. I am not suggesting that great and wonderful things will happen if they ‘make nice’ with their opponents, nor do I believe that Stephen Jay Gould’s NOMA theory can draw a clearly defined line between the empirical and the religious worlds.
I do, however, question the wisdom of working to increase scientific literacy while needlessly disparaging religion, especially in the manner Myers has been doing lately; it has no other effect than to give well-meaning religious people a perfectly justifiable reason to ignore his superb scholarship and writing. For good or for bad, scientific literacy and atheist apologetics are not complimentary goals in America today; Myers and Dawkins do themselves, their profession, and our civilization great harm by their failure to acknowledge this.
* My point is not that religion is the only source of solace, meaning, and ethics; rather, that most people derive these things from religion. It should go without saying that people can also find justification for bigotry, arrogance, and hatred in religion as well.
Posted by Tom in Buffoon Watch, Philosophy, Science!