Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum–whose new book Unscientific America beweeps US scientific illiteracy while simultaneously chiding the likes of PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins for their confrontational approach to religion–continue to make their case in a new essay called “In science vs. faith, the need to heed Darwin.”  [You'll want to read this essay to make sense of my response.]

M&K reiterate their contention that “in-your-face atheism,” particularly as practiced by Richard Dawkins, only hardens the hearts of the religionists and Luddites who most need the message that science is a good thing and (as Dawkins will explicate in his upcoming book The Greatest Show on Earth) that evolution is true.

Now, there’s no denying that when people like Richard Dawkins call the religious upbringing of children tantamount to child abuse, or PZ Myers mocks the notion that a cracker could become the flesh of a living god, or Christopher Hitchens says that “religion poisons everything” (everything being a lot of stuff), it upsets religious people.  M&K rightly call this confrontational.  But is that necessarily a bad thing?

Look where things have been heading as a direct consequence of the accommodationist policy; that is, the notion that science and religion are compatible.  Half of all Americans believe in young earth creationism.  Biology professors who have minded their own business suddenly find their classrooms filled with college students who think that “the eye couldn’t just have happened” and that “genetic mutation never adds information.”  I won’t go so far as to say it’s an epidemic, but you’d be hard pressed to go a week here in the States without reading about a child who died or ended up in the hospital because his/her parents thought prayer was better than chemo, or that homeopathy would do the trick, or that vaccines cause autism.  This in the country that sent men to the moon.

It’s clear that science and religion aren’t compatible, public pronouncements by the AAAS and NCSE notwithstanding.  Perhaps science and religion can find an uneasy coexistence, but let’s face it: the only way that works is for people to compartmentalize their religion and their science (a sort of mental Apartheid in which good ideas are allowed to flourish while bad ideas are continually nursed), or to water down their religion to the point that it has no falsifiable claims.  You can’t believe in science and believe that YHWH spoke the universe into existence in six 24-hour days.  You can’t believe in science and believe that mankind appeared in his current form within the last 10,000 years.  You can (if you must) believe in science and say you’re a “spiritual person” (whatever that means), or that the Bible is just a big metaphor whose details may or may not be historically accurate.  In short, science and religion are compatible if science is allowed to do its thing and religion slowly paints itself into a corner.

What’s most disturbing about Mooney & Kirshenbaum’s essay is the idea that some citizens–no matter how correct they are–should just shut the fuck up.  Dawkins is hurting The Cause when he speaks his mind, say Mooney and Kirshenbaum.  Ditto for Myers, Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and a host of others.  So much for freedom of speech and freedom of expression.  Meanwhile, for every Dawkins who offends the sensibilities of the pious, there are 10,000 preachers who have free reign to tell their flocks that those who believe differently will suffer eternal torture in a fiery pit, or to invite Creationist snake-oil salesmen to give talks on Sunday evening to tell the children that what they’ve been taught in school is a lie–and even give the kids tips on how to disrupt class with clever questions designed to trip up the teacher.  But if a tiny minority of atheists refuse to let the fundamentalist monopolize the public stage…Lordie no, that won’t do!

In the end, I think M&K miss the point of the Dawkinses and Myerses of the world.  Calling them “intolerant” implies they wish to deny religionists the right to speak or worship as they please, which is manifestly NOT the case.  All they’re saying is, if you don’t believe what someone else believes, you ought not be made to feel ashamed, or be painted as a bully, if you say “I disagree.  I think you’re full of it, and it’s about time you laid out your proof.”  If you think someone’s belief is preposterous, misguided, or laughable, you should have the confidence to say so.  This will offend religious people–even moderate religious people–but it may accomplish the same outcome as similar tactics have had on racists, homophobes and misogynists: that they can no longer presume that when they speak, everyone will agree with them, or that those who don’t will remain silent so as not to cause a fuss.  By not letting religionists assume that their thoughts are the default, that their beliefs are unchallengeable, we may accomplish far more in a shorter span than the “can’t we all just get along?” policy of the accommodationists.

Tags: accommodationism, chris mooney, greatest show on earth, pz myers, richard dawkins, sheril kirshenbaum, unscientific america

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 10:19 am and is filed under atheism, books, christianity, civil rights, commentary, evolution, religion, religious rights, science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.