In Which the New Atheists Saw Off The Bough On Which They Sit
Michael Ruse is an atheist philosopher who is not amused by the New Atheists. In fact he seems to think that they may dangerously undermine their own position when they go around saying that evolution disproves God:
“The First Amendment does not ban the teaching of bad science in publicly funded schools. It bans the teaching of religion. That is why it is crucial to argue that Creationism, including its side kick IDT, is religion and not just bad science. But sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If teaching “God exists” is teaching religion – and it is – then why is teaching “God does not exist” not teaching religion? Obviously it is teaching religion. But if science generally and Darwinism specifically imply that God does not exist, then teaching science generally and Darwinism specifically runs smack up against the First Amendment. Perhaps indeed teaching Darwinism is implicitly teaching atheism. This is the claim of the new atheists.”
It would be interesting to see whether Ruse’s scenario would ever be tested in court. Extrapolating evolution into meaning that there is no god is lousy science, lousy theology, lousy philosophy and now it may also be lousy politics.
I think their argument just brings up an impossible tension already implied in the interpretation of the First Amendment which sees it as saying the state (and its schools) should be neutral on religion. When we teach that the earth is a globe spinning in space, we thereby deny religious views of the earth as sitting on the backs of turtles and elephants. We also presume anything-but-neutral definitions of “religion” and “science” in doing so.
The moment religion means something more than “what we do in our quiet times” to the practitioner of any given “religion”, the state’s being neutral towards that religion becomes problematic.
I lack the space to speak to this precept generally, but in this particular case I think that neutrality is a problem only if one holds to the idea that science is only compatible with an exclusive humanism. If scientific inquiry finds things that are not apparently compatible with various religious traditions, reporting on these findings are not necessarily making a religious claim. If I do a survey and cannot find any giant turtles holding up the world and publish a paper to that effect, I am doing scientific work. On the other hand if I then want to start publishing popular books with names like The Turtle Delusion or Turtles are not Great talking about how this conclusively disproves Iroquois spirituality then I am quite outside of science. That science cannot find empirical evidence for this religion or that religion does not disprove a religion (or religion in general), it merely points to an absence of evidence or at least the presence of conflicting evidence. The danger is taking this evidence and saying that one must believe in an exclusive humanism as a result of science (a la Dawkins or PZ Myers). In that case one is quite clearly in the religious realm.
It’s probably my dullness, but I don’t think the fact that you’re publishing the lack-of-turtle-foundations as a “scientific” (as opposed to “religious”) finding is going to be comforting to the Iroquois, because implicit (in Western culture, anyway) in the claim that something is “scientific” is that it is just plain true. How one can be neutral toward a religious belief while saying it is completely false is something I have trouble understanding.
Oh, I don’t think it would be comforting to the Iroquois, but then neither is the history of European colonial conquest – if I were an aboriginal person I would be angrier at my deity or deities (alas, my ignorance here is apparent) over colonialism than I would be over turtle issues. Both science and history (Along with many other disciplines, did you see the post I had the other day about social science programs correlating with decline in religious activity?) can shake religious beliefs, but that is again not to be taken to mean that academic pursuits imply an exclusive humanism. I would actually be curious to hear how practitioners of native spirituality reconcile the apparent conflict between their beliefs and the empirical evidence about how earth moves through space.