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Religion & Law

: Thoughts in a Haystack

Skilling the Messenger

By John Pieret

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Okay, I've made my case for the overreaching of the "incompatiblists." Now it's time to turn to the "accommodationists," in particular Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum. At their blog, The Intersection, they say this:

Science and religion are not mutually exclusive and must not continue to be portrayed as such. Though some very vocal voices in the science community disagree, I assure you they are not representative of the whole. I continue to work day to day with scientists who hold a very broad array of beliefs across fields from molecular biology to physiology to conservation. And when it comes to issues like climate change and ocean acidification, everyone must be engaged if we're to get anywhere. The new atheist movement takes an adversarial approach, but only succeeds in alienating the majority of the planet away from science. When it comes to enacting sound policies on what really matters, this will always be a losing strategy.

While I agree that science and religion are not necessarily mutually exclusive, it is certainly true that some religions and religious beliefs are in such conflict with science that glossing over that fact is not helpful to reaching any general accommodation between science and the religious. In fact, scientists not only have the right but, I think, the duty to portray, for example, young-Earth creationism as deeply unscientific and harmful to the country's well-being, insofar at that depends on the public understanding of science.

Just as I think that it is unrealistic for some "atheist-scientists" to think that religion will go away soon, Mooney and Kirshenbaum are being unrealistic to think the atheists and their harsh criticism of religion is going anywhere either. A significant group are going to continue to portray science and religion as mutually exclusive and Mooney and Kirshenbaum need to deal with it. Their continual whining (and that is, I'm afraid, what it is) over that fact is exactly what they claim the atheists are engaged in: a losing strategy. It is an adversarial relationship that only succeeds in alienating people who, by all objective measures, are already the kind of effective communicators that Mooney and Kirshenbaum wish more scientists were. That, in turn, actually draws more attention to the atheists' position and makes the controversy loom larger in the public consciousness.

If, in fact, as Mooney and Kirshenbaum imply, there is a wellspring of accommodationists in the scientific community, their time would be much better spent encouraging those scientists to speak out and giving them the kind of communication skills Mooney and Kirshenbaum are so fond of talking about, rather than in hectoring atheists.
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Full post as published by Thoughts in a Haystack on July 14, 2009 (boomark / email).