Creationism: Conspiracy Road Trip

Here's Jerry Coyne discussing the practicalities of fitting all the world's animals onto a boat that is too large to remain stable.

In this show, Conspiracy Road Trip, Andrew Maxwell takes conspiracists on a variety of subjects, such as 9/11 and UFOs, and challenges their beliefs. On this occasion, he took five British creationists (four Christian and one Muslim) to the States to look at some of the evidence and discuss it with experts in their fields.

There's a good quote from Jerry in discussion with Maxwell:

Evolution is unique amongst the sciences because it strikes people in the solar plexus of their faith; it strikes them in the idea that they are specially created by God, because evolution says you're not. It says that there is no special purpose for your life, because it's a naturalistic philosophy, we have no more extrinsic purpose than a squirrel or an armadillo. And it says that morality does not come from God, it's an evolved phenomenon. And those are three things that are really hard for humans to accept, particularly those brought up in a religious tradition.

There tends to be agreement on these points between creationists and atheists, although more liberal theists and accommodationist atheists would disagree with them. One of the creationists articulated this well, by saying that if the young earth belief she held was wrong then it all was. I think the acid of science can have this effect on religious belief. But folk can be very flexible, so cherry-picking is entirely consistent with theism, if the person is already happy to commit to any random possibility that happens to appeal to them.

If you think Jerry's talk didn't go down well, then you should see how well persuaded the gang were by Christian scientists explaining the evidence gently. In short, they weren't. It's difficult to avoid the conclusion from this, admittedly unscientific, experiment that persuasion depends more on the personality of the persuadee than the style of rhetoric employed. It's a truism to say that faith is an integral part of a person of faith, but it's exposed in all its humanity in this episode. You can see that each person's faith reflects their personalities, their wants and needs; changing faith is changing the person you are, and not to be taken lightly. Anyone who says your faith is wrong, whether gently or bluntly, is, in a sense, attacking and potentially killing the person you are, and re-birth is needed if the evidence is to be taken seriously.

So, in the end, it's a lot less traumatic for these persons to simply ignore the evidence. I can see how that could be, and I'm just glad I never got so hooked into a faith that I would feel so destroyed by losing it.

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Religious 'Evolution'

From the wonderful article Jerry Coyne's Seeing and Believing:

Karl Giberson said

Empirical science does indeed trump revealed truth about the world as Galileo and Darwin showed only too clearly. But empirical science also trumps other empirical science. Einstein's dethronement of Newton was not the wholesale undermining of the scientific enterprise, even though it showed that science was clearly in error. It was, rather, a glorious and appropriately celebrated advance for science, albeit one not understood by most people. Why is this different than modern theology's near universal rejection of the tyrannical anthropomorphic deity of the Old Testament, so eloquently skewered by Dawkins? How is it that "science" is allowed to toss its historical baggage overboard when its best informed leaders decide to do so, even though the ideas continue to circulate on main street, but religion must forever be defined by the ancient baggage carried by its least informed?

This, for me, is actually one of the biggest reasons for being atheist. Giberson correctly points out that both scientific beliefs and religious beliefs have evolved, but then asks the question - why is science allowed to evolve but religion not?

The answer murders religious belief. Science *sets out* to uncover the reality around us with a rigorous methodology (the *only* reliable methodology we have); our knowledge remains provisional. *Naturally* scientific knowledge evolves, as new evidence is uncovered, and reason is applied. Religion *establishes* the truth of the matter, and its knowledge remains absolute. *Unnaturally* religious belief evolves as science contradicts the *established* truth. Scientific knowledge evolves smoothly on a synchromesh and religious belief bounces along on crude cogs.

Some would say I’m making a category error here; I’m not allowed to compare theism to science. But the only ontology we *can* throw any light on comes from science and reason, so the distinction is only brought up as a red herring. As Coyne says:

In the end, then, there is a fundamental distinction between scientific truths and religious truths, however you construe them. The difference rests on how you answer one question: how would I know if I were wrong?

Theists cannot know, scientists (dare I say, naturalists) can, in principle.

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