I must be the last person to read “Why Darwin Matters” by Michael Shermer. I like Shermer, and I enjoyed “Why People Believe Weird Things”. So this book is a general explanation of evolution and a takedown of creationist arguments. It also gets into recent legal actions where ID activists, having come up empty on the science, are attempting to wedge creationism into schools. It’s a fun and interesting read.
But I’ve run aground on this bit where Shermer argues that religious people can ‘believe’ in evolution. He mentions the three possibilities for how science and religion can interact:
- the ‘Conflicting-Worlds’ model: science and religion is describing the same thing, and one must be wrong
- the ‘Same-World’ model, where science and religion are both describing aspects of the same thing, and both do a good job of it
- and the ‘Separate-Worlds’ model (which is basically the ‘Non-Overlapping Magisteria’ argument): that science describes the physical world, religion describes the spiritual, and this can work because the two don’t converge.
Inexplicably, Shermer plumps for the ‘Separate-Worlds’ model:
Believers can have both religion and science as long as there is no attempt to make A non-A, to make reality unreal, to turn naturalism into supernaturalism. Thus, the most logically coherent argument for theists is that God is outside time and space; that is, God is beyond nature — super nature, or supernatural — and therefore cannot be explained by natural causes. God is beyond the dominion of science, and science is outside the realm of God.
And there the chapter ends.
Shermer is careful here. He’s arguing that this is the only plausible road that theists can take, without saying he’s taking that road himself. And yet, by leaving it there, he’s making it sound approving.
You could take a Carnival cruise ship through the holes in the NOMA argument. Okay, if God is outside time and space, he’s outside time and space. What’s he doing creating planets, then? Or dictating books, or appearing to prophets, or healing the sick, or finding your car keys? As soon as he interacts in the physical world like believers claim he constantly is, then the two realms collide, and we can examine things to check for goddy effects. (None so far; keep you posted.)
Not surprisingly, I’m an unabashed ‘Conflicting-Worlds’-ist. But check out Shermer’s paragraph on it:
This “warfare” approach holds that science and religion are mutually exclusive ways of knowing, one being right and the other wrong. In this view, the findings of modern science are always a potential threat to one’s faith and thus they must be carefully vetted against religious truths before acceptance; likewise, the tenets of religion are always a potential threat to science and thus they must be viewed with skepticism and cynicism. The conflicting-worlds model is embraced by extremists on both sides of the divide. Young Earth creationists, who insist that all scientific findings must correlate perfectly with their own (often literal) reading of Genesis, retain a suspicious hostility of science, while militant atheists cannot imagine how religion could contribute anything positive to human knowledge or social interaction.
To read Shermer erecting the scarecrow of militant extremist atheism is particularly disappointing.
I’m sure Shermer knows this terrain, which makes his support for NOMA all the more baffling. Is he trying to trick the rubes into thinking that evolution’s okay? In that case, what you’ll get is people making a nominal committment to science being okay, while being ignorant of what science is, or any of its implications. Which seems kind of dishonest to me.
15 May 2008 at 2:47 am
I think religion should be a matter of faith only. For instance the Holy Bible. One can either denounce it as an athoritativeless book of mens imagination: evolutionist. Or read the prophecys and come into knowledge that all things including electromagnitism which carries this message to your computer were created and in the hand of the Word given to Him by the Father which is related in the christian faith. When the prophecys hit home an evolutionsits theory seems more like the imagination of men than the Gods Word. Good Luck with this logic…Oh and by the way, accordiong to prophecy the last 3 and 1/2 years will be a great tribulation such as the world has never seen. The world has seen alot: empire after warring empire and especially A.Hitlers attempt. probably earthquakes and volcanos too. (sound familar?) Any way look for 10 commandments to escape…. Or look to your wisdom of the man called Darwin….
15 May 2008 at 4:18 am
Daniel, overall would you recommend the book despite the issues mentioned here? I’ve been keen on reading ‘The Mind of the Market’, but I’m mired in the middle of ‘Sabbath’s Theater’ by Phillip Roth.
I turned to Shermer and Skeptic the second the whole ‘Expelled’ thing flamed up. They’ve didn’t disappoint, they had some entertaining content.
Fighting..urge.to…respond….to..Anonymous….
15 May 2008 at 5:47 am
It’s no use, Ted. Our human reason is no match for anon’s spiritual mojo and spelling.
Any way look for 10 commandments to escape…. Or look to your wisdom of the man called Darwin….
I’ll take Darwin, thanks. Oh, and by the way, the last seven years has been pretty tribulatious as well, despite the electromagna-matism. Thanks for the update, chump.
The book: if you’ve been reading blogs over the last two years, you’ll be familiar with the information. Handy though it is to have it in one place.
It wasn’t just the passage I mentioned; I couldn’t shake the impression that the book was written for someone slightly less-informed than I was. Not to say… you know. But it’s not an expensive book, and it’s a fun read, so I’m glad I got it.
15 May 2008 at 6:22 am
nah im just kidding. i love darwin
16 May 2008 at 2:26 am
Wooooo spooky,
There have been quite a few earthquakes and volcanos and huricanes and tornados and war and rumors of war and an increase in knowledge…. People are shouting the end is 12-21-12 so that makes some time in June of 2009 the beginning of the last 3 1/2 years. I guess well find out if that guy is right or wrong soon enough.
16 May 2008 at 2:42 am
I think its electromagnetism….what is electromagna-matism? Ive been called worse than a chump and your sure I have so what? Now Ill be friendly….You cant believe in the bible for a good reason. Its not your calling. If God wanted you Im sure you would know it. So Im a bit out of line for giving you fodder to chew on. Sorry bout that. I dont consider myself an intellectual like your type. So I wont race IQ’s with you. Im basicly a muscular white guy who has studied both sides of the coin,and understands why pagan religion only makes people hate God and makes them blind to happiness that belongs to them. Thats life in the big city. The truth is harder to find than it is to swallow. Thats a fact. Chat at you later maybe…..Anon…
16 May 2008 at 5:01 am
A new end of the world, and I wasn’t informed? I hadn’t even heard of 12-21-12, but it seems to be all over the web.
Sounds like another blog post in the making. Thanks for the tip, second anonymous!
16 May 2008 at 12:31 pm
Bah. The Mayan Calendar crap is beyond irritating. There are lots of cool myths out there without having to invent new ones.
17 May 2008 at 5:18 am
I defy Anonymous to provide evidence that people have been ‘shouting’ 12-21-12! The only thing I hear people shouting around me is “Thanks for cutting me off dick!”.
Have you noticed that 12-21-12 is a numerical palindrome for 21-12-21? Creepy. I got dem pee chills all over mah body!!!!
19 May 2008 at 9:46 pm
Lovely, more end of the world non-sense. The world isn’t going to end on 12/21/12. Better put some jam in your pockets then, becase we are going to be toast in a few billion years when the Sun goes into its expansion state. That will be cool to watch. Maybe that is more end-of-the-world type stuff we can all agree on.
19 May 2008 at 11:50 pm
This is probably dumb, but it’s always the paintings and artwork that I worry about. How are we going to preserve Mondrian and Klimt? Can we take them through wormholes in space? The universe will suffer heat death in 10^150 years, and I’m like “Teh paintings!”
25 May 2008 at 8:03 pm
So Daniel, Are you saying that you are 100% sure that religion has never and will never add anything positive to human knowledge or social interaction.
How is it that most religions have come up with:
1. An idea that before what we call reality occured was Chaos.
2. First from nothing came light and dark and then planets and then life.
3. water and land needed to seperate before life began.
Most religions start with Chaos as the “original God” which is just another way of saying everything from nothing which falls nicely into the big bang theory.
So how did they “divine” such a complicated idea 10,000 years ago and without science?
26 May 2008 at 9:17 am
Are you saying that you are 100% sure that religion has never and will never add anything positive to human knowledge or social interaction.
That’s not something I’ve said, but I’m happy to address it.
Empiricism (getting facts from observation) is the ONLY way to really know anything. There are NO other ways of knowing. (If you think you know any, please tell me, because empiricism is time-consuming and sometimes discouraging.) Revelation, intuition, and introspection may result in some interesting hypotheses, but this is not the same as knowledge until it gets tested observationally.
Religions, being non-empirical belief systems, do not contribute to human knowledge directly. This is not to say that they don’t contribute some hypotheses. But these hypotheses must be tested empirically to be valid, and then we’re doing science.
How is it that most religions have come up with:
1. An idea that before what we call reality occured was Chaos.
2. First from nothing came light and dark and then planets and then life.
3. water and land needed to seperate before life began.
You’re counting the hits and forgetting the misses. Are you forgetting that, in the Bible, plants came before the sun? 🙂
Most religions start with Chaos as the “original God” which is just another way of saying everything from nothing which falls nicely into the big bang theory.
No, ‘most’ religions do not claim this. Some Asian religions say that everything came from an egg, and Hindus say that everything has always existed.
So how did they “divine” such a complicated idea 10,000 years ago and without science?
They waited for scientists to do the work, and then they plowed through the scriptures to find a verse that matched what the scientists found.
I love this Jesus and Mo comic, which says the same thing, but funnier.
Story: Once Ms Perfect said, “What if the people at your old church are right, and you’re wrong?”
I responded, “That’s possible. But if they’re right, they don’t know they’re right.” If they’ve somehow magically hit everything exactly right, they still haven’t done the empirical work to demonstrate it, and therefore they don’t ‘know’. They’re merely certain.
26 May 2008 at 9:27 am
Not Hindus. Something else. Can’t find it.