A raw deal on Darwin in the NY Times
August 24, 2009 7:04 pm ET by Simon Maloy
The New York Times featured an op-ed yesterday by Robert Wright of the New America Foundation proposing "A Grand Bargain Over Evolution," whereby two warring groups -- the "intensely religious" and the "militantly atheistic" -- might find a scrap of common ground concerning Darwin's theories and "learn to get along." The proposal is wrapped in scientific jargon and relies heavily on intellectual history and high-minded philosophizing. There's just one problem.
The "bargain" stinks.
Here's how Wright sees things -- the atheists "insist that any form of god-talk, any notion of higher purpose, is incompatible with a scientific worldview," whereas the religious refuse to believe that natural selection is capable of producing creatures as complex and morally attuned as Homo sapiens, which means God "had to step in and provide special ingredients at some point." Both these viewpoints are "wrong," according to Wright, and are in need of some tweaking. For the religious, Wright proposes that they accept that God "initiat[ed] natural selection with some confidence that it would lead to a morally rich and reflective species." For the atheists, Wright prescribes that they accept that "any god whose creative role ends with the beginning of natural selection is, strictly speaking, logically compatible with Darwinism," and that "natural selection's intrinsic creative power ... adds at least an iota of plausibility to this remotely creative god." Voila -- amity achieved.
But this doesn't seem like much of a "bargain." He's asking believers in God to continue believing in God, but to also believe in natural selection as one of God's works. But for the atheists, he's essentially asking that they toss out their beliefs. Being an atheist in predicated upon one principle idea -- that there is no "higher power" at work in the universe. To ask an atheist to acknowledge, in Wright's words, "at least an iota of plausibility to this remotely creative god" is to ask that atheist to stop being an atheist. He's asking one group to merely alter their belief structure, and another group to completely undermine the basic tenet of theirs. Some "bargain" ...
And as you might expect, the "militant atheist" scientists are mightily unimpressed with Wright's teleological wheeling and dealing.
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Good gods, what a twit.
Morally attuned? Us?
He's kidding, right?
But isn't this story the whole conservative-vs-liberal fair-and-balanced environment in a nutshell? If we give truth and fiction equal weight, don't we ultimately compromise ourselves into a bi-partisan position of fiction? That's how you tell when your average binary black/white right/wrong conservative has lost his argument - he's willing to cede his fiction for another one.
Besdies, who asked Wright to draw up this "bargain"? Did he get a request for mediation he neglected to tell us about?
These are truth propositions we're dealing with. They are either true or false. The only acceptable options are to decide what's true to the best of your ability or to decide that you'd rather not decide.
Don't you know it would take some research to figure out that
an atheist doesn't believe in God, so that this "bargain" is a non-starter to begin with. Obviously, research costs money and they certainly can't afford to spend that.
I have a better bargain.
Let the atheists believe what they want to believe.
Let the religous believe what they want to believe.
Then have both groups leave the rest of us alone.
I think this idea of needing a middle ground is a false one. What we need is for citizens to agree to live together regardless of belief or a lack of belief in god. And this requires a government that is secular. This is a promise of the US constitution that is not fully realized at the moment.
And, you don't have to be an Atheist to believe in evolution.
"Of course, religion doesn’t have a monopoly on awe and inspiration. The story that science tells, the story of nature, is awesome, and some people get plenty of inspiration from it, without needing the religious kind. What’s more, science has its own role to play in knitting the world together. The scientific enterprise has long been on the frontiers of international community, fostering an inclusive, cosmopolitan ethic"
I'm totally with Wright and find Simon Malloy's concerns to be petty, overly sensitive, and wrong.
You want to run down the list of what Americans assume about their country? Americans, not Swedes, not Frenchmen or Nigerians. Atrios used to call Bill Clinton "Big Dog." He was the man! To Social Democrats in other countries, let alone socialists in this one, Clinton was a Republican, and a pig.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,"
Do we? Why?
People like their mythologies. They always will. Some people think Zionism isn't racism. Strange but true.
The issue is not religion it's education policy.
Faith, for better or worse, is eternal.
Teach religion, in churches. Where it belongs.
Teach evolution, in schools. Where it belongs.
Never should the 2 meet.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'd rather keep my brain engaged.