God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion (40 page)

Some have attacked the problem of divine action in the face of the absence of evidence for the miracles that would be expected to appear occasionally as the result of those actions. However, attempts to use quantum mechanics and chaos theory to provide a means for God to act in the world without being detected have not been satisfactory, especially since this perspective seems to lead to a new kind of deist god, one who plays dice with the universe. Try as they might, Christian theologians cannot reconcile this model with traditional Christian teachings. Furthermore, why would a beneficent God want to hide from his creatures so only those of limited intellect who have unquestioning faith receive the gift of an eternity of bliss?

Another view promoted by liberal Protestant theologians is that God should not be viewed as a supernatural entity outside of space and time, but as a being existing everywhere and everyplace in space and time. They claim their methods of arriving at this model closely follow those of science. In particular, the model is based on data, namely human experience, and theory, namely interpretation of the data. However, while that may be the case, this procedure differs from scientific method in that wherever it has been tested, as in prayer experiments or religious experiences, it has uniformly failed. When that happens in science, the hypothesis being tested is discarded. This never happens in religion, at least as the direct result of testing.

While some scientists are religious, they have compartmentalized and compromised their thinking. Religion is based on faith—beliefs that have no basis in evidence or reason. Faith is foolish. Faith is a failure. It is the very antithesis of science. And, ultimately, this is why science and religion are forever fundamentally incompatible.

CONFRONTATION OR ACCOMMODATION?

The court decisions on evolution and creationism have not addressed the more fundamental issues at the interface between science and religion. Science leaders in America generally have avoided confronting religious leaders with the irrationality of many of their positions. Let me quote from the National Academy of Sciences' position paper on the evolution controversy:

Can a person believe in God and still accept evolution?

Many do. Most religions of the world do not have any direct conflict with the idea of evolution. Within the Judeo-Christian religions, many people believe that God works through the process of evolution. That is, God has created both a world that is ever-changing and a mechanism through which creatures can adapt to environmental change over time.

At the root of the apparent conflict between some religions and evolution is a misunderstanding of the critical difference between religious and scientific ways of knowing. Religions and science answer different questions about the world. Whether there is a purpose to the universe or a purpose for human existence are not questions for science. Religious and scientific ways of knowing have played, and will continue to play, significant roles in human history.

No one way of knowing can provide all of the answers to the questions that humans ask. Consequently, many people, including many scientists, hold strong religious beliefs and simultaneously accept the occurrence of evolution.
²⁶

However, we have seen that those Catholics and moderate Christians who say they accept evolution really do not. They view evolution as the process by which God achieves his purpose, and they believe that humans are central to that purpose. This is not evolution as it is understood by science. The Darwinian scheme has no role for God. In this scheme, humanity is an accident. The National Academy of Sciences has simply swept this fact under the rug, just as it has ignored the fact, mentioned in
chapter 9
, that scientists are, in principle, able to discover the supernatural and some very competent researchers are pursuing that end. The failure to find any sign of the supernatural so far is piling up evidence that it is nonexistent.

Those who hold views similar to the National Academy have come to be called “accommodationists.” In 2006 and 2007, the term “new atheism” entered into the lexicon of the discourse on science and religion, referring to those who are taking a more confrontational stand in dealing with religion.
²⁷
A series of books appeared that immediately hit the bestseller lists:
The End of Faith
²⁸
and
Letter to a Christian Nation
²⁹
by neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris;
Breaking the Spell
³⁰
by philosopher Daniel Dennett;
The God Delusion
³¹
by biologist Richard Dawkins;
God Is Not Great
³²
by journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens; and my own
God: The Failed Hypothesis
—the only one by a physicist.
³³

While many other authors, bloggers, and speakers have eloquently portrayed the atheist position, this particular group was singled out by the media as the “new atheists” because of the much harder line against religion they advocated compared to what had been the widespread convention. Of course, these five are certainly not the only ones out there who are confronting rather than accommodating religion. Several popular bloggers
³⁴
and a rapidly growing, well-organized collection of university students
³⁵
support and promote the new atheist position.

Prior to the new atheism, the prevalent view among nonbelievers was that religion is generally a benign force in the world and that only a small minority of fanatics presented any serious threat to the public well-being. Also, those scientists and science organizations particularly concerned with the financial support for and teaching of science—especially evolution—felt that it was strategically a bad idea to alienate believers, especially since they constitute such a large majority in America and completely dominate government at all levels. Journalist Chris Mooney exemplifies the accommodationist position:

If the goal is to create an America more friendly toward science and reason, the combativeness of the New Atheists is strongly counterproductive…. America is a very religious nation, and if forced to choose between faith and science, a vast number of Americans will select faith.
³⁶

Although individual new atheists (there is no central new atheism dogma) fully appreciated the merit of this argument and have thought about it
carefully, they decided that religion is too destructive a force in society to just sit back and allow it to proceed unopposed. And this opposition was not to be limited to religious extremists. To the great dismay of accommodationists, moderate believers also found themselves criticized by new atheists. Despite moderate believers' sincere public endorsements of science and reason, they still hold to ancient mythologies. In our final chapter we will see why this, in the long run, can only impede humanity's progress toward a more rational world.

The delusional is no longer marginal.

—Kevin Phillips
¹

Those who control what young people are taught, and what they experience—what they see, hear, think, and believe—will determine the future course of the nation.

—James Dobson
²

THE AMERICAN ANOMALY

I
f the conflict between science and religion were just a matter of intellectual debate, a battle between eggheads in theology and eggheads in science and philosophy, the stakes would not be very high. There is a famous quotation that is variously attributed to C. P. Snow, Henry Kissinger, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Woodrow Wilson, and others: “Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.”
³

However, in the case of the incompatibility of science and religion, the stakes are high—not because of academic politics but because of American and, indeed, world politics. The role of religion in today's political and social scene is ubiquitous, from Islamic terrorism to attempts by the Christian Right in America to replace democracy with theocracy. A theocracy? In America? Most of my scientific colleagues in the cozy comfort of their cluttered campus offices would scoff at the notion. But they need to be good scientists and look at the data. As I write this, potential Republican candidates to oppose
Democrat Obama in the 2012 presidential election are busy campaigning and debating. Most are injecting religion into the political dialogue as never before, some even claiming divine guidance. At this writing, all the front-runners, even those who have been relatively moderate in the past, are making strong antiscientific statements that are obviously intended to appeal to those who vote in Republican primaries.

In 2003, columnist Kimberly Blaker edited a series of essays titled
The Fundamentals of Extremism: The Christian Right in America
that documented the insidious role of Christian fundamentalism in American family and political life.
⁴
While this book is almost a decade old, the problems described have, if anything, become more critical.

In his 2006 book
American Theocracy
, former Republican strategist and bestselling author Kevin Phillips wrote, “The rapture, end times, and Armageddon hucksters in the United States rank with any Shiite ayatollahs, and the last two presidential elections [2000 and 2004] make the transformation of the GOP into the first religious party in U.S. history.”
⁵

In her 2006
New York Times
bestseller
Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism
, journalist Michelle Goldberg chronicled the dominant role in American politics played by extremist Christians.
⁶
In the same year, Damon Linker, former editor of the Catholic magazine
First Things
, wrote in his book
The Theocons
about how, over the course of three decades, a few determined men have succeeded in injecting their radical religious ideas into the nation's politics.
⁷

Also in 2006, in
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America
, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and theist Chris Hedges noted:

Democratic and Christian [values] are being dismantled, often with stealth, by a radical Christian movement known as dominionism, which seeks to cloak itself in the mantle of Christian faith and American patriotism. Dominionism takes its name from Genesis 1:26–31, in which God gives human beings “dominion” over creation. This movement, small in number but influential, departs from traditional evangelicalism. Dominionists now control at least six national television networks, each reaching tens of millions of homes, and virtually all of the nation's more than 2,000 religious radio stations, as well as denominations such as the Southern Baptist
Convention. Dominionism seeks to redefine traditional democratic and Christian terms and concepts to fit an ideology that calls on the radical church to take political power.
⁸

In
The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
, published in 2009, journalist Jeff Sharlet revealed how a small, secretive group of extremely conservative Christians called “The Family” have wielded increasing national and international political power. They organize the yearly Washington Prayer Breakfasts attended by presidents and foreign diplomats, provide prayerful retreats for congressmen, senators, and Supreme Court justices, and preach a gospel of biblical capitalism, military might, and American empire.
⁹
In a followup volume published in 2010,
C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy
, Sharlet told how The Family also aided several prominent senators and congressmen in covering up their extramarital affairs.
¹⁰

In a 2011 essay in
Religion Dispatches
, Peter Montgomery, senior fellow at People for the American Way, summarized how “religious right leaders and activists have spent decades creating fertile soil for anti-union campaigns through the promotion of ‘biblical capitalism.’”
¹¹
These leaders have proclaimed that Jesus and the Bible oppose progressive taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes, and minimum wage laws. They also enlist Jesus in a war against unions, which they regard as unbiblical.

The founder of The Family was a Norwegian immigrant, Abraham Vereide. According to Sharlet, also writing in
Religion Dispatches
:

In 1942 [Vereide] moved to the capital where the National Association of Manufacturers staked him to a meeting of congressmen who would become students of his spiritual politics, among them Virginia senator Absalom Willis Robertson—Pat Robertson's father. Vereide returned the manufacturers' favor by telling his new congressional followers that God wanted them to break the spine of organized labor. They did.
¹²

Montgomery writes that the 1990 Christian Coalition leadership manual coauthored by coalition founder Ralph Reed cites four biblical passages instructing slaves to be obedient to their masters. For example:

Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. (1 Peter 2:18–19)

Reed interprets this to mean, “Christians have a responsibility to submit to the authority of their employers, since they are designated as part of God's plan for the exercise of authority on earth by man.”
¹³
We see here the same argument that has been used for millennia to justify the right of monarchs, no matter how incompetent or brutal, to rule over everyone else: God put them there so it must be his will.

In 2005, journalist Chris Mooney documented how the antiscience attitudes of the George W. Bush administration, motivated in part by the heavy representation of Catholics and evangelical Christians in virtually all federal offices from the president on down and dominating most advisory panels, suppressed reports by government scientists on issues such as birth control, global warming, and stem-cell research.
¹⁴

Antiscience is implicit, or even explicit, throughout this movement. Scientists have to stop sitting back and start stepping up to challenge religion. The welfare and, indeed, the survival of our species is at stake.

THE UPS AND DOWNS OF SCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC MIND

Mooney and marine biologist Sheril Kirshenbaum have chronicled how science has fallen in and out of favor with the American public in the years since World War II.
¹⁵
Prior to that war, fundamental science in the United States was respectable but lagged behind that in Europe, especially England and Germany, and had little public attention. That changed dramatically when, with the help of expatriate scientists from the continent, the United States developed the nuclear bomb, along with radar and other dramatic military technologies. Then, public and politicians alike recognized the power and importance of basic research, especially physics.

The result was a greatly increased expenditure of federal funds on research and scientific education in the postwar period, spurred on by the Cold War. Then, in 1957 came the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, which generated an even greater anxiety in Americans that our very way of life was threatened. The result was further expansion of spending on science. Mooney and Kirshenbaum note that in 1940 the total federal expenditure on research and development was $74 million. By 1962–63 it was $12.3
billion
.
¹⁶
(Inflation played a small role in this increase: $1 in 1940 had the same buying power as $2.14 in 1962.)

I had the good fortune of getting my PhD in physics in 1963. I did not have to seek a job; jobs sought me. I didn't need to spend the usual several years' apprenticeship as a postdoc but moved directly into the professorate. Two colleagues and I were able to set up from scratch a research group in elementary particle physics at the University of Hawaii, funded by the US Atomic Energy Commission. Our research had no application to nuclear bombs or reactors, but the message of the war was that it was imperative for our national defense to always be at the forefront of research into the fundamental nature of matter and energy.

In just a few years, however, by the mid 1970s, the trend of ever-increasing funding for scientific research began to reverse. This resulted from the cultural shift brought about by the Vietnam War. The growing antiwar, antinuclear, environmental, and feminist movements on the Left were matched by the antievolution, antireproductive rights, and antienvironmental movements on the Right. The culture war began and science was caught in the middle.

Science also became more specialized and more remote from public understanding; the number of scientific journals expanded from five thousand to one hundred thousand—each filled with articles that were unreadable not only by the general public but also by most scientists outside each specialty. Unsurprisingly, many people could not see the benefit of much of this effort, unless it directly affected them, such as with medical research.

That is not to say science was shut off. We landed men on the moon, a robot vehicle on Mars, and discovered the structure of DNA. In my field, we developed the standard model of particles and forces that has stood empirically nonfalsified for a generation. But in 1993, Congress cancelled the
Superconducting Supercollider that would have probed to the next level of matter, leaving that job to be done in Europe with the Large Hadron Collider, only now going into operation almost two decades later.

A brief period of renewed interest in science was brought about in the 1980s, largely by the brilliant efforts of one man, astronomer Carl Sagan, with his books, speeches, and the extraordinary TV series
Cosmos.
The first of
Cosmos
's thirteen one-hour episodes premiered in 1980. However, Sagan soon got in trouble with the establishment for his criticism of Ronald Reagan's inane Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) and his promotion of the “nuclear winter” scenario that Sagan and others claimed would make any nuclear war unwinnable.

The scientific community did not win any awards for courage and statesmanship in its treatment of Sagan, who was refused tenure at Harvard and denied membership in the National Academy of Sciences because he was not a “pure” scientist but a “popularizer,” as if popularizing science was bad for science. In fact, Sagan was not just a great popularizer of science; he had made significant contributions in research that normally would have warranted these honors.

Thus, with the Reagan administration began the conservative antipathy toward science that reached its peak in the administration of G. W. Bush.

THE CULTURAL DIVIDE

In 2008, science found a more congenial president in Barack Obama. However, Obama and his opponents in the primary and general elections demonstrated their priorities by ignoring invitations to speak about science issues during the campaigns. By contrast, Obama and Hillary Clinton had no qualms about attending a “compassion forum” on faith and values at Messiah College during the primary, and Obama and John McCain appeared at a forum at pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Church during the general election.
¹⁷
Warren would give the invocation at Obama's inaugural (another obvious violation of the separation of church and state).

Despite his commitment to bipartisanship, Obama's election only
served to deepen the cultural divide between two irreconcilable ideologies. Progressives are generally for more government involvement in society, with social programs and regulations on industry, while the conservatives fight for minimal government and special benefits for the rich. Conservatives exhibit the inconsistency of being against all forms of government intervention on business while seeking laws to control individual sexual behavior. The actual sexual behavior of many priests, preachers, and politicians perhaps indicates that it is not so much inconsistency as hypocrisy.