So the Origins Conference sponsored by the Skeptics Society was held last Saturday, and a good time was had by all. Or, at least, a good time was had by most. Or, maybe the right thing to say was that a good time was had much of the time by many of the people.
More specifically: the morning session, devoted to science, was fun. The evening entertainment, by Mr. Deity and his crew, was fantastic. In between, there was some debate/discussion on science vs. religion. Ken Miller is a biologist who believes strongly that science should be taught in science classrooms — he was an important witness in the Dover trial — and who happens also to be a Catholic. He gave an apologia for his belief that was frustrating and ultimately (if you ask me) wrong-headed, but at least qualified as reasonable academic discussion. He was followed by Nancey Murphy, a theologian who was much worse; she defended her belief in the efficacy of prayer by relating an anecdote in which she prayed to God to get a job, and the phone immediately rang with a job offer. (I am not, as Dave Barry says, making this up.) And Michael Shermer and Vic Stenger represented the atheist side, although both talks were also frustrating in their own ways.
But all of that just fades into the background when put into the same room as the sheer unadulterated looniness of the remaining speaker, Hugh Ross. Despite warnings, I didn’t really know anything about the guy before the conference began. The taxonomy of crackpots is not especially interesting to me; there are too many of them, and I’d rather engage with the best arguments for positions I disagree with than spend time mocking the worst arguments (although I’m not above a bit of mockery now and then).
So I was unprepared. For those of you fortunate enough to be blissfully unaware of Ross’s special brand of lunacy, feel free to stop reading now if you so choose. For the rest of you: man, this guy is nuts. And he’s not even the most nuts it’s possible to be — he’s an “old-earth” creationist, willing to accept that the universe is 14 billion years old and that the conventional scientific interpretation of the fossil record is generally right. Still: totally nuts.
Ross’ talk took two tacks. First, he explained to us how the Bible predicted that: (1) the universe started from an initial singularity; (2) it is now expanding; and (3) it is cooling down at it expands. The evidence for these remarkable claims? A long list of Bible verses! Well, not the verses themselves. Just the citations. So we couldn’t really tell what the verses themselves said. Except for poor Ken Miller, who was trying to salvage some last shred of dignity for his side of the debate, and had the perspicacity to look up one of the verses on his iPhone. (Praise be to technology!) I’m not sure which verse it was, but that’s okay, because they all say precisely the same thing. Here is Isaiah 45:12, in the New International Version:
It is I who made the earth
and created mankind upon it.
My own hands stretched out the heavens;
I marshaled their starry hosts.
What’s that? You don’t see the bold prediction of Hubble’s Law, practically ready for peer review? It’s right there, in the bit about “stretched out the heavens.” To the mind of a non-crazy person, this is a poetic way of expressing the fact that the dome of the sky reaches from one horizon to the other. To Hugh Ross, though, it’s a straightforward scientific prediction of the expansion of the universe.
Here is Ross in person, going through some of these same arguments:
(Yes, that video is embedded from “GodTube.com.”)
His second tack was to explain how our universe is finely-tuned for the existence of life. We’ve all heard this kind of claim, from real scientists as well as crackpots. But Ross and his clan take it to grotesque extremes, as detailed in the website for his Reasons to Believe ministry. Where, by the way, they don’t believe the LHC will destroy the world! Rather, it will “provide even new reasons to trust the validity of Scripture.” It would be nice if they would tell us what those reasons are ahead of time. Does Scripture predict low-energy supersymmetry? Large extra dimensions?
According to Reasons to Believe, the chance of life arising on a planet within the observable universe is only 1 in 10282 — or it would have been, if it weren’t for divine miracles. (Don’t tell them about there are 10500 vacua in string theory, it would ruin everything.) They get this number by writing down a long list of criteria that are purportedly necessary for the existence of life (“star’s space velocity relative to Local Standard of Rest”; “molybdenum quantity in crust”; “mass distribution of Oort Cloud objects”), then they assign probabilities to each, and cheerfully multiply them together. To the non-crackpot eye, most have little if any connection to the existence of life, and let’s not even mention that many of these are highly non-independent quantities. (You cannot calculate the fraction of “Sean Carroll”s in the world by multiplying the fraction of “Sean”s by the fraction of “Carroll’s. As good Irish names, they are strongly correlated.) It’s the worst kind of flim-flam, because it tries to cover the stench of nonsense by squirting liberal doses of scientific-smelling perfume. If someone didn’t know anything about the science, and already believed in an active God who made the universe just for us, they could come away convinced that modern science had vindicated all of their beliefs. And that’s not something any of us should sit still for.
There is a reason why all this is worth rehashing, as distasteful as it may be and as feeble as the arguments are. Namely: there is no reason whatsoever to invite such a person to speak at a conference that aspires to any degree of seriousness. You can invite religious speakers, and you can have a debate on the existence of God; all that is fine, so long as it is clearly labeled and not presented as science. But there’s never any reason to invite crackpots. The crackpot mindset has no legitimate interest in an open-minded discussion, held in good faith; their game is to take any set of facts or arguments and twist them to fit their pre-determined conclusions. It’s the opposite of the academic ideal. And it’s an insult to religious believers to have their point of view represented by crackpots.
Which, if you want to be excessively conspiratorial, might have been the point. Perhaps the conference organizers wanted to ridicule belief in God by having it defended by Hugh Ross, or perhaps they wanted to energize the skeptical base by exposing them to some of the horrors that are really out there. Still, it was inappropriate. If we non-believers are confident in our positions, we should engage with the most intelligent and open-minded exemplars of the other side. Shooting fish in a barrel is not a sport that holds anyone’s attention for very long.
You can’t get a virus from a site just because you can get a cookie from it. Really, there’s no need no worry about anything like that, unless you turn off all the security in your browser, and even then it’s highly unlikely at a site like the one hosting the video.
Ross’s specific arguments are terrible. (1) The Bible is not a science textbook. (2) Poor numerical estimates on nigh-irrelevant geological/astronomical quantities is a terrible idea.
As you described it, and as I watched in the clip, I think his presentation combines the worst elements of both science and religion; misleading and shallow conceptions of current ‘evidence’ and the scientific method, and a literal, narrow, twisted reading of the Bible. Both are distortions of scientific and religious tradition.
But despite that fault, he is one of few spokespeople trying to reconcile faith and science. If as people here say, there are many believing scientists (of which I am a young’un), either they haven’t explored both ideas long enough to hit cognitive dissonance or they just don’t look for a resolution, suppressing one or the other as needed. I think they are reconcilable and even complementary, but not the way Ross works. His approach is wrong, but what he’s trying to do – make science and religion make sense simultaneously, is crucial.
Is it bad to invite Ross? Don’t listen to his evidence, but his mission. Do you think science and spiritual faith are completely incompatible? That’s a matter of philosophy, and that’s the place to start. Too bad Origins is a scientific conference.
Many posters here seem to be equating Faith with Christianity. It seems fairly obvious to me that is not a reasonable thing to do.
Professing that the origins of life, the universe and everything are due to a higher power / super being / alien robot is one thing. Science is having a stab at explaining these questions, but it is some way from an answer at the moment. I expect it will find those answers, but I’m not (yet) going to ridicule people who think that some kind of spooky weirdness was involved.
However, belief in the Christian God (or any other contemporary deity) is clearly silly. You don’t need particle accelerators and Darwinism to seriously doubt the existence of the Christian god – such atheistic philosophy has been around for hundreds of years.
The religious beliefs that one holds are hugely influenced by geography (where you were born) and history (when you were born). Any 21st centrury, US Christians (scientists or otherwise) would not have been so had they been born in another country or an earlier era.
I’m afraid that I can’t see how such simple facts aren’t impassable stumbling blocks for anyone that isn’t a real fundamentalist (i.e. our religion is right. All the others are completely wrong).
My advice is to drop the Faith word when discussing Christian issues and call em Christians. If you are going to involve religion in such discussions, do it properly and get representatives from a wide range of faiths to attend. If nothing else it would be polite to do so and the juxtaposition of so many different views on the origins of the world would only highlight the inherent bonkerness of each.
Read Hebrews Ch 11, vs 1 about faith. Faith is the cornerstone of Christianity. The whole belief is that some guy who got into trouble and got nailed on a cross is the foundation of the world, as pointed out by Paul in Corinthians. It takes a lot of faith to believe this. It further takes faith to think that scripture is somehow commensurate with modern physics and cosmology.
Lawrence B. Crowell
mk: “McCain” is a Scottish surname, and “John” is English (“Sean” is the Irish for John, actually). A very bad Irish name,then, as it contains no Irish whatsoever. “,)
It’s vital that scientists of all bents deign to engage with the likes of Ross and explain exactly what’s wrong with their ideas. Newspapers and TV shows love to present these debates as conflicts between people with different, but equally valid, opinions.
Unfortunately, many scientists are strangely unwilling to engage in this sort of conversation – witness the recent furore leading to the resignation of Michael Reiss from the Royal Society. But the public don’t want to take science on trust from white-coated high priests – they want clear explanations and would probably accept them, if only they were offered.
Henry, it won’t work. Ross will never repudiate the doctrine of (literal) inerrancy because it is the very foundation of his faith, and since he won’t do that then he’s not open to persuasion.
Ross might be saner than YECs when it comes to cosmology in that he accepts an old Universe, there are severe limits to what he will accept. Once you get to Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, 800 year lifespans, etc, then Ross is as anti-science as the rest of them.
It is the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy that separates people like Ross from the rest of the scientific community. That is the demarcation point between Christians who believe science informs them about reality and those Christians (like Ross) who believe science informs them about what the Bible teaches about reality.
Tacitus,
I’m not suggesting that Ross is open to persuasion – I’m saying that the public would benefit from a genuine debate.
It now seems to be commonplace in the scientific community to assert that it’s impossible to communicate with people who don’t wholeheartedly accept the scientific method. But where does that leave the vast majority of people, who aren’t particularly interested in science and to whom science, religion and pseudo-science all seem equally plausible? Spending their money on ineffective homeopathic remedies, that’s where.
Patient, careful rebuttals of faulty arguments, straightforward enough that journalists might even be willing to repeat them, are potentially really valuable here. And yet scientists seem as intent on polarizing the debate as their religious counterparts, by refusing to have a genuine conversation!
The point is that the validity of the scientific method is completely uncontroversial… within the scientific community. But where does that leave everyone else?
Okay, I see your point. I don’t know if what you suggest will work — people tend to be very hard to persuade once their minds are made up — but I’m all for more rebuttal of pseudoscience and (especially) more science education in schools.
Sean wrote “Does Scripture predict low-energy supersymmetry? Large extra dimensions?
Yup, that’s taken care of, in a manner of speaking: As the Man Himself said (John ch 14 v 2) “In my Father’s house are many mansions” (quoted with no intent to mock the New Testament or Christ’s teachings BTW; in fact I’ve always found that rather an intriguing saying.)
I never thought fundies had much of a foothold in the UK any more; but in a junk shop in Cardiff, Wales, last week I was shocked to hear a sad old man berating the shop assistant because the shop had in the window a book on biology which (shock horror) featured the theory of evolution! Oh well, as they say, science advances funeral by funeral ..
I enjoy this site immensely. But I do not understand the preoccupation with bashing believers (I am not one); it sems without sufficient reason to me. It is neither persuasive nor courteous to ridicule others. Reasoning with “believres” is useless by definition. What then is the point? Can someone please explain?
I think that it’s just the atheists futile attempt to persuade people to their way of thought. Sometimes it seems as if the true goal of some scientists is to prove that there is no God, and not just finding ways to solve problems through advancing knowledge.
Morris,
I think you’ve answered your own question. As you said, reasoning with religious believers about their beliefs is pointless. With a few rare exceptions, our attempts to persuade them are doomed to fail no matter what we do or how we do it. Since we won’t convince anyone anyway, we might as well dispense with ‘courtesy’ and state the truth in a forthright manner, regardless of whom it may offend.
I will consider any ‘reason’ presented. So far, I have never seen a reasonable explanation for why atheists believe there is no God. All I see is religion bashing and ad hominen ridicule. This has no bearing on the question of whether or not there is a God.
I don’t think Morris answered his own question, but I do think Janus did. You dispense with ‘courtesy’ because you can’t find a ‘reason.’ Please do ‘state the truth in a forthright manner.’ I won’t be offended.
From Sean’s post: “most [of Ross’ criteria] have little if any connection to the existence of life, and let’s not even mention that many of these are highly non-independent quantities.”
Sean’s assertion is incorrect. Each of the criteria has a connection to the possibility of life on a planet. Ross’s estimates rely on published scientific data. As you can see on his link, Ross has provided hundreds of references.
As I pointed out in my response #20, Ross did account for dependencies among the criteria. But suppose Ross’ dependency estimate is not sufficient and we change his number 10282 to 10100. Considering that there are 1080 protons and neutrons in the observable universe, he still as a strong case for fine-tuning that is has not been explained by natural mechanisms, other than by appealing to infinities.
Otis
Sorry. The HTML tag does not seem to work. The numbers that I meant to write are 10^282 and 10^100.
Otis,
I only see some estimates at the bottom about dependency factors and longevity requirements and other values. I don’t see any reason I should simply accept his estimates especially without any sort of explanation of where they come from. Also, he has listed references, yes, but they are pretty useless to me. I do not have the time to go through each to try to figure out how they relate to the above list. As there are no references within the above document to indicate where the claims come from as well as how the estimate of probability were made, unless there is some full paper somewhere that is well referenced that I have just not seen, I remain unimpressed and unconvinced. I see no way to verify any of the values he has or the relevance of each.
Travis,
You make a valid point. The documentation could be improved and it is not unreasonable that you remain unconvinced. While being unconvinced may be reasonable in this case, Sean’s over-the-top name-calling is not reasonable.
If you follow the scientific literature, evidence of unexpected fine-tunnig is proliferating month by month. We have heard much about “Rare Earth,” now we have “Rare Solar System.”
The researchers report, “We now better understand the process of planet formation and can explain the properties of the strange exoplanets we’ve observed. We also know that the solar system is special and understand at some level what makes it special.”
There are many more recent examples. My favorite is the set of intricate contingencies (fine-tuning or chance?) that allows the long lasting 4BY plate tectonics on Earth, without which there would be NO complex life on Earth.
Otis
Sean, thanks for the account, but… Are you not disturbed by having participated in such a meeting ? I honestly would not broadcast it if I were you.
This is all a huge misunderstanding. The fact that there exist people who will try to find in the bible explanations for observed scientific phenomena does not have to mean that scientist must sit and listen to such unmitigated b******t. First of all, scientists have better occupations, unlike their lecturers. Second, it just can’t happen that science and religion can find a common ground. Believing that is possible is a big blunder.
I am really sorry for all honest scientists who also are believers. But theirs is the fault.
Cheers,
T.
I am an atheist but I would like to point out that any religious believer who places biblical inerrancy above scientific knowledge is by any reasonable theology a blasphemer.
If God created the Universe then study of His creation is the only real route to knowledge about God. To deny scientific results about the natural world on the basis of what ever ancient text you hold sacred is to deny God’s creation and you then become a blasphemer.
So on this basis any YEC is a blasphemer and once he moves onto palaeontology and geology so too is Hugh Ross.
Just to clear up some of the ongoing confusion among some of the posters here, an atheist is some one who does not believe in a personal God. That is defined by the Greek root of the word atheist. Where ‘a’ means not and theism refers to belief in a personal God as in contrast in the modern linguistic and theological use of the Latin root term deist to refer to a person who believes in an impersonal God. An atheist is a person who sees no reason to believe in a personal God, theism is then just one hypothesis to be tested against the real world. There is no real distinction between atheism and agnosticism, maybe some people feel it is a little less disturbing to religious people to describe themselves as agnostics rather than atheists.
Dr. Gregory Graffin (the lead singer of the punk band Bad Religion) during his research at Stanford conducted a detailed questionnaire based survey of the religious views of a statistically significant number of prominent biologists. He carried out a multi-dimensional ranking of their views. Interestingly he found that while there was only a negligible tendency towards theism there were a number whose view could be described at least in part as deistic.
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/evolution-religion-and-free-will
As a person who has come from the center of the bibllical-philosophic-theological-producing universe of conflicting diversity in the name of the Christian biblical God, I am weary of such attempts to merge science into the Jewish scriptures.
The Old Testament writers never based their information in a scientific context — which was very prevalent during that day. From Job to Malachi there is not one sentence written for the purposes that so called, “scientific biblicists” boast of discovering within the pages of a collection of Jewish and radical Jewish writings.
In fact, the writers specifically state the most arrogant of claims — Their inspirational being was/is the Creator, who can’t be challenged, nor approached, and His “ways” are past finding out, but can be appreciated by the observer resulting in a very limited comprehension at best.
All one has to read is the book of Job from chapters 38 to 42 to see exactly my point. From that writer to the last O.T. writer, there is not one who breaks from that arrogant apologetic.
If a Bible reader can’t take the time and energy to develop a sensible, reasonable, cohesive hermeneutic, then he should be exposed under the light of his own source. But since this is not usually provided, those who are at the very least responsible in creating a scientific language with the most “righteous” of intentions, should be thanked for exposing the fraud that other Bible readers failed to expose.
For the sake of this discusion, let’s allow the following:
1. The Jewish Bible God is the Creator.
2. That Creator chose from the earth’s people one person to create a nation.
3. After 1000 years, a murderer is chosen to lead the people to become a nation.
4. That family/nation provided written records and preserved them reliably.
5. The context of all writings was national, not personally applied by the people individually, but for citizenship and allegiance. As with all Kingdoms, the King decrees general laws that generally provide beneficial parameters that limit. Note: All biblical authors present in their writings a common parameter — You the people are ONLY free “In The Lord God Who Brought You Out of Egypt.” Read the writing of Joshua for the most famous case.
Now, with those five points allowed for the sake of reason, should it not be said that a true Bible believer should never attempt to use the Bible to refute science by attempting to be scientific?
A true Bible believer really has only one thing to say to the scientist.
“Wow, that’s great work, nice research there, thank you for that amazing creation of factual knowledge and new language, however, even though I find what you have provided to be reasonable, I must remain — what will seem to you — most arrogant and say that I have chosen to believe the Jewish version of God, who the writers claimed created your understanding of “Time” on the third day of His creation event, and used a clear definition of the word “day” as a morning and evening as Moses understood and used those words– 24 hours.
I realize it’s a Jewish national religious writing, and doesn’t belong in a discussion of science, and that is why it seems so disrespectful to those of science to address their intelligent findings along side of a foreign Jewish King’s decree.
All that said, keep up the good work of exposing biblical fools who fraudulently offer ignorant Bible readers a false hope that will be totally rejected when they are judged by the King of the writing they say they understand.
If I was a scientist, I would certainly not dignify the fraud of a foreign King’s decrees, afterall what is the point — the King is not yours, nor is His writings written for you, NOR is the fool your debating any more of an accurate representation of his claimed source than a total fool counting to three represents you.
Please don’t buy into the religious right’s caricature of scientists. Even Richard Dawkins, probably the best know militant atheist scientist around today, says that science cannot prove there is no God.
A test for the existence of “God”, as defined by Christianity, Islam, or any of the major world religious is outside the bounds of what science can accomplish. Sure, we can test certain claims of some who adhere to those religions — that the Earth was created less than 10,000 years ago, but even if we have proved those claims to be false, it doesn’t prove that some form of supernatural creator does not exist.
I became an atheist after a lengthy struggle to come to terms with what is taught in the Bible. I was actually quite happy as a “liberal” Christian back in the UK where they don’t, as a rule, teach the dogma of Biblical inerrancy, but once I was exposed to the American strain of fundamentalist Christianity — which basically demands that you either accept the teachings in the *whole* Bible, or you are not a true believer — then it became clear to me that when you dig a little deeper, many of the claims of Christianity just don’t hold water.
Sure science, in the form of cosmology, archaeology, geology, etc. had a little to do with my decision to reject Christianity as my religion, but it was much more to do with my examining the veracity of the claims made by Christianity based on Biblical teachings — e.g. salvation, eternal damnation, original sin, universal atonement.
Now that’s just a fact — about me, no one else. I’m not saying that to offend Christians who read this blog. It’s what I believe. Can I prove without a doubt that the Bible isn’t stating the truth about a personal, triune God who condemns people to eternal damnation if they don’t become born again? No, I can’t. Neither can science since it is outside the realm of what’s testable by the scientific method, and you be hard pressed to find a scientist who would say otherwise.
So, please stop conflating a rejection of Hugh Ross’s claims to be practicing science as an attack on all Christianity. The very fact that Ross’s organization. Reasons to Believe, is not about doing science, but an apologetics outfit makes it plain where his priorities lie. He does appear to have a more reasonable stance on the age of the Earth, cosmology, geology, etc. than young Earth creationists, but he still, first and foremost, would reject any scientific finding that cannot be reconciled with his belief that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. That’s why, contrary to all the scientific evidence found so far, he claims that we are all descended from one couple — Adam and Eve — who were created there, on the spot, separate from the hominids who lived at that time and who lived for hundreds of years.
Hugh Ross is entitled to those beliefs, but he is not entitled to claim that he is following the scientific method when coming to those types of conclusion without being challenged. That is the issue at hand in this thread, not a full broadside on the whole of Christianity.
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I never mentioned Christianity, and I don’t believe in it myself. I just get the impression sometimes, that some scientists and others are on a quest to free mankind from the hindrances of religion,… and so they think they can break religion’s back by loudly proclaiming that there is no God.
I’ve noticed that just about all of the mainstream media news stories I read about the two Mars Rovers concern the search for evidence of running, liquid water having existed on the Martian surface in some past epoch. We never hear about anything else. What interesting minerals did they find? What differences and similarities are there between Earth and Mars? There are all kinds of stories that they could release, but all they seem to be interested in is running water, and the stories always end with “If Mars once had liquid water, then maybe it had life, because life needs water.”
When I look at the stories they release, I ask why is it so darn important to try to prove there is life on other bodies in the Solar System? It should stand to reason that there has never been so much as a single gene anywhere in the Solar System outside of the Earth, unless Mankind carried it there.
If you can prove there is life on other bodies in the Solar System, even just one, you could claim that as proof that there is no God. So far, the only thing that can create DNA from scratch is DNA.
It’s funny how some people find the idea of our reality possibly being a creation, to be way too implausible, but at the same time they have no problem with DNA assembling itself and beginning reproduction all because of just the right random collisions between random molecules.
QUOTE; “If you can prove there is life on other bodies in the Solar System, even just one, you could claim that as proof that there is no God.”
God never said earth was the only planet He breathed life into? As a “real” believer in God, I happened to believe He may very well have many planes of life, perhaps even some where he physically partakes in the wonderful things He creates.
I find it very interesting, as “scientists” you’re all very quick to NOT answer any of the yet unanswered questions pertaining to just “how” life began. If there is a “beginning” then you have to have a “beginner.” I hope were not still clinging to the little ball of dense particulates exploding and creating everything? Or perhaps the mysterious unexplained magic “goo” that just so happened to have everything in it to spur off and generate all life?
You should know, those who truly read and study the Bible, and have a direct relationship with God, do not ascribe to the lunacy of the catholic church or the cults of Mormonism and Islam. “They,” in fact are why we have so many of you who do not believe. See, I looked to science to answer what I now call miracles that happened to me personally, and they not only refused to answer how, why and what, but in fact were only willing to say, I was crazy, or something to that effect. The fact these things actually happened, and I now personally know they did, whether anyone believes me or not is unimportant. But the more you deny they happened, the more my faith in God increases. You all do yourself and your purpose a massive disservice when all you can do is end your argument with something like, “Can God create a rock so big He can’t lift it?” If that’s the extent of your surmising, then I suggest your not very good scientists at all, and anyone looking for real answers would have to write off anything else you have to say for that very reason? You know, its, like this, “we are full of supreme answers to the universe, we just can’t answer the “unexplained” things?
I claim to be a devout “Christian” and not a fake one such as Pelosi or Obama, but one who really does believe in God. I was wondering if there was a place here where all you experts might be willing to answer some questions I have for you? Thanks for your time folks, I enjoyed this humor.