Friday, October 12, 2007 | Reason : Commentary | print version

A Revelation

by Naomi Schaeffer Riley

Reposted from:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110010724

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.--The event had been sold out for weeks. Tickets were being offered on the black market for three times their face value. With 30 minutes to show time, the crowds were formhttp://www.opinionjournal.com/images/line.gifing outside, some wolfing down sandwiches in the parking lot. For this much excitement, people around here generally expect some serious football. Tonight, though, the buzz is over a debate between biologist Richard Dawkins and mathematician John Lennox. The subject, which may be even more important to this audience than whether Alabama can beat Auburn at the Iron Bowl this year: Does God exist?

Over the course of 90 minutes, Mr. Dawkins, 66, the infamous author of "The God Delusion," squared off with Mr. Lennox, 63, on such propositions as: "Faith is blind; science is evidence based," "Design is dead, otherwise one must explain who designed the designer" and "Christianity is dangerous." The two Oxford professors, who had never met before this evening, both displayed rhetorical skills in the best British tradition.

They clashed over whether it was Christianity that began the scientific revolution, whether the universe's complexity was evidence for a creator and whether atheism was itself a sort of faith. Some of the exchanges were funny, as when Mr. Lennox suggested that his opponent believed that his wife loved him even though it's not scientifically provable. "Is there any evidence for that?" Mr. Lennox asked. "Yes, plenty of evidence," Mr. Dawkins answered. "Never mind about my wife."

Mr. Lennox made some good points about Mr. Dawkins's attempt to divorce the atheism of the 20th century's tyrants from their deeds. But Mr. Dawkins held his own. When Mr. Lennox suggested that the Bible got it right (scientifically), in stating that the world was created out of something rather than having always existed, Mr. Dawkins quipped that there was a 50-50 chance the Bible would be correct. And Mr. Dawkins pointed out that for all of Mr. Lennox's attempts to show the scientific existence of a creator, he could still not manage to prove that Jesus was the son of God or that he was resurrected.

Their smart exchanges occasionally went outside of the debate format, despite the best efforts of their distinguished moderator, Judge William Pryor of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Dawkins's words sometimes veered into the provocative, as when he referred to "creationist lunacy," but for the most part the evening was remarkable for its civility. Each scholar received a round of applause after a few of his smarter remarks. But there was no hooting or hollering. Indeed, not one stray comment could be heard from the audience. I didn't make out a single sarcastic whisper from the college students sitting to my left or the middle-aged couples to my right.

Perhaps Mr. Dawkins was surprised by this reception. He recently referred to the Bible Belt states as "the reptilian brain of southern and middle America," in contrast to the "country's cerebral cortex to the north and down the coasts." This debate marks the first time Mr. Dawkins has appeared in the Old South. Maybe his publishers suggested it would be a good idea. After all, "The God Delusion" and similar atheist tracts have been selling like hotcakes (or buttered grits) down here.

But why? Are Christians staying up late on Saturday night to read these books and failing to show up at church on Sunday morning, as Mr. Dawkins might hope? So far, the answer is no, according to Bill Hay, senior pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church just outside of Birmingham. He tells me that there hasn't been much of an exodus from his church as a result of these books. But he does think that his congregants are aware of them and want to know how to respond to such arguments. He notes that 200 men show up to church at 6 a.m. once a week for a class on Christian doctrine.

Lee Strobel, who used to be a teaching pastor at Saddleback Church in Southern California, tells me that he thinks there has been a nationwide "resurgence in apologetics" among evangelicals in response to the recent spate of atheism books. His own publications, "The Case for Christ" and "The Case for Faith" have sold well. But so has Josh McDowell's "Evidence That Demands a Verdict," Ravi Zacharias's "Reasons for Faith" and now, this month, the "Apologetics Study Bible," whose contributors include Chuck Colson and former Southern Baptist Seminary president Albert Mohler.

Defenders of the faith are drawing crowds of thousands in person as well. Next month, the Southern Evangelical Seminary will host a National Conference on Christian Apologetics, which will include a special segment for teens. Younger people are some of the most avid consumers of apologetics texts, according to Christian author Jonalyn Fincher, who speaks to college and high-school groups regularly. She says that in the 20th century, Christians often reacted to science's attacks on religion by "running away from culture." But in recent years more Christians have begun to take the attitude, "If our God is the God of truth, what are we afraid of?"

That is the attitude that John Lennox says he was raised with. In a brief biographical statement at the beginning of the debate, Mr. Lennox described a childhood in Northern Ireland surrounded by "sectarian violence" in which his parents encouraged him to read everything and "develop an interest in the great questions of life."

Mr. Dawkins, on the other hand, says he had a "harmless Anglican upbringing." As a teenager, he says he realized that his religion was merely an accident of his birth and soon thereafter gave up his faith. In some sense, it seems he was rebelling less against religion, per se, than against the kind of "harmless" worldview that simply glosses over "the great questions of life." And who can blame him? But if their interest in this debate is any marker, the people in this Birmingham audience did not come out of that tradition.

Ms. Riley is The Wall Street Journal's deputy Taste editor.

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1. Comment #78210 by JD Cherry on October 12, 2007 at 7:00 am

That's Dr. Dawkins to you. Also what's "revalation"?

Other Comments by JD Cherry

2. Comment #78214 by Matt7895 on October 12, 2007 at 7:13 am

Not even Dr., he should be called Professor as he currently holds the Simonyi Chair at the University of Oxford!

Other Comments by Matt7895

3. Comment #78216 by Jiten on October 12, 2007 at 7:22 am

"creationist lunacy,"

That's not provocative,that's the truth!

Other Comments by Jiten

4. Comment #78222 by MartinSGill on October 12, 2007 at 7:37 am

From what I understand of the US system a professor is anyone that teaches and hence seems to hold little respect.

In the UK a professor is an academic "rank" that ranks higher than Doctor. It's awarded to academics who have contributed significantly to their university. Where I studied Engineering, the head of the department position (of about 35 Phds) rotated biannually through only 4 professors.

I could, of course, be wrong, maybe it's even one of those state-to-state issues.

Anyone care to enlighten me?

Other Comments by MartinSGill

5. Comment #78223 by MartinSGill on October 12, 2007 at 7:39 am

Oh.. as to the article... maybe it's just me... but it seemed very skewed towards Christianity and the theists.

Lennox wasn't criticised at all whereas Dawkins was infamous, provocative and picking an example of humour that implies RD was evading.

Other Comments by MartinSGill

6. Comment #78224 by ChrisMcL on October 12, 2007 at 7:45 am

Interesting. A review of the event from a religious person trying to be impartial. It's respectful, but not what I'd call unbiased.

Other Comments by ChrisMcL

7. Comment #78226 by Vendetta on October 12, 2007 at 7:54 am

You are right, MartinSGill, there is a difference in terms of rank and title between the US and UK. You don't necessarily have to be a Dr. to be an instructor in a college (and hence be called a professor) although about 99% of professors have doctorate degrees or PHDs. There is no formal "professor" rank that is similar to what you have described in the UK. That explains some comments I've seen on here where people point out that they should address RD as PROFESSOR. Someone from the US (like myself) would read that comment and scratch their head, wondering what the big fuss is. Of course he's a professor since he works at a college, so what?

Thanks for explaining the uproar over the proper way to address RD. :)

Other Comments by Vendetta

8. Comment #78227 by prettygoodformonkeys on October 12, 2007 at 7:56 am

"..whether it was Christianity that began the scientific revolution.."

Are you fucking kidding me? That same old saw again, that just because everyone in Christendom was by definition "Christian", then all of our accomplishments as a species have been therefore Christian.

It's true that Christianity, as a world view, has been intimately involved in the struggle for knowledge, namely during the centuries-long bloodbath called the Dark Ages (and long before) during which it monitored all thought like a pinch-brained, hook-nosed old crone, and suppressed every new idea for as long as it possibly could, then put a godly spin on its inevitable failure. Some contribution.

I hope it was quickly ridiculed, and that they moved on...

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9. Comment #78229 by Matt7895 on October 12, 2007 at 8:01 am

I see. Thanks for clearing that up. It always seemed disrespectful to me when in Q&A sessions (particularly the one at Virginia), people called him Doctor instead of Professor. As Martin points out, Professor is a title given in universities to Doctors who have proved themselves and contributed a great deal to their particular field. The head of Ancient History at the University of Manchester, where I studied last year, was Professor Tim Parkin. In honorific terms, he would rank above Dr. Daryn Lehoux, who ran my course on Rome.

So it's settled. To anyone from the UK, 'Professor' holds significant meaning. To anyone from the US, 'Professor' simply means teacher. That's a big difference, and it explains why he's known as Dr. more in the US.

Back to the article, its obviously biased from a Christian point of view, it's quite a shame really because I bet the people of Alabama are sick of having such idiots represent them.

Other Comments by Matt7895

10. Comment #78230 by davorg on October 12, 2007 at 8:03 am

The title on the original web site is the more sensible-sounding "A Revelation".

Other Comments by davorg

11. Comment #78238 by Vendetta on October 12, 2007 at 8:18 am

Forgive me for going off topic for a sec:

College and university are pretty interchangeable terms here in the US as well, which I understand is also a bigger difference for those of you across the pond.

Google answers: In a global context, the words "college" and "university" can
inspire confusion. Different countries use the same words to name
different things. What is usually called a "college" in Europe is
really more like the two-year institution called a "Community College"
in the U.S.

In the United States, when you ask someone what differentiates the
two, the first response is likely to be "not much"

Other Comments by Vendetta

12. Comment #78241 by bamafreethinker on October 12, 2007 at 8:32 am

Living in the south (Alabama) is different I suppose. People are friendly and warm on average and you really wouldn't know that most people are fundamentalists unless you really pull it out of them. Most people just live out their lives and pretty much function day-to-day as if there was no god. I honestly believe that most people aren't really fundamentalists and instead they; a. enjoy the social benefits that come church-going, b. don't want to be an outcast, and c. go to church just in case it is real so they can avoid going to hell. A few years ago, when I traveled over the central and northern parts of the nation I found that the south has no monopoly on stupid Americans and there is plenty of closed-minded ignorance everywhere. Don't get me wrong there is a minority of people I know that seem to structure their lives around their religion, but they generally mind their own business. People may profess an unwavering faith, but their actions prove them to be paying lip-service – to some extent at least. I have worked at a company of about 600 for almost three years now and so far, I have not been asked one time about my beliefs or heard anyone talking religion at the water cooler. I think that faith is slowly dying in the south, but church-going is a little behind the curve. Hell, I even go to church because my family does and some of my best friends are Christians – hell… all of my friends are "Christians"… by title at least!

Other Comments by bamafreethinker

13. Comment #78244 by epeeist on October 12, 2007 at 8:42 am

Comment #78214 by Matt7895

Not even Dr., he should be called Professor as he currently holds the Simonyi Chair at the University of Oxford!

I would have had no problem with it if they hadn't called the moderator "Judge".

Other Comments by epeeist

14. Comment #78250 by crazy4blues on October 12, 2007 at 9:28 am

I think that 'Bama has it about right, but I'd add, from my experiences in South Carolina, that religion as a cultrual trope is simply more visible. It was in the South that I first saw a sign in front of a church decrying the evils of Holloween! You'd never see anything like that in the liberal San Francisco Bay Area, but sentiments like that are very public in the South and the "fly-over" section of the U.S.

As the U.S. economy continues to worsen, the only cultural identifiers that people have are religion and political conservatism, Rush Limbaugh style. Neither one requires much thought or soul searching, if you will; it's simply the easy way out for someone suffering from the fact that the "American Dream" is no longer accessible for the middle class.

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15. Comment #78251 by Roger Stanyard on October 12, 2007 at 9:30 am

Sometimes I despair when I see this sort of thing:

"That is the attitude that John Lennox says he was raised with. In a brief biographical statement at the beginning of the debate, Mr. Lennox described a childhood in Northern Ireland surrounded by "sectarian violence" in which his parents encouraged him to read everything and "develop an interest in the great questions of life."

"Mr. Dawkins, on the other hand, says he had a "harmless Anglican upbringing." As a teenager, he says he realized that his religion was merely an accident of his birth and soon thereafter gave up his faith. In some sense, it seems he was rebelling less against religion, per se, than against the kind of "harmless" worldview that simply glosses over "the great questions of life." And who can blame him? But if their interest in this debate is any marker, the people in this Birmingham audience did not come out of that tradition."

Naomi Schaeffer Riley seems incapable of recognising her own blatant irony. For 350 years the Anglican Church has kept the genie of religious extremism in the bottle for England. That it has failed to do so in Northern Ireland speaks for itself and the province. There is a straight issue here. The Deep South is riddled with religious extremism and is a menace to itself and the United States as a consequence. Strewth, Riley even quotes Lee Strobel and he is an out and out fundamentalist creationist. Lennox is touching on being a Northern Irish fundamentalist with his backing of Intelligent Design.

That province is infested with fundamentalism and its politics are putrid as a consequence.

Let's spell it out plainly. Fundamentalism in the USA is behind ludicrous dangerous pseudo-science, dominionism (the movement to make the USA a theocracy) and dispensationalism (a glorification of war and genocide). The Southern Baptist Convention has been controlled by extremists for years. Christian fundamentalism is exactly the same as Muslim fundamentalism. Scratch any fundamentalist and they are all the same underneath. They think that they are absolutely right and want to impose their religion on everyone else. It is not benign by a massive margin. That is the traditional that Birmingham, Alabama and Northern Ireland come out of and it is not a pretty sight.

Roger Stanyard

Other Comments by Roger Stanyard

16. Comment #78252 by Vendetta on October 12, 2007 at 9:34 am

bamafreethinker -

Apparently these people paying lip service and going to church "just in case" haven't yet realized how naive Pascal's wager is.

I recently moved from Seattle back to Montana, where I was born. Let me assure you, there are MAJOR differences. These differences go beyond Democrat & liberal vs Republican & conservative. You can tell religion is far more powerful here based on church attendance, conversations at work, letters to the editor, jewelry, bumper stickers, etc.

It's no surprise that there's also a similar abundance of belief here in other superstition such as astrology, alien abduction, psychics, etc. It's not that there is a lack of skepticism, it is where that skepticism is directed. For the most part people here don't point their skepticism towards religion, they are skeptical of science (how do we know they're right when they keep changing their theories?) and the government.

I wish the Professor would come to Montana, this state is at least as ignorant as the South.

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17. Comment #78258 by Cartomancer on October 12, 2007 at 9:56 am

What, might I ask, does a "Deputy Taste Editor" actually do? Presumably the Wall Street Journal thus has a fully-fledged Taste Editor as well. I have images in my mind of somebody munching page after page of slipshod journalism and commenting on its piquancy, saltiness and flavour...

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18. Comment #78260 by BeyondBelief on October 12, 2007 at 10:05 am

Vendetta wrote:

For the most part people here don't point their skepticism towards religion, they are skeptical of science (how do we know they're right when they keep changing their theories?) and the government.

I wonder where the fundamentalists get that notion about science? Hmmm... where could it be propagated? Have you seen the excerpt of Ted Haggard talking to RD in "Root of All Evil"? Paraphrasing Haggard: "I have here a book written thousands of years ago, by 40 different authors, and it doesn't contradict itself. On the other hand, we can't even get two scientists to agree for a week about some theories."

That kind of thinking doesn't grow of its own accord... it is force fed down the gullets of the gullible, listening to idiots like Haggard DEFINE "science" and "evolution," who then go out and think they understand either science or evolution.

They are actively teaching that disagreement over truth-claims (i.e. the heart of the scientific enterprise) is EQUAL to those truth-claims being wrong. The short hand: "Thinking about truth is wrong. Accepting it as handed to you is right."

Yikes!!

Also... they're skeptical of the "gubmint", not government. :-)

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19. Comment #78262 by Cartomancer on October 12, 2007 at 10:19 am

I should also like to register my displeasure at prettygoodformonkeys' scurrilous misrepresentation of medieval intellectual culture, though I fear he is simply retailing the usual stereotyped picture of the Middle Ages we have all inherited from their Renaissance and Enlightenment detractors.

The precise relationship between the church and scientific endeavour in the Medieval centuries is neither a simple nor a monolithic one, and it would take me far more time and space than I have here to do it justice. Suffice to say that while Christian doctrine had a profound effect on scientific thinking in these centuries it was no more restrictive than, for example, Darwinism is now. You can't just come up with any old theory today unless it fits with the accumulated evidence and theoretical background of modern science, just as back then scholars had to take their own theoretical background into account. The fact that their physics and metaphysics were wrong is immaterial - Newton's physics are in many ways fundamentally wrong but scientists until Einstein had to take them into account and don't receive flak for doing so.

It is with the end of the middle ages, with Renaissance humanism, the counter-reformation and the reaction to the Enlightenment that the church really becomes the enemy of science. Copernicus and Galileo are the examples everyone tends to think of when religious oppression science comes to mind, but in fact they are products of a rather different intellectual climate to the one which produced Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus and William of Ockham. It has become too fashionable these days to label everything repressive and backward-looking as "medieval", or worse to conflate "medieval" with "dark-age", which are in fact two distinct periods in European history. The "dark ages" refer roughly to the period from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west (c. 350-450 AD) to the seventh or eighth centuries when the Frankish, Anglo-saxon and similar stable kingdoms emerge. They are so called not primarily because of their cultural backwardness but because there is hardly any written evidence on which to base their history - they're dark because we can see only very sketchily what was going on. The ancient Greek "dark age" from the collapse of the Mycenaean empire in c. 1200 BC to the emergence of the classical city states in about 700 BC gave us the epics of Homer and the didactic poems of Hesiod, so it is not entirely fitting to call these periods culturally backward - often they are evidence of changing and developing culture and give rise to unprecedented new cultural forms when history writing re-emerges.

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20. Comment #78269 by Dr Benway on October 12, 2007 at 10:31 am

My American experience with formal style:

As a high school student taking a few classes at a community college, I addressed my instructors as "Dr. X." I assumed that instructors at large universities might be either "Doctor" or "Professor", the latter being more formal. I didn't understand tenure then.

As an undergraduate, I addressed tenured instructors (associate and full professors) as "Professor X." Others I called "Doctor X."

I addressed all medical school instructors as "Doctor X" whether tenured or not, MD or PhD.

I never addressed any instructor older than myself by a first name.

I would have addressed Dawkins as "Professor Dawkins."

I would never write an article for print that included "smarter remarks" or "he says he realized" unless for humorous or ironic effect. Such colloquialisms advertise a shoddy education.

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21. Comment #78277 by steve99 on October 12, 2007 at 10:51 am

To anyone from the UK, 'Professor' holds significant meaning.

In the UK, 'Professor' is more like a job title than an academic qualitification, where as 'Doctor' is purely academic. It is possible to retire from a professorship, but 'Doctor' is life-long. I don't think addressing Dawkins as 'Doctor' is in any way impolite, but I guess what matters is how he feels.

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22. Comment #78303 by Duff on October 12, 2007 at 11:40 am

Most any article concerning a debate, printed in the Wall Street Journal, will of necessity demonstrate a bias in favor of whomever is more conservative, be it a political, commerce, or even a religious debate. Professor Dawkins, in the eyes of America's conservative press, is about as liberal as one can be, and he, therefore, will automatically get the sharp end of the biased stick. This girl probably doesn't know squat about the nuances of the topics being debated.

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23. Comment #78305 by bamafreethinker on October 12, 2007 at 11:50 am

To better understand how we Americans define a professor – please see Gilligan's Island re-runs… : )

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24. Comment #78321 by prettygoodformonkeys on October 12, 2007 at 12:28 pm

19. Comment #78262 by Cartomancer:

"..Christian doctrine .... was no more restrictive than .... Darwinism is now.."

You're correct; perhaps I should have said dark ages, not Dark Ages, to demonstrate a layman's understanding. I'm sure, if only by your tone, that your dates are accurate, but perhaps you could expand further on the above excerpt for me, especially in relation to things like the church's general historical approach to geocentrism, disease vs. demons, the astronomy of heaven and hell, the persecution and torture of those who dissented? I would be so surprised to learn that it WAS "Christianity that began the scientific revolution", but I'd be open to the idea if it were true.

Thanks.

And, my apologies to all medieval intellectuals.

PGFM

Other Comments by prettygoodformonkeys

25. Comment #78337 by cowalker on October 12, 2007 at 12:57 pm

I totally agree with Bamafreethinker:
Most people just live out their lives and pretty much function day-to-day as if there was no god.

Personally I think the growing interest in books about atheism, and theological debates over the existence of God stem from increasing numbers of people realizing this. Young people especially are becoming conscious of the fact that belief in God has no effect on their values or decisions. They have friends with different beliefs and friends who are unbelievers, and what is different about their lives? I suspect they're looking for intellectual support for their gut feelings that religion is indeed a delusion. Apparently the Christians quoted in this article are doing the same. Telling that they feel the need, in my opinion.

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26. Comment #78342 by Polydactyl on October 12, 2007 at 1:13 pm

On medieval scientific thought: most ideas grew out of the theories of ancient Greek thought, especially that of Aristotle. There was a bit of trouble when Aristotle's works first became known in the West,but it did not take very long for them to become the staple of the university curriculum. They might be, by our views, erroneous, but they were real scientific theories, and expounded at great length by medieval academics such as St Albertus Magnus: so, no: the medieval church was not opposed to science at all. Medieval medicine is similarly based on erroneous foundations (the theory of the four elements), but within that framework it is 'scientific' in reasoning. I have found nothing on demonic possession in medical texts of the high Middle Ages, and it is safe to assume that most of them were written by clerics of one sort or another. PGFM must be thinking about the Renaissance turmoil over Galileo, etc. but Copernicus was a cleric, and it didn't seem to prevent him from elaborating the heliocentric theory.

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27. Comment #78354 by leodavinci on October 12, 2007 at 1:35 pm

"He notes that 200 men show up to church at 6 a.m. once a week for a class on Christian doctrine."

Scary

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28. Comment #78358 by Bonzai on October 12, 2007 at 1:47 pm

26. Comment #78342 by Polydactyl

On medieval scientific thought: most ideas grew out of the theories of ancient Greek thought, especially that of Aristotle...

Except the medieval Church claimed Aristotle was infallible and his theories were enshrined into dogmas. Aristotle emphasized the importance of empirical observations over philosophical speculations even though many of his own observations turned out to be wrong. He would have been spinning in his grave if he knew what the Church did with his ideas.

Science doesn't mean expounding some "theories" in great length and erudition, if it were the case theology would be a science. The approach of the medieval Church to science was exactly the same as theology, it was based on tedious scholastic arguments within the limit set by some overarching dogma,--whether it was the Bible or Aristotle.

While the Church's tradition might have fostered some skills and habits that turned out to be useful later on for the scientific revolution and its institutions such as universities no doubt facilitated the advent of science, the Christian tradition at its core was anti-science in spirit.

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29. Comment #78359 by prettygoodformonkeys on October 12, 2007 at 1:51 pm

26. Comment #78342 by Polydactyl

Thanks; that was helpful. I mean it. But:

Copernicus' book was suspended until corrected by the Index of the Catholic Church in 1616, because the Pythagorean doctrine of the motion of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun "is false and altogether opposed to the Holy Scripture". These corrections were indicated in 1620, and nine sentences had to be either omitted or changed. The book stayed on the Index until 1758. In that period Galileo Galilei was found guilty in 1633 for "following the position of Copernicus, which is contrary to the true sense and authority of Holy Scripture ...", and was sent to his home near Florence where he was to be under house arrest for the remainder of his life in 1638.

I do find medieval history interesting, but I am not a historian and am fuzzy with the dates. I learn a lot on this site from academics; I am not one. However, I think my initial point is a simple one, still unaddressed: that most everybody was Christian by default of birth, and many, if not most, scholars were clerics or monks (who else had time for it?). But what did Christianity, with its doctrines and the subsequent conduct of the church, do to further progress in science?

Of course they were in favor of science, they didn't yet know what it held; "by all means, let's have a look around", and so they did. And then they didn't like it.

It seems you were free to elaborate your theory, and the church was free to throw you in confinement for it; not much of a recommendation for having begun the scientific revolution.

And now here we are today, with Christianity doing its best to cut science off at the knees: Archaeology, Biology, Physics, Astronomy, Geology, etc. etc.

It galls me that they would also take credit for having started science in the first place. That puts "History" on the list as well.

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30. Comment #78365 by bamafreethinker on October 12, 2007 at 2:19 pm

I think that people like Robertson, Falwell, and Haggard, et al, have hijacked the long train called Christianity and the moderates and even some liberals are content to remain calm and wait for the train to start running out of fuel to get off. Thank goodness the train has been slowing down of late – partially because of stupid remarks by some of the radicals and partially from the pens of RD, CH, SH and the like. Most moderates may never openly rebel against the radicals (they can't because they protected by the cloak of "faith"), but they can quit supplying the coal that the charismatic leaders need to keep it going. I do see a change in the zeitgeist, even in Alabama, but you can bet we will be the last ones off the train! We are the highest on the poverty scale and the lowest on the education scale (except for Mississippi of course) so we will be behind the curve - just like we were with racism. But hey, once we come through it we'll still have our southern hospitality and some of the most gorgeous landscapes in North America. They don't call it "Alabama the Beautiful" for nothing!

Speaking as someone who has not studied the time periods being discussed here, I would say from a layman's perspective that the church has always been against any and all science that does not compliment the current doctrine and for any part of it that agrees. Religious people are happy to grab hold of any so called "scientists" like Lennox – it gives them the satisfaction that smart people are on their side too. We all tend to cherry pick when it comes to these things.

Other Comments by bamafreethinker

31. Comment #78367 by Veronique on October 12, 2007 at 2:29 pm

4. Comment #78222 by MartinSGill

A Professor is the Head of a Department; the holder of a Chair, as in the Head of the Department of Biochemistry, Prof. So and So. It is both a position and a title.

It denotes someone who has published quite a mountain of peer-reviewed original work, which is why all professors are PhDs in their fields. There has to be a position available. One cannot be a non-working professor.

The respect granted professors comes from the appreciation of their continuing contribution to the discipline in which they are engaged.

My father was the inaugural Professor of Biochemistry in two different medical schools that had not previously had departments of biochemistry because no one was qualified enough to take on the running of a department.

Medical students in Singapore until 1948, had to seek academic study in biochemistry outside the King George V University. The position of Head of the (new) Department of Biochemistry had to be created and it was because my father was sufficiently qualified to warrant the setting up of the Department, that it came about. So a Medical School was able to be founded in the University.

The University of WA didn't have a coherent Medical School until 1958, when he came back to his home University. Medical students had to go to Adelaide in South Australia to study Biochemistry until the UWA Department of Biochemistry was inaugurated in 1958. It was quite a thing, let me tell you.

All the founding professors of the UWA Medical School were honoured last year with a terrific ceremony and the opening of The Professors' Walk. Busts of each of the 8 founders of the Medical School are attached to the walls of the walkway.

What a marvellous opportunity on this thread for me to boast and exclaim my reverence for my dear father:-). I am so enormously proud of him:-). And shamelessly so:-)

Good morning everyone, a brew of Quetz's favourite libation is in order
V

Other Comments by Veronique

32. Comment #78369 by Vendetta on October 12, 2007 at 2:36 pm

V, based on your post I'd say that pride and reverence are called for.

Cheers!

Other Comments by Vendetta

33. Comment #78370 by Veronique on October 12, 2007 at 2:47 pm

17. Comment #78258 by Cartomancer

Hahaha. I thought that too. Her 'taste' in descriptive words lacks an objectivity that I would have thought essential in judgement.

She describes RD as the infamous author of "The God Delusion,"

Mr. Dawkins's attempt to divorce the atheism of the 20th century's tyrants from their deeds.

"The God Delusion" and similar atheist tracts

Before anyone takes me to task, I know I am cherry picking and biased:-), and she's a Christian after all.

Her article sounds nothing like the comments here on the audio of the event. I decided not to waste time listening to it. The comment thread was enough for me.

Cheers
V

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34. Comment #78375 by prettygoodformonkeys on October 12, 2007 at 2:59 pm

31. Comment #78367 by Veronique:
"Good morning everyone, a brew of Quetz's favourite libation is in order"

Friday evening here; hope G&T is ok

32. Comment #78369 by Vendetta:
"V, based on your post I'd say that pride and reverence are called for."

I second that! Cheers!

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35. Comment #78378 by Veronique on October 12, 2007 at 3:06 pm

PGFM

I believe on an earlier thread that Quetz sanctioned most tipples and really didn't insist on any time demarcation.

So everything is in order. Enjoy:-)

Thanks for letting me waffle on about my pater:-). Just a bit more I thought of - when professors retire, if they be of best rank and station, they are awarded the title of professor emeritus. Great gobs of kudos in that. Needless to say, my pater was so awarded:-)

Cheers
V

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36. Comment #78404 by Polydactyl on October 12, 2007 at 5:10 pm

Bonzai: when did the medieval church declare Aristotle to be infallible?

PGFM: people divide up 'medieval' and 'Renaissance' in different ways: I guess I should have explained that I take anything after the beginning of printing to be 'Renaissance'; I don't think there was much trouble between the church and science before printed texts began to get around. The Galileo row was long after the medieval period of history.

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37. Comment #78408 by Bonzai on October 12, 2007 at 5:38 pm

Polydactyl,

Bonzai: when did the medieval church declare Aristotle to be infallibe?

Wasn't Galileo persecuted because his idea was in conflict with Aristotelian cosmology?

There was probably no formal declaration that Aristotle was infallible, but the Church did turn his ideas into dogmas (though earlier on Aristotle was considered a heathen heretic, so that would be equally irrational)

Without going into nitpicking over dates and names which is the job of medieval scholars it seems clear the basic attitude of the Church is fundamentally at odd with the spirit of science. Whatever benefits to science resulting from Church patronage appeared to be incidental and unforeseen.

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38. Comment #78409 by mmurray on October 12, 2007 at 5:39 pm

On the question of Christianity's support for science in the early days I recently stumbled across this web site via New Scientist.

http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org/

Apologies to those who know what a palimpset is but I didn't at the time. Basically if you found yourself in need of some paper for a prayer book the sensible monk went down to a nearby heathen library grabbed a few books, scraped of all the rubbish on them by non-believers such as Archimedes, rebound them and wrote ditties to the glory of their one god (The Man Who Lived!) on them. Sort of the Christian equivalent of blowing up the Buddha's of Mamyan IMHO. This particular act of vandalism occurred around 1200. Luckily modern science can be used to recover ancient science.

Michael

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39. Comment #78418 by Cartomancer on October 12, 2007 at 6:59 pm

I think I presented something of the case for the Western scientific tradition stemming in part from medieval scholasticism on another thread some time ago. Posts 114-116 of

http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,1499,Arrogance-dogma-and-why-science---not-faith---is-the-new-enemy-of-reason,Melanie-Phillips,page3#comments

Bonzai is slightly misleading when he says that the Catholic church promulgated dogmas based on Aristotle or ever considered the Stagirite an infallible authority. From the thirteenth century onward Aristotle's physics and metaphysics were afforded great respect (and some of his simpler logical works, translated by Boethius, were similarly respected from about the sixth century), and became the paradigm by which scientific endeavour was conducted. Respect for ancient written authority was indeed much greater then than it is now, however, at best Aristotle was considered to have achieved all that was possible without divine revelation and so his theories were by necessity incomplete - the extra data provided by revelation had not been taken into account. As such, for example, his ideas on the human soul (essentially that it was just the substantial form of the body) had to be reconciled with those in Augustine and the scriptures to take into account the properties a soul would need to store sin and achieve full bodily resurrection at the end of time. Similarly Aristotle's universe was to all intents and purposes eternal, while the Christian universe most emphatically could not be.

In 1210 and 1215 the University of Paris banned the teaching of Aristotle's natural philosophy until these recently translated works could be purged of error. Such a purging never took place, though they were back on the curriculum by the middle of the century (when Oxford masters such as Roger Bacon had to be brought in to teach them). In 1277 a list of 217 propositions based on excessively Aristotelian ideas were condemned as heretical (including, amusingly, some proposed by none other than Scholastic lard-bucket superstar friar Thomas Aquinas and more by his Franciscan disputant Sigier of Brabant, who was killed while under house arrest by his mad secretary with a pencil sharpener). This moment has been seen by some as a great step forward in scientific thinking because it prevented western thought becoming little more than dogmatic aristotelianism. I'm not quite that deterministic, but it certainly demonstrates that Aristotle's dominance in the medieval schoolroom was easily circumscribed.

As far as official dogmas were concerned the church merely asserted certain facts that Christians should believe, never how those facts must be explained. You could come up with your own very off-the-wall philosophical justification for something like the virgin birth or the resurrection of the body, and you could use whatever principles of physics you liked in that justification. And your opponents were free to pick your theory apart and expose its flaws or inconsistencies, often by bringing up evidence that it does not adequately explain. This is not really all that different from modern science except that the facts which needed explaining in the first place come from scriptural assertion as well as observation and (occasionally) experimental test.

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40. Comment #78420 by mmurray on October 12, 2007 at 7:09 pm

This is not really all that different from modern science except that the facts which needed explaining in the first place come from scriptural assertion as well as observation and (occasionally) experimental test.

What if, after thinking about it, you came up with a theory explaining why the virgin birth DIDN'T happen. Did you have trouble getting your papers published, invited to conferences and getting tenure or did you get burnt at the stake?

Michael

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41. Comment #78423 by Cartomancer on October 12, 2007 at 7:31 pm

Well, given that the only conferences one could attend were the various church councils held to formalise points of doctrine you'd probably get invited and told to recant or have copies of your works ritually burned (this happened to Abelard twice, at Soissons in 1121 and Sens in 1141, both at the instigation of his nemesis St. Bernard and Bernard's nasty little bootlick William of St. Thierry). The closest thing to "publishing" that existed was having your works copied out by university stationers or the friars of your own mendicant order, and you wouldn't get that far if you weren't largely orthodox in your thinking. Your ideas might be ridiculed and argued against by other authors who did circulate widely however, as those of the Cathars were. Tenure at Universities was again done by co-option, some chairs belonging to the mendicant orders and others to 'secular' masters. You wouldn't get the required theology degrees if you consistently espoused heretical ideas, so that too was out.

As for burning at the stake, yes, technically that was the official prescribed punishment for heresy after the Synod of Verona in 1184, but in practice it almost never happened to an academic theologian. Sigier of Brabant, for instance, was detained under indefinite house arrest, not executed. Even Copernicus was only detained in such a way much later on. In any case a simple recanting of your errors was almost always enough to secure pardon. Popular heretical movements were of much greater concern to the church authorities for obvious political and economic reasons.

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42. Comment #78425 by Cartomancer on October 12, 2007 at 7:41 pm

Also, from the medieval perspective, arguing that a virgin birth is impossible is a much harder proposition than arguing the same thing in today's intellectual climate. How would you do it? Of course it's biologically impossible under normal circumstances, but with an all-powerful god on the scene anything is possible. You either have to argue that God does not exist (very difficult without sufficient rejoinders to Anselm's ontological argument, the argument from design or the Prime Mover argument) or that the scriptural account is wrong (also very tricky given the state of knowledge on philology, textual criticism and transmission - these people still believed that the septuagint was translated word-perfectly by all seventy of its translators in Ptolemaic Egypt at exactly the same time).

These people did not have Albert Einstein or Bertrand Russel or Kurt Godel or Charles Darwin or Pierre Laplace or Isaac Newton or even William of Ockham. They barely had Aristotle for that matter. Is it really fair to condemn them for assuming that the God Hypothesis is easily the best one in town and anyone arguing against it is deluded? Even a Ricardus of Dawkins, Regent Master of the Public Understanding of Natural Philosophy at the recently founded University of Oxford would have a tough time believing anything else...

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43. Comment #78428 by prettygoodformonkeys on October 12, 2007 at 8:31 pm

41. Comment #78423 by Cartomancer:

I still can't reconcile:
"the facts which needed explaining in the first place come from scriptural assertion"

and that this is:
"not really all that different from modern science"

The form is the same, but that is all. If you have a perfect tree but it is made out of iron (or, in this case, excrement) you will never get any apples from it.

Also:
"...burning at the stake...almost never happened to an academic theologian."

Well, it didn't really have to did it? The 16th and 17 centuries saw an estimated 200,000 'souls' burned at the stake. But we shouldn't say it quickly: they were slowly roasted. If the church allowed, family could bring extra wood to make it go faster. I think the message was writ plainly for the academics, lest they be burned, and let's not forget that academic theology is at least a step apart from science, and that anyone 'in the fold' is worth more (for no reason) than a nameless peasant.

And:

"..a simple recanting of your errors was almost always enough to secure pardon."

Marvellous. Such a deal. Surely you're not making a case for the benign influence of the church on free thought, let alone it being the architect of the scientific revolution? Especially since its sentiment toward knowledge is much the same today, without the burning. And not just difficult new ideas, but established theories: explaining germs, evolution, weather, the age of the earth. These are concerted efforts to increase ignorance.

I realise we can't go back and say they were all stupid for not knowing what we know now (but neither then should we bring it forward and assert that that's what Ricardus of Dawkins would have thought), but they were actually burning people. The witch who was burned for turning herself into a cat knew perfectly well that they were lying, and at least suspected that their philosophy was bankrupt. There have always been people in history (such as Lucretius), famous and not, before and after 33 A.D., who saw through the scam and saw these people for what they were. And there have always been people who will (as an extreme) burn other people; they're out there still. Religion, or politics, or business: many of us can recognise what drives people. And what drives people like this is power and schadenfreude, not the thirst for knowledge. They have recognised intelligence in others and have seen it as a threat, wielding any club at hand. That has been the primary role of the Church in the 'quest for knowledge': CONTROL.

IMHO

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44. Comment #78453 by miaka on October 13, 2007 at 1:24 am

Regarding the persecution of Galileo:

This is a piece of history that everyone seems to get wrong--and there's no excuse since it's actually discussed in some detail on Wikipedia.

Pope Urban VIII actually admired Galileo and had disapproved of the Inquisition's earlier attempts to suppress his work. When Galileo decided to write a book discussing the heliocentric viewpoint, the Pope agreed, but asked that Galileo also discuss the Church's viewpoint. Instead of presenting the two viewpoints with even-handedness, Galileo mockingly expresses the Church's position through the voice of a character named "Simplicius", who, as wikipedia puts it mildly, "sometimes comes off as a fool."

The Pope was publicly humiliated by a man he both admired and viewed as a friend. In this light, the subsequent persecution of Galileo strikes me as having more to do with personal betrayal than with the Church suppressing science.

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45. Comment #78463 by miaka on October 13, 2007 at 2:05 am

Taking a gander at some of the other posts here, I feel like I can tell which people actually study history. I can't claim to be an expert myself, but I do know that any attempt to explain away the role of the Church in the Middle Ages as "dogmatic-therefore bad" is going to fall flat on its face. Issues like why someone does or doesn't get persecuted are always much more complicated when you dig beneath the surface. My sense is that religious persecution was rarely about the supposed heresy alone. Rather, it might provide a convenient way to get rid of someone you owed money to, or to acquire someone's property. Not to say these are good motivations for persecution, but they're manifestly non-religious in their origin.

Of course, some instances of persecution are consequences of mass hysteria, like the Jewish pogroms during the Great Plague. In this situation, the Church actually passed a decree declaring that the Jewish peasants were not responsible for the pestilence, since they were falling ill as well. Few listened.

Surely one can attribute a wealth of misdeeds to the Medieval Church--I only mean to suggest that people not develop a knee-jerk attitude toward this period in history.

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46. Comment #78478 by Cartomancer on October 13, 2007 at 6:17 am

As do I miaka, as do I...

prettygoodformonkeys: I'm not saying that medieval science and modern science are exactly the same, obviously they are not. What I am saying is that you can't suddenly draw a line somewhere in the fifteenth century and say "aha, by Jove they've started doing science now!" then write off everything that went before as crude, superstitious nonsense with nothing to contribute to the development of the scientific mindset.

Yes, 99% of the science was very wrong indeed. Yes the method was not completely in place so the errors could not be systematically pruned in the same way scientists prune them now. Yes we would laugh at their ideas from a modern perspective. But this is how 99% of all the cleverest people on the planet thought about things for many thouands of years and to write it off as a great big church conspiracy to suppress what everyone sort of knew anyway (which would require the complicity of pretty much all the religious authorities on the planet) is so utterly fatuuous it hurts. These people WERE making intellectual progress. Even technological and social progress. Clocks, spectacles, windmills, halter-ploughs, trebuchets, gothic architecture, steam organs, universities, guilds, theories of just war, typographic indexing systems, tremendous economic progress and yes, the development of at least some of the scientific method. All these things and more come from the middle ages. You can complain if you want that the advances were slower and more sporadic then, but that's how cultural progress is made - when it reaches critical mass and the right elements fall into place together a quickening occurs. This happens in evolution too so I gather.

Think about a culture that has maybe ten or twenty learned books in common circulation and a literate, intellectual community numbering at most a couple of thousand. This is Europe at the beginning of the middle ages. These intellectuals are fully aware that the ancient societies which preceded them knew far more than they do - the ruins surrounding them and the books they have inherited stand testament to this. Books are special, rare, expensive and fetishised things. The written word is a powerful arcane language used for transferring secrets from one wise man to another. How easy it is for us to scoff at this attitude surrounded as we are by words and books multiplied to ruinous excess! Nullius in Verba might be a sensible motto for the royal society to adopt once Europe has undergone eight centuries of intellectual quickening and got over its book fetish, but can we really blame the early medievals for thinking that books, by virtue of simply existing, hold value? From this world, jump forward to the twelfth century with the return of Aristotle and the arrival of the Arab scientists in the west. Suddenly the paltry pickings of your science are swamped by a feast of ideas from the distant past in a sophisticated, complex philosophical system. What's the sensible thing to do, grapple with these ideas as thoroughly as possible to extract all the wisdom you can, or throw your hands in the air and say "I'm going to conduct my own experiments and to hell with what the learned men of the past thought." With hindsight we have a different perspective, but it would be the equivalent today of Richard Dawkins saying "Stuff that Darwin fellow, and that bore Newton, I'm going to start from scratch". And actually some people did start to conduct their own experiments while at the same time grappling with the Aristotelian framework. As I said before the great achievement of medieval thought, upon the recovery of ancient science, was not the discovery, as they had hoped, that it could adequately explain the entire universe but the discovery that it could not. Why condemn them for giving Aristotle a fair hearing before eventually abandoning him?

You seem to assume that it is natural and logical, whatever your cultural and intellectual background, to conclude that atheism and modern scientific method are self evident. Thus whenever they do not predominate there must be some kind of conspiracy holding them down. I get the distinct impression that in your world all the medieval popes and cardinals and bishops are sitting there thinking "oooer, they've rumbled us. If this gets out then all this silly religion nonsense we're peddling purely to control the ignorant masses is going to fall flat on its face and it's no more big dinners for us anymore." That's not how these things work at all. The conspiracy theorist's fantasy of the educated elite who know better taking shameless advantage of the oppressed is almost never accurate. The medieval clergy, for the most part, ACTUALLY BELIEVED this stuff. Christian doctrine and the philosophical underpinnings it was given genuinely did seem the most logical and coherent explanation for the universe at this time. The "oppressors" were just as wrapped up in the system as the "oppressed".

Lucretius did indeed posit an Atheistic metaphysics in the first century, and among the ancients he was not alone. His work was only barely known in the middle ages but that's not the point - Lucretius' ideas were never considered mainstream and, crucially, did not explain a vast multitude of phenomena that have only comparatively recently been explained by modern science. I repeat that for the classical or medieval mind the God Hypothesis is not a blatantly ridiculous one, while the No God Hypothesis very much is. Take just the examples given in the God Delusion of arguments for the existence of God - our own rejoinders to them would not have worked in the middle ages. Anselm's ontological argument is silly because it relies on the idea of absolute ontological excellence as a real property of things. Everybody in the middle ages and most of the ancients thought this was incontrovertably true - by their very natures some things are just better than others. Likewise how do you account for the complexity of nature without Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection? And without modern cosmology - facilitated by telescopes that work on principles derived from classical optics transmitted via arabic and latin sources in the middle ages - the prime mover argument suddenly seems very plausible.

Furthermore, what of the competing claims of all those world religions that lead so many of us into Atheism? Imagine living the entirety of your life in a small village and never meeting anyone of a different race, religion or culture. The only information you are ever likely to get about other religions comes either from classical texts which less than one per cent of the population can read (and if they are able to read them they will almost certainly be doing so with Augustine's account of classical religion as demonic parody from City of God ringing in their ears) or from reports of the crusades in the Holy Land, the reconquista in Spain and the Jewish communities in Europe (which were mostly expelled in the twelfth century). Nothing but nothing but Abrahamic monotheism then...

Overall the lack of Atheists in the middle ages (indeed up until the nineteenth century) is perfectly explicable without the need to posit conscious oppression from religious authorities. This is where we came from, this is where our culture came from, this is what we have advanced beyond. But we could not have evolved from classical to modern thinkers without becoming medieval thinkers in the meantime. Or maybe we could, but as it happens we most certainly didn't. Medieval-bashing in this context is just as helpful as shouting at a primitive mudfish and thinking it backward because it hasn't evolved proper legs and lungs and come out on land all at once. Every stage in its evolution has some survival advantage, just as every stage in our intellectual progress has something to contribute to the stage after it. Our ancestors took millions of years to slowly crawl from the sea - a couple of thousand to crawl from the darkness of religion is positively miraculous!

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47. Comment #78481 by Cartomancer on October 13, 2007 at 6:32 am

Furthermore, medieval-bashing is divisive and confrontational. It paints another us good them bad picture rather than presenting the more appealing notion that, yes, the theistic mindset had its day and made its contribution to our societies but now it has been naturally superceded and don't you theists really want to move with the times and learn some really neat new stuff? We were all theists once, so history tells us, and there's no shame in it when you don't know any better. Today it is possible to know better, but not everyone does - education is the only way to solve this problem, not scorn on its own. I have nothing but contempt for those who wilfully resist education in this manner, but surely we should be doing everything we can not to put off those who would otherwise welcome it?

Perhaps these are just the rants of a Medieval Historian trying to make a case for the value of his subject among scientists who usually tend to look down on it, but I genuinely think that ignorance of medieval history is just as much to blame for persistent pseudomedieval attitudes among the religious as ignorance of modern science. If they only knew what a different world the medieval centuries were to our own, and how its concerns shaped its thoughts, they would be far less inclined toward trying to transplant medieval notions onto the fabric of modern existence. Likewise they would be far less willing to oppose modern science if they only knew that the very medievals they look up to did no such thing in their own day.

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48. Comment #78490 by Polydactyl on October 13, 2007 at 7:58 am

Cartomancer puts it beautifully.

Many on this site get very annoyed when the other side trot out arguments they consider trite, strawmen, or produced in ignorance of the real position of the unbeliever. But some of the arguments by unbelievers show similar failings: attacking an entirely notional "church" and erroneous ideas of what it is supposed to have said and done and thought. Isn't it important for a real discussion to have an accurate idea of the other's position? Otherwise we are not really talking to each other at all.

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49. Comment #78493 by Vendetta on October 13, 2007 at 8:51 am

I can appreciate what miaka, Cartomancer, and Polydactyl are saying (as they obviously make some very valid points). I do think it's worth noting, however, that even though we bash the tactic all the time, it is actually very hard to avoid generalizations and subsequent strawmen. Generally (see, another generalization) only experienced debaters can self-censor every statement.

Cartomancer obviously knows medieval history and can comment on this at length, but sometimes people only want to make a point in a single paragraph and not 9. If we really want to be fair, we should give religious apologetics a chance to back up their generalizations. There's a chance that they MIGHT actually have more to say to back up their simple statements. Doubtful, but still possible. Usually by urging them to elaborate their points, they end up burying themselves further with weak arguments. Let them beat themselves.

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50. Comment #78499 by Eric Blair on October 13, 2007 at 9:31 am

"Mr. Dawkins" is common North American journalistic style. Only medical doctors are called "Dr." (Of course, many papers have dispensed entirely with honorifics.)

But I'm surprised no one objected to Lennox not being called "Dr." I presume he too holds a PhD, or doctorate.

EB

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