Wednesday, November 25, 2009 | Science : Evolution and Biology | print version

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Darwin in the World: Evolution And Faith In The 21st Century

by The BBC Debate

Thanks to Quine for the link.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0053fcn

Listen to audio - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p0053fcn

Published 150 years ago, Charles Darwin's seminal work, On the Origin of Species, continues to cause debate between scientists and some people of religious faith for whom the idea that man evolved from more primitive animals remains controversial.

Bridget Kendall chairs a debate about evolution and faith from a conference at the famous Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt.

She is joined by an audience of students and academics and a panel including: John Hedley Brooke from the Theology Department of Oxford University; Nidhal Guessoum, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates; Salman Hameed, Professor of Integrated Science and Humanities at Hampshire College in Massachusetts; Eugenie Scott, Director of the US National Centre for Science Education in California; and Samy Zalat, Professor of Biodiversity at the University of the Suez Canal.

They discuss how Darwin’s ideas were received around the world in his own time, and how attitudes vary today, from the Christian fundamentalist heartland in the USA to faith schools in the Middle East. Will there always be conflict between evolution and religion? Do they apply to different, non-overlapping worlds? Or can science live in harmony with faith?
...
Continue to BBC to listen to program.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0053fcn

Posted: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 | Permalink

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1. Comment #434758 by msloane on November 25, 2009 at 5:45 am

Did I detect a panel loaded with religious scientists ???

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2. Comment #434763 by vaibhav_p on November 25, 2009 at 6:56 am

'Atheists are to blame because of the lack of knowledge of evolution in general public'

Oh sure blame the atheists! We argue against the existence of god on the basis of science but what about people pushing their beliefs on others for centuries due to the lack of scientific temper? And when we stand up and say enough is enough we are to be blamed because someone doesn't like us standing up.I mean come on a Prof. of Biodiversity arguing about the lack of transitional fossils? I couldn't take it anymore!

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3. Comment #434764 by Jos Gibbons on November 25, 2009 at 7:26 am

I've only just got up, so I haven't listened to this yet, but vaibhav_p has picked up on something very stupid someone said. You'd think by now a property not possessed by RD would not be said to be possessed by atheists per se. He's "the pope of" us, and he's told the public about evolution in many books dedicated to nothing else ... and WE are the ones who are responsible for a lack of knowledge of evolution amongst laypeople? How often do the evolution-accepting theologians actually teach people about evolution? I can't wait to debunk this rubbish when I hear it.

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4. Comment #434768 by Stafford Gordon on November 25, 2009 at 8:20 am

I simply couldn't bear to listen to this; I'm sick and tired of these sort of tail chasing exchanges.

They boil down to the subjective view of each individual and never seem to progress or develop.

If some individuals are determined to spend their lives in a dream all I can say is sleep tight.

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5. Comment #434769 by Mr Blue Sky on November 25, 2009 at 8:23 am

I am 12 minutes in and have decided to go out and see if I can find some paint drying to watch or something....

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6. Comment #434771 by Apemanblues on November 25, 2009 at 8:33 am

This seems to be a common trend these days. Blame "militant atheists" or scientists for a problem the religious have created.

With all the available material around today, if you live in the developed world and you don't understand evolution by now, you don't want to understand evolution. I see no milage in spending time on people like that.

Science doesn't need to sacrifice one iota of it's integrity by paying lip service to unscientific beliefs.

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7. Comment #434772 by Roland_F on November 25, 2009 at 8:50 am

a conference at the famous Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt.

Fitting location as one of the first things Christians were doing after gaining the status of State Religion of the Roman Empire end of the 4th century AD was the burning the evidence for pagan religions plagiarized from them and destruction of all available knowledge especially the huge selection of philosophical and science books in Alexandria.

And atheist are to blame for poor science education about evolution, when religious cretinists and IDiot’s are sabotaging every school curriculum they can screw up.

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8. Comment #434777 by Netsrak on November 25, 2009 at 9:21 am

Where is Hitchins when you need him....what a bunch of wet blankets.....

They are not compatible, how many more of these pointless discussions do we have to listen to?
No loving god would choose to create anything through the brutal process of evolution, evolution is true, therefore no loving god as described in holy texts, case close...or am I missing something.

welks !!

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9. Comment #434779 by vega on November 25, 2009 at 9:33 am

Please stop with the over-polite use of the word 'faith', as if it's a position to be valued and cherished.

It's 'superstition' - Science vs Superstition and there is no debate.

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10. Comment #434780 by Follow Peter Egan on November 25, 2009 at 9:36 am

Judging by the above comments I may give this a miss...

...not in the mood for listening to accommodationism and special pleading.

Thanks for the comments from the people who did endure this.

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11. Comment #434782 by Quine on November 25, 2009 at 9:44 am

The second half of this is more interesting to me than the first, especially the last third. In that part you get a view of how Evolution is taught and known in the Muslim world, which is almost not at all. Some of the audience speak out about the desire to get real science into this world. I find quite moving those who wish to break out of the blinders imposed by the culture around them.

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12. Comment #434783 by prolibertas on November 25, 2009 at 9:49 am

I'm glad that I waited until some comments were made before deciding whether to bother watching this. I am now deciding against it.

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13. Comment #434785 by rod-the-farmer on November 25, 2009 at 10:09 am

I agree with Quine. I listened the the entire broadcast, and found it fascinating. Comments above seem to take the position that because RD (among others) published several books on evolutionary science, that should be enough, and those in the muslim world who don't understand/believe in evolution are at fault.

When few of that segment of the world population read English, we can hardly blame them. When literacy rates in some muslim countries are apparently in the range of 30%, we can hardly blame them. I was a bit surprised to hear that at least one of the "scientists" on the panel does not fully accept evolution by natural selection, saying "We need more transitional fossils".

All in all worth listening to. The muslim world is indeed terra incognita when it comes to the public understanding of science.

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14. Comment #434786 by bendigeidfran on November 25, 2009 at 10:10 am

Comment #434779 by vega

That's a very good point. There's a lot of 'joining in' from our side. Superstition, voodoo, witchcraft, zombies etc etc these are the correct words.

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15. Comment #434789 by Quine on November 25, 2009 at 10:14 am

Rod, I got a strong feeling from this that TGSoE desperately needs to be translated into Arabic and distributed widely.

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16. Comment #434798 by T. Kari on November 25, 2009 at 11:23 am

Comment #434785 by rod-the-farmer:

Oh yes, we can hardly blame them, especially since they are surrounded by dogmatic religious people who tell them what to think.
How they somehow translate that to being the atheists fault, on the other hand, is beyond me. Science gets censored in that part of the world, it's HARDLY the atheists fault for not making enough science available.
Those people make me sick :/

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17. Comment #434801 by Taliesan on November 25, 2009 at 11:27 am

Not a single one of the panelists looks to be against compatibility and religion both - surely that leaves out a very important part of the debate?

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18. Comment #435173 by NewEnglandBob on November 25, 2009 at 8:30 pm

I made it to 16 minutes before I got fed up with the lies and religious bullshit and shut it off.

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19. Comment #435206 by Mike Atkinson on November 25, 2009 at 9:35 pm

That was a fascinating insight into the difficulties faced by educators in the Islamic world. At present I think it is pointless trying to argue with their society that accomodationism makes no sense. The priority must be to encourage our friends in education in those countries and offer them help - so that they can enhance their school and college education and make scientific thought and the scientific method become much more a part of their culture. Only when that has happened can we expect to proceed to the next step - the interesting philosophical one of deciding whether a belief in god is necessary.

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20. Comment #435310 by black wolf on November 26, 2009 at 12:53 am

The comment page for the discussion is here:

http://worldhaveyoursay.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/are-science-and-religion-compatible-2/

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21. Comment #435315 by black wolf on November 26, 2009 at 1:07 am

It seems that some people find it worthwhile to create and spread the modern myth that it was atheists who first forced science against superstition, against that strange creature 'useful faith'. It's a lie, simple as that. The attacks on science began from the fundie theist side, long before Darwin, long before anyone consciously took up the self-description 'atheist', when violent religious fundamentalism was mainstream. Darwin only brought the last major brick to the wall theists were and still are constantly chipping away at. Today they are, in the West at least where all the science is happening, reduced to rubbing down the walls of the scientific monument, daydreaming of the days when they could bring cannons.

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22. Comment #435366 by Uhtred on November 26, 2009 at 7:07 am

Remember that old joke about Manny at a Nazi rally before the war who, in response to Hitler's ranting question about 'Who is to blame for all of our problems?', cried out, 'Blame the cyclists!'
When Hitler replied, 'Why the cyclists?', Manny responded, 'Why the Jews?'

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23. Comment #435602 by Jos Gibbons on November 26, 2009 at 10:56 pm

I've finally started listening to this, having put it off for days. I'm about ten minutes through. So far it's pretty unpersuasive. I don't give a damn about whether some scientists were initially unpersuaded by Darwin for reasons unconcerned with religion (e.g. they didn't know about nuclear physics so underestimated the age of the Sun), for the fairly obvious reason that we live now. It should also be obvious that it is equally true that, insofar as what religious people think rather than the scripture itself being important, it should be what they believe now that matters. I don't care how many non-literalists there were in 1859 - there are a gazillion now, who must be stopped. Wait - at 14 minutes that Muslim guy claims speciation is unproven. The lying scum. That does it, I shan't listen any more.

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24. Comment #435671 by Quine on November 27, 2009 at 7:05 am

The issue of Koran literalism came up several times. I was surprised when the teacher (starting at 49:10) told about being stopped when he tried to present scientific information about the moon, because the students insisted that the Koran said that the moon had been split. Elsewhere in the discussion it was mentioned that when new scientific data comes along the religious authorities will try to "reinterpret" phrases or words in the Koran to resolve conflict. Of course that only goes so far. It is clear that the literal following of the Koran is the same kind of block to science as is Biblical literalism.

Eugenie Scott made a good call for science to be able to present the results of its investigation without going through any kind of religious filter. It is true that she gets some flak because she walks a careful line in the USA so as to keep the fight going for proper teaching of Evolution in our schools, but in this Muslim context it is clear that even more careful steps need to be taken. Here is a good video from last year of Scott explaining the whole issue on the USA side:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETqdzDVzz_8

I would love to hear her speak about what she learned there in Egypt.

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