Science and Society

Church-going

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God Since today, 6/6/06, is (granted some typographical latitude) International Number of the Beast Day, I should tell you about my visit on Sunday to the Augustana Lutheran Church near the University of Chicago. (Not to disparage my kind hosts, but I have to say that sacred architecture really took a turn for the worse after the Reformation; give me those Gothic cathedrals any day.) I was invited by Shane Caldwell, a student in my cosmology class, to speak to a group that meets to talk about science and religion. Of course, my take on the matter is that science and religion are in stark conflict. But they understood where I was coming from, and were interested in hearing my spiel on cosmology and atheism. (All practiced academics understand that it’s important to have a small number of spiels that can be adapted to multiple circumstances at the drop of a hat; mine was rather different in this case than Clifford’s.)

Hot dogs and hamburgers were served, and we had a fun time debating the meaning of “knowing” and the existence of God. Robert Smith, the pastor of the church who is also the campus minister of the UofC, was very welcoming, and excited to be starting this kind of dialogue between different parts of the community. Most of the small audience were actually students, some who had taken my classes and some undergrads who were members of the church. There were also a few representatives from the Zygon Center for Science and Society, an organization across the street that is dedicated to studying the relationship between science and religion.

I’ve given my “God does not exist” talk to a couple of religious audiences before, and they’re generally very interested in hearing a different perspective and thinking about the issues in an unfamiliar way. Granted, these audiences were highly selected and undoubtedly academic, not randomly chosen evangelical churches in the heartland. And you may suspect that nothing I might say would ever change anyone’s mind, but that’s not true; I had one professional theologian tell me that I did change his mind. Not about the existence of God, but about the efficacy of the argument from design. And there is a tight (inverse) correlation between age of the listener and willingness to engage with the ideas; the students were interested and ready to tackle my claims on their own terms, while some of the older folks wanted to argue that there were plenty of scientists more famous than me who were religious, so what right did I have?

There are a million things one could talk about concerning science and religion, and the discussions tend to become rapidly unfocused (or individually focused on the concerns of each person in the room, with everyone talking past everyone else). Not to mention that theology is a rich subject with a complex history about which I know only the basics. So I make a real effort to define all the my words very carefully, and limit myself to one extremely specific chain of reasoning: science and religion do overlap in their mutual interest in understanding the basic workings of reality, and therefore it is possible to judge at least some religious claims using the ordinary empirical criteria of science, and that when one does so, a materialistic conception of reality (in which there exist nothing but stuff following unbreakable rules) comes out very far ahead of a theistic one (in which there exists a separate supernatural/spiritual category not bound by the laws of physics). There might be other interesting things to talk about, and there are other things that religion is concerned with besides the workings of nature, and there could be other criteria besides the scientific method that one might want to use in deciding between different pictures of the world. But in the quite specific question I am choosing to address, I think there is a sensible answer.

At the same time, I want to argue that the answer is not inevitable, or it wouldn’t be worth going through the exercise. There are several ways that thinking like a scientist could have led us to believe in God (or the supernatural more generally). The most obvious would be if God just kept showing up in our world and performing miracles; a sensible scientific approach in that case would be to search for the “laws of nature” that were in effect when God wasn’t around, and treat his manifestations as outside that box. More subtly, we might look for evidence of design in nature, or we might look for impassable “gaps” in our understanding (like the beginning of the universe, or the origin of life and/or consciousness) that only God could bridge. I’m perfectly happy to contemplate that such things could be part of a logically possible world; I just strongly believe that, in the actual world in which we find ourselves, there are no such fingerprints of design or unbridgeable gaps, and hence no scientific reason to appeal to the supernatural. We don’t understand everything in nature, but there’s absolutely no reason to think that it’s not understandable (even the beginning of the universe etc.) in terms of purely mechanical laws. So God, as an hypothesis, is discarded along with geocentrism and phlogiston and the Steady State universe and whatnot. Sadly, it’s taking a little while for the discarding to actually sink in, but I suspect it’s just a matter of (perhaps a very long) time.

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Physicists with Guns

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There’s an interesting discussion at Pharyngula and Uncertain Principles about a high-school physics teacher in California who is in trouble for firing a gun as part of a classroom demonstration. It’s interesting because it opposes two principles to which we bleeding-heart liberal academic types will generally be sympathetic: “guns are dangerous” vs. “teachers should be free to make their classes interesting and exciting.” In the comments it’s very clear that, not only are people disagreeing, but they find folks on the other side to be slightly nutso.

I’m happy to come down on the side of an interesting classroom in this case. Guns can certainly be dangerous, and we have some cultural issues here in the U.S. that cause special problems that most other countries don’t have. It’s far too easy for the wrong people to have guns, especially handguns and assault rifles and other darlings of the NRA. But it goes way too far to extrapolate to the idea that the very concept of a gun is somehow evil, and that the things should be banned entirely.

Ballistic Pendulum

The teacher, David Lapp, demonstrates the ballistic pendulum experiment each year by shooting a bullet into a block of wood. By measuring the block’s recoil, you can figure out the velocity of the bullet using conservation of momentum. (Or “inertia, velocity and other complex formulae,” as the newspaper article would have it.) Sure, there are ways to do it without using a rifle, but a demonstration like this makes the experiment come alive for a lot of students.

Many commenters in PZ and Chad’s threads are absolutist about the issue, insisting that any appearance of a gun in a classroom is completely insane. But the basic arguments against allowing the gun are pretty simple: either (1) there is a safety risk in having a gun in the classroom, or (2) it sends the wrong message to kids to let them see guns. I think (1) is blown substantially out of proportion. Imagine, in any of these arguments, replacing “gun” with “a dangerous thing.” Should there be an absolute prohibition against every dangerous thing in a classroom? No hazardous chemicals, no driver’s ed, no power tools in shop class? Dangerous things should be handled with care, but that shouldn’t lead to a complete loss of perspective.

The second argument, that simply letting the kids see a gun up close leads to familiarity and it’s a short step from there to Columbine, has it exactly backwards. The reason why American students go to college and engage in frequent binge drinking and other irresponsible behavior isn’t because they are exposed to alcohol too much in high school — it’s because the concept of underage drinking is a taboo that they can’t wait to violate. In other countries where children are allowed to drink in responsible amounts in a respectable context, there isn’t any outlaw romance associated with the concept of getting completely plastered once you escape from your family, and the rampant alcohol abuse that U.S. colleges have to deal with is much less widespread. I’d be very happy if the total number of firearms in American households were dramatically lower than it is, but I’d also be happy if kids were taught basic gun safety, and thought of them as tools to be used properly rather than toys out of movies and comic books.

And if they learn some conservation of momentum and other “complex formulae” in the process, so much the better.

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Treason in Base Ten

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Hey, anyone remember the metric system? Perhaps some of our international readers could provide insight into what it is like to live in a world governed by units that come neatly packaged by factors of ten, rather than the charmingly anthropocentric system of ounces and inches and acres that we favor here in the U.S. True, some of us science types will occasionally speak of centimeters, but in my circles we usually set hbar=c=1 and express everything in electron volts, so it’s barely metric at all.

Via Lawyers, Guns & Money, Dean Dad reminds us of the time when a titanic struggle raged for the soul of this great nation, with the forces of American exceptionalism valiantly beating back the invaders who would have us measure football fields in meters rather than yards. (Or, even worse, “metres”!) Without the patriots of the Reagan Administration to save us from the malaisical cosmopolitan wussification favored by Jimmy Carter, the speed limit on many interstate highways might be 90 km/hour even today.

Some of our younger Gen-Y readers might be skeptical that this was ever such a big deal. One of my favorite stories recalls a discussion in an English class at the end of my first semester in college in 1984. Our mischievous professor asked each of the students to give an example of a belief we held that we thought would be controversial among our fellows. Given that this was a middle-class suburban Catholic institution, there were too many ways for me to get in serious trouble here (um, “God doesn’t exist”? “abortion should be legal”?). But I chickened out, and settled on something that I thought satisfied the letter of the assignment without being too crazy — I declared my support for the metric system.

You would have thought I had called the Pope a Communist. The class (including the professor) exploded in exasperation, rolling their eyes and moaning “Oh no, you’re not one of those people, are you?” People are very attached to their weights and measures, as it turns out. But I stuck courageously to my convictions, defending the usefulness of making easy conversions between units at different scales.

If I were to do it again, though, I might go with the god-doesn’t-exist business.

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Argument from banana

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Kevin Schnitzius pointed me to this video, which has been around for a while but was recently mentioned by the Disgruntled Chemist. Skip to about the two-minute mark to get some deep insight into the creationist mindset, which Tara from Aetiology (which has since moved) accurately dubbed the “argument from banana.”

Argument from banana
You really do need to see the video, but I’ll spill the beans for the impatient: bananas are the quintessentially designed object. Not only do they fit snugly into a human hand, they even have ridges to allow for a tighter grip, a built-in color-coding that lets us know when they’re ripe, and — my favorite — a convenient pull-tab at the top for easy peeling! What better proof for the existence of God could one need?

I do wonder what they make of the Durian. Perhaps the Designer has a sense of humor?

Update: If you want to know more (perhaps your faith in naturalism has been shaken?), the video comes from a series called The Way of the Master, featuring Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort. It purportedly shows in 70 countries, and has been awarded honors by the National Religious Broadcasters association.

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Cafe Scientifique Chicago

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You may have read celebrated and successful bloggers such as Mark and PZ Myers enthusing about the “Cafe Scientifique” idea. It’s an attempt, international in scope but local in focus, to promote discussion about exciting scientific ideas between experts and non-experts in an informal environment. By “in an informal environment” we typically mean “in a bar,” although I suppose an actual cafe or similar venue would do just as well. The original Cafes were located in England, but the idea has subsequently taken off and spread around the world. It’s similar in spirit to KC Cole’s Categorically Not series that Clifford has mentioned.

So now it’s our turn. Randy Landsberg at the University of Chicago has taken up the challenge of organizing a Cafe Scientifique in the Windy City, and the first meeting will be this Wednesday at the Map Room, a neighborhood bar famous for its dizzyingly diverse beer list. I’ll be the speaker, although the speaking is not the focus of the event. I’ll talk for about twenty minutes, followed by a break to give everyone a chance to refill their drinks, culminating in an extensive discussion/Q&A session where everyone gets a chance to talk the ideas through. The particular idea to be discussed is one of my favorites: Why is the past different from the future? We’ll talk about entropy and the arrow of time in our everyday lives, and connect it to big speculative ideas about the origin of the universe. Should be fun! And if everyone gets along, this will undoubtedly be the first of many events, and before too long the El will be alive with intense discussions about dispatches from the frontiers of science.

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How quickly can Iran get the bomb?

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Obviously a lot of smart and well-informed people have been thinking about this. Many, like Juan Cole, think that the Iranians are nowhere close to a bomb; ThinkProgress is slightly less sanguine. They are taking the trouble to make this argument because the US is claiming that it would only take 16 days for Iran to make a bomb. There are all sorts of reasons to disbelieve this particular claim: a history of crying wolf, an apparent misunderstanding of the concept of significant figures… Still, is it more like ten days, or ten years?

Steinn Sigurðsson looks at the problem as a physicist, and isn’t optimistic.

I don’t know Iran; I don’t have access to any classified information on nuclear weapons.
I do know something about physics…

First of all, Iran is clearly been working on putting together a full nuclear cycle for about 20 years

That means they want to be able to do it all in-house: mining, enrichment, burning, plutonium extraction, power generation and bomb production.

It is clear that they did the science in the early-to-mid-90s, they tested centrifuges, built small high neutron flux reactors and got small amounts of plutonium extracted.

So, they learned Pu chemistry, what isotopes you get with different burns, and maybe some metallurgy.

They then set up centrifuge halls and played with an AVLIS (laser isotope separator).

They also ordered a 1GW reactor from the russians, and refined uranium oxide (aka “yellowcake”) into both uranium tetrafluoride, uranium hexafluoride and uranium metal.
Supposedly several tons of uranium oxide were processed.

Now: there are two ways to make bombs, at the basic level.
Get highly refined uranium-235 metal; or, fairly pure plutonium-239. In kilogram quantities.
U-235 bombs are simple and need not be tested. “A grad student could make one of those”.
Pu-239 bombs are notoriously fickle and are said to need testing (although maybe not so much any more…)

Read the whole thing.

Hofstadter’s Law says “It always takes longer than you think, even when taking into account Hofstadter’s Law.” For nuclear weapons, unfortunately, the word “longer” should be replaced by “shorter.” Historically, we always underestimate the proximity of other nations to full nuclear capability (unless we’re trying to cook up reasons to invade them). I don’t know what to do about it, but there’s every reason to believe that, left to its own devices, Iran will have some sort of bomb sooner rather than later.

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The language of Science

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From a footnote on page 69 of Seth Lloyd’s new book Programming the Universe (about which more later):

I happened to be in [Nobel Laureate Norman Ramsey’s office in Paris] when two members of the Academie Francaise came to call. “Why, Professeur Ramsey,” they inquired, “is French not the international language of Science?” Ramsey immediately answered them in his fluent French, with a thick midwestern accent. Horrified, they dropped the subject. In fact, the French Academy of Sciences caused the adoption of English as the international language of science in the seventeenth century by being the first national academy to abandon the previous international language, Latin, and publish their proceedings in their own language. The English and the Germans followed suit. The rest is just an accident of history.

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Dr. Doom

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This story is so amazing/silly/horrifying that it’s taken a few days to sink in. Short version: Dr. Eric Pianka of the University of Texas, an internationally recognized ecologist, goes around giving talks warning that the Earth is in major trouble. We’re headed for an ecological disaster, and human beings in particular are in serious danger of being wiped out by a deadly virus like Ebola, perhaps leading to the death of 90% of our current population. It might even be good for the environment over all (although bad for us, obviously). He’s an alarmist, no doubt about it, but it’s better to hear about such disaster scenarios than to simply ignore them.

And then — and here’s the part that is so bizarre that it takes a while to really believe it — “citizen scientist” and creationist Forrest Mims apparently heard Pianka give a talk, and decided that Pianka is advocating that we release a virus to kill 90% of the Earth’s population. Completely untrue, of course; just a simple-minded and mean-spirited twisting of the guy’s words. Even from the original story, you could tell that there was a serious disconnect between portrayal and reality — the actual quotes from Pianka didn’t measure up to the surrounding alarmist hysteria.

But the right-wing/creationist blogosphere has gone completely nutso over this. I thought my fellow left-wing/scientific friends might be exaggerating the reaction a bit, but it’s true — dozens of posts about the crazy “Dr. Doom” who longs to bring down our civilization through bioterrorism. ID advocate (and tireless defender of academic freedom!) William Dembski has taken the obvious step for someone who is unhinged but nevertheless concerned — he has reported Pianka to the Department of Homeland Security. A good summary of the craziness has been written by Nick Matzke at the Panda’s Thumb; more coverage from PZ Myers (and here), Ed Brayton, Wesley Elsberry (and here), and DarkSyde (and here).

There’s a lesson here, although damned if I can figure out what it is. PZ thinks that these people are just anti-academic, and that it’s part of a campaign to discredit the very notion of expertise. But I suspect that it’s less calculated than that — we’re talking about folks who find it completely plausible to imagine that liberal biology professors are eager to wipe out most of the human race. The basic cognitive short-circuit seems to be an inability to understand the difference between a sentiment of the form “A human population of one billion is more ecologically sustainable than one of six billion” and something like “I would like to personally murder five out of every six living people.” It’s the right-wing equivalent of people who think that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by Halliburton and/or the Mossad. Except that it’s not a fringe movement; the buzz is all over the right hemiblogosphere, and was straightforwardly reported by Matt Drudge and others.

Next time I mention that a decay of our vacuum state via bubble nucleation could wipe out life on Earth, I’ll make sure there aren’t any creationists in the audience. I can’t imagine explaining that to the Department of Homeland Security.

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The Foundational Questions Institute (Anthony Aguirre)

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The Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) was mentioned in the comments of Mark’s post about John Barrow’s Templeton Prize. This is a new organization that is devoted to supporting innovative ideas at the frontiers of physics and cosmology. It is led by Max Tegmark of MIT and Anthony Aguirre of UCSC, two leading young cosmologists, backed up by an extremely prestigious Scientific Advisory Panel.

Sounds like a great idea, but some of us have questions, primarily concerning the source of funding for FQXi — currently the John Templeton Foundation. The Templeton Foundation is devoted to bringing together science and religion, which may or may not be your cup of tea. I’m already on the record as turning down money from them (see also this Business Week article) — and believe me, turning down money is not part of my usual repertoire. But Max and Anthony and the rest are good scientists, so we here at Cosmic Variance thought it would be good to hear the story behind FQXi in their own words. We invited Anthony to contribute a guest post about the goals and procedures of the new institute, and he was kind enough to agree. Feel free to ask questions and be politely skeptical (or for that matter enthusiastically supportive), and we can all learn more about what’s going on.

———-

I (Anthony Aguirre) have been invited by Sean to write a guest blog entry discussing an exciting new project that Max Tegmark and I have been leading: Foundational Questions in Physics and Cosmology (“FQX”). This program was publicly announced in October, and the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) was formally launched as a legal entity in February, as was its first call for proposals. There is a plethora of information on FQXi at www.fqxi.org, but the kind invitation by Cosmic Variance provides a good opportunity to outline informally what FQXi is, why we think it is important, to address some reservations voiced in this forum, and to generate some discussion in the physics and cosmology community.

What is FQXi all about? Its stated mission is “To catalyze, support, and disseminate research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology, particularly new frontiers and innovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of reality, but unlikely to be supported by conventional funding sources.” Less formally, the aim of FQXi is to allow researchers in physics, cosmology, and related fields who like to think about and do real research about really big, deep, foundational or even “ultimate” questions, to actually do so — when otherwise they could not. We boiled this type of research down into two defining terms: the research should be foundational (with potentially significant and broad implications for our understanding of the deep or “ultimate” nature of reality) and it should be unconventional (consisting of rigorous research which, because of its speculative, non-mainstream, or high-risk nature, would otherwise go unperformed due to lack of funding.) The particular types of research FQXi will support are detailed in the FQXi Charter and in the first call for proposals, which also features a handy (but by no means whatsoever comprehensive) list of example projects, and their likelihood of being suitable for FQXi funding. In addition to straightforward grants, FQXi will run various other programs — “mini”-grants, conferences, essay contests, a web forum, etc. — focused on the same sort of science.

Why is FQXi important? There are a number of foundational questions that are of deep interest to humanity at large — and are the (often hidden) passion of and inspiration for researchers — but which various financial and “social” pressures make it very difficult for researchers to actually pursue. National funding sources, for example, tend to shy aware from research that is high-risk/high- reward, or speculative, or very fundamental, or unconventional, or “too philosophical”, and instead support research using fairly proven methods with a high probability of advancing science along known routes. There is nothing wrong with this, and it creates a large amount of excellent science. But it leaves some really interesting questions on the sidelines. We go on at length about this in the FQXi Charter — but the researchers FQXi aims to support will know all too well what the problems are. Our goal is to fund the research into foundational questions in physics and cosmology that would otherwise go unfunded.

More money to support really exciting, interesting, and, yes, fun research seems like an unreservedly good thing. Nonetheless, a couple of significant reservations have been voiced to us, both by writers on this blog and others. These are:

1) Some feel research that is very speculative or “borderline philosophical” is just a waste of time and resources — if the research was worth doing, conventional agencies would fund it. We won’t accept this criticism from anyone who has worked on either time machines or the arrow of time (so Sean is out) :), but from others we acknowledge that they feel this way, we respectfully disagree, and we think that many of the giants of 20th century physics (Einstein, Bohr, Schroedinger, Pauli, etc.) would also disagree. Ultimately, those who feel this way are free not to participate in FQXi. We also note that we think it would by great if some private donors were also to support more conventional research in a way that complemented or supplemented federal funding (as they do in, e.g., the Sloan and Packard fellowships); that, however, is not the case here: the donation supporting FQXi is expressely for the purpose of supporting foundational research. Which brings us to…

2) The second major reservation concerns FQXi’s current sole source of funding: the John Templeton Foundation (JTF), an organization that espouses and supports the “constructive dialogue between science and religion.” It is understandable that some people may be suspicious of JTF’s involvement with FQXi, and in today’s political climate in which Intelligent Design and other movements seek to undermine science in order to promote a religious and political agenda, such suspicion is especially understandable. But it is as important as ever to also be open-minded and objective. The salient points, we think, regarding JTF and FQXi are:

  • FQXi is a non-profit scientific grant-awarding organization fully independent from its donors (we are actively seeking other donors beyond JTF, see below) and operated in accordance with its Charter. Proposal funding is determined via a standard and rigorous peer-review process, and an expert panel appointed by FQXi. The structure of FQXi is such that donors — including JTF — have no control or influence over individual proposal selection or renewal. Specifically, scientific decisions are made (as enshrined in the FQXi corporate Bylaws) by the Scientific Directorate (Max & I), on the basis of advice from review panels and the Scientific Advisory Panel. The only condition of the JTF grant to FQXi is that FQXi’s grantmaking be consistent with the FQXi Charter, which, as stated previously, can be viewed in its entirity at fqxi.org.
  • JTF’s stated interest in FQXi is captured in the FQXi Charter: the questions being tackled by researchers funded by FQXi intimately connect with and inform not just scientific fields, but also philosophy, theology and religious belief systems. Answers to these questions will have profound intellectual, practical, and spiritual implications for anyone with deep curiosity about the world’s true nature.
  • While FQXi’s funding is currently all from JTF, we have been strongly encouraged by JTF to seek (and are actively working on finding) additional donors; furthermore, there is no guarantee of JTF funding beyond the first four years — though we certainly hope FQXi will go on long past the initial four-year phase.
  • As for JTF benefiting “by association” with FQXi and the great research we hope that it will support, well, we feel that JTF has been extremely generous not just in giving a large sum of money to science, without strings attached, and with a great deal of support through the complex process of setting up FQXi as an independent institute of just the sort that Max & I wanted. If all this reflects well on JTF, I would submit that they deserve it.

We’ve tried hard to make FQXi’s operation and goals as transparent as possible, so those in the community can make informed decisions on whether they would like to participate in what we are hoping to do. We are very excited by the proposals that are coming in so far, and invite interested scientists to take a look at the call for proposals before it is too late (April 2). For those who are not actively researching foundational questions, we hope to have a very active public discussion and outreach program for both scientists and the interested public; we invite you to periodically check the FQXi website.

Thank you for this opportunity to discuss FQXi at Cosmic Variance.

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We're creeping up on you

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Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje takes an unflinching look at a small, quiet community that seems to be gaining in numbers in the unsuspecting coffee shops of San Antonio — atheists!

She wears stylish glasses, and her thick black hair is swept up in a ponytail; the only hint of a slightly rebellious streak is the tattoo that peeks from under her shirtsleeve. He is a slight, soft-spoken man with a laid-back demeanor and a full beard.

Melissa and Chanse are young atheists. They don’t believe in God. As such, they’re part of a small but substantial minority that swims against the overtly religious mainstream of America, a spiritual tenor that has grown more strident in recent times as issues of faith increasingly become entangled with politics and public policy.

Of course they are stylish! And only slightly rebellious, at least on the surface. In fact it’s a very nice article, the point of which is that atheists and agnostics, despite being a tiny minority (about 3 percent), constitute the fastest-growing category of religious “belief” in the United States.

This cheerful demographic fact ties into a discussion between Chris Mooney, PZ Myers and others a little while back, on how we should speak about science and evolution and religion in the public sphere. Chris suggested that, since we live in a very religious culture, it’s to our own benefit to emphasize the compatibility of religious belief with a scientific worldview. PZ replied that there is no reason to dilute our message just to win some temporary battles. And the truth is that, while there are some staunchly religious scientists who also believe in evolution, and there’s no reason not to have such people be fighting for the cause of science, most scientists are somewhat agnostic if not downright atheist, and there’s no reason to hide that fact. Chris’s response correctly identified the underlying disagreement, which is completely about tactics. (Be sure to read Chris at Mixing Memory on the use of “framing” in this context, and John Rennie at Scientific American on the Dover trial.)

If I may put words into their mouths, Chris is a strategist, looking for the most politically effective ways of fighting the battle currently before us, which is defending evolution in schools. PZ is playing the role of the intellectual, for whom strategy and tactics will always take a back seat to telling the truth. If it makes a few people uncomfortable, that’s their problem. This is why Richard Dawkins generates such emotional responses among people who are clearly on his side when it comes to the truth of evolution; intellectuals admire his fierce determination to call it as he sees it, while strategists cringe at his blatantly anti-religious rhetoric.

I am on the uncompromising-intellectual side of this debate (big surprise there), but I think that the truth-telling attitude has its strategic benefits as well. The fight over teaching evolution in public schools is a tiny skirmish in a much broader cultural conversation. (See? We don’t have to call it a “war.”) We do live in a religious society, remarkably so when we are compared to similar countries elsewhere in the world, and there are complicated reasons for that. But increasingly, a lot of folks are wondering whether their supernatural beliefs are really warranted by the evidence, or whether they’re not just going along because that’s what everyone does. To young people wondering about the meaning of it all, it can be extremely powerful to hear someone say that it’s okay not to believe in God. Everyone always says that you will never talk someone out of their religious beliefs by lecturing about the scientific method; that’s certainly true for a wide range of people who are very confident in their positions, but there are also a huge number of people who are legitimately questioning what to believe. In the long run, the way to squelch the political effectiveness of the intelligent-design movement, the anti-abortion movement, the anti-gay-marriage movement, and so on, is to relegate them to insignificant minority positions within the populace, and one good way to do that is to undermine their supernatural foundations. It’s an extremely long-term project, to say the least, but one worth keeping in mind.

The only time I think the Stoeltje article stumbles is at the very end:

But what, exactly, do atheists believe in, if not in God?

In a nutshell, atheists believe in reason alone, in those things that can be arrived at through intellect and the scientific method. Concrete evidence for God, they argue, simply doesn’t exist. They don’t cotton to leaps of faith or anything that involves a supernatural being reaching into human lives. They believe you can live a happy, respectable life based on human ethics that were derived not from God handing down a tablet but from a code of rules that emerged naturally through an evolutionary process in which humans learned how to live together successfully.

The idea that atheists replace “religion” with “science” is an unfortunately common misunderstanding. Religion plays many roles — it tells a story about the workings of the universe, it suggest moral and ethical guidelines, and it provides social and cultural institutions and practices. Science does not play all those roles, nor should it pretend to; it talks about how the universe works, but is of no help with morality or culture. However, the moral and cultural roles of religion do not stand independently of its beliefs about the universe (existence of a caring supernatural being or what have you) — if that part of the story isn’t true, the other teachings of the religion (homosexuality is a sin, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven) aren’t necessarily any better or worse than any other set of non-religious cultural practices, and should be evaluated on that basis. Science can’t tell us how we should treat other human beings. What it can do is to free us from the mistaken idea that the correct way to treat other human beings can be found in scripture or in church teachings or in the contemplation of God’s will; we human beings have to solve this hard problem all by ourselves.

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