The religion vs. science debate is stupid
There are only two categories of institutions particularly invested in positioning religion versus science in a two-sided war: Those who believe unquestioningly in their preferred dogma, and journalists.
Journalists have a particular conventions in writing that make their job more manageable. These techniques include simplifying complex issues into just two sides, and giving equal attention to (often self-appointed) representatives of each side to preserve this illusion. Some debates don’t deserve a two-sided perspective, however, such as whether intelligent design ought to be taught in science classes. Intelligent design isn’t science, period. There may be some argument for redefining how we think of science (which should be kept out of middle school until the experts work it out), or some argument for teaching about creationist beliefs as part of a social studies class (which sounds like a grand idea if you ask me, so long as we get less familiar doctrines in there as well), but there is not a two-sided argument to be made about teaching not-science in a science class. There are simply allied groups with a rather annoying agenda who know how to play the media.
Now, having dealt with journalists, I have grouped religious fundamentalists and scientistic types all into the second group. This is partly because I think it is fun to be a rascal at times. It is also because an unwavering belief in scientific truth, in the abstract, is remarkably similar to an unwavering belief in religious truth. The scientistic absolutists and the religious fundamentalists each want an enemy, and so they have one another, two sides of the same coin.
I’m expecting that it’s easier to defend the scientistic absolutists than the religious fundamentalists to the readers of this blog, so I’ll try to pick on the former a bit now.
If, as some would contend, most published scientific research findings are wrong, “science” is more of an ideal than a practical reality. In my own field, I often see statistics wielded like magical incantations, capable of garnering grant funding on awfully flimsy pretenses. Science is supposed to be based on the empirically observable and repeatable, but it is flawed by being a human process. There are institutional constraints that encourage bad practices and a dubious record of negative findings, and there is enough room for interpreting results that human error — both willful and mistaken — is not inevitable more than just occasionally.
Yes, I am quite aware that the scientific method has brought us many great things, and I’m a big fan of it myself, despite that it also gave us nuclear weapons. It has real results. But let’s also remember that religion has also brought us some decent things too, despite jerkass fundamentalists trying to shoehorn their beliefs into schools (not to mention the Crusades and the Catholic church’s systematic efforts to deny contraceptives to Africa, but those have nothing to do with an ostensible opposition to science, so I’ll leave those aside for another day).
More germane to this discussion, however, we must remember that “religion” is only opposite “science” if we actively define these to be mutually incompatible. They are not. It is only a fundamentalist reading of the Bible — which I and many others would argue is a misguided reading — that would actively deny scientific evidence. And it is only a cynical, reductive view of science — one in which that which is not empirically must not actually exist — that would actively deny religious experience.
Admittedly, I do believe that the scientific absolutists, like Richard Dawkins, think they would be saving the world by abolishing religion. I’m honestly not sure that the religious fundamentalists are as genuinely interested in saving the world, but maybe they do, in some sort of weird way, where “save” doesn’t mean what you’d normally think it means. Still, religion isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Our country can’t even elect a Democrat, let alone support an atheist revolution. I do think a more tolerant Christianity is possible, at least, but I don’t think the way to achieve that is by actively seeking to antagonize. That “Darwin” fish (and related parodies) may seem clever now, but those of us who self-identify as liberal Christians find it kind of obnoxious, and we’re your inside guys, you know? If you’ll forgive the metaphor, when you leave a bag of flaming dog poop in front of my neighbor’s door, I can smell it too.
