Reflections on our Interview with Bill Nye | The BioLogos Forum

I agree with both DH and Lou that science can’t really answer questions about meaning, purpose, love, and God. However, I think science can rule some potential answers false, while leaving others on the table as genuine possibilities. For example, science clearly denies the specific claim that humans were directly created by God a few thousand years ago–a claim that is loaded with meaning and purpose, but it’s just not true.

At the same time, aspects of the universe and our own existence do not (IMO) rule out the possibility that our universe–the only universe we actually know about, for sure–was intended to become the home of carbon-based life forms, such as (but hardly limited to) ourselves. Science could never prove such a claim–again, I agree with DH and Lou. However, aspects of science do indeed suggest that possibility. That is, they are consistent with the prior religious claim that we do live in just such a place.

For more on this, see the series starting with http://biologos.org/blog/belief-in-god-in-an-age-of-science-john-polkinghorne-part-one

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Actually, Lou, the history of Christian doctrine is more fluid than you seem to think. I also think you’re making the wrong comparison, when you look to the fluidity of science for your standard of acceptability. I suspect you might harbor some (non-scientific) beliefs that you would not surrender under any circumstances–and certainly not in the face of scientific facts, whatever those facts might be.

For example, consider the Jeffersonian claim, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, …”

I don’t know whether you believe that (perhaps with “Nature” substituted for “their Creator”), or not. I suspect that many American scientists agree with it, and hold it as a fundamental value that shouldn’t be abandoned, even when genetics contradicts the assertion that we are “created equal.”

Many religious claims are of this type: that A is good and B is bad, or that person A has the same intrinsic value as person B, even when person B is far more gifted by nature. Religious claims are much more like political claims than scientific claims. We shouldn’t expect them to have a similar degree of fluidity. Values are more important than facts.

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I appreciate, very much, Larry_Bunce’s attitude toward conversations like this. I recently read something provcative by MIT physicist Alan Lightman that I’d like to quote in this context: “Several years ago, I thought that the writings and arguments of such people as Dawkins and Aczel, attempting to disprove or prove the existence of God, were a terrible waste of calories. I have changed my mind. I now believe that the discussions of science and religion, even the attempts of one side to disprove the other, are part of the continuing and restorative conversation of humanity with itself. In the end, all of our art, our science and our theological beliefs are an attempt to make sense of this fabulous and fleeting existence we find ourselves in.”

Here’s the long URL for the whole piece: http://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0LEVvKyCNhULwsAwlgnnIlQ;_ylu=X3oDMTEzM2pkdDNiBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMQRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkA1lIUzAwMl8x/RV=2/RE=1423472947/RO=10/RU=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fopinions%2Fbook-review-why-science-does-not-disprove-god-by-amir-d-aczel%2F2014%2F04%2F10%2F4ee476ec-a49e-11e3-a5fa-55f0c77bf39c_story.html/RK=0/RS=WsQGmSgx6z75nbaqLRDJS5KiB5U-

From my point of view as a Christian, it’s not the unbelief of Dawkins or Coyne that troubles me. People disagree fundamentally about fundamental things, all the time, and this is no exception. What troubles me is the attitude that religious people just don’t belong in the conversation. We do indeed have a fabulous and fleeting existence, and I fail to see why the answers and non-answers offered by Dawkins or Coyne should be privileged over religious answers and non-answers.

Thanks for your reply, Ted. I agree with you (and with IDers) that science could in theory support the idea that this universe was designed to produce carbon-based life forms. I think it does not support that idea, but we can’t definitely rule it out either. However, even if we accept this, we only get to deism, not the Christian god.

What troubles me is the attitude that religious people just don't belong in the conversation.
But Ted, where should one draw the line? Do Scientologists need to be in the conversation? Jehovah's Witnesses? Breatharians? Moonies? ISIS? Don't you think that people need to earn a place at the table by at least being open-minded about the tentative nature of their own beliefs? If they insist on reserving some of their own empirical beliefs as sacrosanct regardless of evidence, as suggested by these dogmatic "We believe..." statements, then what kind of conversation can one really have? The moment someone insists that their particular holy book is directly inspired by a god or gods, regardless of evidence to the contrary, the conversation ends (and in some cases, the shooting begins).

Anyone who shares Lou’s view that religious believers don’t treat basic beliefs as working hypotheses is invited to read my current series: http://biologos.org/blog/series/evolution-and-original-sin-by-robin-collins.
The whole point of Robin Collins’ essay is to examine the basic truth that all humans are capable of wicked acts (that particular belief is fundamental to Christianity and more than a hypothesis) in light of modern knowledge, in order to arrive at a hypothesis about how to relate the basic truth to current knowledge.

I don’t see scientists treating certain fundamental truths as working hypotheses, either, Lou. When faced (e.g.) with an apparent contradiction between conservation of mass (a philosophical notion ultimately related to Greek ideas) and special relativity, a way is found to negotiate the situation, by redefining what counts as “mass.”

Of course, Lou, places at the table have to be earned, not simply granted. What must be granted (IMO), however, is that conversations about ultimate meaning and purpose are not scientific in nature–they are humanistic, and far more pluralistic (in a philosophical sense) than science normally is or can be.

As for being “open-minded about the tentative nature of [one’s] beliefs,” I doubt that most of us in the West are willing to be “open-minded” about our condemnation of ISIS. Our revulsion is more than a gut-level reaction, of course–it’s based on a prior commitment to certain values that doesn’t look very negotiable to me, but (at the same time) doesn’t appear to be a necessary consequence of “science” or “reason”–both of which were elevated to semi-divine status in modern regimes that tried to stamp out all religion and committed atrocities comparable to those of ISIS on a vast scale.

Ted, please look at what I wrote. I was complaining about the “What we believe” credos of BioLogos, Answers in Genesis, and Reasons to Believe. I did not say that all details of all religious people’s beliefs are immune to reflection. All religious people I know (including myself when I was religious) have doubts about many details of their beliefs, and allow their thinking to evolve with reflection and examination.

If BioLogos said “We will treat the inspiration of the Bible as a working hypothesis and examine it carefully and skeptically in the light of current knowledge”, I’d commend them. Instead you have what amount to credos. That is what I object to.

Scientists (especially physicists) put everything on the table. Scientific revolutions do often have to buck entrenched preconceptions, but they happen nevertheless. Your own example of mass is a good one. We didn’t just redefine mass to keep preconcieved views. We rejected the original, deeply fundamental concept that mass was a fixed property of matter independent of potential energy and state of motion. That was a huge conceptual shift, one of many that physicists have made over the years. Each of these revolutions was practically like rejecting the Resurrection. We actually LIKE to do that, and we try hard to find evidence to reject the current worldview. Finding such evidence is the best thing that could happen to a scientist.

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This was in response to Ted’s comment starting “Anyone who shares Lou’s view that religious believers don’t treat basic beliefs as working hypotheses is invited to read my current series…”

Ted, you said about ISIS:

Our revulsion is more than a gut-level reaction, of course–it’s based on a prior commitment to certain values that doesn’t look very negotiable to me, but (at the same time) doesn’t appear to be a necessary consequence of “science” or “reason”

Agreed, Ted, but ISIS correctly claims that they are just obeying their allegedly inspired Holy Book. They can’t be talked out of their position, because of this irrational belief. That’s the root of the problem–not ISIS, but irrational non-negotiable belief in the authority of an old book.

As you know, your own holy book makes those same statements. Unbelievers are to be stoned, people who violated religious laws are to be killed, your god ordered the taking of sex slaves and the massacres of entire nations, etc. At various times in your church’s history it has burned people alive, invaded other countries in “holy wars”, etc. Both Jesus and Mohammed also spoke of love and justice and mercy, but they left wiggle-room; some parts of the NT condone slavery, order believers to kill their own children or their parents for some offenses, etc. Some verses imply that Jesus still believed the OT and its laws.

Any claim that ethics are absolute and timeless and come from god is just false, if you accept the Bible as truly inspired. Western society has become more humane not because of their holy book but in spite of it; society has matured enough to reject more of the holy book than our ancestors rejected. That’s what we have to hope Muslims will do too…

A rational Kantian basis for ethics seems possible, and indeed the largely atheist northern European countries are by every measure healthier, happier, more just, and with less crime than deeply Christian countries like the US. I don’t claim that atheism is necessarily the cause of these things, but I do claim these countries disprove the thesis that society depends on religion for its ethics.

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Might we see some comment, then, on why Bill Nye was accused of using “troubling rhetoric against the Bible and Christian beliefs”? I’m a sceptic and a biologist, and while I don’t join Lou in his strictness on dogma, I was rather put off by the way DH talked about Nye. The “troubling rhetoric” charge is a mystery to me, and I thought DH seemed to try to make Nye’s comments in the interview look as bad as possible. In so doing, she seemed (to me) to misrepresent what he said.

Maybe BL doesn’t need to worry about what we atheists/sceptics think. I would take no offence at being told that. So I’d understand if my question were ignored.

Thanks for all the comments that came in over the weekend. And thanks to Ted and Lou for their conversation today which highlights a lot of the issues. I don’t have anything to add for Lou beyond what Ted has written.
In this interview we wanted to show where Nye’s views agreed and disagreed with those of BioLogos. He clearly is rejecting religion; that is contrary to our views, but on its own it doesn’t qualify as troubling rhetoric. The “troubling rhetoric” comes when he claims that science requires rejecting of religion. He claims his book is just about scientific evidence for age and yet goes well beyond that to speak broadly against religious belief. Yet in other places, he affirms that religion and science can coexist as long as the religion isn’t claiming the earth is young; that gives us a lot of common ground to build on.

I’ve asked Brad to chime in with some additional specific examples based on his reading of Nye’s book and several of Nye’s interviews.

As Deb said, our main concern with Nye’s rhetoric (both in the interview, the book, and the Ham/Nye) is the way in which he interweaves scientific data with personal comments about religion. His book is ostensibly just an explanation of the science of evolution, but he frequently segues into his personal views about how science makes religion implausible, sometimes without any indication that he’s moved from science to opinion. Here’s some more examples from his book:

Page 55: “Configuring [giraffe] necks this way is almost certainly not how a designer or engineer would design the world. But the details all make perfect sense once you embrace the idea that evolution does not work the way a human designer or engineer would.”

Page 78: If there was a designer, why did he or she or it create all those fossils of things that aren’t living anymore?..In short, why mess around with all this messiness? If you’re a creationist reading this, and you want to remark something like, “Well, that’s the way he did it,” I tell you right back, that is just not reasonable, nor is it satisfactory…Another thing: If there were a designer, I’d expect some better results. I’d expect no common cold viruses, for example. Or, if are an unavoidable or accidental viruses. If the argument is, “Well, that was all part of the plan,” then I have to ask: How can you take the lack of evidence of a plan as evidence of a plan? That makes no sense.”

Page 282: Asking the big question [of life’s origin] sounds an awful lot like asking, “Is there a god who runs the show?” There is an essential difference, however. Every other aspect of life that was once attributed to divine intent is now elegantly and completely explained in the context of evolutionary science.

Again, the issue here is that Nye is making rather broad (and completely un-nuanced) statements about religion and science without any caveats. We don’t Nye is purposely trying to ruin anyone’s faith, or that his offers of good will towards those of religious faith are disingenuous, but it doesn’t make this rhetoric any less unhelpful. A reader of Nye’s book (not to mention his interviews and the debate) is given a clear sense that to accept mainstream science is to deny any sort of Divine intentionality anywhere in nature. To us, that’s troubling rhetoric.

I will be writing a bit more about this on Wednesday, as Deb mentioned.

Dr. Haarsma, thanks for the reply. I have not read Undeniable but will shortly. If Nye did claim that “science requires rejecting of religion,” he was wrong and I will be rather disappointed in him.

Dear Brad and BL,

None of those remarks by Nye is troubling, and none of them gives a sense that “to accept mainstream science is to deny any sort of Divine intentionality anywhere in nature.” Most of the comments you quote are plain facts. There are some troubling comments in this conversation, but Bill Nye didn’t make them.

I should refrain from further commentary until I have read Nye’s book, but I think Brad’s responses show that my hunch was correct and that Nye has not made the troubling remarks that you alleged.

Very disappointed, but still in your corner.

Given the rhetoric of Nye listed above (and cited in the interview), can you please tell me what sort of Divine being actually passes the bar of Nye’s remarks? It sounds to me like Nye is saying that you are free to believe in God as long as the god doesn’t resemble the God of the Bible in any clear sense. Of course, Nye is free to say this, but it makes his insistence that he is not “anti-Christian” seem confusing, at the least. Furthermore, given the statements above, can you see how his statement in the interview that his book is not at all about religion would strike us as odd?

Dear Brad,

I have heard of many different gods in my life. Process theology gods, open theology gods, gods of deism, lots and lots of gods. I suspect that quite a few of them meet the qualifications, and I was surprised to see such a response from a BL staffer.

I may be underestimating the gulf between us, but I hope we just disagree on the justification for accusing someone of “troubling rhetoric,” in the context of discussions of religion and science, and in a forum that has hosted people thought of by many biologists as enemies of science. Nye’s critiques of simplistic “intelligent design” claims are hardly “troubling,” and I would be surprised if his retorts have not been used by BL’s own commentators. Each of the quotes you provide involves a specific response to a specific (and silly) religious claim. None of the quotes contains blanket claims about religion.

It’s just my opinion, of course, shared between friends, but I think your accusations against Nye, and your harshly exaggerated interpretations of his comments, are troubling. Not horrid, awful, dehumanizing, nothing like that, just disappointing and leaning in the “troubling” direction. This rhetoric, for example, is exaggerated to an unacceptable degree: [Nye’s rhetoric gives] “a clear sense that to accept mainstream science is to deny any sort of Divine intentionality anywhere in nature.” It almost looks like a deliberate attempt to make Nye look as bad as possible.

I still know too little about BL, and I may have stumbled clumsily into a coded conversation. I look forward to reading what you think about atheists and sceptics, but your not-very-rational engagement with Nye (subject to my own reading of his book) has made me think that I am not very welcome here. I would take no offence, as I already said, and I know more than you may guess about the task you are attempting. It may be that you need to be rude to Bill Nye, and sweet to Stephen Meyer, to get the job done. If so, please carry on.

@Humeandroid If our views and opinions make you feel unwelcome, I am sorry to hear it. We really do mean it when we say that we welcome all views.

I have learned that every conversation about origins is a coded conversation, if by that you mean one where the same words are perceived much differently depending on one’s personal beliefs. Trying to publish an interview with Bill Nye in such a way as to serve both skeptics and evangelical Christians is an astoundingly delicate task, and I quite freely concede we might not have fully succeeded.

I wonder if it might not be helpful to read some of our blogs published around the time of the Ham/Nye debate? Series link here. It might give some more context to our assertions of “troubling rhetoric” on the part of Nye.

Thanks for your comments.

I would like to focus on the positive as much as possible. It doesn’t appear to me from the interview that Nye takes the position of Coyne or Dawkins that evolutionary creationism is as bad (or worse) as young earth creationism. I suppose that is a start. It is certainly better than the Ken Ham interactions. Biologos is clearly on the right track, since it is so widely attacked from all sides.

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