Reflections on our Interview with Bill Nye | The BioLogos Forum

[loujost]

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.

[Humeandroid (David Hume (nom de plume))]

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.

[DeborahHaarsma (Dr. Deborah Haarsma)]

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.

[BradKramer]

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.

[Humeandroid (David Hume (nom de plume))]

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.

[Humeandroid (David Hume (nom de plume))]

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.

[BradKramer]

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?

[Humeandroid (David Hume (nom de plume))]

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.

[BradKramer]

@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.

[Sy_Garte]

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.