We now come to Part 7 of my analysis of Jerry Coyne’s book, Faith vs. Fact, where I will begin to discuss his comments in Chapter 3: “Why Accommodationism Fails.”
A Very Brief Overview of the Chapter
Chapter 3 is roughly 50 pages long, but when it gets right down to it, providing an overview of the chapter is pretty easy. Coyne spends the first 20 pages or so arguing that accommodationism (i.e. the view that says religion and science are not at odds with each other, but actually address different things) is wrong. He accuses people who think that religion and science aren’t in conflict of being syncretists—the very term, ironically, that people like Ken Ham use to disparage Christians who accept modern science. In the course of these 20 pages, Coyne also discusses Stephen Jay Gould’s NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria), which argues that science deals with the natural world while religion deals with issues of meaning, purpose and morals.
After that, Coyne discusses what would, in fact, convince him to believe God existed and Christianity was true. From there he shifts to a few brief comments on how the Bible isn’t historically reliable, and then he dovetails from that to discussing Jonah, Noah’s Ark, and Adam and Eve as a way of showing the Bible isn’t historical. Finally, in the last 15 pages or so of the chapter, he specifically addresses theistic evolution and argues that it, in fact, pollutes science.
So there you have it. It should be an interesting chapter to analyze. Let’s get to it.
Accommodationism—Bad!
Coyne begins his chapter by asserting that accommodationism—the view that says science and religion are not in conflict—is a form of cognitive dissonance that appears in a culture that “reveres science” but still “clings to pseudoscientific and religious myths” (97). In a word, Coyne says that if you disagree with him, then you are, for all practical purposes, slightly mentally unstable. But one may ask, “What about the many scientists who are also religious?” We can look to modern day scientists like Francis Collins, Kenneth Miller, and John Polkinghorne who are also Christians. We can also look back in history to the likes of Bacon, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, in fact, most scientists back then, who were also Christians. Doesn’t that fact alone prove Coyne is wrong, and that science and religion aren’t, in fact, in conflict?
“Not at all!” says Coyne. Men like Collins simply suffer from cognitive dissonance. They are like smokers who don’t get lung cancer (I’ll refrain from elaborating on how Coyne’s own analogy equates science with smoking and atheism with cancer). In regard to scientists in the past, Coyne says that doesn’t prove anything either. He writes, “…in the early days of science, everyone was religious, so this hardly counts as evidence of compatibility. Because publicly professed belief was ubiquitous, religion could be touted as compatible with all human endeavors” (99).
To be clear, the “because publicly professed belief was ubiquitous” comment betrays a type of conspiracy theory that one can also see among others in the New Atheist Movement. It basically says, “Oh, of course they said they were Christians. They had to say that or else the Church would have them killed!” To the point, that is simply ludicrous. The irrefutable historical fact is that the natural sciences were emphasized and encouraged in medieval Catholic universities. And that fact alone (which is actually supports the first part of Coyne’s sentence: i.e. “in the early days of science, everyone was religious”) pretty much is historical proof that contradicts Coyne’s assertion that science and religion are in conflict. In a word, if virtually all the early scientists who laid the foundation for modern science were religious, yes—that actually does count as evidence of compatibility.
Coyne, though, doesn’t see it this way. In fact, he brings up an analogy that, to this day, I still don’t get. He writes, “This form of accommodationism confuses coexistence with compatibility. And if religion and science are compatible in this way, so are marriage and adultery” (100). If anyone can explain how religion and science are just like marriage and adultery, I’m all ears.
Syncretism
In addition to saying that scientists who also are religious are just like adulterers, Coyne also calls them syncretists. He writes the following: “When discussing science and religion, syncretists claim that they are two sides of a single practice: finding truth.” And again, “Syncretism…makes science and religion compatible by redefining one so that it includes the other” (100). And again, “Other syncretists argue that it’s impossible for science to contradict religion because science, devoted to understanding how God’s creation works, must comport with religious belief” (101).
Given the fact that chapter 3 addresses accommodationism and that much of it (as we will see) is directed against theistic evolution, Coyne’s use of “syncretism” here is just too much an echo of the very rhetoric that comes out of young earth creationist organizations like Answers in Genesis to pass up. Once again, we find further evidence of just how much the New Atheist Movement and YECist organizations like AiG are alike in their thinking, worldview, and rhetoric.
Case in point, in a January 10, 2018 article by Bodie Hodge entitled, “Can an Evolutionist be a Creationist?” Hodge equates the theistic evolutionists at BioLogos with the ancient Israelites who practiced syncretism: “Just as when Old Testament Israelites mixed their religion with the Baal worship of the day, that was syncretism, so when people mix their Christianity with paganistic origins like evolution, that is also syncretism. Theistic evolution is really just another form of syncretism.”
I’ve noticed this phenomenon for quite a long time now. As far back as 5-6 years ago, I’ve been saying that New Atheists like Richard Dawkins and YECists like Ken Ham are essentially each other’s doppleganger. You can insert many names into that statement, like Jerry Coyne and Bodie Hodge—but the point is the same. If you get New Atheists and YECists calling you the same names over the same issues, you are probably right where you should be. In any case, it is about time people realize that the New Atheist Movement and the Young Earth Creationist Movement really are playing for the same philosophical team, they’re in the same worldview boat—they’re in bed together…and no one should want to see that kind of pornography.
NOMA! NOMA!
But it’s not just Christians who accept science who are the object of Coyne’s accusation that religion and science are in conflict. Coyne also thinks The National Academies, The National Science Teachers Association, as well as atheist scientists like Stephen Jay Gould are syncretists as well. Why? Because they, too, do not think science and religion are in conflict.
Gould is specifically known for his idea of NOMA: Non-Overlapping Magisteria. In a nutshell, he argued that science and religion deal with different things: science seeks to discover things about the natural world, while religion deals with issues of meaning, purpose, and morals. Therefore, what NOMA means is that science has its “box” to work in over here, and religion has its “box” to work in over there—and we should keep them completely separate, always.
Coyne finds Gould’s NOMA to be utter nonsense. And, although it may surprise you, I tend to agree. First, although he tries to be nice about it, Gould’s NOMA really is just re-heated Enlightenment/Deistic thinking. Furthermore, he (like Coyne) uncritically lumps all religions in together, as if they were basically the same thing. And finally, he applies his NOMA to the realm of history, and thus says “religion” cannot “mix magisteria” by claiming God ever does intervene in history (i.e. no claims of revelation, inspiration, miraculous deeds, etc.). And when he does that, his philosophical naturalism shows. In a says, he’s saying, “Can’t we just go back to when deism was accepted, and those religious people could keep their ‘faith’ in their private lives?
So, in specific regard to Christianity, although on a surface level I agree that the natural sciences focus on discovering things about the natural world and Christianity/the Bible aren’t trying to “do science,” I disagree that “religion” is limited to some sort of privately held box of meaning and purpose and morals (although it obviously does speak to meaning and purpose and morals), and I disagree that one can dismiss any supernatural claims out of hand on the basis of “If science can’t prove it, it’s not real.”
Coyne also sees that Gould’s NOMA ultimately doesn’t hold water, for as Coyne correctly states, Gould’s NOMA “rejects the central claim of Christianity—the Resurrection.” But then, as quickly as he makes a valid point, Coyne veers off into the all too common New Atheist/YECist wasteland by adding “…as well as the Catholic and literalist belief in a historical Adam and Eve” (109).
To be clear, yes, the resurrection of Christ is a historical claim and is central to the Christian faith, but no, the belief in a historical Adam and Eve has never been a central claim of Christianity, nor has it been universally held. And although Coyne is right in his rejection of YECism on the basis that it really is religiously motivated and not scientific, he is simply wrong to think that YECism represents the historical Christian faith. And he (like YECists!) is also wrong to treat belief of a historical Adam and Eve as if it were on the same level as belief in the resurrection.
Another area of NOMA that Coyne takes issue with is NOMA’s claim that areas of meaning, purpose, and morals belong to “religion” and not to science. Now, on one level, I agree—to imply that only “religion” can address meaning, purpose, and morals is rather absurd. Of course, non-religious people can deal with these issues. But what I do find funny about Coyne’s comments is his assertion that “serious scholarly discussion of ethics really began as a secular endeavor in ancient Greece” (110). In the ancient world, everything in society was religious in some way. The whole “religion vs. secular world” distinction was actually a result of when Christianity gained more prominence in the Empire, beginning with Constantine. Augustine’s City of God is probably the most obvious example of this. But to stay on point, to suggest that ancient Greece was “secular” is truly astounding and simply unbelievable.
In any case, in an attempt to play down Christianity’s role and contribution to the study of ethics, Coyne then jumps directly from “secular” ancient Greece to 19th century philosophers like Mill and Kant and various modern atheist philosophers, thus conveniently skipping over 1900 years of the study of ethics by Christian philosophers.
In my next post, we will look at what Jerry Coyne says would convince him that miracles were real and that Christianity was true…as well as a few other things.
