Faith Versus Fact : Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible (9780698195516) (42 page)

Park's recovery required a concatenation of events, none of which could have occurred without science. As he said, “I was taken to the most modern hospital in the nation's capital, where I was put back together by skilled orthopedic surgeons guided by the latest medical imaging devices. They consulted frequently with various specialists. Psychiatrists monitored my emotional state; hematologists kept track of my blood tests, looking for indications of infection; caring professionals attended to me twenty-four hours a day; trained therapists guided me through rehabilitation.”

The point is that as well-intentioned as believers may be (and the two priests later became Park's friends, strolling with him many times along the same trail), their faith is at best useless in such situations. There's little doubt that most people pinned under a tree would prefer to get medical help rather than prayer. Indeed, Park was an atheist, and had he been conscious he might well have been frightened by hearing incantations muttered by priests. But even had he been Catholic, there is no evidence that last rites would accomplish anything, for we can't be confident that even if there were a god, Catholicism, rather than, say, Islam, would be the one religion with the right god and beliefs. Faith has no way to find out. In the end, the priests' words were as meaningless and ineffectual a superstition as my avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk when I was a child. Many people would have called Park's recovery a miracle, but it wasn't: it was the result of decades of scientific inquiry in many areas, as well as the diligence of trained doctors, nurses, and rehabilitationists. No prayers or supernatural interventions were involved.

For many, the transition from religion to nonbelief, from faith to rationality, is an awakening. Although that awakening may bring a sense of freedom and self-determination, it is sometimes catalyzed by tragedy and accompanied by regret for a life spent in servitude to superstition.
Such was the case
of Russ Briggs.

Briggs was a member of the Followers of Christ Church in Oregon, a sect that rejects medical care. He and his wife lost two boys shortly after birth,
within a year of each other. One was premature but could easily have been saved had he not been tended by an untrained midwife. After the deaths, Briggs left the church in 1981. When trying to rejoin later, he was rebuffed and ostracized by his family and other Followers, one of whom publicly called him “a liar and a whoremonger.” Tormented by guilt, he continued to visit his sons' graves, vividly describing his pain: “I stood there, a twenty-year-old child, sobbing and hurting, and trying to figure out why my child died. Had there been an incubator there, or modern medicine, I know he would have made it.” He added, “I could have saved them, but I let them die.” This was an act of courage, for Briggs took full responsibility for what he did, avoiding rationalizing or covering his acts with the blanket of excuses called “God's will.” He stands alone, having shed superstition and accepted the reality of what happened.

Briggs later accepted conventional medical care and produced two healthy daughters. Let those who see faith as a virtue—an attitude that allows the Followers to escape legal responsibility for child abuse—ponder what Briggs said when recalling how his religion killed his sons: “It's only when you no longer have that belief that all of a sudden it comes to you: How could I ever have done
that?”

As this book is only tangentially connected with my day-to-day work in evolutionary genetics, I have benefited greatly from the help and encouragement of diverse friends and colleagues, including Dan Barker, Andrew Berry, Russell Blackford, Paul Bloom, Peter Boghossian, Maarten Boudry, Sarah Brosnan, Sean Carroll, Matthew Cobb, Graham Coop, Martin Corcoran, Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, Michael Fisher, Yonatan Fishman, Faye Flam, Caroline Fraser, Karl Giberson, Anthony Grayling, Miranda Hale, Larry Hamelin, Sam Harris, Will Hausman, Alex Lickerman, John Loftus, Eric MacDonald, Anne Magurran, Peggy Mason, Greg Mayer, Steve Pinker, Leslie Rissler, Jason Rosenhouse, Allen Sanderson, Michael Shermer, Grania Spingies, the late Victor Stenger, Sue Strandberg, and Ed Suominen. Hugh Dominic Stiles was indispensable for finding the source of many obscure quotations. Not all of these people, of course, will agree with everything I've written, and I apologize to those whose names have been inadvertently omitted. Many of the ideas and themes in this book were developed in posts on my Web site, whyevolutionistrue.com, and I am grateful to the dozens of readers whose comments contributed to my own thinking. Finally, I benefited once again from the advice and help of my agent, John Brockman, and from the astute editorial skills of Wendy Wolf at Penguin Random House.

Parts of chapter 3 are modified from articles in the
New Republic
and the
Times Literary Supplement
(Coyne 2000, 2009b), while parts of chapter 4, on religious critiques of science, are modified from pieces originally published on my Web site (Coyne 2013a, 2013b) and in
Slate
(Coyne
2013c).

All quotations from the Bible are taken from the King James Version, and definitions from the
Oxford English Dictionary
were accessed from the electronic version available at the University of Chicago Libraries. When using the word “god,” I capitalize it when it refers to the Abrahamic God of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, but leave it lowercase when it refers to generic gods. Because the Abrahamic God is conventionally referred to as “he,” I use that word as well but have not capitalized it.

Epigraphs

“God is an hypothesis”
:
Shelley 1915 [1813], p. 5.

“We have already compared”
:
Ingersoll 1900a, pp. 133–34.

Preface

“The good thing about science”
:
“The good thing about science . . . Neil deGrasse Tyson,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRxx8pen6JY.

But my vague beliefs in a God
: Manier 2008.

the proportion of creationists
:
My book was
Why Evolution Is True
(Coyne 2009a); the Gallup poll on evolution is Gallup 2014.

“The point is not that we atheists can prove”
:
Harris 2007.

Life After Faith
:
Kitcher 2014.

Pascal Boyer's
Religion Explained
and Daniel Dennett's
Breaking the Spell
:
Boyer 2002; Dennett 2006.

Chapter 1: The Problem

“For we often talked of my daughter”
:
Tennyson, “The Village Wife,” http://www .telelib.com/authors/TennysonAlfred/verse/ballads/villagewife.htm/. The original was:

Fur hoffens we talkt o' my darter es died o' the fever at fall: An' I thowt 'twur the will o' the Lord, but Miss Annie she said it wur draäins.

“Then has it in truth come to this”
:
Draper 1875, p. 363.

“persons of every religious denomination”
:
Cornell University 1892.

“So far from wishing to injure Christianity”
:
A. D. White 1932, p. vi.

“Then it was that there was borne”
:
Ibid., p. viii.

And while not all of the “science and religion” books
:
WorldCat search, January 20, 2014. Between 1974 and 1983, WorldCat lists 48,577 books published in English on the topic of religion. Of these, 514, or 1.06 percent, were on “science and religion.” In the next decade, 1984–93, the proportion remained similar: 0.96 percent (606 out of 63,120). But over the last two decades the proportion nearly doubled: 1.40 percent from 1994 to 2003 (1,274 out of 90,906) and 2.33 percent between 2004 and 2013 (2,574 out of 110,259).

“By one report, U.S. higher education”
:
Larson and Witham 1997, p. 89.

“building bridges between science and theology”
:
Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, http://www.ctns.org/index.html.

Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion
:
http://www.aaas.org/DoSER.

the John Templeton Foundation
:
Bains 2011.

the Clergy Letter Project
:
http://www.theclergyletterproject.org.

“The sponsors of many of these”
:
American Association for the Advancement of Science 2006.

But because many Americans believe otherwise
:
Statistics on young-Earth creationism from Gallup 2014.

“The science of evolution does not make claims”
:
Hess 2009.

Because nearly 20 percent of Americans
:
American acceptance of evolution from Gallup 2014; proportion of American nonbelievers from Pew Research 2012a.

“Though faith is above reason”
:
United States Catholic Conference 1994, Section 159.

Further, as we'll see
:
Masci 2009.

When asked what they would do
:
Time
/Roper poll cited in Masci 2007; D. Masci, personal communication.

A related poll
:
Gallup 2007.

A 2009 Pew poll
:
Pew Research 2009a; 68 percent of those
not
affiliated with a church saw a conflict between science and religion.

“Reason #3”
:
Barna Research 2011.

One of the more remarkable demonstrations
:
Citizens for Objective Public Education 2013.

Surveying American scientists
:
Larson and Witham 1997; Pew Research 2009b.

When one moves to scientists
:
Ecklund 2010.

Sitting at the top tier
:
Larson and Witham 1997.

So, among academics
:
Gross and Simmons 2007, 2009.

The first is that elite scientists
:
Ecklund and Scheitle 2007.

But there's further evidence
:
Decline of religious belief in America: Grant 2008, 2014. Older scientists being less religious: Pew Research 2009b; Gallup 2011. Scientists between eighteen and thirty-four years old, for instance, are significantly more likely to believe in God (42 percent) than are scientists over sixty-five (28 percent). Conversely, scientists who reject both God and a “higher power” are more frequent in the older group (48 percent) than in the younger (32 percent).

“Despite a million chances”
:
Coyne 2009a, p. 223.

This makes “nones” the fastest-growing category
:
Pew Research 2012a.

“Sir John believed”
:
John Templeton Foundation, “Philanthropic Vision,” http://www .templeton.org/sir-john-templeton/philanthropic-vision.

“Sir John's own eclectic list”
:
John Templeton Foundation, “Science and the Big Questions,” http://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/core-funding-areas/science-and-the-big-questions.

You may have encountered the foundation
:
John Templeton Foundation, “Big Questions Essay Series,” http://www.templeton.org/signature-programs/big-questions-essay-series.

The foundation's most famous award
:
Bains 2011; John Templeton Foundation, “About the Prize” at http://www.templetonprize.org/abouttheprize.html.

“The Foundational Questions”
:
John Templeton Foundation, “Foundational Questions in Evolutionary Biology (FQEB),” http://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grants/foundational-questions-in-evolutionary-biology-fqeb.

the $100,000 Epiphany Prize
:
Epiphany Prizes, http://www.epiphanyprizes.com.

the World Science Festival
:
John Templeton Foundation, “The World Science Festival: Big Ideas Series,” http://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grants/the-world-science-festival-big-ideas-series.

Important New Atheist works
:
Harris 2004, 2006; Dawkins 2006; Dennett 2006; Hitchens 2007a; Stenger 2007.

“I am the way”
:
John 14:6.

“extraordinary claims require”
:
Hitchens 2003.

“First, we hypothesize”
:
Hamelin 2014.

Chapter 2: What's Incompatible?

“I admit I'm surprised”
:
Angier 2004, pp. 132–33.

“a testable body of knowledge”
:
Shermer 2013, p. 208.

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself”
:
Feynman and Leighton 1985, p. 343.

“The interest I have in believing”
:
Voltaire and Arouet 1763, p. 10: “De plus, l'intérêt que j'ai à croire une chose n'est pas une preuve de l'existence de cette chose.”

“What distinguishes knowledge”
:
Kaufmann 1958, p. 78.

“confirmed to such a degree”
:
Gould 1983, p. 255.

But some people take this too far
:
See Lehrer 2010; Flam 2014; Johnson 2014.

“I can live with doubt”
:
Richard Feynman, BBC
Horizon
interview, 1981, transcribed from video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1tKEvN3DF0.

“the dog sniffing tremendously”
:
Mencken 1922, p. 270.

The participants in the discovery
:
Tunggal 2013.

“As I prepared to leave Little Rock”
:
Gould 1982, p. 17.

about 54 percent of the word's inhabitants:
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html.

“[T]here is a certain uniform deliverance”
:
James 1928, p. 508.

We all know Catholics
:
Rejection of evolution by American Catholics in Masci 2009.

“Religion isn't a philosophical argument”
:
Spufford 2012, pp. 34–35.

“It is a shame that this word”
:
Aslan 2005, p. xviii.

“Now if Christ be preached”
:
1 Corinthians 15:12–14.

“For the practices of the Christian religion”
:
Swinburne 2012, p. 120.

“A religion therefore contains”
:
Stenmark 2012, p. 65 (emphasis in the original).

“The question of truth”
:
Polkinghorne 2011, p. 2.

“A religious tradition”
:
Barbour 2000, pp. 36–37.

“Likewise, religion in almost all of its manifestations”
:
Giberson and Collins 2011, p. 86.

A 2011 survey of belief
:
Ipsos/Reuters 2011.

But three surveys
:
Smith 2012.

“The Untold Story of Creation”
:
Awake!,
March 2014, p. 4, http://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/g201403/untold-story-of-creation/.

“Attributes of God”
:
Franciscan Clerics of Holy Name College 1943, pp. 147–48.

“I take the proposition”
:
Swinburne 2004, p. 7.

“What [Daniel Dennett] calls”
: Plantinga 2011, p. 11.

“It's really important”
:
Bickel and Jantz 1996, p. 40.

Liberal theologians like Karen Armstrong and David Bentley Hart
:
Armstrong 2009; Hart 2013.

The most recent survey
:
Harris Interactive 2013.

To get data on the content
:
Baggini 2011 (includes both survey results and quotation).

The 2011 Ipsos/Reuters poll
:
Ipsos/Reuters 2011.

The world's Muslims
:
Pew Research 2012b.

“Only a small minority of believers”
:
Wieseltier 2013.

“non-negotiables of Christianity”
:
Dembski 2012.

“There's no evidence”
:
Sullivan 2011, responding to Coyne 2011.

“When, however, there is question”
:
Pius XII 1950, para. 37.

“Regardless of how differently”
:
Livingstone 2011, p. 5. My thanks to Jason Rosenhouse for pointing out this quote.

“Augustine says . . . ‘Three general opinions prevail'”
:
Aquinas,
Summa Theologica,
Question 102, Article 1, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1102.htm#article1.

“the tragedy of theology”
:
Bernstein 2006, p. 26.

“The narrative indeed”
:
Augustine 2002, pp. 346–47.

Julian Baggini's online survey
:
Baggini 2011.

And yet it is supported
:
Coyne 2009a.

And indeed, evolution
:
Worldwide and U.S. surveys on evolution from Ipsos/Reuters 2011; Coyne 2012; Gallup 2014.