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Donning my asbestos suit...


-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Russell [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 4:18 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: NOMA

At 13:42 17/05/2005, Jonah Cohen quoted:

>The people of a sovereign state attempt to settle by
>referendum the question of whether man is a product of organic evolution;
>for them to attempt a popular verdict on the Einstein theory would be no
>less absurd."
>
>           -Scientific American, July, 1929

It seems to me that ASTC members will not succeed in calming this damaging 
conflict either by yawning and ignoring it or by cheering for their 
favourite side.
==============
First off, I daresay that the quote in my sig (partly seen above) remains
quite true, and quite relevant. I'll go so far as to speculate this:
conservatives and the religious right in America have elected their
candidate to the white house + a majority in congress, and this makes them
very frustrated that they can't do everything they want. "We won the
election, how dare scientists/liberals tell us we can't decide what gets
taught in schools!" This seems to be their attitude on things other than
evolution, too. (ie judges who have made rulings conservatives disagree with
have gotten barely veiled threats of violence --- from members of Congress!)
==============

In my contribution on 18th April (Is this can of beans round or square?) I 
suggested that ASTC might consider an official endorsement of Stephen Jay 
Gould's 'NOMA'  (Nonoverlapping Magisteria) principle. 
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html

============
I'll recommend reading Gould's "Rock of Ages" - it's a good book, thought
provoking and I agree with a lot of it. I admit, the acronym NOMA (Non
Overlapping Magisteria) struck me at first glance as being incredibly
pretentious and a warning flare that the book was going to be a bag of
pompous wind... but I was wrong on that, thankfully.

I'll agree with Ian, partly, that a NOMA-esque strategy (science + religion
handle separate issues, the "conflict" between them is overblown an
needless). For example, when the issue comes up, excellent points to make
include:
1) Evolution does not state, nor imply, that there is no God. Heck, Darwin
himself was no atheist. Evolution could have been created by God, or could
exist without a God. Science doesn't (and really can't) address the question
of which it is on that last point. We'll leave that to people to determine
for themselves.
2) Religion and Science base their ideas on different criteria (roughly
speaking: faith and evidence, respectively). We just don't want creationism
in science class because that's not what science class is for. It's the same
reason we wouldn't suggest teaching molecular biology in church. 

That being said...
===============

In many encounters with militant creationists, I have personally found that 
a suitably packaged, sensitively presented version of Stephen Jay Gould's 
'NOMA'  approach softens hostility from all but the most prejudiced 
hardliners. It works. 

===========
My worry is, there are seem to be an awful lot of the prejudiced hardliners
out there. Do we really think a sensitively presented version of NOMA will
soften people who:

* Call the teaching of evolution a reason for the Columbine massacre?
(that's Tom DeLay, majority leader of the House of Representatives)
* Say that belief in evolution caused the serial killings of Jeffrey Dahmer?
(That one is the very powerful lobbying group Focus on the Family.)

The problem is that many anti-evolutionists don't want their magisteria to
be non-overlapping. They want them to be very overlapping, indeed. To them,
anything separated from a big dose of religion is wrong in the scientific
AND moral sense of the word. Whatever their purpose, they couch their
arguments as though they seriously believe evidence for evolution is thin,
and thus "the controversy" needs be taught in science class. And the issue
goes way beyond that for them. Here's more from Focus on the Family:

"[the issue of teaching evolution] is the key to many issues, including
abortion, marriage, sexuality, bioethics, human rights and so on."

Those are the words of a very pro OMA worldview.

Sorry if I've gotten too political.

Jonah Cohen
Outreach & Public Programs Manager
Science Center of Connecticut

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