Biologos: People To Ponder

Conversation Side Conversation
21

Good; you are being consistent. But Eugenie Scott and the NCSE were not consistent, because they allowed that ID could be taught in courses other than science. That was the only point I was trying to make.

As for the case you are upset about, I haven’t followed it, but if she is endorsing teaching the correctness of particular religious views in the classroom in public schools, I’m against what she is doing. However, I don’t think government employees should be banned from all religious expression in the public sphere. They should, however, when expressing private views, always strip their communications of any reference to their government positions, so that no endorsement of the state is implied. A government employee should be able to write, on a Christian website, speaking as an American with the right of free speech, “I think abortion is evil”; but the employee should sign her name as “Jane Smith”, not “Jane Smith, Operations Manager, Polk County Public Hospital.”

22

As an organization NCSE is suppose to be only concerned with science education. So all discussions of what is taught in philosophy classes at the high school level is really outside the scope of NCSE.

A government employee does give up his/her personal freedom of speech when speaking/acting as a government official. For example a Police Chief can go to church in his uniform coming off his shift at work. However He can’t go in his police chief uniform and be the ministerial speaker at the church. Regarding writing under a assumed name, that is not allowed either as a government employee can’t do that under the terms of his employment. However, no one gives up his personal freedom of religion to practice your religion as you see fit privately.

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23


The evolutionary biologist and confirmed atheist warned that it was virtually impossible to study English literature without knowing the background of Christianity.

It’s not a bad thing if everyone is presented not as a reason for belief in the religion, but as a reason for their formative years. Dawkins’ experience could fit in that description above very well–from his “Magic of Reality,” his reasoning was that naturalism explains everything and is evident to boys and girls, and doesn’t need God to confound things. It’s not a bad blurb about Dawkins, if that’s what she has used.

I think the jury’s still out. I would encourage you to contact her directly. Maybe that will get the most reaction, find out what she says about others, and maintain personal contacts. Thanks.

24

Richard Dawkins is not a public school official in Sonoma County California. Unfortunately I have already got the legal machinery going. If you want to contact her and tell her about that is fine with me. I really don’t want anyone to get hurt in their careers if this was an innocent mistake. She (and Biologos) can easily clean up the mess that they created. Biologos doesn’t seem to realize that they are considered in the same category as AIG and DI in legal matters like this.

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25

This doesn’t really deal with the point I was raising. The point is that Eugenie Scott saw no constitutionality issues with teaching ID in a Philosophy class – which is an illogical conclusion if she really believes that ID is inherently a religious teaching. So either she doesn’t think ID is religious teaching (in which case there would no constitutional objection to teaching it in science class, thought there might be other reasons for not teaching it in science class), or she was being logically inconsistent in saying ID would be fine in other classes. But anyhow, you are clear from this inconsistency, so we can let the point drop.

I don’t know why you mentioned assumed names – I hadn’t suggested that. I had suggested using one’s real name, with no mention of one’s job as a public employee.

If we apply your police chief example strictly, it would seem that you believe that Francis Collins shouldn’t have had to sever all ties with BioLogos (a Christian organization) merely because he took on the job as NIH head. He should have been allowed to continue to write columns about faith and science there, as long as he wasn’t wearing his NIH badge in the photo of himself at the top of the column, and as long as BioLogos didn’t append information about his NIH position. For example, it should have been OK for his column to be headed by, “Francis Collins, Christian geneticist”. But Jerry Coyne and others insisted that Collins should have to cease all BioLogos activity during his tenure as NIH head. That sounds more strict than you would insist upon. Coyne believes that the NIH head has the duty to make his personal faith completely invisible to the public; you seem to be saying that heads of government agencies have no such obligation, as long at their participation in faith activities does not in any way bring in their governmental position. If so, I like your view better than Jerry’s.

26

I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t know if that is true (that they are not allowed).

I am a non-religious person, and I do support the non-establishment clause of the first amendment. However, I don’t find anything particularly objectionable about that statement. It is a statement that seems to argue that religious people are not necessarily anti-science and some of them are very successful scientists. I do not see how this compromises the first amendment.

Yes, there is a little bit of a flavor of religious testimony there. But it does not appear to be attempt to persuade students to adopt a faith based view. And, to avoid bias, I would like to see an accompanying statement about another scientist who has not adopted a faith based view.

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27

Thanks. I think that the principle of separation of church and state is above law–so I personally disagree with teaching religion as anything other than comparative or historical in England public schools, too (Dawkins is speaking of comparative religion here, so one can learn the background/history of what one is talking about and make critical comparison. It is on the order of teaching history).

I would personally recommend, for example, not incorporating a given religious belief into affairs and rituals of state, so as not to exclude nonbelievers who are not part of that sect. Nor would I recommend leading students in any kind of prayer if one is the secular head, no matter what government one follows.

So–I would think that we can discuss Sonoma/California and US laws with the idea of a higher rule in mind. Maybe they don’t go far enough; certainly, we can all make mistakes. We are all working to make this better (or we hope we are).

I do think it’s a better idea to go to the person who you think is doing the wrong thing in person first, before hammering them–it does sometimes help to get more reaction. You may even make a friend. However, legal action is sometimes necessary. And maybe the experience here predisposes towards that.

However, if there is indeed good reason for this, and she has been very fair handed–it’s possible that Freedom From Religion will get egg on their faces. And that is something that discussion in person would have avoided.

28

Constitutionality is determined by attorney’s and the courts. Once things like this are in their hands they usually take on a life of their own. Predicting the outcomes of constitutionality are rarely simple and predictable.

For Collins to be confirmed by the Senate, he had to agree to severe all formal ties with Biologos. That was an agreement he made with Senators. I am little less strict to Jerry Coyne regarding Dr. Francis Collins (mainly because Dr. Collins knows the rules and plays by them). I am okay with private citizen, Francis Collins coming to an evening jam session at a Biologos conference on his own expense (and with no honorarium) and playing his guitar with the NT Wright and shaking hands and wishing people well. He is among friends and supporters and he is not there as a representative of the Government setting Policy.

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29

Interesting insight. Playing by the rules does help. And yes, probably a good thing he’s separate.

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30

Contrast that with government officials who don’t play by the rules - VP Mike Pence and Sec of Ed Betsy DeVos come to mine. How about Tony Perkins as an international religious freedom official? Look at the Governors of Texas and Kentucky, you can’t tell it they are Chief Ministers of Texas and Kentucky .

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31

Which reminds me–have you ever seen the Youtube “Canada for President”? Wasn’t there a petition to build a wall on their southern border towards November 2016, when they heard Trump might win? (tongue in cheek)

I guess I’m a bit under read–I haven’t actually read the instances you allude to about the elected officials. I’m almost afraid to ask. I’ll keep an eye out for them.

Wasn’t it Andrew Jackson who actually had a law against sedition passed once? So–things could be worse. I think.

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32

That’s fine, but the point is that if Judge Jones’s understanding of ID were strictly applied to some future case where ID was taught in a Philosophy class, ID would have to banned from the class as religious teaching and hence unconstitutional. And Eugenie liked Judge Jones’s understanding. I realize she is not a lawyer or judge, and that the final decision would not be hers in such a case. But that’s immaterial to the point I was making. The point I was making was that she was thinking and arguing incorrectly, illogically, and inconsistently.

Of course, we have to remember that she belonged to an advocacy group and that statements made by advocacy groups are not always to be taken as theoretically consistent. Sometimes advocacy groups say things that they know to be strictly speaking incorrect or illogical but which they think will win them support in the public policy war. Saying that ID would be OK in philosophy was probably her way of soothing the tempers of parents who think there should be some place in the schools for discussing ideas such as design. It made her sound more flexible and accommodating, and a little less overtly anti-religious. That’s probably why she said it. But that doesn’t make it a logical position to take, given her premises.

I agree with what you said about Francis Collins, as far as it goes. What would you say to Francis Collins writing the occasional column for some Christian magazine – without pay, and doing the writing after Government offices are closed for the night – arguing as a Christian scientist (not as head of the NIH) that a scientist can coherently believe in evolution through natural laws but also in the miraculous resurrection of Jesus? Would that be OK with you, too, as long as it wasn’t done on a daily basis (maybe just once or twice a year), and his connection with the NIH was never mentioned? I think Coyne would say, “No way!”

33

The Dover case is now the benchmark that all future cases will be decided on. It is the precedence. Any new lawsuits would have to be substantially different than Dover for a ruling to be any different than Dover. So all an attorney will need to do is to cite Dover, and a judge would be required to rule the same way unless there were some extenuating new merits to the case that would say otherwise. In that case it would result in two different rulings at Federal District court level requiring a look by the US Court of Appeals. Dover makes as a matter of law that Creationism in all its forms (YEC, OEC, TE/EC and ID) are religion and cannot be discussed in public schools.

There is a big difference of what an adocacy group publishes and the statements of any government official. A government official speaks for the government which at all times must remain neutral with regard to religion. So Francis Collins is not allow to write a column for some Christian magazine without pay and at night after his government job is done for several reasons. 1) Dr. Collins is never off duty as Director NIH, it is 24/7 365 days a year.high-level government position 2) He must not favor one religion over any others as well as non-religion, so Collins’ column should be able to be published in a Islamic magazine or an atheist magazine or both without any favoritism being shown to one group over any other. If Collins has policy issues to discuss, it should be published by the NIH directly to all Americans regardless of faith or no faith as an official statement on health matters by the US Government (which Collin does regularly by twitter, facebook, and the NIH Director’s offical website)

34

I agree with you that Dover will likely be cited as a precedent in future cases. However, at the time of the trial, it was pointed out by legal experts that technically, the ruling is only binding within that court district, so it is not correct to say that any future judge elsewhere must follow the path taken by Judge Jones. The most that can be said is that future judges will be urged by attorneys to follow the Dover precedent, and that many if not most of them will probably do so.

You are wrong when you call ID a species of creationism – that is factually false, based on the definition of ID as provided by Discovery Institute – and since they invented the term, or rather gave it its current form, they are the only authority regarding its proper use. In fact, they have a whole information article explaining precisely how ID differs from creationism. However, you may be referring to the fact that Judge Jones treated ID as creationism, and that lawyers in future court cases would try to induce future judges to accept Judge Jones’s conclusion as a given. I don’t doubt it. But a judge is not a slave to precedent; precedent is important, but following a single precedent is not a binding requirement. Indeed, judges are often faced with incompatible precedents coming from different court districts, and have to decide which to follow.

I don’t follow your logic about Collins. A police chief is also police chief 24/7 – he can be awakened at any hour of the night for an emergency (say, a kidnapping or random shooter occupying a restaurant), and in fact police chiefs in cities of any decent size are probably called in to work in the wee hours of the morning far more often than Collins is. So the 24/7 distinction is not supported by the facts.

In any case, you said you didn’t mind a police chief attending a church service in his uniform, yet for a Jew or Hindu or Muslim who observes the uniformed police chief entering a church, that could be seen as a violation religious neutrality by a state official. I’m surprised you wouldn’t insist that the police chief remove his uniform and get into plainclothes before entering the church, or at least remove his hat and cover up his uniform with a trenchcoat so that neither uniform nor badge would be visible, and that he not use what is obviously a police vehicle to transport him to the church. I actually would support such restrictions.

So if there is any principle operating in your distinction, it is that merely local government officials can plainly indicate their religious preferences, but national government officials can’t. I wonder where state government officials fall within that spectrum, on your view.

Note that in the example I gave, Collins’s article would be only about the compatibility of being a good scientist with believing in miracles such as the resurrection, not an argument that the resurrection actually happened. As it would be merely a statement about logical compatibility, it would not constitute an endorsement of Christianity in particular – the same argument would hold good for Jewish, Christian, Hindu or any other alleged miracles. Nor would it be discriminating against atheists, since the article would not argue that miracles actually occurred, but only that believing that they occurred is not incompatible with being a good scientist. It would not deny that being an atheist is also compatible with being a good scientist. So no American’s view would be singled out as religiously inferior. The message would be that you can be a good scientist and believe in, or not believe in, miracles, that you can be a good scientist and believe in, or not believe in, God. I don’t see any constitutional violation in that, even if it’s stated by the head of the NIH, as long as it is stated in a private venue which no one is forced to read or subsidize, and with an explicit disclaimer that the writer is speaking purely in his private capacity as citizen and not in his government capacity. But of course Jerry Coyne personally believes that anyone who accept miracles is to that extent not a good scientist, and doesn’t want the head of the NIH differing from him publicly on that, not even in a private venue.

It looks as if we agree on about 3/4 of this subject, but not completely. But I can live with that, and I’m happy to drop the subject if you are.

35

This is not true, @Patrick. In fact, @Eddie continues to castigate BioLogos for not teaching religion more.

36

@eddie I’m not sure the purpose of your post. It seems everyone agrees:

  1. Dover determined ID to be creationism and this is the most recent ruling in the federal courts.

  2. Many of the key principles in ID are creationists (not meaning this pejoratively).

  3. DI disputes the Dover finding that ID is creationism, but most scientists agree with the finding.

  4. A forum argument on the particulars of 1-3 is only relevant in helping improve public understanding of where things currently stand, and won’t alter the situation.

That seems to be the situation. Everyone, it appears, would agree with these facts. Why react to people saying it as they see it (3)? Why relitigate it here?

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37

Joshua:

I agree with the first two points, though I don’t understand the parenthetical addition after the second point, which appears not to make sense. [Later note: thanks for the correction; it makes sense now.]

Regarding your third point, I agree with the first clause, but the second clause contains a statement you could not possibly know. Unless you have personally polled every scientist in the world about their opinion on the Dover verdict, and counted the votes, you cannot declare what “most scientists” say on the subject. The most you could say is that most scientists of your acquaintance, who are aware of the Dover Trial, agree with the finding. And most scientists of your acquaintance, who are aware of the Dover Trial, would not amount to more than a very small fraction of all the scientists in the world.

I was not questioning Patrick’s statements about what the Dover Judge ruled. I know exactly what he ruled, and why. But there is a difference between saying, “The Dover Judge ruled that ID is creationism” and saying “ID is creationism”. The first statement is true, the second false.

The fact that many ID proponents are also creationists does not mean that ID, as defined by the Discovery Institute is creationism. In fact, the DI definition is accompanied on the DI website by web pages specifying precisely where ID differs from creationism.

If Patrick wants to say that a court has ruled that ID is creationism, he will get no pushback from me. But if he says on his own authority that ID is creationism (which he in fact did), he will get pushback.

The DI has carefully defined ID in such a way that it is very easy to distinguish it from creationism. The most obvious point is that creationism, as that term is commonly used in American discourse (for about the past 100 years!), subjects scientific investigation to the court of the Bible, interpreted in a literal manner. ID arguments – I mean ID arguments for design in nature, not arguments from creationist ID proponents in the Crossway book against the theology of BioLogos TEs, etc. – make no use at all of the Bible. ID as a theoretical enterprise, being completely detached from Biblical exegesis, cannot be creationism, which, whether Old Earth or Young Earth, is inherently attached to Biblical exegesis of a particular kind.

One can criticize ID for all kinds of things. One can object to this or that scientific claim. But one can’t say that ID arguments for design in nature rest on any interpretation of the Bible. They simply don’t. And therefore ID is not and cannot be creationism, even if many ID proponents are also in fact creationists.

I’m not trying to re-try the Dover case here. I already admitted that on the narrower verdict the Dover decision was completely right. On the broader question of the nature of ID as an enterprise, it was wrong, because the judge was an ignoramus in philosophy, science, and theology, nowhere near intellectually capable of following difficult discussions about demarcation criteria, etc. He badly conflated the creationist use of ID language (of which the Dover Board was guilty) with the theoretical substance of ID (which is about design detection, not Biblical exegesis).

If Patrick is merely recording what the Judge decided, that is fine. But he appears to me to be going beyond that, to making a judgment of his own that ID is creationism. If he wants to make that claim, he has to defend it, based on the writings about design detection by Meyer, Dembski, Behe, etc. I would ask him where he finds creationism (as normally defined) in Darwin’s Black Box, No Free Lunch, or Signature in the Cell. I have not found any creationist arguments in these works.

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You North Americans have painted yourself into a ridiculous position over separation of church and state. Here’s this silly argument over getting police officers or teachers getting fired for, maybe, mentioning something about religion in public - when you elect your presidents insisting that you know about whether they are Christians, Muslims or Mormons - and even whether they privately believe in Creationism.

If even Trump has to establish some tenuous link to a church to get elected, then this whole “separation” bit is spurious. His head would roll if he doesn’t say that his prayers are with the victims of any disaster. But maybe the President isn’t a government employee.

In every free nation of the world, governments are marked by their diversity of religious views, not by pretending that they haven’t any, or being afraid to admit it in case some atheist joker brings a court case because they didn’t keep it a secret, like being a clandestine paedophile.

If government employees sacrifice their freedom of speech when they get hired, you have disenfranchised 17% (38% in Washington DC) of your more public-spirited citizens. Bad move - the prophet Daniel would have lost his job in America.

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39

I agree with George; BioLogos has not advocated inserting religion into public school science classes. And thank goodness for that, given the sort of religion that a good number of BioLogos writers appear to hold! :slight_smile:

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40

Then what was yesterday’s posting by Biologos and the Science Curriculum Coordinator of Sonoma County all about?