Coyne on the war between science and faith

[Tim]

@dga471

I think it’s hard to accuse Christian scientists on this forum, for example, of compartmentalization …

I do not believe that either Coyne or myself were making that, rather specific, accusation about “Christian scientists on this forum”.

That specific accusation appears to have been made by @John_Harshman to you here.

@dga471

… when a considerable amount of our time is spent actually devoted to examining how science and theology interact, dealing with contradictions and tensions, and answering objections from non-Christians.

I think we must each have to answer for ourselves (hampered as we each are, by our own individual biases and preconceptions) whether such examinations have yielded satisfactory results.

However, if you think that there are any, particularly cogent, threads that I might have overlooked, and that might give me a more positive understanding of such ‘interactions’, then please point them out.

More particularly, I think many of the issues that I might raise with you on the topic of how apt or applicable the term “compartmentalization” is have already been raised with you by others on this thread. I therefore do not see much purpose to rehashing such issues with you here.

@dga471

I think the accusation of some militant atheists that Christian scientists are all compartmentalizing, is itself a form of compartmentalization. It explains how Jerry Coyne keeps saying the same simplistic, PRATT things about religion despite having written for decades on the subject. It explains how Richard Dawkins publishes an atheist book for teenagers containing factual errors so basic that a quick search on Wikipedia could correct them.

Yes, Dawkins isn’t a historian, so probably should have the wisdom to STFU about the subject of history (or even to hire an actual historian to ghost-write the historical bits of his book). But the same thing could be said for the very many militant Christians, many of them proudly taking the title ‘Christian apologist’, who make equally ill-advised statements about things like science, and ‘what atheists really think’. I do not however think that either Dawkins or these Christian apologists are particularly on-topic for this thread.

Are “militant atheists” compartmentalising when they ‘accuse’ Christian scientists of “all compartmentalizing”? It’s possible. But given that no detail has been given of what they (or maybe it is “we”) are accused of compartmentalising between, it is less than clear that this accusation should be taken seriously.

Should the original “accusation” be taken any more seriously, beyond the mere fact that it actually specifies what is being compartmentalised between? I don’t know. It seems a reasonable explanation to me – but I have my own biases. On the other hand, I do not see much in the way of substantiation for the rival ‘commensurability’ and ‘integration’ theories, at least not as yet, either.