Religious faith and interest in basic science

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Okay great. And you were initially pretty good about saying you were discussing creationists in general, not us or me specifically. That changed for some reason I don’t quite understand.

We are exploring how utility can be used to justify basic science. This is no different than discussing the “Usefulness of Usleess science,” which you yourself cited. So these statement a total non-sequitor:

We could say the same thing of your posts about the usefulness of useless science, so this just is not coherent. Rather, what had been said, for example, was:

You raised a good question:

There have been studies done on this. I’ll have to look them up, but it is too simplistic to say that is devaluing basic science. If I recall correctly, the leading factors are:

  1. Value on helping people directly (which is not a distaste for indirectly helping people)
  2. Perception that basic scientists are anti-religious, often fed by anti-religious rhetoric by public scientists.
  3. Belief that some fields (like evolution) are incompatible with their faith.

It is notable that #1 clearly applies to African Americans, who are underrepresented in both medicine and basic science, but still tend towards medicine. I’d be cautious about your reasoning about #1 and creationists, because that would seem to apply also to AAs.

For me, I was a YEC creationists, and I was pre-med. I also really loved science for science’s sake, but hadn’t actually been exposed to basic scientific research. That exposure during undergrad changed everything, and drew me eventually into a scientific career. Often what is lacking for both creationists and AA is that meaningful exposure to actual basic science research. That exposure doesn’t happen when the anti-religious rhetoric is strong.

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For the record I’ve seen virtually none of that in practice among my colleagues. I actually was invited to participate in an interfaith panel discussion here at Marshall discussing these issues. I’ve exposed many many students from high school to undergrad to graduate to experiences in basic research in biodiversity, ornithology and ecology and evolution. Never in that time have I had the need to say anything about anyone’s religious beliefs or lack thereof.

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Yes, that is true of most scientific departments, but many creationists never get to experience that tolerance. They are more likely to be exposed to basic biology research through other venues where vocal scientist are often making anti-religious statements. This often is something they would never do within their departments or to their students directly. The fact that this is public, in books, interviews, blogs, and forums, increases its impact on the public.

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OK now I think you are the one conflating creationists with religious people in general.

For the vast majority of my students I have no idea really what they believe or don’t believe and really don’t care all that much.

I’ve provided experiences in basic research for way more students than I can keep track of and many, some starting in my lab when they were in high school, have moved into all sorts of careers. Some have PhDs, some are physicians, veterinarians, teachers, etc. I just take issue with the suggestion I’m somehow turning students away.

I think it’s important to note however that it’s possible to turn atheist students away as well and students who may not fit in traditional societal roles if faculty are too outspoken about mingling their faith and science. I’ve served as faculty mentor for the campus secular student alliance and across many schools in the US these students can also easily be alienated by religious faculty, not to mention the challenges faced by LGBTQ students.

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Certainly, it’s just a question of how to explain and justify science in our pluralistic society. In such a society, tolerance and respect becomes important.

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I think this explains a great deal, actually, about the nature of creationism. The fact is that most people simply aren’t very interested in biology, and we make a mistake if we assume, when discussing matters with a creationist, that he is interested in biology. He may be, or he may (far more likely) not. Being interested in it exactly insofar as people have told him it conflicts with his religion, and utterly uninterested otherwise, is the usual state of things.

One place one can see this is in my favorite weird venue, the Amazon review. It’s quite impressive how a book like Darwin’s Doubt, with its very light and easy-reading treatment of technical issues, or even something substantially easier to read like Axe’s Undeniable, gets a lot of comments that run along the lines of “this book is HIGHLY technical and most people will find it difficult to follow.” Plainly these are not people who have taken time to inform themselves on biological topics in general, and who then said, “gee, I wonder what dissenting views there might be on the Cambrian explosion” and ran off to buy Meyer’s book. They are people who have never done any reading in biological science at all.

And they’ve been taught, in many cases, that “Darwinism” was invented for the purpose of destroying religion. They’ve been actively discouraged from seeking an education in the relevant science. Seeing all of actual biology as an anti-religion movement, they naturally think that they need to know why all of actual biology is wrong; and, Dunning-Krueger being what it is, they do not tend to understand that a man who wishes to show that all of biology is wrong will, before he does anything else, need to develop expertise in biology so that he can set about the process of putting matters straight.

Not a lot of 'em, to be sure. I think it’s not a viable niche. If you learn too much biology, you can’t remain a creationist. You can either learn less biology than that and remain a creationist, or learn plenty of biology, understand why creationism is false, and go on publishing creationist books anyway, as the DI fellows do.

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When I was a museum curator I was involved in many local birding and natural history clubs, like the local Audubon chapter and various clubs associated with area wildlife refuges and native plant societies. These people were intensely interested in natural history and conservation and very interested in the science. I was aware of none of them who were creationists or sympathetic to creationist cause. I just have noticed that in my experience as people become more interested in natural history they are less likely to buy into creationist arguments and very vocal creationists again in my experience have virtually no working knowledge of natural history and this goes for creationists with PhDs too.

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I am a bit of a broken record sometimes so my apologies if I’ve said this previously, but: this is why I think that the very, very best thing we can do in the long-term battle against creationist pseudoscience is simply to make sure that every child in this country gets a decent education in biology. When I say that, people often think I mean a decent education in “evolution” specifically, but I really don’t.

I had an old-fashioned high school biology teacher who basically did a major phylum every week – we saw films, he lectured, we read textbook chapters, and by Friday we had a decent high-school level summary of, say, Platyhelminthes. And then next week it’d be the nematodes, or the arthropods, or someone like that. I feel we were taught about evolution, but honestly, I cannot actually recall whether evolution as such was really talked about very much.

Well, that education, in the 1970s, was the last I saw of formal instruction in biology. I went to college where I thought I was a poet rather than a scientist (I don’t know if I would have made a great scientist, but it is at least now clear that I was not poised to become a great poet), and so I never really followed it up until I began to read books on biology years later. But after that class, I don’t think there was ever any possibility of my being a creationist (I’m not a theist, either, so I don’t know why I WOULD become one, but that’s another question). The variety of life is just such a compelling subject, and the common features of living things are so plain. I cannot think that very many people could learn those things and still come out of it and sign on to a cartoon-show version of natural history.

But gosh, I don’t see that being done much these days. There is an emphasis in the schools now on a sort of demonstrative method in science classes, where one explores HOW science is done. I am sure that there are benefits to that, and that it combats creationism in its own particular way, but everything you put INTO a curriculum squeezes something else OUT OF a curriculum. And while teaching science as a “method” is marvelous, I hate to see children not learning as much of what the results of that method are.

In the law, you’ve got to learn a certain amount of what we call “black-letter law” at the start. What are the basic rules that you won’t get very far by questioning, that underly a field in the law? Knowing the black letter law is very important, and knowing the methods of legal scholarship and argumentation are ALSO very important. But you can’t even apply those methods of scholarship and argumentation to the law if you don’t have a certain amount of black-letter law committed to memory so that you have a proper context to put difficult questions into.

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Yes! I agree 100%. That students can enter into an undergraduate education and still believe in young earth creationism or doubt evolution or even just without a broad exposure to biological diversity is an indictment on our educational system.

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Not life, but this just in…

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Hello, everyone. Not much time to participate here any more – too much work in my real life. But I noticed this discussion because Daniel highlighted one of my previous remarks, and I got notification. Thanks, Daniel. Glad you found my comment useful.

This is a good discussion here – more constructive than many discussions here, because it addresses some large general questions of broad social and intellectual concern, and is not merely more partisan quarreling over evolution or creationism etc. I find myself agreeing with many of the statements made by Daniel, Joshua, and several others, including Herman Mays (though I don’t agree with him on everything). Some brief points:

  1. Yes, it is a reasonable justification of basic research that it often leads to practical benefits that we cannot yet see.

  2. However, the original motivation of science, going back to the original meaning of the Greek word theoria, is to understand nature, that understanding being something sweet and noble for its own sake, regardless of practical consequences. I think that’s the best motive for pursuing basic research.

  3. Of course the amount spent on basic research has to be weighed against other social needs – running hospitals and police forces and fire stations and urban renewal and education and the military and so on. This is not a decision for scientists alone, but for all citizens; after all, the citizens are ultimately paying for everything. It’s therefore a completely legitimate debate about how many billions should be spent on building bigger colliders, etc. It’s not an “anti-science” spirit that raises questions about such expenditures. As Joshua points out, even scientists themselves don’t always agree what research spending should have priority, and even scientists themselves can be concerned that a few favored megaprojects may divert funds away from hundreds of equally worthy or more worthy scientific investigations.

  4. Someone above asked what motive a non-theist would have for pursuing pure science with no practical applications. Aristotle, who was no theist (his God was not the God of theism), thought that theoretical knowledge was its own justification; knowing that one knows something about nature is one of the highest pleasures, if not the highest pleasure, available to man. Aristotle didn’t offer any practical social benefits coming from the study of nature; he took it for granted that the truly theoretical man would understand the intrinsic value of the activity. And even later, Newton couldn’t have cared less that one day his discoveries about planetary motion would allow us to have satellite TV. He would have pursued the same questions even if God had told him personally that there would never be any practical application for his discoveries, but only the satisfaction of being able to think God’s thoughts after him. Being able to think God’s thoughts after him was reward enough for a lifetime of work in physics and mathematics. So Newton the theist and Aristotle the non-theist had a justification for pure research that was unaffected by the prospect of potential technological or social benefits. Support for pure research into nature therefore does not require theism. Conversely, rejecting theism does not require one to adopt practical applications as the only motive for scientific research.

  5. I liked the point of Herman Mays way up top about organismal biology. It does seem as if the focus in biology has moved more and more to cells and genetics, and, increasingly, to computer models regarding genetics, evolution, etc. I have nothing against the study of cells and genetics or the use of computer models, but biology shouldn’t lose touch with the natural entities – multicellular plants and animals – that it started out studying, way back in the days of Aristotle and Theophrastus. Darwin was a good descriptive biologist, and he greatly admired Aristotle, whom he thought to be another good descriptive biologist. If I were a biologist and in charge of a biology program, I would make basic organismal courses mandatory at my institution. (I’d also make history and philosophy of biology, or at least a general course on the history and philosophy of science, mandatory, but that’s another topic.)

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First, I would like to point out that of course we shouldn’t pursue basic research at the cost of hospitals, basic infrastructure, medicine, etc. But, in the United States where all basic research funding combined is minuscule we aren’t even remotely under anyone’s wildest imagination close to that situation.

Studying evolution or astronomy or the origin of the earth or particle physics or biodiversity isn’t taking away from these goals in the slightest. Saying it is I think is laughable.

If people aren’t receiving adequate health care or roads aren’t being maintained or new drugs aren’t being discovered it’s not because the United States has spent too much money on research in bird speciation. It’s about values. We simply do not value health care, infrastructure, the environment, social safety nets, education or basic research in the way that we should. It’s not a zero sum game. We can do better as a country in all these areas.

I think we’ve devalued basic research (and really just pure scholarship in general whether it’s philosophy, humanities or science) for lots of reasons among those reasons however is the tendency to see science purely as a means to an end. Creationists, and I’m talking to some degree about creationists in the broad sense as well, very often contribute to this because they often want science to conform to their religious beliefs and used as a prop for those beliefs.

People like Nathaniel Jeanson of AiG is not interested in biogeography or population genetics or speciation because he thought they were interesting questions in and of themselves. He only became interested to the extent he could present the science to serve an end, to prop up his beliefs. This happens very often when creationists with some scientific background decide they want to speak up at the intersection of faith and science. It’s only then when they discover a newfound interest in anthropology or population genetics or systematics.

Most creationists with a scientific background come from biomedical research, clinical practice, industry, or engineering, all fields that use science as a means to an end. Thinking of science in these utilitarian terms is necessary for turning science into applications but if it’s the ONLY way you’ve learned to think about science then it contributes to an erosion of trust in science and devaluation of basic research. To me this is just one of the many casualties of carelessly mingling your religious beliefs with science.

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Me too.

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While I appreciate science for science’s sake, we are a very small minority of the population. Most people, believers or not, do not value science for science’s sake.

Anecdotally, the atheists and agnostics in my life are far more utilitarian in their views of science than the theists. The theists value basic research due to reasons similar to @dga471’s views, while I have been questioned by non-believers for working on basic research that do not have direct economic or utilitarian goals. Indeed, something like @dga471’s reasoning is the one behind the Catholic Church’s patronage of the sciences in the middle ages.

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I would argue that when someone says they are doing basic science to glorify God or to worship God then that itself constitutes a kind of utility.

I don’t have a problem with utilitarian science even science serving a personal religious utility but the beauty about valuing knowledge for its own sake is that it works for everyone independent of their religious beliefs.

And yes I agree, seeing science as purely a utilitarian endeavor cuts across lots of different sorts of people regardless of their beliefs, and this attitude generally has contributed to anti-intellectualism especially in the US.

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I do not disagree to this. My point was that in my view it is “less utilitarian” than doing science or wanting to support science because it will generate the next commercial or technological breakthrough.

At least laypersons who value science because it showcased the work of some divine being is still interested in the scientific results themselves (e.g., how electron works). In contrast, I find laypersons who are interested in science merely for their technological benefits to only care about the utilitarian end product (e.g., the new engine that can be made by knowing how electron works).

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I might take issue with that to some degree. Let’s say someone justifies doing basic science because they see investigating nature as a form of worship to glorify their god. That is their utility they associate with science. Let’s now say they wake up one day and decide their is no god. Then what? Does basic science lose its value? I think we need to emphasize the value of science independent of any particular person’s religious convictions. Science doesn’t just belong to the religious.

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Yes, but it’s a utility of a different kind than commercial or practical utility, or the apologetical utility that Jeanson et al. are interested in. This is because the notion of basic science glorifying God is a very general one that is applicable to many fields of scientific endeavor, and are not dependent on whether the latest results happen to come out one way or the other.

One can say the same with anyone who studies science for the sake of itself - what if one day they decide it’s not interesting anymore. Then what?

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It is also no different, from a utility point of view, than @Herman_Mays studying birds for personal edification. This is just a different way of describing essentially the same thing.

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I agree to this. My agreement with people who value science due to their religious conviction is a compromise, not the ideal case, as is my agreement with people who value science for their commercial or technological purposes. I am not idealistic enough to think that we can make everyone to like science for science’s sake.

To your other point:

Yes, basic science loses its value to that person. I don’t see what’s wrong with it - I’m not going to force them to still value basic science. This is the same as a person who loses interest in research in say, general relativity, once they realized there is no commercial applications to it.

I also never have any experience with any scientist of whom only one thing (e.g., their religious conviction) to be their sole motivation in doing science.

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