Robert Shedinger: Religion, Science and Evolution: Confessions of a Darwin Skeptic

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Yes, and there’s a great deal more phylogenetic analysis that might be applied to Shedinger’s book! One reason I said in my review that it was “relatively” but not “absolutely” free of quote-mining is that there are some quote-mines in there but they are probably his uncritical re-use of quotes given to him by the DI rather than his own dishonest attempts to distort the meanings of the originals.

I think that he’s sitting in a weird little place – half postmodern, half medieval mysticism, and without any recognition that the two halves cannot really be made to fit. But we have a lot of people like this around these days. Thinking about things is hard, because you have to know about things. But thinking about ideas seems, to someone who knows little about anything, to be so powerful that it makes thinking about things quite unnecessary. Shedinger thinks that thinking about what biologists have thought is powerful, even if you don’t understand any of the things biologists were talking about when they told you what they thought.

What I think he does not realize is that his rationale is that one may use the tools of the humanities to evaluate statements made in the sciences, and that this rationale, when uncoupled from any knowledge of underlying biology, is quite weak. As I said to him on the Luther College blog, a voice crying aloud in the wilderness may be bringing great revelation, or he may just be a madman hollering at trees. Literary/philosophical analysis may tell you whether someone is a voice crying aloud in the wilderness, but only an understanding of the substance will tell you which of these, if either, he is. And if you get it wrong, Diarthrognathus will haunt your dreams.

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Then again, I’ve seen philosophers who are well versed in biology make similar mistakes all on their own. I recall a book by one such respected person, who shall remaing nameless, criticizing Behe on flagellar evolution who illustrated with a picture of the cross section of a eukaryote flagellum.

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But Paramecia are so much more photogenic!

Nobody is immune, of course, from error, but when people get caught in error, it is fascinating to see how they respond. Shedinger certainly doesn’t want to hear one word about the mammalian jaw – won’t acknowledge the screwup, and won’t retract it, either, but instead responds that I have misunderstood his book. I am not sure in what sense I have misunderstood it, and he does not say, or wish to say. I invited him to point out anything I’d gotten wrong. Crickets.

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At least he’ll have @Eddie for company. :smile:

That was beautifully and accurately put. I am fascinated by the politicoreligious right’s embrace of postmodernism.

Which in turn requires the critic of science to fantasize that empiricists are a lower caste of scientists, with theorists as the Brahmin caste, without ever realizing that 99.9% of working biologists are both.

This also helps ID creationists to rationalize why their heroes don’t do any advancing or empirical testing of hypotheses–they’re far above the peons who lower themselves to working at the bench or in the field.

As you might imagine, we see a lot of that here.

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I have no idea what definition JAM is using for the “politicoreligious right”, nor am I sure how he understands “postmodernism”, but I can say, based upon several decades of close interaction with “conservatives” of various types, that if postmodernism means this:

“Postmodernism , in contemporary Western philosophy, a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power” (Britannica.com),

most philosophical conservatives reject postmodernism with every fiber of their being. The undermining of reason is exactly what conservatives are trying to resist, and as for the role of ideology in politics and economics, conservatives are acutely aware of it (since liberal ideology has long controlled many institutions), but they don’t think the answer is to flee from reason into relativism and skepticism, but to use reason to challenge reigning ideology.

The Sokal hoax punctured the pretensions of much of the crap that is associated with “postmodernism” – and most people I talk to of a conservative bent think that Sokal was perfectly justified in his hoaxing. and applauded his services to reason, even though they don’t share Sokal’s leftist perspective on social and political matters. A left-winger and a right-winger can disagree with each other while still respecting standards of rationality in discussion; postmodernism – as it has been presented to me, anyway – yanks out the rug from under any rational standard of discussion, and leaves various philosophical and political positions as nothing more than sheer assertions of will, prejudice, groupthink, etc. Postmodernism is a recipe for social and moral chaos. No conservative is going to endorse that.

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Seen from my vantage point, conservatives very much embrace postmodernism. But, yes, they also strongly deny that. Perhaps they are weak on self-assessment.

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Conservatives typically believe that some truths are objective and unchanging. Postmodernists appear to deny the existence of any truth that is objective or unchanging. How then can a conservative embrace postmodernism?

Perhaps you could provide an example of a conservative thinker who embraces postmodernism? As I run through a list of conservative thinkers in my head – Allan Bloom, Alvin Plantinga, William F. Buckley, Leon Kass, Dinesh D’Souza, and many more – I don’t see any postmodernists in there.

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Many conservatives have embraced Donald Trump’s “alternative facts” and “alternative truths”.

Many conservative Christians appeal to subjective experience as evidence for Christianity.

Many conservatives reject the science of evolutionary biology, the science of global warming, the science of vaccination.

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I see; so it’s Trump you’re upset about. I thought we were talking about the proper definition of terms in philosophy and political theory, as they are used by careful thinkers, not about the actions or words of Trump, who is neither careful nor a thinker.

If it helps you any, I don’t like Trump and never did, and I think Christian fundamentalists are badly misguided if they think he is on their side.

Appealing to subjective experience does not in itself make one a postmodernist. I would expect that you had the subjective experience that your mother loved you, and I don’t think that by appealing to that experience you thereby joined the postmodernist school of thought.

If someone genuinely believes that he saw Jesus standing at the foot of his bed and telling him to stop drinking and cheating on his wife, that “subjective” experience would quite reasonably count (in his mind) for evidence for the objective reality of Jesus. It would not make him a postmodernist.

None of those things would make the people in question post-modernists. In fact, the very opposite is the case. All of those people believe in objective facts, and reasoning, etc.; but they think that reason and the facts show that evolution didn’t happen, that the earth’s warming is not as dangerous as some think, and that vaccinations are risky. They can be completely wrong on all of those points without being postmoderns. A postmodern, according to the definition I gave, would say something quite different: he would say that reason can’t settle questions about evolution, global warming, or vaccination, that they are just matters of subjective preference, ideology, whim, etc. But the literalist fundamentalist waving his book of Genesis does not believe that it’s just a matter of subjectivity, whim, ideology, etc. whether one prefers evolution or Genesis. The literalist thinks he can prove that Genesis is true history and true science, and that reason and evidence show that evolution never happened. The literalist and Richard Dawkins would be at one in rejecting postmodernism as an approach to the truth about origins. They are both very much “objectivist” rather than “subjectivist” in their approach to how truth is determined.

Whatever definition of “postmodern” you are using, it appears to be different from the one I presented from Britannica.

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Hmmm… Lets parse this:

“… broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism …”

That’s a pretty good description of the ID movement, at least when it comes to the sciences.

“a general suspicion of reason”

Even moreso.

“an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power”

Um, maybe not economic power, but the ID movement is acutely aware of the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political sway. One sees essays to this effect almost every day on their website. And, contrary to what @Eddie asserts, their answers rely on the rejection of reason and logic.

No question about - ID proponents are postmodernists.

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No, they merely say that.

The way you deny the massive evidence supporting evolution in favor of vague, subjective notions that inspire no one to advance or test a hypothesis is completely pomo.

D’Souza is utterly pomo.

If any of them truly believed in those alleged facts, they would be doing science instead of empty rhetoric. None of those are supported by the facts, therefore pomo.

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Art:

You don’t appear to have read anything about postmodernism, and you don’t appear to know how “skepticism” is used in a philosophical context. It’s a more general stance about the very possibility of knowledge, not a laundry list of particular things certain people are dubious about, e.g., evolution or global warming. The post-modernist thinks that science itself is yet another subjective enterprise, like philosophy, religion, art, etc. Science is the product of “dead white males” of European cultural background, just one “language game” that can be played among others, not in the end any more rationally justifiable than other things. That’s why Sokal was furious at post-modern thought, being himself a defender of scientific reason and of the objective truth of scientific discoveries.

The entire plane of battle between “creationism” and “evolution” has taken place entirely with modern assumptions about truth, reality, and knowledge. The combatants differ over particulars, not about the playing field. Post-modernists, in contrast, contest the reality of the playing field. Indeed, a consistent post-modernist would not be able to choose between creationism and evolution, since they question the objectivity of the very standards of “science” which both camps use to try to win the debate. But of course, not very many post-modernists are consistent. When they are in agony with a ruptured appendix, they quite quickly drive to the hospital to avail themselves of the “phallocentric, Western-centric” science generated by “dead white males”; suddenly, they become believers in objective as opposed to relative truth.

It’s only in wealthy, overdeveloped, advanced urban societies that there can exist a whole class of people (university professors and literary intellectuals) who sit around all day writing and talking about “postmodernism” and denying the reality of objective truth. In less wealthy, supposedly less “advanced” societies, nobody could afford sustaining a useless intellectual class like that.

Genuine conservative thinkers, such as the people whose names I listed above, could have no use for post-modernism, which they would regard as a cancer within the body social and body politic. And that’s true whether they are conservative religious thinkers, or conservative purely secular thinkers. The conservative believes there are objective Truths, truths that reside Out There, not just in our minds or wishes. The post-modernist wants us all to stop believing in that kind of truth.

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Why don’t you write in standard English, instead of pop slang?

Tell me the names of some books by conservative thinkers that you have read all the way through, and tell me what you did to ensure that you knew the meaning of “post-modernism” before you predicated it of conservative thinkers.

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As am I. To be clear, I don’t think they embrace it explicitly, as Eddie seems to think is being said here. Rather, they eagerly embrace its toolkit. It’s very convenient to be able to call upon a relativism so extreme that it dissolves reality itself, when the facts are not on your side. And it’s very convenient to be able to attribute EVERYTHING to folkloric, story-telling processes, and to feel at liberty to constantly let everyone else know that you know what the REAL subtext of the scientific consensus is and that it’s all about racism, colonialism, et cetera.

But, of course, if one is going to invoke these things, as Shedinger does, one can be held to some sort of standard of consistency. Why is it that, when ID is conspicuously the product of specific religious doctrinal motivations, it is somehow only the scientific consensus which is amenable to this sort of psychoanalysis? Surely if biologists are only, as Shedinger claims with regard to the mammalian jaw, telling stories, then aren’t creationists ALSO only telling stories?

The whole thing is quite silly. I doubt there are any people who, by this point in their freshman year at the University of Washington, say, have NOT learned that all observations and theories and doctrines and facts and whatnot are filtered through people’s preconceptions, assumptions, and worldviews. But any of those freshmen who gets to this point next year without having figured out that this only means that one should be alert to the influence of such things, and not that all knowledge is useless, should probably drop out. I am reminded of the line spoken by Kate in the film of East of Eden: “If you don’t think that’s funny, you’d better not GO to college.”

“Which in turn requires the critic of science to fantasize that empiricists are a lower caste of scientists, with theorists as the Brahmin caste, without ever realizing that 99.9% of working biologists are both.”

Exactly. During the fallout from Darwin’s Doubt, I recall meeting quite a lot of people who, when it was pointed out that Meyer was not a scientist and had done no research, would say that he is a PHILOSOPHER of science, which of course is better – it’s like being the king of science. Of course, actual philosophers of science don’t believe that (it was Woody Allen, I think, who said that people did not so much dislike Socrates’ declaration that we should be ruled by a philosopher king as they disliked the way he would cough and point to himself when he said it).

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Look at yourself with evolution. No facts, just wishes. You’re a textbook pomo.

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Exactly.

Notice that Eddie is trying to defend with meaningless terms like “conservative” and tribalism instead of looking in the mirror at his own pomo tendencies wrt evolution…

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Because I want to.

Why don’t you look at evidence? Why do you contradict yourself so often?

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That’s Eddie!

Here’s a great example:

Specifically, “…a thinker, not a mere high-level technician…”

In Eddie’s world, doing doesn’t apparently involve any thinking.

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Just to be clear: I was making no comment on Shedinger’s work at all. I haven’t read it. I was responding to JAM’s claim that conservatives are embracing post-modernism. I don’t know any conservatives who do. If Shedinger is a conservative and embraces post-modernism, he’s the only one I know. Conservatives generally hate it. And my examples of “conservatives” show, I have in mind more than rural fundamentalists. I would like to see statements from any of those writers to the effect that reason can’t get us to truth, that all truth is relative, that science is no closer to an objective understanding of nature than poetry is, etc.

Right, and that’s exactly the point. From a post-modernist point of view, it’s all story-telling and you just pick the story you like; it’s a modern myth that “reason” can tell us which story ought to be believed. But no conservative believes that about reason. They believe that reason is reliable. Some conservatives disagree over what reason proves regarding particular issues, but none of them advocate scrapping reason for sheer enthusiasm or ideology.

This is all the more the case for those fundamentalists who talk about “evidence demanding a verdict” in the case of Jesus. They believe that they can prove through historical evidence, logic, etc. that Jesus rose from the dead, was the son of God, etc. They don’t argue, “Oh well, some like the story of Jesus, some like the story of Buddha, some like the story of the Big Bang, and there’s no objective way of deciding which is right; it’s all cultural or ideological prejudices that determine what we believe.” They don’t argue at all like post-modernists.

I agree. But some of them don’t drop out, but go on to become English or Philosophy professors and preach the evangel of post-modernism. And that’s our problem right now – how to root this cancer out of our universities. Every scientist should join hands with every conservative philosopher (see the list I gave for examples) in the common effort to purge the academy of these people, or at least, of their influence. But the scientists are behind the times regarding what’s happening in the Arts departments. They think that the Arts profs lean toward to old leftist views they admire – public health care, equality for women and blacks, and so on. They don’t realize that the “advanced” thought in the Arts departments has moved far beyond that. These profs used to eagerly support science as an objective endeavor aimed at truth which would sustain a more just and equal society. Now they say that science itself is just another social construct, like any religion or ideology, no better at getting at truth (which doesn’t exist) than anything else.

The science profs don’t realize that this new movement of thought within the Arts departments is not their ally, as the old left-wing ideology was. But conservative thinkers realized long ago that this trend of thought threatens science itself, as well as conservative social and political values. What is needed is an alliance between the scientists and the traditional philosophers to take the university back from these nihilists, and return to the practice of hiring Arts professors who, however much they might disagree on the detailed contents of the truth, believe that there is a truth out there to look for, and that reason is the main tool we have for discerning the truth, and should not be denigrated or ridiculed.

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Well, you know, it has certainly seemed to me that post-modernist relativism plays a role in a lot of creationist works. It is never labeled as such, of course. I would provide you quotes, but frankly, I’m too lazy and it’s sort of a meta-point anyhow; the issue is generally that they’re wrong, and the po-mo tendencies have more to do with how they try to paper that over than with the cause of their wrongness.

But as to “conservatives,” I suspect that I may be the only person in this thread whose local paper ever tarred him as a shrill right-wing ideologue. I’m not, but I used to do litigation which was partly funded by what was generally regarded as the most right-wing political lobby in the state, and I stood up for some unpopular causes, and I certainly did know a lot of what are known, in common parlance, as “conservatives.” I wouldn’t call most of them conservatives. I don’t think it’s actually a very useful term any longer, and I sort of wish we could strip it of all of its post-1790 acquired meanings and get back to Burke. I’m a Burkean conservative, for sure, which means that people commonly called “liberals” often mistake me for a crazed right-winger and people commonly called “conservatives” usually express their distaste by calling me a “libtard.” I am beginning to think nobody likes me.

I do not have the impression that Shedinger would call himself a conservative. Somebody else might call him that.

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