Blogs / The Intersection

by Sparticus Maximus the Great

I knew it all along.

The discovery of five remarkable new fossils has confirmed that birds evolved from dinosaurs, Chinese scientists said last night.

. . . . . . . .

Feathers cover the arms and tail, but also the feet, suggesting that a four-winged stage may have existed in the transition to birds. The fossils will also help scientists work out the mechanics of how early birds flew. The specimens have been identified as types of Anchiornis huxleyi. The details of the find will also be announced in Nature.

Just look at that handsome fellow! The Guardian’s got details…

Artist’s impression based on the feathered dinosaur fossil Anchiornis huxleyi, discovered in north-eastern China. Photograph: Hu Dongyu/AP

Creation: The True Story of Charles Darwin

The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia.

However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.

I sincerely hope The Telegraph is mistaken. The trailer looks intriguing and over at Panda’s Thumb Eugenie Scott calls it “a thoughtful, well-made film that will change many views of Darwin held by the public – for the good.” Not all reviews have been as favorable, but Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connolly tend to give solid performances. I’m interested to see this movie and hope it finds its way to a theater in the Research Triangle.

Would you buy tickets to Creation?

(Thanks to ‘Ben’ for the link)

On the new book website, there’s the most extensive write-up yet of our argument and scope. I’ll repaste it here, as it explains precisely why we’re concerned about the gap between science and mainstream culture, and what we must do about it:

In his famous 1959 Rede lecture at Cambridge University, the scientifically-trained novelist C.P. Snow described science and the humanities as “two cultures,” separated by a “gulf of mutual incomprehension.” And the humanists had all the cultural power—the low prestige of science, Snow argued, left Western leaders too little educated in scientific subjects that were increasingly central to world problems: the elementary physics behind nuclear weapons, for instance, or the basics of plant science needed to feed the world’s growing population.

Now, Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, a journalist-scientist team, offer an updated “two cultures” polemic for America in the 21st century. Just as in Snow’s time, some of our gravest challenges—climate change, the energy crisis, national economic competitiveness—and gravest threats–global pandemics, nuclear proliferation—have fundamentally scientific underpinnings. Yet we still live in a culture that rarely takes science seriously or has it on the radar.

For every five hours of cable news, less than a minute is devoted to science; 46 percent of Americans reject evolution and think the Earth is less than 10,000 years old; the number of newspapers with weekly science sections has shrunken by two-thirds over the past several decades. The public is polarized over climate change—an issue where political party affiliation determines one’s view of reality—and in dangerous retreat from childhood vaccinations. Meanwhile, only 18 percent of Americans have even met a scientist to begin with; more than half can’t name a living scientist role model.

For this dismaying situation, Mooney and Kirshenbaum don’t let anyone off the hook. They highlight the anti-intellectual tendencies of the American public (and particularly the politicians and journalists who are supposed to serve it), but also challenge the scientists themselves, who despite the best of intentions have often failed to communicate about their work effectively to a broad public—and so have ceded their critical place in the public sphere to religious and commercial propagandists.

A plea for enhanced scientific literacy, Unscientific America urges those who care about the place of science in our society to take unprecedented action. We must begin to train a small army of ambassadors who can translate science’s message and make it relevant to the media, to politicians, and to the public in the broadest sense. An impassioned call to arms worthy of Snow’s original manifesto, this book lays the groundwork for reintegrating science into the public discourse–before it’s too late.

Once again, you can check out the new book website here.

I was just reading this great column by Peter Hess, director of the Faith Project at the National Center for Science Education, on science-religion compatibility. And I came across this passage:

Too often, debates over the public perception of evolution are dominated by the fringes, by fundamentalist Christians and others who reject basic science due to their literal reading of the Bible and by ardent atheists who reject religion because they’ve embraced metaphysical naturalism ― that nature is all that exists. But the silent majority ― that spans the spectrum from theism to atheism ― have no problem reconciling their religious beliefs with established sciences such as evolution, or with new sciences such as stem cell research. My work at the National Center for Science Education brings me into contact with voices across that spectrum and I’ve found that honest, open, and inclusive dialog is not only possible, but vital for our children’s education, for the credibility of religious traditions, and for the continued role of the United States as a scientific and moral leader in our increasingly interconnected world.

I heartily agree–my sense, too, is that the silent majority doesn’t side with either of the extremes. And I think the polling data eminently supports this. For instance, as David Masci of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life writes in a survey of that evidence:

These data once again show that, in the minds of most people in the United States, there is no real clash between science and religion. And when the two realms offer seemingly contradictory explanations (as in the case of evolution), religious people, who make up a majority of Americans, may rely primarily upon their faith for answers.

At the same time, though, let’s face it–in the science blogosphere, we don’t hear a lot from the “silent majority.” Rather, and admittedly with some important exceptions, we hear from the New Atheists.

Yet I am arguing on behalf of the silent majority, and that is what keeps me going. So my question is this: How can we wake them up, make them realize that this is their issue too, and help them reclaim the debate for the middle ground?

At the outset of really digging into Jerry Coyne’s stance on science and religion, let’s pose a question: Why do we care whether or not the two are compatible?

The answer is that one might care for many reasons. One reason–a very good one–involves what we take to be true. After we know all we can know about the world through science, is there still any room left for the supernatural or divine? Or must such elements be completely gone for everyone, just as they are for atheists like myself and Coyne?

Another reason, however, is practical. After all, the question of how science and religion ought to interrelate has huge political implications, particularly for science education and the public view of science in America, something we might broadly call “scientific literacy.”

For instance, if evolution is true, but also in some sense leads to or entails atheism (the Coyne/New Atheist view), then we are going to have a vastly harder time getting much of religious America ever to accept evolution.

I believe the central reason we have such massive problems with the teaching of evolution to be precisely this—millions of America believe, incorrectly, that they must give up their faith in order to learn about it or accept it. This misconception is highly prevalent, and is regularly reinforced in a number of ways: Through the media, by church leaders, by the New Atheists, and so on.

If this incorrect view could somehow be dislodged, then, we might also have a better chance of defusing tensions over the teaching of evolution, and thereby improving “scientific literacy” (a term we define in more detail in the book, but that I won’t get bogged down with here). Such are some of the premises that I’m working from….

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Jerry Coyne has not yet responded to my first post, so far as I can tell. But I hope to have up a second one up today, defending the science-religion reconciliationist position from a legal perspective. The basic point that I will develop will be that reconciliationism played a key role in the biggest pro-evolution victory in this decade, Judge John E. Jones III’s ruling in the 2005 Dover trial. This on its own doesn’t make the court-endorsed accommodationist position true–judges are not our ultimate arbiter on either science or philosophy. But it does suggest that if we care about the teaching of evolution, we ought to think very, very hard before undermining a position that has succeeded so well in court.

But that’s just a teaser, an argument to be developed at more length soon. In the meantime, I want to draw attention to my latest Science Progress column, which is on a very different subject–the beginning of hurricane season. It’s supposed to be an average year, not a bad one, at least according to the pre-season forecasts. But it only takes one storm to devastate us, and we all know there will be > 0 storms in the Atlantic this year.  Moreover, Congress continues to fail us when it comes to making much needed new investments in hurricane research. As I put it:

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According to Amazon, a lot of people who buy Unscientific America are also buying another book that’s coming out soon, entitled Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free, by Charles Pierce.

On their face, these books may sound similar. And in fact, we probably agree substantively with Pierce in most of what he says about things like creationism (judging from the book’s description). I would go so far as to suggest that many readers of this blog would likely enjoy Pierce’s book, just as they would (I hope) enjoy our own.

Yet while it definitely gets people fired up, I would argue that it ultimately does little or no good to denigrate the intelligence of one’s intellectual opponents, whoever they may be–to call them “stupid,” “idiots,” and so on. Moreover, it’s rarely an accurate description on a factual level. As I’ve noted about vaccine refusal, for instance, high levels of education don’t seem to be any protection against this particular kind of “idiocy.”

We definitely have serious culture wars, we definitely have serious attacks on science, and we definitely have “scientific illiteracy” (which needs to be carefully defined). But I’m far from convinced that the root problems here have much to do with intelligence; rather, they turn on knottier matters like politics, culture, and religion. What’s more, if you really wanted to change someone’s mind, denigration of his/her intellect is the last thing you would ever do, for obvious reasons.

There’s much more to be said, but, well…that’s why we wrote a whole book about it!

My latest Science Progress column sings the praises of Eugenie C. Scott of the National Center for Science Education, or NCSE–who has been winning a lot of accolades lately, so I just wanted to pile on. Here’s an excerpt:

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Today an international team of scientists announced the discovery of a 47 million year old human ancestor found in the Messel Pit, Germany.  The European fossil is 95% complete, providing the most comprehensive understanding of the paleobiology of any Eocene primate yet. Named ‘Ida,‘ she was a young female with opposable big toes and a talus bone linking her directly to humans.

Read the full article available free at PLoS ONE…