John Farrell Versus Isaac Newton

Guess Who Wins?

The title of John Farrell’s article in Commonweal from earlier this year is a dead giveaway. When writing about the interaction between faith and science, as Farrell does in the piece, the title “The Conflict Continues” is like a flashing red light that the mythological Warfare Thesis is coming at you.

Sure enough, Farrell does not disappoint. He informs his readers that the fear that science could “make God seem unnecessary” is “widespread today among religious believers,” particularly in the US where “opposition to belief in evolution remains very high.”

Indeed, this fear has “haunted the debate over the tension between religion and science for centuries.” Farrell notes that Edward Larson and Michael Ruse point out in their new book On Faith and Science, that the “conflict model doesn’t work so well. But that seems to be a minor speed bump for Farrell. He finds that:

The idea that the world operates according to its own laws and regularities remains controversial in the evolution debate today, as Intelligent Design proponents attack the consensus of science on Darwinian evolution and insist that God’s direct intervention in the history of life can be scientifically demonstrated.

Farrell also writes that Isaac Newton, driven by concerns about secondary causes, “insisted God was still necessary to occasionally tweak the motions of the planets if any threatened to wander off course.”

Farrell’s piece is riddled with myths. Secondary causes are not nearly as controversial as he would have us believe. He utterly mischaracterizes ID, and Newton said no such thing. It is true that Newton suggested that the Creator could intervene in the cosmos (not “insisted”).

And was this the result of some radical voluntarism?

Of course not. Newton suggested God may intervene in the cosmos because the physics of the day (which by the way he invented), indicated that our solar system could occasionally have instabilities. The fact that was running along just fine, and hadn’t yet blown up, suggested that something had intervened along the way.

Newton was arguing from science, not religion. But that doesn’t fit the Epicurean mythos that religion opposes naturalism while science confirms it. The reality is, of course, the exact opposite.

Meet Jamie Jensen: What Are They Teaching at Brigham Young University?

Bacterial Resistance to Antibiotics

Rachel Gross’ recent article about evolutionist’s public outreach contains several misconceptions that are, unfortunately, all too common. Perhaps most obvious is the mythological Warfare Thesis that Gross and her evolutionary protagonists heavily rely on. Plumbing the depths of ignorance, Gross writes:

Those who research the topic call this paradigm the “conflict mode” because it pits religion and science against each other, with little room for discussion. And researchers are starting to realize that it does little to illuminate the science of evolution for those who need it most.

“Those who research the topic call this paradigm the ‘conflict mode’”?

Huh?

This is reminiscent of Judge Jones endorsement of Inherit the Wind as a primer for understanding the origins debate, for it is beyond embarrassing. Exactly who are those “who research the topic” to which Gross refers?

Gross is apparently blithely unaware that there are precisely zero such researchers. The “conflict mode” is a long-discarded, failed view of history promoted in Inherit the Wind, a two-dimensional, upside-down rewrite of the 1925 Monkey Trial.

But ever since, evolutionists have latched onto the play, and the mythological history it promotes, in an unabashed display of anti-intellectualism. As Lawrence Principe has explained:

The notion that there exists, and has always existed, a “warfare” or “conflict” between science and religion is so deeply ingrained in public thinking that it usually goes unquestioned. The idea was however largely the creation of two late nineteenth-century authors who confected it for personal and political purposes. Even though no serious historians of science acquiesce in it today, the myth remains powerful, and endlessly repeated, in wider circles

Or as Jeffrey Russell writes:

The reason for promoting both the specific lie about the sphericity of Earth and the general lie that religion and science are in natural and eternal conflict in Western society, is to defend Darwinism. The answer is really only slightly more complicated than that bald statement.

Rachel Gross is, unfortunately, promoting the “general lie” that historians have long since been warning of. Her article is utter nonsense. The worst of junk news.

But it gets worse.

Gross next approvingly quotes Brigham Young University associate professor Jamie Jensen whose goal is to inculcate her students with Epicureanism. “Acceptance is my goal,” says Jensen, referring to her teaching of spontaneous origins in her Biology 101 class at the Mormon institution.

As we have explained many times, this is how evolutionists think. Explaining their anti-scientific, religious beliefs is not enough. You must believe. As Jensen explains:

By the end of Biology 101, they can answer all the questions really well, but they don’t believe a word I say. If they don’t accept it as being real, then they’re not willing to make important decisions based on evolution — like whether or not to vaccinate their child or give them antibiotics.

Whether or not to give their child antibiotics?

As we have discussed many times before, the equating of “evolution” with bacterial resistance to antibiotics is an equivocation and bait-and-switch.

The notion that one must believe in evolution to understand bacterial resistance to antibiotics is beyond absurd.

It not only makes no sense; it masks the monumental empirical contradictions that bacterial antibiotic resistance presents to evolution. As a university life science professor, Jensen is of course well aware of these basic facts of biology.

And she gets paid to teach people’s children?

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Another Warfare Thesis Tale

Science Versus Biblical Authority

Last time I began to look at a new book co-authored by evolutionist Dennis Venema. As we saw, Venema was raised in an evangelical-creationist setting which equated evolution with atheism. This casting of evolutionists as atheist rascals is ignorant. It is also dangerous for it leaves one without the understanding and tools to reckon with the real evolution. The result is sometimes a  flip to the other extreme: scientism and the Warfare Thesis. The Warfare Thesis holds that religion, and Christianity in particular, often conflicts with and opposes scientific advances. It can be traced at least as far back as Voltaire with his 18th century mythical retelling of the Galileo Affair. Many later contributors embellished and established the myth that was eventually labelled the “Warfare Thesis.” Unfortunately this is precisely where Venema ended up.

After discussing his personal background, Venema presents the Warfare Thesis in a section ironically entitled “Learning from History.” Unfortunately, rather than learning from history readers are given yet another round of the Warfare Thesis myth. They learn that the basic issue of the seventeenth century Galileo Affair was “the veracity of the new science, and its perceived threat to biblical authority.” According to Venema there were “apologists” who thought the science “was wrong,” over against scientists such as Galileo.

Venema has jumped from the proverbial frying pan into the fire. His rehearsing of the Warfare Thesis myth is both predictable and disappointing. The Warfare Thesis myth is standard fare for evolutionists in their attempt to place their theory into a compelling historical narrative. But when will it end? How many historians have to publicly chide, correct, disabuse, and decry this myth before evolutionists will make it stop?

We don’t know the answers to these questions, but we do know we are not there yet. Venema’s new book is proof of that.

In fact the Galileo Affair was nuanced and complex. Galileo had numerous barriers working against him. One was Aristotelianism. Though it was waning, Galileo was still presented with rebuttals from the two thousand year old system.

Another important barrier was Galileo’s own, abrasive, personality. The church was perfectly fine with Galileo publishing his work, and several people within the church were at least somewhat sympathetic to Galileo’s promotion of heliocentrism. But Galileo outright humiliated people and easily made enemies. Few people could cross the Pope (whether in part or in full) and expect to emerge victorious. Galileo was fortunate that in his aging years his sentence (for ostensibly breaking an agreement with the Pope) was merely house arrest.

Then there was the science, which by no means unambiguously supported Copernicus’ heliocentrism with its circular orbits and epicycles. Brahe’s and Ptolemy’s models were by no means obviously wrong, and expertise in astronomy at that time did not mean one would necessarily agree with Galileo.

Wars and politics were also not helping Galileo. The Reformation and its aftermath, including conflicts with the Protestants did not help to produce an environment conducive to challenging long-standing ideas.

Lastly there were scriptural questions raised by passages such as Joshua 10 and Ecclesiastes 1. These questions are last on my list because they were least. Yes these questions were put to Galileo, but they were hardly at the center of the controversy. And in resolving these questions, the main problem was in Galileo’s lack of diplomacy.

It isn’t that scriptural questions were completely absent, but they certainly were not the key, central concerns of the Galileo Affair, as the Warfare Thesis mythology would have it. This is why Venema’s predictable reconstruction is so misleading.

Once again we see this “science versus religion” rendition of the Galileo Affair servicing evolutionary thought. Venema’s larger point is, in typical fashion, to recruit the Galileo Affair as support for evolution. Darwin and the evolutionists, like Galileo, are merely appealing to the empirical science, and skeptics are driven by their religious agendas.

Unfortunately to make this argument evolutionists must erroneously cast both the Galileo Affair and today’s origins debate.

Here’s An Example of the Flip-Side of the Warfare Thesis

From the Frying Pan to the Fire

Empirical observations of the world don’t suggest that it arose by natural law and chance events. But that is what evolutionists believe, and so it is always interesting to see where they are coming from. What underlying beliefs or influences drive one to the age-old position of Epicureanism? Why would one believe the world arose by randomly swerving atoms, or randomly mutating genomes? Dennis Venema, co-author of a new book promoting evolution, makes his influences clear from the very first sentence:

Like many evangelicals, I (Dennis) grew up in an environment that was suspicious of science in general, and openly hostile to evolution in particular.

That sentence speaks volumes. Venema is a refugee from creationism and what I call the flip-side of the Warfare Thesis. The Warfare Thesis holds that religion, and Christianity in particular, often conflicts with and opposes scientific advances. It can be traced at least as far back as Voltaire with his 18th century mythical retelling of the Galileo Affair. Many later contributors embellished and established the myth that was eventually labelled the “Warfare Thesis.”

While the Warfare Thesis can be found in the evolution literature, creationists have their own version. In this reverse, or flip-side, the myth is that evolutionists are atheists, pushed to believe in a naturalistic origins because of the rejection of God. To be sure, atheism today has been aided and abetted by evolution’s popularity. But from Epicureanism to Darwinism to Neo-Darwinism and beyond, it is theism, not a-theism, that is doing the heavy lifting.

Why did Richard Bentley charge Thomas Burnet (an Anglican cleric who appealed to Scripture in his popular 17th century cosmogony) with atheism? Burnet was indeed a latitudinarian, but hardly an atheist. Why did Charles Hodge charge Darwin’s new theory as atheism in disguise? Darwin was hardly a mainline Christian but, like Burnet, his 1859 tome on evolution was chocked full of theological discussion and claims about the Creator. Darwin’s strong arguments were based on theism, not a-theism.

The flip-side of the Warfare Thesis is as dangerous as the A side, and it was Venema’s world. As he explains, he was taught that evolution was “pushed by atheists,” that Darwin and his theory “were evil,” and there mere utterance was tantamount to cursing, “and not mildly.” Evolution “was bad,” and “Science and God’s actions, at least in this case, were placed in opposition to each other.”

This flip-side of the Warfare Thesis is dangerous because the ignorance it establishes sets its adherents up for a fall. One simply is in no position to comprehend the deep theology at work in Epicurean and evolutionary thought. Darwin presented his arguments with a patina of scientific jargon, and that formed the template for the genre. Consider this gem from Chapter 6 of Origins:

Thus, we can hardly believe that the webbed feet of the upland goose or of the frigate-bird are of special use to these birds; we cannot believe that the similar bones in the arm of the monkey, in the fore-leg of the horse, in the wing of the bat, and in the flipper of the seal, are of special use to these animals. We may safely attribute these structures to inheritance.

One can read through such passages and almost conclude that Darwin is merely presenting empirical scientific reasoning and conclusions. And so it is with today’s evolutionary reasoning, such as this typical textbook example:

If the 11 species had independent origins, there is no reason why their [traits] should be correlated.

It all sounds so scientific. But of course it is not. This is the great deception of evolutionary thought. And those mired in the flip-side of the Warfare Thesis—believing for certain that evolutionists are nothing more than atheist rascals—lack to tools and knowledge to reckon with it. Venema never had a chance. It was out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Unfortunately his story is all too common.

Venema also discusses another important influence in his thinking: rationalism. And again, it is all too common. Evolutionists tend to place great value in theories. To be sure, theories are extremely important in science. But for centuries, rationalism in its extreme has placed an unhealthy, undue, emphasis on theories, over and above the importance of following the data. Better to have a theory that doesn’t work very well, then to have no theory at all (and no, creationism is not a theory).

Venema makes it clear that rationalism was an important influence for him. At an early age he found biology to be a “dreadful bore compared with physics and chemistry.” Physics and chemistry were appealing because they were about principles. Biology “seemed to have no organizing principle behind it, whereas the others did”. Indeed, chemistry and physics had “underlying principles that gave order and cohesion to a body of facts.”

With a foundation of the flip-side of the Warfare Thesis and rationalism, Venema was an evolutionist waiting to happen.

Merrilee Salmon Propagates the Warfare Thesis

The Will to Believe

Merrilee Salmon’s review of Richard Williams and Daniel Robinson 2015 volume, Scientism: The New Orthodoxy, starts out well enough, explaining that scientism is “a philosophical view about the power and scope of the techniques of the natural sciences. It is generally understood to hold that all genuine knowledge about the world around us, including about human behavior, is obtainable only through the particular scientific methods that have proved so successful in physics, chemistry, and the other natural sciences. In other words, knowledge gained through use of the scientific method has a unique claim to truth, and, some would say, constitutes the only path to real knowledge.” But the professor emerita from one of the leading HPS programs in the country (University of Pittsburgh) unfortunately ends up devolving into the same old Warfare Thesis myth which contributed and underwrote today’s scientism in the first place. To wit, Salmon erroneously identifies, yes Galileo and Darwin, (oh no, not this again), as examples where science triumphed over religion:

Simply recognizing that both science and theology are cultural institutions, however, does not solve the problem of what to believe when the two collide. The historic cases of Galileo Galilei and Charles Darwin remind us that science has the superior record when it comes to producing evidence for claims that have been challenged by theologians.

Arg. Has history taught us nothing?

Do we need to recount yet again how theology underwrote evolution, and that rebuttals were about the science? Do we need to, one more time, retell the facts of the Galileo Affair? That questions about Joshua 10 and Ecclesiastes 1 paled in comparison to the political, social, Aristotelian, and most importantly, scientific problems with heliocentrism?

Unfortunately, over and over, we see that the mythological Warfare Thesis is not the product of the ignorant but the elite. From the playwrights to the professors, the Warfare Thesis is a powerful and enduring myth for the same reasons any myth is powerful and enduring—we want to believe it.

Religion drives science, and it matter.

Philosopher: Today We Segregate Science and Religion

Presentism

Mythologies do not arise from the ignorant, but from the elite. This timeless truth is nowhere more evident today than with the Warfare Thesis myth. This myth has many tentacles, including: (1) Christianity often conflicts with and opposes scientific advances, (2) Science is a strictly empirical endeavor, free of religion, (3) The modern scientist has no metaphysical influences. And while good historians and philosophers are attempting to disabuse everyone else of these falsehoods, there seem to be just as many others who continue to repeat them. To wit, yesterday’s National Geographic quotes philosopher James Force as follows:

What set Whiston and Newton apart from modern scientists is their assumption that the Bible was literally true, and that God’s “book of nature” could be used to understand God’s other book, the Bible. Today, we tend to keep science and religion in strictly segregated boxes. Not so Newton and Whiston.

It is not that there have been no changes in the way naturalists think since the seventeenth century, but the idea that scientists today don the white lab coat and are free of religious influence is simply false. This is evident in the literature, as we have pointed out many times.

Another Warfare Thesis Tidbit

The Hits Just Keep on Coming

In his recent Washington Post opinion piece, Harvard astrophysicist Howard Smith began with yet more Warfare Thesis history:

There was a time, back when astronomy put Earth at the center of the universe, that we thought we were special.

Actually we “put Earth at the center of the universe” as a consequence of Aristotelian physics, not because of any anthropomorphism. That is the imaginary history, foisted on us by the Warfare Thesis, which can be traced back to Voltaire, but rose in prominence in the 19th century.

Warfare Thesis Failure Leaves Evolution Desperate For Canards

Pop Psych to the Rescue

Ever since Voltaire mythologized the Galileo Affair, Hume’s Philo demolished Cleanthes, and Gibbon blamed pretty much everything on the Christians, evolutionary thinking has had an unbeatable template: The Warfare Thesis. Anyone who opposes or even questions evolution is automatically branded as having religious motives. Religion is at war with science. That claim has failed the test of historiography over and over, but so what? Who cares about history? Certainly not journalists, policy makers, federal judges, textbook authors, and anyone else who matters. But now there is an entirely different, empirical, falsification of the Warfare Thesis, and evolutionists are in full-panic.

Evolutionists began to realize there were problems with blaming skepticism of their warmed over Epicureanism on the Warfare Thesis a few years ago when Neil deGrasse Tyson asked “How come this number isn’t zero?” That “number” Tyson referred to was not the number of backwoods fideists, but rather the number of scientists, who reject evolution. The greatest minds in history didn’t buy it and a non trivial percentage of today’s scientists also aren’t quite sure that astronomical entropy barriers have repeatedly been climbed an astronomical number of times by, err, random chance events. The Warfare Thesis canard was showing signs of wear.

More recently, studies are showing that people generally tend to reject evolutionary concepts at a gut level. This has nothing to do with religious beliefs. It seems that the evolutionary ideas that (i) the species are nothing but snapshots in a continuum, rather than essentialistic, and that (ii) the world is nothing but a randomly evolving blob, rather than there being an underlying teleology, don’t make much sense to people. All people.

This is particularly evident in young children. As the Guardian reports:

Developmental psychologists have identified two cognitive biases in very young children that help to explain the popularity of intelligent design. The first is a belief that species are defined by an internal quality that cannot be changed (psychological essentialism). The second is that all things are designed for a purpose (promiscuous teleology). These biases interact with cultural beliefs such as religion but are just as prevalent in children raised in secular societies. Importantly, these beliefs become increasingly entrenched, making formal scientific instruction more and more difficult as children get older. … teleology is prevalent in children regardless of how their parents describe the world to them or the religious culture that they are growing up in. This widespread function compunction is neither outgrown nor fully replaced by formal scientific education.

The Warfare Thesis continues to fail, and evolutionists need a new canard why people just won’t go along with their age-old idea that the world arose spontaneously.

BioLogos: Fundamentalists Were Wrong About Galileo, So They’re Also Wrong About Darwin

A Flawed History

It is one thing to point out particular conflicts between religion and science, it is quite another to characterize broadly the relationship between religion and science as one of conflict. The former is simply recognizing realities, the latter is the failed view known as the Conflict or Warfare Thesis. Certainly there are some genuine conflicts that arise from certain religious sects or traditions, but historically the relationship between religion and science is far more complicated than simply an on-going conflict. The BioLogos organization is very much concerned with this conflict, but they point out that they are careful to avoid the Warfare Thesis. Unfortunately this claim depends on a carefully crafted definition of the Warfare Thesis.

What is the Warfare Thesis?

The Warfare Thesis is bad history, but ironically too often the Warfare Thesis itself is the victim of bad history. Proponents of the Warfare Thesis are not necessarily atheists as they are sometimes portrayed. Nor do proponents of the Warfare Thesis necessarily see religion and science as mortal enemies, locked in an inevitable and necessary conflict. Like any broad movement the Warfare Thesis occupies a spectrum of views. From Voltaire and Edward Gibbon, to Hume, Kant, Washington Irving, Antoine-Jean Letronne, Thomas H. Huxley, John William Draper, Andrew Dickson White, and the many twentieth century proponents, the Warfare Thesis has had a wide variety of inputs and influences. Within its ranks one can find theists, agnostics and atheists. A common thread, however, is not the identification of conflict between religion and science so much as between fundamentalist religion and science. The problem lies with those scriptural literalists who can’t, or won’t, understand poetry or nuance in God’s word. Religion, once loosened from the fundamentalist grip, can take on its proper role. One of the Warfare Thesis strongest exponents, Andrew Dickson White, made this quite clear:

My belief is that in the field left to them—their proper field—the clergy will more and more, as they cease to struggle against scientific methods and conclusions, do work even nobler and more beautiful than anything they have heretofore done. And this is saying much. My conviction is that Science, though it has evidently conquered Dogmatic Theology based on biblical texts and ancient modes of thought, will go hand in hand with Religion; and that, although theological control will continue to diminish, Religion, as seen in the recognition of “a Power in the universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness,” and in the love of God and of our neighbor, will steadily grow stronger and stronger, not only in the American institutions of learning but in the world at large.

This religious sentiment was nowhere better illustrated than in the final scene of Inherit the Wind (click video above) which has the fictional character Henry Drummond (based on Clarence Darrow and played by actor Spencer Tracy) paying respects to his now deceased courtroom opponent, Matthew Harrison Brady (based on William Jennings Bryan and played by actor Fredric March).

Such sentimentalism does not sit well with atheist journalist E. K. Hornbeck (based on H. L. Mencken and played by actor Gene Kelly). Drummond quotes Scripture from memory and laments that “A giant once lived in that body, but Matt Brady got lost because he looked for God too high up and too far away.”

Hornbeck cries foul: “You hypocrite. You fraud. The atheist who believes in God,” but he is easily vanquished by the wiser Drummond who excoriates Hornbeck and his shallow skepticism. Hornbeck retreats from the courtroom while Drummond thoughtfully weighs his law book in one hand and the Bible in the other hand. He places the Good Book on top and victoriously walks out the other door to the rising crescendo of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Inherit the Wind is a classic staging of the Warfare Thesis. The ultimate target of Jerome Lawrence’s and Robert Lee’s script was McCarthyism and its witch hunts, but it was its weapon of choice—the Warfare Thesis—that made the play, and its many stagings and screenings, so popular.

And just as the Warfare Thesis is constructed from a false history, so too is Inherit the Wind based on a fictional retelling of the famous 1925 Monkey Trial. The historical furniture is rearranged to convey a false message of conflict, and yet the script is routinely held up as a cogent and accurate message for today. Such is the power of the enduring Warfare Thesis mythology.

So the Warfare Thesis is not an atheistic mission. Nor is it an attack on all things religious. Rather it is a religious view that seeks a harmonization which avoids the pitfalls of literalism and recognizes the advances of science. That may sound good, but in its attack on fundamentalism it fails to appreciate the complex relationship between religion and science. Religion, for example, can provide useful ideas to science and it can guiding restraints. The influence may or may not be cooperative, but it often is subtle and complicated.

What is BioLogos?

BioLogos is many things, but regarding the religion and science, BioLogos is concerned about conflicts. And not just any conflicts. President Deborah Haarsma recently reiterated BioLogos’ long-standing concern with Christians who do not accept the fact of evolution. Meanwhile Senior Editor Jim Stump expresses concern that design advocates are misleading people in areas such as climate change and vaccines.

These are all classic Warfare Thesis topics. They are politically, economically and metaphysically laden areas where the science is easily influenced by non scientific factors. Consider vaccines, for example, a topic that comes right out of Andrew Dickson White’s work. The facts are that vaccines provide varying levels of immunity at the very remote risk of injury. The details vary with the vaccine but, in general, patients are faced with a risk-reward tradeoff for which there is no scientific formula. Unfortunately the whole area has become politically charged and accurate statistics can be difficult to obtain. Even the mention of risk, which is a scientific fact, is too often met with disdain. It is the height of scientism—a spin-off of the Warfare Thesis—to argue that science dictates the answer. This is a human decision.

One of BioLogos’ arguments for its position is that it is following in the tradition of Copernicus and Galileo who advocated heliocentrism against scriptural opposition. Is it not obvious that Christians were right to alter their interpretation of biblical verses suggesting geocentrism, such as Psalm 104:5, Joshua 10:12-13 and Ecclesiastes 1:5.

The answer, of course, is “yes.” And for most such a modification was not difficult since it was doctrinally inconsequential. Indeed, most of Galileo’s opposition had little or no problem with such modifications and the scriptural questions were not high on his list of disputes he had to deal with.

Furthermore, when the perspective of those verses is understood (or as we say in science, the “reference frame”), there is no contradiction with heliocentrism. Galileo had plenty of political opposition, and he created much of it with his overbearing personality, but in his favor he had empirical evidences that were fairly suggestive of heliocentrism.

This is not analogous to today’s Warfare Thesis situation. The science does not at all suggest that the species arose spontaneously. We can argue over how unlikely this is, but BioLogos argues it is a fact. And as with all evolutionists, their confidence comes from the metaphysics, not the science. There are many proofs of evolution, but there is no scientific argument that supports the evolutionist’s claim that evolution is a fact. That is not my opinion, that is a fact of the literature.

Likewise, to compare the politically-charged man-made global warming theory with Galileo and heliocentrism is an insult to the great scientist and the theory he championed. Thoughtful commentators such as Matt Ridley have explained the non scientific influences on AGW, but the myth of certainty persists. This is not to say AGW is not true, perhaps it is. But we are far from knowing what its proponents proclaim as undeniable truth, and that is the point. The truth claims reveal that it isn’t about the science.

I tried to explain these issues at the BioLogos website. The website’s rule is the comments are closed after four days of inactivity. In this case, however, the evolutionists suddenly changed the rule and closed the discussion after a criticism of my points.

BioLogos is certainly on target to argue that scientific findings need to be acknowledged and recognized. And BioLogos obviously rejects the over-the-top atheistic versions of the Warfare Thesis. But that doesn’t change the fact that BioLogos’ support for non scientific mandates falls right into the Warfare Thesis tradition.

The Warfare Thesis and BioLogos

Hindsight is 20/20

Today professor Ted Davis, historian and Fellow at the BioLogos Foundation, explains why BioLogos does not promote the Warfare Thesis. Davis explains that just because the Warfare Thesis (the claim that Christianity often conflicts with and opposes scientific advances) is wrong doesn’t mean there aren’t real conflicts here and there. Davis points to geocentrism and the young-earth beliefs as examples of legitimate conflicts between religion and science. Davis’ point is that while the overarching model of Warfare between religion and science is flawed, there certainly are particular conflicts. So while we need to clarify the failure of the Warfare Thesis, we must not over compensate. We must not reject any and all conflicts as unreal:

My first goal in writing for BioLogos is to get the history right, in all of its complexity. If we want to overthrow the Warfare Thesis (and all of my work is aimed at doing just that), we can’t be replacing it with an equally inaccurate, sanitized view of things.

It was precisely this error that I fell into when I claimed that BioLogos promotes the Warfare Thesis, according to Davis. Davis says that I have a “Misunderstanding of the History of Science and Religion.” After all, BioLogos’ position today is comparable to Galileo’s position four centuries ago when he advocated heliocentrism.

Davis makes many good points, not the least of which is that the history of the interaction between science and religion is a complicated one. The Warfare Thesis is obviously flawed, but nonetheless there certainly have been, and remain today, areas of conflict. That is an important point that I have made many, many times. It is central to this blog and the recent posts (here, here and here) about BioLogos make this very point. Therefore it is a bit perplexing that Davis can, nonetheless, find what would be a sophomoric mistake:

What he fails to understand—or at least, what he fails to tell his readers—is that we historians continue to think there are some instances of genuine conflict between science and religion

Of course there is genuine conflict between science and religion. But how did Davis miss my telling my readers about it? For instance, one post explains that “Evolution was never about the science, but rather is motivated and justified by, yes, religious beliefs. That is abundantly documented, from Leibniz to Darwin to Coyne.” Another post gives this explanation:

evolutionary thinking is obvious in ancient Epicureanism, but its resurgence in the seventeenth century was almost exclusively the work of Christian thinkers. Descartes, Malebranche, Cudworth, Ray, Burnet, Leibniz and Wolfe are good examples of how widespread was the movement within Christian thought, and of how varied were the arguments for a strictly naturalistic origins narrative. These Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans agreed that the world must have arisen by natural causes. The common theme was that the arguments were theological and philosophical (i.e., metaphysical rather than scientific). These mandates for naturalism increased and by the nineteenth century were the received truths for progressives. This was the culture Charles Darwin was born into and his book applied these arguments for naturalism to the problem of the origins of the species. Darwin’s thought—from his early notebooks, to Origins, to his later works and autobiography—was thoroughly metaphysical. God must have created via law not miracle and, ever since Darwin, Christians have embraced this belief just as strongly as the pre Darwin Christians had promoted it. … In fact, from a strictly scientific perspective, a naturalistic origins fares no better than a perpetual motion machine. The clear message of science, then and now, is that the world did not likely arise spontaneously.

If that isn’t conflict between science and religion then what is?

But Davis seeks to defend the BioLogos evolutionists and clear BioLogos of the Warfare Thesis. One way to do this is to label any such criticism as a naïve misunderstanding—a failure to understand genuine conflicts. To identify BioLogos with the Warfare Thesis is to deny the existence of any legitimate conflicts between religion and science, because BioLogos is doing nothing more than pointing those out.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. BioLogos is not merely pointing out some particular, current examples of religious resistance to science. Instead, BioLogos fits precisely into, yes, the Warfare Thesis.

BioLogos advocates the spontaneous origins of the world (i.e., evolution according to chance plus natural law), claims that this evolutionary conviction is a compelling, empirical scientific conclusion, and then accuses skeptical Christians of using their religion to oppose science. This is precisely the argument of the Warfare Thesis. And like earlier Warfare Thesis proponents, they (i) appeal to Galileo, as though that brings some justification and (ii) seek a “harmonization” in which today’s Epicureanism determines the facts, and skepticism is demoted to mere feeling and faith. Where it counts, this is no different than yesterday’s Warfare Thesis.

But in fact evolutionary thought is soaking in religious influence. Theological proofs are what motivate and justify evolutionary thought—they are at its foundation. Evolutionists, from the seventeenth century to today, have made that abundantly clear. And they use the Warfare Thesis claim the high ground of science and blame the other guy for what they do.

It is easy to look back to centuries past and see the error of those who have come before. It is more difficult to see that same error today. But we must if we are to educate ourselves and avoid such recurring errors. As a previous post explained:

So whereas the seventeenth and eighteenth century evolutionists were clear about their metaphysical assumptions and how those assumptions mandated naturalism, today’s evolutionists obfuscate their message with the Warfare Thesis. They make the same non biblical, theological and philosophical arguments for evolution in their apologetic literature. But then argue that their proofs are scientific, not metaphysical, and claim their skeptics are the ones with the bad science and bad religion.

The Warfare Thesis is not merely something from long ago. It is not a problem from the past that we have now fixed. It is inherent in our modern day Epicureanism, and it won’t go away until we recognize it.

Here is How BioLogos Promotes the Warfare Thesis

Just Like Huxley and White

The “Warfare Thesis” is an overly simplistic and downright mythological view of the relationship between religion and science. It models the relationship as one of conflict, with religion dogmatically resisting science’s inconvenient findings, such as evolution, while science objectively pursues the truth. But the Warfare Thesis is not opposed to religion. Early exponents such as Thomas H. Huxley and Andrew Dickson White were often friends with religion. Huxley was sympathetic to the Church of England and White spoke well of Christianity. Far from wishing to injure Christianity, White wrote that he hoped to promote it; at least, his favored version of Christianity. White's target were those “mediaeval conceptions of Christianity.” Once this “dogmatic theology” is excised all would be well:

My belief is that in the field left to them—their proper field—the clergy will more and more, as they cease to struggle against scientific methods and conclusions, do work even nobler and more beautiful than anything they have heretofore done. And this is saying much. My conviction is that Science, though it has evidently conquered Dogmatic Theology based on biblical texts and ancient modes of thought, will go hand in hand with Religion; and that, although theological control will continue to diminish, Religion, as seen in the recognition of “a Power in the universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness,” and in the love of God and of our neighbor, will steadily grow stronger and stronger, not only in the American institutions of learning but in the world at large.

In other words, rightly understood science and religion should divide along the fact-faith split. Science gives us facts while religion gives us faith and feelings. This was the implicit message of the closing scene of Inherit The Wind which had Clarence Darrow (Spencer Tracy) clutching a Bible after demolishing William Jennings Bryan’s (Fredric March) belief that the Bible gives us facts, as well as faith. The message was not to reject religion, but to keep it in its place. Of course Darrow was not a Christian, and he never defeated Bryan. But the Warfare Thesis never was about truth.

So while the Warfare Thesis speaks of conflict between science and religion, it also seeks harmony between science and religion. The difference is in the religion. Religion needs to accommodate science’s new truths and restrict itself to faith and feelings. That will lead to harmony but otherwise there is conflict.

Nowhere is this more evident today than at BioLogos where, for example in a recent post, President Deborah Haarsma expressed concern that Bethel College has decided that its faculty ought not to be advocating the view that God used evolution to create the first humans. The concern at BioLogos is that such a decision “effectively sets faith commitments in opposition to clear scientific evidence [for the evolution of humans] in God’s creation.”

This is the Warfare Thesis. Religion is in conflict with “science” and that is a problem.

But of course elsewhere BioLogos calls for harmony as they invite “the church and the world to see the harmony between science and biblical faith as we present an evolutionary understanding of God’s creation,” and provide “5 Reasons the Church Should Embrace Science.”

This too is the Warfare Thesis. Religion is in conflict with “science” and the solution is to acquiesce and retreat to the realm of faith and feelings.

The Warfare Thesis is based on the erroneous equating of evolution as empirical science. Evolution was never about the science, but rather is motivated and justified by, yes, religious beliefs. That is abundantly documented, from Leibniz to Darwin to Coyne. The claim that science has arrived at Epicureanism is simply absurd. The fact is, Epicureanism has arrived at Epicureanism. Evolutionary thought is thoroughly ensconced in metaphysics. There are no scientific proofs for the spontaneous origin of the species, they are theological and philosophical.

Here’s What’s Going on With BioLogos

The Importance of the Warfare Thesis

Deborah Haarsma was professor and chair in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Calvin College and is currently the President of BioLogos. Both of these Christian organizations promote evolutionary theory (Calvin statement, BioLogos statement). That is not surprising since evolution derives, at least in modern times, from theologians and philosophers in the church. To be sure, evolutionary thinking is obvious in ancient Epicureanism, but its resurgence in the seventeenth century was almost exclusively the work of Christian thinkers. Descartes, Malebranche, Cudworth, Ray, Burnet, Leibniz and Wolfe are good examples of how widespread was the movement within Christian thought, and of how varied were the arguments for a strictly naturalistic origins narrative. These Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans agreed that the world must have arisen by natural causes. The common theme was that the arguments were theological and philosophical (i.e., metaphysical rather than scientific). These mandates for naturalism increased and by the nineteenth century were the received truths for progressives. This was the culture Charles Darwin was born into and his book applied these arguments for naturalism to the problem of the origins of the species. Darwin’s thought—from his early notebooks, to Origins, to his later works and autobiography—was thoroughly metaphysical. God must have created via law not miracle and, ever since Darwin, Christians have embraced this belief just as strongly as the pre Darwin Christians had promoted it. Deborah Haarsma is, therefore, a contemporary representative of a long and distinguished intellectual history. But there is one major difference between today’s evolutionists and their forerunners from centuries past.

In the eighteenth century, and even more so in the nineteenth century, evolutionary thought increasingly sought to enlist science to support its thesis of naturalism. In the eighteenth century Bernoulli, Buffon, Kant and Laplace constructed naturalistic theories to explain the origin of the solar system. In the nineteenth century Lamarck, Wallace and Darwin constructed naturalistic theories to explain the origin of the species. While these thinkers and their works rested on the metaphysical foundation that had been laid for them, this genre took on a patina of empiricism. Lengthy, meandering, passages describing scientific observations seemed to lend the authority of science, even if the brief conclusions that followed were steeped in metaphysics.

Thus began the claim that a naturalistic origins is the obvious and unavoidable result of objective scientific inquiry. In fact, from a strictly scientific perspective, a naturalistic origins fares no better than a perpetual motion machine. The clear message of science, then and now, is that the world did not likely arise spontaneously. But science, as has been said, is theology’s hand maiden and the empirical evidence is notoriously vulnerable to manipulation and clever presentation.

To aid in this presentation, evolutionary thinkers also constructed a false history known today as the Conflict or Warfare Thesis. It can be traced back to Voltaire and his mythological reconstruction of the Galileo Affair, but it gathered strength in the nineteenth century. The idea is that science and religion are in conflict as science churns out new, occasionally inconvenient, truths while religion retreats and resists where it can.

So according to the Warfare Thesis, there is a conflict for Christians who are unwilling to bend their interpretation of Scripture. Their religious faith is in conflict with science.

Historians have understood for the better part of a century now that this Warfare Thesis is a false history. It was constructed by evolutionists to frame the origins debate in their favor. In fact the conflict is the exactly the opposite—it is between the metaphysical foundation of evolutionary thought and science. That metaphysical foundation of naturalism is unyielding and unbending, and it makes no sense on the science. It is the evolutionists who have a conflict between their religious beliefs and science. The Warfare Thesis is an attempt to turn the tables and turn the attention away from the obvious problems with evolutionary thought.

Evolutionists say that their skeptics suffer from bad religion and bad science. In fact, the metaphysical foundation of naturalism is not biblical (in spite of the fact that it comes from Christians), and evolutionary theory is not scientific. Science does not indicate that the world spontaneously arose.

But the Warfare Thesis continues. In spite of its obvious failure and falsehood, it is too powerful to resist. A few years ago when Haarsma became President of BioLogos she called for respectful discourse. I took that opportunity to voice my concern that BioLogos was reliant on the Warfare Thesis. Not only was there no reply, but BioLogos has continued to promote the false Warfare Thesis. Haarsma’s article from two weeks ago, on the resignation of Bethel College professor Jim Stump, is an example:

Yet we are concerned that a decision like this effectively sets faith commitments in opposition to clear scientific evidence in God’s creation. We would like to see Christian colleges encouraging their scholars to engage the scientific evidence that humans evolved, and acknowledge that this can be done without letting go of biblical authority. … We are also concerned that Christian college students, especially those who feel called to scientific careers, will see policies like this as a sign of conflict between Christianity and science and feel forced to make an unnecessary choice between them. … We love the Bible and we make the case for evolutionary creation: that God used the natural process of evolution to create all of life’s diverse forms, including humans, as supported by abundant genetic and fossil evidence. This position is in harmony with the teachings of the Bible and Christian doctrine. For example, there are multiple ways that the biblical accounts of Adam and Eve can be understood in the context of this scientific evidence, including as real historical people. And even though God used the natural mechanisms of evolution to create humans, he also made us spiritual beings and established a unique relationship with us by endowing humans with his image.

Clear scientific evidence for evolution? Abundant genetic and fossil evidence for evolution? Yes, the scientific evidence is clear, and the genetic and fossil evidence is abundant, but it does not support evolution. Not even remotely.

Of course Scripture can have different interpretations. But the science leaves no such wiggle room. It does not prove, indicate or suggest that the species arose spontaneously, as a consequence of natural laws and processes. That is a metaphysical mandate that is in conflict with the science.

So whereas the seventeenth and eighteenth century evolutionists were clear about their metaphysical assumptions and how those assumptions mandated naturalism, today’s evolutionists obfuscate their message with the Warfare Thesis. They make the same non biblical, theological and philosophical arguments for evolution in their apologetic literature. But then argue that their proofs are scientific, not metaphysical, and claim their skeptics are the ones with the bad science and bad religion.

Too often evolutionists today present a contradictory message. Religion drives science, and it matters.

Jeff Sachs Goes There: Anti-Vaxxers Go To Jail

Don’t Pass Go, And Don’t Collect $200

Given the dominance and confluence of the Warfare Thesis, its resulting scientism, and evolution’s apparently unceasing thirst for control over people, I kick myself for not predicting Jeff Sachs’ latest we-would-laugh-except-this-is-real threat that parents who do not vaccinate their children are committing a crime [1:50]. It is not enough that this past week the California legislature passed a new law that prohibits parents, who avoid the risk of vaccination, from sending their children to the public schools while nonetheless taxing those same parents to pay for the public school system which they are not allowed to use. These parents are a small minority and so are an easy target. But if Sachs has his way, unfair taxation will be the least of these parents’ concerns as they will be convicted as criminals for their choice to protect their children. Undoubtedly the state would also take their children from them.

Given the strong language from global warming (AGW) advocates about how those who don’t agree with them should be incarcerated, Sachs’ move is not too surprising. Please see this post , where I concluded that this vigilante justice could jump to other issues:

What we are seeing are classic defamation tactics. Evolution’s Warfare Thesis has lit all kinds of fires and emotions are running high. With evolution there is no law, just narrative. Today it focuses on climate, but it could jump to any number of issues.

According to Sachs, vaccination should be one of those issues. That fits nicely into the nineteenth century, mythical Warfare Thesis which was erected by evolutionists to protect their theory. One of the many targets of the Warfare Thesis were those anti-vaccination rascals. To this day evolutionists rally around vaccinations as another support for their scientism.

The fact is that vaccinations have done a world of good and there are plenty of reasons to vaccinate, but they also carry low-probability risk. Those are generalizations and the details are different for each vaccine and each patient.

The bottom line is that vaccinations often present a classic risk-reward tradeoff. They provide helpful protections, but they can present a very low risk of both short-term and long-term illness and death. Recently more than two dozen children in Mexico were hospitalized and two died after receiving vaccines. Authorities halted vaccinations temporarily. Tragedy has also struck in this country, such as in the case of Lorrin Kain, popularized in a recent book, who eventually died from her vaccination injuries. Even the official vaccine court acknowledged the vaccine injury, though the reparations were not nearly adequate.

For most people the risks are tolerably low, and the tradeoff favors the vaccination. But this isn’t a scientific analysis. Not only are the exact probabilities unknown (mostly because the Warfare Thesis has served to cloud and corrupt the science of properly evaluating the vaccine risk), but even if they were known, the risk-reward tradeoff cannot be set to a formula. It is a choice each parent must make for each vaccine, in consultation with their doctor.

None of this is controversial, yet evolutionary thinking demands a very different approach. It demands that while parents must have the choice to kill their unborn child, they ought not have the choice to make the vaccine risk-reward decision. What about the risk? Evolutionists deny the risk because, after all, correlation does not imply causation.

When I explained this evolutionists attacked me with their usual demagoguery. One evolutionist explained the problem is that I don’t accept the basic principles of science because, after all, unlike him I am skeptical that the species arose naturalistically:

The fact that the author of this post is a dedicated anti-evolutionist for whom no amount of evidence is enough to make him even question his convictions, and who has now apparently become an anti-vaxer is not surprising: if you don't accept the basic principles of science, then any application of science to human welfare is, by foregone conclusion, definitely negative

Note the dismissive language. Doubting that the species arose naturalistically makes me a “dedicated anti-evolutionist for whom no amount of evidence is enough” who does not “accept the basic principles of science.” And pointing out that the benefits of vaccines are accompanied by risks makes me “an anti-vaxer.” It’s all Warfare Thesis.

Another evolutionist attacked my post, making the absurd suggestion that the Lorrin Kain’s injuries may have been a mere coincidence, and threatening that he had “Saved and tweeted [the post] for posterity.”

It is disappointing that rational discussion is not possible, but this is the environment that the Warfare Thesis has created. The above Jeff Sachs video in which he calls for the criminalization of parents choosing not to vaccinate, for example, appears at Business Insider under the heading: “Watch Jeff Sachs destroy the anti-vaccine movement in under two minutes.” It is all about attacking the “deniers.” Meanwhile unlikely hypotheses are insisted to be fact, and anyone who doesn’t go along will incur their wrath, and maybe their indictments.

Zack Kopplin: There is No Scientific Evidence Against Evolution

A Product of the Warfare Thesis 

Zack Kopplin is the face of rational thought. Kopplin is a bright, energetic young man opposing the forces of anti intellectualism and ignorance that deny science and the fact of evolution, and seek to inject religious beliefs into the public schools. There’s only one problem. While we are delighted to see young people get involved in public policy issues, Kopplin is feverishly promoting precisely what he claims to be opposing.

Kopplin insists that there is no scientific evidence against evolution. While there is room for debate about particular biological evidences and exactly how they bear on the theory of evolution, there simply is no question that there is scientific evidence against evolution. Plenty of it. To deny that would be the height of anti science denialism. Yet this is precisely what evolutionists claim.

Kopplin explains that the church burned people alive for believing the Earth was round and that the Earth rotated the sun. A myth such as this is sure to move audiences, and is red meat for evolutionists, but it is, nonetheless, a myth. Historians call it the Warfare Thesis myth, but evolutionists won’t stop using it.

Not surprisingly Kopplin wants evolution to be taught in the public schools. But evolution is full of religious claims. Kopplin is pushing to have religious beliefs injected into the public schools—precisely what he claims to oppose.

This is the fruit of evolutionary thought.

The Warfare Thesis in Action: Why Jimmy Kimmel is Important

A Strengthening Tradition

On July 30 of last year Meredith Prohaska had the misfortunate of having a sore throat. At what would have been a routine visit to the doctor the 12-year-old’s mother was told that Meredith should have an HPV vaccine. By dinnertime Meredith was dead.

What exactly is the purpose of the HPV vaccine? Why are so many people so insistent that young girls be given a sequence of this vaccine? Because it offers protection against a virus that is sexually transmitted. And after all, aren’t all 12-year-old girls going to sleep around eventually?

Meredith Prohaska’s cause of death was not the HPV vaccine. At least that is what the official records say.* After all, as Hugh Hewitt assures us, correlation does not imply causation. And since the HPV vaccine did not cause Meredith’s death—or the many other devastating problems girls have experienced including terrible pain and uncontrolled seizures—it therefore is known to be safe.

That’s the message from Jimmy Kimmel, late-night comedian who turns serious when it comes to vaccines and those who aren’t sure about them. Kimmel castigates those “anti-vaxxers” with cutting sarcasm. Vaccines are perfectly safe and anyone who doubts that is fair game for public ridicule.

What is disturbing about Kimmel, and the many other voices of scorn, is not their pro-vaccine sentiment. Vaccines are a complex issue and certainly there are arguments in their favor. But vaccines are not perfectly safe. That is a simple fact that no responsible medical professional would deny. And of course the benefits and risks do not fit a simple formula. Each vaccine is different, and each person is different. Science can inform, but it cannot answer the difficult risk-reward tradeoff question.

The quandary is further complicated by the fact that the vaccine manufacturers have their own special federal law protecting them against the normal law suit process where adequate damages can be sought. Would you purchase an automobile from a company with no liability and immune from prosecution? Of course not.

What is disturbing about mockers such as Kimmel is that they represent a strengthening tradition of delegitimization and dismissal of a group of people. This is a powerful and dangerous division.

We’re not talking about spirited political disagreements. We’re talking about abhorrence and disgust.

This is a much stronger movement, and it is not limited to vaccinations. A host of other, equally complex issues also fuel this irrational odium, including global warming, evolution and abortion.

While these are complex issues, the common thread is that in all cases, the mockers hold to irrational positions. The passion is exceeded only by the ignorance.

The unmistakable underlying pattern, it seems to me, is the Warfare Thesis and its attendant scientism. The dressing up of thoughtful people as ignorant obstructionists at best, and as insidious characters at worst, is not a little concerning.

An excellent example of this is the play and movie, Inherit the Wind. It presents a ridiculous, insulting picture of people which, though contrived, is today taken as accurate and cogent. The irony is that the script was originally intended to combat McCarthyism. It has now become something far more dangerous.

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*Addendum: Further information from the Waukesha County medical via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Diphenhydramine intoxication — ingestion of a lethal level of an antihistamine — caused the death of Meredith Prohaska, though the manner of death is undetermined, Medical Examiner Lynda Biedrzycki said in a prepared statement. "There is no evidence that any vaccination caused or contributed to her death," Biedrzycki said.

The Warfare Thesis, Scientism and Vaccines

Hugh Hewitt Unhinged

Evolution is not merely a theory about biology. It is a much broader movement, tracing back to the Epicureans, that is more of a worldview than a particular theory. Of course evolution calls for a strictly naturalistic origins narrative. But it also has its own world view. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the so-called Warfare Thesis. Simply put, the idea is that naturalism is the pinnacle of scientific progress and that anyone who questions the dogma that the world arose spontaneously must be driven by nonscientific, religious motives. Hence there is a war between religion and science as scientists inexorably uncover new truths which the pious resist and oppose where they can. The Warfare Thesis can be traced back to the eighteenth century with thinkers such as Voltaire, Hume and Kant. Voltaire initiated what would become the unstoppable mythology of the Galileo Affair, reporting that Galileo had “groaned away his days in the dungeons of the Inquisition, because he had demonstrated by irrefragable proofs the motion of the earth.” Neither were true but this myth endures to this very day. Hume, with his arguments against natural theology, and Kant, with his celebration of the Enlightenment, portrayed the pious and the providentialists as naïve obstructionists. By the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries textbooks were informing students that Christians believed the Earth was flat until Columbus proved them wrong. Though the Warfare Thesis is well known to be a myth, it has an enduring and compelling appeal. No less a historian than Daniel J. Boorstin—Distinguished Professor of history at the University of Chicago, Director of the National Museum of History and Technology, and Twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress—promoted the flat Earth myth in his 1983 book, The Discoverers. Unfortunately, now in the Year 2015, the Warfare Thesis not only shows no signs of abating but is gathering yet more strength. Its misconceptions, stereotypes, delegitimizations and “we versus them” mentality are reaching a fever pitch.

One of the corollaries of the Warfare Thesis is scientism, the view of science as the objective source of truth. Poets deal with subjective feelings but scientists, in their spotless white lab coats, deal in unimpeachable facts. It is not uncommon to see “science” referred to as the authoritative source of all kinds of truths. We are told, for example, that products are scientifically proven and that research has now explained why people hold religious beliefs.

But scientism is not limited to advertisements and tabloids. In a recent Washington Post editorial piece, Fred Hiatt bemoans the fact that public opinion is not always aligned with scientific consensus. Hiatt’s opening sentence leaves little doubt what’s coming: “Sophisticated readers know a science denier when they see one.”

This is all Warfare Thesis. There are science “deniers” and there are sophisticated people who can spot them. If you disagree with “science” (as if there is such a monolithic thing), you are not a concerned or thoughtful citizen, you are a denier. In this “we versus them” world, the negative connotation is obvious.

Hiatt criticizes the “southern Bible-thumper denying the fossil in front of his nose.” Ah yes, those “southern Bible-thumpers.” They’re still denying the fossils, aren’t they. We really should do something about them.

Hiatt goes on to quote from polls showing that 88 percent of scientists believe genetically modified foods are safe to eat, compared with only 37 percent of the public; that 87 percent of scientists believe that climate change is mostly caused by human activity, compared with only 50 percent of the public; and that 98 percent of scientists believe that humans have evolved over time, compared with only 65 percent of the public.

Shouldn’t the public accede to the professionals? Shouldn’t we all accept the fact of man-made global warming? One wonders what Hiatt would do with the 13 percent of scientists who don’t go along with the politically-charged conclusion.

Hiatt apparently is not bothered that climate research is not exactly double-blind. Blackballing, funding pressures, career threats, peer-review manipulation, editorial board controls and even shutting down journals altogether are all part of the “science.”

Does Hiatt understand that science is conducted by humans and not robots? Humans with political, cultural, religious, social and career pressures and concerns. A few years ago global cooling was the concern. Indeed, as philosophers well understand, scientific consensus changes with the seasons and is hardly a paragon of truth. Scientists thought continental drift was crazy and that genetic mutations must be independent of need. Even Einstein rejected quantum mechanics. All of these are now well accepted.

None of this means that man-made global warming is not true. In spite of the data adjustments, and in spite of the thoughtful concerns that have been expressed, it may well be true. But we don’t need to start calling names when people aren’t sure.

What is disturbing about Hiatt’s editorial is that it appeared in the Washington Post, one of the nation’s leading newspapers. This dangerous exhibition of Warfare Thesis stereotypes and scientism is what leading opinion makers are thinking.

Nor is this merely a rare mistake of one journalist. This month’s cover of the venerable National Geographic magazine, pictured above, could hardly be a more explicit proclamation of the Warfare Thesis mythology. Inside Joel Achenbach explains the battle. He propagates the Flat Earth myth because, as he explains, some guy in South Dakota in 1893 built a flat-Earth model. And Achenbach ridicules any doubt about man-made global warming as a conspiracy theory. “The idea that hundreds of scientists,” writes Achenbach, “from all over the world would collaborate on such a vast hoax is laughable.”

Laughable? Apparently Achenbach is unaware that scientists “from all over the world” have agreed on all kinds of theories that were later discarded as clearly false. And what about the scientists who do not agree? Even James Lovelock admits that he was “a Little Too Certain.” Dismissive language and delegitimization are not helping.

Vaccines

This latest round of the Warfare Thesis has also featured concerns about vaccines. The most significant work in the formation of the Warfare Thesis was Andrew Dickson White’s 1896 volume, History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. White took the mythology to new levels, covering a wide spectrum of topics including vaccinations. Today, vaccinations continue to service the myth as evidenced by various commentators.

Radio journalist Hugh Hewitt, for example, has been castigating parents who do not vaccinate their children, assuring his listeners that vaccines are safe and the decision is a no-brainer. What about the many vaccine injuries? Hewitt echoes Hume with the absurd refrain that correlation does not imply causation. How then does Hewitt advocate vaccines in the first place?

But Hewitt has no time for such fine points as he belittles those who don’t go along. It’s Hume and White all over again. The lie that vaccines are safe because correlation does not imply causation did not begin with Hewitt. It is a common explanation used to dismiss and ridicule questions regarding vaccine risk.

CNN has also been attacking the vaccine issue. Reporter Sanjay Gupta recently interviewed the U.S. Surgeon General, urging him to recommend a federal law mandating vaccinations. Gupta became increasingly concerned in the interview, suggesting to the Surgeon General that those who do not vaccinate have sinister motives. Gupta unequivocally declared vaccines to be safe while the CNN anchor Jake Tapper was visibly angered at the thought of anyone declining vaccinations.

We are now living in a Warfare Thesis driven culture. Vaccines, as with the other topics that have been subsumed by this mythology, are far more complicated than this dangerous scientism allows. Vaccines have a long history of causing a wide spectrum of injuries and death. That is a scientific fact that all responsible researchers and health practitioners understand.

The message that vaccines carry no risk is simply a lie and an example of the dangers of White’s false history. Consider Lorrin Kain who died on December 22, 2009. In the spring of 1994, at the age of 6 weeks, Lorrin’s parents took their baby to be vaccinated. Their lives would never be the same. Lorrin sustained severe brain damage and would have uncontrolled seizures for the rest of her life. At the age of 15 she finally succumbed. And now the Kain’s are being told that the decision to vaccinate is clear-cut and that vaccines carry no risk.

In Practice, the Origins Debate is Often Misinformed

Strong Beliefs, Weak Knowledge

When it comes to the origins debate, it sometimes seems that everyone is an expert. Consider international business consultant Greg Satell who shared his wisdom yesterday, at the Forbes website, in a piece entitled “How The War On Science Affects Us All.” Satell begins with the centuries-old demarcation problem which attempts to define what is and isn’t science.

On the surface, the term “scientific” seems to be a fairly arbitrary distinction.  After all, both alien hunters and SETI scientists are both engaged in a search for truth, but the difference is that the work of scientists, when properly done, is reproducible and testable and that makes all the difference. Science matters not because of its greater truth, but its lesser solipsism.

So real science is “reproducible and testable.” The army of philosophers working on the demarcation problem can now put down their pens—Satell has solved the problem. No matter that Satell’s finding immediately fails on his own example. Why is the SETI scientist’s radio recording of 3.1415 “reproducible and testable” while the alien hunter’s video recording of a saucer flying overhead is not?

Satell next tells his readers that skeptics doubt evolution because after all, “no one actually saw humans evolve.” Satell gives no references or examples because there are none, at least none from any serious skeptics. This straw man argument tells us more about Satell than about skeptics.

Satell next moves to the topic of the age of the Earth, explaining that “The bible says that the earth is several thousand years old.” Again no reference is given because the Bible doesn’t actually say this. That is one interpretation. And while it may well be correct, it nonetheless is an interpretation. There is no passage that says “the earth is several thousand years old,” and that is an important distinction.

Unfortunately such ignorance, misrepresentation and inaccuracy unusual. Too often the topic of origins is informed by simplistic Warfare Thesis stereotypes and straw men rather than informed judgment. People will always disagree but let’s at least be knowledgeable in our disagreement.

New Findings: Human Genome was Shaped by an Evolutionary Arms Race

From Hume to Carlin

In our cells there are mobile genes and there are complex genetic regulatory systems, and sometimes these two come together. Mobile genes with complex genetic regulatory systems is a challenge for evolution to explain for in a relatively short amount of time evolution must have developed these amazing regulatory systems. But just has Hume explained that “A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures,” and that nature is so arranged so as “to embitter the life of every living being”; and Malthus explained that populations struggle for limited resources; and Spencer characterized life as the survival of the fittest, so too today’s evolutionists describe these unlikely findings as the result of an on-going war, this time within our genome (please watch the 30 second video above before reading the abstract below):

Throughout evolution primate genomes have been modified by waves of retrotransposon insertions. For each wave, the host eventually finds a way to repress retrotransposon transcription and prevent further insertions. In mouse embryonic stem cells, transcriptional silencing of retrotransposons requires KAP1 (also known as TRIM28) and its repressive complex, which can be recruited to target sites by KRAB zinc-finger (KZNF) proteins such as murine-specific ZFP809 which binds to integrated murine leukaemia virus DNA elements and recruits KAP1 to repress them. KZNF genes are one of the fastest growing gene families in primates and this expansion is hypothesized to enable primates to respond to newly emerged retrotransposons. However, the identity of KZNF genes battling retrotransposons currently active in the human genome, such as SINE-VNTR-Alu (SVA) and long interspersed nuclear element 1 (L1), is unknown. Here we show that two primate-specific KZNF genes rapidly evolved to repress these two distinct retrotransposon families shortly after they began to spread in our ancestral genome. ZNF91 underwent a series of structural changes 8–12 million years ago that enabled it to repress SVA elements. ZNF93 evolved earlier to repress the primate L1 lineage until ~12.5 million years ago when the L1PA3-subfamily of retrotransposons escaped ZNF93’s restriction through the removal of the ZNF93-binding site. Our data support a model where KZNF gene expansion limits the activity of newly emerged retrotransposon classes, and this is followed by mutations in these retrotransposons to evade repression, a cycle of events that could explain the rapid expansion of lineage-specific KZNF genes.

In evolutionary theory death is the engine of progress and existence is an on-going battle.

Workshop on Scientific Imperialism

An Abundance of Material

Don’t miss the Workshop on Scientific Imperialism in Helsinki next April where attendees will consider whether “conventions and procedures of one discipline or field are imposed on other fields, or more weakly when a scientific discipline seeks to explain phenomena that are traditionally considered proper of another discipline’s domain.” Keynote Speaker Stephen Downes will ask  “Is the Appeal to Evolution in Explanations of Human Behavior a Case of Scientific Imperialism?”

The answer is “yes,” but human behavior is only the beginning of a long list. Evolution is by far the most influential theory in the history of science and its influence spreads not only to other areas of science, but well outside of science as well.

One of evolution’s early moves outside of science was in historiography where Darwin’s friend and champion Thomas Huxley began the construction of the history of thought from an evolutionary perspective. Evolutionary theory was motivated and mandated by religious premises, but Huxley reversed the roles and cast evolution as objective, truth-seeking science and the opposition as misguided religious believers. Thus, in this Warfare Thesis, science was opposed by religion, rather than informed and constrained by religion.

An important tool that was instrumental in spreading the Warfare Thesis far beyond evolutionary studies and into the broader culture was the play and movie Inherit the Wind. The Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee script was all that Huxley could have dreamt of, casting the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial as a conflict between the rational evolutionists and the irrational faithful.

Inherit the Wind is fictional propaganda that evolutionists continue to use to this day and remains widely influential. As Judge John Jones astonishingly explained, he wanted to see Inherit the Wind a second time in preparation for the 2005 Dover case, over which he presided, because the film puts the origins debate into its proper “historical context.” Jones later reminisced about the trial, explaining that “I understood the general theme. I’d seen Inherit the Wind.” The federal judge’s over-the-top naiveté was a manifestation of evolution’s anti-intellectualism.

Another important early evolutionary spinoff was eugenics “science” and abortion. Nietzsche proclaimed that it was the sick, the oppressed, the broken and the weak, rather than evil men, who were the greatest threat to humanity. And Margaret Sanger promoted her racism and sexual immorality in what would become the abortion movement. The American eugenics movement and both World War I and later the horrors of the German Nazis were all influenced by evolution’s pseudo science.

More recently the abortion movement has grown and eugenics continues to be advocated. Lawlessness and immorality escalated with the legalization of abortion in the Roe v. Wade decision and its inherent racism. As Roe v. Wade lawyer Ron Weddington explained to the newly elected President Bill Clinton, “You can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy, and poor segment of our country,” with inexpensive abortifacients. Weddington explained that he was not advocating mass extinction of these unfortunate people because “Crime, drugs and disease are already doing that. The problem is that their numbers are not only replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to people who can’t afford to have babies. There, I’ve said it. It’s what we all know is true, but we only whisper it, because as liberals who believe in individual rights, we view any program which might treat the disadvantaged differently as discriminatory, mean-spirited and … well … so Republican.”

Likewise Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg described Roe v. Wade as intended to control population growth, “particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” And you know what that means. And restrictions on abortion simply exacerbate the problem because “the impact of all these restrictions is on poor women,” and “It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people.”

It is little wonder that University of Texas evolutionist Eric Pianka receives standing ovations and awards for his advocacy of the elimination of 90% of the human population.

Eugenics, abortion and population control are, unfortunately, by no means the end of evolution’s deconstructionism. Evolution does away with law, common sense and morality. Scientific laws, as evolutionists explain, are not appropriate when explaining the creation of the world. For despite appearances and the hard scientific evidence, the world must have arisen spontaneously. It is a narrative of sheer absurdity. But we control it, and one consequence is moral relativism. Morality is seen as the result of evolutionary history. Right and wrong are determined by the haphazard configurations of molecules in our head.

Yes, there is plenty of material for Workshop on Scientific Imperialism in Helsinki next April.

Why the Narrative Trumps the Facts

What Evolution is All About

Greg Conterio, echoing Robert Bidinotto, makes the point that culture war differences often pit the facts versus the narrative. The facts can win every battle but the narrative wins the war. As Bidinotto puts it, “One of the most valuable insights I discovered in recent years is how Narratives trump everything else — including what most of us would call concern for ‘practical results.’” Conterio and Bidinotto are mainly concerned with political issues, but what lies behind their insight is our beliefs about origins.

A predetermined narrative is what influenced Darwin in concluding that the species must have arisen as a result of the blind actions of natural processes. As Darwin historian Janet Browne explained, Darwin, as well as evolution co-discoverer Alfred Wallace, came to believe in transmutation and so they then sought a suitable mechanism. The reason they came to believe in transmutation was the biological world was too gritty, too unseemly, and lacking in elegance. In a word, too evil.

Such rationalistic thinking (starting with preconceived ideas of what to expect, rather than exploring the data to see where it leads) about origins by no means began with Darwin and Wallace. They were handed these ideas from leading Christian thinkers from the previous centuries. Evolution was not a scientific finding, it was a religious conclusion.

From a scientific perspective, the spontaneous origin of the biological world makes little sense. Darwin and Wallace had no idea how such wonders actually could have sprung up all by themselves. Nor do evolutionists today. As Browne put it, they first believed—then they sought a scientific mechanism. That’s backwards, but this is precisely what they, and their followers today, are committed to.

The result is that evolution has introduced into science the art of story-telling. Evolution is a narrative, not an appeal to scientific principles and laws. Evolutionary events are “unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible” in the words of famous evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky. Or as Harvard’s Ernst Mayr wrote, “Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques” for explaining evolutionary events and processes.

Evolution is a narrative. And it is not just any narrative—it is the world’s creation story. The most important fundamental of a culture is its creation story. Tell me where you think you came from, and I’ll tell you everything else about you. At least everything that is important.

So what Conterio and Bidinotto are observing is the fruit of evolutionary thought. Evolution is not merely a scientific theory. It is the most influential theory in areas outside of science, in the history of science.

One now classic example of this is how evolutionary theory influenced historiography. In the nineteenth century evolutionists began constructing the history of ideas from their perspective. It became known as the Warfare Thesis, or Conflict Thesis, because it cast religious people as resisting, and in conflict with, science and its objective truths.

Even though historians agree that the Warfare Thesis is a strong dose of Whig history, it nonetheless often informs our culture’s views today. Anyone questioning evolution is cast as the fundamentalist, opposing the objective, truth-seeking scientists.

The poster child for this mythical retelling of history is Inherit the Wind, a play and movie that is a fictionalization of the famous 1925 Monkey Trial. Evolutionists today heavily promote this film as a cogent insight into our culture. It casts evolutionists as the white-hat good guys, and skeptics as ignorant, religious zealots.

Many evolutionists are unaware that Inherit the Wind is a fictionalization. And when told about this, they don’t really care. Because the narrative trumps the facts.

Judge John Jones explained, for example, he wanted to see Inherit the Wind a second time in preparation for the 2005 Dover case, over which he presided, because the film puts the origins debate into its proper “historical context.” Jones later reminisced about the trial, explaining that “I understood the general theme. I’d seen Inherit the Wind.”

But a federal judge’s profound ignorance and prejudice over a case in which he presided does not bother anyone—he was exalted as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year. So what if Inherit the Wind takes a few liberties with the truth, it is the narrative that counts.

Unfortunately evolution’s influence didn’t stop with a silly screenplay. With evolution life has no divine spark, we weren’t made in the image of any Creator, and things like facts and laws, both scientific and otherwise, don’t really matter. In politics, as well as evolution, it’s all about the narrative, not following the law.