(This is Post 1 in a series of 3).
It’s been a while since I posted about the Michael Reiss affair, but I only just found a response to the controversy in the Guardian by Sir Harold Kroto. He is a Nobel Laureate in chemistry for discovering new kinds of carbon. I’ll respond to Kroto in three posts.
His central argument can be summarised as follows:
- Science is based solely on disinterested examination of the physical world.
- To be a scientist, we must accept nothing whatsoever for which there is no evidence as having any fundamental validity.
- All religious people have sacrificed their intellectual integrity by accepting “irrational unsubstantiated claims [that have] no fundamental validity”.
- Thus, Reiss cannot tackle the “fundamentally unresolvable conflict at the science/religion interface.” He was in the wrong job.
There are a number of points that need to be made in response to this. The most obvious is the accusation that all scientists who are believers are dishonest and irrational. This is an amazing claim. Was Newton dishonest? Boyle? Francis Bacon, one of the fathers of the scientific revolution? Johannes Kepler? Nicolaus Copernicus? Blaise Pascal? Sir William Herschel? Michael Faraday? James Prescott Joule? James Clerk Maxwell? Louis Pasteur? In more modern times, was Arthur Eddington dishonest? Max Planck? Is George Ellis dishonest? John Polkinghorne? Nobel Laureate Arthur Schawlow? Alan Sandage? Don Page? Chris Isham? The computer science legend that is Donald Knuth? Owen Gingerich? Human genone project leader Francis Collins? Neuroscientist Bill Newsome? Geneticist R. J. Berry? Paleontologist Simon Conway Morris?
Now they could all be wrong, and I’m not claiming that believers comprise a majority of scientists. My point is the breathtaking claim that all of these scientists are dishonest, that they have no intellectual integrity.
Surely we would see evidence of this deficiency in their scientific work. If these are the sort of people who would deceitfully harbour unscientific beliefs, then we should see these beliefs creep into their research. Has Kroto discovered fabrications in Polkinghorne’s work with quarks? Are Alan Sandage’s observations to measure the Hubble constant strewn with lies? Is the man who created Tex (Knuth be praised!), “dangerous” and “hell-bent on dragging us back to the dark ages”? Where is Kroto’s evidence for such a claim?
Believers, it seems, are perfectly capable of applying the scientific method.
Ah yes, Kroto would say, but they disqualify themselves by claiming to know anything that cannot be subjected to scientific testing. We’ll look more closely at that claim in my next post.
Letters to Nature 
>>My point is the breathtaking claim that all of these scientists are dishonest, that they have no intellectual integrity.<>Science is based solely on doubt-based, disinterested examination of the natural and physical world. It is entirely independent of personal belief.<<
I think some science-minded people run from the word "belief" for no good reason. Science has everything to do with personal belief – it's all about how we choose what propositions to trust and which ones to doubt. "Belief" doesn't necessarily only refer to unjustified and implausible claims.
For some reason my above post got corrupted.
“My point is the breathtaking claim that all of these scientists are dishonest, that they have no intellectual integrity.”
Agreed, I think they are simply mistaken. I presume you agree with them to some extent.
Also a quote from Kroto that I disagree with:
“Science is based solely on doubt-based, disinterested examination of the natural and physical world. It is entirely independent of personal belief.”
I think some science-minded people run from the word “belief” for no good reason. Science has everything to do with personal belief – it’s all about how we choose what propositions to trust and which ones to doubt. “Belief” doesn’t necessarily only refer to unjustified and implausible claims.
I agree with both points, especially the second one. Its one of the reasons I’m drawn to the “degrees of belief” interpretation of probability.
[…] stupidity of this episode goes without saying. I’ve noted before that being taken out of context is hardly the fault of the individual in question, and yet careers […]
You should read all I wrote which makes your above statements re religious scientists totally redundant. Furthermore most of these scientists lived before we realised much about the cosmos: Now 92 % of top scientist FRSs NASMs and Nobel Laureates are atheists, agnostic and freethinkers
Sir Harry goes on to express his complete agreement with the Rev Michael Reiss’ resignation from his position as Director of Science Education, saying:
I do not have a particularly big problem with scientists who may have some personal mystical beliefs – for all I know the President of the Royal Society may be religious. However, I, and many of my Royal Society colleagues, do have a problem with an ordained minister as Director of Science Education – this is a totally different matter. … Reiss cannot have his religious cake in church and eat the scientific one in the classroom. This is where the intellectual integrity issue arises – and it is the crucial issue in the Reiss affair.
Harry Kroto
“However, I, and many of my Royal Society colleagues, do have a problem with an ordained minister as Director of Science Education – this is a totally different matter. … Reiss cannot have his religious cake in church and eat the scientific one in the classroom.”
Why not? Would it be ok for the director of an atheist society to be Director of Science Education? If science is “entirely independent of personal belief” then what’s the problem?
“An ordained minister must have accepted that there was a creator (presumably more intelligent than he is?) thus many of us (maybe 90% of FRSs) cannot see how such a person can pontificate on how to tackle this fundamentally unresolvable conflict at the science/religion interface.” Why does this affect an ordained minister but not an ordinary scientist who is a Christian? Should we be screening scientists, trying to weed out the believers? After all, they too are on the wrong side of this “fundamentally unresolvable conflict”, but seem to be doing science just fine.
Most importantly, what precisely is this “fundamentally unresolvable conflict”? What scientific fact have we learned since Newton that renders resolution impossible?
(Great to have you commenting here, Sir Harry!!!)
“What scientific fact have we learned since Newton that renders resolution impossible?”
Evolution,star formation, the age of the earth, how the earth formed, the fact that god doesn’t heal amputees, etc etc. Basically anything. All gods of consequence are implausible. It’s only deist gods that are still possible, and they don’t have anything to do with religions.
Mr. Kroto,
I realize I’m a little late to this discussion. My apologies… I only just discovered it. But I feel compelled to offer a few comments;
“Furthermore most of these scientists lived before we realized much about the cosmos…”
Incorrect. The list of “modern times” believing scientists Luke presented is larger than his pre-20th Century one (14 names vs. 11). This is simple arithmetic, and many of those scientists are alive today. It’s also irrelevant. What was, or was not known about the cosmos in past centuries has little to do with the philosophy of science and religion. In fact, many of the foundations of modern scientific method were laid by believing scientists from the late Middle Ages on (Hannam, 2009).
“Now 92% of top scientist FRSs, NASMs and Nobel Laureates are atheists, agnostic and freethinkers…”
Also incorrect. I don’t know about “FRSs” or “NASMs,” but there is no reliable record of how many Nobel Laureates are atheists or agnostics. The Nobel committee keeps no such records and there are no general surveys to that effect (at least, not that I was able to locate). However, there have been studies of how many trained scientists are atheists, and the results don’t even begin to support a figure like that. For instance, Ecklund (2010) found that nearly 50% of all scientists surveyed were religious, and most of the remainder were spiritual seekers who are open to the idea of God and religion (a friend of mine who is an atheist reviewed this work for Discover).
More to the point, even if your claim was true it’s a textbook example of an Argument from Authority–one of the first fallacies taught in any undergraduate logic course, and it presumes false authority as well. At a bare minimum, any discussion of the relationship between science and religion requires at least some knowledge of comparative religion, philosophy, and a relevant scientific field. This isn’t a plug for religion or a plea for politically correct sensitivity–it’s Critical Thinking 101. One cannot discuss the relationship between any two subjects, A and B, without have at least some knowledge of both. Science vs. religion… beer-brewing vs. wine-making… axle grease vs. personal lubricants… it makes no difference what the subjects are. One may be the world’s leading expert in A, but if he/she doesn’t know the first thing about B they’re in no position to address any relationship between the two. Of all the atheists I’ve ever known or read, I can count on less than one hand the number that were at least marginally literate in both philosophy and a scientific field, and only two who had any knowledge whatsoever of comparative religion (Bertrand Russell and Issac Asimov). To the best of my knowledge, virtually every living scholar who is adequately trained in all three areas is religious, or at least open to religion. If you can document even one exception I’m all ears.
“I, and many of my Royal Society colleagues, do have a problem with an ordained minister as Director of Science Education…”
Why, exactly? Are you telling me you wouldn’t consider scientists like John Polkinghorne or Georges Lamaitre? That’s interesting… seeing as how not only are they among the leading physicists of the last century, the Royal Society saw fit to award Lamaitre the Eddington Prize in 1953 for his seminal contributions to modern cosmology (not the least of which was being the first to propose the big band and derive the Hubble Law), and Polkinghorne is a member. Both men are/were literate in philosophy and comparative religion as well, btw, and the Eddington Prize’s namesake also believed in God.
As for atheists, I fail to see why I should expect any of them to be better candidates for a position like Director of Science Education. Richard Dawkins for instance, is the University of Oxford’s Professor for Public Understanding of Science–as good a resume fit as one could expect. His background is in ethology and evolutionary biology, the former of which has nothing whatsoever to do with any religious topic, and the latter of which is only relevant to Bible-Belt anti-evolutionary fundamentalism in the United States. Fine… if I ever need help answering some scientifically uneducated back-country American fundamentalists I’ll look him up. But apart from that, he’s illiterate in virtually every scientific field even remotely relevant to religion or to the philosophy of science, the latter of which bears directly on science education. He’s certainly no better a scientist than Polkinghorne, Lamaitre, or anyone in Luke’s list. And if anything should bear on his credentials for such a title it would be his scholarship standards… speaking of which, even creationists know better than to cite Hollywood gossip spoof sites as legitimate sources in their published works.
References
Hannam, J. (2009). God’s Philosophers: How the medieval world laid the foundations of modern science. Icon Books. Available online at http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Philosophers-Medieval-Foundations-Science-ebook/dp/B003B02OJQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439411654&sr=8-1&keywords=gods+philosophers. Accessed Aug. 12, 2015.
Ecklund, E. H. (2010). Science vs. religion: What scientists really think. Oxford University Press. Available online at http://www.amazon.com/Science-vs-Religion-Scientists-Really/dp/0195392981/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439412232&sr=8-1&keywords=What+scientists+really+think. Accessed Aug. 12, 2015.
Ooops… big bang, not big “band.” 🙂