Ok, Murphy, but just this once. . .

“Never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference.” – Murphy’s Law

Saeran St. Christopher's "a posse ad esse"

The first point I’d make is about politics, not science. The current round of Creationism debate is primarily political. There hasn’t been a national debate on evolution of this scope since Scopes. Why has it resurfaced now- along with the other red herring issue of the day- gay marriage? These are political hooks meant to solidify Republican hegemony. All of the serious intellectuals (and most of the adult homosexuals) in this country are stocked in the solidly Blue states of NY, CA, MA, and IL. These states have been lost to the Republicans forever, so there is no harm in letting the blowhards (pundits & professors, etc.) blow as hard as they like. Those of us on the Upper West Side will never pull the R lever no matter the candidate. However, in the 50/50 states that we now call Red States, the surest fire way to get the angry proles out to the voting booths to create that 51% majority is to wave around pictures of arrogant scientists from New York and Cambridge claiming that the middle-American religious lifestyle is bunk.

In other words, you’ve taken the bait, seeing an opportunity for self-aggrandizement and self-promotion. There really is no debate on this subject except with fairly narrow, provincial minds. You’ve fallen into the intellectual trap of believing that reason is the causal actor in life, that reason alone shall set you free. The emotional response elicited by threatening (intellectual) ideas is what moves people’s passions and moves them to act. And while the intellectuals pat their own backs for being “right” they watch the world go to hell around them with nothing but their own self-satisfaction to comfort them. The most recent result of this farce was the victory of Bush/Cheney in 2004.

You took the bait in the typically stupid manner to which most smart people are prone – an idiotic question was posed and you couldn’t resist showing everybody how smart you were by refuting it. But the people who posed the question have no concern for intellectual rigor or who comes out on top of the debate. It’s basically a give away. What they’re concerned with is raising emotions which cause people to act and override their reason. And my friend, it is working splendidly.

No intelligent person likes being condescended to. And no one who would take your points on faith I would consider to be an intelligent person. As for the rest, you’re just fanning the flames of their resentment of intellectualism in general, further widening the (unnecessary) rift in the social fabric.

“There is no conflict between Science and Religion, however there is conflict between stupid science and stupid religion” – Abraham Maslow

My second point would be religious. The assumptions you make about the nature and intent of the universe are profoundly arrogant and at the same time revealingly simplistic. I can empathize to a point, as I remember myself as a young scientist puzzled that any fool would spend his time majoring in Theology since we had already proved that God did not exist, so what was the point? Of course I was only fourteen at the time and had never seriously investigated faith, myth, religious history, or any kind of practical numinosity. But as I matured I began doing my own research into the more sophisticated spiritual worldviews and learned of their richness, depth, wisdom, and indeed, practicality.

In hearing what I could tolerate of your lecture I was taken aback by the wideness of the assumptions you make about what religion has to offer us – that somehow the primary religious tenets are that we are “meant” to live in a perfectly harmonious world where creativity is “efficient” and hostility to life is the exception and not the rule. Ignoring the fact that serious scientists ought to examine their own assumptions exhaustively, a step which you do not seem to approach in this segment, I would condemn the emotional weakness such assumptions imply:

It is a typical intellectual conceit (and in general a male prejudice as well) that there be some kind of fixed, harmonious, Euclidian order to the world. The intellectual’s feeling of superiority over the emotionally-driven population leads him (generally) to discount the emotional experience as irrelevant, or at best primitive and unworthy of very much respect. But if one takes the emotional person’s point of view, it is the imperfections, the vicissitudes of life that create the challenge, the drama, and the experience of life itself. While the intellectual spends his time breaking life down into meaningless bits, all the while searching for “meaning,” the life experience - which may be the meaning itself - passes him by. From a psychological standpoint this tends to be due to a weakened emotional stance in the individual forcing him to use reason to attempt to control-by-making-sense-of something which is not inherently reasonable. This tail chasing is evident in the current creationist debate.

Suffering, death, the ferocity of nature, the process of creativity - these are all the subject of serious religious thought, discussion, and philosophy. In Saeran's video post, you seem to be refuting an assumption about how these subjects are understood by religious persons. Making such assumptions, of course, makes your case seem all the more obvious and yourself all the more superior. But you have chosen those assumptions just for that purpose, ignoring the rich history and exploration into the deeper psycho-spiritual underpinnings of the human experience. It is an argument against Maslow's "stupid" religion, invoking Murphy's directive to stop arguing with those people!

I am aware that the typical Creationist point of view is moronic- from a scientific point of view. And if Saeran had posted one of their rants on her site, I would be telling them that their simplistic and shallow view of religion was provoking this inflated reaction in the scientific community and that they would do well to seek out the deeper truths in their faiths rather than the fatuous "Thou Shalts" that make them all sound like Philistines. The people that promote these simplistic religious ideas are just as guilty of opportunism and self-promotion as you are, only on the other side – none of which is to the public benefit. The “sensible” Christians and the “sensitive” scientists don’t get air time on Bill O’Reilly – or even Charlie Rose. It’s only the sophomoric fringe that get the play in the public forum – and it’s for exactly the same reasons – they stir emotions, get people to act (i.e. tune in) and boost ratings – again to no great public benefit.

Just to iterate, the cleverness of this tactic politically is that while there is indeed an emotional reaction in the intellectual elite to the silliness of the creationist rhetoric, it is a reaction that is impotent to effect change, due of our political landscape. No matter how angry the folks get in Harvard Square or at Northwestern, the political outcome will not be any different than if they had all been asleep- whereas in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, those few angry rednecks are just enough to push the conservatives over the top. And you are the one luring them on. “Stupid Design.” What better way to get a redneck out of bed on a cold Tuesday in November than calling Jesus stupid. And here we are today. "Four more years!"

A third point is this: Have you ever been to Kansas? Have you ever seriously opened your mind to what you consider to be the ridiculous? As a middle-class, prep-schooled New Yorker myself, I had what must be a similar aversion to life beyond the Hudson. But in a recent bout of courage I made my way to Kentucky – or was it Ohio? – to the new Creationist museum. I had heard the blurb on NPR which declared it to be an anti-abortion, anti-homosexual political tool and decided to see for myself – a little scientific inquiry, eh? I’ll spare you the story of my entire adventure (unless you’d like me to elaborate) and say the whole thing was really quite civilized. From a technological view it made the Museum of Natural History on the West Side look like something my uncle threw together in his basement. They used (perhaps ironically) the full power of modern scientific technology to make their case. It was indeed an impressive display.

But as for substance, when I tried to suss out exactly what they were getting at, it turned out to be a very simple point, and one that I find wholly worthy of discussion. They chose the medium of film to show a young girl asking questions about her life, who she was, what was her purpose, and why was she here – questions that most thoughtful people ask in their lives. During the film, the hipster-looking angels sweep down (accompanied by vibrating seats and surround-sound speakers) and attempt to assuage her concerns that she was here only as an accident of random genetic mutation and that her life had no meaning, purpose, or significance whatsoever.

Now this is a fair point, I’d say. Highly intelligent people have criticized the idea of random mutation as the driving force of evolution – and the nihilism that logically follows from it. In their plain little film, the creationists suggest that there are holes in much of the scientific evidence (points I’m sure you’ve addressed in your many public engagements) and that therefore the world must have been created in the way the Bible says it was. This is certainly an enormous leap in logic. But by failing to adequately address the underlying concerns of the Creationists – not the self-serving explanation of weak-minded theologians - the scientific community is missing an important issue that will never go away. This is not surprising since science has never been able to adequately address such issues of purpose and meaning, so it behooves scientists to ignore them and fight on grounds for which they are better equipped, carbon dating for instance.

It has always been my feeling that scientists have handled the question of Darwinian purposelessness by assuming for themselves the purpose of bringing reason to the ignorant. This is a sort of intellectual sleight of hand that allows them to feel a sense of purpose while at the same time denigrating the concept of purpose (as espoused by traditional religions) through reductionism and, in this case, the concept of random mutation.

By the way, I got through about 3/4 of the exhibits and didn’t see anything about abortion or ”gay marriage.”



So getting back to you, Mr. Tyson, I am not really arguing with your science. I am not really interested in your science. Science will go round and round as it always has, oblivious to what it chooses to ignore- that is irrational, unquantifiable forces that act in reality but which are excluded from scientific inquiry. I am suggesting that science is by and large besides the point. I am taking issue with your tone, your manner, and the other aspects of your presentation that deteriorate the public good to the benefit of your personal career. Science is not the only force in the universe. It is but one perspective, even though it is the dominant one in our culture. So, as a fish in water, it is hard for an intelligent person to realize that there is anything else besides it, yet there most certainly is. And that which we ignore will always come back to haunt us – in ways that not even science can predict.


I have further thoughts on this topic, but I'll leave it here for now. Would be happy to discuss further at your pleasure.

All best,
David Goodman