I don’t usually read the tripe over at the Framing Science blog. Matthew Nisbet spends too much of his time whining about how the “New Atheist movement” is offending the religious folk and how science should bend over and take it up the ass from the theistards who want to inject their fantasies into science, all in the name of “working together” and “finding common ground”. For some reason, he seems to think that pointing out the absurdities inherent in the beliefs and actions of the religious is disrespectful to religion. We shouldn’t go confronting those who make absurd claims with absolutely no proof, even when we are possessed of a plethora of evidence to the contrary; evidence obtained through science.
PP
Anyway, as I was perusing the posts on Science Blogs, the title of a post from Nisbet caught my eye: Words of Advice for Atheist Literalists (and Many Bloggers). Naturally, being a blogger and an atheist, this made me curious. What advice would Nisbet offer? Turns out he was sharing some wisdom from Rick Weiss; a quote from an op-ed piece Weiss did for the Washington Post.
While Darwin himself never took his findings as definitive evidence against the existence of God, many people of faith have read that conclusion into his work. As a result, the man who first grasped biology’s most unifying concept is today widely demonized as an enemy of the church, even as many scientists and others make a similar mistake and invoke Darwin in their rejection of everything theological……Darwin’s humility in the face of insufficient evidence — his willingness to say “I don’t know” — is as important a lesson as any to be found in biology texts today. This is not about “teaching the controversy” — Darwin had a slam-dunk in his explanation of the evolution of species, including humans, and every modern test of evolutionary theory has only strengthened his conclusions. But he also knew there is plenty of room for God at the top, upstream of the business of biology.
Soldiers in today’s culture wars, whether in black collars or white lab coats, could take a tip from Darwin on his birthday bicentennial. He loved the natural world, “most beautiful and most wonderful.” And he knew enough to not pick fights over what he did not know.
I felt compelled to leave a comment at Framing Science which, apparently is still stuck in moderation. So I’ll go ahead and repeat it here.
I’m not sure exactly to whom Mr. Weiss is offering advice to. I believe that you’ll find that most atheists, the vast majority, do not empirically state that there is no god. Our position is that the likelihood of a god existing (especially a god as depicted in most religious texts) is so vanishingly remote that for all practical purposes we feel quite confident that there probably is no god. Nothing in science can be proven to absolution but that is no reason to create a supernatural explanation to cover up the fact that we don’t yet know the answer.In addition to that, I think you’ll find that most atheists would be quite willing to change their position if sufficient evidence were to be brought forth for the existence of a god. I seriously doubt that you’ll here a similar claim from the other side.
Darwinian evolution is just one small piece in the vast collection of evidence disproving the existence of god. It is a tremendous piece of work, but taken against the whole, it factors very little in my decision to be an atheist. It seems to me that the ones making the most strident assertions that Darwin == atheism are the theists who feel threatened by the analysis of the natural world that Darwin did and his discovery of a natural explanation for a process that formerly had only been described by supernatural stories.
As far as picking fights over what he did not know, the only ones I see doing that are the theists.
And Nisbet too. Talk about picking fights; offering unsolicited “advice” is a very quick way to piss people off. What a horses ass. 
#1 by Ryan on February 12, 2009 - 9:49 pm
Interestingly, I was reading and thinking about something similar a few days ago.
Even if evolution was categorically disproven beyond a shadow of a doubt, that still doesn’t prove the existence of God or a god no matter which way you slice it. Regardless of whether you’re a theist, atheist, or coked-out hippie, it’s simply illogical that the existence of God is the only alternative to evolution.
I also agree with you that Nisbet’s idea that you can’t point out the absurdities in religion is ridiculous – I’m a Christian and I freely admit to most of the absurdities in my own religion and the (unfortunately) idiots who like to speak for it, or think they do anyway (see Pat Robertson, James Dobson, et. all).
At the same time though, I don’t think it’s right (in a humanistic sense) to go as far as PZ Myers and redefine the idea of sacred to mean “something unquestionable.” He said in his “Great Desecration” blog post that “Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything.”
Personally, I don’t think that “sacred” means “unquestionable,” though I know there are a lot of people who do. My Bible can be sacred, someone’s Koran, or Torah can be sacred, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be questioned. A religion can be sacred, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be reflected on, or probed. All that the term “sacred” means is that it ought to be respected in some form or fashion. You don’t have to agree with it, or even remotely believe in it, but that shouldn’t be a reason to try and desecrate something for the purpose of being an ass with an opinion. If you hold Grandma’s ashes to be sacred and think they talk to you, the fact that I don’t believe that and question it still doesn’t give me the right to break the urn and piss on them to make my point that I don’t think they’re sacred.