Is Jerry Coyne's new book the worst atheist book ever written?

Jerry's new book.

I have not yet had a chance to review atheist scientist Jerry Coyne's new book, Faith vs. Fact, but after this review by Catholic philosopher Ed Feser, I may not have to:

Faith versus Fact is some kind of achievement. Biologist Jerry Coyne has managed to write what might be the worst book yet published in the New Atheist genre. True, the competition for that particular distinction is fierce. But among other volumes in this metastasizing literature, each has at least some small redeeming feature. For example, though Lawrence Krauss’s A Universe from Nothing is bad as philosophy, it is middling as pop science. Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great was at least written by someone who could write like Christopher Hitchens. Though devoid of interest, Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation is brief. Even PZ Myers’s book The Happy Atheist has at least one advantage over Coyne’s book: It came out first.

You gotta love it. Read the rest here.

Ignorance Indefatigable: Jerry Coyne Surprised by Divine Impassibility

Jerry Coyne claims to have "spent several years reading theology before [deciding] that it was a mind-numbing and largely worthless exercise." He also claims to have made "extensive incursions into theology and science."

Now Coyne is certainly not a respectable commentator on religion and its relation to science. A certain lack of intellectual rigor for a non-academic is inevitable. But he is a blogger who has something a following online, and he is known as a hanger-on of the New Atheist movement. His ineptitude when it comes to religious matters, then, is a case study of the low intellectual standards of the New Atheists.

I've previously offered several examples in which Coyne shows that he doesn't grasp the most basic claims of Christian theology. Coyne's descriptions of what Christian theology shows pretty clearly that his "years of reading theology" is a fib.

Consider these examples:

• Coyne claims that Augustine and Aquinas don't think God is the source of being. In fact, Augustine said that God is being itself, "the absolute fullness of being and thus the sole primeval source of all being ...." Likewise, Aquinas held that God is "ipsum esse subsistens" (subsistent being itself).
• Coyne thinks that the doctrine of the Incarnation says that "God turning himself into his son ...." But Christians don't believe that Jesus Christ is the Father made into human form. This sort of thing has always been rejected as a heresy related to Sabellianism. (Sabellianism was condemned as a heresy upon its appearance around the turn of the Third Century.
• Coyne claims that "the theological notion of original sin didn’t arise until several centuries after Jesus supposedly lived ...." Coyne's years of studying theology didn't acquaint him with Romans or I Corinthians, apparently.

Divine Impassibility: A Pervasive Christian Doctrine

Coyne has recently been adding more weird claims about theology. In a post entitled "An Eastern Orthodox priest says I know nothing of God," Coyne seems determined to demonstrate that, in fact, he knows nothing of God.

The doctrine that God lacks emotions and is unaltered by the world is called "Divine Impassibility." Impassibility is one of the major attributes Christians believe God has.

The doctrine of Impassibility is grounded in the Scriptures and was formulated at least as early as the Second Century AD. Those who did not believe in it were deemed heretics. Patripassionism, a school that taught that God the Father suffers, was condemned in the Second Century AD.

The doctrine of Divine Impassibility is pervasive in Christian theology: it was held by every major theologian before the modern period and affirmed in official church proceedings such as the Nicene Council.

Surprised by Divine Impassibility

Given Coyne's claims to have spent "years" studying theology, one would think he would be familiar with the doctrine. But Coyne states that he has never heard anyone say that the Christian God does not have emotions. In responding to an Orthodox priest who mentions impassibility, Coyne says:

"In other words, God completely lacks emotion, nor is He altered by the world. Well, Fr. Kimel, that’s a new one to me. You’ve managed to find one theologian who says that."

Coyne apparently thinks few Christian theologians hold God to be impassible. But, of course, every major patristic and medieval theologian held this view. Here are some theologians, just off the top of my head, who believe God is impassible:

• Augustine
• Thomas Aquinas
• Martin Luther
• John Calvin
• Origen
• Ignatius
• Justin Martyr
• Cyprian
• Tertullian
• Theodoret
• Gregory of Nyssa
• Basil the Great
• Gregory Thaumaturgus
• Eusebius
• Anselm
• Bonaventure
• Duns Scotus
• Rufinus
• Ignatius
• Irenaeus

The notion that God is without emotion is a central aspect of theism, Christian or otherwise. You can find the notion of divine impassibility in Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus.

This alone would suffice to show that Coyne never spent "years" studying theology. Even had Coyne not shown the basics of Christian theology to be news to him in his previous posts, this would be enough.

A New Trend in the Sciences: Making Things Up

So let's recap. Jerry Coyne claims he has spent years reading theology. Then Coyne goes on to say that he's never heard anyone say that God is impassible. But divine impassibility is held by every major orthodox theologian up to the eighteenth century. It's rejected as a heresy at least as far back as the second century!

Coyne is just making things up. This, it turns out, is the new trend among scientists. Marc Hauser, a famous evolutionary biologist at Harvard, was discovered to have fabricated research data. Hauser's career, incidentally, was largely focused on claiming primates had many human-like cognitive functions.

Another recent case, also at Harvard and also involving a biologist, involved an influential paper in stem-cell research written by Haruko Obokata.

I've wondered in the past how Coyne, as a trained biologist, could have total disregard for the data and for intellectual rigor when it comes to matters of religion. Perhaps, though, it is the case that his sloppy reasoning, refusal to revise his views in light of contrary evidence, and his fabrications concerning his past work are actually bad habits that come from certain sectors of the sciences.

A few years' training in the methods of theology might do wonders for the quality of Coyne's thinking.

Jerry Coyne, Theologian

Anyone who wishes to assess Jerry Coyne's credibility may wish to start with his claim that "I spent several years reading theology ...." And elsewhere, Coyne invokes his "extensive incursions into theology and science."

Statements Coyne has made subsequent to this claim make it about as credible as Al Gore's invention of the internet. Let's consider a few:

Coyne claims that the Roman Catholic Catechism "hardly paints the picture of God as a ground of being ...." But of course, the Catechism directly portrays God as the source of being, not only in the sense that he initially created all things, but also that he sustains them in their being. Paragraph 301 says that God "not only gives [finite things] being and existence, but also, and at every moment, upholds and sustains them in being ...."

Coyne claims that "the Christian morality tale of the crucifixion and resurrection" involves "God turning himself into his son ...." Of course, Christians don't believe that "God turned himself into his son." The notion that God turns himself into his son is modalism, which Christian orthodoxy has always rejected as a heresy.

Coyne claims that "the theological notion of original sin didn’t arise until several centuries after Jesus supposedly lived ...." St. Paul, of course, stated "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come."

What has got Coyne confused is that some claim that the predominate interpretation of original sin in the West arose with Augustine. Even if that is true, that's just one way of understanding Paul's notion of original sin. And even if Paul hadn't considered original sin theologically in Romans and Corinthians, Irenaeus wrote about it in his Against Heresies around 180 AD--hardly "several centuries" after Jesus' life.

Coyne thinks St. Thomas Aquinas is a "Church Father." But of course, the period of the church fathers was the period before the Scholastic age. St. Thomas Aquinas is as much a church father as Einstein is a renaissance natural philosopher.

Coyne claims that "if there was a conflict" between the metaphorical and literal sense of Scripture, "people like Aquinas and Augustine" took the literal sense over the metaphorical sense. Augustine, of course, rejected a literal six-day creation, and said that when statements in Scripture about the physical world conflict with reason, those statements in Scripture should be construed non-literally.* (Coyne is also unaware that for Aquinas, metaphor is one type under the literal sense.)

Coyne claims that the notion of "God [as] the unconditioned cause of reality ...," and as "what grounds the existence of every contingent thing" is not how "Aquinas, Luther, [and] Augustine" saw God. This one is quite baffling: any theologian who believes in the doctrine of creation believes that the universe exists because God created it, and would not have existed had God not created it. Aquinas, Luther, and Augustine all held to a doctrine of creation. Furthermore, they all held that God sustains the universe in its existence. See for example, Augustine's Confessions, VII, 7. Or take Aquinas, who said "every being in any way existing is from God.... [A]ll beings apart from God are not their own being, but are beings by participation." And again: "Now it has been shown above (44, 1,2), that nothing can be, unless it is from God, Who is the universal cause of all being. Hence it is necessary to say that God brings things into being from nothing."

In fact, virtually every instance where Coyne describes the beliefs of Christians or of theologians he does so inaccurately. I'm not necessarily saying Coyne is lying about spending years reading theology. There is one other alternative: the he cannot understand basic theological claims well enough to restate them. But this is no ordinary misunderstanding. When I read Paul Cohen's proof that the continuum hypothesis is independent of the ZFC axioms, I know that I do not understand what Cohen is saying. Because I know this, I would not assert my own misunderstanding. Coyne, on the other hand, doesn't seem to know enough to know that he doesn't understand.

For instance, it could be that Coyne reads a Christian account of the Incarnation (saying something like "the Word of God became flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit"), he is only able to conceive this as the claim that "God became his son." This is not what is objectively on the page of course, but that is not the point. It may be the case that Coyne's mind experiences some kind of process whereby semantic content Coyne receives is so altered that he literally cannot perceive the content on the page in front of him, nor understand why it is that others do understand what is said.

Or Coyne it could be that Coyne was simply making the "years of theology" thing up. In the end it doesn't much matter.



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* The quote is: "[I]f anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical world] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation."

Jerry Coyne's Precambrian Rabbits

When last we left Jerry Coyne, we had coined the term "coyning, v." to mean attempting to disprove the arguments in a book without having read it. Apparently determined to clear his name, Coyne has been reading David Hart's new book and writing about it, to somewhat comic effect.

Coyne's arguments are deeply premised in his facile understanding of religion, despite his claim to have spent years studying theology. For example, Coyne identifies the claim that God refers to the "Ground of All Being" (Coyne's words) is a notion that begins with modern theologians such as Tillich. This claim is, of course, falsifiable--and false.

Just as a pre-Cambrian rabbit would falsify the current account of evolutionary history, so a statement by a pre-Modern theologian would disprove Coyne's "history of dogma." And Coyne's pre-Cambrian positively teems with rabbits.

John of Damascus, born in 676 AD, said of God:

God does not belong to the class of existing things: not that he has no existence, but that he is above existing things, nay even above existence itself.

And John of Damascus offers this as a summary of the Christian theologians who lived before him. This is well known to anyone who has studied the history of theology. One of the most famous aspects of the theology of Augustine and Aquinas is their claim that God is Being, the ground of all beings. In fact, the view that God is a particular being is a distinctively modern view, peddled by the likes of William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga.

So the question is this: will Coyne revise his position in light of the evidence falsifying it? Or is his ignorance indefatigable? Will he hold on to his faith that the notion of God as the ground of being is modern, in spite of the evidence disproving it?

My suspicion--and I am happy to shown wrong--is that Coyne faith is so desperate that he will hold onto his beliefs even after they have been falsified. And if he does so, he will have proven that his supposed commitment to evidence is a smokescreen that hides a blind faith.

Bureau for Better Atheists issues advisory on Jerry Coyne

Once again, we here at the Bureau for Better Atheists (BBA) are having to set aside our other important work (such as trying to find Richard Dawkins a competent barber) to deal with Jerry Coyne.

As we have mentioned before, the BBA is devoted to improving the quality of atheists by dealing with a problem that is reaching crisis proportions: the increasing intellectual deterioration of atheists. An increasing number of atheists are questioning basic historical facts and setting out in the apparently unfamiliar terrain of philosophy.

Our file on Coyne, a prominent evolutionary biologist, now occupies a whole cabinet. In fact, we are thinking of hiring a full-time staff member devoted solely to Coyniana. It is atheists like Coyne who make opposition to atheism that much more tedious and unchallenging.

Anyway, Coyne is now contesting the idea that religion had a prominent role in the rise and development of science. This is just one of the eccentric views being promulgated by modern atheists who either a) don't know the history of science; b) have issues with truth generally; or c) are functionally illiterate.

Coyne says:

All progress in science, whether ancient or modern, came from ignoring or rejecting the idea of divine intervention. Even if theories were inspired by thoughts of God, they were substantiated or disproven by tacitly assuming a godless universe—that is, by employing methodological naturalism. 

Ah, methodological naturalism. Does he mean the methodological naturalism that originated in the 12th century with Adelard of Bath, who believed that reason did not in any way conflict with Christian faith? That methodological naturalism? If you want to maintain the discredited theory of the inherent conflict between religion and science, it's probably not a good idea to use an idea developed by someone who completely disagreed with that theory.

Coyne continues:

Religion has of course also repressed the search for knowledge. Not only do we have the cases of Galileo and Bruno, but also the active discouragement of the use of reason by many church fathers, especially Martin Luther, who made statements like this: “Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.” And freethinkers like Spinoza were regularly persecuted by religion (Judaism in his case.)

Yes, and governments have repressed knowledge. Is government, then, inherently anti-science? And what about males? Most of those who have repressed science have been males. What is it about these males that makes them so anti-science? In fact, now that I think about it, human beings seem to be the culprits. Have you ever noticed how many of the people who have hampered the progress of science are human beings?

And since when is Martin Luther a "church father"? I don't know anyone, including Luther fans, who call him a "church father." "Protestant reformer" yes, but no one even remotely familiar with history calls Luther a "church father."

In addition, Coyne apparently forget (or never knew) that both Galileo and Bruno were Christians. And why is the Church how tried to hold Galileo to the standards of proof a bad guy? Galileo didn't have adequate proof of his theory (which wasn't completely correct anyway, since it presumed the circular orbit of planets, which Kepler had already shown to be false, among other things). The Church (which Galileo was a voluntarily member of) didn't allow Galileo to assert that his theory was true because he hadn't proved it. The Church had no problem with the propagation of Copernicus' theory as a possible explanation of the data and, in fact, most of the Church was accepting of some heliocentric view.

He goes on:

The major achievements of science, including relativity, evolution, and modern molecular biology, were achieved by non-theists.

I have only one thing to say: Gregor Mendel (Augustinian friar. Mendelian genetics named after. Salvaged evolutionary theory from sole reliance on natural selection. Check it out.)

Jerry Coyne's silly accusation that Chesterton was an anti-Semite

Atheist biologist Jerry Coyne, who is vying to be the poster child for cultural illiteracy, claims that Chesterton, who the Catholic Church is considering for sainthood, was an anti-Semite. He culls his reasons from a few scraps of quotes from Chesterton's detractors.

Coyne admits to not having read Chesterton:

I’ve tried to read Chesterton, but simply can’t do it, just as I can’t read P. G. Wodehouse (yes, I know I’ll be faulted for it; but I see it as one of those English/American dichotomies, like my complete failure to even giggle at “Yes Minister”).

He probably thinks Shakespeare is kind of mediocre too.

And if he thinks Chesterton and Wodehouse are a burden to read, he should try reading his own blog some time.

If you're going with any integrity to accuse someone of being an anti-Semite, then you should a) have actually read the person's writing, and b) read what that person may have said in his defense against the charge (which Chesterton did here). But Coyne not only has not done these things, but apparently doesn't see the obligation to do them. In fact, for someone who has so often accused others of "quote-mining," Coyne seems to be rather fond of it in this case.

Not only that, but the anti-Catholic remarks Coyne has made would surely qualify him as being anti-Catholic in the same respect he's accusing Chesterton of being anti-Semitic, which makes you wonder about the dullness of someone who, in the very act of accusing someone else of something, engages in it himself.

Chesterton talked about Jews the way he talked about the Germans or the French--or the Americans. In fact, there were a few British people for whom he had choice words: He saw how each man in some way displays the unique characteristics of his nationality and particularly for those who display it in extreme proportion.

"I should imagine that Jews varied in their moral proportions as much as the rest of mankind," he said.

But we'll just add this to the Jerry Coyne tag we've got here at Vital Remnants as another reminder of just how silly the scientific materialists can be.

UPDATE: Coyne has deleted several of my comments from his blog in response to the post. You gotta love these champions of rationality. It's so much easier when you can deal with disagreement by pressing a button.

Coyne betrays his ignorance of theology. Again.

The biologically intrepid but theologically illiterate Jerry Coyne has a few things to say about Pope Benedict's reaffirmation, in his new book, about the Virgin Birth. Not very intelligent things, mind you, but when has that ever stopped him?

He first takes note of a reference by the Pope to the Holy Spirit being one part of the Trinity, to which he responds:

Note that the Trinity is not an explicit claim of the New Testament, but a doctrine (now ironclad) made up by Church fathers from some questionable references in the New Testament. And it’s not accepted by many Christians (e.g. “Unitarians”, Christian Scientists, and Mormons). Once again, theology has just made something up. But I digress ...

No, the Trinity is not explicit, but nature doesn't exactly announce in explicit terms that operates on evolutionary principles, but Coyne believes that. In the case of the Trinity, the assertions are clear and the inference is straightforward: The person of the Father is God; the person of the Spirit is God; the person of the Son is God; there is only one God; therefore, there are three persons in the one God. You can disagree with it, but you can't coherently quibble with the claims or casually dismiss the inference.

And someone please inform Jerry that the Unitarian, Christian Scientist, and Mormon churches are not exactly your paradigm Christian institutions. They reject every central tenet of the Christian faith. So on what grounds can anyone call them "Christian"? Because they claim to be? Historically, a Christian is someone who can affirm the Nicene Creed. These institutions reject it. This is not theological rocket science.

Does Jerry accept Scientology as science? It claims to be.

Coyne goes bumbling along, asking (on the basis of a yahoo.com report--yahoo being a well-known repository of theological scholarship) why the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection are "cornerstones of faith" while the Flood, Adam and Eve, and the parting of the Red Sea are not (answer: for the same reason that systematic circulation of the blood or that photosynthesis converts light into chemical energy or that tides are caused by the Moon are "cornerstones of science"--because, although they are scientific conclusions, they are not determinative of what is science and what isn't); why he accepts creation but does not reject evolution (answer: because not all evolutionary belief is Darwinian); and why he accepts some Biblical truths as literal and some as metaphorical (answer: because some Biblical truths are intended as literal and some are intended as metaphorical).

But I don’t see the Virgin Birth as such an unequivocal truth. Nothing really depends on that tale except the notion that Jesus was an extraordinary (i.e., divine) being. And by holding fast to such a ludicrous doctrine, the Pope is making things tough for his Church, and harder for adherents to accept its doctrine in an age of science.

Naw. Nothing depends on it. Except the central claim of Christianity. That's all.

And as for making things "tough on the Church" because we are in the "age of science," Coyne can't name one discovery of science that makes belief in the Virgin Birth "tough." The Virgin Birth is a miracle, and, as I've pointed out, science, as science, can have exactly nothing to say about it.

Coyne says the Pope has "embarrassed himself." And he didn't even blush when he said it.

Did I mention that the Pope has more knowledge of history and theology (as well as the philosophy of science) in his little fingernail than Coyne has in his whole body?

Why is Francis Collins doing more science than his atheist critics?

New Atheists Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, P. Z. Myers, and Sam Harris, the self-designated champions of science against religion, have severely criticized Francis Collins, the evangelical former head of the Human Genome Project and current head of the National Institutes for Health (NIH):

They publicly opposed Collin’s nomination to head the NIH by suggesting, without any evidence, that his religious faith would lead him to somehow harm the funding of scientific research. Harris has claimed that Collins “has repudiated the scientific worldview” and is “a man who believes that understanding ourselves through science is impossible.” 

... Coyne has accused Collins of being an “embarrassment to the NIH, to scientists, and, indeed, to all rational people” and an “advocate of profoundly anti-scientific beliefs.” Myers calls him a “creationist dupe arguing against scientific theories” and “an amiable lightweight” who doesn’t know how to think like a scientist.

So says the blog Shadow to Light.

But the ironic thing is that it is the evangelical Collins who seems to have been more busy producing, like, actual science. Collins, says the blog, has produced somewhere between 384 to 483 scientific papers from 1971 to 2007. And brave defenders of science, Coyne and Co.? Only something less than 150.

Gee. Maybe if the New Atheists scientists spent a little less time posting snippy remarks on their blogs, they could be scientifically productive too.

HT: Dangerous Idea.

Lawrence Krauss: The new poster child for scientism

We hereby declare this week "Lawrence Krauss Week" here at Vital Remnants. Krauss is fast becoming the poster boy for modern New Atheist scientism by engaging in an adolescent triumphalism about science that is now making even some of his atheist colleagues uncomfortable.


I mean, when you force Jerry Coyne to distance himself from you, you know your becoming radioactive. It would be sort of like having Jerry Springer disassociate from you on grounds of bad journalism.


Krauss, for those of our readers unfamiliar with the more exotic specimens of scientism, is a physicist at Case Western Reserve whose new book, A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing (which we will be reviewing later this week), marks a new low in a New Atheist literature characterized by not being very high.


Krauss' most recent flight from rationality occurred in a recent interview with The Atlantic, in which he goes after the discipline of philosophy. At least the old atheists knew better than to dismiss a whole field of study simply because they didn't understand it.


Here is Krauss, from the Atlantic interview, displaying his utter lack of understanding of what he is criticizing:

Philosophy is a field that, unfortunately, reminds me of that old Woody Allen joke, "those that can't do, teach, and those that can't teach, teach gym." And the worst part of philosophy is the philosophy of science; the only people, as far as I can tell, that read work by philosophers of science are other philosophers of science. It has no impact on physics what so ever, and I doubt that other philosophers read it because it's fairly technical. And so it's really hard to understand what justifies it. And so I'd say that this tension occurs because people in philosophy feel threatened, and they have every right to feel threatened, because science progresses and philosophy doesn't.

Boneheaded Statement #1: The "only people who read philosophy of science" are "philosophers of science"? First of all that's a completely inaccurate statement. I happen to have on my mp3 player at this very moment two series of lectures published by the Great Courses on the subject. Not only am I not a philosopher of science, but the company that produces them makes money from people buying them, and I cannot imagine that there are enough philosophers of science out there to constitute a market if that is the only people purchasing them.


But why should it matter? Maybe Krauss could inform the public who else besides particle physicists read the complicated journal articles that appear in physics journals in that particularly specialty. How many do you think are cosmologists? If the legitimacy of a specialty in a discipline is going to be judged by how many people outside that specialty read in it, then what is fate of cosmology?


Boneheaded Statement #2: "It has no impact on physics what so ever, and I doubt that other philosophers read it because it's fairly technical. And so it's really hard to understand what justifies it." Huh?  Is this even an argument? Why does philosophy of science have to have an "impact on physics"? And how would having an "impact on science" justify the philosophy of science? The point of the philosophy of science is not to have an "impact on physics" in the first place. It's supposed to offer a rational critique of science. If no scientist wants to listen (in fact, many of them do), then that's not the problem of the philosophy of science; it's problem with science.


Boneheaded Statement #3: "And so I'd say that this tension occurs because people in philosophy feel threatened, and they have every right to feel threatened, because science progresses and philosophy doesn't." What evidence does he have that people in the philosophy of science are threatened? How does he know what their motives are?  Why shouldn't we believe instead that he feels threatened by the philosophy of science? And in what way has the philosophy of science not progressed? Does he really think there is not a greater understanding the what criteria should and shouldn't be employed in demarcating science from non-science today than 100 years ago? Or about the way science explains? Or about causality? Or about probability? Has he never heard of Leibniz? Berkely? Hume? Bayes? Whewell? C. S. Pierce? Bertrand Russell? Rudolf Carnap? Kurt Gödel? Karl Popper? Thomas Kuhn? Karl Hempel? Nelson Goodman? Ernest Nagel? Saul Kripke? Paul Feyerabend? Bas van Fraasen? Have these people really have made no contribution to any progress in the understanding of science--what it is, how it explains, and how it justifies itself?


This is just one paragraph folks, and it doesn't get any better. If Krauss isn't careful, he's going to give intellectual incompetence a bad name.

Can science explain how something came from nothing?

One of the dogmas of the New Atheism is that science is superior to philosophy and theology as a means to truth--in every way, on every question. The trouble is, every time its exponents make a pronouncement based on this assumption, they get schooled by some philosopher or theologian on whatever non-scientific issue they have waded into, thinking that the only thing they needed was their science.

Just check out the exchanges between New Atheist biologist Jerry Coyne and Catholic philosopher Ed Feser if you want a good example.

Now we have New Atheist physicist Lawrence Krauss, whose new book A Universe from Nothing purports to explain how something came from nothing (as he defines it). My review of the book will be up this week, but in the meantime, there is philosopher David Albert's takedown of Krauss' book in the New York Times, which he summarizes as "the pale, small, silly, nerdy accusation that religion is, I don’t know, dumb."

Of course the issue of where scientific explanation begins and ends is not, as scientists like Krauss seem to believe, a question in the field of science, but, ironically, in the field of philosophy, philosophy of science in particular. Albert points out one of the central flaws of Krauss's entire position:

It happens that ever since the scientific revolution of the 17th century, what physics has given us in the way of candidates for the fundamental laws of nature have as a general rule simply taken it for granted that there is, at the bottom of everything, some basic, elementary, eternally persisting, concrete, physical stuff. Newton, for example, took that elementary stuff to consist of material particles. And physicists at the end of the 19th century took that elementary stuff to consist of both material particles and electro­magnetic fields. And so on. And what the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all there is for the fundamental laws of nature to be about, insofar as physics has ever been able to imagine, is how that elementary stuff is arranged. The fundamental laws of nature generally take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of that stuff are physically possible and which aren’t, or rules connecting the arrangements of that elementary stuff at later times to its arrangement at earlier times, or something like that. But the laws have no bearing whatsoever on questions of where the elementary stuff came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular elementary stuff it does, as opposed to something else, or to nothing at all.

...The fundamental physical laws that Krauss is talking about in “A Universe From Nothing” — the laws of relativistic quantum field theories — are no exception to this ...and they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story.

But it's not like Krauss or any of the other New Atheists are actually going to pay any attention to the fact that their field of expertise has nothing to do with the questions they think they can use it to address. That would be an admission that the scientism they champion is completely bogus.

He also points out one of the central problems of the book, which is Krauss' definition of "nothing," which, it turns out, happens to be something, namely vacuum states:

But that’s just not right. Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states — no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff. The true relativistic-quantum-field-­theoretical equivalent to there not being any physical stuff at all isn’t this or that particular arrangement of the fields — what it is (obviously, and ineluctably, and on the contrary) is the simple absence of the fields! ... And the fact that particles can pop in and out of existence, over time, as those fields rearrange themselves, is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence, over time, as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none of these poppings — if you look at them aright — amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing.

The book is, indeed, a mess, which, of course, didn't stop fellow New Atheist Richard Dawkins from hailing the book. Read the rest here.

Mob rationality

Ed Feser points out that about the last place you'll find reason is in an emotional crowd. But that's exactly the environment in which atheists think they're going to conjure it up at March 24th's Rally for Reason:

How fitting, then, that the Counter-Religion that is the New Atheism has now decided to make of itself a mob. Something called the “Reason Rally” is scheduled for March 24 at the National Mall in Washington, D. C. and the Counter-Prophet Richard Dawkins is headlining as chief rouser of the “rationalist” rabble. The name alone exposes it for the farce that it is -- a “Reason Rally” being (for the reasons just given) somewhat akin to a “Chastity Orgy” or a “Temperance Kegger.” As always, the New Atheist satirizes himself before you can do it for him.

Of course rationality for the scientific materialists putting this show on is just a pose. The implication is that scientific thinkers are rational and religious and philosophical thinkers are not, an intellectual posture that is called into question almost every time Jerry Coyne or P. Z. Myers tries to address an issue of philosophy or theology (politics and social issues don't fare too well either).

I mention before my of applying for an exhibitor's pass so I can hand out a copy of the final exam in my introductory logic course just to see how these champions of reason actually perform. But it would be just as much fun to have copies on hand of random passages from some medieval thinker, say an article from St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica, or a random treatise from William of Ockham or Duns Scotus or Henry of Ghent--just to see if they could even understand it.

The aim of this “movement-wide event,” we are told, is “to unify, energize, and embolden” the secularist faithful. Naturally, this is not the reason of Socrates, but that of the “Religion of Reason,” of the French and Russian Revolutions, of Comte. It is “Reason” as a slogan, something to stick on a banner and march behind, and in the name of which to promote an agenda and shout down critics. Fortunately, the “movement” hasn’t yet reached the guillotine stage, and the mob will have to satisfy itself with “music, comedy, great speakers, and lots of fun” -- rather than, say, storming Vatican City and arresting the Pope, as Dawkins would no doubt prefer.

And Ed has unearthed a preview of the rally, the script for which appears to have been written by P. Z. Myers.

Another New Atheist setting his hair on fire

The 19th century mathematician and historian of philosophy Augustus DeMorgan once issued a warning for the scientist who tried to venture into metaphysics: "[W]hen he tries to look down his own throat with a candle in his hand," he said, he needs to "take care that he does not set his head on fire."

Despite the warning, scientists have been setting their hair on fire ever since. And with the onset of the New Atheists, the need for philosophical fire extinguishers has grown exponentially.

The result has been scientists who, rather than assent to the existence of God, will believe in almost anything. One example is multiple universes, recently proposed by, among others, physicist Stephen Hawking. The belief in this, we are told with a straight face, is more rational than believing in God.

This is not a new idea, of course, having already been thought up--and rejected--by the Greeks.

Another more recent example is Jerry Coyne, a biologist who regularly practices philosophy without a license. He wrote an opinion piece for USA Today a month or so back wherein he announced to the world that free will was an illusion. Coyne's intellectual gears too are stuck in an earlier time, in his case, the early 20th century positivistic materialism that most philosophers themselves--including most of those who came up with the idea in the first place--abandoned back about the 1960s.

But Jerry still hasn't gotten the memo.

In his new post, he wrestle's with the only other theory of free will more absurd than is own materialistic one, namely compatiabalism--the idea that determinism and free will are consistent with one another. Coyne at least realizes that won't fly, but then, seeing that the only other alternative is to go outside his little materialistic world, he bites the bullet and denies free will.

At least we can credit Coyne with being consistently wrong.

Scientism? What Scientism? We haven't seen any scientism...

The New Atheists are currently in the throes of denial that their beliefs about religion and philosophy smack of "scientism." And if you can't answer a charge, what better thing to do than to confuse the issue?

The term "scientism" has been around since the late 19th century, but was known as a concept even in ancient times, and it has been applied frequently to the reductive mode of thought that sees all problems as reducible to strictly scientific problems. It's the "when all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" problem many atheists have who are blind to their own scientifically unverifiable assumptions as well as the whole range of legitimate beliefs that are immune to scientific testability.

The two main responses of New Atheists like Jerry Coyne and Jason Rosenhouse, two scientific bulls who frequently wander into the philosophical china shop, are that a) their beliefs do not meet the criteria of scientism, and b) there are no such things as criteria for scientism anyway. It's kind of hard to hold both these mutually exclusive positions simultaneously, but it is a feat Jerry and Jason attempt in almost every post they write on the subject.

The fact that you can't just take the methodologies and conventions of one body of knowledge and indiscriminately apply them in other intellectual disciplines was understood as early as the 4th century B.C. In Book I, ch. 3 of his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle asserts that it is the "mark of an educated man" that not every discipline admits of the same level of precision and that "precision ought not to be sought in the same way in all kinds of discourse."

In other words, you can't verify that, say, Caesar crossed the Rubicon with the same level of precision as you can determine the paternity of a child (at least today)--and you can't use the same methods to determine the former as the latter--and vice-versa.

To use a technical term: Duh.

It's a simple concept, really, but Coyne and Rosenhouse just doesn't seem to get it. So, first, they feign ignorance. Says Rosenhouse:

But I've never entirely understood what scientism actually is. The usual definition is that scientism is the blinkered belief that science is the only reliable “way of knowing,” but this is vague until we have sharp definitions of “science” and “way of knowing.”

And then there are those pesky terms "the" and "only". What do they mean? Are New Atheist scientists really so philosophically challenged that they can't understand a term that has been around in fairly common discourse in the scholarly community for at least 60 years?

Just pulling down a few random books from my office library shelves, I find very quickly this definition given by John Wellmuth, S.J., in the 1944 Aquinas Lecture at Marquette University. "The Nature and Origin of Scientism":

The word "scientism," as used in this lecture, is to be understood as meaning the belief that science, in the modern sense of that term, and the scientific method as described by modern scientists, afford the only reliable natural means of acquiring such knowledge as may be available about whatever is real. (pp. 1-2)

He not only defines it, he describes it and lists its three chief characteristics:

1. "the fields of the various sciences ... are taken to be coextensive, at least in principle, with the entire field of available knowledge"
2. "the scientific method ... is the only reliable method of widening and deepening our knowledge and of making that knowledge more accurate"
3. "either that philosophy should be made scientific by conforming to the methods and ideas of some particular science, or that the function of philosophy is to correlate and if possible unify the findings of the other sciences by means of generalizing on a basis of these findings, after ridding itself of outworn metaphysical notions."

I find basically the same definition in F. A. Hayek's The Counter-Revolution of Science, where he describes it as:

the mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed ... a very prejudiced approach which, before it has considered its subject, claims to know what it he most appropriate way of investigating it. (p. 24)

"Such an attitude," Hayek quotes physicist P. W. Bridgman as saying, "bespeaks an unimaginativeness, a mental obtuseness and obstinacy, which might be expected to have exhausted their pragmatic justification at a lower plane of mental activity." (The Logic of Modern Physics, 1928, p. 46).

Then I grab for a third book: Life is a Miracle, by Wendell Berry, who discusses how "this legitimate faith in scientific methodology seems to veer off into a kind of religious faith in the power of science to know all things and solve all problems, whereupon the scientist may become an evangelist and go forth to save the world." (p. 19)

There you have it: a philosopher, an economics, a scientist, and a novelist, poet, and essayist, over a 60 year period, all of whom have no trouble negotiating the term "scientism." But Jerry Coyne and Jason Rosenhouse just don't get it.

Maybe it's that narrow scientific training they got. Doesn't seem to transfer over too well into all those other disciplines that are supposed to bend the knee to science, does it?

If there is a problem with this definition, then what is it? There are four basic criteria for a good definition:

1. that it have both a generic and differentiating element
2. that the definition and the thing defined be coextensive
3. that the definition be clearer than what is defined
4. that the definition be universal (and not individual: you can't define 'Obama', but you can define 'president')

You can find these in ch. 10 of my Material Logic. Wellmuth's definition (and the others) meet all four criteria. So what's the problem? The problem is that the question of what the limits of science are is not a scientific question, but you are arguing with people who think every question is a scientific question, including the question "What is a scientific question?"

The definition of "scientism" is essentially a philosophical endeavor, a kind of question in which Coyne and Rosenhouse have no formal expertise, much less any demonstrated informal facility, and what makes it worse is that they don't seem have a clue that they're insufficient to the task. It's somewhat analogous to a literature professor trying his hand at physics and wondering what all this stuff about time and space really means after all.

To Coyne and Rosenhouse it's all just a religionist plot concocted to cover their own intellectual illegitimacy: "The relevant distinction between scientific knowledge claims and religious knowledge claims is that the former are based on reliable methods while the latter are not." Reliable meaning "scientific." By definition, of course.

The answer? "We should reject totally," says Rosenhouse, "the idea that there are two kinds of knowledge, scientific on the one hand and religious on the other." I would pass this off as merely an attempt by someone trained only in the use of a hammer to redefine everything as a nail, but it is even more strange than that.

Instead of erasing the line between science and religion such that science engulfs religion, instead Coyne and Rosenhouse, in erasing the line between the two, end up only with ... religion. Their religion. It is the religion of science--or, as we said before, scientism. It is, said Berry, "the religification ... of science." The scientist is no longer the dull gray figure putzing around the lab. No. He must be seen in a more heroic role. The scientist now, says Berry, occupies the "place once occupied by the prophets and priests of religion."

But the argument that Coyne and Rosenhouse think is the most telling argument proving that they are not, in fact, guilty of scientism is the very clever procedure of engaging in it in the very process of denying it.

After arguing that this whole "scientism" thing is just a religionist plot (he would say "creationist" plot except the BioLogos people have been using the term), Rosenhouse waxes scientistic in the very process of denying the existence of scientism:

So I don't think it is unreasonable, in the context of these sorts of discussions, to define science very broadly. It just seems silly to me to say that scientific knowledge is one kind of thing, historical knowledge is something else, philosophical knowledge is a third and mathematical knowledge is a fourth. Mathematicians primarily use deductive reasoning in their work, but deductive reasoning is not some special, mathematical approach to knowledge that is separate from what scientists do. The primary tool of philosophy is dialectical argumentation, but this, too, is not something that is foreign to scientific practice.

In other words, how can there be such a thing as scientism (which is the belief that science is the only legitimate mode of intellectual inquiry) when, in fact, we know that science is the only legitimate mode of intellectual inquiry?

We know that everything is, in fact, a nail because, as you can plainly see, all we've got here hammer. QEP (Quod est procusum. Rough translation: "That which was to be proven hammered").

It's nonsense like this that contributes to people like Massimo Pigliucci, an atheist scientist who is at least capable of making a competent rational case for his beliefs, charging people like Coyne with "hero worship and a selective dearth of critical thinking."

Ten Best Blogs (and a few other good ones)

I suppose I should really call this simply, "The Blogs I Read the Most." That doesn't necessarily entail that they are the best things going, just that they are good and happen to appeal to what interests me most in life right now. I am interested in religion (mostly from a cultural perspective), literature (mostly of the classic type), philosophy (mostly of the Aristotelian-Thomistic variety), and politics (I'm of a traditionalist conservative bent, but just keeping up with the current controversies determines what I like here, and am particularly interested in the cultural implications of religion and science), in roughly that order:

Arts & Letters Daily: Just three short article summaries (from other websites) with links, having to do with literature and culture. I will click on at least one article link on about every other post, which is a pretty high percentage for me.

3 Quarks Daily: I'm still not sure what the principle of selection is for this blog, but it has an amazing number of interesting article selections from the web on literature, science, and culture generally.

Ed Feser's Blog: Feser is an Aristotelian-Thomist philosopher from California who is, for my money, among the top two or three most formidable apologists for historic Christianity writing today.

Carpe Diem: The proprietor of this blog is Mark Perry, a conservative economist at the University of Michigan. Maybe it's Perry's perpetual optimism that drives be to this blog again and again. Or maybe its the excellent graphs he uses to show current economic trends. In any case, his posts are short and informative, and always give you some great piece of information the left-wingers don't want you to know.

First Things: On the Square: Years ago, I read National Review cover to cover. That was back when it had as much of a cultural focus as a policy and political focus. These days it is First Things magazine, which covers religion and culture, that I read cover to cover. It is the best thing going. The blog is great too.

The Art of Manliness: This is a partly (but only partly) tongue-in-cheek blog that discusses the way men should behave. It alternately informs and entertains--sometimes both. I learned how to properly cut a Thanksgiving turkey from this site, discovered a great adventure author from a post about great books for boys, discovered several easy-to-fix man meals for when the little woman was away, and proper table etiquette for social occasions. Every article will have you chuckling because the funny take it has on some common issue you didn't realize before reading it that you really did need to know more about. Oh, and then there is the "Mustache Style Guide," and "How to Break Down a Door: An Illustrated Guide." You gotta love it.

Atlantic Wire: This is the blog of Atlantic Magazine. Atlantic has the best bead on cultural trends of any publication I have seen. Articles like "The End of Men," and the recent "What Me Marry?" don't always have the best prescriptions (in fact, they often have the wrong prescriptions), but they always have a great bead on the problem and include a wealth of interesting angles on cultural problems. This same nose for the latest thing characterizes the blog, which also has very comprehensive coverage of cultural and political events and trends.

Cranach: The Blog of Veith: Gene Edward Veith is a Lutheran academic who is currently the Dean of Academics at Patrick Henry College. A prolific and insightful writer, he always seems to be onto some article or issue which you won't find anywhere else.

Insight Scoop & CatholicVote.org: The two best Catholic blogs on the net. Insight Scoop is the blog of Ignatius Press, the most significant (and traditional) Catholic publisher in the United States. Carl Olson does a great job informing readers of new books and cultural trends of interest to Catholics. CatholicVote.org is a great source of current events having to do with cultural and politics from a Catholic perspective. Well written too.

SPECIAL CATEGORIES:

Best Education Blog: CiRCE Institute: An organization devoted to promoting classical Christian education. Run by Andrew Kern and his son David, who also write for it, you will find insights on education that no one else is making.

Worst Philosophy Blog: Why Evolution is True: Atheist Jerry Coyne, a biologist at the University of Minnesota is not a philosopher, a fact of which he seems entirely unaware, but which is evident to any moderately conscious reader from his numerous attempts to impugn theism. It has all the entertainment value of watching a guy fire a gun the barrel of which has been bent back to point at the person firing it (in a Bugs Bunny sort of way). Watch the intrepid Jerry as he confuses empiricism and rationality, misstates the cosmological argument for the existence of God, and mistakes ad hominem attacks for legitimate arguments. You can get an extra bonus whenever Ed Feser, tiring of the silliness, swats him down every couple months. It's sort of like watching somebody with good aim at the dunking booth at the fair.

Best Conservative Kentucky Political Blog (besides mine, of course): Bluegrass Bulletin: Marc Carey runs this blog which sports the best take on political events in Kentucky from a conservative perspective. He also runs great political cartoons.

Best Agrarian Blog: Front Porch Republic: Run (at least in part, I'm not sure) by Jeremy Beers, formerly the head of ISI Books, my favorite book publisher. Great articles from an agrarian, Distributist perspective on culture, economics, and politics.

Best Thomist Blog: Just Thomism: Okay, let's face it: There was not a lot to choose from here. But James Chastek's blog on Thomist philosophy is really excellent. You've got to pay attention here, though, this is heavy stuff. Thomists have the most complete and explanatory world view. Everything has a place. And Chastek talks about, well, just about anything. 

Best ... Well, I'm Not Sure, But I Wanted to Mention This Blog Anyway: Mere Comments: The blog of Touchstone magazine, which is up there with First Things, Modern Age, The Intercollegiate Review, and The New Criterion for best cultural journals, but written at a slightly more popular level. Anthony Esolen's articles are worth the price of the subscription. Esolen writes for the blog too and so do several Touchstone editors and authors.

Are science and religion incompatible?

Essays lauding the superiority of science over religion are not uncommon, and Julian Baggini, atheist editor of Philosopher's Magazine, gives us another one in the Guardian. Biologist Jerry Coyne, of course, is much impressed, as he is with any such pronouncement, no matter the quality of them.

Baggini acknowledges that science is focused on how questions, and religion on why questions, but contests the non-overlapping magisteria view of the late Stephen J. Gould--that religion and science deal with two completely different kinds of questions that do not impinge on one another--and correctly so. This is, in fact, one of the places in which the New Atheists are correct: you can't place religion and science in two hermetically sealed compartments and expect them never to get mixed:

This means that if someone asks why things are as they are, what their meaning and purpose is, and puts God in the answer, they are almost inevitably going to make an at least implicit claim about the how: God has set things up in some way, or intervened in some way, to make sure that purpose is achieved or meaning realised. The neat division between scientific “how” and religious “why” questions therefore turns out to be unsustainable.

So far, so good. There are claims made by Christianity that are empirically testable: That Christ was born without a human father, lived at a particular time, spent his life in particular place as a member of particular tribe who performed specific miracles, was executed on a particular mountain under the reign of a specific governor of Judea, and was raised after a specified number of days from the dead and seen afterwards by hundreds of people. And that his disciples went around afterwards preaching and baptizing and performing some of the same miracles as Jesus did in His name.

Now you can believe those claims or not, but they are the claims Christianity makes (in fact, its central claims) and they are "scientific" in the broad sense of being explicitly empirical and subject to proof or disproof by the methods of whatever empirical discipline would apply to them, which, in this case, happens to be history. Some are only empirical in theory and are not practically verifiable, but others of them are subject to at least some empirical scrutiny.

There are also philosophical or metaphysical claims made by Christians (but not necessarily by Christianity per se) who are operating in the realm of natural theology that are subject to proof or disproof. Examples of this would be the traditional proofs for the existence of God. These arguments can philosophically prove particular theistic beliefs, such as the existence of God, but if someone were to disprove any one of them, it would not affect the central claims of Christianity itself--it would only prove that some particular Christians (St. Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas, etc.) were mistaken.

Despite the fact that he is a philosopher, Baggini says nothing about these metaphysical issues which are neither strictly theological nor empirical. In fact, Baggini seems to somewhat confuse the two when he speaks of "an evidence-led, rational examination of a view." A view could be "evidence-led" and not rational, or rational and non "evidence-led." The traditional proofs for the existence of God (or for that matter certain theorems in mathematics) are rational, but not "evidence-led," at least in the sense of being empirically testable.

But the main problem with Baggini's piece is that he seems to see every case in which religion makes an empirical claim as a case in which science and religion are in conflict:

[H]ow easily science and religion can rub on together depends very much on what kind of religion we're talking about. If it is a kind that seeks to explain the hows of the universe, or ends up doing so by stealth, then it is competing with science. In such contests science always wins, hands down, and the only way out is to claim a priority for faith over evidence, or the Bible over the lab.

Coyne too chimes in too, shaking his pom-poms:

This, of course, is just another take on something many of us have long maintained: any theistic religion—that is, one that posits a God who is active in the universe—must perforce make claims that can in principle be empirically examined or tested. And that is a “how” question. On the level ground where science and faith must compete to answer such questions, religion always loses, and always will.

The fact that two approaches may happen to focus on the same subject does not automatically put them into conflict. Conflict only comes when one approach says one thing about it and another approach says something contradictory. If historians say that historical records show that there was a comet in the sky in 627 B.C. and astronomers say there wasn't, that's a conflict. But if they both approaches conclude there was a comet in the sky at that time, then there is not conflict. The two are perfectly compatible.

If science is "incompatible" with theology because they arrive at truth through different methodologies, then science is also incompatible with history, and with ethics--and with philosophy, Baggini's own discipline.

There is really no sense in talking about whether whether science and religion are compatible. If they look at the same alleged fact and come to differing conclusions about it, then so be it. Let it be decided using the methodology that is appropriate.

If the subject is the chemical makeup of something, then apply science. But if it is the existence of God, then science is going to have to bow to philosophy; if it is the genuineness of a historical event, then it's going to have to bow to history; and if it is the nature of the doctrine of justification, then it's going to have to bow to theology.

From the earliest times, Christianity has made empirical claims as evidence of its truth--largely having to do with miracle and prophecy. If scientists like Baggini and Coyne want to dispute them then let them have at it.

But so far they not only don't seem to have refuted them: they're too busy talking about whether magisteria are overlapping to even try.

More thoughts on the Adam and Eve question

The responses are, as I anticipated, beginning to come in on my post on the controversy over Adam and Eve, which was spawned by New Atheist biologist Jerry Coyne's claim that "[T]he genetic data show unequivocally that humanity did not descend from a single pair that lived in the genus Homo."

There were several responses from Christian thinkers to this claim, but, as is becoming increasingly common, the most telling came from Catholic philosopher Ed Feser, someone who we have had multiple opportunities on this blog to cheer on. Feser is an Aristotelian Thomist, which just means that he subscribes to the version of Aristotelian philosophy articulated most comprehensively by the medieval philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. As I have said before, Thomas' thought is the only thing worthy to be called Christian philosophy and all other pretenders to that title are weak imitations.

In the present case, Feser has applied the traditional Aristotelian Thomist definition of a "human being," which consists simply of the belief that man is a rational animal. We can explain this by using the terms laid out by Porphyry, a 3rd century Neoplatonist philosopher, in this famous "Porphyrean Tree," a division of all substance.

According to Porphyry, who was simply riffing on what Aristotle had said a few centuries earlier, man, in the most general terms, is an "animal" in the sense that, along with the beasts, he is a sentient, living, material substance. An animal is a living material organism that has senses--unlike plants which are non-sentient living, material substances; and unlike rocks, which are non-living material substances; and unlike angels, which are non-material substances. A man is an animal in this sense, but he has a specific difference that marks him off from the animal (which in traditional logic is called the "specific difference"), which is the quality of rationality itself. This makes him the only being who is a rational sentient, living, material substance.

The Christian belief, based on the Scriptural revelation, is that the human race, consisting of these rational animals, began with two people: Adam and Eve. And we are all descended ultimately from this pair. Genesis says this and the Apostle Paul, whose epistles are an important part of the Divine Revelation, clearly assumes this. In addition, the disobedient actions of this pair caused a spiritual rupture between them and God, and this separated status is shared by all their descendants by virtue of their sharing in the same human nature.

This is the doctrine of original sin. And just as Adam represents the human race in rebelling against God, so Christ represents it on the cross in redeeming it. This, of course, is one of the reasons the doctrine is so important: man is redeemed in the same way he fell: according to a representational scheme: Adam represented man in the fall in the same way Christ represented man in the redemption. Paul states this pretty clearly in Romans. So if you believe Christ redeemed the human race in the act of crucifixion and resurrection, you shouldn't have any problem believing that Adam brought it down in the act of disobedience. They're sort of two sides of the same coin.

A number of scientists (including Christian ones) say that, over the course of the evolution of human beings, there was never just two humans: at the smallest bottleneck of the developmental chain, there were, at minimum, at least 10,000 individuals. Therefore, they say, we are not descended from one primordial pair.

Now there are undoubtedly numerous assumptions along the chain of reasoning that leads to this 10,000 individual estimate. And it is a little suspicious that others use other numbers, which would seem to indicate that this is, in some respect, and inexact science. And obviously there is the evolutionary assumption as well, and there are not a few Christians who won't go for that. But for purposes of addressing the question of whether there was an Adam and Eve whose descendants we are, it really doesn't matter. We can stipulate this for purposes of debate.

One of the interesting things about this debate is that, before Feser weighed in, a number of Christian thinkers, unarmed by the Thomistic distinctions, tried to deal with the implications of the genetic evidence, but, quite frankly, didn't do a very good job of it. Without a proper definition of human being, these people, well-intentioned as I'm sure they were, were in the position of either having to argue against the evidence of genetics on the one hand, or rejecting the traditional account of the Biblical Adam and Eve story on the other. The ones getting the press, of course, took the latter course.

Feser simply pointed out that the term "human being" is not merely a biological designation, but a metaphysical one as well. He is a rational animal--and the "rational" part of that is not a biological designation. Unfortunately, many of the evangelical rationalizations--like that of Fracis Collins--bought into the idea that man is only his biology.

If you don't understand what man is, then your going to have a heck of a time determining who the first one is.

Were Adam and Eve real? Another case of atheist scientists jumping the gun and failing to make important distinctions

When my youngest son was about eight, he would assault his 16 year old brother by simply rushing him, while my oldest son would calmly put out one arm, catching him by the head and just hold him him there as my youngest son's arms would just flail about in the air, not harming anybody. Undaunted, my eight year old son would simply repeat the same method of attack--getting the same ineffective result. But even though he never got anywhere by doing this, I admired his spunk. He is now 16 himself and trains in mixed martial arts and his technique has improved dramatically.

This is the image that came to mind seeing the most recent exchange between atheist biologist Jerry Coyne (the eight year-old in this saga) and Christian philosopher Edward Feser. Jerry rushes at Ed, all arms flailing, Ed holds hand out, stopping the charge, calmly pointing out to Jerry that his facts are wrong, his arguments are invalid, that he is completely missing the point, or that he has failed to make a crucial distinction, at which point Jerry, in seeming ignorance of the points Ed has made, just keeps repeating the same futile procedure over and over and over again.

But if you can't appreciate his logic (and he makes it very difficult), you at least gotta admire his spunk.

In the most recent episode, the issue is whether there could have been a literal Adam and Eve. It is a debate, Christianity Today magazine asserted, that constitutes "a groundbreaking science-and-Scripture dispute, a 21st-century equivalent of the once disturbing proof that the Earth orbits the sun." While it is not quite equivalent to the issue of whether Jesus actually rose from the dead, a literal claim without which there would literally be no Christianity, the Apostle Paul does clearly assume a literal Adam, making it a truth claim the disproof of which would seriously cripple the philosophical and theological integrity of Christianity, particularly the doctrine of original sin, which asserts that, in the words of the old New England Primer, "In Adam's fall, we fell all."

There are Christians, of course, who try to fudge on this issue, claiming that one could believe in a figurative Adam and Eve (i.e., that Paul was mistaken) and still be an orthodox Christian. Former head of the Human Genome Project Francis Collins and his colleague Karl Giberson attempt this position. But it's not a terribly convincing.

The Catholic Church has long taken the position that the origin of the human body--whether it comes from "pre-existent and living matter"--is not the material issue. One can take the position that the human body was the result of biological development as long as one did not deny that "souls are immediately created by God." Leo XII's statement on this issue in his encyclical Humani Generis also states that polygenism (that we are descended from multiple parents rather than one particular set) is not a belief that is reconcilable with orthodox Christianity. In addition, he said, such a belief would conflict with the belief in original sin.

Protestants are not limited by any particular theological authority other than their own personal interpretive inclinations, a fact that has resulted in a riot of diverse schools of thought on such issues, but the Catholic teaching is clear and unambiguous. We are descended from two original human parents. So the questioning of this dogma is important indeed.

Enter Coyne, who declared recently on his blog, "[T]he scientific evidence shows that Adam and Eve could not have existed, at least in the way they’re portrayed in the Bible."

And, lest his assertion was not clear, he added, "Unlike the case of Jesus’s virgin birth and resurrection, we can dismiss a physical Adam and Eve with near scientific certainty."

And, just in case there was still any doubt about what he meant, he concluded, "[T]he genetic data show unequivocally that humanity did not descend from a single pair that lived in the genus Homo."

Coyne tries to base his claim on genetic research that ironically derives in part from the person whose appointment to head the Human Genome Project he adamantly opposed on the grounds that he was an evangelical Christian: Francis Collins. Collins wrote, in a 2006 book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, that, as Christianity Today put it, "humans emerged from primate ancestors perhaps 100,000 years ago—long before the apparent Genesis time frame—and originated with a population that numbered something like 10,000, not two individuals."

Richard Ostling, writing in Christianity Today, recounts the position of Dennis R. Venema, a biology chairman at Trinity Western University and a fellow at Biologos, an organization with which Coyne has shown little but scorn because of their "accommodationist" (i.e., that science and religion are consistent approaches to truth):

Over the past decade, researchers have attempted to use the genetic diversity within modern humans to estimate primordial population sizes. According to a consensus drawn from three independent avenues of research, he states, the history of human ancestry involved a population "bottleneck" around 150,000 years ago—and from this tiny group of hominids came everyone living today. But the size of the group was far larger than a lonely couple: it consisted of several thousand individuals at minimum, say the geneticists.

So Coyne, armed with evidence uncovered in part by an evangelical Christian who only several years earlier he proclaimed could not be trusted on such issues--and flailing away, announces that there were no Adam and Eve. Coyne then goes on to catalog various evangelical rationalizations of the problem, all of which he finds wanting, at which point he does his end zone dance.

But it was all effective enough to convince John Farrell to write a piece in Forbes magazine where he unaccountably finds Coyne convincing on this issue, quotes him, and expands on Coyne's points (misstating the Eastern Orthodox view on original sin in the process), and challenging the Catholic Church to renounce its "silence" on the "challenge of genomics."

Apparently the continuous public witness of the Church over the course of centuries to the truth of the Aristotelian-Thomist position, which articulates a full view of man as a physical and spiritual creature that bears only partial resemblance to the being Farrell, Coyne and others discuss in their arguments, and making clear public statements which are easily available to anyone who is serious about wanting to know the Church's position are just not sufficient.

Despite this, Coyne accuses theists "of rationalizing, post facto, hopes and ideas that one pulls out of thin air."  Statements like this serve as atheist like a sort of spell to keep .

But just in case anyone needed to be reminded, Catholic philosopher Ed Feser enters the fray. Feser, who is fast becoming the go-to guy when it comes to defending the Ancient Faith against its less than intellectually impressive detractors (and who you can just imagine sighing once again and shaking his head), then pointed out a few uncomfortable facts to Jerry (and John), among which is that, in his post on this issue, Coyne didn't even bother taking into account the view of the Christian institution that has been around the longest, an institution that has made an implicit distinction between the concept of homo sapiens as a biological category and the concept of rational animals as a physical and theological category.

In other words, the biological condition of homo sapiens is a necessary condition for being a humans as we know them now, but it is not sufficient. The philosophical distinction of man as a "rational animal" (Aristotle's definition) is also necessary to the full definition of human being. Men are indeed homo sapiens, biologically speaking. But they are something far more than this: they are creatures who can apprehend abstract concepts in a way in which other animals do not even remotely approximate. He points in his response to an article by Kenneth W. Kemp ("Science, Theology, and Monogenesis"), which goes into gory detail about the Catholic position on this and why it is completely consistence with a bottleneck of however many thousand homo sapiens.

But Coyne, who apparently didn't actually read Feser's article but someone else's summary, does what he seems to do every time he has to deal with Feser: he fires wildly while running for cover. In this case, he criticizes Feser using an argument that Kemp's article, to which Feser had linked to, had already refuted--and then goes and hides behind Jason Rosenhouse. "I needn’t go over all the problems that Jason finds with this."

Yeah. Right.

It's hard work acting as second for someone who, every time he show up for the duel, runs off, but Rosenhouse, a mathematician who blogs at EvolutionBlog, holds forth manfully. But Rosenhouse seems to have no better ability to manage careful distinctions than Coyne.

He argues first that "the Bible does not teach anything remotely like what Feser is describing." Rosenhouse manages this criticism by assuming that Feser is somehow obligated to give Genesis a fundamentalist reading, which it is kind of hard for Feser to do since, like, he's a Catholic. As Feser himself pointed out, while it would be very convenient for atheists if all Christians took a fundamentalist position, they probably need to get used to the fact that all Christians are not fundamentalists, and that it would probably help their case (not to mention make for a more productive discussion) to actually address the arguments of Christians who, like Feser, don't match up with the stereotypes atheists are always invoking.

Rosenhouse then questions Feser's point that human being are not exhausted by their physical attributes, to which Rosenhouse responds, "we should note that Catholic theologians have not the slightest basis for saying that our nature is simply not exhausted by our physical attributes." Back to Feser:

Hear that? Not “a highly controversial basis.” Not “a basis that I, Jason Rosenhouse, find unconvincing.” No, not the slightest basis. Now, forget about my own arguments for the intellect’s immateriality (though Rosenhouse says nothing in response to them). A great many more important Catholic philosophers and theologians have also presented serious arguments for it, as have non-Catholic Christians and pagan thinkers in the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions. Secular writers like Karl Popper and David Chalmers have endorsed forms of dualism. Secular writers like Bertrand Russell, A. J. Ayer, and Galen Strawson, while they do not embrace dualism, nevertheless reject physicalism. Yet others, like Thomas Nagel, Jerry Fodor, and Joseph Levine, have argued that there are at least serious difficulties facing physicalism which have yet to be answered. And many materialists who think these difficulties can be answered at least acknowledge that the difficulties are indeed serious ones raised by critics in good faith. Then there are secular non-dualists like Tyler Burge, John Searle, and William Lycan, who (as I have noted before) have expressed the opinion that the dominance of materialism in contemporary philosophy of mind owes less to the quality of the arguments in its favor than to ideological thinking.

But for Rosenhouse, it seems, none of these thinkers has the slightest basis for his views. It’s all just transparently feeble religious apologetics, apparently even with the many secularists among them. No doubt that’s because Rosenhouse read a materialist philosophy of mind book once back in college which he thinks “refuted” all the objections to materialism once and for all.

In other words, let's all pretend that these argument have never been made so we can go on arguing with our fundamentalist caricatures.

Finally, Rosenhouse says, "Intelligence and rationality appear to be things that come in degrees." He then goes on to list all the intelligent qualities animals have the men also possess, all of which are apparently supposed to add up to the qualities that men have that animals do not possess, namely, as Feser points out, "conceptual thought" that "can have a determinate, unambiguous content and a universality of reference that sensations, mental imagery, and material symbols cannot have even in principle."

Rosenhouse says that Feser's account "creates some very difficult theological problems." The problem is that none of the "theological problems" Rosenhouse identifies are actually theological problems. In fact, all they amount to is Rosenhouse saying that he doesn't understand why God would have done it that way. So saying you don't understand someone's motivations for doing something some kind of refutation of the fact that they did it?

"Also," Rosenhouse adds, "the idea of a Chosen People is itself theologically problematic. Among Jews, a very common understanding of the notion is that the Jews are unique only in their willingness to accept a covenant with God. Which is to say, it is the Jews who chose God and not the other way around." Wait, Rosenhouse was only just earlier seen arguing that Feser wasn't following the Biblical account, and now Rosenhouse is arguing this? One thing that comes through loud and clear in those accounts is that the covenant is completely unilateral in its initiation. Maybe Rosenhouse could explain how he derives Abraham's willingness out of the Biblical accounts which don't mention what Abraham thought about it at all.

Memo to New Atheists: Don't debate Feser. Go back to your caracatures. And theists? They don't need caricatures. They've got Rosenhouse and Coyne.