There seems to be a great effort on the part of those who think they have a mission to not only describe but also shape our culture to dampen any signs of disagreement between the scientific and the religious perspectives that have often appeared, to this untrained eye, to suggest some antagonism in the very public battles between them. Thus, many reporters, social commentator’s, religionists and even scientists have held forth on the necessity to promote harmony between these “nonoverlapping magisteria,” to borrow the late Stephen Jay Gould’s phrasing. (See “The trouble with NOMA” for my view of Gould’s description.)

Thus, accommodation between the religious and the scientific is presented as something to be desired, if not at all costs, certainly in the overwhelming majority of cases. And those obstreperous individuals, of whom Richard Dawkins—unfairly, in my view—appears to have become the prototype, who dare to suggest the accommodation may mask a sellout of basic scientific values are just being rude. According to the mavens of accommodation, those who cannot say anything nice about religion should just shut up about it. Now they are not quite gutsy enough to come out and declare such a requirement openly, but it is implicit in their constant insistence that those who won’t “play nice” with religion are damaging our public discourse and doing a disservice to the many believers who are not fundamentalists and who do, for the most part, believe in science.

All of this noise obscures, in the public mind at least, an obvious and, for the religious, uncomfortable fact—the “elephant in the room” that everyone seems to be ignoring. Science and religions are not just different ways of looking at things, they are in fundamental disagreement about the nature of reality. They are, in a word, incompatible.

This does not mean that a scientist may not believe in a god or practice a religion and still be a good scientist. Human beings function at high levels in all walks of life and practically every one of them believes in contradictory and, at times, mutually exclusive ideas. For example, we are very good at compartmentalizing our minds so that our fantasies can coexist with our perceptions and understanding of the real world. As long as we don’t force the issue, the two may cohabit quite peacefully, neither one intruding on the other. People do this sort of thing all the time. However, saying that two ideas may coexist in the same mind, or the same culture, should not be taken as evidence those ideas are compatible with one another. That a scientist may believe in a god says nothing about whether or not his or her religious beliefs are compatible with science.

Science is based upon observation, experimentation and demonstration. In order to be acceptable, scientific evidence must be susceptible to independent verification. When evidence cannot be verified, when experiments cannot be repeated, any conclusions drawn from them are either held in abeyance, pending further study, or disregarded. Science is about asking questions and challenging the answers. As a consequence, science is always unfinished, always contingent upon what we know today and what we may learn tomorrow. Above all else, science is a reason-based process. It is inherently rational. Science is a method of learning about the universe and everything in it through the application of human cognition.

Those who advocate accommodation between science and religions are fond of declaring that science answers the “how” questions and religions answer the “why” questions. They are not, however, very clear about exactly what that means. Sometimes how and why are inextricably intertwined so that it is not possible to understand one without the other. For example, one cannot understand how the human genome works without understanding why it is put together the way it is. It is not possible to understand the “why” of nuclear fission without understanding the “how” of atomic theory.

Of course, religionists will complain what they mean is that religions supply the answers to the “really big” questions of human existence. “Why am I here?” “What is the meaning of existence?” Those kinds of questions. There are, of course, perfectly good answers to those questions supplied by science. The first answer is that I am here because my parents engaged in sexual activity and I was the result. The second is that existence appears to supply its own meaning. Existence is an end in itself and requires nothing more than that to make it meaningful.

“No. No. That is not what we mean either,” the religionists will declare. They claim to be talking about ultimate meanings and that sort of thing. What religions answer are those ultimate questions that cannot be addressed by science. In other words, religions claim to be able to answer questions for which there are no satisfactory answers except by appeal to the irrational and the indefinable. But what sort of answers are supplied thereby?

Here is the rub. It is all well and good to ask “Why is there something rather than nothing?” as many people have. However, there is no way to get to a verifiable answer. Since we cannot see beyond the event, the “Big Bang,” which led to the development of this universe, we cannot know what conditions were before it came into existence. Maybe something always has existed. Maybe the universe is a unique event, a cosmic hiccup that will never be repeated. Maybe universes are as common as galaxies or solar systems. Maybe the universe we occupy was created as a bauble for the children of a species of cosmic overlords, something to keep the kiddies occupied whilst they were in their cribs. Maybe it is the accidental byproduct of extreme flatulence by the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Maybe the answer is simply “Why not?”

Obviously, some of those answers might deserve more consideration than others and one, or maybe two of them are intended only in jest. However, there is no method known to us to prove any of them false. But what sort of answer is “God?” It really is no answer at all. Positing a god as an answer to unanswerable questions tells us absolutely nothing about anything. It is simply a pietistic way of begging those questions.

So what exactly is it about religions that science must accommodate?

This is an important question, one to which I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer. As a method of finding out about what exists, science brings a lot to the table. Religions offer nothing that is helpful in that endeavor. Instead they offer verbal slight of hand, phrases like “the ground of all being” or “a god outside of space and time” or new age gobbledygook that sounds like “the ineffable essence at the core of an inexplicable reality.” That kind of thing. Such language may be appropriate for the ethereal meanderings of theologians who rarely offer anything useful in the real world, but they are scarcely helpful in finding out about what is going on in the universe we all occupy and why it appears to operate the way it does.

It is no virtue that the only territory religion can claim for its own is that which is outside the ken of rational inquiry. In that terrain anything is possible, and nothing can be verified. It is the realm of mystic visions, spiritual entities and things that go bump in the night. The gods who populate such regions may be the creators and destroyers of worlds or the ethereal panaceas and placebos who have fed the fantasies of all manner of delusional people. And while it may be impossible to demonstrate that such fanciful notions are false, there is not the slightest bit of verifiable evidence to suggest they are true. Attempting to shoehorn such notions into scientific theories does a disservice to the work of the scientific enterprise as a whole. It also goes a long way toward destroying the credibility of the scientists who make the attempt.

Consider the “fine-tuning” argument so beloved by theists. There is a set of physical properties that need to have the values they have in order for human beings, or any complex life forms, to have evolved. Thus, it is claimed, a divine agent must have set things up so that the universe we occupy would have those values. Ergo, “God”—or whatever you want to call the agent in question—must exist, or we could not be here. Now whether it is expressed as a probability or only a possibility, this argument has no place in science. (For more treatments of this subject and a variety of arguments on both sides of the issue, I refer you here.)

The late Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and other works, once compared this notion to a mud puddle declaring that the hole it occupied must have been created for it because otherwise it could not have fit so well. (Here’s a youtube audio of Adams making the point.) Any universe occupied by complex life must be organized to accommodate that life. There’s no reason to suppose a divine agent had anything to do with it. It’s a bit like declaring that human legs are proof there must be a god because no matter how tall you are, they are exactly the right length for your feet to reach the ground.

We expect to hear this sort of pap coming from religionists. However, it is surprising to hear it put forth by any scientist, whether they have a background in astrophysics or not. Certainly, the constants exist. That’s not the point. The point is that their existence is evidence of nothing except that certain conditions may be necessary for life to evolve. Positing “God” as the source of those constants violates the most basic rules of science. It is not even a good hypothesis because there is absolutely no way to test it. Making declarations about what is necessary for a universe like ours to exist is an exercise in futility anyway. Ours is the only universe we know anything about. You simply cannot form valid conclusions about the conditions necessary for a phenomenon to exist when you have only one example of that phenomenon.

There are no concepts put forth by religions to which science must accommodate itself. However, science puts forth many ideas to which religions must accommodate their own beliefs if they wish to retain any semblance of intellectual respectability. Here in the United States, many religious people deplore evolution, dismiss modern cosmology and declare their preference for ignorance and superstition. Now, people have the right to believe such things. They have no right, however, to require anyone else to respect such nonsense. Religions that preach the world was created by a deity 6,000 years ago (or in any similar time frame) ought not be allowed to influence the way biology is taught in modern science classrooms in public schools because the theory of evolution offends their religious sensibilities. A person’s right to be an ignoramus does not translate into a right to impose ignorance on others.

Religions and science need not be in conflict. When they are, it is usually religions who pick the fight. They pick it because they see their dominance over the minds of humankind slowly being eaten away. For tens of thousands of years, supernaturalism dominated the human narrative and gave us thousands of gods and hundreds of thousands of religions. Religions, like all other human cultural artifacts, have evolved to meet the changing conditions in which they have found themselves. Today, however, modern science has evolved a new narrative that makes the hoary tales told by religions seem quaint and parochial and, at times, destructive. The story science tells us about who we are and how we came to be is far grander and far more inspiring than the puny myths peddled by modern religions.

So religions may well need to accommodate themselves to modern science if they are to have any prospect for survival in the coming centuries. But science has no need and no reason to accommodate itself to the beliefs of any religion. And unless religion can bring more to the party than wishful thinking and unverifiable observations, it would be a violation of its very nature for science to try.

1. If you are interested in this subject and want to track the debate, two of the best sources of information are P.Z. Myers blog, Pharyngula, and Jerry Coyne’s blog, Why Evolution is True. Both could be characterized as anti-accommodationist, I suppose, but their reactions are informed by science, and they cite references, including those to whom they are reacting. Both blogs are well-written and informative, touching on many areas.

The amendment is sponsored by the Florida Coalition to Protect Marriage. The largest contributor to the campaign, so far, has been the Florida Republican Party, which has donated more than $300,000 to the petition drive. Opposing the amendment are two groups: Fairness For ALL Families and Florida Red & Blue.

Although same-sex marriage is now prohibited by state law, backers of this amendment claim it is necessary to prevent the courts from overturning existing legislation. The amendment bars recognition of any “legal union” other than that between one man and one woman from being legitimized by state law, whether it is called “marriage” or the “substantial equivalent” of same.

Whatever else may be said or written about it in what promises to be a very contentious campaign, one fact is transparently obvious. This amendment will protect no marriages.

The amendment does not defend the right of heterosexual couples to marry. It makes no one’s marriage any stronger, any less likely to fail or any more likely to succeed. Heterosexual unions will receive no benefit whatever if this amendment passes, and they will incur no penalty if it fails. The authors of the bill know this. Apparently they are hoping Floridians won’t notice.

No, the aim of this amendment clearly is not to protect heterosexual marriages. Its aim is to assert a legal definition of marriage that will punish same-sex couples by denying them the legal status and the legal protections that are enjoyed by heterosexual couples. The amendment does not just prevent the legislature from enacting a law to allow gays and lesbians to marry—something that is now forbidden under state law. It also denies the legislature the ability to enact legislation permitting “civil unions” by gay and lesbian couples.

The wording of the amendment is clear, “Inasmuch as marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized.”

So even if the people of Florida should decide, at some future date, to stop allowing their state to act as a cultural backwater, to join the 21st century and demand legislation that treats homosexuals as American citizens who stand before the law as equals with all others, it will be necessary to first amend the state constitution to do so.

That is the real issue here. Do we consider homosexuals to have the same rights as all other American citizens? If we do, then how can we deny homosexual couples who love one another the same right to form legal unions that are granted to heterosexual couples? Under what legal theory that is not a travesty of the very idea of equal justice before the law can we allow such bigotry to be written into our state constitution?

A large part of the objection to homosexuality in our culture stems from the religious opinions of some citizens. While we can respect the right of those who hold such opinions to conduct their own lives accordingly, those opinions cannot be controlling on society as a whole. Religious dogma should never be the sole justification for legislation in a secular society.

After all, the same book of the Bible that condemns homosexuality as an abomination, Leviticus, also says it is an abomination to eat shellfish. What’s next, a state-mandated boycott of Red Lobster restaurants?

The proposed amendment protects no marriages. It simply enshrines bigotry in our state constitution. Shame on us if we allow that to happen.

1. Florida Department of Elections.

“Them that’s got shall get. Them that’s not shall lose.”¹

One of the myths we Americans hold dear is that our democratic system mitigates the disparities and evens the playing field so that, for the most part, we the people control the process. We have a government “of the people, by the people and for the people” to borrow Lincoln’s phrasing. Jefferson said it differently but meant essentially the same thing when he described a government that “derives its just powers from the consent of the governed” in the Declaration of Independence.

The American experiment whose birthday we celebrate every July 4th was, above all else, proclaimed to be a testing of the liberty assured by self-governance. America would be ruled not by gods or kings but by the people themselves. We the people would choose our representatives, and we the people would expect, would demand, that they govern in accordance with our wishes. The process was never intended to guarantee equality of result, but it was intended to guarantee, as much as possible, equality of opportunity. It also guaranteed that each American was an equal partner in the enterprise. In the people’s government, all of us are stake holders. We are the people in whose name our government is supposed to act.

Such mythic lies have nursed succeeding generations of Americans to such an extent that any demurral is regarded as anathema. Never mind that the patricians who founded this great republic were, with few exceptions, chiefly interested in creating a society in which the democratic impulses of the majority could be managed and controlled by the propertied classes whose interests that republic was created to protect. Never mind that this great experiment in liberty ignored the rights of women, the rights of minorities and the rights of the indigenous Americans who lived here long before any European colonies were established on these shores. Never mind that the founding document, the Constitution of the United States, enshrined slavery in its text and guaranteed its continued existence, at least for a time.

Of course, it may be argued by the apologists for such policies that our society was no worse than any other in the way it dealt with those matters, and there is some truth in that. However, if we were no worse than most, neither were we much better. The impediments placed in the way of genuine democracy ensured that the voice of the people, when it was heard at all, could be muted and, at times, ignored by those in power.

All of which is not to say there was nothing of value in the American experiment. The creation of a society dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal” and endowed with inalienable rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” was a worthwhile effort, even if the reality of the America brought into being would fall far short of that promise. The establishment of a written constitution with a declaration of rights that protected individual citizens and states from encroachments by the federal government placed checks on the power of the central government. The establishment of a government that declared its legitimate authority came from the consent of the governed and not from deities or their appointed representatives helped to ensure the secular nature of that government and protected the nation from the sectarian divisiveness that had proven so destructive in the nations of Europe.

But the mythic America that fills the rhetoric of politicians and excites the imaginations of those who never question the claims on which it is based never had much reality at all. If the American people are, in large part, myopic about the true nature of the rest of the world, and I submit they are, the myopia begins at an early age and at home. It makes us oblivious to the faults in our own society and the dangerous implications of those faults for us and the rest of humankind. It makes us unwilling to see the evil we perpetrate in the world and unforgiving toward those who try to point it out to us.

The strident nationalism so characteristic of American institutions is based on the myth of American exceptionalism. “We are the greatest nation in the world,” we tell ourselves, as we collectively pat ourselves on our collective backs. American media, devoted as it is to promoting the mythology that best serves the global corporations who are its masters, regurgitates the myth reflexively as soon as a new target has been acquired by our political leadership. After all, how can the “greatest nation in the world” be wrong? Why should we have any care at all about what we are doing in the world when everyone knows our motives are always pure and our causes are always just?

We the people tell ourselves we are in charge because that’s what we have been programmed to tell ourselves and because, for most Americans, admitting the truth is too painful and too destructive to our sense of who we are. Whatever we are doing must be right because it depends on the “consent of the governed” after all. When all is said and done, our government reflects our wishes. When all is said and done, we get the government we deserve.

At least, that’s the theory. The reality, especially in our brave new world, is somewhat different. In today’s America, the consent of the governed translates into desultory trips to polling places where we vote for preselected candidates who represent major political parties that are, in their turn, controlled by powerful elites who have a vested interest in preserving the illusion of democracy while retaining power for themselves. In today’s America, the people are made blind by a dominant media controlled by powerful corporations who have turned news broadcasts into infotainment presenting a nightly ration of hype, hysteria and the latest celebrity sightings with little or no solid reporting or analysis of the days events.

Once the self-styled “land of the free and home of the brave,” today’s America, all too often, is the land of the fearful and the home of false bravado. And if we are poorly served by the mass media in our society, it’s at least partly our fault. It’s much easier to simply vegetate in front of the, aptly named, “boob tube” than to go in search of real information, much easier to accept the predigested wisdom of talking heads and anointed pundits than to seek to find out for yourself. Even if it is self-induced, however, our blindness makes us timid and afraid.

Too many Americans don’t want to know. Too many Americans are frightened by the truth. Too many Americans think that by perpetuating ignorance we can avoid the consequences of our own complicity in the destruction of our democracy. Too many Americans continue to invoke the tired and shopworn myth of American exceptionalism, rather than facing the truth about what we have become. But surely even our strenuous denials cannot disguise the truth that the “shining city on a hill,” so often extolled in political rhetoric, has become tarnished and tawdry of late.

Today’s America is a three-tiered society composed of a relative handful of extremely wealthy people, a modest group of well-paid professionals whose chief concern is to service the needs of that wealthy elite and all the rest of us who exist as pawns in service to the system created thereby but are not important enough to deserve much more than a passing glance. The corporate media ensures the continuation of the stratification by constantly distracting the broad mass of Americans with the latest celebrity gossip, the exacerbation of racial and religious tensions and hysteria-laden screeds about the threats of crime, terrorism and illegal immigration.

Today’s America produces very little in the way of consumer goods. Most of the products in our stores and catalogues are manufactured elsewhere, many in developing nations whose workers are employed in conditions that are tantamount to slave labor. The vaunted American standard of living is purchased at the cost of a great deal of misery around the world and has been for some time. Meanwhile American and some European corporate interests work very hard to keep the aspirations of workers in those impoverished lands from being realized. They cannot afford the cost, corporate interests tell the leaders of those nations, if workers’ wages or living conditions are improved. Meanwhile profits swell to obscene levels.

Today’s America declares its commitment to spreading freedom and democracy around the world, but our actions belie all such pretense. We invade sovereign nations at will. We torture prisoners. We prop up dictatorial regimes who serve our purposes, all the while denouncing democratically elected governments that have the audacity to refuse to submit to our authority. We are the chief exporters of arms in the world and our defense budget, if the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is included, exceeds all the military expenditures of all the nations on this planet combined. Under the guise of fighting a global war on terror, our government has effectively waged war on the constitution of our own nation and the human rights of people around the world.

And make no mistake about it. Just as these problems have not ended with the election of a Democratically controlled U.S. Congress, so they will not cease with the end of the Bush administration. These conditions do not exist because of a brief political aberration. They are part and parcel of the way the government of these United States has done business since the end of the Second World War.

We have exalted the rights of corporations over individuals. We have enshrined the myth of American exceptionalism as a reality to which all must pay obeisance. We have declared that the only important interests are American interests, just as the most important lives are American lives. We have overthrown legitimate governments and installed dictators. We have reserved to ourselves the right to wage war anywhere on the planet under any pretext, while denouncing efforts of other nations to achieve self-determination when those efforts run counter to our own preferences.

For the most part, the American people are decent enough. We can be generous and caring. The same can be said of the people of all the nations of the world. However, our basic decency does not absolve us from complicity in the actions of our government. In a democratic republic the people in whose name government acts cannot turn a blind eye when that government acts irresponsibly. When we refuse to see the evil being done in our name, we implicitly endorse it.

Today the corporate takeover of the United States of America is nearly complete. It has been engineered by Republicans and Democrats alike. It has led to the wholesale corruption of our political process and the destruction of democratic values here and around the globe. It has created huge disparities of wealth and influence, huge inequities in our society and huge instability in the world as a whole. It has turned the dominant American media into the house organ for the status quo and has marginalized or ignored totally any inconvenient truths that do not fit its paradigm of the way the world is supposed to work.

Certainly, America is not responsible for all the world’s ills. But our corporate state is responsible for a great many of them. Our society is our responsibility as American citizens. What we do in the world has a cost not only to the people of other nations but to our own people as well. Ending what is wrong with our society is not a task we can leave to future generations. There is no time.

If the American people fail to act to end the travesty in Iraq, if we continue to pretend it was simply a mistake, or a bad policy decision instead of a criminal act that violated both international law and our own constitution,² if we continue to refuse to see the plain truth about the ruinous economic policies we have forced on many of the nations of the world, we, and our children’s children’s children will bear the consequences for ages to come.

It’s time to reclaim the promise of liberty and equal justice for all that is at the very heart of the American myth and make that promise a reality. It’s time we the people demand a society that conforms to our best impulses and not our worst fears. It’s time we rein in the corporations and the politicians who have yielded to them and remove them from the seat of power. It’s time we demand honesty and openness from our government and end the duopoly of political power by Democrats and Republicans alike whose first concern after gaining office is how to perpetuate their own political fortunes. We need a political system that is open to all comers and is divorced from the corrosive effect of corporate payoffs. We need a political process that is characterized by honest debate and dialogue, not by photo ops and sound bites.

It’s difficult to know whether any of these things can happen. It may well be too late for the United States of America to be reclaimed by its citizenry. It may well be that the corporate powers who control us are too firmly entrenched to be unseated. Certainly there appears to be very little reason for hope in today’s political landscape.

But if there remain ideals worth preserving in the American dream of liberty and social justice that has fired the imaginations of reformers around the world, surely those things are worth a struggle in the nation where they began. Let it not be said that we allowed the utter failure
of that dream without fighting to redeem it. Let it not be said that we allowed this experiment in liberty to end, like the world of T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men, “Not with a bang but a whimper.”

1. Song lyric. “God bless the child,” words and music by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog Jr.
2. If you doubt this, read the Constitution of the United States of America, Article VI, paragraph two, which declares that all treaties made are to be considered the supreme law of the land and are binding on our government. We are party to several treaties and international agreements, the United Nations Charter for one, that specifically ban the unilateral use of force by one state against another state, except under certain, clearly defined circumstances. Those circumstances had not been met when we invaded Iraq. It was an illegal act. While he was still secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan came to the same conclusion. That opinion was shared by many legal scholars.