Monday, December 14, 2020

Response to Professor Jerry Coyne

 Recently Yahoo News published an article by an evolutionary biologist named Jerry Coyne at the University of Chicago. 


Here is a link to the article: 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/yes-war-between-science-religion-013715813.html

Here is my response:


I admire Professor Coyne’s credentials and his willingness to pursue the truth. As a distinguished scientist in one of my favorite cities of the world, Chicago, he is carrying out important research that is improving the lives of people today. I commend him for that.

However, his recent article titled “Yes, there is a war between science and religion” is deeply flawed, not the least because he begs the question about truth in the first instance. A 21st century critic, theorist, or activist might read his article and think, “This man talks about truth and facts? How funny. He still accepts those old, tired ideas.” His reference to Plato, Hume, and Kant is also amusing. Are these white men even acceptable guides in today’s world? (As an aside, Plato was also deeply religious, which Coyne fails to mention. Just look at the place that priests serve in Plato’s Republic or, more especially, in The Laws. Plus, the esteem which Kant held the Bible should not be overlooked.) Today or one day in the near future, those schooled in the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt school and other bastions in Post-Modernity will reject Professor Coyne’s own scientific project and assert that the scientific seeking after truth is, itself, a product of modernism, Euro-centrism, and even racism. Professor Coyne’s article was outdated before it was even published. What does it matter to the 21st century person that his or her beliefs are incompatible or irrational? Life is all about group power and personal choice after all. Coyne’s view about facts could lead to objective statements about things which might alienate groups who chose to hold onto different facts due to tribal culture, religious background, or something else. To the post-modern, it is deeply problematic that there could exist a viewpoint which assumes there is a “truth” out there to apprehend, and that there are “facts” that can lead to a better existence. 

How will Professor Coyne establish the reality of truth itself? What is truth? If it is mere “facts” then Professor Coyne’s own point of view is already contradicted.  His article is not a bare list of scientific facts; it is a pleading. Yet no amount of urging, pleading, or arguing can emerge from the facts but from the interpretation of the facts. Such an interpretation comes from outside the facts themselves and is essentially a religious exercise. Coyne’s article is deeply religious.  For example, a fact could be that it is dangerous for humans to consume even small quantities of lead. But it is belief to tell them about that.  For it is not facts but the moral or religious interpretation of the facts (in other words, beliefs) that guide our desire to teach people for their betterment.  It is a fact that someone murdered someone else; it is a belief that murder is immoral. One is a bare assertion of something having occurred; the other is an interpretation of that event based on a foundation of beliefs, such as “God said murder is wrong” or “For the good of society, people should not murder.” However, neither God nor society is “proven” by facts; both are accepted by faith, that is, a vision of the good life. As soon as Professor Coyne shows me how our morality is decided by evolution and can be proven by his scientific “facts,” I’ll be listening.  But then he has the burden of demonstrating why, if we now have this knowledge, we choose to slavishly obey it. If it can’t be otherwise, as he might argue, then the conclusion is that humans experience a determinist existence where nothing can be otherwise. That would make Coyne’s article completely irrelevant, as it would also make mine. It would also mean that everything we do with our minds and imaginations would be pointless. No, we write, we plead, we argue, because we want to find the truth. And the truth, as Christ says, will set us free.

I accept that human reason is a reliable instrument, but I accept that because of faith. As G. K. Chesterton put it, “Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.” In response to his conclusion, I might say that it is irrational of him to “decide what is true in your daily life using empirical evidence, but then to rely on wishful thinking and old superstitions to judge the truths undergirding [sic] your faith.” The difference is that Coyne’s are new superstitions, not old ones. For me, I’ll rely on the storehouse of wisdom from women and men who lived before my little sliver of time. I’ll gladly read Plato, Moses, Christ; I will continue to reconcile my faith with my reason as most of humanity has done for countless years. We’ll see if Coyne’s 20th century modernist-atheism will blossom in this century and give rise to any poetry, art, or meaning of its own. It won’t.

 


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