Over the weekend an interesting fight has popped up in the scienceblogs community.

Starting with Mooney and Nisbet's latest Op-Ed in the WaPo, the uppity atheist community, including PZ and Larry Moran are really tearing into the framers. Chris Mooney has responded to some of the criticisms.

Here's a breakdown of the problem. It stems from this statement by M&N:

If the defenders of evolution wanted to give their creationist adversaries a boost, it's hard to see how they could do better than Richard Dawkins, the famed Oxford scientist who had a bestseller with "The God Delusion." Dawkins, who rose to fame with his lucid expositions of evolution in such books as "The Selfish Gene," has never gone easy on religion. But recently he has ramped up his atheist message, further mixing his defense of evolution with his attack on belief.

Leave aside for a moment the validity of Dawkins's arguments against religion. The fact remains: The public cannot be expected to differentiate between his advocacy of evolution and his atheism. More than 80 percent of Americans believe in God, after all, and many fear that teaching evolution in our schools could undermine the belief system they consider the foundation of morality. Dawkins not only reinforces and validates such fears -- baseless though they may be -- but lends them an exclamation point.

We agree with Dawkins on evolution and admire his books, so we don't enjoy singling him out. But he stands as a particularly stark example of scientists' failure to explain hot-button issues, such as global warming and evolution, to a wary public.

Scientists excel at research; creating knowledge is their forte. But presenting this knowledge to the public is something else altogether.

Now this of course set PZ and LM's teeth on edge.

PZ:

Good grief, this is bogus beyond belief. Let's pretend: let's say I shut down my blog, Dawkins refuses to lecture on atheism anymore, Dennett retires to a grass shack in the South Pacific, and Sam Harris converts to Mormonism. Furthermore, every scientist in the country shies away completely from ever mentioning religion, except of course for people like Collins and Miller, who continue their "I'm a scientist, and I believe in Jeeezus!" schtick. We'll forget about the odious implications for the freedom of speech for atheists in this suggestion, and just ask whether it would make the slightest difference in accommodating the public to evolution.

Moran:

Forget about the fact that Dawkins has done more to change the climate of the debate than Nisbet & Mooney have ever done with their appeasement policy. That dosen't matter. If you're a fan of "framing" then you've got to modify your opinion so you never disagree with anyone.

...


As we've seen during the framing debates on various blogs, Nisbet & Mooney seem to be incapable of making the distinction between explaining science and what you do with that knowledge. Evolutionists have done a good job of explaining evolution. If Nisbet & Mooney don't think this is true then I challenge them to come up with a better way of describing the science of evolutionary biology.

What they're upset about is the fact that a segment of the population doesn't buy the scientific explanation. That's true, but it doesn't matter how well you explain it to those people, they still won't accept it. They won't accept it even it's economically beneficial and leads to medical advances.

Why won't they accept it? Because it's against their religion. How do we change their minds? Part of the solution is to show them that their religion is false if it conflicts with science. This doesn't have anything to do with explaining the facts of science. It has to do with fighting superstition and anti-science attitudes.

M&N really agitated a hornet's nest there. It's interesting to me because on the one hand, PZ and Moran are wrong about the inherent conflict of reason and religion. For instance take the example of Sagan's discussing science with the Dalai Lama:

CS: Well, when I talk to religious leaders, one thing I always ask them is: What would you do if a fundamental tenet of your religion was definitively disproved by science? And, at least in the West, and especially among fundamentalist religions, the tendency is to say, "Science couldn't possibly," or, "My religion is an absolute truth, and if science gets different answers, too bad for science." The Dalai Lama's answer was: "If science found a serious error in Tibetan Buddhism, of course we would change Tibetan Buddhism." So I tried to push him on this issue. Suppose it was something basic? Suppose, for instance, it was reincarnation? And the Dalai Lama said to me, "If science can disprove reincarnation, Tibetan Buddhism would abandon reincarnation." And then he said, "But it's going to be mighty hard to disprove reincarnation."with a twinkle - it's going to be hard to disprove reincarnation.

Now, I know PZ and Moran's response to this, that the Dalai Lama is just pushing his irrational ideas further from the realm of empirical testing, thus ensuring their safety from science. But it's really the first part that is critical, Sagan was pointing out the problem that M&N are trying, and failing to address. Which leads to my problem with their take on the issue. The problem is not Dawkins, the problem is the unwillingness of people to accept facts from the real world which conflict with their worldview. As is obvious from a study of denialists, it's not just religion which creates this clash between reason and unreason. It's an unfortunate aspect of human nature that some people develop overvalued ideas, then refuse to relinquish them when they are proven wrong, again and again.

Mooney and Nisbet's framing is worthless against cranks, so they are missing their own point. The point is we are competing with cranks for the public's understanding of facts. To say that we should fear of upsetting cranks by exposing the illogic of people's overvalued ideas is hopeless. While they are appropriately wary of alienating people with Dawkins more frontal assault on religion, it is simply not possible to communicate science effectively and not challenge ideas like creation myths, Noah's ark, or, more generally, conspiracy theories, superstitious beliefs, racism, etc., that are the source of the cranks' ire.

So, do we need to be uppity atheists like PZ and Moran to communicate science? Of course not. Do uppity atheists lose us the debate? I strongly doubt it. Even if we didn't have uppity atheists and the like the cranks would invent them to attack science.

In short, the problem isn't the atheism. The problem is the cranks. Cranks do not accept evidence, they do not accept anything that conflicts with their pre-formed and un-evidenced "truths". The fact that they fear atheism is besides the point. Shifting the debate to Dawkins is a terrible idea. And saying that Dawkins isn't a good communicator is frankly nuts. PZ and Moran are wrong in that we have to take on all religion, Mooney and Nisbet are wrong that we can win this fight without pissing off religions.

We're competing with cranks and denialists for public opinion. The real focus to me (maybe I'm biased), should be on explaining to people how to tell the difference between the BS and the real science. It's about creating sources of factual information that people can rely on that are thorough, unbiased, and effectively expose crank arguments in a highly public fashion. If the crank argument happens to be something like teaching kids the Grand Canyon was formed by the biblical flood, then yes, you're going to have to attack a few sacred cows and piss off the religious. It's unavoidable, if people want to believe in silly things (and try to push them on everyone else), we're going to have fight back.

Mooney and Nisbet have taken their eye off the ball. Getting scientists to communicate effectively makes sense. What they should do is throwing everything we've got behind science lobbying groups - like the Union of Concerned Scientists or Scientists and Engineers for America but better funded - that makes sure that in every article about "controversial" science that they get a say. That when there is testimony in front of congress they are there, and lobbying congress on behalf of people who care about scientific truth. We need our own power lobby. We need to be sure when unscientific garbage gets to the desks of policy makers there is a lobbyist pounding on the door demanding that they get a chance to respond. The lobby of reason.

Labels: Chris Mooney, general discussion, Larry Moran, Matt Nisbet, PZ Myers