Militant Religion

I am no fan of militant religion of any stripe, but for reasons probably peculiar to my own history and psychology, I find the militant atheists to sometimes be particularly irritating. I certainly don't object to anybody holding such beliefs and I even accept that they have a good case, but I find the more strident types insufferably smug and conceited.

Cosmic Variance, which is often a good site, if not nearly as good as Sean's old blog, suffers periodic outbreaks of militancy. In the latest, Jo Anne posts about a tenure dispute involving an astronomer in Intelligent Designer clothing. I thought both the post and many of the comments were rather obtuse in their discussion of the issues. I commented:

Jo Anne & Rob,

I have you mistaken in law, history and logic. If Intelligent Design is religion and not science(as is usually argued), and the tenure committee used his expressed belief in it’s decision, they violated the law and the Constitution - no religious test - have you heard that one.

It’s simply false that ID was invented as a weapon against evolution. A very limited study of the history of western thought will show you that it was a prominent idea in the philosophy of nature from ancient times until Darwin.

Calling it anti-scientific is not a meaningful use of the term. In fact, ID is a theory of nature, and it’s one that has testable consequences. ID was rejected by biologists because it lacked explanatory power, failing to explain relations between species, and because it made false predictions - too many aspects of life simply aren’t intelligently designed.

If the committee rejected Dr. G for believing in a discredited theory, albeit one distant from his own research, that might be legit if odd.

If you plan to discuss this stuff you ought to try to get your minimum facts together before you just launch into your respective prejudices.

I suppose I have officially reached querulous old age.

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