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‘Ockham’s Razor’, a program about science or a soapbox for prejudice?

By Peter Sellick - posted Tuesday, 5 January 2010


I for one look to the ABC for intelligent commentary about all number of subjects, especially on Radio National which bills itself as a “world of ideas”. With my background in science I sometimes enjoy Robin Williams’ programs, one of which is Ockham’ Razor, and often find information on the latest in research. However, on my way to church on the first Sunday in Christmas I happened to hear the tail end of this program which I later found was called “A Response to evangelical atheism” presented by Philip Ponder who teaches chemistry at a High School in Melbourne.

My irritation with this program was that it was not about science at all but was a dreadfully simplistic bash at all things religious. It is typical for scientists to hold such opinions, I have many colleagues in science who do and I usually forgive them because of the narrowness of their education and the seemingly inevitable reduction of everything to facts that is associated with scientific training. But I did not expect such a diatribe from Radio National’s premier science program.

The tail end of the program that I did catch is reproduced below.

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Philip Ponder: “In combating religious fundamentalism in science education, it is probably unhelpful to take the sarcastic approach of claiming to be a 'Pastafarian' and demanding the 'Gospel according to The Flying Spaghetti Monster' be given equal time with biblical account. I suspect the cause of science would be far better promoted if students themselves were disparaging about such pseudo science as 'intelligent design' and regarded it as 'veggie science'.”

Robyn Williams: “Yes, well, Philip, but what about veggie religion? Or is that a tautology?”

I have no problem with describing creationism and intelligent design as veggie science. The problem is that neither Ponder nor Williams understand that there is a respectable intellectual tradition of theology in Christianity that can not be demolished by such shallow objections as appear in Ponder’s piece. After all, Ockham was a theologian more than a scientist.

The other thing that made me blush for these presenters was that science is described as a “cause”. In my long working life as a scientist I never understood what I was doing as a “cause”. This description indicates an underlying ideology from which science should be free. What is the cause of science? Well it is obviously to convince us that it is the only source of truth in all things and that these religious people are all ignorant and superstitious and should be given no credence whatsoever.

But the clincher is yet to come. Williams, in a rare candid moment, reveals his true feelings when he suggests that “veggie religion” is a tautology, in other words all religion is veggie that is to say dumb, and way below the intellect of the true searchers after truth, i.e. the scientist.

Such arrogance should have no place on the ABC, this is not about toleration of difference, that code for anything goes, but is simply ignorance that leads to the grossest misrepresentation. Are we not aware that the world’s seats of learning have their origin in the Church? Are we not aware that all of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the world continue to have departments of theology? If Ponder and Williams are right in describing all religion as “veggie” then how do these departments continue to exist in major universities? One would expect that they would have been swept aside like Newton’s alchemy and his projections of the end of the world from the apocalyptic chapters in the bible. What sort of limited enclosed world do these people live in that they are ignorant of the intellectual content of Christian theology?

Ponder makes the beginner’s mistake of assuming that religion is a single phenomenon that may be critiqued from the standpoint of rationalism. No student of anthropology or sociology would make such a mistake. All religions are different and they do not all spring from the one source of the need for an explanation of natural phenomenon, which natural science has displaced.

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I am no defender of religion for religion’s sake, in fact I am just as intolerant of ignorance and superstition as the evangelical atheists. The one thing that saves the Christian tradition is the built-in critique of religion that pervades both Testaments. Again and again in Old Testament narrative religion is discounted as a way that informs us of reality. The Bible is severely iconoclastic. The final death of religion occurred when the temple hierarchy was involved in the crucifixion of Jesus. From that day on religion has been under a death sentence. That means that the life of faith may be led free of the religious.

Neither can Christianity to be reduced to simple monotheism. Christians have a stake in atheism in that they do not believe in the existence of an intelligent supernatural being. Rather, they are influenced by a history and a poetry that penetrates to the depth of what it means to be human. Certainly the word “God” is used but this is so hemmed around by prohibitions of idolatry that simple theism is impossible. The Christian God can never be “out there” a nameless force in the universe but may be seen in the experience of Israel and in the face of the man Jesus.

The arrogance of Ponder is truly amazing. He describes Israel as “a minor downtrodden Middle Eastern Tribe” and fails to understand the centrality of the Judeo/Christian tradition in the development of Western culture, including the culture of natural science which would never have gotten off the ground under Aristotle or Plato.

Ponder takes the usual potshot at the church by mentioning the sorry treatment of Galileo at the hands of the Vatican, but this was not as simple as it is made to look. Galileo had support from key figures in the Vatican and his trial was more an example of conflicting egos than an illustration that Christianity was anti science. As David Hart points out in his Atheist Delusions “in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Christian scientists educated in Christian universities and following a Christian tradition of scientific and mathematical speculation overturned a pagan cosmology and physics, and arrived at conclusions that would have been unimaginable within the confines of the Hellenistic traditions”.

It is just not good enough to raise the spectre of the trial of Galileo to prove that Christianity is essentially antagonistic to natural science. Ponder is exposed as intellectually lazy in adopting second hand opinions that suit his purposes without any attempt to investigate them further.

One could very easy write a similar polemic against natural science and it would be just as irrational. All we need to do is to point to the results of atheism in the French revolution, communist Russia, China and the other various crackpot regimes around the world and conclude that atheism brings mass murder, starvation and persecution. Similarly, we could point to Darwinian evolution as the basis for the Nazi eugenics program that ended the life of thousands of individuals who were “not worthy of life”. It seems from a reading of the bloody history of the 20th century we have far more to fear from atheism and natural science that has been used to achieve terrible ends. However, we do not reach the conclusion that natural science is evil.

Religion is seen as such an easy target that no effort at all is required to pull it down. All the old hackneyed arguments are enough to demolish the whole structure. No original research or thinking is required. Ponder worries that the religious may become powerful enough to restrict the great project of science. How limp an excuse for deriding the religious. Creationism and intelligent design have been easily seen off and Islamic fundamentalism has yet to find a toe-hold in the education systems of the West.

I expect more from the ABC than this drivel. This is not about balance, it is about quality, quality of research and ideas. Robyn Williams has let the side down by inviting someone who will grind his axe for him.

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About the Author

Peter Sellick an Anglican deacon working in Perth with a background in the biological sciences.

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