Clear Ideas, Unfortunately Muddled

Lawrence Krauss is a smart guy, but his recent column for Scientific American includes a lot of not-so-good ideas muddled with a couple good points. Here are the best parts:

I don’t know which is more dangerous, that religious beliefs force some people to choose between knowledge and myth or that pointing out how religion can purvey ignorance is taboo.

. . .

Last May I attended a conference on science and public policy at which a representative of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences gave a keynote address. When I questioned how he reconciled his own reasonable views about science with the sometimes absurd and unjust activities of the Church—from false claims about condoms and AIDS in Africa to pedophilia among the clergy—I was denounced by one speaker after another for my intolerance.

. . .

Keeping religion immune from criticism is both unwarranted and dangerous. Unless we are willing to expose religious irrationality whenever it arises, we will encourage irrational public policy and promote ignorance over education for our children.

There is a problem when “religious beliefs” (or whatever myth-oriented behaviors you want to talk about), which produce no knowledge of the world, prevent people from learning or recognizing actual knowledge. Confront the mysteries of your existence or your personal struggles with ritual or meditative practices if you must, but don’t pretend those practices produce meaningful information about how the world works.

Unfortunately, those good points come wrapped up in stuff like this:

When presented with the statement “human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals,” just 45 percent of respondents [in the United States] indicated “true.” Compare this figure with the affirmative percentages in Japan (78), Europe (70), China (69) and South Korea (64). Only 33 percent of Americans agreed that “the universe began with a big explosion.”

The part about evolution is fine. It is lamentable that only 45 percent of Americans are susceptible to the massive heap of evidence that we “developed from earlier species of animals.” When he jumps to the Big Bang, however, Krauss gets sloppy: Why does it matter if Americans “agree that ‘the universe began with a big explosion.’” Science is not about agreement. Maybe he meant to say something else, that Americans are simply ignorant that “[t]he Big Bang is the prevailing cosmological theory of the early development of the universe” (according to Wikipedia), which is sort of like saying that Americans cannot identify all nine justices of the Supreme Court. Ultimately, so what? Knowing basic factual information about current events is good (as my seventh grade social studies teacher drilled into me), but not necessary, especially depending on the context. (If you’re a physicist complaining that non-physicists are ignorant of the state of your field, or a lawyer complaining that non-lawyers can’t name all nine Supreme Court justices, your perspective is obviously distorted.)

And then Krauss makes little logical gaffes like this:

Consider the results of a 2009 Pew Survey: 31 percent of U.S. adults believe “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.” (So much for dogs, horses or H1N1 flu.)

Note that the survey only refers to “humans and other living things,” not “all living things.” The results are depressing, yes, but considering the wording of the question, the parenthetical remark is a non sequitur. One might believe that some living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time, but that others—like dogs, horses, and the H1N1 virus—have evolved. Lots of people actually believe that way. Their views are still contrary to the current state of our knowledge, which is supported by plenty of evidence, but they are not inconsistent in the way Krauss implies.

Or this:

The survey’s most enlightening aspect was its categorization of responses by levels of religious activity, which suggests that the most devout are on average least willing to accept the evidence of reality. White evangelical Protestants have the highest denial rate (55 percent), closely followed by the group across all religions who attend services on average at least once a week (49 percent).

I think I understand what he means to say, which is similar to what I suggested in a post a couple days ago, that religious beliefs can have the troubling effect of preventing people from recognizing real knowledge, but what is “evidence of reality”?

Finally, he recounts the recent excommunication of a Catholic nun because she approved an abortion:

In my state of Arizona, Sister Margaret McBride, a senior administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, recently authorized a legal abortion to save the life of a 27-year-old mother of four who was 11 weeks pregnant and suffering from severe complications of pulmonary hypertension; she made that decision after consultation with the mother’s family, her doctors and the local ethics committee. Yet the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olmsted, immediately excommunicated Sister Mary, saying, “The mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s.” Ordinarily, a man who would callously let a woman die and orphan her children would be called a monster; this should not change just because he is a cleric.

That story has been making the rounds skeptical, atheist, and non-religious folks. I have no sympathy for the idea that “[t]he mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s,” and am glad that Olmsted is not the one making medical decisions for people. But Olmsted did not make the decision, he did not let a woman die and orphan her children, and there is a preference that  requires defense one way or the other. Krauss, like others who have recounted the story, glosses over those points. There are good arguments for preferring the mother over the unborn child, whether you find them convincing or not; but in order to trigger your outrage, Krauss assumes you know them and find them convincing, which suggests he is only writing for people who already agree with him. And why should I care if Sister McBride was excommunicated? If I have no love or sympathy for the church, why should it matter to me whether she was kicked out for doing something I agree with?

Krauss is surely smart enough to recognize all these deficiencies in his article. And I suspect that he would be reasonable enough to clarify his views if pressed. But when “pointing out how religion can purvey ignorance is taboo” and can lead to kind of public denunciation he describes, it might help to work harder at avoiding minor slip-ups that, while they will be recognized by friendly readers as peripheral and not affecting the veracity of the conclusion, invariably will be seized by unfriendly readers as an excuse to dismiss the conclusion.

But maybe Krauss wrote hastily, or maybe he wrote for people like the fellow in Australia who recently (and poignantly, in my opinion) thanked Richard Dawkins for precisely the kind of conclusory bluntness that so irritates Dawkins’ critics. So I’ll give Krauss the benefit of the doubt on that point. Still, you can be blunt with your conclusions without throwing in weird little logical flaws of the type that are easily avoided.