However, if you look carefully, his claim is slightly different:

The prayer leader, Hojatoleslam Kazim Sadeghi, says women and girls who “don’t dress appropriately” spread “promiscuity in society.”

“When promiscuity spreads, earthquakes increase,” he says in a video posted Monday on YouTube, apparently of him leading Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran, last week.

This makes my inner scientist worry. Maybe immodestly leads to promiscuity, but unless it leads to same-day promiscuity, then we shouldn’t expect to see an earthquake tomorrow even if Sadeghi is right!

There’s only one way to make sure the science works out. Promiscuity-quake! Who’s in?

There is no opposition between faith and science, says Benedict XVI, who proposed the example of St. Albert the Great to illustrate this truth.

Well, of course! What better way to demonstrate the compatibility of science and religion than with the example of a man who lived 800 years ago, back in the heyday of science!

You might not be familiar with Albert, as for some reason *cough* anti-religious-bias *cough* they tend not to teach much about him in science class, but he was a real scientist’s scientist.

For instance, he was an earlier pioneer of alchemy, and (like Nicolas Flamel in the British versions of Harry Potter) he wrote a treatise on the Philosopher’s Stone. He discovered the depilatory effects of frog ashes. His theory of astrological talismans was centuries ahead of its time. He witnessed the creation of gold by “transmutation,” which even today’s scientists can’t manage. And he was even said to be interested in phrenology, which wasn’t even really popular until 500 years later.

So next time someone tries to tell you faith and science aren’t compatible, you just remind them that the 13th century says different!

Well, now there’s a new one to add to the list: Vatican astronomer.

Sure, the hours are OK, and Rome is full of easily-charmed young women, and you can spend most of the workday goofing off and theorizing whether space aliens are allowed to take communion or not.

However, there’s also the real possibility that if you start doing, you know, science, then you might be arrested as a heretic and locked away in the basement where they keep confiscated copies of The Da Vinci Code.

But this doesn’t seem to worry star astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno:

Q: Is there something spiritual in it for you?

A: Anybody who’s looked at the stars, it’s got to be spiritual. Now, I don’t want to say I find God in the stars. It’s the other way around. … You know, the reason that they fund us … is to show the world that the church embraces science.

For whatever reason, the world seems not to be convinced about the whole “embraces science” thing yet. Perhaps when the church abandons its evidenceless claims of human parthenogenesis and resurrection and transsubstantiation and miracle cures “they” don’t want you to know about, then we might start taking Brother Guy’s claim seriously.

(Plus, “it’s got to be spiritual” is not exactly scientific reasoning at its finest.)

Now, that’s not to say that the job doesn’t have its perks. For instance, while non-Vatican scientists have to spend lots of time becoming familiar with what counts as “evidence” for things, Brother Guy gets to remain blissfully unaware:

Q: Any evidence of Heaven in the heavens?

A: In a funny way, yes. It’s not enough that the universe makes sense, and that we can study it — that there are laws to be found. … But the fact is, the skies are beautiful. And even the laws of physics that describe the skies are beautiful. And to me that is the beauty of the creator coming through.

Q: Any evidence that after you die you go to heaven or hell depending on whether you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior, ate his cracker-flesh, and let a priest fondle you in a dark booth?

A: In a funny way, yes. The skies are beautiful!

Q: Any evidence that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim?

A: In a funny way, yes. The skies are beautiful!

Q: Any evidence that there’s a lost city of Atlantis somewhere under the ocean and that it’s populated by bloodthirsty merpeople who are waiting for the Mayan Prophecy Year of 2012 to come aboveground and conquer us all as revenge for the plastic we’ve been dumping into the Pacific?

A: In a funny way, yes. The skies are beautiful!

Or come up with your own. Thanks, Catholic Church!

And when you try and teach them about “the intangible,” why, they think it’s all “fortune-telling and ghosts,” just like they see on the television and the internets!

That’s why you can’t just assume they know what “god” is:

Most students in fact have already formed their own basis for belief or unbelief, and in both instances their implicit “philosophies” are cobbled together from some of the worst God-talk popular culture has to offer. In this sense, there is no question that students are up to the task of philosophical reflection about God. The problem is that this reflection is taking place without the direction and input of the Catholic intellectual tradition.

As the scare quotes make clear, it’s not really really a philosophy unless it incorporates the input of the “Catholic intellectual tradition.”

And teacher Brad Rothrock (who wrote the linked essay) knows how to incorporate tradition, which is how his students got so good at correcting those who make the egregious mistake of thinking of god as a “thing.”

Several students then tried to explain to her that God is not a “thing,” but rather the act of existence itself from which all “things” proceed. Though the transfer student remained confused, and I suggested she see me later, this was one of those moments teachers dream about.

Indeed, only the hardest-headed empiricist wouldn’t be thrilled with students so adept at parroting “philosophical” nonsense. I mean, philosophical nonsense.

Fearful that people might use this as occasion to, you know, disbelieve in the Bible, creative Bible-believers have created the Message-Incident Principle:

That is, instead of confusing or distracting the biblical writers and their readers with modern scientific concepts, God descended to their level and employed the science-of-the-day.

[...]

Therefore, passages in the Bible referring to the physical world feature both a Message of Faith and an incidental ancient science. According to this interpretive principle, biblical inerrancy rests in the Divine Theology, and not in statements referring to nature.

Of course! God didn’t want to confuse people! If everyone believes in a firmament, then God made a firmament. If everyone believes in human parthenogenesis, then that’s how God rolls!

And, being omniscient, god must have foreseen that the science-loving denizens of the 21st century would easily distinguish between the parts of the Bible that count as “Divine Theology” and the parts that count as “Cave-People Folk Science.” It’s just common sense:

In the case of Phil 2, the 3-tier ancient astronomy is “alongside” the “more important” Message of Faith that Jesus is Lord over the entire universe. Amen!

Thanks, god, for not confusing anyone!

It is quite a long post, representing a dizzyingly broad array of viewpoints, so as a public service I will give you the gist of each person’s response:

KATIE SHERROD, Episcopal lay activist, Diocese of Fort Worth:

The government once infected Black men with syphilis. See how wicked science is without religion!

ROBIN LOVIN, SMU professor of ethics:

Scientific dogma and religious dogma actually have lots in common! For example, they’re both dogma.

MATTHEW WILSON, SMU political scientist (Roman Catholic):

As Albert Einstein said, “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”

GEORGE MASON, senior pastor, Wilshire Baptist Church:

Scientific explanations change as more data becomes available, so science should “keep a sense of openness” that religion might provide “plausible structures” of knowledge.

DEAL HUDSON, The Morley Foundation (Roman Catholic):

“Metaphysical reasoning” is superior to “empirical science,” and science actually has nothing to say on questions like “was Jesus the product of parthenogenesis?” and “did Jesus come back to life after being dead for 3 days?” and “why was Jesus so popular with the ladies?”

NITYANANDA CHANDRA DAS, priest, ISKCON:

“Metaphysical reasoning” is necessary to do “empirical science,” and can help science answer questions like “is Krishna the source of all the avatars?” and “what was the precise nature of Krishna’s relationship with Radha?” and “why does the end of My Sweet Lord sound so familiar?”

AMY MARTIN, executive director, Earth Rhythms:

blah blah blah some hippie shit blah blah blah.

BOB DEAN, Dallas Baptist Association:

The most important truths come from the Bible, but there’s some less important truths that come from science.

JOE CLIFFORD, pastor, First Presbyterian Church (Dallas):

e.e. cummings
wrote a poem about
how religion is a
perfectly
	legitimate
		way
to appreciate a sunrise

DANIEL KANTER, pastor, First Unitarian Church of Dallas:

[does not make any sense]

CYNTHIA RIGBY, professor, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary:

The Apostle Paul would have wanted us to.

RIC DEXTER, Men’s Division Chapter Leader, Nichiren Buddhist (Soka Gakkai organization)

As Albert Einstein said “Science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind.”

LARRY BETHUNE, pastor, University Baptist Church (Austin):

As Albert Einstein said, “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”

WILLIAM B. LAWRENCE, dean, SMU Perkins School of Theology:

Science needs to recognize the “merits” of religious truths.

DARRELL BOCK, professor, Dallas Theological Seminary:

Religion has a soul, while science has a brain.

–

I know this heady discussion has caused me to see the accomodationism debate in a new light, and I’m glad that Dreher didn’t muck up the discussion by talking to any, you know, scientists.

I’m thinking it’s time to go talk to religion. Who wants to be my wingman?

1. Observation is not a reliable way of gathering data:

Putting modern scientific ideas into [the Bible] distorts the meaning of the text, which is clearly about God’s faithful and caring relation to the world, not the details of how that world came to be.

See, even though the very first chapter gives a somewhat explicit description of, well, how the world came to be, that’s “clearly” not what the book’s about, and “clearly” you’re supposed to ignore that part. (Many of the other parts are “clearly” 100% true, of course. Which parts? I can’t believe you’d even ask such an impertinent question! Clearly you have no future as a BioLogos Scientist.)

2. Only test some of your hypotheses:

What we learn from science cannot threaten our belief in God as the creator. If God created the universe in a Big Bang 15 billion years ago, guided its development with elegant mathematical laws so that eventually there would be big-brained mammals exploring things such as beauty, morality and truth, then let us celebrate that idea, not reject it.

Can what we learn from science threaten our beliefs in human parthenogenesis, resurrection, non-conservation of bread and fish, and spontaneous heaven-ascension?

The article doesn’t say, but based on my experiences with BioLogos, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that “clearly” it cannot. Praise Jesus science!

Based on the square quotes (and also the “supposed”) you’d probably guess that they don’t believe there’s a conflict, and you’d be right:

The common ground, instead, must be science in its broadest sense–a shared body of facts we can all agree about, however we may differ about the spiritual. Yet this common ground itself is at risk if we let science and faith be in conflict.

I see what they’re saying. We all agree on the age of the earth; the best explanation for the appearance of design in nature; whether there was a sudden, world-wide flood at some point in the past; the meaning of a frozen waterfall; and the existence of thetans. And so we shouldn’t let our “spiritual” differences get in the way of this common ground.

Because if there’s one principle that’s important to the practice of science, it’s majoritarianism:

After all, the vast majority of Americas want nothing to do with this conflict. They want compromise, and compatibility.

If that’s what they want, then who am I to argue? Tell me, Mooney and Kirshenbaum, how can I help?

Next time you see the news media cover “science versus religion” as if it’s a battle, write or call in and say why that’s simplistic.

I can do that:

Dear New York Times,

Joel Grus
Seattle, WA

Typically the NYT doesn’t print my letters, but I have a good feeling about this one.

You see, there’s a new book, Unscientific America, arguing that scientific illiteracy threatens our future.

I have no doubt this is true. Just last weekend I wore my Maxwell’s Equations T-shirt out to a nightclub, and not a single woman remarked on how clever it was. And to be frank, I’ve had similar experiences with my “Carbon Based And proud of it!” shirt, with my periodic table tie, and with my “Negative air pressure differentials SUCK!” shirt.

(And you don’t even want to know about my “Geologists Make The Bed Rock” misadventure.)

Like everyone else, I have lots of good ideas about how to solve this problem:

• bring back “El Mundo de Beakman”
• new CBS drama “Dr. Quinn, Postdoctoral Researcher”
• marijuana-growing contests
• daily ballistic pendulum demonstrations in elementary school classrooms
• Tacoma Narrows Bridge video put into constant rotation on MTV and MTV2
• routine in-school showings of pro-biology movies like Underworld: Evolution and Dragonball Evolution
• new national anthem: “She Blinded Me With Science”

“Those are great ideas,” you’re thinking, “and I’d love to fund them. But where’s the debate?”

Well, I haven’t read the book per se, but I’m told that the debate lies in chapters 8 and 9: “Why Wicked Scientists Shouldn’t Tell Credulous Believers That Their Religion Is False” and “Why Wicked Bloggers Shouldn’t Tell Credulous Believers That Their Religion Is False.”

Apparently (and, again, I’m piecing this together from what I read on a couple of blogs and in TV Guide), by telling people that science and religion are incompatible, we’re scaring them away from science (but not from religion).

Instead we should be reassuring them that science and religion are perfectly compatible, just as long as they abandon a few ancillary tenets like “our holy scriptures mean what that say” and “god doesn’t have to obey the laws of physics” and “it’s possible to get pregnant without sperm, and also it’s possible (using 1st-century technology) to come back to life after being dead for three days.”

Actually, I’m pretty sure that we’re also not supposed to point out the necessity of throwing out the religious claims. Better still to trot out Francis Collins and the BioLogos crew.

After all, he worked on the Human Genome Project, so anything he says about science is automatically trustworthy. And if science and religion are compatible enough for him, then who are we to argue?

DATE: July 9, 2009

APPLICANT: Joel Grus
CONTACT: your.religion.is.false -at- gmail.com

NAME OF FEDERAL AGENCY: National Institutes of Health

DESCRIPTIVE TITLE OF PROJECT:

“Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls”: Religious Implications of Hydrological Phenomena

ESTIMATED PROJECT FUNDING: $30 million

ARE HUMAN SUBJECTS INVOLVED? yes
ARE VERTEBRATE ANIMALS USED? yes
DOES THIS PROJECT HAVE A POTENTIAL IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT? yes
DOES THIS PROJECT HAVE SPIRITUAL IMPLICATIONS? oh god yes

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Joel Grus

POSITION/TITLE: Author, Your Religion Is False

DOES THE PROPOSED PROJECT INVOLVE HUMAN EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS?

It does now!

RESEARCH PLAN

SPECIFIC AIMS:

To investigate the effect on god-belief of human exposure to various hydrological phenomena.

BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE:

Over the past decade, Canadian/American indie rock supergroup The New Atheists have been steadily producing books arguing that the god of the Christian bible (among other gods) doesn’t really exist. Although the biological sciences seem to provide unambiguous support for this view, it is possible that god willing some of the other sciences may countervail.

PRELIMINARY STUDIES:

In 1977, Francis Collins (who is the new director of your agency, but please don’t let that sway your opinion) was hiking in the Cascades, when he came across a waterfall frozen into three streams. As this reminded him of the Trinity, he fell on his knees in the dewy grass and devoted himself to Jesus Christ. So far this experiment has never been replicated.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS:

We will collect a large assortment of scientists and randomly assign them to visit hydrological features, including aquifers, beaches, catadupae, drainage basins, endorheic basins, flood plains, infiltration basins, losing streams, percolation trenches, riparian zones, streams, and waterfalls. (I, for instance, will be randomly assigned to the “beach” treatment.)

Each scientist will be measured both before and after his trip using the Dawkins Scale of Religiosity, after which we will use some type of computer (which we will purchase with the grant money) to make graphs and play Minesweeper draw conclusions.

Based on the results of this first experiment, we will repeat on a larger scale, expanding the subject pool to include non-scientists, monkeys, kangaroos, and human embryonic stem cells.

If all goes well, I think we can get our work published in one of the InterVarsity Press science journals. We’d also present at some of the Campus Crusade science conferences, of course. And we’d be happy to facilitate inclusion of our results in the science curriculum in Texas.

OTHER FUNDING:

We’ve also applied to the BioLogos Foundation for funding. If you could put in a good word for us with Director Collins, that would be just swell!