Amateurs!

Over at BioLogos, , Karl Giberson has a post complaining about Jerry Coyne's representation of religious belief. Specifically, that Coyne is arguing against popular, man-in-the-street religion instead of the expert version held by theologians (such as Giberson?). He likens this to attacking science and targeting the uninformed ideas held by ordinary people, instead of the serious arguments of well-educated scientists.

There is a serious argument in there, but you need to clear away some rubbish first.

In describing the low standards of scientific thinking of ordinary people, Giberson claims most of them would accept astrology, dowsing, UFOs and aliens, etc - and therefore provide targets for an anti-science argument. This would make sense as an analogy only if Coyne had been dismissing Christianity because its believers also accepted astrology. I've only ever heard this argument used to dismiss the "millions of people believe in Christianity" line - which Giberson is implicitly throwing away here as well. Apparently most people don't understand Christianity well enough to have an opinion on it.

But underneath that, it is certainly true that many people accept science without really understanding it, and would get large parts of it wrong if asked. What's the difference, then?

For one thing, the people who are actually practicing science, using it to make decisions that affect other people, and building the iPhones and the space rockets, are all pretty well trained in the science they're using. Whereas the people who do most of the work of Christianity are these ordinary folk - the ones who try to get Creationism into schools and stop gays from marrying. If, as Giberson seems to want, we confined religion to the theologically well-trained people who are apparently qualified to have an opinion, then there would be no "God Delusion" book, because Richard Dawkins would have moved on to more important targets than a handful of largely ignored theologians; he'd probably be attacking astrology instead (ironically enough). And Jerry Coyne would not have thought it necessary to write "Why Evolution Is True" because no-one would be trying to corrupt biology education. If we confined the practicing of science to those well trained in it... well, actually, we try to.

For another, when you've finished asking ordinary people about the critical theories of science and religion, try telling them that some professor of physics or theology says they're wrong, and here's the real answer. For religion, you will get a lot of angry responses about liberal academics and moral corruption. The word "atheist" will probably be used - a lot of these well-trained theologians are hard to distinguish from atheists, at least to my poorly-educated ear. For science, most of your respondents will back off, denying thorough knowledge of all those complicated science topics. Why? Do the science types have their followers more cowed? No, most people are ignorant of a lot of science, but they know that they are ignorant. Religion is supposed to be understandable by the common man, and most people believe they do understand it.

More importantly, science has a well-accepted way of arriving at an agreed answer - and religion most certainly does not. That is why there is, by and large, only one science, and lots of religions and sects and denominations. And it is why scientific controversies tend to die down over time; anything interesting accumulates evidence and careful thinking; possibilities are ruled out, and one theory is left standing. Global warming is controversial now, but in a hundred years it will be firmly accepted (or forgotten, on the slim chance that it really is rubbish). Smoking causes lung cancer; continents move; germs cause disease; the earth orbits the sun.

If a popular "Scientist" movement was trying to get astrology introduced in the classrooms, Dawkins and Coyne would no doubt be first to the barricades. If the misconceptions of ordinary folk were being used instead of actual science, we would *want* someone to write "Science Is Not Great", to try to get real science back into the mainstream. If Karl Giberson wishes to promote a dialog between science and faith, the first thing he needs to do is train up all these ignorant rank and file types so they leave behind their naive conceptions of a personal God, and understand what Christianity is really about.

Good luck with that, Karl.