Why PZ Myers Won't Debate

Where is your god now???

Just a few weeks ago David Marshall, author of Christ The Tao, challenged PZ Myers to a debate over whether or not Christianity has uplifted, or oppressed, women.

David Marshall has not gotten a response, as predicted, but another popular Christian blogger has. Myers has responded to the invitation of Vox Day to debate the exact same topic.

Myers reasoning can be read here, but basically sums up to Myers finding Day morally reprehensible, and not wanting to give "the other side" any more credibility.

What's curious to me is that this is becoming an identical situation to Dawkins refusal to debate with Craig.

Marshall thinks that Myers has chosen to respond to Day, and ignore him, because Day is the easier target for Myers typical tactic of using slander and mockery (rather than logic and reason) to provoke his readers to rage against Christianity. Marshall says,

"Instead of implying that he won't debate because we're all racist, women-hating savages ..., or because PZ Myers owns this vast stockpile of credibility and doesn't want any of it leaking out to nourish undead believing memes, PZ might just admit, 'My whole schtick involves pretending that we atheists are a breed apart, and that the solution to religion is to mock it, deride it, and slander those who believe it.  I would lose credibility with my crowd if I were found on stage reasoning -- really reasoning, thinking and discoursing and looking at evidence and trying to really understand, rather than just slandering and dancing and posturing -- with the other side.'"  

Christianity and the Birth of Modern Science

It's a pretty common view these days that science and religion are at odds, or that they work against each other. This is tragic. What is even more tragic is that this view is often accurate. Theists make claims which are demonstrably false and consider it a badge of honor to obstinately refuse to listen to reason, or to promote a conception of God which even they admit makes no sense.

Another view is that science and religion are independent of each other. Science is about the physical, whereas religion is about the metaphysical. Science is empirical, religion is more philosophic. Rejecting religion because of science is like rejecting politics because of science, or rejecting economics because of science. The two have nothing to do with each other.

Recently, I came across another idea which I had never heard, but the more I look, the more sources I see that hold this position. Some scholars apparently think that religion has not been a hindrance to science. In fact, they believe that modern science owes a lot to medieval Christianity.

One example is James Hannam, who holds a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge. He wrote an article called Christianity and the Rise of Science. In this article, he argues that Christianity is largely responsible for the rise of science as we have it today for a number of reasons, including:

• The preservation of literacy in the Dark Ages.
• The doctrine of the lawfulness of nature.
• The need to examine the real world rather than rely on pure reason.
• The belief that science was a sacred duty.

I highly suggest you read the full article, linked above, for a complete explanation. Another article by Hannam is Science owes much to both Christianity and the Middle Ages.

A misconception about apparent conflict comes from a few high-profile cases, such as Galileo, but these are not characteristic of the entire Middle Ages. The idea that science and religion were in conflict did not become popular until long after in the writings of Voltaire. 

We think that science and religion were in conflict for the same reason that people are afraid to fly in airplanes. We never hear reports of planes successfully landing with no trouble. We only hear about the horrific crashes, so we have a distorted view of how common they are. Likewise, we never hear about all the support religion gave to science and education in an era when it was hard to come by. We only hear about Galileo's trial so our view is distorted.

Another mistake is equating "religion" with "Christianity". Even in the Middle Ages, religious communities in other parts of the world, such as in Muslim regions, saw many fundamental advances in science and mathematics, including a theory of evolution by natural selection which was common knowledge among Muslims almost a thousand years before Darwin.

Much of history is simply a matter of perception and interpretation. If Hitler had won WWII, our textbooks would be very different, regardless of what actually happened or who was actually "right", but it seems there is a certain number of scholars who interpret history such that not only has religion not been a stumbling block for science, but that we may not have had science without it.

What do you think?

TIL that Evolution was taught among Muslims almost a thousand years before Darwin.

Here's another post on Reddit that has exploded into something interesting. I submitted a post called TIL that Evolution was taught among Muslims almost a thousand years before Darwin. The comments turned into a pretty interesting discussion about the relationship between science and religion, the history of Evolution as a scientific idea, the effect of religion on peoples minds, and many other things.

This submission hasn't blown up the way IAmA Former Mormon Missionary. AMA did, but there are some pretty interesting insights that are definitely worth checking out.