Madeleine Bunting, fifth-rate accommodationist

Really, just when you think the hopper of stupidity has emptied itself for the day, something happens to fill it back up. This time it’s the ever-reliable Madeleine Bunting and her minions. Over at the Guardian, Bunting reports on an accommodationist conference at Lambeth Palace, residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Her column is, as the Brits say, a dog’s breakfast.

She first laments that so much time is being wasted by discussing accommodationism:

So what happens when there is an attempt at a very different kind of conversation which is not around the extremes of belief and non belief but largely amongst thoughtful believers, many of whom might be scientists? That was the proposition behind Lambeth Palace’s gathering of scientists, philosophers and theologians yesterday morning.

The discussion can be framed around two very basic, crucial questions put forward by the audience. Firstly, what’s all the fuss about? It reflected a strand of anxiety in the multifaith audience that, frankly, there were bigger questions to worry about. Surely believers should be discussing individualism, consumerism and other social problems rather than indulge in this kind of philosophical reasoning.

Why, then, has Bunting devoted so many of her columns to this very issue? But she regroups and quickly begins reciting the traditional mantras of the fifth-rate accommodationist:

But the Archbishop of Canterbury was brisk, and he warned, “beware of the power of nonsense”. Science’s triumphalist claim as a competitor to failed religion was dangerous. In contrast, he offered an accommodation in which science and religion were “different ways of knowing” and “what you come to know depends on the questions you start with”. Different questions lead to “different practices of learning” – for example different academic disciplines. Rather than competitors, science and religion were both needed to pursue different questions.

I am still waiting patiently for someone to tell me one thing that religious people know is true, and that the knowledge whereof came uniquely from faith. Do we know if Jesus was the son of God? If so, what about Muslims who know something different? Frankly, I am losing patience with people who make this ludicrous argument, because they never specify what religion can help us know.

Oh well. Simon Conway Morris then rears his head:

Simon Conway Morris, professor of evolutionary palaeobiology, argued that the polemical hostile debate which dominates public debate – “the fuss” – is really about a failure of nerve of both science and religion. The response of both is to retreat into their own forms of dangerous literalism – religion into creationism and science into a fundamentalism. Challenging the current deference to Darwin in this anniversary year, he warned that aspects of Darwin’s thought can be taken into very dangerous territory; he cited a diary entry of Josef Goebbels’ in 1942 on the “parasitical Jews” in the struggle for survival. Science needed ethical thinking.

I used to respect Conway Morris for his achievements in paleontology, but it’s hard to maintain that respect in the view of this nonsense. Since when is the idea of “parasitical Jews” an “aspect of Darwin’s thought”? Conway Morris, it seems, has planted himself firmly in creationist la-la land along with Henry Morris, Phillip Johnson, and Ann Coulter. Can’t we just declare a moratorium on the assertion that the road from Darwin to Hitler is straight and unerring? But if we must pursue this line of argument, let us not forget that it was the Jews who were the unique objects of Nazi opprobrium. Why is that? Because they were the despised killers of Christ.
Not content with that, Conway Morris offers this:

The second question from the audience – from the philosopher Mary Midgley – was what comes next? What both science and religion needed, argued Conway Morris was a more fruitful conversation. He raised the possibility that religion might be needed to help develop understanding into questions which have baffled scientists such as the nature of consciousness.

To which one can reply only “not bloody likely!” If religion has ever given rise to any fruitful scientific methodology, I don’t know of it. This suggestion smacks of desperation.

Finally, out of desperationville rides John Houghton:

John Houghton, the climate scientist, took the question in an entirely different direction. It was science which had established the nature of global warming and science would play a role in inventing the innovations which could mitigate its impact, but religion also had a role as an agent of change of personal behaviour. It had a crucial role because religion essentially concerned itself with relationships to other people, to the rest of humanity and to the natural environment.

Perhaps Bunting, and Houghton, have forgotten that much of the opposition to the idea of global warming comes from religion, especially from those evangelical Christians who see humans as having been given dominion over nature. No secularist makes, or can make, such a claim. Has Bunting not observed the remarkable confluence of creationists and global-warming deniers?

I guess I read Bunting for the same reason that I sniff the milk when the carton is two weeks past its sell-by date: you know it’s bad, but there’s a perverse pleasure in making sure.