Guardian story misleadingly blames atheists for perpetuating the notion of a science/religion conflict

On Saturday the Guardian published an article called, “Would you Adam and Eve it? Why creation story is at the heart of a new spiritual divide.” The point of the article, based on a A YouGov poll commissioned by Newman University in Birmingham, is to make a point that’s the subtitle of the article: “Major survey reveals that it’s atheists who perpetuate the conflict between religious belief and science.” In other words, it’s the damn atheists who keep saying there’s a conflict between religion and science when such a conflict doesn’t really exist. To wit:

According to the research, nearly two-thirds of Britons – as well as nearly three-quarters of atheists – think Christians have to accept the assertion in Genesis that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. But just 16% of believers accept the creation myth – according to which, in the words of the questionnaire, “humans and other living things were created by God and have always existed in their current form”. Only 9% of all Britons reject evolutionary theory.

According to Professor Fern Elsdon-Baker, who led the research, the findings suggest a need to revise stereotypes when it comes to Christian belief in Britain. “In a society that is increasingly non-religious, this mismatch in perception could be seen as a form of prejudice towards religious or spiritual groups,” she said. “It may be one of the contributing factors in religious groups or individuals saying they see a conflict between science and religion.” [JAC: There is a big difference in how the religious versus nonbelievers see evolution; I give the data below. In light of these data, the accusation of “prejudice” seems unfounded.]

According to the British Attitudes Survey, religious belief is continuing to decline in Britain, but the former archbishop of Canterbury, Lord (Rowan) Williams, says the YouGov survey confirms that a presumed incompatibility between science and religion is “a phoney war”.

“The number of mainstream Christians – certainly in this country – who have qualms about evolutionary theory is very small indeed,” said Williams. “But perceptions are different, and the presence of US-style fundamentalism in the popular imagination means that a growing number who know nothing of the actual history of intellectual discussion of these questions assume that all religious believers must be committed to combating scientific accounts of the universe’s beginnings.”

First of all, this study was conducted in Britain, not the U.S., so the conclusions (which are wrong even for Britain) can’t be extended the U.S., where the conflict is far more intense. And in the U.S. it’s not atheists who are responsible for the religious rejecting evolution; its their own conditioning and brainwashing. Further, wholesale rejection of evolution occurs in many Muslim countries, too, and you can’t pin that on atheists, who would often be killed or imprisoned for even saying that there’s a science/religion conflict. Finally, even in Britain, as Julian Baggini discovered to his chagrin (an atheist, he once said religion was not about specific beliefs but about human comity), British Christians believe in the literal truth of a whole lot of myths and superstitions (see here and here), including belief in miracles, heaven and hell, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and so on. Here’s part of Bagginis’s survey of Anglicans—admittedly not constructed scientifically. But have a look at the last row, as well as the second and fourth. If science contradicts the Bible, say these Anglicans, just as many of them will believe the Bible as will reject the Bible in favor of science. That bespeaks some conflict.

But on to the YouGov data. As reader Mark pointed out, if you look at that data, there’s a big difference between the “religious/spiritual” people and those who are not “religious/spiritual” or atheist.

The base population was asked the question “Which of the following statements comes closest to your view about the origin and development of life on Earth”? There were five choices, listed in order below. #1 is straight biblical creationism, #2 is theistic evolution (note that it refers to all creatures, not just humans), #3 is pure naturalistic evolution that we teach in biology class, #4 is “another theory” (I suspect largely religious), and #5 is “I don’t know”:

 

Here are the data divided by belief, with the five rows of percentages corresponding to the five answers given above—in order.

 

First, one issue: they frame the question as “evolution by natural selection” instead of just “evolution.” Of course genetic drift played a role in evolution, though not in adaptations. This isn’t hugely important given that most people don’t even know about genetic drift, but it would have been more accurate to say “Humans and other living things evolved over time as a result of natural processes, in which God played no part,” leaving out “natural selection.”

Now, compare the “religious/spiritual” column to either the “not religious/spiritual” or “atheist” columns. (We’ll ignore “spiritual but not religious”, since the article is mostly about the conflict between religious believers and atheists.) If you add up rows 1 and 2, which correspond to God-created and God-guided evolution respectively, the sum is 55% for the religious, and 10% and 3% for the other two, respectively. That’s already a big difference. If you add in row 4, corresponding to “non-naturalistic evolution” (i.e., “I have a theory which is mine”), you get 68% of religious/spiritual people holding unscientific views of evolution, compared to 18% of “not religious/spiritual” folk and only 7% of atheists. That’s nearly a fourfold difference for those who are not religious/spiritual, and an eightfold difference for atheists.

Finally, look at the scientific view of evolution: column 3. Religious/spiritual people accept a naturalistic view of evolution only 23% of the time, compared to 72% for “not religious/spiritual” and a whopping 92% for “atheist.” Clearly, the less religious you are, the more you accept the view of evolution that science gives us. Comparing “religious spiritual” to atheists, it’s exactly a fourfold difference!

Christians like the reporter and Rowan Williams, may argue that the conflict is “phoney”, but they, and the Guardian author (a Catholic; see below) are simply presenting the figures in the best possible light for the faithful. What we see is another attempt to persuade everyone that science and religion don’t conflict.

If they don’t, though, why is there a huge difference in acceptance of naturalistic evolution between “religious/spiritual” folk on one hand and those damned pesky atheists on the other? The religious still cling to the belief that God had a hand in evolution, contrary to Rowan Williams’s statement in the article, ” “To say that all things depend unilaterally on the eternal action of God is not the same as saying that specific steps in the universe’s history must be the direct result of divine intervention.” But if God either created everything or guided evolution, then, yes, specific steps must have been the result of divine intervention.

After all, modern evolutionary theory is more than just “things changed over time.” It is in fact “things changed over time by purely natural processes“—in other words, the answer represented in row 3. We have no need of the God hypothesis. No, the atheists are not to blame for perpetuating the idea of a conflict. After all, who among British atheists can you name, with the possible exceptions of Richard Dawkins and Anthony Grayling, who even discusses the notion of accommodationism and its flaws The big difference between atheists and the religious/spiritual in how they think evolution happened bespeaks something about religion that prevents its adherents from accepting scientific fact. Is that not a conflict? And I’m betting it comes not from the activities of atheists, but from the tendency of believers to see as true whatever makes them feel good—or what they were taught at home or in school.

Oh, and reader Mark, who did his due diligence, also pointed out that this survey was funded by one of the Templeton organizations. Does that surprise you?  The International Society for Science and Religion notes that

Dr Fern Elsdon-Baker, at the Newman University in Birmingham, has been awarded funding by the Templeton Religion Trust to establish a research group to examine the relationship between science and religion in society. The project is established in partnership with Professor Bernard Lightman of the Institute of Science and Technology Studies at York University, Canada; Dr Carola Leicht of the Centre for the Study of Group Processes, in the School of Psychology, University of Kent, UK; and the National Life Stories programme at the British Library.

Finally, note that the reporter, Catherine Pepinster, is a Catholic commentator; she was former editor of the Catholic news weekly The Tablet, the UK Development Officer for the Anglican Centre in Rome (she’s not an Anglican), is the author of a forthcoming book on Britain and the Papacy, and has a Catholic blog that describes her as “a Catholic commentator”. This article is an example how you can dump on atheists and pretend there’s no conflict between science and religion simply by judiciously picking the figures you cite.

h/t:  Matthew, Mark (but not Luke or John)