Mary Midgley laments a Cold War

Is it possible for someone to lose his job at the Royal Society simply because headline-writers misrepresent what he has been saying? In mid-September, this startling thing seems to have happened.

Several papers claimed in their headlines (not in their detailed reports) that Professor Michael Reiss, Director of Education at the Royal Society, had recommended that creationism should be taught in school science-classes. What he had actually said was that, if this topic came up, science teachers should allow their classes to discuss it and should help them to understand how the disagreements about it have arisen.

The Royal Society’s pundits, however, decided to outlaw him. Whether moved by the headlines, or by the fact that Reiss is an ordained Anglican minister, or by real horror at the prospect of such discussions, they insisted that he should resign his post.

Stirring up Cold War

How has this happened? Headline-writers, of course, always dramatize conflicts because they are pressed to print things that will sell their papers, and what sells them quickest is always a war.

In the case of religion, this means assuming that those involved on both sides are all bigots – anti-scientific fundamentalist Christians on one side and naïve scientistic atheists on the other. It means ignoring the long history of thoughtful discussions that have shown most people the folly of both positions.

More seriously, it means overlooking the fact that most readers are not bigots but are puzzled and confused people who would really welcome light on their conflicts from either side. It means deliberately stirring up a Cold War in which neither party even tries to understand the other. In the last few decades this has been done so thoroughly that today the headline-forgers are not alone in claiming to iron out the world’s complexities in this way. As we see, they are joined by the Royal Society.

Confused attacks

Why has this split developed? On the religious side, of course, extremism is not new. In the USA, where the literal interpretation of the Bible was first systematically defended in the late nineteenth century, a fundamentalist war against science has long been a political issue. It is linked with many local feuds between town and country, intelligentsia and populace, innovation and tradition.

Until lately, however, these warriors lacked something that all extremists need – namely, active, colourful opponents whom they could denounce. This equipment has now been generously provided for them by Messrs. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens et al., who have obligingly attacked religion in such a confused, undiscriminating  way that it is not hard to answer them nor to represent them as hostile to every kind of ideal. (Richard Dawkins has now, very admirably, protested against the treatment of Reiss. But his books have already contributed to the main damage.)

Thus both armies can now go on indefinitely feeding on each other – quoting each others’ provocations without ever having to attend to the larger issues which interest the rest of us. And this performance is so noisy that outside observers – including, presumably, the Royal Society – easily conclude that a Cold War between bigots is indeed the only way to discuss these matters.

More interesting questions

But this is not our whole world. There are vast horizons beyond for us to think about, horizons beside which this quarrel is a trifling distraction. I can only quote here a few signposts to this enticing territory.

For instance, Albert Einstein said, ‘Religion without science is lame; science without religion is blind’. Charles Kingsley, on reading the Origin of Species, promptly wrote to Darwin saying that, ‘It is just as noble a conception of Deity to believe that He created primal forms capable of self-development… as to believe that He required a fresh act of intervention to supply the lacunas that He himself had made’ – a view which has remained widespread among Anglicans, as witness Professor Reiss. And again, the late American writer and essayist David Foster Wallace remarked, ‘There is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping.… The only choice we get is what to worship.’

And that is surely a far more interesting question than any that is being raised in the current Cold War.

Mary Midgely is a moral philosopher. Her latest book is The Owl of Minerva: A Memoir (2005), Routledge, London. She is also the author of Evolution as a religion (revised ed. 2002), Routledge, London, and Science as salvation (1992), Routledge, London
 
Professor Reiss made his comments at the 2008 BA Festival of Science.