Some Religious and Political Bloviations

When History News Network featured Thomas C. Reeves's blog post,"The Temptation of Secularism," on its mainpage this past week, the negative reaction was widespread, not only in comments there, but elsewhere on the net. I've already cited the reaction of our colleague, Miriam Burstein, at Little Professor. Despite Reeves's claims, she insisted, it is possible for agnostics and atheists to be happy. But Burstein's rejoinder was near an endorsement compared with P. Z. Myers's"Has HNN No Standards?" at Pharyngula. Reeves's essay is"a piece of hackwork from some conservative religious looney working in one of those right-wing think-tanks" says P. Z.

Cliopatria's readers may recall that I am no apologistfor Tom Reeves. His blogging irritates me because he systematically ignores the comments of readers on what he has said. In the blogosphere, that's arrogant and insulting. I pointed out that in his 30 year career at the University of Wisconsin, Parkside, he antagonized all of his colleagues and, when he took a comfortable retirement from its faculty, Reeves attacked his institution and his former students. That seemed to me, at the least, ungracious. My criticism of his blogging was occasioned by his misrepresentation of evidence. For my trouble, I was accused of being a"dishonorable""McCarthyite." Reeves was forced to correct himself only after I withdrew a charge that he was a"liar." I am no apologist for Tom Reeves. [Read More ...]

On the other hand, P. Z. should have known that he was attacking HNN for what was merely a blog post that happened to get featured on the mainpage. I have no idea why it was featured there, but worse characters than Tom Reeves -- people like David Horowitz, who have no reasonable credentials at all -- have had their work presented there. Reeves is a much published historian at the end of a substantial career. If he wants to bloviate, he has every much right to do so as P. Z. Myers has. P. Z. is a much more interesting blogger, but I can't find any evidence that he has actually produced much scholarship in his own field.

Reeves would be better off if he shunned those generalizations that he's drawn to about the degeneration of western civilization since the Enlightenment. They're mostly gaseous and nauseous escapes – the kind for which polite people say"Excuse me" or"I beg your pardon." But I suspect that the biologist in P. Z. understands that those things come naturally to most of us. What's up P. Z.'s craw is that Reeves is a bloviating theist and there's been a lot of gas escaping from bloviating theists lately. I suspect what P. Z. most resents – what really gets his dander up – is that Reeves understands that there are no true atheists. All of us have a highest loyalty, a highest majesty, whom we serve – whether it is self-interest, material comfort, national interest, or some marketplace. That highest loyalty is our g_d and P. Z.'s got one whether he admits it or not. A major thrust of all western monotheism – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – is its prophetic iconoclasm. And, poorly framed or not, Reeves's latest bloviation is in that tradition. He denounces false g_ds in the name of a one true G_d. It's understandable, I suppose, that a self-styled atheist like P. Z. wouldn't think well of Tom's denunciation of idols."Of course, there are no g_ds, but yours is false, too," he'd claim. But P. Z. would be right about that only if he had no ultimate loyalty and I suspect that he's got at least one.

The other piece that caught my attention yesterday was the New York Times"complete coverage" of"The Evolution Debate." Especially, I was intrigued by Jodi Wilgoren's"Politicized Scholars Put Evolution on the Defensive." The article intrigued me for three reasons:
1) because the scholars on whom it focuses cannot be easily dismissed. Stephen C. Meyer, vice president and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, has a doctorate in the history and philosophy of science from Cambridge. Another fellow, William Dembski has a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago. Even Edward J. Larson, the distinguished historian of the Scopes Monkey trial, was affiliated with the Discovery Institute at one time.
2) the Discovery Institute does not repudiate the theory of evolution. It remains the prevailing interpretation, the one for which there is evidence and the authority of substantial agreement. They know, too, that revelation is not evidence. Thus, they argue – not to ban the teaching of evolution or the adoption of some intelligent design curriculum. There is none. They argue for teaching the controversy. That there is no controversy among biologists remains a problem for them.
3) the other thing that struck me, personally, is that in some odd way, these are my peeps. In the mid-1960s and early 1970s, when I was an active Republican, Bruce Chapman and George Gilder were leaders in the Ripon Society, an organization of progressive young Republicans. They co-authored an analysis of the disastrous Goldwater campaign, The Party That Lost Its Head. I was one of the young members of the Ripon Society who hoped that the party's future lay with the heirs to Nelson Rockefeller, John Lindsay, Mark Hatfield, Jacob Javitz, William Scranton, Edward Brooke, and many others. That was before the Dixiecrats joined my party, before the rise of the radical right, before the Reagan revolution. I see that Bruce and George have accommodated themselves to political change fairly well. I haven't.