The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis

Childish Octogenarian Fools.

This is the third in a series of conversations among leading scientists and scholars about the “Big Questions.”

by Michael Shermer

I wanted to alert eSkeptic readers about a free beautifully produced booklet on the question “Does science make belief in God obsolete?” published by the Templeton Foundation and edited by myself. The booklet contains 13 essays of varying answers to this question, which itself is part of the Templeton Foundation’s “Big Questions” project (a previous big question, for example, is “Does the universe have a purpose?”) To answer this latest big question, I was selected by Templeton to not only edit the essays, but to select the participants. We aimed for a wide range of commentators who would provide an equally wide range of answers, from “yes” to “no” to “it depends” to “no, but it should” (the latter by the inimitable Christopher Hitchens).

Since I am aware of the reputation that the Templeton Foundation has within the skeptical, atheist, and humanist communities for harboring a right-wing Christian agenda, I would like to note that, in fact, they invited me to select the commentators and edit their essays, and insisted that I include skeptics, atheists, and humanists, which you will see that I did. There was never any hint to me that I should edit the commentaries to come out a certain way to match the alleged agenda; to the contrary, they seemed most eager to give everyone a fair shake … to the tune of over a million dollars spent in a national advertising campaign that included advertorials place in Scientific American, American Scientist, Nature, The New Scientist, The Atlantic Monthly, Commentary, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Economist, The Financial Times, The New Republic, Prospect, and the Sunday edition of The New York Times. Oh, and Skeptic magazine!

The full list of essayists includes:

On the “Yes” side
Victor Stenger: Yes. Worse. Science renders belief in God incoherent.
Steven Pinker: Yes, if by science we include secular reason and knowledge.
Pervez Hoodbhoy: Not necessarily. You must find a science-compatible God.
Stuart Kauffman: No, if we redefine God as creativity in the universe.
Chrisopher Hitchens: No, but it should.
Michael Shermer: It depends: belief no, God yes.
On the “No” side
Mary Midgley: Of course not, belief in God is not a scientific question.
Kenneth Miller: Of course not. Science expands our appreciation of the Divine.
William D. Phillips: Absolutely not! Belief in God is not a scientific matter.
Robert Sapolsky: No. Belief offers something that science doesn’t.
Jerome Groopman: No. Not at all.
Keith Ward: No.
Christoph Cardinal Schönborn: No.

You may read all the essays online, order a copy of the booklet, or download a PDFs.

Read it here.