The Orange Traffic Cones of Discourse
In the neighborhood I live in, some people attempt to claim parking spots on the street by placing orange traffic cones in the way, so that others will pass these spots by. Some people acknowledge this tactic doesn’t have any force of law behind it, and will not bother you if you move their cones and park. Others will stand on their porch and yell at you while you’re trying to carry a television from your car to your front door. But by and large, people don’t usually park in these spots because of the intimidating power of the orange traffic cone.
I’ve long hypothesized that you can get away with just about anything in plain daylight by applying clever use of traffic cones. A similar tactic has been applied intellectually to end the straw-man cage match going on between the “New Atheists” and practically everybody else. Chris Money’s new book, Unscientific America has been reviewed here and there by Chad Orzel at Uncertain Principles and PZ Meyers of like-I-have-to-tell-you. I haven’t read it (yet) and I’m holding out hope that the parts of the book that will not be creating a huge stink in the science blog-o-sphere will be more than worth the cost of the book and time to read it, but I’m going to preemptively contribute my puff of acrid odor.
In my understanding, part of the debate is over whether or not science can conclusively say “God doesn’t exist.” The “New Atheists” say that the evidence for God’s existence is nigh unto nonexistent. In Dawkins words, he does not rule it out entirely but assumes the absence of God in his day-to-day life. Mooney seems to think this is equivalent to taking the philosophical position that there is no God, period, and that scientifically this is incorrect. Backing him up are “Quite a lot of philosophers — and scientists,” who, “would disagree.” Argumentum ad papulum, anybody?
What I think is going on here, is a case of intellectual traffic cones. Mooney is placing traffic cones around God, and insisting that science can’t say anything about it. He’s trying to back this up with vacuous accusations of conflating methodological and philosophical naturalism. I honestly don’t know why, because I think his real point is that to some extent Dawkins and Meyers are bad PR for science. Maybe he does say this explicitly, but again, I haven’t read the book yet. I’d agree that, yes, when the face of science is, on occasion, acetic and abrasive it doesn’t do us any favors, but intellectually, their position is completely correct: with the current evidence scientifically, God is bunk.
Tags: atheism