The Right to be Wrong

From USA Today is an article on Religious Freedoms that I thought was particularly interesting.

America has a complex and enduring commitment to pluralism. We want people to be free to act — and believe — as they please. But we must all play in the same sandbox, so we are attentive to the idiosyncrasies of our playmates, especially when they don't make sense to us.

Few idiosyncrasies are more perplexing than the ways people connect science and religion. Widespread rejection of evolution, to take a familiar example, has created a crisis in education, and it now appears that biology texts might be altered to satisfy anti-evolutionary activists in Texas. Many on the textbook commission believe their religion is incompatible with scientific explanations of origins — evolution and the Big Bang — so they want textbooks with more accommodating theories and different facts.

Tufts University philosopher and leading atheist Daniel Dennet no doubt finds all this mystifying, since he thinks seminary education should ultimately terminate one's faith: "Anybody who goes through seminary and comes out believing in God hasn't been paying attention," he toldThe Boston Globe.

Dennet's brother-in-arms, atheist Jerry Coyne, raked Brown University cell biologist Ken Miller and me over the coals in The New Republic for our claims that Christians can unapologetically embrace science. The only faiths compatible with science, wrote Coyne, are "Pantheism and some forms of Buddhism" — hardly encouraging since few Americans embrace either of these. Coyne wrote that "90% of Americans" hold religious beliefs that "fall into the 'incompatible' category."

The 90% of Americans holding beliefs incompatible with science include Charles Townes and William Phillips, who won Nobel Prizes in physics in 1964 and 1997, respectively. What sort of atheist complains that a fellow citizen doing world-class science must abandon his or her religion to be a good scientist?

Our commitment to pluralism and individual freedom should motivate generosity in such matters and allow people "the right to be wrong," especially when the beliefs in question do not interfere with us. Nothing is gained by loud, self-promoting and mean-spirited assaults on the beliefs of fellow citizens.

I still think that Religion encroaches on other freedoms too much to get its knickers in a twist just yet, but there should be some restraint from bullying people for having a view of the world that cannot be scientifically proven.

Read the Article