Ah, poor Panda's Thumb. It's getting hit with the Religious Wars. Don't they know that Pharyngula is the place to battle over atheism and religion? I'm going to side with my compatriots over there who think religion should not be a discussion topic there, but that doesn't mean I can't argue about it elsewhere.

Nick Matzke brings up one interesting but irrelevant point.

Jacob Weisberg and Julian Sanchez, who both want to argue that evolution is incompatible with religious belief, have to explain why the same logic does not also apply to meteorology, germ theory, genetics, atomism, etc. All of these contradict certain literal interpretations of fundamental Judeo-Christian-Islamic holy texts. All of these scientific discoveries have experienced objections from certain religious sects, even though, now, it seems silly to almost every religious person that there would be some kind of religious problem with genetics or meteorology.

There is a good question there: why does evolution stir up these debates? However, it's not our question to answer. If scientists were driven to crash Sunday School sessions and yell at the little kiddies that Genesis is a lie, it would be a point worth bringing up on the Panda's Thumb…but we're not. The argument is all coming from the other direction. So don't ask me or my heathenish ilk why they leave meteorology alone (although…didn't Pat Robertson make some theological assertions about the paths of tornadoes?), ask them. And please don't chew out the atheists over it—they aren't the ones trying to degrade public education or insert atheism into the school's science instruction.

This part, though, I find a bit annoying.

Michael Ruse has been getting flack from certain quarters lately for pointing this out, and perhaps he sometimes does exagerrate the sins of Richard Dawkins et al. in this area. But the very reason that Ruse has to pound the table so hard is that a certain segment of evolution/atheism popularizers stubbornly, and in the case of Jacob Weisberg, defiantly, refuses to separate their science and their religious argumentation. Basically, they take the lazy step of saying “Look, folks, it’s science or religion,” and attempt to force people to chose their favorite, rather than actually arguing for their own religious view of atheism. Make no mistake: arguing for atheism is making a religious argument, just like arguing for theism. Having religious arguments is a grand human tradition and all for the good, but history has shown that it is a Very Bad Thing if governments take sides on these arguments. Atheists insisting that evolution proves atheism make it appear as if teaching standard science in biology classrooms is actually state sponsorship of atheism, and this is what motivates creationists/IDists. It is highly doubtful that the evolution=atheism mixture has ever been a significant component of public education in the U.S., but if people who are ostensibly supporting teaching evolution can’t resist mixing in the religious argument for atheism, then it is understandable why the public will continue to be confused.

I guess I'm one of that tiny minority of PTers who will note that there really is a conflict between science and religion.

Nick has elided two very different points: 1) "evolution proves atheism" and 2) "evolution and religion are in conflict". (1) is false; I don't know of any sensible atheists who make such a claim, and Dawkins or Weisberg or any of the other boogiemen mentioned there certainly don't. (1) and (2) are not synonymous, and (2) is definitely true. We wouldn't be having these evolution-creation wars if it were not so. Go to any of the big guns of the religious right, say Johnson or Robertson or Dobson or Falwell, and try to tell them that they've got no argument with evolution. They'll disagree. Anyone wanna bet on it?

What Nick is doing is promoting one kind of religious belief, a sort of abstract deism, as compatible with evolutionary biology. Sure it is; I'll agree with him one hundred percent. But there are probably about as many people who practice that particularly fuzzy sort of religion as there are atheists, and what he is actually doing is pushing a kind of sectarian faith that will only serve to annoy the Baptist and Methodist and Catholic and miscellaneous Evangelical creationists. In order for the two to be compatible, we're insisting that these religions strip out articles of faith that they may consider indispensable.

I have no problem saying that religions that conflict with reality are wacky and should change; I'm an atheist. It's odd, though, to see people trying to fool themselves into believing that promoting their version of religion, which avoids key problems with evolutionary biology, is somehow less offensive than going whole hog and just stating that all religion is hooey.

I'll also add that if people really want to show that evolutionary biology is independent of religion, they're going to have to stop treating atheist proponents of evolution as the bad boys they'd like to keep in the closet. The evidence that evolution is not dependent on a religious point of view is that many Catholics and Baptists and Moslems and Buddhists and religious whatevers and atheists can all agree on its major ideas. Including us atheists pisses off the fundies terribly, but treating us as pariahs gives the lie to the the claim that it is not religious.