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In 2006 at a Salk Institute symposium held in La Jolla, California entitled “Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival,” Neil deGrasse Tyson stood before a forum of scientists and decried the 15% of scientists among them who still dared to retain religious beliefs. After reciting Newton’s declaration that the beauty and order of the solar system “could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being,” Tyson says, whilst thumping with his hand, “This is Isaac Newton invoking intelligent design [pause and thump] at the limits of his knowledge.” He then goes on as follows:
And I want to put on the table the fact that you have school systems wanting to put intelligent design into the classroom, but you also have the most brilliant people who ever walked this earth doing the same thing. And so the prob. . . so it’s a deeper challenge than simply educating the public. It’s deeper than. . . as you know by the books written by our scientific colleagues that do take these. . . these. . . these deeply resonant and charitable positions towards their religious beliefs. Maybe the real question here. . . Let me back up for a moment. You know we’ve all seen the data. 40%. . . There’s 90-whatever% of the west. . . or of the American public believes in a personal God that responds to their prayers. Then he asked, What is that percentage for scientists? Averaged over disciplines it’s about 40%. And then he said, How about the elite scientists?—members of the National Academy of Sciences. An article on that. . . those data recently in Nature: it said, 85% of the National Academy reject a personal God, and then they compare it to 90% of the public. [Worth noting that Tyson’s passion in the following sentences reaches a fever.] You know that’s not the story. . . there. They missed the story! What that article should have said is, How come this number isn’t zero? That’s the story! Okay. So. My esteemed colleague here, Krau. . . [in his fit of passion forgets his name and points at said colleague idiotically—laughter]. . . Professor Kraus. . . Professor Kraus here says, “All we have to do is make a scientifically literate public.” Well when you do, how can they do better than the scientists themselves in their percentages of who is religious and who isn’t. That’s kind of unrealistic, I think. So, there’s something else going on that nobody seems to be talking about: that as you become more scientific, yes, the religiosity drops off, but it asymptotes, it asymptotes not at zero, it asymptotes at some other level. So they should be the subject of everybody’s investigation. Not the public. [titter in the crowd] I. . . I’m telling [exasperated guffaw]. . . So it’s not 85% reject, it’s that 15% of the most brilliant minds in the nation accepts it. And that’s something that we can’t just sweep under the rug. Otherwise we’re being disingenuous to our. . . to the efforts here. [November 5, 2006. youtube.com/watch?v=N7rR8stuQfk - (11:32 - 14:55)]
Imagine Dr. Tyson got his way and this sort of implied inquisitional cleansing of the scientific community actually took place. What kind of movement would Science then be? No doubt, I am seeing Tyson’s call to investigate the 15% of heretics in its most sinister form. Perhaps the idea of a scientific inquisition is hyperbolic. Surely, all he means is that it would be beneficial to better understand this cohort of esteemed and “most brilliant minds in the nation.” That’s the most charitable reading of his message. But I urge you to listen to his lecture. He is concerned that all religious beliefs directly threaten the scientific enterprise; and what he therefore desires is to bring that number down to zero. He entertains no intention of understanding the position of his heretical colleagues. He has no interest at all in that sort of conversation. As far as he’s concerned, the matter is settled. And moreover, these dissenters are a fringe that represent a direct threat to TheScience™.
Tyson’s political move of applying social pressure to mavericks to conform to scientific orthodoxy (i.e. new atheism) is Tool No. 1 in the Ad Hominem subkit: intimidation and bullying through direct ad hominem attack. In this case Tyson implements and equally enjoys Tool No. 1 of the Rhetorical subkit—the invocation of scientific consensus (i.e. basic peer pressure). We must ask ourselves why on earth a man of science would want to do this. This sort of behaviour toward minority beliefs (or any beliefs really) should have nothing to do with science proper. And besides, it’s unfriendly. What sort of fanaticism motivates an individual to mistreat his peers so viciously and with such puerile glee? Does Tyson desire a pure clergy of TheScience™ committed to new atheist doctrines? Ought they to take oaths of obedience to the Offices and systems of authority to maintain their licenses?
Meanwhile let’s keep in mind that the reverend Dr. Tyson has an immense public influence since his reboot of the television show Cosmos. I know many practicing scientists who laugh at Tyson and Dawkins along with the rest of that crowd and say, Well, those guys are populists and sensationalists. That’s not how scientists really see things. To this observation I must reply that though partly true, it is nevertheless due to his very populism that he is shaping the way the world understands science, its claims to certainty and to authority. And this drift into the irrational is beginning to undermine our civilisation. So pull your head out of your microscope and observe what’s going on with TheScience™ and new atheism; their behaviour and their doctrines must be curbed because folks like Tyson have revealed that they want total power over your thoughts, your beliefs and your behaviour, simply because new atheists are superior. They are in his words, “the most brilliant minds in the nation” and “the most brilliant people who ever walked this earth.”
This is not a matter of opinion to him. Members of the National Academy of Sciences are distinguished, elite thinkers surpassing all others. This is his clergy, and he feels it should be ours too. His question is how to make us all fall in line, and his concern is how such a feat is possible so long as dissenters still maintain the stature and distinction of belonging to the most elite club in America. If we all behaved as the purified version of this group must, we’d be in a perfect world at last: so his thinking goes. No sentiment could be accounted more orthodox and religious (even messianic) than that one: yet there it is in relation to TheScience™ for all to behold.
In response to Dr. Tyson’s remarks, “What that article should have said is, How come this number isn’t zero? That’s the story!”—I believe it’s worth turning it around and asking, Who’s missing the point? The more salient (and far more interesting) question following his survey of scientific heroes who all held spiritual beliefs would have been: How come it works? What is it about spiritual concerns that marks the most brilliant minds? What is it about their frame of mind that has helped bring about the most significant, consciousness-altering insights? That’s the story!
Asa Boxer’s poetry has garnered several prizes and is included in various anthologies around the world. His books are The Mechanical Bird (Signal, 2007), Skullduggery (Signal, 2011), Friar Biard’s Primer to the New World (Frog Hollow Press, 2013), Etymologies(Anstruther Press, 2016), Field Notes from the Undead (Interludes Press, 2018), and The Narrow Cabinet: A Zombie Chronicle (Guernica, 2022). Boxer is also a founder of and editor at analogy magazine.
When people get rabid making their arguments we should all be aware (or run for the hills!)
I would have only characterized Tyson as the Baron Harkonnen of science, and walked away from the topic.
Instead we get this:
“...What is it about their frame of mind that has helped bring about the most significant, consciousness-altering insights? That’s the story!...”
Solid gold Boxer observation. Great judo. Actionable.
(One possible answer to the above question is: “Faith lives at the boundary between the known and the unknowable, and Science often finds gems at such frontiers”.)