Panel Discussion | Dawkins, Tyson, Druyan, Stenger, Grothe

well welcome everyone in our discussion today we'd like to focus on science and the public focus on roadblocks to science education and maybe some solutions that our distinguished panelists can suggest for overcoming those roadblocks but first let's ask a question I think all of us are already on the same page about but we're anticipating that these discussions will reach a much wider audience let's begin with the question why science when Annie was on going to acquire it should be said that all the panelists have been on the radio show the podcast she seemed to have the audacity to suggest that science was for everyone so the question is why should someone in our society east into science does the public really need to understand the methods of science the body of knowledge that we call science in order to kind of eat with citizens how does that how does that cash out so let's begin with Andrea thank you thank you DJ what couple of thoughts come to mind what I want to address something that was said by the earlier panel which dude they did such a great job and we're so stimulating and witty but um when Wendy Cabinet asked about how you know science isn't for everyone because we don't all have that predisposition or that aptitude to grasp some of these ideas in a meeting occurred to me that that is really our job it's to reach the widest possible public this is a great legacy of Carl Sagan who wouldn't write any mind off and who as we all know took a huge amount of abuse from the scientific community for doing so he was absolutely committed to reaching out to speaking and writing in crystalline clear words never resorting to jargon they're important mystification because for my money science is the greatest engine of just demystification the world has ever seen and that's his greatness and I do believe in science with my home I'm so sorry I'm so froggy I do believe in science completely I believe in not a one of its particular insights or in its ability to to find absolute truth and I believe in methodology in its methodology which is this error correcting mechanism relentless unflinching and it's to me kind of spiritual discipline what a kind of devoutness unprecedented in our history this great mechanism which has given us everything you see around you yes you wouldn't want to use the toilet paper of the Renaissance although it might have been some kind of wonderful silk and or cotton you know just started fabric or something like that it could have been better with what we have now but that's just technology but if you have the chance to talk to some of the great minds of the Renaissance the great scientific minds of the Enlightenment we would want to talk to them today as much as we would want to talk to anyone it's not as if Einstein annihilates Newton as no Tyson is often said so brilliantly he expands what Newton knew he takes what Newton ooh and then makes that region much greater and it continues to endless Road and it's also a permanent revolution and that's what's a great vibe that's the great political dream that is yet to be fulfilled the creation of a society which is permanently revolutionary our society is only a couple of hundred years old and already so many of us are willing to betray with every day its most fundamental values and so we have a senator who calls himself a Democrat who's willing to look aside as a person who aspires to be the highest law enforcement officer in the land says he doesn't know torture when he sees it and that's that's the kind of error correcting mechanism of the Constitution which that another brilliant machine it hasn't failed but our ability to take it to heart and to make it influence our actions we have failed and it's a source of tremendous heartbreak that we are living in a time when the law has been abandoned we have a president reach the widest number of people and do our best to communicate values in the methods of science so that people will be responsive when they're lied to and have so takes have some kind of reaction to that we have many buttons that are easily pushed that's our evolutionary baggage and the only antidote I know both to being manipulated in this fashion is our knowledge of sight so um so um so that's why science and I'd like to ask you and the other panelists may be beginning with Neil Tyson how does learning science this panel discussion science in the public how does learning science pay off for me or for the average Joe on the street there are economic benefits for society when we learn science that's obvious but is that the only reason why scientists bring their hands about scientific literacy well what are some of the other kinds of payoffs Neil Tyson yeah thanks I you know this this enterprise we call science I think might be mislabeled if you call it science then people get to say oh that's science I'm going to do something else maybe we should recall the enterprise of science reality okay get an applause but I'll take it they in the previous panel it was mentioned that perhaps science is not the way to answer all questions maybe that would be scientism but the methods and tools certainly have demonstrated themselves as being the most successful way to come to understand reality there ever was but there's an aspect of science that went onion comment upon which may be its most fundamental and that is its capacity without equal to remove as far as possible our own urges to delude ourselves that is the fundamental element of a scientific process it is the tacit recognition that we are faulty our five senses or faulty data taking devices and they need help and so while ours you can never fully divorce the read of experiment from your senses what you can do is sort of narrow the likelihood that your senses have interfere with your interpretation until you sort of asymptotically hit some level where you then step back and say that's reality and so the value of science is not simply what the next model of iPod you will buy next the next week the values on that's great okay we're good but it's real value comes about when it's time to distinguish reality from everything else and to be scientifically literate is to be trained and what it is to recognize your own frailty as a data taking data interpreting device so scientists value goes far beyond just the technologies that make life better they transfer into other walks of life when it's time to assess what is right and what is not to make informed decisions about your life about the lives of others loved ones and even the geopolitics of what it is to conduct life in the world today a question for Richard Dawkins on this point might be controversial in front of this audience because we're all motivated by his recent bestseller a God Delusion but my favorite of your titles Richard is unweaving the rainbow and in it you argue I think beautifully that learning science isn't just to get a better job or because of the technological benefits but that learning the scientific outlook steeping yourself in that it enriches your life does does the sales pitch that scientists need to make in order to foster a more widespread appreciation of science have to include that kind of competition with other worldviews that many people find enrich their lives there are two main justifications for science and one of them I suppose is the utilitarian one that it's useful and we you need then people will justify saving rainforests because you can get medicine from tree bark and things like that but I agree with what you just said but there's something much more important which is the sort of poetic benefit of science the utilitarian benefits of science are not a good enough reason I think is rather I've used this example before it's rather like saying that the point about music is the distance exercise for the violinists right arm science is much more like music in the sense of the aesthetic appreciation of music and just as you don't have to learn an instrument like the violin in order to appreciate music at a very high level so you can appreciate science you can enjoy something you can feel the thrill of the aesthetic thrill of science without actually being a scientist so you don't have to have made a youthful study of the Bunsen burner in order to appreciate the amusing of the spheres the the majesty of the heavens the the majesty in another sense of the of the of the geological record the sheer age of the rocks the immense complexity of a single living cell let alone the immense complexity of the trillions of living cells that is each that is each one of you so so I I suppose that you know what Neil was talking about is kind of intermediate between the violinists right arm the the utilitarian mundane value of science something the Carl Sagan sort of poetic value of science the the advantage of the scientific way of thinking of you're not getting a cockeyed view of the world in which you find yourself science has developed methods of avoiding foolin yourself scientists are not necessarily more honest people than anybody else but the methods of science have honesty built into them we have peer review we have the necessity for experiments to be repeated before they're taken seriously we have the the virtue of interobserver correlation it shouldn't matter who does the experiment the experiment is done in Japan or America or India if the experiments done properly it should get the same result scientists don't appeal to Authority that kind of correct view of reality as opposed to a tradition you of reality or a revelation view of reality that it seems to me to be a third that virtue of science which lies intermediate between the violinists right arm on the one hand and the Carl Sagan at the in the specialist fear of poetry Kenny you have it come yeah there's another value to science and that is that science is the only discipline which I know that has been able to lean us of our spiritually narcissistic need to be at the center of the universe and so science has done something so profound to us both and what I would call it a philosophical and religious worldview without science you know we go along in this kind of infantile belief that we are the center of the universe the crown of creation that we were created by God separately from the rest of nature and that that is had a very powerful effect so that even people who would consider themselves conventionally religious if they are conventionally religious it requires them to ignore the four hundred billion suns and the red news of a hundred worlds that circle those Suns each and the billions of galaxies and to recognize that all of that constitutes merely four percent of the universe the rest of it is enshrouded in dark matter 96 percent unknown to us at this point so it's very hard when in our traditions of traditional religious sub scriptures when they talk of God creating the world it's a guy who's a earthbound and he was oblivious to the rest of creation we only know that because of science a number of the panelists are formal science educators I'd like to ask Vic Stanger who it has a background as a formal science educator what are some of the roadblocks and in fact the whole panel I'd like to discuss roadblocks if we're all on the same page I'm sold you guys have persuaded me signs is for everyone we should get into it what's stopping widespread appreciation well I taught university physics for 37 years and when I look back at now I think I would do it entirely differently at that and I meant but but yeah I'm not sure how I would do it because I think a big problem that we have in science education as we just do not teach science well the embedment the one of the impediments I had was I was forced certainly I was teaching introductory physics courses the great bulk of the students were engineering students and they were there to be trained they had learned certain things to be able to move on to the next level and I always felt we never had a chance to really talk about what what physics was all about I tried to do that it was so interested just the students sat there well this is going to be on the test and and one of the aspects of science that were supposed to emphasize is critical thinking I don't know where the science curriculum anybody learns any critical thinking my wife Phyllis here who taught English did a lot more a better job of teaching critical thinking in English classes in her in the essays that and she had to grade it and made sure that the students when they wrote these essays had a basis for what they were saying and we never had that we know we're just asking one showing them how to solve problems I would practically take for the freshman I would take them up to the blackboard in my office and practically take them by the hand to show them how to draw picture and state what's given its state what you have to find and look for the right ways and then check it how to check they play it that's how we train scientists I guess the point is that what we were doing we're training people to be either engineers or scientists and even when we taught the courses for non-science majors and their loved textbooks out there to choose from and almost every one of those books I'm just basically teaching watered down calculus physics physics without calculus but and the lower the level the physics one hundredth of oldest level physics course would be with a lot of cartoons and with drawings and so on but there was still the same subject matter you had to go through the same subject matter just at it at a much lower level I think if I had to do it over again I'll try to do it some other way yeah you can you I picked I think you're under under recognizing the value of your life experience and then in those roles let me offer anecdotal though it is reflections on just your point people who are in school and maybe in a physics class and perhaps they don't want to become a physicist or an engineer you'll say why do I have to learn about a frictionless pulley on an inclined plane with a masculine but how do I ever use this and in fact you will never in your life encounter a frictionless pulley on a massless pulley on a frictionless inclined plane never ever will that ever come up yeah it's a physics problem in the physics book and so I understand this of course however there's something else going on there that we forget as educators and particularly as physics educators and that is in order to solve the problem in the first place there's a new wiring of the brain that gets connected and even after you forget the details of having solved the problem the wiring in the brain that was established to have solved the problem lingers poem and I see this in the minds of adults for example Richard Hoefer who you may remember is the American ambassador of the UN during Clinton he's a neighbor of the American Museum of Natural History where where it's my day job up there at the Hayden Planetarium he wanted to take a tour of the newly built row center and Hayden Planetarium right after we go and so I'm getting I'm you know I build the place I give the guy the tour I start describing the moon the planets the Stars and he starts asking questions and he says is it true that if the movement is aligned this way you get this phase before this eclipse takes place it in actually began uh we're walking around and he says but this galaxy rotates does it do the stars move through the gas clouds or is it all one oboe actually it goes this way and you trigger smart and he's asking questions deep in the content and I say now wait a minute you're like a politician your your your your negotiator in the book in the Balkans what what wait is this once he said oh oh oh sorry I took physics when I was in college before I shut it over and it's an international law and then it was just plainly obvious that this man had small frictionless pulley problem he knew how to get to the to the essence of a problem and then I asked him how does that reveal itself in the negotiating table he was a politician how does this show he said you know immediately who's basically full of it and who isn't constructing alternative realities that have no foundation in the real reality and so so Viktor oh don't don't don't give up on yourself I should I should mention that I grew up with this area and when I was about 15 my mother took me to the Hayden Planetarium it's around 1950 years that they like that and that really got me into science so maybe you did a great job but yeah you're right and I have to I have to admit that there's something happening in the process I'm just I'm just claiming that the people who are coming out are still not thinking critically the way we want they why is it that so many of them for example still will come out of the science education and I've still believe the religion I mean it's is there a myth when you walk into a church is there a place there where you leave your brains into prostration and something I think we've all had the puzzle about I'm really not yeah really in biology education we have very much the same kind of problems but we have one massive additional problem which is that the central theorem of biology is evolution and in the case of evolution well there are of course difficulties in understanding evolution which are genuine difficulties which are comparable to those in understanding physics in order to really understand evolution you have to get your mind around incomprehensible time spans nobody can really grasp what a million years means let alone what a hundred million years means because we're our brains on the Pleistocene of Africa were geared to understanding time spans of seconds minutes hours days years decades maybe at most centuries we can't cope with a million years we certainly conflict with 100 million years and yet you've got to or you won't understand evolution similarly there's a there's a tremendous interference put out by the fact that we are an artifact creating species and therefore when we see a mechanism like an eye a biological mechanism like an eye our mind instantly leaps to artifacts beings to be think there has to be a maker these are all legitimate difficulties which are soluble by patient explanation and I've devoted my whole adult life to try to provide such explanations but we have to face the fact that in the case of evolution we have one massive roadblock to education and that is religion because in the case of evolution I think almost uniquely in science maybe no maybe the big bag is subject to a similar problems we have a competing worldview which is actively engaged in a political process of deliberate subversion of the educational process and so where as a physicist who is trying to get across the charms of bold sliding down inclined planes etc has the ordinary problems of Education and we get students wondering whether it's going to be on the test biologists have all that problem as well but they have the additional problem that the student will say oh I don't believe that because I'm a naked Muslim Catholic or whatever I was on not good I was on a I was visiting a school a few days ago during the filming project and was talking to these children for was a big 15 or 16 year olds about evolution and time and again I would get somebody who would say oh well I I know that's what we're told in school but I don't believe that because I'm a Muslim it says in the Koran or it says in in in the Bible and I put it to them straight you mean to say that if the evidence says so-and-so and your holy book whichever what it happens to be says he says the opposite you mean you prefer your holy book over the evidence and they said of course we would there was no question about it 15:16 in England in London there was there was one young man who was raised raised Muslim empties totally closed-minded more than just close-minded in the ordinary way that any of us might because why did he be his mind had been systematically closed by an educational process in early childhood and it's a massive additional barrier that we have to face as educators in the field of evolution so is it consensus of all the panelists that among the many challenges to science education political ideologies postmodernist brands of feminism maybe that religion deserves the biggest bullseye maybe I have to make a quick agreement with Richard here at the planetarium we have a tandem projection space where we recreate the first few moments of the universe and what we call a big bang experience and of course this is part of the larger Museum of Natural History and occasionally I'm confronted by a religious person who wants to ask well where is the religious view of the beginning of the universe and so rather than actually engagement in that conversation I I send them over to the hall of evolutionary biology then they never come back those chimpanzees holding hands with human skeletons and they and so they just never show up again so forgive me but I'm sending them all over table but I'm sorry but your the question they just say it while it appears there's consensus that religion deserves the biggest schools I in terms of it being the biggest impediment to science education but there are other well I I forgot to mention those modernism but or I mean that these are kind of view which is which is being put about in social science and arts departments of universities that there's nothing special about science and science is just one version of truth and your version of truth is just as good as my version of truth and and we all decide what's true for us and never mind about evidence who says evidence is important isn't evidence just a a white male supremacist concept anyway so we've talked about and maybe not at length that giving time constraints and some of the challenges facing widespread appreciation science I'd like to talk about some solutions and manages mention one additional challenge besides religion and that is popular culture which depicts the scientist as a misfit and the guy who's about to destroy everything it's precious to all of us and it's not just that kind of dr. Frankenstein dr. Faustus dr. Strangelove kind of problem Jurassic Park that kind of thing but it's also this is not strictly religious view and I think it's more of a popular cultural view or even a psychological problem and that is that we're afraid to tell our children that they will die someday and so in infancy and childhood toddlers when as soon as they ask us these deep questions most parents I think are really afraid to say yes you will die and I think that perpetually infantilizes people so that they grow up with this core belief that is an obstacle this magical thinking that is an obstacle not only to having a great life and living in the present and realizing that this world is our path this is the place that we were made for by evolution but also a kind of resistance to science as something that's a lot of bad news no and that really it's like every you know American movies all of them but mostly they're always saying just gotta believe if you just want to get enough it make it happen things that are possible can happen and so it's a kind of it's a kind of popular culture religion that we're up against which says that science is boring and then of course the educational system comes in and supports that contention and every opportunity and some people don't think that science is for them and that's that's a great tragedy and that's something that I think is perhaps as big an obstacle as Orthodox religious ideology fixed anger a quick rejoinder then we'll talk about some solutions me well I've never joined it to that head point but there was something I wanted to add about the whole science religion issue that came up actually in the previous panel the common statement that you hear where did the how come where they had the universe come from why is there something rather than nothing where the laws of the things come from these are all questions that I think science is now in a position to answer a very simple reason is for why there's something rather than nothing is that from own experiences with physical phenomena weaken nothing seems to be a very unstable this system a state where there is just total symmetry such as a raindrop will tend to naturally become something more complex and so there's an answer to the question very simple answer the question why is there something rather than nothing that is that nothing is unstable nothing is not the most natural state something is the more natural state of existence yeah but Viktor okay but I don't care that but even if we didn't yet have an answer to it we should not be ashamed of not having answers to all questions yet so you shouldn't somehow take the list of questions that the religious community poses to science and say well what was around before the Big Bang there were this and after-death in it and so I don't know yet and go on to the next problem and and I'm perfectly happy staring somebody in the face saying I don't know yet I when we got top people working on the moment you feel from hell to provide an answer then you're doing the same thing that the religious community does providing answers to every possible question by the way what science also does it is not only answer well post questions and also can put you in a position to judge whether in fact the question has meaning in the first place and because not just because you put nouns and verbs in the right sequence doesn't mean your question has to have any sense at all yes what is this square root of a porkchop and what temperature does the normal seven melt these just because you asked that question doesn't obligate me to say hey let's listen from the lab to answer them so so science inquiry is also half of that effort is constructing the questions in first let's spend the ring remaining couple minutes talking about some solutions Vic mentioned earlier going to the Hayden Planetarium young turned him on you have a story about how influential that experience was in your life quick question about informal science education by the way is in my memoir which first of all the books talked about in a previous paper which is for sale and autographed out of the rating for you in Japan in all of Asia there's a very small number single digits number of informal science education institution science centers planetary and yet they graduate men a much higher number of science professionals in North America there's 150 or so planet area Science Center science museums and we wring our hands about the lack of enthusiasm the lack of interest in science what gives I'll ask first Neal since he is executive director oh sure first of all I think and I think it's not as bleak it is bleak but not as bleak as you indicated oh okay no no in the sense that the portrayal of scientists in the media there's a trend line where that is improving otherwise you would not have sexy scientists chemists in other words playing roles in the very lucrative CSI series the crime scene investigation la Las Vegas you're just if you watch television to check out that show on time they are attractive people solving problems with science there's also the very popular program numbers where although it's a stretch sometimes nonetheless you have attractive people using mathematics to solve FBI problems and so I just want to just and not only that we are we are entering a culture where the nerd is almost become a celebrated icon where the richest person in the world is the patron saint of nerds undecidable gays so there's some hope that the celebration of what it is to be a geek and to to have some deeper understanding of the physical world people are a little warmer to that fact that I think they once were but we have a long way to go in terms of solutions I think I'm angry by the way even if I don't sound it this moment I gave a talk recently to the huge gathering of the National Science Teachers Association okay love talking a teacher my favorite audience and these are educators these are the people who have the future of our science literacy in their hands and they're all members of this organization and so I at the beginning I just asked for show of hands how many of you do not own a television a fourth of their hands went up of those who own a television how many I would ever really watch it except maybe a movie they rent another fourth of the hands went half of the audience does not watch television yet 99% of America watches television and so what do you how can you call yourself an educator without knowing what the forces are operating on the person who it is you're trying to educate and I charge I charge them with it I'm not saying they have to come become TV jump junkie couch potatoes but you should have some understanding and the next educator who said the students they just don't want to learn what this science is not for everyone that is a pedagogical a lazy sentence that is the educator who refuses to actually meet the person halfway or even 90% of the way to understand what keys will unlock the understanding of the audience so I submit that half of the effort is not just complaining about how come no one cares anymore it's reinvigorating a community of educators who will actually make the effort to go over there and meet the people on their own turf regarding mass media communication of science to the public your professor of the public understanding of science there are many new technological innovations to get science education out there YouTube podcasts your web sites very popular that Neil deGrasse Tyson has this wonderful lecture series with the teaching company out there on on the universe my favorite universe does that medium limit science education you have to water things down too much or or put things in sound by a form that makes science education kind of weekend well if I don't believe that a quarter of the teachers dead in televisions I think they're lying yeah the culture in quite a request I am I am enthusiastic about technological aids to caching they can of course go too far and we've all sort of moaned about the power point addict who has linked using around you it can be positively distracting some of the you were talking earlier about exhibition centers and science fairs and and things like pallet areum's and the Exploratorium is it called in in San Francisco I watched children in the Exploratorium and there's a similar one in Bristol in in England and I get the feeling that actually they're not really learning very much science I mean they're rushing around pressing buttons and rushing to the next vodka Sea to get the reinforcement of seeing some action when you go and when you go and press a button some something it's a bit like a pigeon in a skinner box or something because it's press a button and and something something happens the other thing I noticed about those about such places is that there is an emphasis on trying to stimulate the senses in all sorts of ways there are bands and crashes and flashes and colored lights and there's an exhibition that goes on in England called exploding custard I'm not sure what it is it's some kind of a scientific experiment and it's a constant emphasis on science as fun science has got to be fun or it's not palatable it won't be imbibed by day by the young people that there is fun in science but is also hard work and so we mustn't lose sight of the hard work that goes into learning science when we are trying to make it fall in women putting on PowerPoint presentations and having visual aids and it creates of all kinds I sometimes feel that in what one of the most rewarding experiences that I know of is is trying to convey to children the the sheer scale of the universe and by doing it as better but very nice American children's books been produced which which invites can regard onto a football pitch and lay up a soccer ball in the middle of the pitch to represent the Sun and then to scale you then walk a certain number of paces to place first of all a pinhead representing mercury and then a slightly larger I don't know appeal or something to represent Venus and then earth and then Mars and then up what will it be a ping-pong ball yeah ping-pong ball to represent Jupiter etc and then you get to the outer planets and by then you're a couple of hundred yards away from the soccer ball and then how far will you have to go in order to put down another soccer ball for the next star Proxima Centauri and the book says pack a lunch you're going to be walking 2,000 miles on that on that scale and the children's eyes just just they just devour that and they light up they don't need exploding custard you can do anything words with words is the society better is that is the real subject matter of of science it is that this is going back to the poetic view of science at a children's level so I I tend to shy away from bangs and crashes and flashes and exploding custard and try to do something like the Carl Sagan approach of explaining the wonderful of reality because these children they are placed in reality what an amazing experience they've been they've been granted by the astonishing statistical luck of having been born no charge of ever say I'm bored because how could you be bored when you when you find yourself living in this in this world with against stupendous odds that's the kind of thing that I think you can convey in words and with with some help from from technology but don't let's get nervous inside continuing our focus on solutions to the problems the panelists have identified if everyone if there is consensus that religion is a major impediment to widespread science education I'd like to ask Annie and then open it up to the rest of the panelists and try to have some time for questions - does it help science educators and science enthusiasts and science advocates to emphasize that point should we be rubbing everyone's nose and that that religion is the big doozy that it of course not hey we should conduct ourselves with respect and kindness and give science a good name by being open and listening to what other people have to say people who disagree with us being really feel that very strongly we have a better story to tell the right story of the universe as revealed by science and in our time is so much more spiritually uplifting the idea that each and every one of us comes from as part of an unbroken chain that goes back nearly 4 billion years that in fact we make new people by exchanging the secret of life within us with the person we love most if we're fortunate and at that moment of ecstatic convenient what happens this ancient message this ancient secret of life combines to create a new being who has never been before this is a better story than any religious story but it means it's a better story but I don't know um when you have an actual organized opposition which actually fights you and tries to stop you telling your story tell and I think you've got to fight back I'm not sure that it's enough just to quiet please go on about what a wonderful story you've got to tell me man finish ok I think I actually in the end I think that the fighting back may be counterproductive really I mean obviously stand up don't be silenced fight for the right to teach science and school and not fantasy stories and give our children's science fight for those things obviously but the fact is is that when we connect with another person whether through television or YouTube or wherever when we connect with another person when we open up their minds when we get them to take what science is saying to heart and not just compartmentalize it as a collection of amazing facts but instead something which is the kind of spiritual leap which is taken which is the result of all the generations when we do that we have a chance of making real change you know the fact is is that there are scientists who are religious now that's baffles me a conventionally religious is really bad less me but it tells me also that that there is a part of ourselves the religious part which is not sometimes not amenable to logic the story you were telling about your sister is that people can maintain these internal consistencies inconsistencies without having any problem with it so we're not going to reach them by telling them they're stupid and then they shouldn't do this we're going to reach them by breaking through with some some idea some insight some act that will permeate that resistance that we're not going to do it with everyone I look at look at YouTube look at how many you know there's something like I don't know thousands of little bits of cosmos on YouTube some of them viewed half a million times cosmos has never been off the air since it was first broadcast in 1980 it is in 40 languages it's being it's on television right now somewhere in the world it's good question why in you know 27 of the most eventful years in the history of science where so much new has been discovered why is the 27 30 year old series still so popular is because I think in March it's the way Carl was presenting what he had to say not as if you don't know this and if you don't believe is you're an idiot no it was bringing people into this great story of how we found out who we are when we are and where we are the universe so I I think the kinder the more patient and the more thoughtful we can make ourselves be the better chance we have of setting an example but of how science speak science is temperate scientists don't burn people at this date scientists don't put people in jail where they shouldn't for believing things that they disagree with scientists are flawed and the community of science has a lot to answer for but if we are true to our values we will not do those things thank you thank you Anne it's my job to make sure that all the panelists have a time to really respond to this question and we'll get to all the panelists in turn fixed angle would you like to respond to that rubbing everyone's nose great now I don't think that the only alternative to rub in everyone's nose in it is to rub your own nose in it and to count out to religion just because you don't want to hurt somebody's feelings or the deeply held belief offend their deeply held beliefs now they're couple of things that scientists now do that I disagree very strongly with you take the National Academy of Sciences for example only 7% of them according to a poll book a few years ago believed in a personal God and yet they came out with a statement one of their statements on evolution where they said that science has nothing to say about the super such sciences nothing to say about God and this was picked up by knowingly in the trial the Dover evolution case the judge made similar statements as science has nothing to say science only deals with the natural it doesn't deal with the supernatural and that's just total nonsense science does have something to say about the supernatural there there are good scientists out there doing doing Studies on the efficacy of prayer for example right right in front of the noses of National Academy of Sciences and furthermore I think that we do ourselves a great disservice by saying that science only deals with natural phenomena this plays right into the hands of people like Phillip Johnson who says who look that you know says that science promotes materialism and and and it's dogmatically opposed to any alternative to materialism or naturalism and i I insist that science isn't automatically opposed to anything science but it it is something that that relies on observation and if the the data were to show evidence for the supernatural evidence for God I'd used the prayer example before for you know if they did very careful studies in prayer that showed that only Catholic prayers worked and nobody else's work no Muslim terrorists didn't work Jewish prayers didn't work oxen prayers that were in the first Catholic prayers well you know you did I couldn't find a plausible natural explain after that I mean I was I was raised as a as a Catholic I've already baptized so it'd be very easy for me to get back in just walk down to the nearest church go into the into the confessional and say must be Father for I have sinned it's been 50 years since I in other words uh I think we could find a middle ground between rubbing anybody's those as our own or anybody else's in the dirt we can we can argue rationally with them we can promise not to be dog back we could promise to go wherever the data lead I separate them brief a reaction to that the I try to put a line in the sand just because it's I think more effective and that is let me give give it by example we we all heard from matthew mcmichael eclair last night receiving a standing ovation see here anyway there you go you got a standing ovations why because he himself stood up for what he knew was a breach of trust really the role of the teacher in a classroom and here with recordings and transcripts of the teacher saying that Jesus has to be your Savior otherwise you'll go to hell and that was packaged in with other statements that Noah's Ark carried dinosaurs the Big Bang and evolution were just the reason optional you can discard it in my letter to the New York Times which in response to that because I try to stay out of that because we got enough folks out there I I don't need to be the n plus one person to comment on these things but all the tape everyone said separation of church is violation of the First Amendment and and I just thought about it and an ACLU got in and I said has had nothing to do with the separation of church and state actually and what I did was I cited not whether you're going to heaven or hell because you believe in Jesus because I actually have very little stay about it but why I did say was if you're going to say that you need the separation of church of state in this case my comment was if the guys saying that Noah had dinosaurs on his ark that evolution was revalued just theory then the problem is not the separation of church and state it's the separation of scientifically illiterate ignorant people from the ranks of teachers that was my final energy not mentioning in those five lines you're going to go to heaven or hell or Jesus because that's I don't care about that really but it is demonstrable false that people hung out with dinosaurs and if Noah is a person he did not have dinosaurs on his ark okay so I've only cited those things for which I'm left hidden there's the evidence okay but if you want to say if Jesus as your Savior you'll go to heaven okay you know then talk about separation of church and state otherwise get to get the demonstrable full stuff out of it out of the classroom so that's why I draw the line and I find it to be much more effective because otherwise you get entangled in all the rest of the baggage that comes with the religion when in fact you've got there's a cleaner if you separate the variables there's a cleaner track track to take now I admire those who want to take up the whole package but I I can't count myself among them life is too short Richard Dawkins I never know what I think I sort of feel like I agree with what nila said on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays it's it's a genuinely hard question and I think it's partly that what's the right political approach to to this kind of problem I I don't have much time for fun for a number for Norma the lapping magisteria the idea that religion and science are doing two quite separate things and they can get on with their religion as long as they don't trespass on our lawn and we get on with our thing and I agree with Victor that that there's the things like the existence of a supernatural creator that actually is a scientific issue it's not something you can say well I just aesthetically prefer to believe that there's a creator but of course I'm a good scientist and I get on with my with my science during the weekend to church on some day I really do think that there is a deep inconsistency and unless you now I stand by that there really is a deep inconsistency and so at least half the time I fight that corner the other half I recognize that there's a political battle especially in the United States and Andy is right that for that kind of reason and and if Regina Scott were here she would say the same thing but for that kind of reason we do have to make a political compact with the sort of decent moderate middle-of-the-road religious people who whatever their faults and needs to on our side on the evolution matter but if it hurts it sticks in my craw the non-overlapping yeah okay way too many souls I think is is a as advance I guess perhaps by Stephen Jay Gould I think is actually a cop-out if you look at the history of religion religion was not simply whether you believe in the supernatural your religious texts may test it experimental statements about the physical universe and no one 500 years ago would have doubted whether there was a flood and that the universe was 600 years 6,000 years old and that was part of the facts extracted from the Bible so for those I think who claim that religion and science are separable that's a latter-day recognition that science has already removed half of the claims that the Bible had made that were taken as truth 500 years ago but so I therefore claim that the non-overlapping magisteria while it's a bit of a shell game because they're accepting what is not yet shown to be false by science the actual political battlefield is not what is left over in the religious texts that people still want to believe it's the stuff in the religious tech the the claims in the religious texts that in Flute that then that step into the territory of what science can we demonstrated to be true or false I think we agree there so Saturday Annie's asked just for one rejoinder you want to comment agree with Richard with all my heart that the non-overlapping magisteria is wrong and it's it's just obviously logically wrong because you know the non-overlapping magisteria folk never say well let's not study Aztec religion scientifically and try to analyze whether or not their belief system had something to do with their agricultural practices and the reality is sort of underlying economics of their situation no it's only the surviving religions that are supposed to be fenced off and it's a kind of compact and it's you know if you think of the great masters of a scientific revolution that people who really gave us the most they were all originally conventionally religious people Newton Kepler even Darwin to begin with and it's possible that their their insights that certainly in Kepler's case overtly was you know he originally was inspired with the idea of reading the mind of God so it was a great job you've got him on his Road and his Road was our road to the modern scientific revolution so I agree with you completely I and I appreciate your courage and I also appreciate the fact that you have kicked open a rotten door for all of us by standing up is almost as if there was disgusting repulsive blister of voting is very much a related to the trauma of 9/11 and the piercing of our our sense of invincibility and safety and people resorted to the worst kind of most reactionary kind of religious belief and Richard came out and stood up and was willing to really take these people on and say no this is not true so I'm in your debt I think it means required changing the mind of our civilization is going to require all of us doing everything we can in every way we know with with that ladies and gentlemen we've gone a little over the last session went over a few minutes as well we'll have time for one maybe - probably not - one question and the first question here at the we'll have two questions the first question at the microphone I'm the Larry Summers question what's up with chicks and science slightly off-topic nonetheless interesting yeah it scientic again yeah right does anyone want to feel many of their genetic differences between men and women explain why more men are in science anyone would have touch that I've never been female but I have been black my whole life and so many perhaps offers some insight from that perspective because there are many similar social issues related to access to equal opportunity that we find the black community as well as the community of women in a male-dominated white male-dominated society and I'll be brief because I want to get try to get more questions when I look at throughout my life I've noticed that I wanted to do astrophysics since I was nine years old a first visit to the Hayden Planetarium a little younger than Victor at the time I was and although he did it before I do and so so I got to see how the world around me reacted to my expression of these ambitions and all I can say is the fact that I wanted to be a scientist a natural physicist was hands down the path of most resistance through the forces of nature into some forces of society any time I express this interest teachers say what you want to be an athlete no don't you want to I want to become something that was outside of the paradigms of expectation of that of the people in power and so so unfortunately my depth of interest something that was so deep and so fuel enriched that every one of these curveballs and I was throwing in faces built in front of me and hills that I had to climb I just wait for more fuel and I kept going now Here I am one I think one of the most visible scientists in the land and I want to look behind me so where are the others who might have been this and they're not there and I wonder how who what is the blood on the tracks that I happen to survive that others did not simply because the forces of society that prevented every turn and every turn to the point of I have security guards following me as I go through department stores presuming that I am some I'm a thief I walk out of the store one time and the alarm went off and so they came running to me I walked through the gate at the same time a white male walked through the gate and that guy just walked off with the stolen goods knowing that they would have stopped me and not him that's an interesting sort of the exploitation of this love it was him that one I take people should do that more often all right so so my my life experience tells me that when you don't find blacks innocent you don't find women in the sciences I know that these forces are real and I had to survive in order to get where I am today so before we start talking about genetic differences right you gotta come up with a system where there's equal opportunity then we can have that conversation and you have another question for and please direct it to one of the panelists so this really isn't a question I just want to let everybody know my name is Emily Kingsley and for the last 38 years I've been writing scripts for Sesame Street and starting kids off in the very beginnings of their educational line of modern attitudes in addition to our curriculum goals of trial-and-error asking questions observation experimentation I just want to let you know that next Tuesday we have a major curriculum seminar to prepare ourselves with a big 40th season coming up which is going to get a lot of press and the major curriculum push for the 40th season is going to be environmentalism conservationism a real treasuring of our planet so I'm here to tell you that that I represent all of us here today in that room and you have the commitment of everybody who works for Sesame Street to start our kids off in the most investigative and appreciative way of nature and science and we committed to that in addition to that course was totally committed to gender neutrality and giving all children of all genders however many there may be people exposure and opportunity to to love and cherish this amazing planet and and their brains and their minds and their ability to to learn and enjoy their lives

Channel: Center for Inquiry

Views: 1,452,417

Rating: 4.8909249 out of 5

Keywords: science, panel, discussion, richarddawkins, neildegrassetyson, djgrothe, dawkins, anndruyan, druyan, victorstenger, d.j., grothe, stenger, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Center for Inquiry, Secular Society and its Enemies, CFI, Secular Society, point of inquiry, racism and sexism in science, atheism versus science, science education, Roadblocks to Science Education, Reasonable Talk

Id: KEeBPSvcNZQ

Length: 66min 46sec (4006 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 21 2009