Finally, I get around to commenting on the hubub around Jerry Coyne’s TNR piece. (Finally? Recent? Are these the right words? Travel makes me loose track of time…) Anyway, if you’re not to familiar with Chris Mooney’s blogging, do a site search of this site, my old blog, or, best of all, ScienceBlogs.com, for the word “framing,” so you can get the background on my animosity towards Mooney.

With that in mind, there are three things that stick out here so far:

Mooney’s position is “shut up, and let me pretend that’s not what I’m telling you to do.”

I really love Mooney’s initial salvo in this debate. I’m going to blockquote the meat of it (which is technically supposed to be a summary of something Barbara Forrest said, but Mooney clearly agrees, and for all I know he’s misrepresenting Forrest):

1. Etiquette. Or as Forrest put it, “be nice.” Religion is a very private matter, and given that liberal religionists support church-state separation, we really have no business questioning their personal way of making meaning of the world. After all, they are not trying to force it on anybody else.

2. Diversity. There are so many religions out there, and so much variation even within particular sects or faiths. So why would we want to criticize liberal Christians, who have not sacrificed scientific accuracy, who are pro-evolution, when there are so many fundamentalists out there attacking science and trying to translate their beliefs into public policy?

3. Humility. Science can’t prove a negative: Saying there is no God is saying more than we can ever really know empirically, or based on data and evidence. So why drive a wedge between religious and non-religious defenders of evolution when it is not even possible to definitively prove the former wrong about metaphysics?

In the first point, since “personal way of making meaning of the world” is really a stand-in for “claims people believe,” the first point amounts to saying that certain belifs must not be questioned. In the second point, the natural way of reading the rhetorical “why would we want to criticize” is “we shouldn’t criticize,” meaning the second point amounts to saying we shouldn’t criticize certain beliefs. And the third point is a bare assertion that some things are unprovable, asserted without argument, and with an implied message that it is uncivil to ever claim otherwise. Thus, Mooney is trying to define civility as not questioning, criticizing, or claiming to have good arguments against certain claims–in other words, shutting up.

I rather like how Mooney is handling this: first he insists that this is a canard, then seems to vaguely agree that he is making claims about “what is preferable to say,” but insists everyone does this. But not all strategic discussions need involve the option of saying certain views shouldn’t be expressed at all–a strategic discussion can be about emphasis and such. And people only tell other people not to say certain things in non-strategic debates only insofar as it’s generally agreed that it’s wrong to go spewing falsehoods, so if we ever resolved a discussion to the point of consensus on some issue, then hopefully people would stop promoting the mistaken view. But Mooney wants to bypass debate about the issues and make one view orthodoxy for political reasons.

I also like Jason Rosenhouse here:

No, he didn’t argue that Coyne should shut up. He only argued that writing a very good, thoughtful, extensive article for The New Republic was evidence of how woefully misguided Coyne is about strategy. Which raises the question: where should Coyne have expressed his views? If even a relatively tame article in a high-level venue like TNR is too much for liberal Christians, then what could Coyne have done, short of shutting up, that would have mollified them?

Mooney confuses making a distinction with accepting a significant claim.

Classic bad philosophy move: thinking that by defining some concept, you’ve discovered a philosophical truth. In this case, there are two concepts: philosophical naturalism (which says that nature is all there is) and methodolical naturalism (which says science should always try to explain observations in natural terms). To understand the philosophical naturalism / methodolical naturalism distinction is just to understand that these are different ideas. Understanding the distinction doesn’t tell you which idea is true, or if both are, or if neither are. It doesn’t tell you why they might be true or false, or how we know this. Here and here, however, Mooney tries to accuse Coyne of not understanding the distinction, simply because Coyne disagrees with Mooney, as if merely making a distinction could prove that Mooney is right.

Again, Jason Rosenhouse has a good contribution here: he has a very thorough explanation of how you can accept methodological naturalism, but in a tentative way that could be overturned by future scientific observations.

PR thinking makes you unable to have an intelligent discussion.

This has been obvious for a long time from watching the framing debate, but it’s nicely confirmed here: Mooney thinks some discussions shouldn’t happen. This puts him in a bind: normally, when someone says something you disagree with, you can explain why you think they’re wrong. But for Mooney to do that, he has to participate in the very discussions he doesn’t want to have happen. Thus, he’s reduced to saying “shut up, shut up, shut up!” in the most respectable-sounding way he can instead of taking part in the debate in an intelligent fashion.

Of course, saying “shut up, shut up, shut up!” is a pretty awkward position, one one doesn’t want to admit publicly to taking. Thus, we get “la la la, I can’t hear you” when anyone points out what Mooney is doing. Which only makes the situation worse.

Compare this contribution by Mooney, where he mashes together the following two contradictory positions: (1) “We have no way of knowing whether any religious claims are true or false” ans (2) “We have no reason to believe one religious claim over another, so we should reject them all.”

On the other hand, I do like this post of Mooney’s, where he starts off talking about how important the truth is, spends the entire post talking about strategy rather than truth, and then at the end admits that, oh yeah, the truth is something entirely different from strategy. At least he can admit that much.