Stephen Jay Gould is a hero of ours for flaying creationism, eugenics and pseudo-scientific theories of race and gender. Nonetheless, this book is an accommodation, a political sell-out from our point of view. From Gould's point of view the book is a political necessity to show that the majority of religious practitioners already have their own reasons for leaving creationism out of the schools. He proposes a false peace between science and religion, religion being defined almost exclusively as Christianity when it comes to examples in the book.

We agree with Gould that his thesis in the book is "nothing original" and "follows a strong consensus accepted for decades by leading scientific and religious thinkers alike"(p. 3)--especially if we restrict that consensus to the consensus of the religious power-elite including the Pope who now endorses evolution.

The thesis is that there are two rocks, one science and one religion. Science has the turf of the natural world and religion has the turf of the spiritual. According to Gould their separation can be called NOMO (Non- Overlapping Magisteria). The word "magisterium" has some application in Catholicism as meaning "turf."

Stephen Jay Gould admits to being an agnostic(p. 8) and also admits to not being an expert in religion. He says he does not understand it, but at the same time he assures the religious community that science can do it no damage, that it's all a matter of how religious thinkers interpret their own scriptures. However, we hard-core atheists believe Gould is wrong, because there is no way to identify "dogmatic theology"(p. 105) as the enemy instead of all religion. Gould is not an expert like he says, but there are also no religious experts who are able to show a reasoned approach to their followers on how to uphold the NOMO. In other words, Gould settled for an unscientific determination of "dogmatic theology" and has surrendered the boundaries of science into the foggy mists.

No science of science

After speculating that people who think in terms of "yes/no" instead of means or probabilities may be throwbacks to an atavistic past when our brains were less developed, (p. 51) and after publishing previous work flaying others for lacking stochastic thought, Gould takes up a case-by-case method to show that religious people understand science well enough to leave it alone. His most noted example is Newton who he says spent more time in religion than physics,(p. 84) and there are of course many cases in history of monks or priests advancing science.

Such a case-by-case approach abandons Stephen Jay Gould's usual preference for accounting for chance. A serious study of the advance of science would find that disproportionately it is carried out by atheists. Of course, the number of atheists in the world has been small relatively-speaking, and not all scientists have been atheists; yet there is no doubt that there is a statistical regularity there, not least of all because a large portion of religious people do not accept Stephen Jay Gould's NOMO and cannot by the precepts of their religion--Christian Scientists being one classic example.

Unfortunately it has been left to Marxism to be the entirety of the science of science or the science of the advance of science. By now there should be many non-Marxists taking the object of study known as the "history of science" and generating scientific theories. It is political reality of the sort dealt with by Stephen Jay Gould that has undercut this possibility. The result of scientific practice regarding the history of science would confirm harsh atheist conclusions and is not supported by the academy.

No science of religion: leaving social science high and dry

Gould restricts himself to speaking of biology and some physics. Left out in his definition of the "natural world" is humyn behavior in most of its aspects. He only notes in passing that his fundamentalist opponents do not have many counterparts in Europe; they are Southern, poor and rural.(p. 132)

There is in fact a whole geography in the middle section of the United $tates known as the Bible Belt. It extends from southern Illinois into the South and ranges from the East Coast through the mid-West and parts of the West.

When Gould points to geography, rural areas and poverty he is talking about causes of fundamentalism that are part of the natural world. We at MIM believe that the science of science points to the eradication of the causes of religion in the long run. For example, as the world progresses, rural life and poverty should become less common and fundamentalism might then disappear.

Progress concerning the orbit of the earth around the sun has eradicated some religion in the past. Just as an example is Galileo's advocacy of the heliocentric view of the solar system accepted by everyone today. Gould goes to some length to make apologies for the Pope for persecuting Galileo in 1633 and thereafter, who he says was asking for trouble. (Yet Gould does not say that the Pope simply dropped Galileo and let some other scientist who hadn't "miffed" the Pope put forward the theory.)(pp. 71-4)

An even bigger blow to religion would be if humyns attained immortality. All the discussions in religion of the after-life would seem rather strange. All the many people taking up religion for its comforting aspects regarding death would no longer have their reason for taking up religion. Yet, immortality is a question of the natural world. It is not a question of the spiritual one that is alleged to exist. Right now there is no way NOMO could convince religious people that immortality is a question of the natural world, because there is no rational thought in religion per se, only people with religious convictions who also have scientific background. There are shades of atheism between the Branch Davidians on the one side and atheists on the other.

Like many people in the "harder" sciences, Gould believes there is no science of politics or religious behavior. That is why he surrendered science to a NOMO with no scientific definition of "dogmatic theology." In contrast, we Marxists believe there will be a day as in the movie "The Matrix" in which all the various thoughts and illusions of the brain can be created through scientifically created biological and neuro-physical stimulations. Rather than divisive religions making references to irrational proofs that cannot be comprehended by all humyns, religion will die and choices will be made by a secular morality, a secular morality which in turn will die with the creation of a full scientific understanding now lacking and held back by religion. What will unite secular morality out of the rubble of all the various fallen relgions is science. As scientific thought advances even further secular morality will also pass, because it will no longer be able to spur controversy in the distant communist-anarchist future of humyn unity.

Professional self-interest

As Gould might himself suspect, seeking to rely on neat compartments between something that exists and something that cannot even be defined is an impossible endeavor: "If this battle [over creationism--MC5] has played a major role in the twentieth century cultural history of America, and has consumed the unwelcome time of many scientists (including yours truly) in successful political campaigns to preserve the First Amendment and reject the legislatively mandated teaching of palpable nonsense, then how can NOMA be defended as more than a pipe dream in a utopian world?"(p. 124)

All this time, MIM thought it was distributing Gould's books since the early 1980s, because he did an energetic job of criticizing eugenics and other pseudo-sciences spurred by oppressor ideologies. We thought he was a model, but now Gould is saying that scientists should not want to spend their time in such work.

He is undertaking to set up neat boundaries for class reasons, reasons of professional self-interest in science production. "Careers are short, and while I won't deny some good moments of comedy, and even of prideful achievement, I'd sure rather be studying the evolution and paleontology of West Indian land snails than fighting creationists. 'Nuff said."(p. 210)

The above quote reeks of class interests, aside from the vulgar aspect in which such a career can pay for exotic travels. Capitalist science production encourages specialization and obscurity. As a class, intellectuals producing science need to demonstrate a monopoly in some area to be good commodities. These scientists feel a constant pressure to become such commodities and enjoy their lives, even if it would be more useful to teaching and advancing science to spend more time on eugenics, religion and such subjects where the overall picture of science emerges.

Gould does admit that science had to expand its turf against Christianity.(p. 64) It wasn't always in the condition that it is today of having the prestige and class power behind it to be separate from religion. Science had to fight to its current position, but now Gould says it can afford to make peace with religion.

Of course, as a group, scientists will not give up their turf and way of making a career. Yet they maintain the NOMO kind of illusion fostered by capitalism that science is highly compartmentalized and in no need of an atheist philosophy such as dialectic materialism to integrate it, not just within a theory of evolution, but across-the-board. Physicists, biologists and political economists are encouraged to think they have nothing in common in their underlying methods.

Ironically, when Gould should be calling on all people of scientific understanding to defend high school textbooks from fundamentalists trying to insert their agendas, he takes up agnosticism and denies the underlying basis of scientific thought. His strategy will end up leaving biologists fighting this fight by themselves.

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