Ethics

Angels, demons and complaining creationists (Ryan)

By Christopher Ryan

I just saw Dan Brown?s Angels and Demons on the big screen. Its OK, if you like that sort of thing, but I shouldn?t rush. It mainly action adventure of course, but it is also about a clash of Science and Religion.

That theme has special relevance for me right at the moment, for I have recently been involved in a Science/Religious clash of my own.

I?m a psychiatrist with the University of Sydney and this year I was to give a new lecture called ?Introduction to Mental Illness? to second year medical students. The brief was to try to get med students interested in and excited about psychiatry.

I decided it might be fun to provide an introduction to philosophy of mind, providing a sort of basic introduction to the science that might underlie our assumptions about our mental life.

The lecture was nothing special and simply ranged over a number of different approaches to the mind including dualism (which I gave reasonably short shrift), identity theory, functionalism and eliminative materialism. In introducing the final ?ism? I followed a fairly well worn path of pointing out that adherents to eliminative materialism call our general understanding of human mental life, folk psychology and that they then question the likelihood of this folk theory surviving in the face of advancing science.

As many will know, eliminative materialists support their case by giving other examples of folk theories that have eventually been proved to be bankrupt, and I also took this tack. It is a fifty minute lecture, but it only took one utterance to provoke one of the students to launch a three page complaint to the sub-dean:

?In the past, say Eliminative Materialists, numerous folk theories have bitten the dust, under the advance of science: the celestial sphere theory of astronomy, the phlogiston theory of combustion, the demon theory of disease, the creationist theory of speciation. All were once seen as the truth; all our now historical relics.?

It was that last example that was the offending one. My complainant did not appear to favour the demon theory of disease ? which is reassuring in a trainee doctor, but she was outraged at my suggestion that the creation theory of speciation was dead. It may be relevant that the complainant was from North America.

The sub-dean took the complaint seriously (as he should) but there was (of course) no suggestion I should alter my lecture in the future.

Creationists have not had near the influence in Australia that they apparently have in the US. I had briefly thought this throw away line might provoke some response, but I did not anticipate the vituperative attack that it inspired.

I would love to hear, especially from US colleagues, who may have similar experiences.

Full post as published by Neuroethics and Law on June 12, 2009 (boomark / email).