Google Reader brings me a serendipitous, or perhaps providential, sequence of articles.<\/p>\n
First up is Douglas Starr\u2019s Discovery<\/em> article, \u201cSpark of Truth: Can Science Bring Justice to Arson Trials?<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n At laboratories throughout the United States \u2014 some large enough to contain a three-story house \u2014 researchers have been lighting rooms and houses on fire and analyzing the results with the kind of scientific scrutiny that has upended several deeply entrenched misconceptions about how fires behave. The upheaval is more than academic. For generations, arson inspectors have used outmoded theories to help indict and incarcerate many suspects. But as new science is brought to bear on old cases, it is becoming clear that over the past several decades, dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people have been convicted of arson based on scant research and misguided beliefs. Many of those people are still in jail, hoping that someone will take up their cause.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of bad science has been applied to arson investigation,\u201d says John Lentini, a renowned fire expert who has given exculpatory testimony in at least 40 arson cases since 2000. His most recent case, now under review, involves a Massachusetts man convicted of arson by Molotov cocktail, even though not a single glass fragment from the supposed bottle bomb was found at the scene.<\/p>\n \u201cI shudder to think how many wrongful convictions there are,\u201d says Richard Roby, president and technical director of Combustion Science and Engineering, a fire-\u2028protection engineering firm based in Columbia, Maryland. Roby has testified for several men charged with arson. One, named Michael Ledford, could not have been \u2028at the scene when the fire that killed his son was allegedly set, according to Roby\u2019s calculations, yet he is now serving a 50-year sentence. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing to think how long it takes for basic science to be accepted,\u201d Roby says. \u201cI lose sleep over this every week.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The stories of injustice and wrongful conviction are horrendous. But the new science is only slowly gaining a hearing due to how deeply entrenched the old, bad science \u201cbased on scant research and misguided beliefs\u201d remains and how invested in it so many people still are. Their mistaken folklore of arson investigation is counter-factual and scientifically indefensible, but it has become an essential part of their identity<\/em>, so they\u2019re unwilling to abandon it even when it has been proven not to be true.<\/p>\n Next up in my reader is Al Mohler\u2019s latest variation on his one and only theme<\/a>. This time he\u2019s denouncing Karl Giberson for being a physicist and Randall J. Stephens for being a historian:<\/p>\n They level their attack on figures like James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, and Ken Ham, founder of the Answers in Genesis ministry. Their main accusation is that these leaders, along with others, simply embarrass evangelicalism before the watching world by refusing to accept what Giberson and Stephens call \u201csecular knowledge.\u201d \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That\u2019s an odd formulation: \u201cwhat Giberson and Stephens call \u2018secular knowledge.'\u201d What else would<\/em> you call it? It isn\u2019t sectarian<\/em> knowledge.<\/p>\n The atomic number of radium is 88. That\u2019s true whether you\u2019re a Southern Baptist, like Al Mohler, or a Presbyterian, Hindu, Mormon, atheist or Jew. It\u2019s a fact, knowledge. And that knowledge is secular and wholly independent from and indifferent to the sectarian loyalties or perspectives of any given observer.<\/p>\n Mohler\u2019s standard shtick is to cast himself as the righteous defender of \u201cabsolute truth\u201d while those he disagrees with he always accuses of abandoning that truth. That\u2019s once again the kicker for this column, in which he faux-laments the sorry state of Giberson and Stephens, shedding a smarmy tear over \u201cthe consequences of the evangelical surrender of truth.\u201d<\/p>\n But the whole premise of Mohler\u2019s article \u2014 not just this one, but the standard template of everything he writes \u2014 is a denial that there exists \u201cwhat Giberson and Stephens call \u2018secular knowledge.'\u201d For Mohler, there is only sectarian<\/em> truth.<\/p>\n Mohler condemns Giberson for writing, \u201cI am happy to concede that science does indeed trump religious truth about the natural world.\u201d That, Mohler says, is a rejection of the Bible. \u201cGiberson has already made his view of the Bible clear,\u201d Mohler sneers, \u201cIt is simply \u2018trumped\u2019 by science when describing the natural world.\u201d<\/p>\n Mohler\u2019s trademark combination of ignorance and condescension can be grating, but he\u2019s generally less irksome than most of the culture warriors of the religious right because he\u2019s not primarily interested in partisan politicking. He\u2019s primarily interested in defending the faith.<\/p>\n And by \u201cdefending the faith\u201d I mean defending his<\/em> faith, which is a fragile construct he has come to believe requires the affirmation of several extrabiblical claims that have been thoroughly and devastatingly refuted by \u201csecular knowledge.\u201d Specifically, Mohler believes that if evolution is true then the Bible is a lie and there is no God, Christ is not risen, we are still dead in our sins and we are of all people most to be pitied.<\/p>\n And unfortunately for Mohler, evolution is, in fact, true.<\/em><\/p>\n So what we find in this column is what we find in nearly every Al Mohler column \u2014 him clinging white-knuckled to religious \u201ctruth\u201d that he conflates with the Bible while shouting his refusal to accept nonsectarian truths that stubbornly refuse to care what he thinks.<\/p>\n While that gives me a measure of sympathy for Mohler and his perpetual crisis of faith, I also think it means he should never be allowed to serve on a jury in a case where someone stands accused of arson. Justice requires that verdicts be based on facts and evidence, on what Mohler would call, pejoratively, \u201csecular knowledge.\u201d For those who do not accept the legitimacy of such knowledge, there can be no such thing as justice and no such thing as truth.<\/p>\n The next item in my Google Reader comes from Ethan Siegel, the theoretical astrophysicist and educator who blogs at Starts With a Bang!<\/a> Siegel\u2019s post is simply titled \u201cI Am a Scientist<\/a>,\u201d and it offers a patient and lucid explanation of what that entails, and why, for everything from gravity to evolution to climate change.<\/p>\n We\u2019re all free to follow Al Mohler\u2019s example and reject the secular knowledge Siegel lays out in favor of some sectarian claim, but that\u2019s a recipe for a self-inflicted perpetual crisis of faith. So if you make that choice know what you\u2019re getting yourself into: A lifetime of churning out desperate columns for outlets like The Christian Post.<\/em><\/p>\n Reality: If you lived here, you\u2019d be home by now.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Google Reader brings me a serendipitous, or perhaps providential, sequence of articles. First up is Douglas Starr\u2019s Discovery article, \u201cSpark of Truth: Can Science Bring Justice to Arson Trials?\u201d At laboratories throughout the United States \u2014 some large enough to contain a three-story house \u2014 researchers have been lighting rooms and houses on fire and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16,18,30],"class_list":["post-4578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-epistemology","tag-evolution","tag-science"],"yoast_head":"\n