Roman Catholics are always getting a bad rap. From Cardinal Bellarmine's 1615 letter to Paolo Antonio Foscarini (Galileo's collaborator in advocating the Copernican system): "Third, I say that if there were a true demonstration that the sun is at the center of the world and the earth in the third heaven, and that the sun does not circle the earth but the earth circles the sun, then one would have to proceed with great care in explaining the Scriptures that appear contrary, and say rather that we do not understand them than what is demonstrated is false. But I will not believe that there is such a demonstration, until it is shown to me."

re: catholicism & anglo-saxon intellectualism, i believe

1) centuries long protestant polemics against 'romish papism' have seeped into the cultural substrate so that post-protestant intellectuals reflexively express their culturally mediated biases without reflection.

2) specifically, this tendency can be expressed for example in richard dawkins' one time contention that fundamentalist (protestant) christianity was more honest than roman catholicism because it did not make any pretense toward reconciliation or rationality with modern science (i understand that catholic intellectuals would not frame the relative detente between say, evolution and roman catholicism, as reconciliation, but you get my intent). i believe that the idea that fundamentalist protestant christianity is more authentic than roman catholic christianity derives in part from a protestant cultural milieu which frames what a religion is (i.e., a personal confessional relation with god mediated through and understanding of text without excessive recourse to institutional authority or clerical guidance, etc. etc.).

3) the alternative thomist intellectual tradition that has been developed within the roman catholic church within the past few centuries, which is at variance with the semantics that dominates non-catholic philosophical discourse, allows for a great deal of inadverdant 'talking past each other.'

4) #3 becomes problematic when i run into roman catholics who sometimes forget that acceptance of aquinas as Truth is not normative outside of their church (and anarchocapitalists who follow murray rothbard). just as problematic as seculars from protestant backgrounds who have a hard time understanding roman catholic conceptions of religion and reason.

Yep. Plus a Roman Catholic Church will always have the bloodiest most graphic crucifix in town. We rock.

The church at my old scholl has a life-sized full color statute of Christ taken down from the Cross so realistic it could fool the coroner. It'll freak a young mind right out.

I used to think it was weird, until I realized it was the key to the whole thing...

I'm not sure I can fully accept your first point, based on my own careful reflection. Having grown up atheist on the west coast in a suburb, I didn't experience any direct polemics against any religion. Looking back at my own personal "cultural mileau," I really can't see any background taint either. It wasn't in TV sitcoms, SciFi, etc.

I can understand that this might not be the case in other environments. It's interesting that this particular thing got so effectively filtered out of the common culture that I was exposed to.

I can, however, see my own philosophical views deriving, "... in part from a protestant cultural milieu which frames what a [philosophy] is (i.e., a personal relation with [the universe] mediated through and understanding of [evidence] without excessive recourse to institutional authority or clerical guidance, etc."

mark, what i'm talking about is implicit and background, not explicit. for example, a common perception by many is that galileo was burned as a heretic by the church (confusing two separate issues, galileo's problems with the church and the burning of heretics). the reality, from what i have read, is that the body count of the roman catholic church was not greater (at least orders of magnitude in relation to the size of catholic europe) during the reformation-counter-reformation period than that of protestant europe (and witch burnings were concentrated mostly in protestant europe actually). and yet the public specifically is primed to understand references to 'bloody mary' and the 'spanish inquisition' and roman catholic (perceived) intransigence re: copernicanism. the reality is that many protestants, like luther, rejected copernicanism, that in england roman catholics were long persecuted after the marian martyrs were dust (though not without good reason to some extent, especially after the overthrow of james II). in short, i think anglo-saxons are primed to perceive iconoclastic personal religions (protesetantism) as more rational than liturgically oriented and sensorially rich traditions, which might be considered 'superstitious.'

now, a counterpoint to this is that many people i know do consider roman catholicism an enlightened religion when the dominant religion in their local area is fundamentalist protestantism. so i'm not saying that this tendency i'm alluding to is universally dominant, rather, it reaches fullest expression in anti-clerical scions of upper-middle english gentry like richard dawkins.

note: i'm not particularly put off my dawkins' hostility toward religion btw. i'm just commenting on its culturally mediated biases, that i perceive. i once went to a private talk given by dawkins, and he cracked a few jokes about catholicism there as well, so i suspect that the bias runs deep, conscious or not.

Razib, I did get that you were talking about both implicit and explicit, and I was examining my own experience as a sort of test case. I was never under the impression that Galileo was burnt. I was as cognisant of the Salem witch trials as of Catholic Inquisition stuff. I didn't have a dog in the fight, and i was growing up in the cultural homogenate of the California 'burbs. I can easily imagine that the situation was very different elsewhere.

It's possible I was oblivious to an undercurrent. I'm an atheist from a multigenerational line. My views on religion don't arise out of rebellion or even intimate contact with any particular tradition. In light of this, I can imagine that certain code words in the broader cultural mileau just didn't find any binding points.

"I am skeptical that most people who study and examine evolutionary theory in a scientific context really have a deep interest in the intersection between their science and philosophical or socio-ethical concerns."

Good point. However, we should be careful to distinguish between the substantial issues addressed by philosophy, problems of knowledge, conduct and governance, versus the academic study of the history of ideas. I get about two paragraphs into Thomism, figure it's a dead end and turn elsewhere for my own philosophy. It's only useful insofar as I might find myself debating a Jesuit.

However, we should be careful to distinguish between the substantial issues addressed by philosophy, problems of knowledge, conduct and governance, versus the academic study of the history of ideas.

i would curious as to how many ph.d.s in the natural sciences could give you a spot on definition of epistemology (for example). myself, i come close to viewing all of philosophy (narrowly viewed as the fields which have not been hived off into other disciplines, i.e., natural philosophy => natural sciences) like you view thomism, they are semantic sharpeners and currency needed to trade with other peoples, but i am personally skeptical of its basic utility in getting anywhere.

my point isn't about what should be really, but i think i am suggesting in my addendum that the perception by some that evolutionary biologists promote an atheistic materialism (as will provine does, though i have argued strictly speaking that he is a scholar of evolutionary biology as a historian, biographer and analyst, rather than a scientist himself) necessarily or even usually is wrongheaded. i think, rather, that evolutionary biologists, even when they do give reasons that connect their secularism to evolutionary biology are offering them ad hoc, without a clear and precise conceptual structure which is systematic in the way that some might perceive them to be (they are abducing back to evolutionary biology as a reason for their atheism from their conclusion, though they might imply that they are deducing in the reverse direction). in contrast, i would submit that the long view of elite ID folks like dembski seems clearly to be pushing a systematic philosophy of metascience at the highest levels. there is an asymmetry at work here. the simplistic equation by those who aren't interested in the tedious details of the two sides miss the differences, distinctions and the significance of the battle of ideas.

I agree wholeheartedly with your point here about the asymmetry. As Sun Tsu observes, the way to victory involves knowing yourself and your opponent.

I also largely agree with your take on philosophy, although with some qualification. I think that we necessarily operate with some sort of implicit "theory of knowledge." A flatworm learning a t-maze has an implicit theory of knowledge of the most basic sort, and we work our way up to implicit "theories" in the framing of concepts like "truth," and "reality." And "good." There are some pitfalls. A bit of formal philosophy can offer some resources for getting around the pitfalls efficiently.

A bit of formal philosophy can offer some resources for getting around the pitfalls efficiently.

agreed. though i think as the years pass by the utility of cognitive science will keep increasing relative to philosophy (in part because cognitive science is hiving off aspects of philosophy germane to its study).

Insofar as there is a natural dividing line between philosophy and science, I put it at the difference between "if...then" and "you should...because." No amount of recursion on the "if...then" theme gets us to the point where philosophy, in this framing, is unimportant. The border, however, does tend to shift as you suggest, but an extrapolation toward the ultimate irrelevance of philosophy is dangerous. In practical terms it leads to shallow, incoherent strategy. Something to encourage and nurture in the camp of the enemy.

an analogy i used yesterday is that i tend to use mathematics as a positive (model building) tool while philosophy is a negative (trashing taking out) tool. for example, consider viewing profiling swarthy men who board airplanes. you can view it in terms of bayesian probability, which forms a positive model with predictions, or elucidate necessary & sufficient conditions to clarify thought and reject imprecise formulations.

The issue of profiling swarthy men who board airplanes is certainly rife with opportunities for shallow, incoherent strategy.

The intellectual content of Roman Catholicism may have little bearing on the stuff with which the bulk of RC laymen are indoctrinated. (Source: my RC grandfather.)