Dark Energy2

GOD IS NOT GREAT

2007-05-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

Christopher Hitchens has added his cultivated and abrasive voice to the appeal for reason over fantasy. Although I have not read the whole book yet, I have read excerpts posted on the christopher hitchens web site, as well as an excerpt from the New York Times.

I expecially liked this paragraph (which I have split up for reading ease) from chapter one:

"Past and present religious atrocities have occurred not because we are evil, but because it is a fact of nature that the human species is, biologically, only partly rational. Evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by committee; a recipe which, alone or in combination, is very certain to lead to some unhappiness and disorder.

But still, what a difference when one lays aside the strenuous believers and takes up the no less arduous work of a Darwin, say, or a Hawking or a Crick. These men are more enlightening when they are wrong, or when they display their inevitable biases, than any falsely modest person of faith who is vainly trying to square the circle and to explain how he, a mere creature of the Creator, can possibly know what that Creator intends.

Not all can be agreed on matters of aesthetics, but we secular humanists and atheists and agnostics do not wish to deprive humanity of its wonders or consolations. Not in the least. If you will devote a little time to studying the staggering photographs taken by the Hubble telescope, you will be scrutinizing things that are far more awesome and mysterious and beautiful-and more chaotic and overwhelming and forbidding-than any creation or "end of days" story.

If you read Hawking on the "event horizon," that theoretical lip of the "black hole" over which one could in theory plunge and see the past and the future (except that one would, regrettably and by definition, not have enough "time"), I shall be surprised if you can still go on gaping at Moses and his unimpressive "burning bush."

If you examine the beauty and symmetry of the double helix, and then go on to have your own genome sequence fully analyzed, you will be at once impressed that such a near-perfect phenomenon is at the core of your being, and reassured (I hope) that you have so much in common with other tribes of the human species-"race" having gone, along with "creation" into the ashcan-and further fascinated to learn how much you are a part of the animal kingdom as well.

Now at last you can be properly humble in the face of your maker, which turns out not to be a "who," but a process of mutation with rather more random elements than our vanity might wish.

This is more than enough mystery and marvel for any mammal to be getting along with: the most educated person in the world now has to admit-I shall not say confess-that he or she knows less and less but at least knows less and less about more and more. . . ."

THE DANGERS OF MODERATE RELIGION

2007-04-08T11:30:00.000-07:00

Don't miss the online debate (Beliefnet) between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan.

I particularly liked this excerpt from Sam Harris' post1.2. (I have edited this into shorter paragraphs)

"First, on my frustration with religious moderates, to which you alluded: It is true that your colleagues in the religious middle have taught me to appreciate the candor and the one-note coherence of religious fanatics. I have found that whenever someone like me or Richard Dawkins criticizes Christians for believing in the imminent return of Christ, or Muslims for believing in martyrdom, religious moderates claim that we have caricatured Christianity and Islam, taken "extremists" to be representative of these "great" faiths, or otherwise overlooked a shimmering ocean of nuance.

" We are invariably told that a mature understanding of the historical and literary contexts of scripture renders faith perfectly compatible with reason, and our attack upon religion is, therefore, "simplistic," "dogmatic," or even "fundamentalist." As a frequent target of such profundities, I can attest that they generally come moistened to a sickening pablum by great sighs of condescension. Present company excluded.

"But there are several problems with such a defense of moderate religion. First, many moderates assume that religious "extremism" is rare and therefore not all that consequential. Happily, you are not in this camp, but I would venture that you are in a minority among religious moderates.

"As you and I both know, religious extremism is not rare, and it is hugely consequential. Forty-four percent of Americans believe that Jesus will return to earth to judge the living and the dead sometime in the next fifty years. This idea is extreme in almost every sense-extremely silly, extremely dangerous, extremely worthy of denigration-but it is not extreme in the sense of being rare.

" The problem, as I see it, is that moderates don't tend to know what it is like to be truly convinced that death is an illusion and that an eternity of happiness awaits the faithful beyond the grave. They have, as you say, "integrated doubt" into their faith. Another way of putting it is that they have less faith-and for good reason. The result, however, is that your fellow moderates tend to doubt that anybody ever really is motivated to sacrifice his life, or the lives of others, on the basis his heartfelt religious beliefs.

"Moderate doubt-which I agree is an improvement over fundamentalist certitude in most respects-often blinds its host to the reality and consequences of full-tilt religious lunacy. Such blindness is now particularly unhelpful, given the hideous collision with Islamic certainty that is unfolding all around us.

"Second, many religious moderates imagine, as you do, that there is some clear line of separation between extremist and moderate religion. But there isn't. Scripture itself remains a perpetual engine of extremism: because, while He may be many things, the God of the Bible and the Qur'an is not a moderate. Read scripture more closely and you do not find reasons for religious moderation; you find reasons to live like a proper religious maniac-to fear the fires of hell, to despise nonbelievers, to persecute homosexuals, etc.

"Of course, one can cherry-pick scripture and find reasons to love one's neighbor and turn the other cheek, but the truth is, the pickings are pretty slim, and the more fully one grants credence to these books, the more fully one will be committed to the view that infidels, heretics, and apostates are destined to be ground up in God's loving machinery of justice. "

WORTHWHILE NUMBERS

2007-04-08T11:22:00.000-07:00

Our daughter Marie asked for a little teen quiz for Easter to help distribute goodies as quiz rewards (I think I have that right).

The result is posted here as a modest contribution to the human race and intelligent discussion.

CLIMATE QUIZ

1. we are living in an "inter-glacial period": these last about how long typically?

ans: about 10 - 20 thousand years

2. most of the time the planet experiences "ice age conditions" in which glaciers cover large areas of the high latitude regions. How long do ice ages last typically?

ans: about 100 thousand years

3. Roughly how long ago was the last "interglacial period" in which the planet warmed up?

ans: about 125 thousand years ago

4. At the end of each "ice age" (ie at the beginning of each inter-glacial period) there is a major global warming. Roughly how long ago was this last major global warming?

ans: about 15 thousand years ago

5. What are the most important atmospheric greenhouse gases( besides water vapor) , and what are their chemical formulas?

ans: 1.carbon dioxide C O2, 2. methane C H4, 3. nitrogen dioxide N O2

6. What do these chemical formulas mean?

ans. C O2 = molecule consisting of one carbon atom bound to two oxygen atoms
C H4 1 carbon + 4 hydrogen
N O2 1 nitrogen + 2 oxygen

7. Roughly how long will carbon dioxide stay up in the atmosphere once injected?

ans: roughly 100 years

8. If planet earth had no atmosphere which produced a greenhouse effect, how much colder would the earth surface be on average?

ans: roughly 54 fahrenheit degrees colder than now.

9. What is the freezing temperature of fresh water (in degrees fahrenheit) ?

ans: 32 degrees F

10. As the global average temperature rises (global warming) at what latitude does the average temperature rise fastest?

ans: at the high latitudes near the N and S poles.

MATH QUIZ

1. If the quantity (3 times some number ) plus 2 is equal to 8, what is the number?

ans: 2

2. What is 0.615 rounded to the nearest tenth?

ans: 0.6

3. Express the quantity ( 5/12 - 3/8 ) as a fraction in the simpest form.

ans: 1/24

4. If the tax on $27 is $1.62, what is the percentage tax rate?

ans: 6 percent

HISTORY QUIZ

1. When did the U.S. revolutionary war happen?

ans: 1775 - 1783

2. When did the U.S. Civil War happen?

ans 1861 - 1865

3. When did World War II happen?

ans: 1939 - 1945

SCIENCE QUIZ

1. What percentage of human DNA is identical to chimpanzee DNA?

ans: 98.4%

2. what is the rough age of our universe?

ans: about 14 billion years

3. what is the rough age of our sun?

ans: about 4 billion years

4. what is the rough age of planet earth?

ans: about 4 billion years

5. when did life originate on earth?

ans: about 3 billion years ago

6. when did the dinosaurs become extinct?

ans: about 65 million years ago

7. when did our ancestors become distinct from the ancestors of chimps and gorillas?

ans: about 6 to 10 million years ago

8. where did the shared ancestors of humans, chimps, and gorillas live?

ans: in Africa

9. what would our ancestors have been classified as when they became a distinct species?

ans: another species of ape

10. when did our ancestors begin habitually walking on their hind legs?

ans: about 4 million years ago

11. when did our ancestors begin using stone tools?

ans: about 2.5 million years ago

12: when did some of our ancestors look enough like us that that are now called homo sapiens?

ans: about 500 thousand years ago

13. How many ice ages have homo sapiens lived through:

ans: about five

(here we leave the realm of simple numbers ... )

14. what is meant by "Cro-Magnon"?

ans: this refers to anatomically modern people (looking like us) . named after a cave in France where their bones were first identified, but later found in France and Spain generally, living during the Late Ice Age ( about 40 thousand years ago), and using many more sophisticated tools, especially for hunting large animals.

15. would a Cro-Magnon have been able to learn to fly a jet aircraft?

ans: yes

16. why did it take so long for humans to learn how to fly?

ans: required first the invention of domestication of plants and animals, invention of writing and mathematics and calculus, understanding of chemistry and physics - all this took a long time building on the achievements of the previous generations.

SAM HARRIS SCORES AGAIN

2006-11-05T16:50:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Sam Harris for his little gem: "A Letter to a Christian Nation".

Our bookclub appreciated his groundbreaking "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason". A few days later we showed some of our bookclub members the hour tape of Harris presenting his ideas (while being taped by CSPAN) at a liberal Jewish synagogue in Irvine, California ( home to U.C. Irvine).

Now appears a slim book summarizing the huge amount of letters he received, with the most vitriolic coming from the most pious! Go figure!

Harris begins:

“Thousands of people have written to tell me that I am wrong not to believe in God. The most hostile of these communications have come from Christians. This is ironic, as Christians generally imagine that no faith imparts the virtues of love and forgiveness more effectively than their own. The truth is that many who claim to be transformed by Christ’s love are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism. While we may want to ascribe this to human nature, it is clear that such hatred draws considerable support from the Bible. How do I know this? The most disturbed of my correspondents always cite chapter and verse.”

And I liked the following mini-review appearing on amazon.com website:

“Reading Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation was like sitting ring side, cheering the champion, yelling ‘Yes!’ at every jab. For those of us who feel depressed by this country’s ever increasing unification of church and state, and the ever decreasing support for the sciences that deliver knowledge and reduce ignorance, this little book is a welcome hit of adrenalin.”
–Marc Hauser, Harvard College Professor, author of Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Sense of Right and Wrong

Go, Harris, Go!!

LESS FAITH AND MORE REASON

2006-10-30T13:56:00.000-08:00

Lubos Motl's blog(see my links) has called attention to Steven Pinker's comments on the new Harvard University general education report [Report of the Committee on General Education]. Pinker focuses on the way Science in justified as a suitable subject in a university, provided it is taught in a social issues context.

Apparently the writers of the Harvard Univ. general education report have little conception of the benefits of serious education in science for university students.

Pinker also picks on the linkages of the importance of teaching about both "faith and reason", as if these were equally important in the education of the university students.

It is worth quoting some of Pinker's comments on the first issues in the Harvard Crimson:

---------------------------------
"...we should be mindful of the way the report frames the goals of general education, and not just its suggested menu of courses. This means affirming the goal of the university as the institution dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and reason. (There is certainly no shortage of forces in the world pushing toward ignorance and irrationality.)"

"The report introduces scientific knowledge as follows: “Science and technology directly affect our students in many ways, both positive and negative: they have led to life-saving medicines, the internet, more efficient energy storage, and digital entertainment; they also have shepherded nuclear weapons, biological warfare agents, electronic eavesdropping, and damage to the environment.”

"Well, yes, and I suppose one could say that architecture has produced both museums and gas chambers, that opera has both uplifted audiences and inspired the Nazis, and so on. It makes it sound as if the choice between science and technology on the one hand, and superstition and ignorance on the other, is a moral toss-up! Of course students should know about both the bad and good effects of technology. But this hardly seems like the best way for a great university to justify the teaching of science.

"Missing from the report is a sensitivity to the ennobling nature of knowledge: to the inherent value, with consequences too far-reaching to enumerate, of understanding how the world works. For one thing, it is a remarkable fact that we have come to understand as much as we do about the natural world: the history of the universe and our planet, the forces that make it tick, the stuff we’re made of, the origin of living things, and the machinery of life, including our own mental life.

"...Also, the picture of humanity’s place in nature that has emerged from scientific inquiry has profound consequences for people’s understanding of the human condition. The discoveries of science have cascading effects, many unforeseeable, on how we view ourselves and the world in which we live: for example, that our planet is an undistinguished speck in an inconceivably vast cosmos; that all the hope and ingenuity in the world can’t create energy or use it without loss; that our species has existed for a tiny fraction of the history of the earth; that humans are primates; that the mind is the activity of an organ that runs by physiological processes; that there are methods for ascertaining the truth that can force us to conclusions which violate common sense, sometimes radically so at scales very large and very small; that precious and widely held beliefs, when subjected to empirical tests, are often cruelly falsified.

"I believe that a person for whom this understanding is not second-nature cannot be said to be educated. And I think that some acknowledgment of the intrinsic value of scientific knowledge should be a goal of the general education requirement and a stated value of a university."

BUNGLED INTELLIGENT DESIGN

2006-10-21T12:05:00.000-07:00

Harvard linguist and psychology professor Steven Pinker contributed to a brief four man debate in Time magazine. The topic of the debate was: "Can You Believe in [Both] God and Evolution". Pinker has the full debate on his website. Since I agree with Pinker, here is his take on this question:

It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.
Our own bodies are riddled with quirks that no competent engineer would have planned but that disclose a history of trial-and-error tinkering: a retina installed backward, a seminal duct that hooks over the ureter like a garden hose snagged on a tree, goose bumps that uselessly try to warm us by fluffing up long-gone fur.
The moral design of nature is as bungled as its engineering design. What twisted sadist would have invented a parasite that blinds millions of people or a gene that covers babies with excruciating blisters? To adapt a Yiddish expression about God: If an intelligent designer lived on Earth, people would break his windows.
The theory of natural selection explains life as we find it, with all its quirks and tragedies. We can prove mathematically that it is capable of producing adaptive life forms and track it in computer simulations, lab experiments and real ecosystems. It doesn't pretend to solve one mystery (the origin of complex life) by slipping in another (the origin of a complex designer).
Many people who accept evolution still feel that a belief in God is necessary to give life meaning and to justify morality. But that is exactly backward. In practice, religion has given us stonings, inquisitions and 9/11. Morality comes from a commitment to treat others as we wish to be treated, which follows from the realization that none of us is the sole occupant of the universe. Like physical evolution, it does not require a white-coated technician in the sky.

The other debaters were Francis Collins (a prominent biologist and human genome expert who has no problem with a belief in a God who carefully supervised every mutation and variation responsible for the tortuous and sometimes tragic paths of natural selection), Michael Behe (Lehigh Univ. biochemist and frequent spokesperson for "Intelligent" Design, and Albert Mohler (President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a young-Earth creationist, who apparently has no problem with a God malicious and tricky enough to create a young earth replete with apparent geological, fossil, and cosmological photon evidence to lead a common sense scientific investigation to the conclusion that our universe is about 14 billion years old: if humans persist in believing their meters, eyes, and mathematical models which seem to make all the sense in the world, then this God says: Catch 22: you spend eternity in the fires of a literal Hell).

READING THE BIBLE CRITICALLY

2006-10-20T18:29:00.000-07:00

"Precritical" reading of the Bible refers to what most Christians do: read the Bible with forgiving eyes as if the insights of Biblical criticism are irrelevant.

Robert Funk, leader of the Jesus Seminar, describes the tortuous efforts of a televangelist to reconcile the two wildly different accounts of the demise of the disciple Judas which one can find in any Bible (you pick the version!).

"After the rise of biblical criticism, pietists tended to harmonize the differences and discrepancies by inventing explanations to account for them. Recently, a televangelist explained to his listeners that the bible does not contradict itself. As an example, he chose the death of Judas Iscariot. According to Matthew (27:3), Judas rejected the thirty pieces of silver and hanged himself. In Acts (1:18–19), Judas bought a field with his silver coins and later swelled up and burst open so that his bowels gushed out.
"The televangelist took the view that hanging and evisceration are two accounts of the same event: Judas hanged himself, then swelled up as he dangled in the air; since Jews were forbidden to touch a dead body, someone had to cut the rope, at which point he dropped to the ground and burst open, his bowels pouring out on the ground.
"The evangelist did not explain the contradiction involved in Judas both returning the coins and buying a field with them. In television land, the defense of the bible as an infallible source of history goes on unabated, as though historical criticism were the invention of the devil."

The work of the Jesus Seminar has been refocused on distinguishing the historical Jesus and his persona and concerns from those who later were sucessful in erecting a large and elaborate super-structure which became the Christian church. As Funk notes, "Jesus was not a Christian."

"The renewed quest is an attempt to reinstate the original aim of the quest, which was to distinguish the aims of Jesus from the aims of the followers. Put more broadly, the renewed quest is designed to distinguish the words and deeds of Jesus from others attributed to him as his reputation grew in the faith community. After all, the two lie side by side in the gospels.
"The renewal of the original aim comes to expression in two major ways. First, the renewed quest is focussed on the vision of Jesus as formulated in his words and deeds rather than on the expressions of faith in him formulated by the early community. To borrow Bultmann's phrase, the renewed quest is focussed on Jesus' proclamation rather than on him as proclaimer. It is a radical shift in point of view or perspective. Jesus points to the kingdom; his disciples point to him.
"The second aspect of the aim follows from the first. A basic rule of evidence is to look for words and deeds in the gospels that represent his outlook rather than that of the evangelists. Jesus was not a Christian. However, the gospels are Christian through and through. The residual fragments left behind in their memories of him are the only clues we have to his own point of view."

RELIGIOUS LIBERALS - NO VALUE FOR TRUTH

2006-10-11T16:38:00.000-07:00

Lubos Motl's recent posting about Steven Weinberg's recent BBC interview [transcript] on the relation between religion and science mentioned the chapter about God in Weinberg's book: Dreams of a Final Theory.

The following is from chapter 11, titled "What About God?". In the middle of that chapter, Weinberg refers to the problem of religious "liberals", as follows:

"Religious liberals are in one sense even farther in spirit from scientists than are fundamentalists and other religious conservatives.

"At least the conservatives, like the scientists, tell you that they believe in what they believe because it is true, rather than because it makes them good or happy.

"Many religious liberals today seem to think that different people can believe in different mutually exclusive things without any of them being wrong, as long as their beliefs 'work for them'.

"This one believes in reincarnation, that one in heaven and hell; a third believes in the extinction of the soul at death, but no one can be said to be wrong as long as everyone gets a satisfying spiritual rush from what they believe.

"To borrow a phrase from Susan Sontag, we are surrounded by 'piety without content'.

"It all reminds me of a story that is told about an experience of Bertrand Russell, when in 1918 he was committed to prison for his opposition to the war. Following prison routine, a jailer asked Russell his religion, and Russell said that he was an agnostic. The jailer looked puzzled for a moment, and then brightened, with the observation that 'I guess it's all right. We worship the same God, don't we?'

Returning to the role of the religious conservatives, Weinberg later continues:

"Many of the great world religions teach that God demands a particular faith and form of worship. It should not be surprising that some the the people who take these teachings seriously should sincerely regard these divine commands as incomparably more important than any merely secular virtues like tolerance or compassion or reason."

In the middle of Weinberg's BBC interview we have the remarks by Weinberg:

"...I once wrote something [apparently referring to the above quote from his Dreams of a Final Theory] rather disparaging about ultra-liberal Christianity and that I found myself more ... in some ways more akin to a fundamentalist because at least they haven't forgotten what it [is] to believe something. And I got a copy of a fundamentalist newspaper from, I think from New Mexico that praised me! Because what they really ... I think what their real concern was, was not odd atheist physicists, that wasn't what they were worried about, what they were worried about was the liberal Christians. ... I think they [the fundamentalists] just found a surprising ally in the battle that they really cared about - their battle with the liberal wing of Christianity. But please don't let me give the wrong impression, I think enormous harm is done by religion - not just in the name of religion, but actually by religion - and I think ..."

[interviewer]: "How is that? Tell me the harm that is done by religion as opposed to the harm that is done in the name of it."

[Weinberg ]: "Oh, I think people who crash air-planes into office buildings in order to destroy them must really believe in paradise and that this is something that their god wants them to do and that they'll be rewarded in paradise. And if they don't believe that then it's a very foolish career move."

[interviewer]: "Yes"

[Weinberg]: "But, ... you know, the idea that God has ... whether it's Allah or Jehovah or whatever, has dictated certain ways of behaving, certain ways of worshiping, and that it's incumbent on you to force others to behave that way and worship in that way ... God, think of all the harm that's been done throughout all the ages by people who believe that and believe it very sincerely. One could just go on and on about the number of very sincerely religious people who were led by their religion to do the most awful things."

[interviewer]: " Well in fact that was very much an aspect of Judaism before the Diaspora"

[Weinberg]: "Oh, absolutely, yes. I do agree, but just coming back to what we were talking about before, it is the religions that have a theory of the world, it seems to me, at least in recent centuries, that do the harm. So the ... the very sincere true believers are the ones you have to watch out for, even though they may have something more to show for themselves intellectually than the more liberal religious, but they are the dangerous ones."

[interviewer] [To the viewer]: "Given the fact that the current president of the United States could be described as a "sincere true believer", I wanted to know if Steven himself was alarmed by the apparent growth of fundamental Christianity in his own country."

[Weinber]: "I don't see the United States in the grip of a... a really disturbing religious awakening. I think that what's much more frightening in the world is Islam, where people, it seems to me, take their religion seriously to the point of madness. I think, you know, there have been times in the history of the world when Islam was a far more tolerant religion than Christianity, but that is not the case now. "

[interviewer]: "But there is undoubtedly for... a certainly for a European, the impression that there's a very strong association between Christianity and patriotism in a way that simply doesn't exist in Europe, certainly not in my own country, the United Kingdom."

[Weinberg]: "Yes, well, it's... I know that impression exists and I think that Americans think more highly of religion that Europeans do. I sometimes think that Americans believe in religion much more than Europeans do. They don't believe in God much more than Europeans do, but they believe that religion is good for you, and without being particularly religious in any meaningful way. You know, I know many people who say they're religious and go to church every Sunday and belong to church organisations, and then when you talk to them and you ask them, "Do you really think that after death this is going to happen?" they say, "I've no idea, I don't know, it's all a mystery, but I think it's good to be religious. This is the faith I grew up with.". As a physicist, you have to decide what you think is true and you get in the habit of that kind of intellectual activity because if you work on the wrong theory and it isn't true you have wasted your professional time, and you keep having to make judgements of truth or falsity, and truth becomes very important to you. For most people truth is not as important as good behaviour, or loyalty to your ethnic group, or loyalty to your family traditions, and truth is something that you don't worry about very much."

[interviewer]: "Although, of course, in the Middle Ages and indeed when people were opposing atheism in the 17th century, it was insisted that the truthfulness of religion was what guaranteed good behaviour. "

[Weinberg] : "Yes, and many people believe that, but an awful lot of people also believe it doesn't matter whether it's true, you just have to be religious because that will guarantee good behaviour. You know the wonderful line of Gibbon's about the pagan religions, he said "The multitude of gods... ", Gibbon said, "The common people found them all equally true, and the philosophers found them all equally false, and the magistrates found them all equally useful.". And I think many people in America and undoubtedly in Europe are in the position of the magistrates Gibbon was talking about - they find them useful. Although I really don't think that... I don't see religion as actually inspiring moral behaviour. In fact you very often hear people say, "Well, these people who blow themselves up for some religious reason in the Middle East or Hindu mobs who destroy a mosque or Muslim mobs who kill Hindus, that they're not really religious, that real religion doesn't involve that kind of behaviour.". I think what they're saying is that they have a moral sense which allows them to distinguish what is religious from what is not religious."

"I think, for example, George Bush said that these terrorists have hijacked a great religion because their actions, their terrorist actions don't fit his idea of religion. You see what's really happening there is that instead of using religion to decide what is moral, they're using their moral sense, which fortunately is a perfectly, good, reasonable, enlightened moral sense, to decide what is religious... and... if that's the case, then what's the point of the religion?"

[interviewer]: [speaking to his audience] "Finally, I wanted to know whether there were any particular reasons, apart from being constantly asked by people like myself, why Steven felt it necessary to address himself to the topic of religion more than many of his colleagues did."

[Weinberg]: "Oh, I try not to do it too much. I don't want to become the village atheist... and I do get involved in a lot of other issues like missile defence and neo... well, post-constructionism, neo-modernism, but I do spend probably a little bit more time than I should on religion and I have a certain amount of hostility to... to it. I think the most rational reason for it is because of the harm that I see it does, we were talking about that earlier. Many people do simply awful things out of sincere religious belief, not using religion as a cover the way that Saddam Hussein may have done, but really because they believe that this is what God wants them to do, going all the way back to Abraham being willing to sacrifice Issac because God told him to do that. Putting God ahead of humanity is a terrible thing."

"Another reason is because I'm offended by the kind of smarmy religiosity that's all around us, perhaps more in America than in Europe, and not really that harmful because it's not really that intense or even that serious, but just... you know after a while you get tired of hearing clergymen giving the invocation at various public celebrations and you feel, haven't we outgrown all this? Do we have to listen to this? "

"But then, maybe at the very bottom of it... I really don't like God. You know, it's silly to say I don't like God because I don't believe in God, but in the same sense that I don't like Iago, or the Reverend Slope or any of the other villains of literature, the god of traditional Judaism and Christianity and Islam seems to me a terrible character. He's a god who will... who obsessed [about] the degree to which people worship him and [is] anxious to punish with the most awful torments those who don't worship him in the right way. Now I realise that many people don't believe in that any more who call themselves Muslims or Jews or Christians, but that is the traditional God and he's a terrible character. I don't like him. "

I have a friend - or had a friend, now dead - Abdul Salam, a very devout Muslim, who was trying to bring science into the universities in the Gulf states and he told me that he had a terrible time because, although they were very receptive to technology, they felt that science would be a corrosive to religious belief, and they were worried about it... and damn it, I think they were right. It is corrosive of religious belief, and it's a good thing too.

Science and Religion: The Loss of Nerve

2006-09-26T10:23:00.000-07:00

The October issue of Scientific American has a brief review of several books on the relations between science and religion.

The authors of the books are Richard Dawkins (evolutionary biology), Owen Gingerich (Astronomy), Francis S. Collins (biology) , and Carl Sagan (physics).

In the brief review by staff writer George Johnson, he remarks:

"But what sounds like a harmless metaphor can restrict the intellectual bravado that is essential to science. "In my view," Collins goes on to say, "DNA sequence alone, even if accompanied by a vast trove of data on biological function, will never explain certain special human attributes, such as the knowledge of the Moral Law and the universal search for God." Evolutionary explanations have been proffered for both these phenomena. Whether they are right or wrong is not a matter of belief but a question to be approached scientifically. The idea of an apartheid of two separate but equal metaphysics may work as a psychological coping mechanism, a way for a believer to get through a day at the lab. But theism and materialism don't stand on equal footings. The assumption of materialism is fundamental to science."

Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, tells of his exasperation with colleagues who try to play both sides of the street: looking to science for justification of their religious convictions while evading the most difficult implications--the existence of a prime mover sophisticated enough to create and run the universe, "to say nothing of mind reading millions of humans simultaneously." Such an entity, he argues, would have to be extremely complex, raising the question of how it came into existence, how it communicates--through spiritons!--and where it resides. "

"Dawkins is frequently dismissed as a bully, but he is only putting theological doctrines to the same kind of scrutiny that any scientific theory must withstand. No one who has witnessed the merciless dissection of a new paper in physics would describe the atmosphere as overly polite."

"Sagan, writing from beyond the grave (actually his new book, The Varieties of Scientific Experience, is an edited version of his 1985 Gifford Lectures), asks why, if God created the universe, he left the evidence so scant. He might have embedded Maxwell's equations in Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Ten Commandments might have been engraved on the moon. "Or why not a hundred-kilometer crucifix in Earth orbit?... Why should God be so clear in the Bible and so obscure in the world?"

"He laments what he calls a "retreat from Copernicus," a loss of nerve, an emotional regression to the idea that humanity must occupy center stage."

Scientists who function with success in science and still cling to medieval ideas about an active and attentive god who responds to prayers of the devout are a fascinating species. We humans have the ability to compartmentalize our brains and believe intrinsically antagonistic ideas. We are the result of a million years of human evolution, and this ability may have provided an evolutionary advantage.

Today, any such primeval advantage is meaningless. Indeed the continued appeals to an anthropomorphic god short circuits our efforts to deal with the huge problems we face in a rational way. And "respect" for religion allows fundamentalists to follow their particular "holy book", whether the Bible or the Koran, adding to the craziness of modern life.

(See Sam Harris' books, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason and Letter to a Christian Nation, for a devastating dissection of the dangers of respecting religion.)

Steven Pinker, the professor in the Department of Pyschology at Harvard University who has done ground breaking research on language and cognition, has written a good cover blurb for Richard Dawkin's new book The God Delusion:

"At last, one of the best nonfiction writers alive today has assembled his thoughts on religion into a characteristically elegant book. If you think that science is just another religion, that religion is about higher values, or that scientists are just as dogmatic as believers, then read this book and see if you can counter Dawkin's arguments. They are passionately stated and poetically expressed but rooted in reason and evidence."

ANN COULTER VS CHARLES DARWIN

2006-09-10T13:22:00.000-07:00

Another great reward of subscribing to The New Republic is the set on online commentaries and blogs dealing with the pressing issues of the day.

Not so long ago, the University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne (professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution) discussed Ann Coulter's new best seller: Godless: The Church of Liberalism. (posted Aug 31, 2006)

A significant part of this new book deals with a spirited attack on godless biology and the evils of the liberal's god, Charles Darwin.

Some of Coyne's comments on this book are:

"Enamored of ID [Intelligent Design], and unable to fathom a scientific reason why biologists don't buy it, Coulter suggests that scientists are an evil sub-cabal of atheist liberals, a group so addicted to godlessness that they must hide at all costs the awful "truth" that evolution didn't happen. She accuses evolutionists of brainwashing children with phony fossils and made-up "evidence," turning the kids into "Darwiniacs" stripped of all moral (i.e., biblical) grounding and prone to become beasts and genocidal lunatics. To Coulter, biologists are folks who, when not playing with test tubes or warping children's minds, encourage people to have sex with dogs. (I am not making this up.) "...

..."First, one has to ask whether Coulter (who, by the way, attacks me in her book) really understands the Darwinism she rejects. The answer is a resounding No. According to the book's acknowledgments, Coulter was tutored in the "complex ideas" of evolution by David Berlinski, a science writer; Michael Behe, a third-rate biologist at Lehigh University (whose own department's website disowns his bizarre ideas); and William Dembski, a fairly bright theologian who went off the intellectual rails and now peddles creationism at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. These are the "giants" of the ID movement, which shows how retarded it really is. Learning biology from this lot is like learning elocution from George W. Bush."

"As expected with such tutors, the Darwinism decried by Coulter is the usual distorted cardboard cut-out. All she does is parrot the ID line: There are no transitional fossils; natural selection can't create true novelty; some features of organisms could not have evolved and therefore must have been designed by an unspecified supernatural agent. And her "research" method consists of using quotes taken out of context, scouring biased secondary sources, and distorting what appears in the scientific literature. Judging by the shoddy documentation of the evolution section, I'm not convinced that the rest of the book isn't based on equally shoddy research. At any rate, I won't belabor the case that Coulter makes for ID, as I've already shown in TNR that her arguments are completely bogus."

What is especially striking is Coulter's failure to tell us what she really believes about how the earth's species got here. It's clear that she thinks God had a direct hand in it, but beyond that we remain unenlightened. IDers believe in limited amounts of evolution. Does Coulter think that mammals evolved from reptiles? If not, what are those curious mammal-like reptiles that appear exactly at the right time in the fossil record? Did humans evolve from ape-like primates, or did the Designer conjure us into existence all at once? How did all those annoying fossils get there, in remarkable evolutionary order?"

And, when faced with the real evidence that shows how strongly evolution trumps ID, she clams up completely. What about the massive fossil evidence for human evolution--what exactly were those creatures 2 million years ago that had human-like skeletons but ape-like brains? Did a race of Limbaughs walk the earth? And why did God--sorry, the Intelligent Designer--give whales a vestigial pelvis, and the flightless kiwi bird tiny, nonfunctional wings? Why do we carry around in our DNA useless genes that are functional in similar species? Did the Designer decide to make the world look as though life had evolved? What a joker! And the Designer doesn't seem all that intelligent, either. He must have been asleep at the wheel when he designed our appendix, back, and prostate gland." ...

..."What's annoying about Coulter (note: there's more than one thing!) is that she insistently demands evidence for evolution (none of which she'll ever accept), but requires not a shred of evidence for her "alternative hypothesis." She repeatedly assures us that God exists (not just any God--the Christian God), that there is only one God (she's no Hindu, folks), that we are made in the image of said God, that the Christian Bible, like Antonin Scalia's Constitution, "is not a 'living' document" (that is, not susceptible to changing interpretation; so does she think that Genesis is literally true?), and that God just might have used evolution as part of His plan. What makes her so sure about all this? And how does she know that the Supreme Being, even if It exists, goes by the name of Yahweh, rather than Allah, Wotan, Zeus, or Mabel? If Coulter just knows these things by faith alone, she should say so, and then tell us why she's so sure that what Parsees or Zunis just know is wrong. I, for one, am not prepared to believe that Ann Coulter is made in God's image without seeing some proof."

"Moreover, if evolution is wrong, why is it the central paradigm of biology? According to Coulter, it's all a big con game. In smoky back rooms at annual meetings, evolutionists plot ways to jam Darwin down America's throat, knowing that even though it is scientifically incorrect, Darwinism (Coulter says) "lets them off the hook morally. Do whatever you feel like doing--screw your secretary, kill Grandma, abort your defective child--Darwin says it will benefit humanity!"

"Unfortunately for Coulter (but fortunately for humanity), science doesn't work this way. Scientists gain fame and high reputation not for propping up their personal prejudices, but for finding out facts about nature. And if evolution really were wrong, the renegade scientist who disproved it--and showed that generations of his predecessors were misled--would reach the top of the scientific ladder in one leap, gaining fame and riches. All it would take to trash Darwinism is a simple demonstration that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, or that our closest genetic relative is the rabbit. There is no cabal, no back-room conspiracy. Instead, the empirical evidence for evolution just keeps piling up, year after year."

EVANGELICALS AND THE ENVIRONMENT

2006-09-10T12:37:00.000-07:00

The only magazine I currently subscribe to is The New Republic , a slender weekly journal of ideas with very fine print and few pictures. They do have clever article titles, however.

Last week's issue contained a spirited call for American Evangelicals to rally to the cause of protecting God's creation. The title of the article is "Apocalypse Now: A Scientists Plea for Christian Environmentalism". The whole article is worth reading (abstracted from Edward Wilson's forthcoming book: "The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth" ).

Biologist Wilson (emeritus at Harvard) includes the following stark paragraphs dealing with the enormous gulf between science and religion:

"It may seem far-fetched for a secular scientist to propose an alliance between science and religion. But the fact is that environmental activists cannot succeed without you and your followers as allies. The political process in American democracy, with rare exceptions, does not start at the top and work its way down to the voting masses. It proceeds in the opposite direction. Political leaders are compelled to calculate as precisely as they can what it will take to win the next election. The United States is an intensely religious nation. It is overwhelmingly Judeo-Christian, with a powerful undercurrent of evangelism. We secularists must face reality. The National Association of Evangelicals has 30 million members; the three leading American humanist organizations combined have, at best, a few thousand. Those who, for religious reasons, believe in saving the Creation, have the strength to do so through the political process; acting alone, secular environmentalists do not. An alliance between science and religion, forged in an atmosphere of mutual respect, may be the only way to protect life on earth, including, in the end, our own. "

"Yes, the gulf separating our worldviews is wide. The Abrahamic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--believe that the universe was constructed to be relevant to humanity. The discoveries of science, in unintended opposition, have reduced earth to an infinitesimal speck within an immensity of space unrelated to human destiny. The Abrahamic religions envisage a supreme ruler who, while existing outside the material universe, nevertheless oversees an agenda for each and every one of our immortal souls. Science can find no evidence of an agenda other than that fashioned by the complex interaction of genes and environment within parallel evolving cultures. Religious creation stories have a divinely engineered beginning and a divinely ordained ending. According to science, in contrast, humans descended from apish ancestors; our origin was basically no different from that of other animals, played out over geological time through a tortuous route of mutation and environmentally driven natural selection. In addition, all mainstream religious belief, whether fundamentalist or liberal, is predicated upon the assumption that humanity is not alone, and we are here for a life and purpose beyond our earthly existence. Science says that, as far as verifiable evidence tells, we are alone, and what significance we have is therefore of our own making. This is the heart of the agonizing conflict between science and religion that has persisted for the past 500 years. "

"I do not see how the difference in worldview between these two great productions of human striving can be closed. But, for the purposes of saving the Creation, I am not sure that it needs to be. To make the point in good gospel manner, let me tell the story of a young man, newly trained for the ministry and so fixed in his Christian faith that he referred all questions of morality to readings from the Bible. When he visited the Atlantic rainforest of Brazil, he saw the manifest hand of God, and in his notebook he wrote, "It is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind." That was Charles Darwin in 1832, early into the voyage of the HMS Beagle, before he had given any thought to evolution. And here is Darwin, concluding On the Origin of Species in 1859, having first abandoned Christian dogma and then, with his newfound intellectual freedom, formulated the theory of evolution by natural selection: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." Darwin's reverence for life remained the same as he crossed the seismic divide that separated his religious phase and his scientific one. And so it can be for the divide that, today, separates mainstream religion and scientific humanism. And that separates you and me. "

I admire Wilson's efforts to reach out to the Evangelical community in the common high goal of slowing the destruction of the environment which supports all life on this small rock of a planet.

I notice that Wilson is not reaching out to the religious fundamentalists, who eschew political involvement in a world already condemned to eternal damnation, and see no point in worrying about the "environment" of Satan's home.

SHIMON PERES

2006-08-17T11:52:00.000-07:00

CSPAN carried a presentation by the 83 year old deputy leader of the present Israeli government, Shimon Peres yesterday (Wednesday, Aug. 16 ) repeatedly.

Kathleen and I were greatly impressed by the survey of recent events and their implications which Peres presented. He said that, although Israel would defend herself if directly attacked by Syria or Iran, for now Iran and Syria are "the world's problem".

The "world's" answer t0 the problem of Iran and Syria is the biggest present unknown. The easy way out is to ignore the Iran nuclear issue and maintain a semblance of peace. Europe certainly does not have the will to prevent Iran from going nuclear (in the sense of weapons).

The U.S. government should be talking to the Iranian leaders at the highest level possible (both them and us) as often as possible. Talking with the Iranian government can do no harm and doesn't imply that we respect their positions.

The U.S. could commit to not trying to aid any "regime change" in Iran, if in return, Iran agrees to abandon the nuclear weapons path and commit to full IAEA inspections of all nuclear facilities including surprise inspections anywhere in Iran.

We cannot turn our backs on Israel, although we can use our large financial support as a wedge to encourage Israel to continue to look for ways to reach limited agreements with the Palestinians which will reduce the tensions.

THE GREAT COMPUTER CRASH

2006-08-07T11:54:00.000-07:00

Power on, blinking red light. Silence. Impotence. Abandoned on the shores of California without a working computer.

How long ago did I buy this Compaq computer?? Where is my paperwork?? If I had only let my wife Kathleen file the paperwork in her unique filing system, I would know where to find the info.

Of course I am intrinsically less organised than Kathleen, and waste hours searching for that crucial item of paper.

Anyway, forget how long the computer has worked. It is way past service guarantees for sure. I probably bought the computer at Staples.

Our local computer shop, Computer Stuff, decided the bad news was a bad motherboard and maybe also cpu. The clear path was to buy a new computer. The local folks moved my "teds documents" to my backup "little black book" hardrive, and started work making me a new computer.

I prefer to buy a custom local computer, so if anything goes wrong, I have an expert at hand who is intimately familiar with my beast.

In the meantime, I am using Kathleen's new computer, a HP Pavilion (with ram upgraded to 1.5 gigs) we picked up at central coast electronics/radio shack in Morro Bay, when we were doing our laundry in the laundromat around the corner. (problems with the new washer and dryer we installed in our San Luis home)

No problems dragging my favorite research files from little black book onto Kathleen's computer, so things could be worse.

I am firmly resisting the temptation to install a linux operating system on my new computer. But that means I will have to download unixlike stuff for windows that will give me utilities like ps2pdf etc.

So I can visualize hours of maintenance time getting my new computer to be useful.

The good news is my brain is still functioning and the sun is shining.

WELCOME HOME, MARIE

2006-07-10T17:05:00.000-07:00

Marie is home from Kuwait/Iraq, and will take on a stateside assignment here in California. She and Justin are with us for a while this week in San Luis Obispo.

This crazy conflict in Iraq has cost a lot more than most people thought when we went in. We are lucky that we have not been faced with a tragic loss of a dedicated and talented soldier and daughter.

The ones who have borne and are bearing the true burdens of this mistaken adventure come home, (the lucky ones) to a homeland where the citizens have not been asked to sacrifice seriously.
No draft, no special war tax, no rationing, no sweat, no danger.

ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE

2006-06-05T12:49:00.000-07:00

I am living in Paradise (San Luis Obispo). A warmer Paradise (than Morro Bay). Yesterday on the rear deck, getting a little sun (and Vitamin D), I took my thermometer with we and laid it on my lap. We were in the direct sunlight and I watched the fluid column climb to 118 deg F quickly, and then moved it into a little shade, where it settled down at 95 deg F.

This was pleasantly toasty compared to sitting on the deck in Morro Bay, but maybe this was the "outlier" of the data set.

Workers are still swarming inside our new quarters, as Kathleen keeps track of the priorities and the very limited dollars available. We spent a goodly chunk on rescuing the backyard landscaping and watering system. The design looks great, but we have some young and tender plants which may not survive this early summer (late spring) hot weather.

Today is Monday, and tomorrow night we go to our monthly book club, The Litwits (unitarian-universalist group). The book of the month is Skull Mantra, by Eliot Pattison. And I should be reading that book (200 pages yet to go) instead of writing this blog note. Where are cliff's notes when you need them?? Seriously, I abhore the whole idea of Cliff's notes. I would rather read the book directly without interpretation or summary, even if I don't make it to the end.

Skull Mantra is a devastating look at the Chinese occupation of Tibet, from the point of view of a former high level Chinese corruption investigator who has been punished with indefinite punishment in a Tibetan hard labor camp run by ruthless Chinese.

The details are gruesome and the fate of the Tibetan monks depressing, but it is an interesting story in the form of a traditional mystery novel.

THE BIG MOVE TO SAN LUIS OBISPO

2006-04-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

Well, the big move has happened (actually we moved from Morro Bay on April 4th, when escrow closed on our house in both Morro Bay and our new home in San Luis Obispo).

The carpenters, plumbers, electricians, furnace experts, handymen, vertical lift installers, window salesmen and master gardeners have been in frequent attendance ever since.

Kathleen, my dear wife, has shown again the great value of a high level of organisation. She started lining up available workers long before our escrow date, and thought deeply about every feature of our new house, setting priorities for what needed to be done to make this house a home.

Thanks to her hard work and energy, things are starting to jell. The biggest project is a remodel of a large strange room in the front of the house which had no obvious use. (In the middle of the room was a large marble sink!) Kathleen decided to turn this useless space into a guest bedroom, guest mini-bathroom, laundry room and her new office. She worked with the San Luis Obispo City hall folks to understand what we would need to do to get official permitted signofffs on this remodel, and found a fantastic contractor, Craig, who is here right now as I type, finishing the roughout of the remodel.

The "other" part of the house, our bedroom, living room, and "great room" face south toward a great view of Islay Hill, and Righetti Hill in the foreground, the airport, Edna Valley and distant range of hills in the background. We found very little real estate that really attracted our attention here in San Luis Obispo. We initially made an offer on a nice home two doors down the street: the offer was contingent on the sale of our home in Morro Bay. When our Morro Bay home failed to sell in the defined time period, we lost our chance for that home.

However, that failed attempt had introduced us to the neighborhood, which we liked a lot. And we kept looking at this house two doors down, which was also for sale. A strange house with a great view. After looking at a lot of unattractive homes with large sale prices, we finally made an offer as soon as we accepted an offer to buy our Morro Bay home.

I will miss being four homes away from the beach in Morro Bay, with a gorgeous designer Japanese garden facing a public creek area in our backyard, complete with waterfalls, mini-creek, pond, large deck, wood bridges, great statuary, and pleasant pine trees in the public creek area: a real retreat from the cares of the world. I loved getting into my manual wheelchair and wheeling myself toward the beach at the West end of the street, and heading down Beachcomber Drive along the ocean overlook for exercise. (post-polio syndrome has made it unwise for me to use my legs for exercise)

But I am glad to now be esconced in a great area of San Luis Obispo ("San Luis" to the locals) in a home with a restful view of the Southern area of San Luis. I am now close to Barnes and Nobel bookstore, Border's Books and Music, California Polytechnic University, a good music store, a vibrant downtown, Home Depot and Cosco (no Wallmart yet), etc.

We're still looking for a great Chinese and also a great Mexican restaurant (I guess we were spoiled by living in Long Beach for so long).

My new study/office is smaller, so one third of my physics and math library is in the livingroom.My digital keyboard is in the Great Room.

The weather recently has been more overcast than sunny. Today is heavy overcast with possible thunderstorms, including lightning and small hail. We are thankful for the rain, since our contractor Craig needs to work on his "inside" jobs when it is raining, and we are getting our remodel down at top speed. I just heard some thunder. "Pray for Rain"

Science is almost totally incompatible with religion

2005-08-23T15:32:00.000-07:00

Despite the phlethora of grandiose attempts to find some common ground between religion and science, science is almost totally incompatible with religion, says Peter Atkins, Oxford University physical chemist.

In an article published in Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 18, Number 2, available on the internet here, Peter Atkins writes:

"Science is almost totally incompatible with religion. I say "almost," but I do not wish that weasel word to be construed as weakness. The only point of compatibility is that there are well-meaning, honest people on both sides who are genuinely and deeply concerned with discovering the truth about this wonderful world. That having been said, there is no actual compatibility between science and religion.

Science's dispassionate stare examines issues publicly, exchanges information openly, discusses awkward points objectively, and builds up a network of interdependent ideas and theories that progressively expose the complex as an outcome of the simple. Religion's inwardly directed sentimental glow reflects on issues privately, exchanges information by assurance and assertion, discusses awkward points by warfare, terror, and coercion, and builds up a network of conflicting ideas that conceal ignorance under a cloak of high-flown yet empty prose.

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation. Science, with its publicly accessible corpus of information and its open, scrutable arguments, can lead the wondering to an understanding of the entire physical world. (Below, of course, I shall have to argue that that is the entire world.)

Science respects the power of the human intellect; religion belittles it. Science gives us the prospect of full understanding, for it continues to show that, given time, there is no aspect of the world that is closed to its scrutiny and explanation. Religion disarmingly avers that human brains are too puny to achieve full comprehension. Yet science is progressively advancing toward complete knowledge, leaving religions bobbing about in its wake. "

See the rest of this great discussion at the website of the Council for Secular Humanism.

==================================================

Atkins also has a great and devastating review of the inconic "Darwin's Black Box" by Michael J. Behe at this website, which begins:

"For those who have not already encountered this book or one of its numerous reviews, let me simply say that the author sets out to argue that the organic world is so complex, particularly at the level of molecular biology and biochemistry, that Darwinian evolution cannot possibly have led to it. As evolution cannot produce irreducibly complex systems (the blood-clotting process, for instance, the biochemist’s analogue of the eye), they must be the outcome of the activities of an Intelligent Designer. In other words, the book is a tiresome reworking at the molecular level of the timeworn "design" argument."

and later says:

".....With hard work and even the possibility of progress dismissed, Dr Behe waves his magic wand, discards the scientific method, and launches into his philosopher’s stone of universal explanation: it was all designed. Presenting this silly, lazy, ignorant, and intellectually abominable view -- essentially discarding reason and invoking that first resort of the intellectually challenged (that is, God) -- he present what he thinks is the most wondrous of theories, that the only way of achieving complexity is by design. There we see Dr. Behe dangling from his petard, proclaiming his "science" of intelligent design, while not troubling to seek the regulation of that awesome monitor of scientific enterprise, peer review."

==================================================
In an Aug. 23 New York Times article by Cornelia Dean with the title: Scientists Speak Up on the Mix of God and Science, examples of mainstream scientists who are devout Christians are presented.

How can we explain the phenomenon of mainstream scientists who are also devout Christians? In the body of Dean's article, we find a possible explanation:

Some scientists say simply that science and religion are two separate realms, "nonoverlapping magisteria," as the late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould put it in his book "Rocks of Ages" (Ballantine, 1999). In Dr. Gould's view, science speaks with authority in the realm of "what the universe is made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory)" and religion holds sway over "questions of ultimate meaning and moral value."

The percentage of scientists who "believe in God" (whatever that means is of course not clear) varies wildly on the sample polled. Later in Dean's report we find:

According to a much-discussed survey reported in the journal Nature in 1997, 40 percent of biologists, physicists and mathematicians said they believed in God - and not just a nonspecific transcendental presence but, as the survey put it, a God to whom one may pray "in expectation of receiving an answer." The survey, by Edward J. Larson of the University of Georgia, was intended to replicate one conducted in 1914, and the results were virtually unchanged. In both cases, participants were drawn from a directory of American scientists. Others play down those results. They note that when Dr. Larson put part of the same survey to "leading scientists" - in this case, members of the National Academy of Sciences, perhaps the nation's most eminent scientific organization - fewer than 10 percent professed belief in a personal God or human immortality.

Later, Dean reports some views on physicist and Nobel prize winner Steven Weinberg:

In any event, he added, "the experience of being a scientist makes religion seem fairly irrelevant," he said. "Most scientists I know simply don't think about it very much. They don't think about religion enough to qualify as practicing atheists." Most scientists he knows who do believe in God, he added, believe in "a God who is behind the laws of nature but who is not intervening."

And this from Richard Dawkins, Oxford Univ. biologist:

But Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary theorist at Oxford, said that even scientists who were believers did not claim evidence for that belief. "The most they will claim is that there is no evidence against," Dr. Dawkins said, "which is pathetically weak. There is no evidence against all sorts of things, but we don't waste our time believing in them."

UNINTELLIGENT DESIGN

2005-08-20T13:52:00.000-07:00

Don't miss the great New Republic book review by Jerry Coyne (U. Chicago Dept. of Ecology and Evolution biologist). Coyne reviews the book "Of Pandas and People", by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon. Pandas and People is the book students in Dover School District (Penna) were directed to if they desired an introduction to the ideas of Intelligent Design.

The review by Coyne has the title: "The Faith That Dare Not Speak its Name: The case against intelligent design," and appears in the August 22 & 29 issue the The New Republic.

Some other good (and shorter!) book reviews related to attacks on the paradigm of Darwinian and neo-darwinian explanations can be found on Coyne's faculty web page in pdf form.

Another (earlier) great discussion of the oxymoron called Intelligent Design is by H. Allen Orr in the New Yorker magazine, titled "Master Planned: Why Intelligent Design Isn't".

Not Physics, Not Poetry, The Blind Leading the Blind

2005-08-04T14:40:00.000-07:00

My Aunt Mary passed on a link to a website called New Dawn Magazine, containing an article called: The Out-of-Body Experience as Dimensional Translocation. New Dawn Magazine advertises itself as: A Journal of Alternative News and Information - For a New Consciousness, a New Humanity, a New Era!

The author, JIM DEKORNE, concludes after a very long trip:

"When we read the monotonously repetitive data on UFO abductions – how abductees are routinely transported through solid walls, beamed into spaceships, communicate telepathically with aliens, etc., we have to ponder what kinds of dimensional interfaces must be involved. Almost all serious researchers are now in substantial agreement that the UFO phenomenon is transdimensional in nature, though how higher-dimensional entities can “physically” introject themselves into three dimensional space remains maddeningly unresolved."

"...Everything we have examined so far suggests that these intruders from a fourth-spatial-dimension constitute the “angels, devils, fairies and elves” who’ve been interfacing with humankind since the dawn of time. The fact that they accommodate themselves to prevailing cultural illusions tells us immediately that (just like us), they are Ideas (spirits, points-of-view) evolving on some frequency within the Objective Psyche. They and we may even be co-creations – when fairies fade from credence in spacetime, the ideas they represent morph into space aliens to keep pace with current belief systems. Who creates whom?"

My Aunt Mary wanted my take on this stuff, so the following was my reply:

Hi Mary,

The physics of this speculation is not accurate.

examples:

author: Koan: Where do these photons (after their exhausting one-hundred million year journey through interstellar space) go upon entering your own personal black holes (eye-pupils)? The radiation from an entire galaxy registers on your brain, is interpreted by your mind, and then what? And then where? Surely those photons can’t just “wink out” after going to all that trouble to get here! Can they?

The radiation impinging on a telescope or eyeball from a distant object involves the conversion of the energy of the photon into the energy of chemical reactions which are used by the telescope detector or your eyeball to process the image. The photon is destroyed in the process, which happens all the time with no problem.

author: " Look at it another way: Imagine a point existing in some kind of pre-spatial “void” – the Tao, perhaps (whatever that is). Mathematically, a point has zero dimensions, but it exists anyway because consciousness defines it that way. A zero-dimensional point existing in “non-space” probably comes as close to “nothing” as we can imagine, but quantum cosmologists say that our universe was created out of just such a “singularity.” They also tell us that nothing can take place without an observer:

The "big bang" was a moment when matter and energy were in a highly compressed state (not infinite density) everywhere, not just at one "point".

The rest of this speculation is a good example of someone with not much academic training in physics making huge extrapolations based on a poor understanding of that physics.

Huge claims are worthless unless the proposer of the ideas shows how the ideas can be falsified by doing an experiment. If no experiment or observation can (in principle) prove the idea wrong, then it is not science but poetry.

Ted

=========================
In this case it is not poetry, it is the blind leading the blind.

President Bush on Intelligent Design

2005-08-02T14:45:00.000-07:00

By Dan Froomkin

Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, August 2, 2005; 2:15 PM

Ron Hutcheson writes for Knight Ridder Newspapers: "President Bush waded into the debate over evolution and 'intelligent design' Monday, saying schools should teach both theories on the creation and complexity of life. . .

"Scientists concede that evolution doesn't answer every question about the creation of life, but most consider intelligent design an attempt to inject religion into science courses.

"Bush compared the current debate to earlier disputes over 'creationism,' a related view that adheres more closely to biblical explanations. As governor of Texas, Bush said students should be exposed to both creationism and evolution.

"On Monday the president said he favors the same approach for intelligent design 'so people can understand what the debate is about.' "

Hutcheson writes that Bush "didn't seem eager to talk about the topic."

Here, in fact, is the entire exchange, prompted by Hutcheson's question:

"Q I wanted to ask you about the -- what seems to be a growing debate over evolution versus intelligent design. What are your personal views on that, and do you think both should be taught in public schools?

"THE PRESIDENT: I think -- as I said, harking back to my days as my governor . . . Then, I said that, first of all, that decision should be made to local school districts, but I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught.

"Q Both sides should be properly taught?

"THE PRESIDENT: Yes, people -- so people can understand what the debate is about.

"Q So the answer accepts the validity of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution?

"THE PRESIDENT: I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought, and I'm not suggesting -- you're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."

=====================================
This from a President who has largely ignored the advice of numerous panels of expert scientists trying to advise him on many problems.

Notice how the President's final reply completely sidesteps the question posed. Why does President Bush think that "intelligent design" should be treated on a par with the deep insights of evolutionary biology??

Isn't Yale University embarassed by their former student??
===================================

Clifford Johnson comments:

"I agree with the President that people should be exposed to different ideas. That does not include teaching them religious ideas under the guise of teaching them science. That does not include teaching science as if it was as much of a “he said, she said” enterprise as polititcs (or, currently, journalism). That this topic has taken up so much of the energy about science education in our country recently can’t help but affect the scientific literacy of the next generation of Americans and does a huge disservice to the goal of educating the next generation of scientists. I’m not surprised by the President’s comments, but I’m extremely dissappointed.

Update: Chris Mooney makes the excellent point that Bush is directly contradicting his (physicist) science advisor, John Marberger, who told a told a group of reporters earlier in the year that 'Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory.' ”

Why Is the Concept of Hell So Amusing?

2005-07-25T09:58:00.000-07:00

Being raised in a minister's family (he was Presbyterian and then Baptist and then...) exposed me to blood curdling sermons and conversations about Hell. Hell was not a funny subject when I was a kid in Dinuba and Fowler and Niland, California, and then at the Stony Brook School for Boys, Stony Brook, Long Island, New York.

My parents had zero interest in understanding the earth and the universe in terms of science. My teachers also seemed to have zero interest in the revolutionary insights provided by science.

The conventional wisdom was that Hell was in the center of the earth. Many years later, I was told that modern methods of physics and geology have revealed that the center of our planet is mainly metal (iron) and that shot down my vision of the location of Hell. Of course this was no problem for true believers, since (according to those true believers) the planet is full of things that are too complicated for us to understand with our puny minds.

If you google up some jokes, a lot of them concern heaven or hell. This first item from Shirley H. is an example of Unitarian-Universalist humor, and includes a great question to ask your priest or your minister:

Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
Priest: "No, not if you did not know."
Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"

(thanks to absolutelyjokes for the following joke):

A curious fellow died one day and found himself waiting in the long line of judgment. As he stood there he noticed that some souls were allowed to march right through the gates of heaven. Others, though, were led over to Satan who threw them into the burning pit.

But every so often, instead of hurling a poor soul into the fire, Satan would toss a soul off to one side into a small pile. After watching Satan do this several times, the fellow's curiosity got the best of him. So he strolled over and asked Satan, "Excuse me, Prince of Darkness," he said. "I'm waiting in line for judgment, but I couldn't help wondering, why are you tossing those people aside instead of flinging them into the fires of hell with the others?"

"Ah, those," Satan said with a groan. "They're all from Seattle. They're too wet to burn yet."

(thanks to boogieline for the following joke):

Bill Gates dies and is met at the pearly gates by St. Peter. St. Peter says, "Well, you've done a lot of bad things in your life, but you've done some good things too, so I'm going to let you take a look at both heaven and hell, and pick which one you want to go to."

Bill thinks this is fair, and takes a look around heaven. He sees a lot of people in white gowns playing harps and floating around, but it looks rather boring. He looks down at hell, and sees people laughing, drinking, smoking and partying down.

"I'll go to hell," Bill says, and instantly he is whisked away into hell, where he is immersed in a vat of boiling oil as flames and smoke fill the air.

"What happened to all that fun I saw people having?" Bill asks, shocked.

St. Peter looks down and says, "Oh, you must have seen the demo version."

(thanks to Kevin for the following two discussions of the properties of Hell):

The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan- Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (300K), gives H as 798K (525C).

The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 2:18 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C. -- From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972

A thermodynamics professor had written a take home exam for his graduate students. It had one question: "Is hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with a proof."

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or some variant. One student, however wrote the following:

First, we postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass. If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for souls entering hell, lets look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since, there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls to volume needs to stay constant. So, if hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose.

Of course, if hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, than the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.

(Thanks to Kevin Kelly) A group of Texans are driving down the road, whooping it up, drinking beer and shooting off their guns when they get into an accident with busload of nuns and orphans, killing everyone. The Texans go straight to Hell. When they arrive the Devil is shocked to see that they are not in agony over the heat and he demands an explanation.

"Well, sir, we're from Texas, and we're used to the heat," says one. This infuriates the Devil and he cranks the thermostat up to its highest setting. The lost souls all over hell start wailing. "I'll check on them in the morning and see how they like THIS." He snorts and disappears in a ball of fire.

The next morning, the Devil shows up at the Texans' camp site, and sure enough they are showing some signs of discomfort. They have taken off their 10 Gallon hats and are fanning themselves. One has even rolled up his sleeves. "Well, sir," explains a Texan, "when you have been on a cattle drive in Lubbock during August, this ain't hardly nothing." The Devil is now so angry he is seeing red.

"Those damn Texans seem immune to heat, let 's see what happens when I turn OFF the heat," he says as he heads to the thermostat. "I'll check on them tomorrow."

So in the morning the Devil arrives at the Texans' campsite, and they are all whoopin' and hollerin' and drinkin' the beers from the ice chest in the back of the pick up, now that they have ice to chill them with. The wail of the lost souls is deafening but the Texans are partyin' like there is no tomorrow.

"I don't get it," the Devil says, completely defeated. "I tried to roast you and it had no effect, and then I tried to freeze you and you are partying. You Texans are made of tough stuff. But why are you celebrating?"

A Texan takes a swig from a Bud in a longneck and replies, "Look around! Hell is frozen over. That's just gotta mean there is another Bush in the White House."

(thanks to lotsofjokes for the following joke):

The following is supposedly an actual question given on a university chemistry exam. The answer by one student was so profound that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state: that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell.

Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1.If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2.If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct ... leaving only Heaven thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A"!!!

Take Care, Marie

2005-06-27T14:55:00.000-07:00

Army Rangers praying

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
"Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"
And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
Isaiah 6:8

(I am including this verse, not because I believe in God, but because the verse was posted next to the above picture on the U.S. Army Ranger website, and it must reflect someone's idea that we are engaged in a "holy war"??)

High five with Iraqi child

Of my three step-daughters, Linda, Marie, and Cindy, Marie grew up with us in Long Beach (CA) as a natural leader. She was a born competitor, and was not always easy for us to keep track of.

After high school, we encouraged her to join the Army, thinking this would help her avoid "evil" influences in Long Beach, and give her a better idea of what she was good at and what she enjoyed doing in life. She met and married a fellow soldier while stationed in Germany, and they gave us our first grandson, Bennie, now 17 years old.

Marie returned to college (Calif. State Univ. at Long Beach, where I taught in the Dept. of Physics and Astron.), joined the Army ROTC program there, and graduated with a commission as a 2nd Lt. in the Army Transportation Corps. She has since done her best to "be all she can be", rising in rank to Major.

Her last assignment in San Diego county (in charge of Army recruiting there) allowed us to visit fairly often, driving down from Morro Bay. I have been impressed by the great job she has done. Her troops love her, and she is always willing to go the extra mile to get things right.

We also enjoy seeing Bennie, her second husband, James, and their son, Justin.

Now Marie is headed to Kuwait/Iraq for at least a year, and our thoughts are with her.

Some pictures:

Linda, Marie, and Cindy in a power-pose:

Linda, Marie, and Cindy all dressed up:

Marie with awards:

Marie and James:

Brandon and Tara are James' children from his first marriage. Here are Brandon, James, Tara, Marie, Bennie, and Justin.

And finally, a view of Iraq from the air:

Take Care, Marie

Fitness tips for people in a hurry

2005-05-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

Lynn Swann and author Judith Evans Thomas

Today's Washington Post features Sally Squire's Lean Plate Club column with some great fitness tips.

I am on a diet and going to physical therapy twice a week to recover from shoulder and bicep surgery. I've lost eleven pounds so far by cutting portions in half and going low fat and low carb.

The effects of post polio on my legs means I have to get my exercise using my upper body. This limits my exercise routine a lot.

One reason I need to lose weight is so my post-polio weakened legs will have less burden to bear. Another reason for weight loss is the fragility of my shoulders. Since I have used a manual wheel chair outdoors for aerobic exercise, I need to seriously use my shoulders, biceps, and back muscles to get the kind of exercise I need. If I weigh less, I need less strength from my upper body to get a workout.

Another idea to to get a super-light wheel chair, but they are expensive. The one I have now is a Action Patriot, a portable, fold-up manual wheel chair which is moderately heavy, and originally cost about 1200 dollars ten years ago. To get a superlight wheel chair which comes apart enough to get into our van would probably cost over 3000 dollars, and would not be covered by medicare.

Hear is a generous portion of the WP article to whet your interest:
===============================================

To most of us mere mortals, elite athletes often seem to eat right and stay in shape with an effortless grace. It's hard to imagine that they ever struggle to work out or are tempted to overeat and add unwanted pounds.

But former Pittsburgh Steeler wide receiver Lynn Swann, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, is here to set the record straight.

At 53, Swann maintains his playing weight of 185 pounds. These days, he juggles work and family, including two sons, aged 7 and 8. In addition to performing his council duties, a voluntary, presidentially-appointed position, Swann is an on-air college football commentator for ABC, which keeps him traveling six months of the year. It's the kind of routine that often makes healthful eating and regular physical activity difficult to sustain.

Here's what Swann suggests -- and practices himself -- to stay fit and to maintain a healthy weight:

Energize with exercise. "People who don't work out kind of wake up and just float through the day," Swann said. "They never get to the point where their body is revved up . . . and functioning at 100 percent. They don't have the same kind of energy or stamina" as those who stay active.

Something is better than nothing. When Swann finds his motivation lacking, he forces himself to get on a stationary bike. "We all have those moments where we don't feel like working out," he said. "Just going through the motions for 30 minutes a day is better than not being there."

Do double duty. Swann watches college game tapes while riding the stationary bike or using the elliptical trainer. "Exercise doesn't mean you're not working in other areas," he said.

Whittle waistlines slowly. Eat 1,800 calories daily, burn 2,200 calories daily and you'll create a "a gradual reduction in your weight," Swann said. How gradual? About three-quarters of a pound per week.

Have a Plan B . While waiting to go on the air, Swann is often surrounded by tempting, high-calorie food. His remedy: He packs himself a plastic bin marked "Swann's Healthy Food." "Some of the guys on the crew laugh at me," he said, "but it has Clif bars, cashews, raisins, protein bars, things that are transportable and will last for a long period of time."

Play the queen of hearts. Swann learned this trick from Navy Seals, who use a deck of cards to stay in shape in small quarters. Make each suit a different exercise. So hearts could be abs; diamonds, push-ups; clubs, core exercises; spades, squat thrusts. Draw the five of hearts and do five reps. Tens and face cards count for 10. Aces count for three sets of seven, so draw the ace of hearts and do seven crunches, seven full sit-ups and seven leg raises. "Anybody can do it," Swann said. "You can decide whether to make it cardio or how many times to go through the deck."

The Democrats Cave

2005-05-24T12:39:00.000-07:00

Well, the Democrats in the Senate have given it almost their all, now have decided to blink first, and still call it a victory. I don't think so. By giving in to threats of the "nuclear option", the Senate Democrats have bought the Brooklyn Bridge. An extraordinary deal based on the definition of extraordinary.

By not insisting on excluding (for the second year in a row) right wing loose cannons from the Apellate Courts, the Senate Democrats have lost their ability to invoke "extraordinary circumstances" if Bush nominates them soon for the Supreme Court.

As today's Noam Scheiber's New Republic blog (written today by T.A. Frank) remarks: "Republicans will allow Democrats to keep the filibuster as long as Democrats never use it. This way, both sides win (except for the Democrats). "

The rest of this comment on this bad deal is worth reading, so to save you from going over to the New Republic web site, here it is in its entirety:
=======================================

CENTER FOLDS: So a deal has been struck on the filibuster. Republicans will allow Democrats to keep the filibuster as long as Democrats never use it. This way, both sides win (except for the Democrats).
Once again, the Republicans have shown their skillfulness when it comes to resetting parameters. Until recently, the perception had been that Bush had consistently filled the courts with extreme conservatives, with only a handful of truly batty nominees failing to meet the standards of Democrats. Now, facing the threat of the "nuclear option," Democrats have backed down on these as well. Thanks to the "finest traditions of the Senate" (Robert Byrd's words yesterday), there's a new agreement under which, presumably, only the certifiably insane can possibly be blocked--or, to put it as the senators did, nominees can "only be filibustered under extraordinary circumstances." That way, if Bush's pick for a judgeship finally goes too far even for Republicans--if he nominates, say, an Irish setter who, during confirmation hearings, runs up and bites Orrin Hatch in the leg, then Democrats will be allowed to play the bad guys and employ their filibuster. Otherwise, they'd better hold off, since, if they don't, Republicans might have to take the filibuster away for real.

Of course, if Democrats had been filibustering half of Bush's 200-some nominees instead of only a handful, or if, for example, they had spoken endlessly of "maintaining balance on the courts" and insisted that Bush also nominate some "centrists" and not only "extremists," then a compromise position would have looked very different. But by bracketing the debate between two right-wing extremes--confirm every nominee except for a handful or confirm every nominee through use of the nuclear option--the Republicans had won before they'd even begun.

Meanwhile, skilled negotiators that they are, Republicans have been wise enough not to gloat over their victory. "It has some good news and it has some disappointing news, and it will require careful monitoring," says Bill Frist, admirably feigning disappointment. Meanwhile, Democrats, who must now back down and allow the confirmation of some truly radical judges, don't feel humiliated. In fact, they speak as if they've won. "In a Senate that is increasingly polarized, the bipartisan center held," Joe Lieberman proudly announced. And here's Assistant Democratic Leader Richard Durbin of Illinois: "There is nothing more exhilarating than being shot at and missed."

Exhilarating indeed. Can somone please resurrect the Whigs?
--T.A. Frank

=====================================================

life after surgery

2005-02-23T11:15:00.000-08:00

repair of a partially shredded right bicep muscle - cut off the bad part and reattach- plus slice and dice on my right ring finger - trigger finger syndrome - has me slowly getting back to normal.

i'm getting everything done with my left arm and hand - so away with capital letters for now - also anything fancy.

sitting on the sofa over the weekend with my march issue of scientific american magazine and the tube turned on to a three day book tv session gave me plenty to think about.

the articles on common misconceptions about big bang cosmology and about new analyses of the huge amount of data related to global ice age cycles, natural greenhouse gas cycles, and the prevention of new ice age by the invention of agriculture were the creme de la creme.

also enjoyed the interview with michael mann - u of va - who has been under continual attack since his alarming hockey stick plot of global deviations from expected global average temps. you would enjoy his blog site at www.realclimate.org .

the highlight of the long book tv weekend was sam harris talking about his book - the end of faith - religion, terror, and the future of reason. check out his website at www.samharris.org

harris was talking in front of an evening audience at a synagogue in irvine, ca - a very progressive audience and yet harris pointed out that religious moderates are part of the problem - since their token appreciation for parts of their holy books of choice undercuts their ability to confront the really crazy conclusions which fundamentalists of every stripe get from their holy book of choice.

harris' critique of fundamentalist islam, and islam in general, is devastating. if you are a true believer in the koran, the only sure way to spend eternity in paradise is to kill an infidel - ie someone who is not a true believer in the koran.

in an interview on the amazon.com website, harris responds to a number of questions about his concerns -this is only a sample to whet your interest.

6. But isn’t our conflict just with Muslim fundamentalists?

The distinction between “fundamentalists” and “moderates” has not really emerged in the Muslim world. Most Muslims are “fundamentalist” in the sense that they really appear to believe that the Koran is the literal and inerrant word of God. In any case, Islamic fundamentalism is only a problem for us because the fundamentals of Islam are a problem for us. There is a pervasive piece of wishful thinking circulating among religious moderates, and it could get a lot of us killed. The idea is that all religions, at their core, teach the same thing. This is myth. The principal tenet of Jainism is non-harming. Observant Jains will literally not harm a fly. Fundamentalist Jainism and fundamentalist Islam do not have the same consequences, neither logically nor behaviorally. Read the Koran. Osama bin Laden is playing it more or less by the book. Anyone who says that there is no basis for his worldview in the doctrine of Islam is either dangerously ignorant or just dangerous.

We must hope that the Muslim world is full of moderates who abhor the worldview of Osama bin Laden. But where are they? We cannot just assume that they exist. And the horrible truth is that if they do exist, they will be easily marginalized by their coreligionists.

7. But we’ve all seen moderate Muslims in the news, disavowing the actions of Islamic militants.

Have we? We’ve seen the occasional Muslim disavow the actions of Osama bin Laden, saying things like “Islam is a religion of peace,” but this is not a sign of Muslim moderation. We’ll know there are Muslim moderates in this world when they get on television and say things like: “There is much in the doctrine of Islam that should not be taken literally. It is, for instance, unacceptable to believe that people can get into Paradise by killing infidels and dying in the process. In fact, we’re not even sure Paradise exists. Nor are we sure that the Koran was written by the Creator of the universe. The Koran is an ancient book of religious wisdom, some of it applies to our modern circumstance and some of it does not.” Find a Muslim who can talk this way, and you will have found a Muslim moderate. You will also have found someone who is guilty of blasphemy and liable to be killed in almost any Muslim community on this earth. This is the problem with Islam.

8. This is all pretty inflammatory.

Yes. There really is a deal-breaker lurking here, and there is no use denying it. We should all be genuinely shaken by the knowledge that an entire civilization appears to think that the Koran is the wisest book ever written. How we have a conversation with 1.3 billion people about the dangerousness and illegitimacy of their core beliefs is a problem for which there may be no easy answer. But we must come to terms with the fact that the spread of technology has moved us to a crisis point. There is no possibility at all of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime that has acquired long-range nuclear weapons. More importantly, moderate Muslims, wherever they are, must come to terms with this. And they must find some way of marginalizing and containing the cult of death and martyrdom that has emerged in the Muslim world.

9. But some would say that it is not religion, but history, that explains Muslim—and specifically Arab—intolerance. Doesn’t the Israeli occupation play a role here?

You cannot deny that the Israeli occupation is at least part of the problem. The Israelis settlers are themselves religious extremists who are putting us all in danger. Their notion of God as some omniscient real-estate broker is one of the principal sources of conflict between the West and Islam. But anyone who thinks western or Israeli imperialism solves the riddle of Muslim violence must explain why we don’t see Tibetan suicide bombers killing Chinese children. The Tibetans have suffered every bit as much as the Palestinians. Over a million of them died as a direct result of the Chinese occupation of their country. Where are the Tibetan suicide bombers? Where is their cult of martyrdom? Where are the throngs of Tibetans seething with hatred, calling for the deaths of the Chinese? They are not likely to exist. What is the difference that makes the difference? Religion.

Faith in Immortality

2005-02-06T15:17:00.000-08:00

Epicurus

Where does the desire for immortality (e.g., living eternally with Jesus in Heaven ) come from? My former Cal State Long Beach Physics Department colleague, Larry Lerner, had a great quote on his office wall which provides a good answer. This is a translation of the ideas of the philosopher Epicurus:

Faith in immortality was born of the greed of unsatisfied people who make unwise use of the time that nature has allotted us.

But the wise man finds his life span sufficient to complete the full circle of attainable pleasures, and when the time of death comes, he will leave the table satisfied, freeing a place for other guests.

For the wise man, one human life is sufficient, and a stupid man will not know what to do with eternity.

Epicurus

Justice Scalia: "A Fool for Christ"

2005-02-04T14:11:00.000-08:00

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia is a serious contender for the position of Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Scalia is a champion of the "original meaning" of the U.S. constitution, and is a champion of the essentially religious (esp. Judeo-Christian) nature of our culture. For these and other reasons, he is regularly criticized by the liberal media and progressives.

Scalia seems to enjoy the scrutiny, and his visits and talks around the country are good bets for memorable quotes. The Village Voice's Mondo Washington has a brief summary of a Scalia talk at a Knights of Columbus event in Louisiana.

Mondo Washington
February 1st, 2005 12:21 PM
James Ridgeway, Nicole Duarte and David Botti

Scalia stumps for virgin birth

Thanks to a resurgence of interest in fundamentalist strains of Christianity, the realm of politics is being refreshed from any number of unexpected sources. In addition to such standard topics as the meaning of Israel in the end-times and ferreting out the Antichrist, there is fierce academic debate over God's role in creating the Grand Canyon.

Recently Justice Antonin Scalia, running neck and neck with fellow justice Clarence Thomas to become chief justice, jumped into the fray. In Baton Rouge for a Knights of Columbus shindig, Scalia took a moment to come to the defense of virgin birth. Noting that people widely mock such traditional beliefs, Scalia praised "traditional Catholics" who stand up for their faith, noting that "intellect and reason need not be laid aside for religion."

"It is not irrational to accept the testimony of eyewitnesses who had nothing to gain," said the justice. "There is something wrong with rejecting, a priori, the existence of miracles.

"If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world."

A more complete account of the talk is provided by the Advocate on line site:

Scalia: Faithful live for Christ

Supreme Court justice urges Christians to live fearlessly
By PENNY BROWN ROBERTS

Advocate staff writer

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Saturday that people of faith should not fear being viewed by "educated circles" as "fools for Christ."

The justice -- in Baton Rouge to address the Knights of Columbus Council 969 centennial celebration without charging a fee -- told a largely Roman Catholic crowd of 350 at the Holiday Inn Select that there's nothing wrong with "traditional Christianity."

"To believe in traditional Christianity is something else," Scalia said. "For the son of God to be born of a virgin? I mean, really. To believe that he rose from the dead and bodily ascended into heaven? How utterly ridiculous. To believe in miracles? Or that those who obey God will rise from the dead and those who do not will burn in hell?

"God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools ... and he has not been disappointed."

Scalia praised "traditional Catholics" who say the rosary, go on pilgrimages, kneel during the Eucharist and "follow religiously the teaching of the pope," adding that "intellect and reason need not be laid aside for religion. It is not irrational to accept the testimony of eyewitnesses who had nothing to gain. There is something wrong with rejecting a priori (deductively) the existence of miracles."

The outspoken conservative justice -- known for his views on religion in America -- didn't shy from them during his visit to south Louisiana Saturday. He didn't discuss any specific issues before the high court, but did tell those in attendance they had "no greater model" for their faith than St. Thomas More.

The Catholic martyr and considered the patron saint of lawyers, repudiated Martin Luther and refused to endorse King Henry VIII's plan to divorce Katherine of Aragon or recognize the king as the supreme head of the Church of England. More was found guilty of treason and beheaded in 1535.

"I find it hard to understand people who revere Thomas More but who themselves selectively oppose the teachings of the pope," said Scalia, widely cited as a potential nominee for the position of chief justice when William Rehnquist leaves the bench.

"If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world."

President Ronald Reagan named Scalia to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1982. Four years later, Scalia was nominated and unanimously confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, taking the seat vacated when was elevated to the court's top post.

The Catholic justice -- raised in the New York City Borough of Queens, and the father of nine children, one of them a priest -- has become an anti-abortion hero to many in the American political right and a leading conservative voice on the court.

He has described himself as an "originalist," following the Constitution as written by the Founding Fathers, rather than interpreting it to reflect the changing times.

In November, while speaking to an interfaith conference at a Manhattan synagogue, Scalia made headlines by saying that a religion-neutral government does not fit with an America that reflects belief in God in everything from its money to its military.

More than a year ago, he removed himself from the Supreme Court's review of whether "under God" should be in the Pledge of Allegiance after mentioning the case in a speech and complaining that courts are stripping God from public life.

Last year, Scalia cast one of two dissenting votes in a 7-2 Supreme Court ruling that states may deny taxpayer-funded scholarships to divinity students. And in 2000, he stood with a majority of the court in upholding the constitutionality of taxpayer funding for parochial school materials in a Jefferson Parish case.

Wine Selection for Seniors

2005-02-02T11:49:00.000-08:00

As a special service for our senior readers/viewers, I am passing on an ad for a fascinating new product from California:

Warning Label: Attatch to All Bibles

2005-02-01T13:23:00.000-08:00

Given the attempts by Christian fundamentalists to attach warning labels to school books which deal with biology, Bob Park (What's New: Friday, Jan 28, 2005) suggests that all Bibles should be similarly labeled:

“This book contains religious stories regarding the origin of living things. The stories are theories, not facts. They are unproven, unprovable and in some cases totally impossible. This material should be approached with an open mind, and a critical eye towards logic and believability.”

One Foot in Eden: a Novel

2005-01-31T16:11:00.000-08:00

Ted's Book Review of the Month:

One Foot in Eden, by Ron Rash

This is our current book selection (Litwits Book Club, San Luis Obispo Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship, SL0, CA).

I think I put this one in the pot for our annual selection effort, and boy did I luck out. A haunting tale of folks living in the Appalachian Mountains ( Oconee county, in the most mountainous corner of South Carolina, located along the South Carolina border).

A tale of a farmer and his wife living a tough life on hard soil with not enough of anything except hope. The farmer caught polio as a child and (perhaps because of that event) has no live sperm.

His beautiful wife gets "sage" advice from the strange elderly woman living far back at the end of Wolf Creek: the wife should get naked in the sight of the young neighbor who works the adjacent farm and is a wild and troublesome Korean war veteran who lives with his mother and welcomes a good fight in a honk-tonk in the evening.

Sure enough, the neighbor has no problem getting the 20 yr old beautiful wife pregnant, but then as the pregnancy becomes apparent, will force the couple to split up and the young wife to become his wife.

The husband correctly infers this will never turn into a good scene, hence the murder and coverup.

The story is told in first person in successive chapters by the County Sheriff, the wife, the husband, the son, and the Deputy Sheriff.

The writing takes you into the hill country dialects and hill country superstitions of plain, hard working country folk. The sense of place lingers long after you finish this book. The characters are just as conflicted as people generally are, and just as vulnerable to tragedy.

This one gets my five star award.

on not watching the inauguration

2005-01-20T11:09:00.000-08:00

Since I am not watching the inauguration, I have no idea what Dubya is saying about one's duty to die for the sins of the Iraqi people. If they (the Iraqis) had their act together, it would be a lot easier to belong to the world's lone superpower.

People generally get the government they deserve, and the most popular books in Baghdad bookstores (pre-liberation) were books about Adolph Hitler.

I would feel a lot better about our President's urges to save the world from godless incompetence if his daughters (and V.P. Cheney's) were in our front lines in uniform and flak jackets.

Oklahoma Biology Lesson

2005-01-09T13:05:00.000-08:00

Charles Darwin
Daniel Dennett, in Darwin's Dangerous Idea:

Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton & Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose, with the realm ... of physical law.

Despite Darwin's great pathbreaking ideas on the evolution of all living matter via natural selection, and despite the fact that 99.99% of biologists consider these ideas as the best explanation of the evidence available, Creationists in the U.S. persist in pushing an alternative explanation, currently called "Intelligent Design".

P.Z. Myers at http://pharyngula.org/ is a university biologist who maintains an active and powerful blog presence.

His "Oklahoma biology lesson" post is so good, I am going to repost it here, to help increase its visibility among the few lost souls who land (surely by accident) on my blog.
===============================================================
A lesson plan for Oklahoma

Hi, kids! Today, in our 8th grade life sciences class here in the beautiful state of Oklahoma, we are going to learn all about Evolution. Evolution is a powerful scientific tool to explain the wonders of the world around us, and a famous scientist once said that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. We're going to learn that it is even more powerful than that, and that evolution also helps us understand politics, religion, and economics; the light of evolution will show us the brilliance of our representatives in Oklahoma City, the enlightening faith that guides them, and that you lucky children will have a bright, happy future as Wal-Mart employees.

Everyone, open your science book to the inside front cover. Let's read this nifty little guide to biological science that we can thank Representative Bill Graves for. We will have to correct a few minor errors in it, but otherwise, it's very helpful.

This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory, which some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things, such as plants and humans.

Yes! This textbook does discuss evolution. That is correct. Rep. Graves is off to a good start. There is a mistake in the next part, though: he really shouldn't say it is a controversial theory. It is accepted by nearly every biologist on the planet. Could everyone scratch out the word "controversial"? Thanks.

Uh-oh, we still have some problems. "some scientists"? That's kind of misleading, I think. Scratch out "some", too.

And "present as a scientific explanation"? It is a scientific explanation. I'm not clear what he's getting at, but let's simplify. Draw a line through "some scientists present as" and write "is" above it. Good work! Let's move on.

No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be considered as theory, not fact.

Yes, Danielle? You have a question? "What about God?"

That's a hard question. Some people don't believe in god, and would say he wasn't present when life first appeared. Others think he was. We don't know one way or another, and we don't have any evidence for either possibility. Rep. Graves really shouldn't be saying that. We don't worry about god in science class, anyway.

Would it make you feel better if we scratched it out? OK. Everyone, draw a line through the first sentence.

If no one was present, though, does that mean we can't ever figure out if something happened? Was anybody around last weekend when the second floor toilet overflowed and flooded the art room? No? I guess that means it didn't happen then.

Oh, it did happen? How do you know?

That's right: evidence. The broken toilet left evidence of the event. We'd be pretty silly if we tried to claim it didn't happen because no one was standing there watching the whole time, wouldn't we? It's a good thing we scratched that sentence out already, because it made poor Rep. Graves look awfully silly.

The second sentence also has a problem. When we started this unit on science we explained what a theory was. Does anyone remember?

Exactly! It's an explanation that is well-supported by evidence. Rep. Graves is correct when he says that evolution is a theory. It is a very, very powerful explanation, and as you'll learn once we get past the inside cover of your textbook, it is very, very well supported by the evidence.

What about "fact"? What is that?

You kids are so good. Yes, it is an idea that is accepted as true, until further evidence refutes it. All the evidence so far supports evolution, and it has not been refuted, so it's also a fact. It is both a fact, just like the broken toilet flooding the art room is a fact, and it is also a theory or explanation, just like the story that Chunk Jones tried to flush Dexter's underpants is an explanation for how it was broken.

Hmmm. The second sentence in this paragraph is wrong, too. Maybe you should just scratch out the whole thing.

The word evolution may refer to many types of change. Evolution describes changes that occur within a species. (White moths, for example, may evolve into gray moths). This process is micro evolution, which can be observed and described as fact. Evolution may also refer to the change of one living thing into another, such as reptiles into birds. This process, called macro evolution, has never been observed and should be considered a theory. Evolution also refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced a world of living things.

Now you get to learn some useful things. Evolution is about change, and there are different kinds of change, even more than just the two Rep. Graves mentions here. One kind of change is change that doesn't result in a new species, and we call that microevolution, because the changes are small. Another kind is called macroevolution, because it results in big changes between species. This part of the paragraph is correct.

There are some problems, though. Evolution is a theory about populations, not individuals. We really don't talk about a white moth turning into a gray moth; the white moths stay white and the gray ones stay gray. Could you write "Populations of" just before the words "white moths"? Very good.

Rep. Graves also has the definition of macroevolution wrong. Scratch out "change of one living thing into another, such as reptiles into birds", and replace it with "change above the species level".

There is a typo in the next sentence. Macroevolution has been observed; we'll talk about fruit flies and Rhagoletis pomonella and the Faroe Island mouse and Culex molestus and ring species and many other examples later. Scratch out "never". Also, where he says "theory"? That should be "fact".

The last sentence is a bit of a mess, I'm afraid. Do we talk about "proof" in science class? No! Save that for Ms. Johnson's geometry class. Do we talk about "beliefs" in science class? No! We talk about evidence and hypotheses and theories and experiments. Both of those words have to go. We'll learn later that evolution is also not random; bye-bye, "random". "Undirected"? Well, the evidence is compatible with that idea, but you know what? This sentence has so many errors in it, let's just draw a line through the whole thing.

There are many unanswered questions about the origin of life, which are not mentioned in your textbook, including: Why did the major groups of animals suddenly appear in the fossil record, known as the Cambrian Explosion? Why have no new major groups of living things appeared in the fossil record in a long time? Why do major groups of plants and animals have no transitional forms in the fossil record? How did you and all living things come to possess such a complete and complex set of instructions for building a living body? Study hard and keep an open mind. Someday you may contribute to the theories of how living things appeared on earth.

I'm glad to see that Rep. Graves appreciates the many unanswered questions. Biology is an exciting topic, and one of the things that makes it fun is that there are so many new things to learn. I'm afraid some of his questions are wrong, though.

Your book does mention the Cambrian 'Explosion', like many general textbooks do. We have many hypotheses about how it happened, such as that it occurred as oxygen was becoming enriched in the atmosphere and making available new materials and greater metabolic rates, or that life evolved to a threshold of complexity that allowed for exploration of novel forms. We don't have nice, sharp, final answers, but it is an interesting topic. Since it's a good question, leave it in, but let's strike out "which are not mentioned in your textbook", OK?

I don't know what Rep. Graves was thinking of in his next question. Major groups have appeared much more recently than the Cambrian—flowering plants and mammals, just to name two we think are kind of important. Maybe you'd better scratch out this question.

The next question is also mistaken! We're going to show you lots of transitional forms from the fossil record: Basilosaurus, Homo erectus (calm down, Roger, or we'll be sending you to the prinicipal's office), Ichthyostega, I have a long list of really cool fossils to show you, and there are lots in your textbook. I think maybe Rep. Graves just forgot to read your book before putting in this question—so let's delete this one, too.

We do wonder how we got these specific, complex instructions that built your body, so that is a good question, too. As you'll see, we think the best answer is evolution.

The last sentence here makes me a bit sad. I'd like to think that someday you'll all be able to help learn new things about life, but some people in your state's government seem to be trying hard to make that difficult and confusing for you, and are making it difficult for me to teach you what you need to know. You're all smart kids, though, so I think you can overcome these obstacles. Let's leave that last sentence in and hope for the best.

So let's see how the revised textbook disclaimer looks.

This textbook discusses evolution, a ~~controversial~~ theory, which ~~some scientists present as~~is a scientific explanation for the origin of living things, such as plants and humans.

~~No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be considered as theory, not fact.~~

The word evolution may refer to many types of change. Evolution describes changes that occur within a species. (Populations of White moths, for example, may evolve into gray moths). This process is micro evolution, which can be observed and described as fact. Evolution may also refer to the ~~change of one living thing into another, such as reptiles into birds~~change above the species level. This process, called macro evolution, has ~~never~~ been observed and should be considered a ~~theory~~fact. ~~Evolution also refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced a world of living things.~~

There are many unanswered questions about the origin of life~~, which are not mentioned in your textbook~~, including: Why did the major groups of animals suddenly appear in the fossil record, known as the Cambrian Explosion? ~~Why have no new major groups of living things appeared in the fossil record in a long time?~~ ~~Why do major groups of plants and animals have no transitional forms in the fossil record?~~ How did you and all living things come to possess such a complete and complex set of instructions for building a living body? Study hard and keep an open mind. Someday you may contribute to the theories of how living things appeared on earth.

Much better! We had to spend today fixing the mistakes of your state representatives, but maybe tomorrow we'll be able to start working on biology. I sure wish politicians would leave the textbook writing to the authors and scientists.

Michelle! Please do not use language like that, and I don't know why Rep. Graves is such a butthead. I didn't vote for him, why don't you ask your parents?

Charles Darwin

Creationism Is Not Science Part 5

2005-01-03T15:27:00.000-08:00

The following website presents an approach to confronting a Creationist:

Scientific Evidence For Evolution and against Creation 'Science'

I like to think of Creation 'Science' as 'Armchair science' because it seems people who believe it have more opinion than fact. They look at it more of a debate of what happened than the science of what happened. I picture them smoking a pipe and pontificating on how God created the [all]. No one is stupid for believing this misapplied science. Only if people study for years will they know creationism is junk science.

It is more blessed to give than to receive.
Bible, Acts 20:35

I always thought how one sided creationist preaching's are. Some stranger armed with pamphlets and skilled in the evolved art of persuading minds to "Believe", against the average person and his/her common sense. If common sense were all you needed to fend off bad ideas there would never have been a "Spanish Inquisition," There would never have been Jews burned in ovens...

I always thought why not teach evolution to the creationist. They have no shame in knocking on your door and telling you "God wants YOU!" So why not turn the tables? I mean "It is more blessed to give than to receive" right? I made up my mind that whenever someone came to me preaching the bible (Or any religion) I would teach evolution. "Nature needs YOU!"

====================================================================
My first Saturday relaxing in my new home when I heard the door bell ring. I got up to see if it was a new neighbor needing a cup of sugar or welcoming me on the block. "Hello" I said with a grin "Can I help you?" They replied "No but I can help you." I looked up and down noticing the business suit and tie. The only people I know of that knock on your door on a Saturday morning, and dress like that is Jehovah's Witnesses.

A short man who looked like he was over dressed for an interview at K-mart asked in a quiet voice "What party do you vote for?" What did this question have to do with religion? I thought... I knew this was a loaded question but I answered quickly. "I vote independent." The man replied "Good! Very good... What if I told you you could vote for someone that could change you and your familys' life for the better right now... would you vote for him?" Knowing the trap which was laid in front of me, I answered "SURE!" He then pulled a pamphlet from his jacket pocket and said "By voting to put God in your heart you can change your life and your familys' life forever!"

My grin became larger as I tried to hold back my laughter. I couldn't help but note this was a beautiful way to introduce the idea. My next response was meant to ensnare my victim in the same way but also to make him feel in command. "How do you know there is a God?" This question is common, almost as common as the answer he gave. "You see this house? It didn't evolve from dust right? It was made by it's designer from the ground up. You are more complex than a house aren't you? You don't think this house could be put together by chance do you? So why would you believe you were?"

Yep, That was response # 1. The complexity argument. It's one of the easiest ways to trap an armchair evolutionist and convert them to armchair scientist. Just learning you came from an ape doesn't explain the complexity of the human anatomy. It seems as though everything is perfectly placed. The armchair evolutionist usually has no good answer to this question but a little open mind can go a long way.

"Isn't a God more complex than a human? Where did your God come from?" I said. I was ready for reply #2 and he didn't disappoint. "God didn't have to be made, he was here all along. He is eternal and infinite." To which I said "So why can't I say that the laws of Natural Selection/Evolution have always been here? At least there is evidence of evolution, and there is no evidence for a God."

The response was that glassy eyed "Yeah right!" as he told me of the ridiculousness of coming from an ape. "You believe you came from an APE!?", as he laughed. I replied while I pointed to the women helper with him: "And you believe you came from a spare rib?" ("Genesis:2:22: And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.) "Think about it... That wouldn't even fly as a Star Trek movie." There are mountains of evidence which support the idea that humans evolved from primates, but no evidence that suggests a women was created from a rib. It is a FACT that over 99.4% of human and primate DNA is the same. [1]

The woman quickly walked off my porch and looked at me as if she was looking at the devil himself. She actually wouldn't go back on the porch after that.

After about an hour, going back and forth, telling them the pamphlets they had are lying about things like the 2nd law of thermodynamics and transitional fossils, they left.
====================================================================

This site is dedicated to providing the armchair evolutionist with information needed to demonstrate to themselves and to others evolution that Darwin's idea of evolution by natural selection is the overwhelmingly best idea around to explain the evidence available to us about human origins.

[1] http://www.med.wayne.edu/news_media/2003/press5.asp

Creationism Is Not Science Part 4

2005-01-03T15:24:00.000-08:00

Excerpt from the following web site explores the connection between Creationism and Ecology:

The gospel truth, according to the book of someone said so.

Biblical Creationism presents a serious roadblock to ecological thinking. It is often used as an excuse to trivialize nature and promote human greed. Rush Limbaugh prefaces the chapter on ecology in his first book by proudly displaying his Creationist views, then proceeds to justify his arrogance toward anything non-human as part of a Biblical mandate. Many people mix Christianity with politics and force their beliefs on others via said politics. This violates the Constitutional separation of church and state (atheism is the lack of belief so it doesn't apply here). Creationism also contributes to scientific illiteracy and disrupts higher education. It clearly undermines biology, which in turn affects people's beliefs about nature.

At the core of Creationists' beliefs is an ancient book written by people who claim to have "spoken to God." This book only exists in an Earthly form and is no different than any other book except for its contents. It doesn't glow in the dark, and people who open it are not propelled upward on a beam of light. It's just a book (albeit with some wise advice in it) and it's clearly figurative in many areas. Creationists use a ridiculous circular argument which states that the Bible is literal because the "Bible says so" (which it never actually does). Don't bother pointing out the absurdity of this argument, because they have as many rationalizations as there are verses in the Bible. And they are willing to change the context of scripture to whatever suits the argument at hand. If science proves that Jesus couldn't have walked on water, Creationists will claim that the water was frozen, and so on.

Another Creationist tactic is to claim that the Bible is an "historical document," as if bits and pieces of reality prove that everything else in the Bible is literal. Is the fact that the Bible correctly describes the location of Jerusalem proof that Moses parted a huge body of water, that men lived to the age of 900, that stars fell to the earth and that all life on the planet was slapped down in seven days? These ideas would be laughed out of any courtroom but Creationists hide behind the notion that "anything is possible with God." They believe this absolves them from the need to prove anything through normal channels. It makes them impossible to reason with. The only thing that would give Creationism scientific validity is unbiased proof of a deity's existence, and this will never happen. They've already had 2000 years to come up with something concrete.

The Bible offers vague, supernatural explanations for phenomena like weather and earthquakes because the authors of the Bible had no means of understanding otherwise. Why is the topic of human origins the only scientific discovery that's so hotly contested by fundamentalists? It's because the origins of Man are considered far more personal than the workings of a storm cloud. Fundamentalists are hypocrites for accepting the scientific method when it gives them cars, computers and life-saving medicine. So-called "scientific" Creationism is just a religious crusade.

Christianity is not based on literal, universally accepted truths. Religion is generally passed down through families much the same way as speech patterns, mannerisms and the inclination to smoke or drink. One need only look at the geographical distribution of world religions to see this. If the Bible was a literal document containing universal truths, missionaries would not be needed to spread the gospel in foreign lands. The idea that all fundamentalists were "destined" to be believers is absurd. If there is truly one God watching over the entire planet, why are there so many different religions with multiple gods? How can fundamentalists know they're the chosen ones who've found the only way to live?

Creationism Is Not Science Part 3

2005-01-03T15:20:00.000-08:00

The following web site presents a broad definition of Creationism:

Creationism by Keith Matthews

This is the easiest of the ‘fringe’ areas to deal with, as it is the one that early archaeologists had to deal with. Creationism, in its broadest sense, is the belief that the entire universe was created by a divine being. The term covers a wide range of convictions, although it is most often used in a restricted sense to refer to the beliefs of protestant fundamentalist Christians, especially in the United States of America. The full gamut of creationist beliefs cannot be described here and most are mutually exclusive (it is a peculiar arrogance of the protestant fundamentalist Christian creationists that they have set the agenda for the debate to be between their version of creationism and science). Creationist beliefs range from the frankly bizarre (one example of ancient Egyptian cosmogeny has the creation of the world proceeding from the masturbation of the god Atum) to the charmingly naive (a Finnish legend has it that a teal built her nest on the Mother of the Primeval Water’s knee and when one of her eggs broke after the Mother twitched, the earth formed from one half of the shell, and the sky from the other). There are few people today who would demand that these sorts of accounts ought to be taught in schools as part of a science lesson, yet the Christian fundamentalists have occasionally been able to persuade various American state legislatures to accept that their particular creation story should be taught in this way.

Protestant fundamentalist Christian creationism is the most prominent form in the western world (and in particular, the USA), because of the privileged position held by the numerous different forms of Christianity in these states. In some Middle Eastern states, fundamentalist Islamic creationism is also a major force (in Taleban-ruled Afghanistan, for instance, it was the only permitted account of the origins of the world), but elsewhere, it is not an important phenomenon (something that may surprise many Americans).

The more extreme creationists believe that divine creation took place as little as 6000 years ago (following the chronology established by James Ussher (1581-1656; Archbishop of Armagh, 1625-56), who calculated the date of creation as 4004 BC); so-called ‘scientific creationism’ has grown up in an attempt to provide evidence that this account is correct. Other creationists are more subtle; some allow the earth to be considerably older than 6000 years, even as old as 4.3 billion years—which is what conventional science says—and restrict their beliefs to a denial that the universe can exist without a creating god. The question of creationism is something that has exercised American educators for many years, with numerous controversies about what can and cannot be taught in schools; it is not taken quite so seriously on this side of the Atlantic.

Creationism Is Not Science Part 2

2005-01-03T15:17:00.000-08:00

Excerpt from a good column by Massimo Pigliucci

Contemplating the meaning of life is one of humankind’s oldest occupations and we are peculiar for inventing all sorts of fabulous stories to make sense of our existence. One of the minimalist answers I run into puts the futility of such an effort in good evidence. It’s a cartoon with a series of living organisms, from simple creatures to more and more complex ones, ending, obviously, with humans. The caption says: “The meaning of life?” Every creature has a balloon that says “Eat, sleep, reproduce;” -- all except for the human’s, which asks: “What is the meaning of life?”

There is more to life than eating, sleeping and reproducing (though those are indeed fairly basic components). For example: writing columns or watching movies; being kind to your friends and relatives; and being at least decent to the rest of humanity. But, despite all our mythologies depicting an everlasting happiness in this or other worlds, we would condemn ourselves to a miserable eternity.

What then? Well, just make sure that your double role as director and star of your life’s movie is worthy of an Academy Award. It shouldn’t be that difficult…

Creationism Is Not Science Part 1

2005-01-03T15:09:00.000-08:00

A fun set of "frequently asked questions" from the following website:

A CREATIONIST FAQ

by Richard Harter

Q: What is the principle evidence for Creationism?
A: The Holy Bible, of course. After all, is it likely that the author of the Universe would be mistaken about its age?

Q: But isn't the Bible religion and not science?
A: Truth is truth. It's a poor sort of science that ignores truth.

Q: But isn't there a lot of evidence for evolution?
A: Not really, most of it is from university professors writing papers for each other. If they didn't write papers they wouldn't have jobs.

Q: How big was Noah's ark?
A: Big enough.

Q: But what about radioactive dating?
A: Hey, everybody knows that stuff is bad for you. Stick with good Christian girls.

Q: What about the fossil evidence?
A: The real fossils are university professors writing papers for each other.

Q: Is there any other evidence for creationism besides the Bible?
A: Yes.

Q: Can you give us some?
A: Yes.

Q: Could you give us a specific example?
A: Yes.

Q: What would be a specific example of evidence for Creationism?
A: I've already answered that question.

Q: What about the Antarctic ice core data?
A: Now I put it to you. Coop up a bunch of men in a Quonset hut in the worst weather in the world, with nothing to do but gather data and drink, and what do you expect?

Q: Did the dinosaurs coexist with man?
A: Look, the liberals were preaching coexistence with the Communists, and you saw what happened to them.

Q: Should Creationism be taught along with Evolution in the schools?
A: Creationism should be taught instead of Evolution in the schools.

Q: Doesn't the Geologic Column prove that the Earth is very old?
A: The geologic column proves that some things are on top of other things and some things are underneath other things. But we already knew that, didn't we.

Q: Hasn't evolution been demonstrated in the Laboratory?
A: Students are demonstrating everywhere these days. To their shame, many professors are demonstrating also.

Q: Aren't Hawiian wallabies an example of Evolution in action?
A: No.

Q: Why not?
A: Because they aren't.

Q: What is a kind?
A: A kind is cards of the same rank. Thus 4 aces and a king are four of a kind, but four spades and a heart are not.

Q: Doesn't genetic variation indicate that life has been going on a long time?
A: Let's be up front about this. That's deviation, not variation, and yes, there is a lot of deviancy out there. That just shows that there has been a lot of Sin since the garden of Eden.

Q: What about Neanderthal Man?
A: Hey, you take one of those geezers and put him in tweeds and give him a pipe and he could be a professor anywhere.

Q: Some scientists state that the earth's continents are drifting around on top of a molten interior which has shaped life as we see it now. Are they right?
A: As you well know the Bible says that beneath the surface of the earth is Hell where there is eternal fires and brimstone. If the continents appear to be moving around that is Satan's doing.

Q: Why do almost all of the scientists believe in Evolution?
A: The real scientists don't. As for the rest of them, that's a very good question, isn't it?

Q: Are you talking about a Satanic conspiracy?
A: Did I say anything about a conspiracy? You might want to think about the shape the world is in since the Evolutionists and the Liberal Humanists captured academia and how Evolution is hand in hand with Godless Communism and crime in the streets but I certainly wouldn't want to say anything about a Satanic conspiracy. I just want you to think about it with an open mind.

Polar Bear Dip Time

2005-01-02T13:57:00.000-08:00

January 1 is the time for endless football bowl games on TV in the comfort of your warm home and, for the more adventurous, time for a dip in the whatever is the coldest water available.

The Lake Powell Polar Bear Club has a not very persuasive list of reasons you should participate:

1) Shocking the circulatory system can produce a warm afterglow and a transcendental state that one literally needs to experience to fully understand.

2) It is a spiritually uplifting ritual which can surpass any normal level of comprehension.

3) It can reduce wrinkles. Drastic temperature changes and shivering skin actually exercise shallow sub-cutaneous muscles that firm the skin.

4) You become part of history rooted in the European tradition of saunas and cold-water bathing.

5) Jumping in near-freezing water wearing little more than a pair of shorts takes a brave soul.

6) Participants build a sense of camaraderie and valued friendships that can last a lifetime.

7) It helps mentally by shortening the winter season and lifts bouts of depression.

8) It's a heck of lot cheaper and safer than walking on coals.

The Wrath of God ??

2004-12-31T13:54:00.000-08:00

Luke 9:27 But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.

Nehemiah 9:31 Nevertheless for thy great mercies' sake thou didst not utterly consume them, nor forsake them; for thou art a gracious and merciful God.

Christian fundamentalists assert that their God is in total control of his Creation. When "bad things happen" like the recent death of many people along the coasts of Indonesia and Asia, their God is clearly responsible. But the ways of God are "mysterious".

Invoking a "mystery" as an explanation is never satisfying and never enlightens. Their God is a "God of Love" , especially if you believe and "are saved". Their God is a "God of Wrath", with elements of mercy, for those outside the fold.

Is there a special lesson here about the evil of Non-Christians (Muslims, Bhuddists, Hindu,...)?? Christian fundamentalists believe Non-Christians are already on the way to Hell, and maybe they needed a little shaking up to get them to see the "light" ??

So maybe, the deaths of 100,000 plus Non-Christians is ok because many more may be saved from eternal damnation??

The existence of "evil" and awful events has always been a deep problem for Christians, and it will always be such. But such is the tortured existence of those who believe in the book: reason can only lead one astray.

"Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason"
(Martin Luther: V, 425 )

"There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason, especially if she enters into spiritual matters which concern the soul and God. For it is more possible to teach an ass to read than to blind such a reason and lead it right; for reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed."
(Martin Luther: V, 1312 )

A New Year's Wish

2004-12-31T13:01:00.000-08:00

May you get a clean bill of health from your dentist,
your cardiologist,
your gastro-enterologist,
your urologist,
your proctologist,
your podiatrist,
your psychiatrist,
your plumber
and the I.R.S.

May your hair,
your teeth,
your face-lift,
your abs and your stocks not fall
and may your blood pressure,
your triglycerides,
your cholesterol,
your white blood count
and your mortgage interest not rise.

May New Year's Eve find you seated around the
table, together with your beloved family and
cherished friends.
May you find the food better,
the environment quieter,
the cost much cheaper,
and the pleasure much more fulfilling than
anything else you might ordinarily do that night.

May what you see in the mirror delight you,
and what others see in you delight them.
May someone love you enough to forgive your faults,
be blind to your blemishes,
and tell the world about your virtues.

May the telemarketers wait to make their sales
calls until you finish dinner,
may the commercials on TV not be louder than the
program you have been watching,
and may your
check book and your budget balance
and include generous amounts for charity.

May you remember to say "I love you"
at least once a day to your spouse,
your child,
your parent,
your siblings;
but not to your secretary,
your nurse,
your masseuse,
your hairdresser
or your tennis instructor.

~Extracts from a Prayer by Rabbi Jacob Pressman~

thanks to shirley for passing this along...

Twas the year 2029 and...

2004-12-10T09:55:00.000-08:00

Ozone created by electric cars now killing millions in the seventh largest country in the world, Mexifornia, formally known as California. White minorities still trying to have English recognized as Mexifornia's third language.

Spotted Owl plague threatens northwestern United States crops and livestock.

Baby conceived naturally . . scientists stumped. Couple petitions court to reinstate heterosexual marriage.

Last remaining Fundamentalist Muslim dies in the American Territory of the Middle East (formerly known as Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon).

Iraq still closed off; physicists estimate it will take at least 10 more years before radioactivity decreases to safe levels.

France pleads for global help after being overtaken by Jamaica

Castro finally dies at age 112; Cuban cigars can now be imported legally, but President Chelsea Clinton has banned all smoking

George Z. Bush says he will run for President in 2036.

Postal Service raises price of first class stamp to $17.89 and reduces mail delivery to Wednesdays only.

85-year, $75.8 billion study: Diet and Exercise is the key to weight loss.

Average weight of Americans drops to 250 lbs.

Japanese scientists have created a camera with such a fast shutter speed, they now can photograph a woman with her mouth shut.

Massachusetts executes last remaining conservative.

Supreme Court rules punishment of criminals violates their civil rights.

Average height of NBA players now nine feet, seven inches.

New federal law requires that all nail clippers, screwdrivers, fly swatters and rolled-up newspapers must be registered by January 2036.

Congress authorizes direct deposit of formerly illegal political contributions to campaign accounts.

Capitol Hill intern indicted for refusing to have sex with congressman.

IRS sets lowest tax rate at 75 percent.

Florida Democrats still don't know how to use a voting machine.

Texas votes to secede from the United States effective Jan. 1, 2036.

The Nobel Prize Money: An Example of Generosity

2004-12-09T14:51:00.000-08:00

Gunter Globel is a cell biologist who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1999. He is the director of the Laboratory of Cell Biology at Rockefeller University.

The New York Times carried an interview with Globel on Dec 7, 2004. He explained that one of his concerns is the responsibility of scientists to try to explain their work in terms which the layman can understand. "I'm always telling my students that if they can't explain what they are doing [in science] to their grandmothers then they probably don't understand it themselves."

Upon receiving the Nobel prize in 1999, Blobel donated the prize money (one million dollars) to the effort to rebuild the synagogue which the Nazis destroyed in Dresden in 1938 (Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass) , and which cost 10 million dollars to rebuild, as well as the effort to rebuild the Lutheran Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady. The Frauenkirche collapsed after bombardment of Dresden by English and American aircraft in the Spring of 1945, near the end of World War II.

Before receiving the Nobel prize, Blobel had started the Friends of Dresden as an effort to raise money to restore some of the architectural glory of pre-war Dresden. As a child of 8 yr., Blobel had passed through Dresden as his family fled Silesia to escape from the invading Russian army. A few days later the city was firebombed by the Allies, and Blobel later saw the horrific destruction.

Blobel has spent many years looking for scientific evidence for his ideas about how proteins created in a cell are able to be transported to the correct location in the cell for executing their particular jobs.

Much of this time his work and ideas were heavily criticized by his peers. When asked in the New York Times interview about his ability to ignore this initial criticism, Blobel replied:

"I've never cared about being judged. There is an internal revolt in me against conforming. After the war [WW II], my family lived in East Germany and that taught me that truth is the most holy and important thing in life. I thought my ideas were reasonable. So why not propose them?"

Gunter Blobel Accepts Nobel Prize
From the Howard Hughes Medical Institute description of Blobel's research:

"The billion or so protein molecules of an average mammalian cell are constantly being renewed—that is, degraded and resynthesized about once every month. Each cell contains about a dozen compartments enclosed by a membrane. Each of the membranes and the compartments they enclose are composed of distinct proteins, and both the compartments and their surrounding membranes carry out distinct functions.

Membranes are impermeable to proteins. Essentially, proteins are synthesized in only one of the cellular compartments, the cytoplasm (although a few are synthesized in the mitoplasm of mitochondria and the chloroplasm of chloroplasts). How are newly synthesized proteins directed to their proper membranes and compartments? And how do these relatively large molecules traverse the compartmental membranes without destroying the essential gradients of small molecules and ions that exist across each of these membranes? ... "

The Problem with Fundamentalist Christians

2004-12-03T13:11:00.000-08:00

In a recent N.Y. Times op-ed piece, David Brooks complained about the inclusion of Jerry Fallwell and Al Sharpton "in a discussion on religion and public life" on the Sunday morning Tim Russert Meet the Press show. Brooks says:

"Inviting these two bozos onto "Meet the Press" to discuss that issue is like inviting Britney Spears and Larry Flynt to discuss D. H. Lawrence. Naturally, they got into a demeaning food fight that would have lowered the intellectual discourse of your average nursery school. [I don't understand why Brooks thinks Sharpton is at the low level of Fallwell ]

"This is why so many people are so misinformed about evangelical Christians. There is a world of difference between real-life people of faith and the made-for-TV, Elmer Gantry-style blowhards who are selected to represent them. Falwell and Pat Robertson are held up as spokesmen for evangelicals, which is ridiculous. Meanwhile people like John Stott, who are actually important, get ignored.

"It could be that you have never heard of John Stott. I don't blame you. As far as I can tell, Stott has never appeared on an important American news program. A computer search suggests that Stott's name hasn't appeared in this newspaper since April 10, 1956, and it's never appeared in many other important publications."

Later Brooks continues with John Stott's positions:

"Most important, he does not believe truth is plural. He does not believe in relativizing good and evil or that all faiths are independently valid, or that truth is something humans are working toward. Instead, Truth has been revealed."

And in Stott's own words (as reported by Brooks):

"In Christ and in the biblical witness to Christ, God's revelation is complete; to add any words of our own to his finished work is derogatory to Christ."

I normally agree with a lot of David Brook's opinions, but his reference to a "better" representative of the evangelical mind set off alarm bells. Since I had never heard of his "John Stott", I proceeded to Google search the name. I found a great comment by Bishop John Shelby Spong on beliefnet.com called "John Stott: A Fundamentalist in Sheep's Clothing? I have selected parts of this dissection of the evangelical mind and also used light editing. (See the link for the entire un-edited version)
======================================
John Stott is probably England's best known and most published evangelical Christian.

John Stott struggled all his life to make his dated version of Christianity relevant to the modern world. That is not easy since he, like all evangelicals, starts with the assumption that the Bible is "revealed truth."

For John Stott, the proper method for settling questions for Christians is to search the Bible's pages for answers. Revealed truth for him is timeless, and thus Holy Scripture provides eternal solutions for all contemporary issues--an argument made by fundamentalist Christians.

Stott is sophisticated enough to know the literal Bible is filled with land mines, so he steps delicately around those places in Scripture where women are defined as the property of men, where polygamy is affirmed, where menstruation is regarded as a source of uncleanness, where slavery is viewed as an acceptable social institution, and where capital punishment is prescribed for such offences as being disobedient to one's parents, worshiping a false god, or being a homosexual.

Yet all of these things are present in the Bible Stott calls "the revealed truth of God." One wonders what he means by the use of both of those words "revealed" and "truth."

When challenged, Stott’s pious smile disappears and his soft voice becomes edgy and rejecting. He suggests that anyone who disagrees with him disagrees with the revealed will of God. He seems never to have heard of Bible 101.

The Bible was written between 1000 B.C.E. and 135 C.E. It makes assumptions that modern men and women cannot make unless we turn off our minds to the expansion of knowledge over the last 400 years.

The Bible reflects the three-tiered universe of the pre-Copernican world. It defines God as a supernatural being, living "above" the sky, capable of invading this planet earth in miraculous and not always moral ways to accomplish what is called his "divine will".

This God strikes the Egyptians with a series of devastating plagues, which include murdering the firstborn son of every family of that nation. Is that moral behavior? This God then opens the Red Sea for the Jewish people to escape and closes the Red Sea to drown the Egyptian pursuers. It is not a very pleasant view of God if you happen to be Egyptian.

Evangelicals base their understanding that the male is to be the head of the family on the words of a patriarchal social order written 2,000 years ago when women were not educated and not regarded as equal in the sight of God. Might we ask whether they have confused "revealed truth" with "prejudiced sin"?

Evangelicals oppose divorce based on what they call "clear biblical teaching." Yet that clear teaching is predicated on the inferiority of the woman. It was not until the 20th century that women won the legal right to leave abusive marriages.

Does "revealed truth" compel a woman to place herself in harm's way, or, if she manages to escape, does it then condemn her to a life of loneliness when she finds the courage to walk away from an abusive husband? I do not think so, and I would not care to worship a God who was presumed to suggest that such was "revealed truth."

Evangelicals are vehemently opposed to any acceptance of homosexuals because they are condemned, or at least their behavior is, in the "revealed truth" of Holy Scripture.

That is nothing but a claim of uninformed ignorance. There is almost no scientist today who thinks sexual orientation is either chosen or changeable behavior.

Is it appropriate for anyone to make judgments on sexual orientation today based on the ancient book of Leviticus, or the story of Sodom from Genesis, both of which were written more than 2,500 years ago?

The writers of the Bible thought God brought rain, floods, drought, and heat waves as punishment for sin.

Only television evangelist Pat Robertson still seems to think that way, for he not only was said to have prayed a hurricane away from his Virginia television empire, but to have warned the people of Orlando, Florida, that they were at risk of a hurricane for passing a gay-friendly city ordinance.

When fundamentalists and evangelicals come to the Christ story, the stakes go up dramatically, and the claims for the "revealed truth" of the Bible become excessive. But biblical scholars note the disparities in both the story of Jesus' birth and of his resurrection.

They also note that both the virgin birth and the resurrection, understood as physical resuscitation, do not even enter the Christian story until the ninth decade of the Christian era.

Evangelicals tell the story of the crucifixion of Jesus in terms of God demanding the sacrifice of his son. They wax eloquent about the intrinsic sin of human life, its "fall" from grace, its need for rescue and restoration to a pre-fallen status.

Yet we know from the fact of human and animal evolution that there never was a "fall" into sin because there never was a righteous "pre-fallen" human status, either in history or in mythology.

Evolution teaches us that life has emerged and evolved over billions of years. Human beings are incomplete creatures who need to be empowered. We are not fallen creatures, lost in sin, who need the bloodshed of a human sacrifice of the son of God in order to have the price of our sins paid to a judging deity. What a grotesque idea this "revealed truth" is. I am repelled by those images.

"Revealed truth" turns out to be evangelical propaganda.

The Bible tells us that in the life of Jesus, every life is loved, even those who reject, betray, deny, and kill the God-bearer. Finally, the Bible suggests that every life is called into the fullness of his or her humanity by the life of the Spirit.

That is our destiny--to be our deepest, fullest, most complete selves in all of our wondrous diversity. That is the truth that keeps breaking through the barriers of Scripture.

The fundamentalist, evangelical tradition will do nothing except justify the human divisions between the saved and the unsaved. That religious stance will ultimately victimize every person who does not reside inside the definition of the Bible as "revealed truth," as evangelicals interpret it.

The Historical Jesus: A Sharper Image

2004-11-30T15:24:00.000-08:00

The Gospel according to Robert Funk
By Patrick Sullivan
From the May 7-13, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

ONCE UPON A TIME, Robert Funk was a teenage evangelist preaching to packed revival meetings. "I did that when I was starting out, sort of being a hotshot. I knew how to make people laugh, make them cry," Funk recalls with a self-deprecating chuckle, voice tinged with regret. A lot has changed since those evangelical days.

Now, as he sits in his busy Santa Rosa offices, the bespectacled, white-haired Funk is preaching a new gospel ... literally. The architect of a collaborative scholarly effort called the Jesus Seminar, Funk is the focus of a massive firestorm of controversy over the group's radical reinterpretation of the heart of the New Testament.

Essentially, the Jesus Seminar places Jesus Christ under the scholarly microscope. The deeds and words of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels are collected and evaluated by experts from various fields in an effort to establish their historical authenticity. The results then have been published in the seminar's 1995 bestseller The Five Gospels and in the newly released The Acts of Jesus (HarperSan Francisco; $35).

The shock waves generated by the final tallies have yet to quiet down. "We found that only 16 percent of the events we evaluated from the gospels were likely to be authentic," says Funk, a distinguished biblical scholar.

Indeed, the portrait of Jesus that emerges from the two books is deeply at odds with Christian orthodoxy. Forget the miracles: Funk dismisses anything like the idea of Jesus walking on water or raising the dead. Even the cozy stable in Bethlehem is out; it seems Jesus was actually born in Nazareth. More seriously, the historical Jesus is portrayed by the Jesus Seminar as a charismatic iconoclast who attacked contemporary religious institutions and social mores with revolutionary zeal and biting humor.

Of course, scholarly challenges to religious doctrine are nothing new. Riven by uncertainty, fraying into fundamentalism, Christianity might seem to some to be an easy target. But Funk argues that the Jesus Seminar's findings constitute an important new crisis for the faith.

"The rediscovery of who Jesus really was has powerful implications for the Christian tradition, for the institutions that grew out of this figure," Funk says. "If we allow him to have something to say about those institutions, they're going to suffer a new and sweeping reformation."

THIS CONTROVERSIAL effort had its beginnings here in California in 1985, when Funk, troubled by religious doubts and hungry for truth, put out a call for scholars to come together to discuss biblical issues. He was pleasantly surprised to have 35 people show up to the first meeting.

"Nobody had ever inventoried all the words attributed to Jesus or collected all the stories told about him, so I wanted to do that first," Funk says. "I guess I have the Tom Sawyer approach to painting fences. You have a big fence to paint, you get a bunch of people to help you paint it."

The big question tackled by the Jesus Seminar concerned the origin of what we now accept as the standard accounts of the life of Jesus. The first written narrative gospel, the Gospel of Mark, wasn't put down on paper until 50 years after the crucifixion. So how was information about these remarkable events transmitted across this half-century gap?

Circulated by word of mouth, subjected to reinterpretation and distortion, the discrete stories and sayings of Jesus were further shaped and augmented by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John when the evangelists turned the tales into coherent narratives.

"They were told and retold and passed around as single anecdotes," Funk says. "The same thing happens in the transmission of jokes today. We hear them and retell them and change them a little every time."

The scholars of the Jesus Seminar attempted to evaluate how much truth survived by watching for anachronisms, historical inaccuracies, and narrative impossibilities. They also asked medical experts to help explain accounts of miraculous healing and came up with some surprising theories, including the notion that Jesus may have exercised his powerful charisma to cure what we would today consider psychosomatic afflictions.

To people of faith unsettled by all of these revelations, Funk offers his compassion. For decades, he has struggled to hold on to his own deeply held religious beliefs, and he knows how troubling it can be to see them slipping away. While he still considers himself a Christian, he also knows that every day new scientific discoveries punch holes in the old framework of belief.

"I have a very deep sympathy for those people who are losing their faith," says Funk. "The myths that we live by have deep emotional roots--they're wrapped around our hearts."

Of course, not everyone accepts the Jesus Seminar's findings. Critics argue that the portrayal of Jesus as an iconoclastic opponent of religious institutions is suspiciously close to exactly what the seminar might be expected to find--God in their own image. To that criticism, Funk replies with some heat. "Most people who criticize that way never stop to think that the same thing also applies to them," he argues.

"The thing to do is to look at the actual evidence."

But he also acknowledges that the uncertainty among religious scholars holds true even among his allies. No one is sure what Christianity will look like in the new millennium. "I know many of the theological leaders of the churches, and I know they're at sea, as all of us are," Funk says. "We're about to cross a watershed of enormous significance. What's on the other side is difficult to say."

source: http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/05.07.98/funk-9818.html

Miracles and the Jesus Seminar

2004-11-30T15:17:00.000-08:00

adapted from a report by David Millikan on a visit to Sydney of the Jesus Seminar in Sept. 1998

(http://www.shootthemessenger.com.au/u_nov_98/infowism/funk.htm)

John Squires teaches New Testament at the School of Ministry. He spent an hour giving a fine introduction to the major texts and developments in what is now called the "Renewed Search for the Historical Jesus". He was talking about the torrent of information now available to New Testament scholars who wish to broaden their understanding of the culture, politics, religion and economic circumstances in which Jesus lived.

Compared to the early search for the historical Jesus which made its way into the public arena through the writings of Albert Schweitzer (1910) , there is an extraordinary amount of detail now available to us about the life of Jesus. It is this mass of material which fuels many of the studies that emerge from the Jesus Seminar. The state of the economy in Palestine, the character of the Roman occupation, the kinds of wine and food consumed, the condition of religion and many other questions about life in Jerusalem and Galilee during the time of Jesus can now be answered with some assurance. It is remarkable that the further we move away in time from the first century, the greater is our knowledge of what happened.

In the last 20 years a number of ideas about Jesus have emerged. There are those who say that we should see Jesus as a Rabbi among the other Rabbi's of his day. Robert Funk disagrees with this saying that Jesus clearly did not have the training necessary to inhabit this role. Others have suggested that he was a Zealot and part of the resistance movement which flared into life in the years after his death.

Others argue that Jesus was a sage, or a sort of wise man. There are those along with A.E. Harvey, E. Wright and E. Saunders have argued that Jesus was an eschatological prophet, whose central message was the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God. Dominic Crosson, a Catholic priest and a well-known member of the Jesus Seminar, has taken another view, arguing in his recent books that Jesus was a peasant or marginalised Jew at the bottom of the social structures of his day. Other views see him as an Essene, a magician, or a "holy man"whose preoccupation was in criticising the contemporary concept of holiness.

All the scholars of the Jesus Seminar have in common the view which says God does not interfere with the natural process of this world through miracles. Beginning from this point of view, they are highly sceptical about stories of Jesus healing people, walking on water, bringing a man back from death, turning water into wine and so on. They have taken a position which puts them at odds with the orthodox center of Christianity.

Robert Funk, and the others in the Jesus Seminar, approach the New Testament already convinced that any stories of miracles, are not true. They look on the miracle stories as something other than history. For example, John Squires spoke with great assurance about the sort of house Jesus lived in (flat roof, made of mud), the sort of food he ate, the sort of clothes he wore etc. These are conclusions we can draw from historical data. But when we approach the miracle stories, Squires says: "Now we are moving from historical stories to stories which bare the character of confessional statements."

The argument proposed by the Jesus Seminar in regard to miracles goes like this: "At the end of the 20th century, Christians can no longer cling to a pre-scientific view of the world which puts God in heaven making the occasional foray into the world to disturb the natural order of things, so that he can achieve his divine purposes. The rise of modern science means that we must now read the miraculous stories of the New Testament aware that the early Christians had a naive belief that many things in the world were supernatural or miraculous."As Funk put it: "Why do we refuse to believe in the miracles which Homer wrote about and accept the miracles of the Gospels?"

It is Funk's view that the era of believing in miracles is well past. The world as we know it has moved beyond the primitive philosophical categories which dominated the thinking of the early Christians. There may be a large number of people in the churches who remain convinced that the miracle stories of the New Testament are true. But they will in time change. Funk says that the church is on the brink of a change which he calls the Second Reformation.

Funk talked about the early years of his life when he also held to this naive view of miracles. First he discovered the rich historical detail in Josephus, which he said was the moment when he "lost his innocence". Why this was the cause of his loss of innocence he did not explain. But I presume that it was the moment when the vision of Jesus given to him by his conservative American Protestant church was suddenly revealed to be at odds with the reality.

The next stage in Funk's development was through an encounter with the neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth. It was from his reading of Barth and later Bultmann and Brunner that he realised that all theological statements are philosophically conditioned. He then spent some time as a parish minister but found the experience so constraining, he realised that his time within the doctrinal straight jacket of the Church was over.

He then moved to teaching in seminaries but again found the compromises asked of him too much. He began teaching in universities where his academic activities were not subject to the scrutiny of the churches. Finally, he came to teaching only graduate students who had no intention of proceeding toward the parish ministry. But even here he was not at rest. Funk said he found it, "painful beyond measure"that there seemed to be no future for his students. He was also saddened by the limited reach the discussion had outside of the university. "I saw colleagues who voted against tenure for scholars whose books were read by thousands rather than hundreds". So Funk left his University teaching and the "Jesus Seminar "was born.

What they are proposing is the most radical rewriting of the Christian vision of Jesus possible. For the last 2000 years the church has maintained that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead was an action of God in Jesus. But the Jesus Seminar scholars do not begin from this point of view. Robert Funk (and Dominic Crosson and Marcus Borg [3]) speak of Jesus as only a man. This surely is one of the most radical challenges to the orthodox Christian view of Christ possible.

The Once and Future Jesus: Betrayed by the Bible

2004-11-30T15:03:00.000-08:00

The quest of the historical Jesus - who he was, what he said, what he did - has been one of he most exciting and controversial developments in contemporary religion. Thanks to decades of renewed interest and research, the way we think and talk about Jesus will never be the same. The Once and Future Jesus Conference took that quest to a new level. At this unprecedented gathering, leading thinkers turned their attention from the past to the future and asked: What do new understandings of Jesus mean for the church, the faith, and the world of tomorrow? Their answers can be found in the pages of this book.

Authors:
Marcus Borg is Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University. John Dominic Crossan is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at DePaul University in Chicago. Robert W. Funk is Director of the Westar Institute and founder of the Jesus Seminar. Lloyd Geering is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Karen L. King is Professor of New Testament Studies and the History of Ancient Christianity at Harvard Divinity School. Gerd Lüdemann is Professor of New Testament at the University of Göttingen, Germany. Thomas Sheehan is Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. John Shelby Spong retired as Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, in January 2000. Walter Wink is Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminar in New York City.
===============================================

Robert W. Funk et. al.
The Once and Future Jesus
The End of the Old: the Advent of the New
Polebridge Press (August, 2000)

Turbulence and turmoil

We have come to the end of an era. The advent of a new millennium is merely an outward sign of the metamorphosis taking place. During the half century that separates us from World War II, momentous changes have taken place in our world - social, political, economic, cultural, religious, and especially mythic. It is possible here only to name them. Yet they are foundational to everything we have done and will do at sessions of the Jesus Seminar.

First of all, the mythic universe that furnished the frame of reference for out Western myths and creeds for more than two millennia is crumbling, in spite of popular reaffirmations to the contrary. The checkout stand of the local supermarket is not a reliable guide to what has happened to the mythical worldview that has supported Christian orthodoxy for the last two millennia. The world was not created six thousand years ago, along with individual species, as many once believed. The world will not end in a fiery holocaust at the hands of an angry God, as the book of Revelation suggests. And God does not dabble from time to time in the history of special peoples, as the Bible claims. These former mythic certainties are all gone.

When John Paul II announces that heaven and hell are metaphors, we know that the decay of the old cosmological myths is well advanced. After all, it took him and the Roman church nearly three and a half centuries to recognize and admit the injustice done to Galileo.

Secondly, we have come to the end of the Christian era - the end of the hegemony of the christianized, industrial West. That hegemony has given way to the global era, in which a world-wide economy, a universal technology, mass consumption, and instant communication between all parts of the globe have altered perceptions forever. And that is only part of the information revolution now in progress. For better or worse, we now inhabit a multi-cultural world in which Christianity and Judaism must compete with other religious traditions as old or older than themselves. We cannot put these developments back in the tribal bag, try as many ethnic groups will. This transition has enormous consequences for the future of Jesus, the church, and the faith.

The end of the Christian era is marked further by the decline of religious literacy. Religious literacy in American society has degenerated steadily in this century until knowledge of the basic components of the Christian tradition has reached an appalling low. The churches have all but abandoned their traditional role in education. The mainline churches have by and large adopted a defensive posture: they have raised the drawbridge and manned the battlements against women and gays, and against critical knowledge of Christian origins. The enemy turns out to be their own insecurities.

Retreat in one area breeds retreat in another. Scholars of religion are exiting Christian precincts at an alarming rate in order to gain the right to think unorthodox thoughts. Biblical scholarship and theology are moving into a wholly profane, secular setting. Many scholars have elected the safe route, which is to abandon the theological ship and seek refuge in a humanistic harbor.

The departure of scholars is matched, or perhaps exceeded, by the loss of clergy. The clergy have been caught in the tension between the chrches they have taken oaths to serve and the scholars who were their mentors in seminaries. Like other rational human beings, some have opted for the safe course, which is not to offend patrons of the parish in order to protect their pensions. The intellectual sacrifice has made them theological eunuchs in the temple of the Lord. Others have given up and quit the service of the church altogether. Still others - a few - have dared to broach the fundamental issues and behave like prophets, at great expense to themselves. A handful told the truth as they knew it from the start.

The mainline denominations, which are in fact oldline denominations, are in danger of becoming sideline denominations, as John Cobb warns. They have lost members at an alarming rate. Denominational loyalties have eroded. Their bureaucracies, however, remain mired down in parochialism, intransigent fiefdoms, and a medieval mentality.

Robert W. Funk

To top it off, there is the sense among many liberal-minded people that we have been betrayed by the Bible. In the half century just ending, there is belated recognition that biblically based Christianity has espoused causes that no thinking or caring person is any longer willing to endorse. We have had enough of the persecution of Jews and witches; of the justification of black slavery; of the surpression of women, sex, and sexuality; and of the stubborn defense of a male-dominated, self-serving clergy. The Bible is not to be blamed for all this misplaced self-righteousness; how we have employed it is at fault. We have created a mindless authoritarian bibliolatry. For Protestants, the office of holy inquisition has been the Bible. Religious and cultural wars are again being fought across the pages of the Bible over sexuality, the place of women in society, and special creation. We cannot, we must not, shrink from engagement with the ignorance and misunderstanding that fuels such egregious misuse of scripture.

The final transition we are making is the reconciliation of religion with the sciences. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake on 17 February, 1600, for insisting, in opposition to the church, that the earth revolved around the sun. He was a champion of Copernican cosmology and Galileo's telescope. The church pretended it knew better. That pretension would have been bad enough, but the church would not tolerate dissent. Accordingly, the church rejected the sciences and prostituted history in defense of its own dogmas. It is now paying the price: Today, according to Roger Jones, "it is science that dictates to the church and not vice versa...It is science and not religion that gives today's world its rationale, morality, sustenance, and story of creation, such as it is." (Physics for the Rest of Us, 1992) At the very least, theology must be rejoined to the sciences. We cannot afford another extended divorce.

Meanwhile, we can do something about the rape of history for apologetic purposes conducted by Bible scholars and theologians as well-meaning friends of the churches. The end of the violation of history is what the renewed quest is all about. We have, I trust, advanced the cause of respect for the integrity of the past as the basic ethic guiding our work.

Renewal of the quest

The renewal of the quest of the historical Jesus in the 1970's signaled the desire to return to origins, to the beginning, to learn again what it meant and means to be a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. This quest was not born of idle curiosity, pursued by academics who had nothing better to do; it is a quest for the holy grail, for the innocence of a meal taken with toll collectors and sinners, when the Jesus movement was young, amorphous, and in a life and death stuggle to find its way in the world. The renewed quest is the herald of a radical reformation - the recovery of the once and the projection of the future Jesus.

These are high sounding words, to be sure. Yet consider what the eight platform lecturers have contributed to the renewal of the quest and the search for a credible faith.

Tom Sheehan anticipated the Seminar in 1986 with his book, The First Coming. How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity. In that book, Tom wrote "Jesus had freed himself from religion and apocalypse by transforming hope into charity and by recasting future eschatology as present liberation." The clarity of Tom's picture gave heart to the rest of us who were only beginning to find our way. Tom was the harbinger of the quest even then aborning.

Marc Borg launched his own quest in 1984 with Conflict, Holiness and Politics in the Teaching of Jesus. He followed in 1987 with Jesus: A New Vision and then with Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (1994). The Jesus one meets in these pages has been imbibed by thousands who act as though they were dying of thirst on a spiritual desert. In Meeting Jesus Again, Marc wrote that the notion that God's only son came to this planet to offer his life as a sacrifice for the sins of the world is simply incredible. The interpretation of Jesus as both high priest and final sacrificial victim was meant to displace the religion of the second temple, but instead it became the vehicle for retaining and maintaining temple religion under new auspices.

Dominic Crossan joined the parables parade early on its modern history. His little book, Dark Interval, published originally in 1975, sketches a theory of parable that underlies his In Parables (1973). He pioneered the study of Jesus' aphorisms in In Fragments (1983). His ground-breaking study of the passion narrative, Who Killed Jesus? (1995), challenged Christian anti-Semitism at its narrative roots. And of course his revolutionary biographies of Jesus have mesmerized hordes of readers. I hear people speaking glibly about "open commensality" and "radical egalitarianism" as though they were phrases heard on the evening news.

The irony of the German theological tradition is that Gerd Ludemann is battling for his academic life when he should be honored as a legitimate successor to D. F. Strauss. He has written books on the resurrection, on the virgin birth, on the heretics in early Christianity, and on the unholy in scripture, along with important studies of Paul. He has finally been driven to renounce Christianity as a result of what ...

Kerry Voters Are Smarter Than Bush Voters

2004-11-29T17:55:00.000-08:00

Being smarter will not save you. Case in point, the recent election. Ted Rall (no relation) makes a case for why we need to elevate the general educational/intelligence level of our population. This may occur naturally as Americans start to give up on TV, a wasteland of minor sensation which deserves almost no attention.

By UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE/TED RALL

Win or Lose, Kerry Voters Are Smarter Than Bush Voters

NEW YORK--Democratic hand wringing is surrealy out of hand. No one is criticizing the morally incongruous Kerry for running against a war he voted for while insisting that he would have voted for it again. Party leaders have yet to consider that NAFTA, signed into law under Clinton, may have cost them high-unemployment Ohio. No, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, darling of the "centrist" Democratic Leadership Council, blames something else: the perception "in the heartland" that Democrats are a "bicoastal cultural elite that is condescending at best and contemptuous at worst to the values that Americans hold in their daily lives."

Firstly, living in the sticks doesn't make you more American. Rural, urban or suburban--they're irrelevant. San Francisco's predominantly gay Castro district is every bit as red, white and blue as the Texas panhandle. But if militant Christianist Republicans from inland backwaters believe that secular liberal Democrats from the big coastal cities look upon them with disdain, there's a reason. We do, and all the more so after this election.

I spent my childhood in fly-over country, in a decidedly Republican town in southwest Ohio. It was a decent place to grow up, with well-funded public schools and only the occasional marauding serial killer to worry about. The only ethnic restaurant sold something called "Mandarin Chinese," Midwestese for cold noodles slathered with sugary sauce. The county had three major employers: the Air Force, Mead Paper, and National Cash Register--and NCR was constantly laying people off. Folks were nice, but depressingly closed-minded. "Well," they'd grimace when confronted with a new musical genre or fashion trend, "that's different." My suburb was racially insular, culturally bland and intellectually unstimulating. Its people were knee-jerk conformists. Faced with the prospect of spending my life underemployed, bored and soused, I did what anyone with a bit of ambition would do. I went to college in a big city and stayed there.

Mine is a common story. Every day in America, hundreds of our most talented young men and women flee the suburbs and rural communities for big cities, especially those on the West and East Coasts. Their youthful vigor fuels these metropolises--the cultural capitals of the blue states. These oases of liberal thinking--New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Boston--are homes to our best-educated people, most vibrant popular culture and most innovative and productive businesses. There are exceptions--some smart people move from cities to the countryside--but the best and brightest gravitate to places where liberalism rules.

Maps showing Kerry's blue states appended to the "United States of Canada" separated from Bush's red "Jesusland" are circulating by email. Though there is a religious component to the election results, the biggest red-blue divide is intellectual. "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?" asked the headline of the Daily Mirror in Great Britain, and the underlying assumption is undeniable. By any objective standard, you had to be spectacularly stupid to support Bush.

72 percent who cast votes for George W. Bush, according to a University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and Knowledge Networks poll, believe that Iraq (news - web sites) had weapons of mass destruction or active WMD programs. 75 percent think that a Saddam-Al Qaeda link has been proven, and 20 percent say Saddam ordered 9/11. Of course, none of this was true.

Kerry voters were less than half as idiotic: 26 percent of Democrats bought into Bush-Cheney's WMD lies, and 30 percent into Saddam-Al Qaeda.

Would Bush's supporters have voted for him even if they had known he was a serial liar? Perhaps their hatred of homosexuals and slutty abortion vixens would have prompted them to make the same choice--an idiotic perversion of priorities. As things stand, they cast their ballots relying on assumptions that were demonstrably false.

Educational achievement doesn't necessarily equal intelligence. After all, Bush holds a Harvard MBA. Still, it bears noting that Democrats are better educated than Republicans. You are 25 percent more likely to hold a college degree if you live in the Democratic northeast than in the red state south. Blue state voters are 25 percent more likely, therefore, to understand the historical and cultural ramifications of Bush's brand of bull-in-a-china-shop foreign policy.

Inland Americans face a bigger challenge than coastal "cultural elitists" when it comes to finding high-quality news coverage. The best newspapers, which routinely win prizes for their in-depth local and national reporting and staffers overseas, line the coasts. So do the cable TV networks with the broadest offerings and most independent radio stations. Bush Country makes do with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity syndicated on one cookie-cutter AM outlet after another. Citizens of the blue states read lackluster dailies stuffed with generic stories cut and pasted from wire services. Given their dismal access to high-quality media, it's a minor miracle that 40 percent of Mississippians turned out for Kerry.

So our guy lost the election. Why shouldn't those of us on the coasts feel superior? We eat better, travel more, dress better, watch cooler movies, earn better salaries, meet more interesting people, listen to better music and know more about what's going on in the world. If you voted for Bush, we accept that we have to share the country with you. We're adjusting to the possibility that there may be more of you than there are of us. But don't demand our respect. You lost it on November 2.

A Note from Her Majesty, the Queen

2004-11-27T13:14:00.000-08:00

Attention all Americans!

NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE TO CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

In light of your failure to make the correct decision in electing your President, thus showing you to be unfit to govern yourselves, we hereby give you notice of the revocation of your independence effective as of Monday 8Th November 2004.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she doesn't much fancy.

Your new Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Tony Blair M.P., for the 97.85% of you unaware of the outside world, will appoint a Minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated in twelve months time to determine if any of you noticed.

To aid your transition into a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. All citizens are to look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. While there, check the pronunciation guide for "aluminium" - this may be surprising for you. Generally attempt to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary". Using the same 27 words interspersed with "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable form of communication. Look up interspersed".

2. There is no such thing as "U.S. English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf.

3. Learn to distinguish British and Australian accents. It's not difficult.

4. Hollywood will henceforth be required to occasionally cast Englishmen as good guys.

5. Re-learn your original anthem, "God Save the Queen". Please ensure that you have complied with the first law before attempting this.

6. Stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of "football". What you refer to as "football" is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you aware of a world outside of your borders may have noticed that no-one else plays it. Play proper football instead; to start with get the girls to help you - it is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, eventually, be allowed to play rugby, which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full Kevlar body armour like nancies.

7. Declare war on Quebec and France, using nukes if they give you any merde. The 97.85% of you unaware of the outside world should count yourselves lucky - the Russians have never really been bad guys. "Merde" is French for "sh*t".

8. 4th July is no longer a public holiday. 2nd November will be the new national holiday.

9. American cars are hereby banned. They are crap; it's for your own good. When we show you German cars you'll understand.

10. Please tell us who killed JFK. Its been driving us crazy.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CO-OPERATION

He Who Laughs Last ...

2004-11-23T13:34:00.000-08:00

I planted some bird seed. A bird came up. Now I don't know what to feed it.

They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them.

Teach a child to be polite and courteous in the home and, when he grows up, he'll never be able to merge his car onto a freeway.

I had amnesia once -- or twice.

Two can live as cheaply as one, for half as long.

Experience is the thing you have left when everything else is gone.

My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies.

I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not sure.

How can there be self-help "groups"?

I went to San Francisco. I found someone's heart. Now what?

Show me a man with both feet firmly on the ground, and I'll show you a man who can't get his pants off.

thanks to Shirley for the humor

A Thanksgiving Prayer

2004-11-22T11:18:00.000-08:00

For years, I have sat at my dining room table, with food and friends, ready to begin a thanksgiving feast.

Most of my family say grace at every meal, and so why not also on Thanksgiving??

Since Kathleen and I never say grace, we have reluctantly asked a "gracefull" family member to say a prayer (hopefully of thanks).

What we often get is a prayer which in subtle ways attacks our view of the meaning of life, and is actually something of a put-down.

Sitting with some cousins recently for a meal, I was asked to offer the prayer. I deferred to my cousin Joe. But I swore to myself, that next time I would be prepared = preprayed.

Thanks to Google, I now have a suitable godless prayer, provided by Roger Fritts of the Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda, Maryland:

We gather to celebrate our connections and our love for each other. We greet again those with whom we have shared an important part of our life journey. We remember today those who are not with us -- friends and family who for many reasons cannot be here. Their friendship and love remains part of us in spite of distance and time. We especially remember our family and friends who have died. Their love continues within each of us.

We give thanks to those persons who have labored to create this meal. We give thanks to the work of farmers, truck drivers, grocery clerks and many others whose network of labor has made this meal possible. Because of their work, we can enjoy this wonderful food.

May each of us feel deeply the joy we experience in the smiles, the handshakes and the hugs we exchange today. May we breathe deep the spirit of friendship and family. May these connections sustain us and give us strength. Amen.

Two Americas and Four More Years

2004-11-05T11:33:00.000-08:00

The Dream Is Lost

Bush gets mandate for theocracy. Only the right can stop him now.

Yes it's four more years. Kerry snatches defeat from victory.

With so many good issues, how could Kerry lose??

The answer: it's moral values, stupid.

According to the AP wire:

_The president had the support of 78 percent of white evangelicals, 23 percent of the voters.

_Bush won 52 percent of the Roman Catholic vote on Tuesday, and got the support of 56 percent of white Catholics, defeating the first Catholic presidential candidate from a major party since John F. Kennedy. In 2000, Bush narrowly lost the Catholic vote.

_Bush was favored by 61 percent of people from all faiths who attend services weekly; they made up 41 percent of the electorate. Democrat John Kerry drew 62 percent of Americans who never attend worship, but they only accounted for 14 percent of voters.

_When respondents were asked to pick the one issue that mattered most in choosing a president, "moral values" ranked first at 22 percent, surpassing the economy (20 percent), terrorism (19 percent) and Iraq (15 percent).

In the end, the majority of Catholics preferred an anti-abortion, Methodist incumbent to one of their own - underscoring that today's religious divide cuts across denominational lines.

To Frank Newport, the editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, religion was "the untold story of this election." Newport, a sociologist who has written extensively on the role of religious faith in politics, said voters subordinated their concerns about Iraq and the war on terror
"and looked at moral values. But it's more than that. It's just about religion as well." (San Fancisco Chronicle)

bush vs kerry by county
From the county bush/kerry red/blue map (courtesy of the Boston Globe), it's easy to see that the Kerry majorities live in a small slice of America: "The urban and/or educational elite slice". If you throw a dart at a map of the U.S., you are overwhelmingly likely to hit Bush country. Two Americas starting to throw bricks at each other.

A big issue crawling out from under the carpet: abortion rights for women. Four more years of Bush may mean a Supreme Court majority for overturning Roe vs Wade. But there are many ways Bush and his compadres can whittle away at choice for the women of America.

From The Village Voice:

"Mondo Washington
by James Ridgeway
No Choice
The 'culture of life' could become real life
November 4th, 2004 4:35 PM

WASHINGTON—When Bush says, "I've earned capital in this election and I'm going to spend it for what I've told the people I'd spend it on," he's not just talking about revamping the income tax and Social Security. It's payback time for the Christian conservatives who gave him vital votes to win the election and then go on and call the win a mandate. They want cultural changes—what Bush himself calls the "culture of life," and that starts with women's place in society.

The administration already has sought to limit a woman's access to abortion and contraception; to shut up clinics, individuals, and providers of abortion around the world; and to cut funds from women's reproductive health services.

Now it's time for more. Here's a partial listing put together by the Center for Reproductive Rights:

• Get rid of Roe v. Wade through new Supreme Court appointees who think like Thomas and Scalia can knock out the ruling when given the chance. Bush will also fight lawsuits challenging the partial birth abortion law.

• Promote federal statutes and regulations that use the term "unborn child" to describe the fetus—opening the prospect of murder charges against doctors and their staffs engaged in abortions and women who have them.

• Push for enactment of the so-called "Child Custody Protection Act" (CCPA), which would prevent teenagers from crossing state lines to get an abortion, and once enacted, enforce it, the Center says, "with intrusive investigatory techniques such as issuing subpoenas for private medical records, and aggressively prosecuting aunts, grandmothers, religious counselors, and physicians who counsel minors or assist them in obtaining abortions"

• Deny Medicaid funding for abortions

• Place new restrictions on funding abortion in cases of incest, rape, and where a woman's life is at stake

• Restrict access to contraception and push new legislation to withdraw contraception coverage for federal employees (including military personnel)

• Continue to deny over-the-counter status to emergency contraception claiming it amounts to an abortifacient

Minorities have rights too. The progressive minority of America needs to resist (especially in Congress) a new thrust by the religious right to take advantage of this close election. We still need to maintain a sense of proportion and a sense of humor. In that cause:

bad knees will not stop determined voters

Rain and Wind in Morro Bay

2004-10-19T14:51:00.001-07:00

Morro Bay has a very dry climate. We only get rain a few times a year. Today it is raining cats and dogs. This kind of rain brings back a lot of rainy images to my brain.

Riding the Greyhound bus back to Stony Brook School every Fall as a teenager.. green farms and grey skies and steady rain. A country so large it took four days and four nights non-stop (except for potty breaks of course, and brief flings at fast food) to get from the Imperial Valley desert of California to the bus station in NYC.

Pouring rain in Kansas, trapped in my small room with no escape.

Standing on the pier in Seal Beach, CA., in a rainstorm that shredded my umbrella, in awe at the power of the storm and wind.

I guess I should welcome the rain, with California in the n'th year of a drought, and with the underbrush dry as tinder and ready to explode in firestorms at the merest flick of a lighted cigarette.

I couldn't live in Seattle or Oregon with all the steady rain and growing molds.

The bright side of today's life is that even when trapped inside your room by rain, the world of ideas and physics is microseconds away via broadband internet. Except for the crash of the electrical power system, which just interrupted this post for 1.3 hours.

When the power has been on, I've been enjoying the vigorous discussions by Sean Carroll, Luboš Motl, and Peter Woit about string theory, the anthropic principle, and the importance of "not giving up".

Luboš Motl is in general tearing up the blog world with long interesting comments and strong points of view about a lot of current physics.

This is the kind of rapid and open exchange of ideas that may revolutionize the world of science.

IN MY DAY ...

2004-10-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

Thanks again to Shirley (see last post) for passing on this funny stuff:

Contest in the Washington Post where readers were asked to tell Gen Xers how much harder you had it in the old days:

Second Runner-Up:
In my day, we couldn't afford shoes, so we went barefoot. In the winter we had to wrap our feet with barbed wire for traction. (Bill Flavin, Alexandria)

First Runner-Up:
In my day we didn't have MTV or in-line skates, or any of that stuff. No, it was 45s and regular old metal-wheeled roller skates, and the 45s always skipped, so to get them to play right you'd weigh the needle down with something like quarters, which we never had because our allowances were way too small, so we'd use our skate keys instead and end up forgetting they were taped to the record player arm so that we couldn't adjust our skates, which didn't really matter because those crummy metal wheels would kill you if you hit a pebble anyway, and in those days roads had real pebbles on them, not like today. (Russell Beland, Springfield)

And the winner of the velour bicentennial poster:
In my day, we didn't have no rocks. We had to go down to the creek and wash our clothes by beating them with our heads. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia)

Honorable Mentions:
In my day, we didn't have dogs or cats. All I had was Silver Beauty, my beloved paper clip. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington)

In my day, we didn't have days. There was only "time for work," "time for prayer" and "time for sleep." The sheriff would go around and tell everyone when to change. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel)

In my day, people could only dream of hitchhiking a ride on a comet. (David Ronka, Charlottesville)

In my day, we didn't have hand-held calculators. We had to do addition on our fingers. To subtract, we had to have some fingers amputated. (Jon Patrick Smith, Washington)

In my day, we didn't have mouses to move the cursor around. We only had the arrows, and if the up arrow was broken and you needed to get to the top of the screen, well, you just hit the left arrow a thousand times, dadgummit. (Kevin Cuddihy, Fairfax)

In my day, we didn't get that disembodied, slightly ticked-off voice saying 'Doors closing.' We got on the train, the doors closed, and if your hand was sticking out it scraped along the tunnel all the damn way to the Silver Spring station and it was a bloody stump at the end. But the base fare was only a dollar. (Russell Beland, Springfield)

In my day, we didn't have water. We had to smash together our own hydrogen and oxygen atoms. (Diana Hugue, Bowie)

In my day, we didn't have Strom Thurmond. Oh, wait. Yes we did... (Peg Sheeran, Vienna)

Kids today think the world revolves around them. In my day, the sun revolved around the world, and the world was perched on the back of a giant tortoise. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)

In my day, we wore our pants up around our armpits. Monstrous wedgies, but we looked snappy. (Bruce Evans, Washington)

In the old days, nobody asked you to sign petitions. The sheriff just came to your house and told you that you was part of a posse. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia)

Back in my day, "60 Minutes" wasn't just a bunch of gray-haired liberal 80-year-old guys. It was a bunch of gray-haired liberal 60-year-old guys. (Russell Beland, Springfield, and Jerry Pannullo, Kensington)

In my day, we didn't have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could outrun him. (Sarah M. Wolford, Hanover)

B.O.O.K. : THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE

2004-10-13T10:23:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Shirley (fellow member of our San Luis Obispo bookclub: the LitWits) for giving me a clue about a great new technology. (Apologies to the true author; this has to have gone around the internet a million times, but it is bound to be new for someone!!)

A look into the future....

B.O.O.K.

Announcing the new Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge device (BOOK). It's a revolutionary breakthrough in technology: no wires, no electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on. It's so easy to use even a child can operate it. Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere--even sitting in an armchair by the fire--yet it is powerful enough to hold as much information as a CD-ROM disk.

Here's how it works: Each BOOK is constructed of sequentially numbered sheets of paper, each capable of holding thousands of bits of information. These pages are locked together with a custom-fit device called a binder that keeps the sheets in their correct sequence. The user scans each sheet optically, registering information directly into
his or her brain. A flick of the finger takes the user to the next sheet.

The BOOK may be taken up at any time and used by merely opening it. The "browse" feature allows the user to move instantly to any sheet and to move forward or backward as desired. Most BOOKs come with an "index" feature that pinpoints the exact location of any selected information for instant retrieval. An optional "BOOKmark" accessory allows the user to open the BOOK to the exact place left in a previous session--even if
the BOOK has been closed. BOOKmarks fit universal design standards; thus a single BOOKmark can be used in BOOKs by various manufacturers.

Portable, durable, and affordable, the BOOK is the entertainment wave of the future, and many new titles are expected soon, due to the surge in popularity of its programming tool, the Portable Erasable-Nib Cryptic Intercommunication Language Stylus...ie: (PENCILS).

On Belief, Faith, and Reason

2004-10-02T11:26:00.000-07:00

Walter Kaufmann on Belief, Faith, and Reason, from his book:
Critique of Religion and Philosophy, Harper & Bros., N.Y., 1958

This book was the most influential source for an attack on the
culture of faith and belief in which I was raised as a child. "When
I was a child, I thought as a child, but..."

From Sect. 22, a poem:

Truth

What is truth? Something of which we rarely speak;
something some men seek;
something flouted by those who lie;
something of which Christ said, it is I;
something without which one goes to hell;
something judges expect one to tell;
a word of honor, a word of praise,
but not a very transparent phrase.

Truth does not exist, it is merely discussed,
but truth is whatever we can trust,
whether a man or a piece of gold,
a Titian or something we are told,
a likeness or something we are taught--
and the noun, the truth, is an afterthought.

Selected quotes from Sect. 36:

"Knowledge and belief, like most interesting terms, have many correct uses, and no distinction is likely to do perfect justice to all correct uses"

"Belief has a wider sense in which it includes knowledge and a narrower sense in which it is contrasted with knowledge."

"When I say that I know that a proposition is true, I say that I think that it is true; that in fact it is true; and that there is evidence sufficient to compel the assent of every reasonable person. When I am asked whether I really know, the question does not concern myself alone ( my earnestness or sincerity ) but also the evidence."

"Belief in the narrow sense, in which it is contrasted with knowledge, is distinguished by the lack of evidence sufficient to compel the assent of every reasonable person."

"Faith is belief - usually belief in the narrow sense - that is held intensely, with some emotional involvement; and almost all statements that begin 'I have faith that...' fulfill one further condition: one would be disappointed if one should be wrong"

"...for those engaged in an impartial investigation, a man's faith creates no presumption whatsoever of a higher probability; on the contrary, it is more suspicious than a less emotional belief. It raises the question whether there is considerable, albeit not compelling, evidence, or whether 'faith' is but a noble word for wishful thinking."

Selected quotes from Sect. 37:

"The impression given is sometimes, in contemporary discussions, too, that there is a virtue in believing without evidence as such. But this would open the floodgates to every superstition, prejudice, and madness."

"To be sure, we must constantly act in the absence of complete certainty; we have to make decisions on the basis of partial evidence; and we are bound to make mistakes frequently. Challenged why we decide the way we do, we should cite the evidence we had in mind....There is no need for the faith that we surely must be right. We need believe no more than that, given our present information, this or that appears to be most probable"

"It is a widespread fallacy that the alternative to the firm faith that we possess the truth must be weak indecision. It is quite possible to act with vigor, realizing that one might be wrong; especially, if one is sustained by the assurance that one's decision was conscientiously arrived at and that one is acting with integrity, though not infallibility."

Quoting Santayana: "If the argument is rather that these beliefs, whether true or false, make life better in this world, the thing is simply false. To be boosted by an illusion is not to live better than to live in harmony with the truth; it is not nearly so safe, not nearly so sweet, and not nearly so fruitful. These refusals to part with a decayed illusion are really an infection to the mind. Believe, certainly; we cannot help believing; but believe rationally, holding what seems certain for certain, what seems probable for probable, what seems desirable for desirable, and what seems false for false"

Two quotes from Martin Luther: (Samtliche Schriften; ed. Johann Georg Walch; 24 vols.; printed in Halle, Germany, in the 18th century, and reprinted in St. Louis 1881-1910)

"There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason, especially if she enters into spiritual matters which concern the soul and God. For it is more possible to teach an ass to read than to blind such a reason and lead it right; for reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed." (V, 1312)

"Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason." (V, 425 )

and one from Nietzsche:

"A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions!"

And a reminder of my origins:

The Last Judgement

On Aging, or Lack Thereof: Anecdotal Evidence

2004-09-29T13:18:00.000-07:00

Jack Lalanne as a young man

I spent a nice (birthday) weekend with my wife Kathleen in Santa Barbara. Our motel was a half-block from the beach, and another block along the beach to the pier.

Sunday afternoon we spent at the Santa Barbara Zoo, my first time to see this zoo. I especially enjoyed the lion cub with mom, the large male silverback gorilla, and the zebras, one with a crooked neck.

In Monday morning's complimentary newspaper (USA Today) was a feature on the legendary Jack LaLanne. Jack reminds me of my Uncle Dan Bulkley. Dan was a coach at Southern Oregon University, Ashland, Oregon. After retirement, he became a competitor in Senior Olympic type competitions and remained in fantastic shape.

Jack LaLanne and his wife Elaine live in my home town of Morro Bay, CA on a 3.5 acre spread back of town. He is a local legend.

Jack and Elaine

Jack's birthday is Sept. 26 (mine is Sept. 25) and he was in New York City to celebrate.

Jack is one data point on how to be fit at ninety years of age.

Miscellaneous Jack comments on how to do it:

"Exercise is King; diet is Queen"

"If man made it, avoid it": Eat fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean meat and fish. No white flour, white sugar. Avoid processed foods. No snacking."

"You don't get old from calendar years. You get old from inactivity. That's the killer"

Jack gets up at 5 AM each morning, seven days a week, and works out in his home gym for one hour, and then another hour in his home pool (equipped with a variable water flow to swim against).

Jack says: "I hate to work out. I'd rather take a beating. To leave a hot bed and a hot woman to go into a cold gym at five in the morning - that takes discipline. But I like the results. "

"You get to be 90 and everyone goes, 'Well how'd the old poop do it? What's his secret?' I tell them: 'Clean thoughts and dirty girls' "

“It's never too late. Test after test shows that even people in their 90s who begin a weight training program can double their strength and endurance in 6-8 weeks. You don't inherit this stuff. You've got to do it.”

“I don't want seniors working out 2-3 hours a day,” he said. “That's ridiculous. If you walk from 12-17 minutes three times a week, that's all you need for cardiovascular fitness.”

Simple Chair Exercises

LONGEVITY TIPS

Still vigorous at 89, Jack LaLanne offers these tips for longevity:

•Exercise 30 minutes a day, three to four times a week. Change your routine every two to three weeks.
•Set short-term fitness goals and follow through.
•Slowly change a few bad habits by starting good habits.
•Eat foods in their natural states and in as many varieties as you can.
•Pass on caffeine, sugar and cigarettes.
•Drink plenty of water.
============================================
While I was on the physics faculty at Cal State Long Beach, I recall a colloquium by a young biologist from U.C. Irvine about aging and its prevention.

He was interested in how long human life could be prolonged in principle, given the gradual and natural deterioration of the human body. His research implied a maximum of about 120 years.

Just think of how the crisis in Social Security and Medicare would change for the worse if a typical person survived that long. Of course retirement ages would probably increase in proportion.

You're Never To Young To Start PushUps!!

Wise Words from Carl Sagan

2004-09-22T16:21:00.000-07:00

Quote of the day:

"Perhaps the most wrenching by-product of the scientific revolution has been to render untenable many of our most cherished and most comforting beliefs. The tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors has been replaced by a cold, immense, indifferent Universe in which humans are relegated to obscurity."

" But I see the emergence in our consciousness of a Universe of a magnificence, and an intricate, elegant order far beyond anything our ancestors imagined. And if much about the Universe can be understood in terms of a few simple laws of Nature, those wishing to believe in God can certainly ascribe those beautiful laws to a Reason underpinning all of Nature."

"My own view is that it is far better to understand the Universe as it really is than to pretend to a Universe as we might wish it to be."

"Whether we will acquire the understanding and wisdom necessary to come to grips with the scientific revelations of the twentieth century will be the most profound challenge of the twenty-first."

(Last two paragraphs of ch. 18: The Twentieth Century, in "Billions & Billions", by Carl Sagan)

Good Science vs Fundamentalism

2004-09-20T13:31:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Sean Carroll for the heads up to the Guardian article by Umberto Eco on the "scientific method".

Eco uses the recent news item from Dublin concerning Stephen Hawking's change of mind about the supposed destruction of information as a black hole gobbles up its surroundings to talk about common misconceptions of science.

Eco writes:

"...Science is frequently criticised by the mass media, which hold it responsible for the devilish pride that is leading humanity towards possible destruction. But in doing so they are evidently confusing science with technology."

"...Modern science does not hold that what is new is always right. On the contrary, it is based on the principle of "fallibilism" (enunciated by the American philosopher Charles Peirce, elaborated upon by Popper and many other theorists, and put into practice by scientists themselves) according to which science progresses by continually correcting itself, falsifying its hypotheses by trial and error, admitting its own mistakes - and by considering that an experiment that doesn't work out is not a failure but is worth as much as a successful one because it proves that a certain line of research was mistaken and it is necessary either to change direction or even to start over from scratch."

"...This way of thinking is opposed, as I said before, to all forms of fundamentalism, to all literal interpretations of holy writ - which are also open to continuous reinterpretation - and to all dogmatic certainty in one's own ideas. This is that good "philosophy," in the everyday and Socratic sense of the term, which ought to be taught in schools."

Sean Carroll's comments on this article are well worth reading.

The Anthropic Principle: Good Physics or Not??

2004-09-18T13:10:00.000-07:00

In a recent post, we talked about L. Susskind's ideas about the huge number of vacuum states (environments for physics and possible universes) implied by our current understanding of string theory.

According to these ideas, we exist in a "pocket universe" with a tiny (but non-zero) effective cosmological constant. Without the cosmological constant having a value in a small range around a tiny number, our variety of intelligent observers could not have evolved to a state like the present. The tiny non-zero value of the effective cosmological constant is hard to understand using traditional particle physics arguments.

Was this an act of "God" or a natural and possible outcome of the "laws of nature". According to Susskind's ideas, our universe is the way it is because a) it is one of a huge number of possible string theory vacua , and b) "we live where we can". This is called an "anthropic explanation".

Physics would then "give up" the job of trying to explain why our universe is the unique prediction of the "laws of nature", by finding some ultimate theory which has within it logically the prediction that our universe could not be other than it is.

Andre Linde, in his book Inflation and Quantum Cosmology (p. 152) remarks: "One should note, that until very recently, the general attitude of physicists to the Anthropic Principle was rather skeptical, to say the least. It was believed that the weak, strong, and electromagnetic interactions are the same in all parts of our universe, that the fundamental constants of Nature are universal and it is meaningless to discuss the possibilty of life in a universe of a different type."

"... if many exponentially large domains with the low-energy physics of our type do exist in the universe described by a given theory, then it is quite natural that we live in one of such domains rather than in a domain where life of our type is impossible".

L. Smolin

L. Susskind

All this is preamble to calling your attention to a good back and forth argument about the nature of good physics and the possible place for the "anthropic principle" type of argument. The Edge has posted a multipart exchange of views between Lee Smolin (anti anthropic prin.) and Leonard Susskind (pro anthropic prin.).

Mercury Rising Thanks to Bush : A Sleeper Issue?

2004-09-16T13:11:00.000-07:00

This morning CSPAN2's Washington Journal carried a 30 minute interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The subject was his new book Crimes Against Nature: How George Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy (Harper-Collins).

The Bush administration, in its Orwellian named "Clean Air Act", seeks to gut any serious improvement in the mercury emissions of old power plants.

According to Kennedy, one-sixth of all American women at present have levels of mercury in their womb which are high enough to cause autism, mental retardation, cognitive impairment, liver disease, etc in their newborn children.

630,000 children are born per year in U.S. with damage due to levels of mercury contamination in the air (which is then absorbed by water and fish and...).

The cost of removing this mercury contamination would amount to 1% of a typical power plant's revenue. Yet the Bush team is gutting provisions for any cleanup. The 110 million dollars contributed to the Bush campaign returns several billion dollars in regulatory relief for polluting industries, a cost that is borne by the American taxpayer in dirtier water, air, fish, and increased medical problems in newborn children.

Former lobbyists of the worst polluters are now in charge of major environmental regulatory agencies and making the decisions about scaling back 30 years of environmental progress.

Why aren't the women of America up in arms about such a vital and personal issue??

Where is the media attention to this issue. Has the major media outlets, controlled by about six major corporate groups, lost their credibility?? I think the answer has to be yes.

More information is on the National Resources Defense Council web sites.

A Gene for Belief in God??

2004-09-14T16:35:00.000-07:00

From the reviews for The God Gene : How Faith is Hardwired into our Genes by DEAN H. HAMER , on Amazon.com:

"The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in God, expressing a conviction that has existed since the beginning of recorded time and is shared by billions around the world. In The God Gene, Dr. Dean Hamer reveals that this inclination toward religious faith is no accident; it is in good measure due to our genes. In fact, he argues, spiritual belief may offer an evolutionary advantage by providing humans with a sense of purpose and the courage and will to overcome hardship and loss. And, as a growing body of evidence suggests, belief also increases our chances of reproductive survival by helping to reduce stress, prevent disease, and extend life."

"...Popular science at its best, The God Gene is an in-depth, fully accessible inquiry into the cutting-edge research that is changing the way we think about ourselves, our world, and our culture. Written with balance and integrity, without seeking to confirm or deny the existence of God, The God Gene brilliantly illuminates the mechanism by which belief itself is biologically fostered."

"DR. DEAN HAMER is a preeminent geneticist and author of The Science of Desire, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Living with Our Genes. Together with his scientific collaborators at the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health, he has authored more than one hundred articles for popular and academic science journals. His television appearances include Good Morning America, Dateline, Oprah, the national news shows, and documentaries for HBO, PBS, and the Discovery Channel. Dr. Hamer received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Ariens Kappers Award for Neurobiology."

Those who, like myself, are not persuaded to "believe" are evidently condemned to live with more stress, more disease, and a shorter life. And evidently (almost) all cosmologists are likewise condemned. See Sean Carroll's straightforward arguments on "Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists."

Save Human Dna on the Moon??

2004-09-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

Space.com has a quirky news item today:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"Noah's Cosmic Ark: Preserving DNA on the Moon
By Michael Schirber
Staff Writer
posted: 13 September, 2004
7:00 a.m. ET

The complexity of life took billions of years to push and stretch and reshape the biological niche that is Earth. It would seem prudent – if one had the means – to save some portion of the blueprints of this majesty, so that the process would not have to start over from scratch in the event of a global cataclysm.

Morbid, for sure, yet still prudent. But where to put this valuable backup so that it is both safe and handy? And what form should it take? .................see link for more........................"
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This suggestion raises all kinds of ethical problems.

I am reminded of the message advanced by Sir Martin Rees (Royal Society Professor at Cambridge University, a Fellow of King's College, and England's Astronomer Royal) in his recent book: "Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning: How terror, error, and environmental disaster threaten humankind's future in this century - on earth and beyond" ( Basic Books, N.Y., 2003).
-------------------------------------------------------------

His final paragraph:

"The theme of this book is that humanity is more at risk than at any earlier phase in its history. The wider cosmos has a potential future that could even be infinite. But will these vast expanses of time be filled with life, or as empty as the Earth's first sterile seas? The choice may depend on us, this century."

Resist Not Evil???

2004-09-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

Our bookclub (The Litwits, San Luis Obispo) met last night and we chewed at a tough assignment: Leo Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God Is Within You".

Coming to this book as a practicing agnostic (I could never get elected president!!) I had a lot of trouble with the focus on the "true" message of Jesus/Christ.

Tolstoy fixated on the Sermon on the Mount and especially on "Resist Not the Evil that Men Do", and spent the last thirty years of his life trying to turn this message of extreme pacifism into a practical daily agenda.

A tough book to read, but this is where Ghandi got his basic inspiration for non-violent resistance which threw the British empire out of India.

Fine Tuning the Cosmological Constant

2004-08-30T11:22:00.000-07:00

Don't miss the article by Raphael Bousso and Joseph Polchinski in the September, 2004 issue of Scientific American. Entitled "The String Theory Landscape", this article presents a user friendly discussion of the existence of a huge number of environments allowed by string theory, each one of which can be the "vacuum state" of a universe. The vacuum energy of each such universe, existing in different 3D spatial parts of the "megaverse", would be the local measured "cosmological constant". The graphics in this article are very helpful in getting some intuition going.

Recall that the simplest explanation for the origin of the dark energy which is driving the accelerated expansion of the universe is a spatially constant positive vacuum energy proportional to the "cosmological constant" which exerts a negative pressure tending to drive clusters of galaxies apart. As the 3D space of our universe has expanded from the moment of the "big bang", the spatial density of matter and radiation has steadily decreased, while the spatial density of the vacuum energy has remained constant and now dominates the energy density of space.

The "fine tuning problem" is that the measured cosmological constant in our universe is tiny but not zero, and if it were much larger, galaxies could not have formed and galaxies are needed to provide an environment for successive generations of stars to form and die, some of their deaths resulting in the crucial production of chemical elements necessary for our (carbon based) form of life to evolve on suitable planets formed together with second generation stars (like our sun).

The other part of this fine tuning problem is that it would be incredible that one could ever find some deep physics reason (related, say, to some symmetry principle) for there being one unique solution allowed for the vacuum state of any universe such that the cosmological constant was close to the tiny positive value we measure.

A good review of the general "problem" of a non-zero cosmological constant is given by Sean Carroll in his Living Reviews in Relativity (Dec. 99) article: "The Cosmological Constant" (also available at arxiv.org here ).

In the Sept. Sci. Amer. article, Bousso and Polchinski review how recent "countings" of string theory vacua have revealed astoundingly large numbers, like 10^(500) (ie. 1 followed by 500 zeros) vacua having positive vacuum energy. They also discuss how such vacua are unstable to decay to vacua with other values of the cosmological constant (mainly lower values but still positive), allowing a universe to nucleate a baby universe (like a bubble starting somewhere) which expands at a lower rate (if its cosmological constant is smaller than its parent), and this process can continue with the baby universe nucleating out grandchildren universes contained within the prior universe boundaries (a concrete version of "eternal inflation" and the "self-reproducing universe").

String theory suggests that we can regard the "dark energy" component of our universe to be the metastable value of an effective scalar field potential energy density, spatially constant in our local universe, but taking different values in each subuniverse.

If one imagines some effective semi-classical scalar field starting out at a high value of potential energy (but in a local minimum of the effective 3D potential energy), and take into account the quantum fluctuations which can allow the scalar field to tunnel to other minima with lower values of the effective potential energy, eventually the metaverse is populated by a "hierarchy of nested bubbles, or subuniverses."

"In each bubble, an observer conducting experiments at low energies (like we do) will see a specific four-dimensional universe [3 spatial and one time dimension(s)] with its own characteristic laws of physics. Information from outside our bubble cannot reach us, because the intermediate space is expanding too rapidly for light to outrun it."

We are here (ie., life and human life has evolved) because "We live where we can" (to quote Leonard Susskind). The basic physics parameters (including the cosmological constant) of our universe are in the "sweet spot" where life is possible.

No one "ordered" this particular sweet spot for us, but there must be a huge number (actually an infinite number ) of other "pocket universes" (which we cannot communicate with) which also have the requisite physics parameters suitable for the evolution of intelligent life, capable of eventually doing physics and developing a gradual understanding of the universe and meta-universe of which our universe is a part. (And of course also gaining the requisite understanding to develop nuclear weapons and toxic pathogens, etc, which can easily end the local human experiment before long.)

If you have broadband internet service, you might enjoy seeing and listening to Leonard Susskind presenting an informal discussion of these ideas to a group of experts on Friday, Oct. 24, 2003, during one of the sessions of the Conference on Superstring Cosmology (10-20 thru 10-24) at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara. Susskind's talk can be viewed and heard using Real Player software. You can also download the audio alone and listen at your leisure. Note that there was also a semester long "Program" in Superstring Cosmology at KITP which extended from Aug. 4 to Dec. 19 (2003), which has much of interest.

Don't miss the interview with Susskind on the Edge website. Some of the flavor is suggested by the following Susskind quote from that website:

"The beginning of the 21st century is a watershed in modern science, a time that will forever change our understanding of the universe. Something is happening which is far more than the discovery of new facts or new equations. This is one of those rare moments when our entire outlook, our framework for thinking, and the whole epistemology of physics and cosmology are suddenly undergoing real upheaval. The narrow 20th-century view of a unique universe, about ten billion years old and ten billion light years across with a unique set of physical laws, is giving way to something far bigger and pregnant with new possibilities.

"Gradually physicists and cosmologists are coming to see our ten billion light years as an infinitesimal pocket of a stupendous megaverse. At the same time theoretical physicists are proposing theories which demote our ordinary laws of nature to a tiny corner of a gigantic landscape of mathematical possibilities

"This landscape of possibilities is a mathematical space representing all of the possible environments that theory allows. Each possible environment has its own laws of physics, elementary particles and constants of nature. Some environments are similar to our own corner of the landscape but slightly different. They may have electrons, quarks and all the usual particles, but gravity might be a billion times stronger. Others have gravity like ours but electrons that are heavier than atomic nuclei. Others may resemble our world except for a violent repulsive force (called the cosmological constant) that tears apart atoms, molecules and even galaxies. Not even the dimensionality of space is sacred. Regions of the landscape describe worlds of 5,6…11 dimensions. The old 20th century question, 'What can you find in the universe?' is giving way to 'What can you not find?' "

A deeper look at these ideas can be found in Susskind's "The Anthropic Landscape of String Theory": preprint available here. ( http://arxiv.org/archive/hep-th, or archive/gr-qc, or
archive/astro-ph are full of fascinating physics. )

If you go to this hep-th section of arXiv.org and use an author search on Susskind, you will get 542 hits (as of today: Mon. Aug 30, 2004), and hit number 5 is this paper. I recommend the Adobe Acrobat "PDF" version.

Scientists Have Been Ignored by Bush

2004-08-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

Space.com posted an AP report on August 14 which details why many leading scientists are fed up with President Bush.

Science, Politics Collide in Election Year
By Matt Crenson
Associated Press
posted: 14 August 200405:55 pm ET

"With more than 4,000 scientists, including 48 Nobel Prize winners, having signed a statement opposing the Bush administration's use of scientific advice, this election year is seeing a new development in the uneasy relationship between science and politics.

In the past, individual scientists and science organizations have occasionally piped up to oppose specific federal policies such as Ronald Reagan's Star Wars missile defense plan. But this is the first time that a broad spectrum of the scientific community has expressed opposition to a president's overall science policy.

Last November, President Bush gave physicist Richard Garwin a medal for his "valuable scientific advice on important questions of national security." Just three months later, Garwin signed the statement condemning the administration for misusing, suppressing and distorting scientific advice."

See the article for more details...

Christians Should Support John Kerry for President

2004-08-16T13:10:00.000-07:00

One of my high school classmates (Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, L.I., N.Y., class of '53) has copied to me a straight from the heart argument that true Christians should be supporting John Kerry for President in 2004. Mike has agreed to let me place it in this blog. Dick is another of my Stony Brook classmates. Stuff in [...] is my addition.

========================

Hi Dick,

Some friendly banter to you on the John Kerry / VietNam issue. It was found out recently (and probably John McCain knew it first) that those contesting the crew of Kerry's river boat were a group of ardent Republicans dead-set on contesting anything positive about Kerry.

Significantly also about them is that, yes, some of them may have served in the same general area there as Kerry, and maybe in his military unit, but NONE of them were in his crew on the boat and there to see his valor under fire. But ALL but one of his crew who are alive today were there by his side at the convention affirming his character and courage.

Let me share something with you, Dick, about our support for Kerry and the Democratic Party. This [the following outline] was the substance, in short form, of a publication here in Pennsylvania recently. And it has everything to do with our transformation and growth in the Christian faith. The article, mainly in outline form is entitled "Why We Are Voting for John Kerry" by Mike and Shirley Winship.

LEADERSHIP - U.S. Senate experience. Honorable, dedicated military officer.

ENVIRONMENT - Environmentalists and Sierra Club support him.

STEM CELL RESEARCH - He supports it for its immense potential for healings and medical possibilities for so many.

VETERANS - Against the sneaky Bush back-door draft and for keeping our VA Centers open and funded.

MILITARY - Decorated combat experience; for strong military and improved homeland defense.

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS - Would restore the lost respect and trust of old allies by respecting and working with them.

HEALTH CARE - Access to adequate health care for all.

EDUCATION - Would give priority to elevating student opportunities and teacher excellence and compensation.

PRESCRIPTION DRUGS - Make them accessible to all at prices comparable to what people in other countries pay.

PERSONAL HUMILITY & INTEGRITY - contrast with Bush arrogance and lies.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY - this is the party of and by and for the people. We are followers of Christ, and He and the Bible describe the work of the Kingdom of God as helping the poor, the oppressed, weak, sick, hungry, hurting (Isaiah 58, 61; Luke 4), and forgiving and peace-making. We are former Republicans (until year 2000), and our Christian faith finally demanded our rejection of the party of the rich and powerful and arrogant, and our alignment with the party of the hard working people all around us. It was, for us, like coming from darkness into the light. It was a gradual and thoughtful process of change, and George Bush proved us right.

Dick, I know how you have wrestled yourself with issues the Presbyterian church has been contended with, and I would seriously ask you consider some of our positives mentioned above. Compare the conventions this summer and look at the difference you will see in the faces of the people there at each. Think of the OT prophets and the sins of Israel/Judah and how God rebuked them for looking away from those oppressed and for their love of ease and self-enrichment. Look at the real sin of Sodom as mentioned in Ezekiel 16:47-50. Then compare the two major parties of America, and see where your heart is.

See, Dick, they call me retired, but I am still the pastor and counselor. One lesson God has taught me in recent years, for which I am so grateful and liberated, is to listen for His voice in all kinds of people, Christian and non-... For me, since Stony Brook, change and the power to change my mind and direction, is the essence of transformation, which the Apostle Paul said was crucial (Romans 12:1-2). Jesus, a true and pure liberal, said the repentance and move into the "Kingdom of God" was so radical that it required nothing less than being"born again." When one is an active pastor, he is rarely free enough to actually go that far. The "Pharisees", or today's conservative equivalents, will crucify you, or at least kick you out of the church. By the way, Jesus was indeed a liberal (free, liberated a la Galatians 5:1). What conservative would say "You have heard it said ... (i.e. the law), but I say unto you ...."?

Just some thoughts, Dick.

Spoken in Spirit and love. Mike

Stephen Hawking's Black Hole 2004

2004-08-09T13:07:00.000-07:00

Back from vacation and eager to see/hear informed comments on Hawking's Dublin presentation of his conclusion that black hole formation and evaporation does not involve a loss of information.

John Baez (math: U C Riverside) for provides a transcript of Hawking's talk, as well as comments about the technical details of Hawking's calculation. ( a link to Baez's discussion appears on the General Relativity 17 conference home page ).

John Preskill (physics: Cal Tech) comments on Hawking's talk and the link to a pdf file containing the text of a Preskill seminar at Cal Tech dealing the the black hole information paradox.

Sean Carroll (physics: U. of Chicago) discusses Hawking's talk on Chicago Public Radio (with Juan Maldacena of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton) where both give a discussion in lay terms of the significance of Hawking's talk and the problem in general. The talk appears on the Odyssey program for July 22, 2004.

Sean Carroll is one of the few first rank physics researchers who cares enough about public outreach (this of course is my characterization!!) to write a regular blog, which covers many interesting topics.

Hawking's results are derived (the details remain to be published) using an approach to quantum gravity in ordinary four dimensional spacetime (three spatial plus one time dimension) which uses the "Euclidean" version of the Feynman path integral (t -> it), with the approximate final answer analytically continued back to the "real world" via the inverse Wick rotation (it -> t ) . The exact answer requires integrating over all 4D geometries possible in the Euclidean space (which has four spatial dimensions). As Baez discusses (see above) , no one knows how to sum this Feynman path integral (FPI) formulation in four dimensions over all possible geometries.

Baez discusses how Hawking uses a "semi-classical" approximation which involves including only contributions from geometries "close to some solution of the classical equations of general relativity." Hawking includes the FPI contributions from only two such classical solutions.

Jacques Distler (U. Texas physics ) , a noted string theorist, notes that Hawking has to include an extra term, "a small negative cosmological constant", in the Lagrangian to keep the expression well defined at low energies. Distler notes that Hawking doesn't really deal with how that mathematical device allows a description finally in terms of the observed universe.

Distler also considers the black hole information paradox as "solved" in principle by string theorists for a multi-dimension version of the universe possessing "AdS/CFT" . In his Dublin talk , Hawking says:

"Finally, it was claimed that the issue was settled in favour of conservation of information, by ADS, CFT. ADS, CFT, is a conjectured duality between supergravity in anti de Sitter space, and a conformal field theory on the boundary of anti de Sitter space, at infinity. Since the conformal field theory is manifestly unitary, the argument is that supergravity must be information preserving. Any information that falls in a black hole in anti de Sitter space, must come out again. But it still wasn't clear, how information could get out of a black hole. It is this question, I will address. "

Hawking is trying to understand this problem in ordinary 4D spacetime.

An interesting approach to the black hole information paradox is contained in a recent preprint: "Black holes Conserve Information in Curved-Space Quantum Field Theory", by Christoph Adami and Greg L. Ver Steeg. The abstract is:

" We show that black hole formation and evaporation in curved-space quantum field theory is unitary if stimulated (as well as spontaneous) emission at the event horizon is taken into account. In particular, we show that the entropy accreted by a black hole when particles cross the event horizon is exactly balanced by a commensurate entropy increase of the rest of the universe, owing to the quantum entanglement between the black hole, Hawking radiation, and scattered radiation (including stimulated emission). As a consequence, the emitted radiation is non-thermal, and information can be retrieved using standard error corrections methods for noisy quantum channels."

The authors analyse the problem using quantum information theory instead of thermodynamics. In their conclusion, they state:

"In conclusion, we found that a consistent treatment of black hole dynamics requires the presence of emitted radiation outside the event horizon beyond the usual Hawking radiation. The radiation field in this region is non-thermal, while accretion and evaporation described by the Hamiltonian Htot = H + Hs is unitary. This guarantees that any change in the entropy of the inside region is exactly balanced by a commensurate change in the outside, so that the total entropy of the universe is constant under this dynamics. The information dynamics of black holes surprisingly turns out to be that of a
very standard quantum channel that is used to transmit classical information, where Hawking radiation provides the noise source. We further note that this solution to the black hole information paradox does not require to go beyond curved-space quantum field theory."