Mike Toliver

Yes. The Brothers Karamazov certainly poses some interesting problems. For example: Ivan: " A well-educated, cultured gentleman and his wife beat their own child with a birch-rod, a girl of seven...They beat for a minute, for five minutes, for ten minutes, more often and more savagely. The child screams. At last the child cannot scream, it gasps 'Daddy daddy!'...But I've still better things about children...There was a little girl of five who was hated by her father and mother, 'most worthy and respectable people, of good education and breeding.'...This poor child was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason till her body was one bruise. Then, they went to greater refinements of cruelty - shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy, and...smeared her face and filled her mouth with excretment...Can you understand why a little creature, who can't even understand what's done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her?...Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to 'dear, kind God!'" Ivan, as I'm sure you're aware, is the atheist. He's got a damn good point.

Hmmm. Seems difficult to discuss these issues, doesn't it? Let me state that I believe God is everywhere, or nowhere. God is present in everything, or nothing. Therefore, my dog (and your dog, too, Doug) has a soul - or he doesn't. If he doesn't, then neither do I. As a scientist, I can modify genetic material - say, in corn to protect it from corn borers - but science doesn't tell me whether I SHOULD modify genetic material. I could, I suppose, do some sort of cost/benefit analysis (using BT genes to protect corn from corn borers will reduce the usage of pesticides by X%; but there's a danger (of X probability) of that genetic material escaping and endangering non-target organisms) but on a fundamental level, I really don't have a clue as to whether this is "good" or "bad". This is why I think the real title of this thread should be "Science and religion" - not science or religion.

Sorry - my fault. Though I would point out that your problem would be solved if you just got a Mac... OH NO! I'm starting to sound like a religious zealot! Please pray for me!

I've enjoyed this thread, but it seems to have gotten side-tracked. I see a couple of issues that may prompt some more discussion: How can a scientist make moral judgements? How can an atheist make moral judgements (there is a difference between a scientist and an atheist)? Is there absolute truth? If there isn't, how do we make law? If there is, how do we discover it? Is there such a thing as "one true religion"? This Easter, my family had a long discussion about Christianity. What troubles us is its exclusionary bent. It excludes God to "somewhere out there". It excludes every other natural entity - only humans have souls. It excludes other humans who don't happen to believe in the divinity of one person. If there is such a thing as the one true religion, I doubt very much that it excludes so many things. One of my daughter's friends had a beloved pet die not long ago. She asked her pastor if "Ally" was in heaven now. He said "Certainly not! Animals don't go to heaven!" There's a real comforting minister for you!

Sure. I get automatic updates when I log on, including the bug fixes mentioned. I have YET to suffer a virus attack on my Macs - not that it isn't possible - while on my PC I am constantly having to update my anti-virus software and screen every email to the point where communication might as well be by snail mail. And as far as system stability - which is what Andy was having trouble with - I might get a program crash (almost always Microsoft for Mac programs) once every two weeks. These do not require a re-boot of the whole operating system. On my PC's, I'm lucky if I get through the day without a crash - which always requires a whole system re-boot. I use Windows 98, Millenium, 2000 and XP daily, and XP is certainly better than the others in this regard; still not as good as OS X 10.3. I "grew up" using PC's, and still use them everyday. But I've been using Macs for about 4 years now, and there's just no comparison. The Mac is a far better computer.

Shoulda bought a mac!

Doug - I believe I stated early on that I do, in fact, notice God. I am not an atheist. However, my God is not a Christian God, so if you are asking what it would take to notice your God, I'd have to answer "I tried, but that God seemed too limiting." What I mean by that is, according to my understanding, only those who believe that Jesus was divine and accept him as their personal savior can expect to be with God. As I've stated before, I simply cannot accept that the many non-Christians who have had a profound positive impact on the world are denied by God.

My opinions about heaven are anything but science and are therefore, as you note, entirely subjective and centered on me. My opinions about the Universe (it is expanding, natural selection produces organic diversity, etc.) are science and do have an external referent and are objective. Your opinions about Jesus, though shared by many people, are not objective. If they were, you'd be able to demonstrate scientifically how he rose and went to heaven. I understand and appreciate your concern about eternity - it's nice of you to worry about others salvation. However, my "salvation" is really up to me, not you.

Ooops! You're on to me! Seriously, I am arguing that scientific faith and religious faith are different, and are equally valuable. Now, as to why I don't subscribe to the idea that Jesus is the only route to heaven - first let me state that I don't think heaven is a place we go to when we die. I think what we have here and now is IT. There is no after-life for me, except in the sense that my bodily composition will be used again by other critters, and again after that. And my family and friends may remember me for a couple of generations. So heaven is here and now. So is hell. Which it happens to be at this particular moment depends mostly on my own actions and attitude. Even if I believed that there was an after-life, I still couldn't buy the idea that the only way to get there would be through one particular religious entity. Human culture is far too rich to allow me to entertain such an idea. If I believed that the only way to heaven was through Jesus, I would be relegating people like Gandhi to hell, or at least to purgatory. If there really is a heaven, I'm pretty sure Gandhi is there, and so is Chief Joseph, and Lao Tzu, and Buddha and.....you get the idea.

I don't believe I said anything about "benevolent" Nature (nor did I capitalize "nature"). Scientists are unable to make any sort of value judgement about nature - as scientists. They simply "have faith" that they can discover natural law—and that natural law may be that the Universe is expanding and will eventually fade into "nothingness", or that we are endowed by natural selection to commit violence on one another; or have a "moral" sense (yes, many biologists "believe" that a moral sense has selective value and therefore evolved in us by the same mechanism that produced an opposable thumb). I also don't think any of us have said Christians can't believe in a loving God - it seems to me the opposite of what I've read in this thread. Tim, I suspect all of us scientists and atheists on this thread have considered just what you've asked us to consider. In my own family, we have various rituals to observe the day—some from Christianity, some pagan (and pagans were probably the first to celebrate the importance of resurrection). I certainly believe in the historical Jesus and regard some of his teaching as incredibly profound. I just can't believe that the only way to heaven is through him.

Sure, scientists have to have faith. They have to have faith that their senses give them accurate information about reality. They have to have faith that natural law may be determined from effect. And they have to have faith that natural law works uniformly through time and space. This seems to me to be a vastly different kind of faith than religious believers have. There is no external referent for religious faith, and therefore it is entirely subjective and personal. That is not true of the faith required to do science. I suspect what bothers religious believers about science is that it works. When you ask "Why should science have the last word?" — well, of course it doesn't have to have the last word. But it often does because it's "word" works.

Years ago, I debated some serious creationists - Ken Bliss from the Institute for Creation Research, and some televangelist from Florida. In the course of the debate, the question of the origin of life was raised, and an incident occurred that illustrates the difference between science and religion quite nicely. I was responding to the issue of the origin of life, and I said that scientists don't know how life began - and before I could finish my sentence the creationist audience (and the Florida televangelist - I think his name was Kennedy) broke out in laughter. It didn't occur to me at the time, but the fact that these creationists found it laughable that I would admit that scientists don't know something shows why science is so powerful in answering questions about the natural world and religion is not. Of course, they KNEW how life originated - God did it. But science doesn't know how life originated, and so we're led, as scientists, to investigate that phenomenon. It is true that religious persons can have a certainty about things which is impossible in science. Such persons can also have a consistency about things as well (but so can atheists). But such certainty has no place in science and it is that UNcertainty that allows - indeed demands - that scientists ask questions about the natural world instead of saying "God did it" and letting it go at that.

I'm really a humanities person posing as a scientist! Seriously, I studied literature as an undergraduate and found it spoke to me about my war experience much more powerfully than an objective analysis of the Vietnam war via political science or history. It was almost enough to make me switch from biology to English (in fact, I'm just 3 hours short of my English major). I have to tease David just a bit here. He was glad we have a bunch of idiots in the US trying to force evolution out of the classroom, so the Europeans could "catch up". To my mind, many Europeans have left the US in the dust when it comes to social justice - including his country.

Tim - "Creation science" is an oxymoron. People like Michael Behe are not good scientists when they write nonsense such as "Darwin's Black Box". That book consists mostly of intricate biological phenomena which Mr. Behe believes are too complex to have evolved by natural selection. Their complexity leads him to believe that they were intelligently designed and he feels he's "scientifically" shown the existence of an Intelligent Designer. Where's the science? It's certainly not in his book. Please go to the talk origins web site and search on Behe or intelligent design to see what scientists think of this junk (www.talkorgins.org). David is exactly correct when he asserts that U.S. states deciding to force biology classes to ignore evolution or teach "intelligent design" have decided to not teach science. He is also correct to note that a scientist can "split herself up" and decide to be a scientist in her professional work, but have religious faith in her personal life. They are two separate things and in order to do one, you have to ignore the other. I used to think that was a bad thing, and that one should be entirely consistent in one's life - therefore one should be an atheist because science is by far the most rational response to the world. I no longer think that, because I think rationality is way over-rated. Thus I can cheerfully pursue my pagan belief that my dog and the geese on the lake all have souls and are part of God - though I certainly wouldn't claim any support for that notion from science.

It is interesting that most of the scientists Tim cites are physicists. Most biologists have a very different take on the argument from design. I find this interesting in part because I am a biologist, but also because biologists deal most closely with life - where one might expect the argument from design to be most powerful. I would say the majority of evolutionary biologists - including of course our friend Richard Dawkins - are atheists. The argument from design was handily destroyed by Hume on a philosophical level, and Darwin finished it off with natural selection, which explains apparent design without resort to a divine intelligence. That, of course, is deeply troubling to religious people of a certain stripe (I doubt a Buddhist would be at all troubled by it...). Certainly it is possible for a scientist to be a Christian (or any other religion for that matter). However, they don't rely on science to sustain that belief - because they can't. In that sense, science and religion do have trouble getting along.

A very interesting thread, and one to which I have devoted some amount of thought. Being an evolutionary biologist, and therefore the wide-receiver on the religion vs. science javelin team, I can't avoid thinking about this. I tend to agree with much of what David has said. However, I can't reject God outright, in part because I don't think science has a whole lot to offer about God's existence (or lack of it). It is interesting to me that the discussion here seems to be much more "Christianity vs. science" rather than "religion vs. science". I find paganism (everything has a "spirit") pretty attractive as religious belief goes, because one thing science tells me is that humans are no more (or less) "special" than any other creature. I also find Buddhism has a lot to recommend it. As a side note, check out Cynthia Rylant's book of poems "God Went to Beauty School". That's the sort of God I can believe in... Cheers, Mike

Derek - Thanks for the link to the "Democracy Now" site. I suspected Churchill's views were being distorted. I am in total agreement with you as to the need to look at why the US was (and is) a target; and our failure to do so only increases the chances we will continue to be subject to these kinds of attacks. Other people have been making such pleas since shortly after the Sept. 11 attack - Churchill just has the misfortune of having stated his in a way that seems to have hit a nerve - and prompted many people to threaten his job. Thus there seem to be limits to "freedom of speech" in the US - not a surprise to me, having experienced it first-hand. It is, however, worse now than anytime since Vietnam. My wife told me she's got a catalog that has a coffee mug with "Patriot Act" in big letters on the top. Underneath are listed all our civil rights. When you fill the cup, each of the civil rights gradually disappears, leaving only "Patriot Act". I must get several of these....

I admire Derek's ability to concisely argue his point! However, one could argue that in terms of human misery, Stalinism was pretty awful (millions killed for their beliefs, or just being in the way). I agree that in terms of "awfulness" it still doesn't top fascism. Perhaps you've read about Prof. Churchill at the Univ. of Colorado, whose job is in jeopardy because he compared the workers in the WTC on Sept. 11 to Nazis. What do you folks think of that?

My college has been having interesting discussions regarding tenure. Some constituents regard tenure as an evil - allowing lazy, irresponsible professors to languish in a cushy job. Arguments about being able to "speak truth to power" are lost on them - they want to be able to run the place like a business. I have a cordial disagreement with one of my colleagues about damn near everything - he is no fan of evolution and I'm an evolutionary biologist, he believes global warming is a plot by socialists wanting to disrupt capitialist economies and I think it's a real phenomenon, etc. Our students benefit directly and indirectly from these disagreements. One of the best classroom discussions I've ever had occurred when the two of us combined our Western Civilization and Culture sections and debated modern art in front of them. Many of my colleagues regard him as, shall I say, "unconventional" (although I think his opinions reflect the population more than my liberal colleagues). I would hate to see him (or me!) lose his (or my!) job because we held certain views. We have a course in critical thinking here, which every student will now have to take. How like academics - to see a course as the solution to a problem! I think it's a good thing, but I don't hold any illusions about magically converting students to critical thinkers. I'm with Mike on this one - give objectivity your best shot, tell 'em where YOU stand and let the chips fall where they may.

Certainly a hot topic these days with the whole "Churchill" controversy at the University of Colorado, etc. I have to say that "majority opinion" is not a good standard to apply when deciding what is or is not appropriate to raise in the classroom. The "majority" may believe that there was some conspiracy to do away with JFK, and it may well be appropriate to question the "official story". However, the "majority" believes the creationist line about where we come from (in the USA, at least). Science isn't decided by majority vote, and I don't think history should be either.

Interesting topic. In our Western Civ. class we are discussing religious thinkers from the ancient Greeks to Thich Nhat Hanh - and many of them wrestle with "the problem of evil". We've just finished a selection from "The Brothers Karamazov" where Ivan tells Aloysha that many regard such awful events as a means of "instructing" us on the nature of good and evil. Ivan, of course, will have none of it. Such knowledge is not worth the suffering of one child. As an evolutionary biologist who has seen Dawkins speak, I have to admit he holds all the cards on this one. Nevertheless, I can't help but turn to Gandhi, who we are also reading, who says "...in the midst of pain, we have hope, in the midst of darkness there is light..."

Fun topic - with lots of great artists mentioned. I haven't gone to many live performances over the years, but John's post reminded me of seeing John Prine in a concert hall, standing there all by himself with his guitar, singing "Hello in There", etc. I saw him again years later when he played with Steve Goodman as Steve was dying from leukemia. Steve was fabulous. Saw Leo Kotke in the late 70's - early 80's - technically phenomenal. The Talking Heads in the late 70's and early 80's - amazing. The Police, fronted by the English Beat, was a memorable performance as well. And Karla Bonoff, singing her songs that others made famous.... Asleep at the Wheel was just plain fun - and not many people came to hear them.

Of course the main (non-economic) purpose of movies is to entertain. That CAN be coincident with learning - in fact one could get a more "realistic" picture from a fictional movie than pure facts. I'm constantly asked by students if there's a "realistic" movie on the Vietnam War. Of course there isn't - a truly realistic movie would be deadly dull most of the time and terrifyingly confused the remainder. Many regard "Apocalypse Now" as a great movie - not realistic but still imparting some essential essence of the War. I used to be a fan of this movie, but it does not wear well with time (unlike " The Bridge on the River Kwai "). Don't even get me started on "Apocalypse Now Redux". The other popular 'Nam movies are pretty much junk: "Platoon", "The Deer Hunter". A possible exception is "Full Metal Jacket", which definitely has its moments. A vastly under-rated film is "Gardens of Stone". And I found "Green Dragon" to be a worthy entry for a side of the war that just isn't represented elsewhere. I wonder what you think of "Gandhi"? I don't know a lot about his personal life, and I've only read excerpts of his writing, but I found the movie very powerful.

Certainly students used the same tactics with library research "in the old days" that they use now with the Internet. And of course critical thinking is important whether you're using the Internet or the library or anything else. However, my concern is that there is a lot of crap out on the Internet that has virtually no "peer review". Any clown with an ax to grind can do so with ease on the 'Net. There is a certain amount of filtering that occurs when books and articles are ordered for or from the library which is entirely lacking on the Internet. It is wonderful that political chicanery can be exposed on the Internet - I applaud it. But I certainly don't want my students to rely solely on the Internet for their information.

There are, of course, biological differences between men and women. Furthermore, it is true that genes have a stronger role to play in our behavior than we'd like to acknowledge. However, from my classroom experience, I would have to say that if performance in science and math is genetically influenced, then women are genetically better at it. Women are consistently at the top of my classes. That doesn't seem to translate into post-graduate work, and I suspect the reasons are much more social than genetic. Relatively few of my great women students continue in graduate studies - and I think they're probably "discouraged" from doing so by a variety of social factors.