Thoughts in a Haystack

[M]ature theology is also very far from intelligent design, which I consider to be a particularly unfortunate, maladroit, and problematic notion ... It is true that the fifth argument of St. Thomas Aquinas for the existence of God is based on the design ..... [y]et theologians themselves noted, long before Richard Dawkins, that the argument is hardly cogent, and ... [is more] a reflection ... of faith by believers than as an effort to persuade unbelievers. In addition, ... a priest friend of mine often takes ... [an] irreverent step further: with all the chance, chaos, entropy, violence, waste, injustice, and randomness in the universe, the project hardly seems very intelligent! Do we imagine that God is intelligent in basically the same way that we are, just a very BIG intelligence and "super-smart"? ...

All of this is mind-numbingly anthropomorphic, and what seems to be irreverent and blasphemous is actually the only way to avoid being so. ... Unfortunately, the most fervent people are often the most naive: the monks of the desert in the fourth century got violently upset when traveling theologians suggested that God did not have a body.

People are docilely being seduced by the latest Christian stars and spiritual fads. Many churches today are full of silent, gentlemanly diplomats, not wanting to make waves! Nobody wants trouble and so they go unchallenged and the church has more than enough of smiling, silent mousy Christian leaders! ...

Today there is a special onslaught of (Chaotic) deceiving spirits has been unleashed, the fulfilment of the prophecy expressed through the Apostle Paul, that this would take place in the "later times."

[F]our faculty members from Pennsylvania's Muhlenberg College — instructors of biology, philosophy, anthropology and English — tackled one particularly tricky case study: the challenge of teaching evolution across the curriculum. Even putting aside today's culture wars, "there are obvious problems teaching evolution as an anthropologist because of the historical legacy my discipline has relative to evolution," said Christopher Kovats-Bernat, an associate professor at Muhlenberg.

Kovats-Bernat, for instance, referenced the "criminal anthropology" movement that dates to the 1870s — essentially the argument that by measuring the degree to which a person exhibits "ape-ish" physical features one can determine their propensity to commit crimes (as "crime is equated with violence and violence is equated with lesser animals," as Kovats-Bernat described the logic).

And Bruce Wightman, an associate professor of biology, pointed to a number of other dubious movements based on natural selection (or, more commonly, a misinterpretation of Darwinian principles) — including the rise of social Darwinism and the catch phrase "survival of the fittest" (though, when it comes to natural selection, as Wightman points out, "whether you survive is irrelevant if you don't reproduce"), and the interest in eugenics and forced sterilization.

Especially when the current political and curricular debate over intelligent design is layered on top of this complex historical legacy, there's a tendency, Wightman said, for professors to retreat and teach the biological theory apart from its context. And yet, evolution is the most important idea biologists have ever introduced in terms of influencing broader thought, Wightman said.

His own sophomore students, already with a year of introductory biology under their belt, may accept evolution as a statement of fact, but still, he said, "they're poorly equipped to talk about it.... This raises questions for us as educators."

"We have to start by admitting some level of failure. If two-thirds of Americans doubt evolution, that's a lot of college graduates out there," Wightman said, referencing a 2004 Gallup poll. "Can this problem be addressed only by better biology instruction?"

... Terry Fox, was the Jerry Falwell of the Sunflower State — the public face of the conservative Christian political movement in a place where that made him a very big deal.

So when Fox announced to his flock one Sunday in August last year that it was his final appearance in the pulpit, the news startled evangelical activists from Atlanta to Grand Rapids. Fox told the congregation that he was quitting so he could work full time on "cultural issues." Within days, The Wichita Eagle reported that Fox left under pressure. The board of deacons had told him that his activism was getting in the way of the Gospel. "It just wasn't pertinent," Associate Pastor Gayle Tenbrook later told me.

Fox, who is 47, said he saw some impatient shuffling in the pews, but he was stunned that the church's lay leaders had turned on him. "They said they were tired of hearing about abortion 52 weeks a year, hearing about all this political stuff!" he told me on a recent Sunday afternoon. "And these were deacons of the church!"

A CBS News poll this month parallels what the Times reporter David D. Kirkpatrick found in his examination of evangelicals for today's Times Magazine. Like most other Americans, they are more interested in hearing from presidential candidates about the war in Iraq and health care than about any other issues.

Abortion and same-sex marriage landed at the bottom of that list; fighting poverty outpolled abortion as a personal priority by a 3-to-2 margin.

If they really believed uncompromisingly in their issues and principles, they would have long since endorsed either Sam Brownback, the zealous Kansas senator fond of using fetus photos as political props, or Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who spent 15 years as a Baptist preacher, calls abortion a "holocaust" and believes in intelligent design rather than evolution.

But they gave Senator Brownback so little moral and financial support that he folded his candidacy a week ago. And they continue to stop well short of embracing Mr. Huckabee, no matter how many rave reviews his affable personality receives on the campaign trail. They shun him because they know he'll lose, and they would rather compromise principle than back a loser.

Backing a loser, they know, would even further diminish their waning Washington status in a post-Rove, post-Bush G.O.P. The more they shed their illusion of power, the more they imperil their ability to rake in big bucks from their apocalyptic direct-mail campaigns. They must choose mammon over God if they are to maintain the many values rackets that make up their various business empires.

Some might compare the religious right to a snake. We may be in our hole right now, but we can come out and bite you at any time.

On the other hand, does science discriminate against proponents of intelligent design? Well, sure, but only in the same sense that a university discriminates against bad students or the stock market discriminates against people who make poor financial decisions.

If anything, the problem is that there isn't enough discrimination against this idea.

Freedom of inquiry ... includes the ability to inquire whether a higher power, a being greater than man, is involved with how the universe operates. This has always been basic to science. ALWAYS.

Some of the greatest scientists of all time, including Galileo, Newton, Einstein, operated under the hypothesis that their work was to understand the principles and phenomena as designed by a creator. ...

Now, I am sorry to say, freedom of inquiry in science is being suppressed.

Under a new anti-religious dogmatism, scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator. ...

They cannot even mention the possibility that -- as Newton or Galileo believed -- these laws were created by God or a higher being.

[F]reedom of speech doesn't protect the rights of professors to make claims with no scientific backing without repercussions. Universities don't stand for professors who waste funds and time researching astrology, parapsychology or other pseudoscientific ideas, and they never should.

Stein and his fellow design advocates don't care about equality or fairness. They want intelligent design to be "special" in this regard, so that they can pretend their belief in God -- a faith-based belief -- somehow has scientific backing.

Contrary to the popular belief among beleaguered design theorists, there is no conspiracy to destroy religion in science. University faculty members continue to hold a multitude of religious positions even in evolutionary biology departments, and in the dozen or so biology textbooks I've looked through, I have yet to find the phrase "God does not exist."

On the other hand, does science discriminate against proponents of intelligent design? Well, sure, but only in the same sense that a university discriminates against bad students or the stock market discriminates against people who make poor financial decisions.

Why is Dr. Pigliucci surprised that most people, even well-educated people, believe in Heaven? How does science prove the non-existence of things outside of nature? ... [I]t's difficult to see how the scientific method, which is suited to the study of the natural world, applies to inferences about religious beliefs in the afterlife.

Prominent secular and atheist commentators have argued lately that religion "poisons" human life and causes endless violence and suffering. But the poison isn't religion; it's monotheism. The polytheistic Greeks didn't advocate killing those who worshipped different gods, and they did not pretend that their religion provided the right answers. Their religion made the ancient Greeks aware of their ignorance and weakness, letting them recognize multiple points of view.

There is much we still can learn from these ancient notions of divinity, even if we can agree that the practices of animal sacrifice, deification of leaders and divining the future through animal entrails and bird flights are well lost.

The world, as the Greek philosopher Thales wrote, is full of gods, and all deserve respect and honor.

What they did not approve of was atheism, by which they meant refusal to believe in the existence of any gods at all. One reason many Athenians resented Socrates was that he claimed a divinity spoke with him privately, but he could not name it.

[A]s the Greeks saw it, the gods made life hard for humans, didn't seek to improve the human condition and allowed people to suffer and die. As a palliative, the gods could offer only to see that great achievement was memorialized. ...

The separation between humankind and the gods made it possible for humans to complain to the gods without the guilt or fear of reprisal the deity of the Old Testament inspired. Mortals were free to speculate about the character and intentions of the gods. By allowing mortals to ask hard questions, Greek theology encouraged them to learn, to seek all the possible causes of events. Philosophy -- that characteristically Greek invention -- had its roots in such theological inquiry. As did science. ...

Ancient Greek religion gives an account of the world that in many respects is more plausible than that offered by the monotheistic traditions. Greek theology openly discourages blind confidence based on unrealistic hopes that everything will work out in the end. Such healthy skepticism about human intelligence and achievements has never been needed more than it is today.

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[E]pistemes [do not] follow one another in neat sequence through time. Men may dwell side by side and yet work within different ones. Men may move back and forth from one to another before making a final commitment; some may never make one. And others, like Darwin, may promote one episteme while never breaking free of another.

Insofar as creationism and positivism shared certain scientific beliefs a common discourse was possible, and it was along the bridge of this discourse that men passed from one episteme to the other. What did they have in common? They shared the legacy of a joint scientific heritage: laws of nature (however differently rationalized), the imperatives of evidence, the canons of proof and prediction. In its pure form creationism predicted that no purely physical explanation of speciation would be found, that no transitional fossils would be discovered, that no argument for evolution could be constructed that would plausibly link supporting evidence. [However], there were creationists who were more committed to a protopositivism within natural history than they were to the theological elements in their episteme, and these were the ones who, for the sake of their science, crossed the bridge; the others did not. Creationism, then, was not only a definite stance on the origin and nature of species, but was itself unstable owing to the development of positivism within it. And this was owing to the gradual modification of the tools of science through work.

... Newtonian nomothetic [divine action through natural law] and the Baconian inductionist traditions from the physical sciences with biblical theology and a type of philosophical idealism, [sanctioning], in the idea of special creation, or so it appeared from the new positive perspective, a pseudoparadigm that was not a research governing theory (since its power to explain was only verbal) but an antitheory, a void that had the function of knowledge but, as naturalists increasingly came to feel, conveyed none.

... that attitude toward nature ... which saw the purpose of science to be the discovery of laws which reflected the operation of purely natural or "secondary" causes. It typically used mechanistic or materialistic models of causality, rejected supernatural, teleological, or other factors which were in principle beyond scientific examination as legitimate aspects of scientific inquiry, and -- whatever the desires or beliefs of individual practitioners, many of whom were theists or even good Christians -- embraced and promoted those far-reaching cultural tendencies conventionally known as secularism and naturalism. This development resulted in a consensus, virtually unquestioned among followers of science by the century's end, that science had a unique and prescriptive approach to knowledge which was superior to all others and was exclusively the way to understand the world of nature.

These systems, positivism and creationism, were realized in the lives of men, and that may best be understood by focusing on the reality of men thinking and working through time, out of one mode of discourse and into another. So much, I think, is true for the generation that makes the transition. Those raised within the confines of the new mode will be, of course, inclined to take its characteristics as self-evident, but only so long as it suits their needs. When conscious theory no longer fits their "silent practice" they, too, will inaugurate an epistemological shift.

I am concerned, then, with might be called the existential dimension of Darwin's work: his attitude toward human knowledge and its possibilities, towards religious faith and its place in human experience.

Surely this is to confuse two very different things. To say that scientific judgments are not objective -- by this I mean cannot be objective, for no one denies that scientists any more than historians may be influenced by outside factors -- but rather follow the desires and assumptions of scientists is to imply that the processes of objectivity (evidence, tests and experiments, logic, and so forth) have nothing to do with shaping those desires and assumptions. On the contrary, it would seem that these things are closely interrelated and that interrelation may best be seen on the workaday level of science ... [T]o say that the ideas of scientists are subjective or ideological because of their being influenced by a given social matrix, and to conclude, therefore, that they are not true -- presumably because they do not result from some quest of pure reason untouched by the world -- is surely a gross instance of the genetic fallacy. The source of an idea is irrelevant, in the strict logical sense, to its success in a scientific system or in any other. The procedures of proof in any knowledge system are logically independent of the circumstances of the origin of the ideas involved. We need to know such things in order to fully understand science as a historical and social entity, but such knowledge, while it may caution one about scientific theories, cannot determine their truth.

The latest poll on religion and politics by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that nearly seven in 10 Americans think it is important for a president to have strong religious beliefs and 58 percent think it is proper for journalists to ask candidates about their religious beliefs.

Although Republicans, Southerners and evangelical Christians were more likely to agree that a president's religious beliefs are important, the numbers were fairly consistent across religious, regional and other lines. The only group in which a majority disagreed about its importance was those without any religious affiliation.

In that talk, Kennedy said communism, poverty, education and the space race were far more critical election issues but had been obscured by debate about his Catholicism.

He described his belief "in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote."

We're electing a commander in chief, not a pastor in chief.

Two individuals are currently undergoing disciplinary procedures through the Dean of Students Office after an investigation by MTU Public Safety determined that they posted a threatening message on the door of the President and Vice President of a recently-formed student organization called the Pastafarian Club.

The remarks were first published on a Wikipedia article on 12:32 a.m. on Oct. 1, and a minor correction was made to the page one minute later. The two individuals then printed the page, highlighted the remarks in question and posted the printed page on the residence hall room door of the President and Vice President of the club (who are roommates).

The remarks read, in part, "it has been proven that throughout all of history every pastafarian has been gay." They go on to say, "many believe they should be shot and hanged from the tallest redwood and then thrown to the raging sea." The rest of the message contains several other sexual-orientation slurs and an obscenity.

You need to be tolerant of people's beliefs and their ways of life.

We, as Pastafarians, are definitely about free speech, but there was definitely a line crossed.

Larson's quest for answers began from a simple effort to produce an accurate, visual portrayal of the Star in his yard for Christmas. This sent him into a whirl of questions that many people ask each time the Christmas story is told. What did this Star look like? Where did it come from? How did it lead the wise men directly to "this" Child?

"God began leading me on a journey and unveiling answers to me beyond my own understanding," Larson said. "That God would ask someone not trained in astronomy to do this still amazes me."

Using astronomer Johannes Kepler's map of the solar system, Josephus's calendaring system and Imaginova's state-of-the-art Starry Night® software, Larson pinpointed the year of the Star's appearance. While most astronomers researching the Star only look to the sky, Larson took his findings a step further by utilizing a critical piece in the puzzle – the Scriptures from the Book of Matthew.

Larson's in-depth study of Matthew led him to nine distinguishing characteristics of the Star that helped explain its existence. These features of the Star included that it signified birth; signified kingship; had a connection with the Jewish nation; rose in the East; appeared at a precise time; was unbeknownst to Herod; endured over time; was ahead of the Magi as they went south from Jerusalem to Bethlehem; and stopped directly over the city of Bethlehem.

The Biblical characteristics pointed to the Star being a natural occurrence. Larson's study of wandering stars, or planets, and slow retrograde motion, created a breaking point in his research. Larson discovered that in 3 and 2 B.C., Jupiter, known for ages as the "King Planet," held the nine characteristics of the Star.

In recent years some parents and school boards have asked that public schools teach alternatives to Darwinian evolution. These efforts sparked a powerful outcry from the scientific and non-believing community. Defenders of evolution accuse parents and school boards of retarding the acquisition of scientific knowledge in the name of religion. The Economist editorialized that "Darwinism has enemies mostly because it is not compatible with a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis."

This is indeed so, but doesn't Darwinism have friends and supporters mostly for the same reason? Consider the alternative: the Darwinists are merely standing up for science. But surveys show that the vast majority of young people in America today are scientifically illiterate, widely ignorant of all aspects of science. How many high school graduates could tell you the meaning of Einstein's famous equation? Lots of young people don't have a clue about photosynthesis or Boyle's Law. So why isn't there a political movement to fight for the teaching of photosynthesis? Why isn't the ACLU filing lawsuits on behalf of Boyle's Law?

The answer is clear. For the defenders of Darwinism, no less than for its critics, religion is the issue. Just as some people oppose the theory of evolution because they believe it to be anti-religious, many others support it for the very same reason. This is why we have Darwinism but not Kepplerism; we encounter Darwinists but no one describes himself as an Einsteinian. Darwinism has become an ideology.

The Swedish government is to crack down on the role religion plays in independent faith schools. The new rules will include a ban on biology teachers teaching creationism or 'intelligent design' alongside evolution.

"Pupils must be protected from all forms of fundamentalism," said Education Minister Jan Björklund to Dagens Nyheter.

Some Christian schools teach biology students that the world and the organisms on it were created by a supreme being. This is often presented as another valid scientific theory alongside evolution - something most scientists reject.

Religious Education will remain on the curriculum and it will still be allowed to start the school day with prayers. But in classes teachers will be expected to stick to the curriculum.

Most independent schools in Sweden are privately owned but funded by government grants.

Björklund also said the Swedish National Agency for Education would double the number of inspections of both council-run and independent schools. He also announced a ban on anonymous financial donations to schools and said he would make it easier to close schools that were breaking the rules.

Instructors in the faculty of biology at the University of Iceland have expressed their disappointment that an Icelandic MP voted against a resolution at the Council of Europe’s Assembly against the so-called theory of intelligent design.

The resolution, which was passed at the Assembly of the Council of Europe in the beginning of October, warned against promoting intelligent design in schools as a scientific theory. Gudfinna S. Bjarnadóttir, MP for the Independence Party and former Rector of Reykjavík University, voted against the resolution. Interviewed by national radio RÚV, Bjarnadóttir said that while she agreed that religion and science should not be confused, it was outside the mandate of the Council of Europe to form educational policy.

According to RÚV, a faculty meeting of the biology department of the University of Iceland has expressed its regret over Bjarnadóttir’s decision. The theory of intelligent design lacks scientific ground since it cannot be empirically proven.

There are specific areas of mismatch between what Richard Dawkins may write about and what religious people think they are doing. There are few things more annoying than people saying 'I know what you mean'.

Don't distract us from the real arguments by assuming that religion is an eccentric survival strategy or irrational form of explanation.

Our culture is one that deeply praises science, so we assume because someone is a good scientist, they must be a good philosopher. My inner jury is out on that.

On closer examination, however, Mill's endorsement can be seen to be not nearly reassuring. Darwin had properly used the Method of Hypothesis, but this method belonged to the logic of discovery, not proof. In spite of twenty years' labor, Darwin had failed to provide proof for his theory of evolution by natural selection.

About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!

... [T]he statement that a new species has appeared is tantamount to the assertion that a living form has been introduced upon the earth which cannot have been generated from anything previously living. It therefore becomes necessary to suppose that the same effort of Creative Will, which originally placed life upon this planet, is repeated at the introduction of every new species; and thus a new species has to be regarded as the offspring of a miraculous birth. We are as powerless to explain by physical causes this miracle as we are any other. To hope for an explanation would be as vain as for the human mind to expect to discover by philosophy the agency by which Joshua made the sun and moon stand still. ... Those, therefore, who attempt to render unnecessary the belief in these continuously-repeated creative fiats, seek to explain hitherto unexplained phenomena of the highest order of interest and importance in natural history. Whenever this explanation shall have been given, a similar service will have been done to this science, as was performed by Newton for astronomy, when he enunciated his law of gravitation. Newton's discovery is now found in numerous religious works as a favourite illustration of the wisdom of the Creator; and it is now considered that a hymn of praise is sung to God when we expound the simplicity of the Newtonian laws. The day will doubtless come when he who shall unfold, in all their full simplicity, the laws which regulate the organic world, will be held, as Newton is now, in grateful remembrance for the service he has done not only to science, but also to religion.

Campbell said his resume runs 18 pages. In editing it down to a campaign biography, he said, he simply did not have room for all of his academic honors and affiliations.

In a reply to the Seattle Weekly, which reported in August that Campbell is a fellow of the Discovery Institute, Campbell said, "I am not an advocate of intelligent design, but instead a Darwinian scholar who believes in classical liberal education. I have found that students learn best when teachers have the freedom to expose them to competing ideas and arguments even in science."