Science Education and America’s Culture Wars

Posted on May 17, 2010 by James Tracy
Tennessee v. John T. Scopes Trial: John Thomas...
Image by Smithsonian Institution via Flickr

I have been invited to give a talk to the San Diego Secular Humanist Outreach (SDSHOUT) group next month on the issue of science and religion in American education. I will be focusing specifically on the textbook as a particularly interesting site of contention for Conservative Christians. I will begin by briefly examining the recent (2005) lawsuit by the Association of Christian Schools International against the University of California for the latter’s rejection of course curriculum from Christian schools as insufficient college preparation (ACSI vs. Stearns). From there I will review, beginning with Scopes, the long and fierce “battle of the books” that has been waged in the United States over the past 90 years and has become a major feature of the so-called culture wars.

Of course, if you are in the San Diego area then you should drop by.

Here is the official announcement:

On Saturday, June 12th, San Diego Secular Humanist Outreach will present a currently relevant lecture by James A. Tracy entitled Battle of the Books: Science Education and America’s Culture Wars. Tracy is a doctoral candidate at UCSD whose research deals with the history of evolution and creationism, the politics of public education and evolution in the US, and science education and conservative Christian movements. He is an active member of Rational Thought, the secular students association on campus, and also serves currently as a teaching assistant there.

The lecture will take place from 2:00 to 4:00 pm in the Harbor Room at the County Health Services Complex at 3851 Rosecrans Street in the Old Town / Midway area. A question and answer and discussion session will follow.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Posts | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Posted on October 17, 2009 by James Tracy
Cover of "Bright-sided: How the Relentles...

Cover via Amazon

A review of Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 2009).

At the end of the Monty Python movie, The Life of Brian, Brian is sentenced to death by crucifixion – a truly deplorable means of execution. Understandably, Brian is a bit depressed, but one of the other nearby crucified convicts implores Brian to think positively and strikes up a cheery song:

Some things in life are bad,
They can really make you mad.
Other things just make you swear and curse.
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle,
Don’t grumble, give a whistle,
And this’ll help things turn out for the best, and…

Always look on the bright side of life.

The song (written in 1979) and the circumstances under which it is sung takes the (fairly innocent idea) of positive thinking to an extremely absurd level to achieve a comic effect. However, in many ways, it seems to presage a relentless movement in positive thinking that would sweep through the United States beginning in the 1980s. Barbara Ehrenreich, in her book Bright-Sided, documents the sometimes comic level that this movement has reached over the past few decades and, more importantly, casts a much needed critical gaze upon it.

On the surface, “positive thinking” might seem like an unusual subject to be criticized. After all, nobody really doubts that positive feelings are an important part of leading a happy and healthy life. But what happens when positive thinking becomes transformed into an ideology? Barbara begins with her own personal story of being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000 and becoming dismayed at the nature of the advice being offered online and through various support organizations. Optimism was being pushed as essentially mandatory to recovery – sometimes to extent of becoming part of the cure itself. This led many breast cancer sufferers to construe their disease as a gift – a positive life changing event! Now the disease is no longer the focus of the problem. If you are not thinking positively about it, then you become the problem. As Barbara concludes, this might cause any of us to “deny reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune, and blame ourselves for our fate” (44).

In other words, so-called “negative” feelings like distress or anger become viewed not as normal and valid emotional reactions but as stumbling blocks that need to be repressively cleared away.

Barbara locates the origins of this back in the nineteenth century post-Calvinist “New Thought” movement (such as Christian Science), which rejected traditional hellfire and brimstone theology in place with the idea that God wants you to prosper and be happy (the prosperity gospel). She then traces its re-emergence in the corporate world during the 1980s and 1990s as businesses downsized. The commodification of motivation created an enormous and profitable industry of life coaches and motivational speakers, as well as books and DVDs such as 2006’s The Secret. The “secret” of The Secret, of course, is that if you think positive thoughts then the universe will in turn give you what you want – like some kind of cosmic butler.

The movement reinfects religion through the rise of extremely wealthy mega churches with their charismatic positive-toting evangelists. It generates a buzz in scientific circles by creating new fields such as “positive psychology” and “the science of happiness” – where the science, unfortunately, is less than positively stellar. In fact, the positive mania seems to have left no aspect of our society uninfected. In the final and immediately relevant chapter, Barbara argues that this saturation of positive thinking help to hasten the current economic meltdown by encouraging lenders and their consumers to be reckless and overly optimistic financial firms to ignore any negative data. When positive thinking is turned into an ideology it can, as any ideology is apt to do, become a delusion of sorts.

That is why this is a much needed book. Happiness requires working, not wishing. You can think positively, but not before thinking clearly. A touch of skepticism will do us all well in the long run. The point is not to be negative or a cynic. The “point is to acquire the skills not of positive thinking but of critical thinking” (199). Barbara demonstrates why we need to be reminded of that even in the least obvious of places.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Science & Religion in Unscientific America

Posted on August 27, 2009 by James Tracy

A lot of blogging words have been spilled over Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum’s book Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future, which I have now read. My opinion is that the major criticisms leveled at the book are generally fair and I have no intention or desire to pick through those again. Rather, I would like to point out a small part of the infamous Chapter 8 that rubbed me the wrong way. That part begins with:

At a recent conference…an audience member asked a panel of Nobel laureates whether a true scientist could also believe in God. Chemist Herbert Hauptman answered with a definitive “No!” … Yet historical scholarship on the complex interactions between science and religion contradicts Hauptman’s simplistic assertion. A great many leading lights of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment…were distinctly religious and viewed science as a better means of understanding God’s creation and the laws governing it.

The authors then cite the (excellent) book Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives by John H. Brooke, which I have read. On this point they are correct, of course. As Brooke argues, individual and community relationships between science and religion run the gamut from conflict to harmony and everything in-between. Many scientists were and are religious. A scientist can believe in God. A better question, however, might have been whether a scientist (or anybody for that matter) should believe in God.

Mooney and Kirshenbaum then wrap up the section by complaining that the New Atheists are “historically incorrect about the relationship between science and religion” for supposedly asserting that science and religion are conflicting.

It is important, however, that one can make the distinction between a historical argument (that is the way it was) and a normative argument (that is the way it should be). The New Atheists, so far as I am familiar with their work, are not making historical arguments when they claim that science and religion are fundamentally at odds. They are making a philosophical argument. In other words, they are arguing, against the harmonizers and accomodationists, that religious faith is fundamentally irrational and that science is methodologically the only real game in town when it comes to seeking knowledge about the reality in which we live. That many scientists can incorporate unsupported and irrational beliefs into their science and their worldview – while historically quite true – does not mean that such an exercise is good or desirable.

And that is one of the fundamental problems that I had with this book. Mooney and Kirshenbaum in their effort to increase scientific literacy and acceptance, ironically, want us to not criticize the anti-scientific ideas of religious believers so that they might accept a theory or two.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Posts | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Uncertain Believer

Posted on August 19, 2009 by James Tracy
Cover of The Uncertain Believer: Reconciling ...
A review of Edward Correia, The Uncertain Believer: Reconciling God and Science (June 2009)

There are a lot of books aiming to reconcile all or part of science with all or part of religion. Thus, when I picked up Edward Correia’s new book, The Uncertain Believer, my first thought was, ‘What new insights does this book offer that have not been treaded and re-treaded before?’ From the outset, however, it seemed to me that this book would be a bit different from any others that I have read in the ‘accommodationist’ arena of thought. The title gives two clues to Edward’s approach. First is the word ‘uncertain’ and second is the word ‘God’. The book seeks to reconcile God, not religion, and science. Edward rejects all religion in its traditional forms and embraces the uncertainty that is inherent in a scientific world view. Given the latter, then, what room is there for God?

Before I go into that allow me to first explain who Edward Correia is as you are not likely to have heard of him even if you try and keep current in science and religion debates. He is an attorney with a private practice based out of Washington DC and served as Special Counsel to President Clinton for Civil Rights and was appointed to the National Council on Disability. He also teaches law at American University. None of this seems particularly pertinent to the topic addressed by the book, but Edward claims to have pondered these questions – as indeed many of us do – for most of his life. That he has spent a great deal of time thinking through his position shows in his clear and lucid prose and his ability (perhaps like any good lawyer) to lead you through an argument.

One of the highlights of this book is the way that Edward goes about completely dismantling traditional notions of God as a supernatural creator of the universe (among other things) as untenable and unsatisfying intellectually. He then makes a case for embracing science in all of its many implications. Finally, he leads us through three intellectual steps that follow from there:

  1. First, we must acknowledge that human beings decide what God is. That has been the case ever since humans evolved sufficiently to consider the existence of God.
  2. Second, we must give up the idea that God is a “being” that controls the universe and understand that this image was created by our pre-scientific ancestors struggling to make sense of things they did not understand.
  3. Third, God cannot love us because God is an “it,” not a “he.” Thus, we have to give up the notion that a personal God loves us and protects us as bearing no relation to the world we actually observe.

Having dismantled religion and the traditional God what then are we left with? Well, not much. Edward’s solution to reconciling God and science is essentially to reduce the concept of God to an abstract moral principle. Drawing on Hegel’s notion of a “collective consciousness” (or widely shared feeling), he argues that “God is the shared ideal of genuine, unqualified love for others [being the highest law]” and that the spirit of love is not a being but a shared attitude or perspective (115-116). To love God, then, means to participate in this spirit of love (117).

The most obvious objection to this re-conceptualization of the idea of God to an abstract moral principle is that it does violence to the word God itself and seems to render its use unnecessary – like an extra layer of garments. Indeed, underneath the veiled God-talk it seems that what he is really doing is just suggesting that we (should) devote our lives to loving others – which is reminiscent of secular humanism. Edward has three responses to this objection – none of which I found to be especially appealing.

First, noting correctly that this is a question of semantics, Edward suggests that since we set the rules of language then we can define God however we like. This is true only to a certain extent. Since language is a social tool meant to convey meaning to others beyond ourselves I cannot easily get away with, for example, defining a dog as a cat. One can certainly argue that we should be defining a dog as a cat, but such a person likely faces an uphill battle. I think that Edward realizes this.

Aside from the semantic issues, however, there is still the issue of the desirability of this new definition. He argues that the word God has been used so differently that a narrow definition of God (such as a supernatural creator being) would exclude many of the ways that it has been used historically. While it is true that dominant definitions or understandings of the concept of God ebb and flow throughout history, this observation suggests why the term is more confusing than helpful and, therefore, a better argument I think for dropping it altogether. Language that creates confusion is usually not preferable to language that creates clarity. God is a confused and muddled concept. If in conversation one has to continually explain and expound on what one means by God, then the term has indeed ceased being useful.

Finally, Edward argues that keeping the word God allows us to better conceptualize this inspiration or spirit of compassion for which it refers. I have my doubts. Keeping the word around seems more like an effort at saving face or avoiding atheism rather than facilitating any understanding. It certainly makes for an extremely nominal form of theism. Indeed, many theists would see no difference between this and atheism. On the other side, most atheists that I know already value a spirit of compassion towards other humans and will not likely rush out to identify this idea with God and start calling themselves theists.

So while Edward is certainly successful in what he set out to do – and in identifying a worthy and unobjectionable way to find meaning in life – the book and the exercise in general leaves me feeling kind of empty in that I don’t really sense what is achieved by hanging on to God in this manner. An argument for greater human compassion would seem to stand quite well on its own without masking it behind any God-talk. Then again, I did get the sense from the book that Edward is not comfortable with calling himself an atheist and doesn’t see that as a valid option – even though his ideas are virtually indistinguishable from atheism. With that said, his arguments could be effective at weaning other “uncertain believers” off of traditional theism and onto something that is clearly much more palatable. However, as I have said before, I like to call a spade a spade. There is no shame in atheism. Let’s call it what it is.

You can find out more about the book at its website or view this interview with the author.

Before I leave you I would like to point out  a few smaller disagreements and errors that I found in the book:

On page 3 Edward writes that “When Copernicus demonstrated that the earth revolved around the sun, the church condemned his findings as heretical…” Copernicus did not “demonstrate” that the earth revolved around the sun. Rather, what he did was propose a plausible astronomical framework that explained observational evidence in a mathematically appealing way. But then again, the old Ptolemaic framework could do that as well. The (Catholic) church did not quite condemn his findings as heretical – rather, the Catholic church objected to any statements to the effect that this was a real physical description of the solar system – for both religious and philosophical reasons. The book was not condemned but “corrected” – i.e., censured.

On page 24 Edward writes that Galileo “showed that the orbits of the planets are not perfect circles…” This was Johannes Kepler, not Galileo.

On page 29 Edward claims that Pope John Paul II issued his famous statement recognizing evolution as a valid scientific theory in 1981 when, in fact, that was in 1996.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why I Think that Michael Ruse is a Disaster

Posted on August 14, 2009 by James Tracy

Michael Ruse is a philosopher of science and a Darwin scholar who has written voluminously on Darwinism and the Evolution-Creation struggle. A self-proclaimed agnostic and skeptic, Ruse is also known as a strong supporter of reconciliation between science and religion. That said, he has taken creationists to task for promoting what he believes is definitely not science. Now, in an article for Beliefnet (“Why I Think the New Atheists are a Disaster”), Ruse is taken the so-called “new atheists” to task and calling them a “disaster.” I like Ruse and much of his work, but I am afraid that the only disaster here is Michael Ruse himself.

He finds the criticisms leveled recently at Francis Collins “deplorable” given “the man’s scientific and managerial credentials.” Of course, nobody is criticizing Collins’ scientific and managerial credentials. Rather, the criticisms are specifically aimed at the ways in which Collins’ faith-based evangelical Christianity seems to cut off or categorically dismiss valid areas of scientific research and how he uses science in pitiful and embarrassing ways to try and prop up that Christianity. Ruse doesn’t directly confront whether or not any of these criticisms are valid. He just seems to be unhappy that this nice man is being roundly called out. Too bad.

Ruse then turns his attention directly on the new atheists – Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens.

Let me say that I believe the new atheists do the side of science a grave disservice. I will defend to the death the right of them to say what they do – as one who is English-born one of the things I admire most about the USA is the First Amendment. But I think first that these people do a disservice to scholarship. Their treatment of the religious viewpoint is pathetic to the point of non-being. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course. Proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing.

It has been a common criticism that Dawkin’s book is not philosophically rigorous or doesn’t address or attempt to understand more theologically sophisticated or nuanced positions. Ruse then compares this to somebody trying to criticize Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene without a deep understanding of genetics. I say that it is laughable to compare the scientific field of genetics to theology. The latter is built on a house of cards, and no matter how “sophisticated” or “nuanced” one’s theology may get, the slightest breeze is enough to collapse the entire enterprise in on itself. Dawkins makes this plain in his book. His arguments are sound. Dressing them up in philosophical jargon would not have served his purpose or his targeted audience. If someone, after reading The God Delusion, desires more philosophical rigor, then I am sure he or she can pick up one of Ruse’s excellent books on the subject (and I am not being sarcastic on that point).

Secondly, I think that the new atheists are doing terrible political damage to the cause of Creationism fighting. Americans are religious people. You may not like this fact. But they are. Not all are fanatics. Survey after survey shows that most American Christians (and Jews and others) fall in the middle on social issues like abortion and gay marriage as well as on science. They want to be science-friendly, although it is certainly true that many have been seduced by the Creationists. We evolutionists have got to speak to these people. We have got to show them that Darwinism is their friend not their enemy. We have got to get them onside when it comes to science in the classroom. And criticizing good men like Francis Collins, accusing them of fanaticism, is just not going to do the job. Nor is criticizing everyone, like me, who wants to build a bridge to believers – not accepting the beliefs, but willing to respect someone who does have them.

This is probably the heart of the matter for Ruse (and the criticisms that appear in Chris Mooney’s recent book Unscientific America). The new atheists are (supposedly) failing (how he knows this I am not sure) to educate religious believers about science because the new atheists also attack religious belief. I am not sure exactly what Ruse would have us do here. Do we tell people that faith-based thinking is perfectly acceptable so long as it is willing to bend to incorporate scientific truths? I hardly see the value in doing so. If you want people to accept the full range of science then you must try and get them to start thinking scientifically rather than religiously. The point is not simply to get religious believers to accept evolution. Many Christians, including Collins, have made evolution essentially a part of their religion. This does not get to the root of the problem, which is faith and believing propositions dogmatically without any evidence.

When Collins or other Christians proclaim that God uses evolution to create life and bestows a special interest on the species homo sapiens, for example, Ruse (although he doesn’t believe it) is apparently happy. But why should we be? The fact that it successfully marries science and faith doesn’t mean that it is a more respectable or justifiable position. Indeed, it is not justifiable at all. But Ruse would seemingly have us compromise intelligent and respectable discourse to pander to fantastical notions. That would be a disaster because it is essentially maintaining a lie – that faith based thinking is in and of itself is a valid way to approach knowledge about the universe. It is not. Let’s not lie to people and pretend that it is just because we want them to accept a theory or two.

We want people to arrive at the conclusion of evolution because it follows from a rational approach to the evidence – not because theology can be mended to incorporate it.

Most importantly, the new atheists are doing terrible damage to the fight to keep Creationism out of the schools. The First Amendment does not ban the teaching of bad science in publicly funded schools. It bans the teaching of religion. That is why it is crucial to argue that Creationism, including its side kick IDT, is religion and not just bad science. But sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If teaching “God exists” is teaching religion – and it is – then why is teaching “God does not exist” not teaching religion? Obviously it is teaching religion. But if science generally and Darwinism specifically imply that God does not exist, then teaching science generally and Darwinism specifically runs smack up against the First Amendment.

This is just silly. Teaching that God does not exist is not teaching a religion. Atheism is not a religious position. However, teaching atheism as true in a public school setting would still be problematic constitutionally, albeit for a slightly different reason. One could interpret that as “inhibiting the free exercise of religion.” Certainly we do not want government to support Christianity at the expense of atheists any more than we want government to support atheism at the expense of Christians. Evolution and Darwinism should be taught because it is sound science. Students can draw their own conclusions about God.

I think that P. Z. Myers and his crew are as disastrous to the evolution side – and people like me need to say this – as Ben Stein is disastrous to the Creationism side – and the Creationists should have had the guts to say so. I have written elsewhere that The God Delusion makes me ashamed to be an atheist. Let me say that again. Let me say also that I am proud to be the focus of the invective of the new atheists. They are a disaster and I want to be on the front line of those who say so.

I like to call a spade a spade. If telling the truth is a disaster, it can’t be any more of a disaster than lying to appease a fundamentally irrational mindset.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Posts | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

God, the State, & the University – As It Was

Posted on April 23, 2009 by James Tracy

I am currently holed up just outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, doing some research on the University of North Carolina’s role in opposing an anti-evolution bill that was introduced in the legislature during 1925 (at about the same time that one was introduced in neighboring Tennessee).

Between 1920 and 1924, North Carolina’s governor was Cameron Morrison. Morrison, although a conservative, poured millions of dollars during his adminisration into upgrading the state’s roads and schools. His support for education did not extend towards the teaching of evolution in biology classes, however. Early in 1924, Morrison intervened in the state’s text book commission to remove two biology textbooks from recommendation on the charge that they taught evolution.  This won him great favor with a local fundamentalist evangelical minister.

While looking through some of Morrison’s stuff I came across an address that he gave to the graduating class of 1921 at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (the state-sponsored university). During the address, Morrison gives some advice to the graduating students for becoming good citizens of the great state of North Carolina. Above all else, he said:

…settle your religious beliefs…The man or woman who has no religion must of necessity be of an uncertain, halting, and stumbling character. Before a man or woman can be adjusted to this life, it is necessary to determine, not what church to join, but what they do by which they are willing to live and die. The man or woman who goes through life without settling this all-important question lives very closely to the life of an animal. Of course, I think that consideration of this great problem will result in accepting the religion of the Christian….[young men and women must] first fix their religious principles, and then their political principles….I implore you to study the principles of the Christian religion, and the principles of our great democratic, or republican, form of government. The devotion to these great principles will cause every virture to flower in your life.”

I can hardly imagine a state governor giving an address like this at a state university today, but in 1921 this probably would have seemed rather mild, especially in the South. For many political leaders in those days, separation of church and state meant not favoring any particular Christian denomination over other Christian denominations. Thus, you can see how Morrison is careful to keep his religious comments as non-sectarian as possible – even though he expliclitly promotes Christianity. It is assumed that you should be a Christian and, therefore, your task would be to eventually identify with a particular brand of Christianity.

It would be tempting to say that this was the kind of minset that opponents of the anti-evolution legilsation had to contend with – but opponents of the legislation largely shared the same mindset (including the President of UNC, who was a vigorous opponent)! Such a fact helps illustrate that the evolution controversy in places such as North Caronlia during the 1920s was a controversy among conservative and liberal versions of Christianity and not merely one of science versus religion. More often than not, Protestant Christianity was a common denominator.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Posts | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World’s Holy Dead

Posted on April 6, 2009 by James Tracy
Cover of Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead
A review of Peter Manseau, Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World’s Holy Dead (Henry Holt and Co., 2009)

What would possess people from all walks of life to marvel at and venerate leathery tongues, detached toes, bone fragments, skin fragments, and a dead person’s ashes or hair? Well, for a start, religion. Peter Manseau, a student of religion at Georgetown University, gives us a tour of both the holy body parts and the people who treasure them in his new book, Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World’s Holy Dead. Manseau has traveled around the world in search of sacred relics, from the alleged tongue of Saint Anthony to the alleged hair of the prophet Muhammed, and the sometimes sketchy history behind them.

The book, part personal storytelling and part historical narrative, is a delight to read. The simple prose reads like a well constructed documentary film with Manseau as your guide. From the beginning you feel like you are standing right there with him, trying to make sense of some curious object as he gives you just enough bits of information to make it all the more intriguing. All the while, you are taken in by his descriptions of the local color – the people and places that give his journey the real depth of flavor.

While Manseau is justifiably skeptical of many of the claims made about such relics, this is not a book that seeks to debunk them or apologetically defend them. Rather, this book is more about the act of exploration and understanding what actually moves people to invest so much attention into these rags and bones. Faith is a common denominator of most, if not all, of the world’s major religious traditions. As the Bible states, “faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not” (Hebrews 11:1Open Link in New Window). Faith concerns that which cannot be seen or otherwise detected. As human beings, however, even the most ardent believers among us have some difficulty with the “unseen.” This is, perhaps, a space that sacred relics fill rather nicely. When a believer prays in front of the mummified head of a long dead saint, that faith is being transformed into something that is now physical – a tangible object for faith to latch upon.

These pieces – and they usually are pieces – are far more mobile, and therefore powerful, than they were in life. Manseau calls this “movable sanctity.” Where there be bones, there be devoted followers. What was once useful only to an individual is now useful for an entire community. As Sam Harris has stated so eloquently and as I have repeated, faith is the permission that people give to one another to believe in something without evidence. But belief can only go so far. Relics pick up where faith leaves off. They serve as a bridge that gives the believer an access point to the unknown. Whether or not the tooth is really the tooth of the Buddha, it makes the Buddha seem real – flesh and bone like all of us.

Manseau opens his book by noting that it is a book about life, not about death. Near the end he remarks that “the veneration of relics is not something only other people do.” This book is not just a commentary on the strange practices of religious believers, rather, it is a commentary on all of us. We all have some fascination with relics, even in science. I am immediately reminded of Galileo’s finger that is now on display in a museum in Italy. This is a finger that gripped a telescope that helped transform astronomy. Einstein’s brain was cut from his head only seven hours after his death. Descartes’ bones traveled perhaps more than the philosopher himself did. Who doesn’t feel even a remote bit of wonder while viewing such objects? Why else do we enjoy viewing items once a part of or used by people who are now long dead?

If anything, this book suggests that a fascination with relics is a part of being human. We are flesh, blood, and bones and ultimately relics remind us of that. There is Lincoln the inspirational historical figure memorialized in marble in Washington D.C. and then there are his blood soaked sheets that are still preserved. He has left behind not only great and memorable speeches but also locks of hair and a worn out old top hat. Both are equally important in getting at both the man and the myth.

We are simultaneously people who need symbols to survive, and we are symbols ourselves. Our bodies – our toes and shins, our foreskins and ribs, our hands and whiskers, our teeth and hair – have the capacity to tell stories we cannot imagine. And the facts of our lives can be as mysterious and in need of explanation as anything that lies beyond.

As a skeptic, of course, I care whether or not a relic really is what people claim it to be. The head of John the Baptist? The foreskin of Jesus (see chapter three)? Are you serious? Don’t these people care to investigate these claims? But after reading these stories you begin to realize that the truth about the relics does not really matter to many of these people. It is the idea that the relic represents but it is also the money and the tourists that it brings in day after day. Keeping the faith and paying the bills. In the central chapter of the book, Manseau visits a pathoanthropologist who performs some tests on a few pieces of bone that some think belonged to Joan of Arc. The good doctor, unlike most relic seekers, does not care whether or not the bones actually are Joan of Arc’s. He cares about uncovering as much of the truth as he can, scientifically. And sometimes the truth is just as interesting as the fiction – the bones most likely belonged to an Egyptian mummy that was most likely used in the nineteenth century to make tea or create medicinal elixirs. The bones are just bones. It is the stories that we tell of our bones that makes them into something else, but this is a conscious act on our parts. As storytelling animals, it is not surprising that we are fascinated by the unusual stories that become attached to usual objects.

This is a quick but fascinating read that is sure to interest you if you wonder at all about the world of sacred body parts. And who doesn’t? Highly recommended.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Owen’s Universe

Posted on October 14, 2006 by James Tracy
Cover of "God's Universe"
Cover of God’s Universe
A Review of Owen Gingerich, God’s Universe (Harvard, 2006).

Dr. Owen Gingerich is a retired Harvard professor of Astronomy and the History of Science. He is widely recognized as an authority on both the astronomers Johannes Kepler and Nicholas Copernicus. His 2004 book, The Book that Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus (Walker & Co.), for example, is an account of his three decade long study in which he sought out and examined 580 sixteenth-century copies of Copernicus’s masterpiece, De revolutionibus, in libraries throughout the world. In 2005, Gingerich delivered the William Belden Noble Lectures at Harvard (held in the Memorial Church) in a three part series that he titled “God’s Universe.” The small, almost pocket-sized book by the same name, is a faithful translation of those lectures into prose.

Gingerich, as a Christian, makes it clear that he believes in a universe that “has been created with intention and purpose” and additionally, “that this belief does not interfere with the scientific enterprise” (pg. 7). Readers not already familiar with Gingerich may be somewhat surprised to learn that he does not support the so-called Intelligent Design movement or its politics as exemplified by the Dover, PA, trial in 2005. Rather, Gingerich labels the movement as “misguided when presented as an alternative to the naturalistic explanations offered by science, which do not explicitly require the hand of God” (Ibid.). Gingerich is not interested in bringing supernatural explanations into the domain of science because science works under a constrained framework. Instead, he is more interested in explaining how scientists can maintain a belief in God or purpose in the universe while  continuing to do good and productive science.

In the first part, titled “Is Mediocrity a Good Idea?” Gingerich asks a simple question: “Why is the water in the teakettle boiling?” One, of course, could give a strictly scientific answer that explains how the heat’s energy excites the water molecules, causing them to move faster and faster until a few eventually escape the surface of the water and become a gas. One could also answer the question by simply stating that the water in the teakettle is boiling because we want some tea. Here Gingerich is making the important distinction between what Aristotle identified as efficient causes and final causes. An efficient cause explains how something happens, while a final cause explains why something happens. In other words, final causes are concerned with purpose. The teakettle boils for the purpose of providing us with some tea. He then notes that the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century marked a point in which final causes were slowly abandoned from scientific discourse. Scientists attempt to uncover how the universe works by unraveling a coherent picture of cause and effect. Efficient cause is the language of science.

At the same time, Gingerich, like any reasonable person, is also interested in the why of the universe.  While science gives us a fairly coherent view of how the universe arrived at its present state after roughly 13.7 billion years of stellar evolution, it does not (and cannot) explain why it exists as it does in the first place. Gingerich introduces readers to what’s called the “Copernican Principle,” which is simply the principle of mediocrity. In other words, following Copernicus, humans were faced with the idea that we are not so special or unique in the universe after all. Earth is just a mediocre planet revolving around a mediocre sun in a mediocre solar system on the fringe of a mediocre galaxy that is just one among billions of others. The point here, as far as Gingerich is concerned, is that he rejects the principle of mediocrity in the sense that he believes that humans do hold a special place in the cosmos because “belief in a final cause, a Creator-God, gives a coherent understanding of why the universe seems so congenially designed for the existence of intelligent, self-reflective life” (pg. 12).

Elsewhere, he writes, “For me the universe is a more coherent and congenial place if I assume that it embodies purpose and intention” (pg. 41). Gingerich is careful here, and this is one of the strengths of this book, in pointing out that he is not trying to prove that a Creator exists, rather, he is merely stating that by assuming a Creator, the universe is more intelligible. “I do not claim that these considerations are proof for the existence of a Creator; I claim only that to me, the universe makes sense with this understanding” (pg. 12). What is it specifically about the universe that makes it more “coherent” if a Creator of some sort is assumed? After all, it is self-evident that the universe feels more congenial when one believes that it was expressly created because that implies that we are here for some reason. Of course that makes our situation seem more agreeable than the alternative – that there is no particular reason why we exist. Yet we must keep in mind that how we feel about the nature of our reality should have no bearing on what we think is true about that reality. The fact that the universe would be a more congenial place if we assumed a Creator behind it all does not justify making that assumption.

This is where the so-called anthropic coincidences come to the rescue, so to speak. As an astronomer, Gingerich understands that the numerous physical constants of nature seemed “fine-tuned” in the sense that if just one of them was a different value, life as we know it could not exist in this universe. Gingerich is convinced that the only satisfactory answer for why so many physical constants seem fine-tuned is that they are fine-tuned – they were explicitly designed for the purpose of creating a universe that could one day be hospitable to intelligent and self-reflecting homo sapiens. If faced with the alternative, that the physical constants all by chance accidently settled on this narrow range of “correct” values in a coincidence that is enormously improbable, then Gingerich’s explanation sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

The anthropic principle is perhaps the most compelling argument for a cosmic designer. However, its appeal seems to only extend out to those individuals who already believe in God in the first place. As a Christian, Gingerich believes in a God who purposefully created the universe in such a way that intelligent beings like ourselves could one day readily appear. The fact that the fundamental laws underlying the universe undoubtedly allow that to happen fits neatly into this view. This is where, as Gingerich would say, our physics (description of the universe) leaves off and we enter metaphysics, or how we interpret the universe that physics has discovered for us.

So, back to the question, does Owen’s universe give us a more coherent understanding of the anthropic principle? I don’t believe that it does. That doesn’t mean that he is wrong and that I am right. What it means is that we both maintain different metaphysical stances. In other words, we interpret the facts as we know them quite differently. As far as the physical constants go, I do not believe that we know enough about the fundamental laws of nature to conclude how probable it is or isn’t that they turned out a specific way. Perhaps the “alternative” mentioned above isn’t the only alternative after all – maybe the fundamental laws of nature are just that, fundamental, and don’t have a cause at all. After all, if we assume that the fundamental constants of nature needed to be tuned by a mysterious Creator, what about the Creator? Surely this entity must exist, if it exists at all, within a context that has its own fundamental laws. Why do those laws allow a Creator with enough power and intelligence to design an entire universe to exist at all? Is the Creator benevolent, malevolent, or indifferent? Gingerich does not address questions like these. Indeed, it seems to me that the postulated Creator is intentionally left as vague and context-free. While it may be satisfying for Gingerich to attribute the fundamental laws that bound our existence to a Creator that isn’t, apparently, bound by any particular laws at all, I do not find that satisfying. It’s not really an explanation because it does not explain how any of this came to be created. If ultimate reality doesn’t stop with our universe, whether there’s an incomprehensible Creator or an infinite number of bubble universes in a grand multiverse, I suspect that homo sapiens will never know for sure.

While the search for purpose through the structure of the universe may not appeal to everyone, there are some more good points in this book that I would like to mention briefly. In the section titled, “Dare a Scientist Believe in Design?” Gingerich argues that what one believes metaphysically about the universe – divine design or purposelessness accident – should not affect how one goes about actually doing science, because science can only concern itself with efficient causes. He writes that “Science will not collapse if some practitioners are convinced that there has occasionally been creative input into the long chain of being. Are mutations blind chance, or is God’s miraculous hand continually at work, disguised in the ambiguity of the uncertainty principle?” (pg. 70). Elsewhere he writes, “It is a matter of belief or ideology how we choose to think about the universe, and it will make no difference how we do our science…Either way, the scientist with theistic metaphysics will approach laboratory problems in much the same way as will his atheistic colleague across the hall” (pgs. 101-102). This is true to the extent that scientists make an honest attempt to adhere to methodological naturalism, or the principle that science can only seek natural explanations for natural phenomenon.

By not adhering to this principle, Gingerich finds the current Intelligent Design movement, as previously noted, to be misguided. While he nonetheless agrees with their conclusions with regards to final causes, “they fall short in supplying any mechanisms to serve as the efficient causes that primarily engage scientists in our age” (pg. 73). Intelligent Design does not explain, for example, “the temporal or geographical distribution of species” or the intricacy of DNA coding anymore than “God’s will” provides an efficient explanation for why objects fall to the ground or the planets orbit the sun.

In God’s Universe, Gingerich has not provided any new or compelling arguments for the skeptic and nonbeliever to convert to his particular metaphysical view, and he certainly doesn’t attempt to logically connect his Creator God with the God of Christianity. Believers, on the other hand, will not find much difficulty embracing it. Nevertheless, this book is certainly valuable for its critique of Intelligent Design from someone who believes in intelligent design (lower-case i, lower-case d), and his discussion of the demarcation between scientific explanations and metaphysical explanations is especially important. Can a scientist believe in divine design? Owen Gingerich is certainly a great example of how a modern scientist can both practice sound science and believe in an intelligent designer, regardless of whether or not you find his arguments persuasive. When it comes down to it, Gingerich readily admits that “probably it takes the eyes of faith to accept that idea” (pg. 77). That I accept.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment