Sexpelled

Check out this great parody of the new creationism propaganda move "Expelled".

Finding Darwin's God

Brown University professor Kenneth R. Miller looks for his own answer to the question, what kind of God do you believe in? After some thought, his response is, “Darwin’s God”. Miller does a great job of detailing evolution and the scientific rejection of intelligent design. He also looks for a way to reconcile his own Catholic faith with the science of evolution. Miller is great at explaining science, but he falls short in the area of theology. I do think this book is important and many will find it helpful. He is top notch at debunking intelligent design. However, I’m still not sure about Darwin’s God. I don’t feel Miller made much progress in answering that part of the question. I feel like I would appreciate Darwin’s God if I found it, but this book didn’t exactly paint a clear picture or spark a new creative idea about what it might be. Maybe that is the point. Maybe his goal was to drive home the idea that we can’t narrowly define God or explain God with a scientific experiment. If that is what he means, then I agree.

This book is great if you want a detailed dismantling of creationism or want a more in depth understanding of the shady history of Intelligent Design. If you want to learn 1001 ways to rephrase the statement “Science is not at odds with faith”, then you’ve found the perfect book. Unfortunately, I got it the first time and grew tired of the repetition.

The good news is that Miller is a wonderful speaker. He loves science and that enthusiasm is contagious. My recommendation is to skip the book and listen to this lecture. It is pure gold!

Oh No! Not Science

Thanks to The Onion for this photo.

Evolution and Disinformation

It seems like everyone has received one of those "Obama is a Muslim" emails by now. It is amazing how soon false propaganda can work its way into the common understanding of society.

With the pending release of the movie Expelled, creationists are making another attempt to bring down modern science by spreading lies about evolution. I find myself in more and more of these debates lately (I live in the Bible-belt). I ran across a wonderful series of videos compiled by a journalist in Australia. He addresses many of the attempts at disinformation by creationists. I was amazed at how efficiently he is able to communicate a large amount of information from the Big bang to human migration out of Africa. You can watch the whole series on his YouTube page. Here are a couple of my favorite episodes debunking the propaganda and providing a wealth of information:

There's no way I came from a monkey!


It's only a "theory"! Science won't listen to all viewpoints.

Stroke of insight

This TED talk, is amazing!

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another. - ted.com

Evolution Sunday

Today is Evolution Sunday. Churches around the world are celebrating evolution and announcing their support of science. It is an important day for Christianity. It is important to make the point that being a person of faith doesn't mean being ignorant. Here are a couple of important sites to read this weekend.

Bob Cornwall has posted the open letter, written by Dr. Michael Zimmerman, and signed now by more than 11,000 clergy, religious leaders and scholars.

Dr. James F. McGrath has written a piece about the importance of Evolution that dispells some of the common myths and misconceptions of its opponents.

Berkley university has one of the best collections of evolution resources. It is full of great information for everyone including materials for children and advanced topics for adults.

Darwiniana.org has some great higher level information. Particularly good is the explanation of transitional species. The most common disinformation transmitted by creationists is that these transitional species don't exist or that evolution only happens at a micro-level within a species. Of course, we now know that is pure BS. Many transitional species have been found and modern genetic research has located hard evidence of macro evolution including the DNA "smoking gun" that shows how primate DNA mutated to form humans.

Intelligent Design on Trial

NOVA will air a special called “Judgement Day – Intelligent Design on Trial” November 13th at 8PM. The show will unpack the important case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District which was reported to be a 6 week trial of testimony regarding evolution and intelligent design. Here are a few excerpts from the transcription which is also available online.

Q: Why is this topic—and the teaching of evolution—so important?

Paula S. Apsell[Senior Executive Producer of NOVA]: Recent polls tells us that 48 percent—almost half of all Americans—still question evolution and still believe that some kind of alternative should be taught in the public schools. What happens when half of the population doesn't accept one of the most fundamental underpinnings of the sciences? Evolution is the absolute bedrock of the biological sciences. It's essential to medical science, agriculture, biotechnology. And it's critical to understanding the natural world around us.

We're a country built on our command of the sciences and technology. But we now face a crisis in science literacy that could threaten our progress in these areas and ultimately threaten our quality of life. So, at NOVA and at Vulcan, we feel that understanding the importance of evolution, and enhancing science literacy in general, are more crucial than ever.

Dr. Kenneth Miller [A biologist testifying on behalf of evolution]:The whole idea of intelligent design is a confession on the part of its advocates that they actually can't get any evidence at all in favor of a designer. So what they resort to is the notion that it's either evolution or it's design. And if evolution right now, today, cannot explain everything, that lack of a complete explanation amounts to evidence for the other side.

Thank you Michael Westmorland-White for posting information about the show. Michael is a Baptist minister in Kentucky who has just made a series of well written posts about Creation and Evolution that includes a detailed exegesis of both Genesis creation myths (you did know there were 2 right?). His blog represents all the best qualities of the Baptist faith tradition.

Pressure to believe

This video is already making its way around the blogosphere but I wanted to comment on it and find out what others think about how this effects our belief systems. In his posts on "Everyday evil" Richard Beck, a psychology professor at Abilene Christian University and blogger at Experimental Theology, raises the question about how religious communities develop using our physiological conditioning to conform.



I have 2 main questions. How much of what we believe is due to our subconscious desire to agree with our faith community? How much of what we often label "the conviction of the holy spirit" is the internal tension (tugging) that is created by this same drive to conform and respond as expected?

Whatever is happening in that video is magnified when applied to religious settings. I have experienced peer pressure in religion and I've seen it used to shape beliefs and produce particular physical responses to an emotional stimulus. It makes me wonder if most of what we have claimed as belief is due to the pressure to fit in with a faith community. Most of my life, I've felt like the people in this video who are shaking their heads and grimacing as they subconsciously agree with the group against their better judgement. I don't feel like churches do this intentionally, but it is nevertheless a powerful subconscious force that enables us to build beliefs in hard to believe things and create conditioned responses to sacred rituals.

You may think I'm claiming religion is evil and God doesn't exist, but I'm not. I am a big advocate of religion and I do believe in God even if it isn't the image of God I was taught in Sunday school. I'm simply suggesting that when we explain an aspect of nature as an externally manipulated event then we create all sorts of problems for later generations who are likely to find out what we label as an external miraculous force is actually a reaction to a chemical released by our brains. It isn't any different than explaining an earthquake as punishment for the sins of a city then scrambling to discredit science when an archaeological dig discovers that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were built on a fault line. If we make God equal to the gap in our current human understanding then we end up with a God that is constantly shrinking.

There is a silver lining to this issue because these same physiological forces can contribute to positive behavior which could allow our society to exist peacefully, but I think religious leaders should be more sensitive to what is causing people to fall in line. We have all felt that tugging feeling to perform by responding to worship experiences in the proper way and agreeing with the things that are taught in groups. I don't think there is anything wrong with peer pressure. It may be something that saves our lives by helping us shape our behavior in a way that affirms life and protects us from harm. I don't think religions should stop doing this, but I wish our religious leaders would correctly label the "spirit" that is doing the tugging.

It is hard to shake thoughts and beliefs that are deeply rooted in our psyche. At times it feels almost like an external force is pulling or pushing us to conform. Maybe that is exactly why we have traditionally described God as an "external force". Is it possible that much of what we mean when we use the term "God" is the collective will of our faith group which is proven here to be a very powerful force? If that is true, then I can certainly affirm that I believe God is real, that God has positively directed my life, that I'm committed to God, and that I deeply desire for God to be the driving force in transforming my life.

The Future of our Souls...

I recently stumbled across this amazing blog by Richard Beck, Associate Professor and Chair of Psychology at Abilene Christian University. His site is a wealth of knowledge.

Here is just one small portion of a post he has written about the conflict of traditional Christian theology with neuroscience as we seek to understand faith in an error of post-Cartesian Dualism...

1. This is the growing view in the modern world. Neuroscience is making Cartesian dualism untenable. In short, in the coming decades Christian reference to the "soul" will seem quaint and charming. Like speaking about the tooth fairy or Santa Claus.

2. We are currently training ministers to go out into a post-modern and post-Christian world. Well, that's great. But let me make clear a challenge that bible professors are wholly overlooking. We are sending ministers out into a POST-CARTESIAN world. And, I ask, are these ministers being prepared for THAT? How quaint that we are training people to go out to reason in the world with notions as charming, to the listeners, as the Easter bunny.

3. Neuroscience, like evolution before it, is setting up up for a titanic struggle between faith and reason. And this one will be much, much worse. The soul itself is at stake. But what if Christianity looses this battle as it has with evolution? What if the soul is removed as a legitimate category of discourse? How will theology need to adjust?

(Finish reading the entire series of articles here)

We have seen Christianity struggle in our lifetime with the conflict between the Biblical myths of Genesis as more and more "average" lay-people are educated in the areas of science. Centuries ago scientists had to struggle with these choices as they clashed (often violently) with the church, but in the last century the same struggles have been thrust on all of us as this knowledge became more widely available. Imagine the impact as more of us are made wise by the discoveries of neuroscience. What sort of stickers will Christian parents place on science text books when they more blatantly teach that the "soul" is a product of brain function not a divine "ghost in the machine"? This is more reason for Christianity to look for a purpose beyond belief in unbelievable things and return to the roots of our faith which are a more meaningful and lasting purpose in community (liberation from captivity), peace (return from exhile), justice (forgiveness) and transformation (rebirth/resurrection).

The Luminous Web (Essays on Science and Religion)

This book by Barbara Brown Taylor really surprised me. Most people are either left brain types or right brain types. Early in our process of education we split off those people that are geared for logical thinking and those that are more geared to write the great American novel.

Taylor is such a great master of words that I was surprised to see her tackle the likes of evolutionary biology, Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity, quantum physics, and chaos theory. I’ve always been fascinated by science, but most books on the subjects suffer from a horrible case of underdeveloped right brain functionality. I was very impressed with this short book that finds a wonderful balance of logic and poetry. She hits the high points of these major scientific areas without boring the reader to tears.

Religion has often been forced into the role of competition with science but that shouldn’t be the case. The two are really built on the same concept of searching for truth. If we attempt to turn the Bible or any set of religious teachings into our science textbook then we will have ruined our ability to think rationally. If we attempt to use science as our religious inspiration then we will end up completely uninspired.

“Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.” – Albert Einstein

From the beginning of time man has always used God as the explanation for the unexplainable. Floods, earthquakes, fires, famine, and even a victory or defeat in battle became the acts of God that punished or rewarded our behavior. As those things became more explainable we relinquished God to be the smaller and smaller “gaps” in our understanding. A major emphasis of the book is revealing how the scientific discoveries in the last several centuries have influenced our religious endeavors. What we learned about the universe during this time period is that there seemed to be a number of very dependable laws of nature that made up a structured machine-like universe. The idea of mystery seemed to be vanishing and our image of God evolved (pardon the pun) into the master machinist pushing the right buttons to keep everything from falling apart. Religion feared these laws because each one seemed to threaten the image of God that man had created. To combat those threats religion attempted to create it’s own set of laws/doctrines to protect its identity. Science keeps stumbling onto a new paradigm shift that sends religion back to the drawing board.

The truth is that religion is always shaped by the physics of the day and the theology of the faith we all grew up with was built on the absolute mindedness of 19th and 20th century science. Modern physics is all about absolute laws of nature. Einstein’s theories of relativity had little to do with being relative and everything to do with an absolute formula for the energy in mass. Even the more recent Chaos theory has more to do with the limits of randomness rather than the mystery of the unknown.

Einstein spent the last part of his life trying to disprove quantum physics, which is an attempt to explain why sub-atomic particles seem to completely ignore all the laws of nature that we have grown attached too. He said, “God doesn’t roll dice” in an attempt to again create another formula that explains what still seems to be unexplainable. He died unsuccessful at finding the formula for the strange relationship of particles that seemed to be affected or somehow externally connected. He called this phenomenon “spooky action at a distance”.

Quantum physics may end up explaining exactly how God operates the machine from a distance, or it may explain how God is not in control at all. Instead, I like the idea that maybe every particle in the universe is actually a part of God interacting together the way a heart interacts with blood or the way plants interact with sunlight. Maybe everything that we can see with the strongest telescope is just a simple cell or at most an organ in the mystery we call God.

“Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes and heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.” - Rabbi Abraham Heschel (Jewish Theologian 1907 –1972)