Wednesday, November 6, 2024
14 hours ago
Friday, December 11, 2009
Moving
For a variety of reasons I am moving my posts to http://israelshaw.wordpress.com/. Check me out there.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
A Great Resource
Technology is so powerful and avails so much to us today that it is hard to grasp its full potential and impact. Maybe a better place to start is to experience its value. BiblicalTraining.org is one such example of the great offerings available for free on the web. Do not pass this opportunity up.
The embedded lecture below is the introductory lecture from Dr. Bruce Ware for his Systematic Theology course. As one of my professors told me in seminary - the most important class offerred in seminary is not Greek I or Hebrew I or Introduction to Philosophy of Religion but it is Systematic Theology. Now one of the brightest minds in our country teaching it is available to all for free. Can't beat it! Enjoy.
The embedded lecture below is the introductory lecture from Dr. Bruce Ware for his Systematic Theology course. As one of my professors told me in seminary - the most important class offerred in seminary is not Greek I or Hebrew I or Introduction to Philosophy of Religion but it is Systematic Theology. Now one of the brightest minds in our country teaching it is available to all for free. Can't beat it! Enjoy.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Two Interesting Articles on Abortion
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
The Unwelcomed Fellow Traveller
An excerpt from C.S. Lewis’ The Horse and his Boy (chapter 11).
“Who are you?” he said, scarcely above a whisper.
“One who has waited long for you to speak,” said the Thing. Its voice was not loud, but very large and deep.
“Are you – are you a giant?” asked Shasta.
“You might call me a giant,” said the Large Voice. “But I am not like the creatures you call giants.”
“I can’t see you at all,” said Shasta, after staring very hard. Then (for an even more terrible idea had come into his head) he said, almost in a scream, “You’re not – not something dead, are you? Oh, please – please do go away. What harm have I ever done you? Oh, I am the unluckiest person in the whole world!”
Once more he felt the warm breath of the Thing on his hand and face. “There,” it said, “that is not the breath of a ghost. Tell me your sorrows.”
Shasta was a little reassured by the breath: so he told how he had never known his real father or mother and had been brought up sternly by the fisherman. And then he told the story of his escape and how they were chased by lions and forced to swim for their lives; and of all their dangers in Tashbaan and about his night among the tombs and how the beasts howled at him out of the desert. And he told about the heat and thirst of their desert journey and how they were almost at their goal when another lion chased them and wounded Aravis. And also, how very long it was since he had had anything to eat.
“I do not call you unfortunate,” said the Large Voice.
“Don’t you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?” said Shasta.
“There was only one lion,” said the Voice.
“What on earth do you mean? I’ve just told you there were at least two the first night, and – “
“There was only one: but he was swift of foot.”
“How do you know?”
“I was the lion.” And as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. “I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”
“Then it was you who wounded Aravis?”
“It was I.”
“But what for?”
“Child,” said the Voice, “I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”
“Who are you?” asked Shasta.
“Myself,” said the voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again, “Myself”, loud and clear and gay: and then the third time “Myself”, whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all around you as if the leaves rustled with it.
“Who are you?” he said, scarcely above a whisper.
“One who has waited long for you to speak,” said the Thing. Its voice was not loud, but very large and deep.
“Are you – are you a giant?” asked Shasta.
“You might call me a giant,” said the Large Voice. “But I am not like the creatures you call giants.”
“I can’t see you at all,” said Shasta, after staring very hard. Then (for an even more terrible idea had come into his head) he said, almost in a scream, “You’re not – not something dead, are you? Oh, please – please do go away. What harm have I ever done you? Oh, I am the unluckiest person in the whole world!”
Once more he felt the warm breath of the Thing on his hand and face. “There,” it said, “that is not the breath of a ghost. Tell me your sorrows.”
Shasta was a little reassured by the breath: so he told how he had never known his real father or mother and had been brought up sternly by the fisherman. And then he told the story of his escape and how they were chased by lions and forced to swim for their lives; and of all their dangers in Tashbaan and about his night among the tombs and how the beasts howled at him out of the desert. And he told about the heat and thirst of their desert journey and how they were almost at their goal when another lion chased them and wounded Aravis. And also, how very long it was since he had had anything to eat.
“I do not call you unfortunate,” said the Large Voice.
“Don’t you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?” said Shasta.
“There was only one lion,” said the Voice.
“What on earth do you mean? I’ve just told you there were at least two the first night, and – “
“There was only one: but he was swift of foot.”
“How do you know?”
“I was the lion.” And as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. “I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”
“Then it was you who wounded Aravis?”
“It was I.”
“But what for?”
“Child,” said the Voice, “I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”
“Who are you?” asked Shasta.
“Myself,” said the voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again, “Myself”, loud and clear and gay: and then the third time “Myself”, whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all around you as if the leaves rustled with it.
Friday, December 4, 2009
An Interesting Comparison: World's 2009 Daniel of the Year award and the 2009 Humanist of the Year award
Trying to figure out the ideologies warring for your acceptance? It is not too hard on some very basic levels. Read these two articles and consider the presuppositions that are present. Here is one specific question to ask: Is taking any position on the origination of life (be it either Intelligent Design or Evolution) evidence of someone's intelligence as the guiding principle in determining what they believe? I will give my opinion within a few weeks.
First, "2009 Daniel of the Year" Award, found in World's December 19, 2009 issue. Found here.
2009 Daniel of the Year
Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, fights to show that all lives have eternal value because they are the work of a Creator and not the product of chance
by Marvin Olasky
WORLD's 12th annual Daniel of the Year does not save lives abroad, as Britain's Caroline Cox and Sudan's Michael Yerko do. Nor does he regularly save lives of the unborn, as Florida's Wanda Cohn does through her pregnancy center work. No, Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, fights to show that those lives have eternal value because they are the work of a Creator and not the product of chance.
This fall Meyer came out with a full account of what science has learned in recent decades: Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (Harper One, 2009) shows that the cell is incredibly complex and the code that directs its functions wonderfully designed. His argument undercuts macroevolution, the theory that one kind of animal over time evolves into a very different kind. Meyer thus garners media scorn for raining on this year's huge celebration of the birth of Charles Darwin 200 years ago and the publication of On the Origin of Species 150 years ago.
Meyer's Seattle-area office is filled with books and papers, drawings of the interior of plants, and trilobite fossils—obviously evolved, a Darwinist would say. Hanging from the ceiling is an obviously created mobile that displays sets of eyes along with pictures of people from many cultures. That mobile, made by Meyer's teenage daughter, reminds him of the passage from 2 Chronicles 16 that notes how "the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward Him." Those with biblical faith in God see both fossils and the mobile as works of intelligence.
From his office Meyer has ventured forth to debate at least nine prominent Darwinians on CNN, NPR, FOX, the BBC, and other venues. In it he has written numerous newspaper and magazine columns in defense of Intelligent Design (ID), as well as an academic article that became notorious five years ago when Richard Sternberg, a Smithsonian-affiliated scientist, agreed to publish it in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. Darwinian higher-ups demoted Sternberg for allowing the other side to have its say. They interrogated him about religious and political beliefs.
ID proponents regularly receive that type of harassment: No lion's den, but denials of tenure and media depiction as anti-science. Ironically, scientific advance is now backing ID, which starts with the idea that—in Meyer's words—"certain technical features in a physical system reveal the activity of an intelligence or a mind. A simple example might be Mount Rushmore: You drive into the Dakotas and you see carvings of the presidents' faces up on the mountainside, and you immediately recognize that you're dealing with a sculpture, an intelligence, rather than an undirected process like wind and erosion."
Our new ability to peer into cells also shows ID: Meyer says, "We don't see little faces but we do see other indicators of intelligent activity, such as the digital code that's stored in a DNA molecule, or the tiny little miniature machines, the nanotechnology, the sliding clamps and turbines and rotary engines that biologists are now finding inside living cells." Darwin did not know any of that and Meyer, 51, did not always know it. His career shows the four-stage pattern that is common among intellectual Daniels: Questioning, discernment, courage, and perseverance.
Meyer's questioning stage came in the 1970s and 1980s. He grew up nominally Catholic—he, his wife, and their three children now attend Covenant Presbyterian in the Seattle area—and as a teenager "had a long and tortuous conversion experience. I was constantly asking myself questions and over-thinking things. In my junior year in high school I vowed that I would not think about Christianity for two whole weeks and I broke the vow within a day. I probably was already a Christian but I had so many questions and I wasn't sure."
At Whitworth College in Spokane, Professor Norman Krebs introduced Meyer to books by Francis Schaeffer that helped him answer theological questions and also led him to a philosophy of science: "I was very taken with Schaeffer's argument from epistemology that the foundation of the scientific enterprise itself rested on certain assumptions that only made sense within a theistic worldview, in particular, assumptions about the reliability of the human mind."
Meyer after graduation kept thinking about "the big questions" and "was first inclined to accept the evolutionary explanation of things mainly because all of my college science professors did." While working as a geophysicist in Texas, he dropped in on a conference concerning the origin of the universe and of life: "Nearly all the panelists acknowledged that there was no materialistic, evolutionary explanation for the origin of the first life . . . the veneer of objectivity in the discussion broke down and some of the scientists started scolding and lecturing this other scientist about his giving up on science. . . . It got really personal and kind of ugly."
Non-questioning minds would have steered clear of what looked like trouble. Meyer's reaction: "I want to know more about this debate"—so he accepted a fellowship that allowed him to study at the 800-year-old University of Cambridge, which includes among its alumni Isaac Newton, Darwin himself, and 85 Nobel Prize winners.
The question that occupied Meyer at Cambridge was, "Could this intuition of a connection between information and intelligence be developed into a rigorous scientific argument?" He "began to study the scientists who had developed a scientific method for studying biological origins. That led me, obviously, to Darwin, and from Darwin to his mentor, the famous 19th-century geologist Charles Lyell, who had pioneered the method of studying events and causes in the remote past. . . . Lyell had a way of distilling this principle of reasoning: He said we should be looking for presently acting causes, or as he put it, 'causes now in operation.'"
Meyer recalls the beginning of his discernment stage: "When I saw that phrase, 'causes now in operation,' the light went on, because I thought, 'What is the cause now in operation that's responsible for the creation of digital code, of alphabetical information in a digital form?' There's only one: intelligence. So I realized that by using Darwin and Lyell's principle of reasoning, you could make a compelling scientific case for Intelligent Design." That type of evidence assessment is different from the standard scientific method emphasis on laboratory analysis and experimentation, but it's what historians use in looking at singular past events and inferring their causes from evidence left behind.
When Meyer completed his dissertation, "Of Clues and Causes: A Methodological Interpretation of Origin of Life Studies," the University of Cambridge in 1991 awarded him its prestigious Ph.D. Meyer, having proceeded through questioning and discernment stages, had to decide whether to enter the courage stage. Everyone knows that microevolution—change within species—occurs, but the critical issue is whether the descendants of dinosaurs become birds through natural selection. Denying macroevolution leaves scientists unprotected even at some Christian colleges.
Meyer says, "You ask how someone gets the moxie to take something like this on. Part of the answer is that I didn't know any better when I was young. I was just so seized with this idea and these questions: 'Was it possible to develop a scientific case? Were we looking at evidence that could revive and resuscitate the classical argument from design, which had been understood from the time of Hume and certainly the time of Darwin to be defunct?' If that was the case, that's a major scientific revolution."
Courage becomes a determinant once we count the cost and see that it's great. Meyer's first inkling came when "talking about my ideas to people at Cambridge High Table settings, and getting that sudden social pall." But the cost was and is more than conversational ease: San Francisco State University in 1992 expelled a professor, Dean Kenyon, who espoused ID, and other job losses have come since. Meyer and other ID proponents saw "that this would be very controversial. One of the things that emboldened all of us who were in the early days of this movement was meeting each other. In 1993 we had a little private conference [with] 10 or 12 very sharp, mostly younger scientists going through top-of-the-world programs in their respective fields who were all skeptical. I think the congealing of this group gave everyone the sense that this was going to be an exciting adventure: Let's rumble."
Meyer taught from 1990 to 2002 at his alma mater, Whitworth. Then he and his family moved to Seattle and full-time work at the Center for Science and Culture, which he had planted in 1996 following "an electric conversation" with famed free market economics writer George Gilder, a Discovery Institute leader. Gilder understands that the creative ingenuity of the human mind, and not material stuff by itself, leads to wealth creation. Similarly, biological functions arise from information in DNA, which points to a designing mind. Our computer age knowledge of the role of information technology helps us to grasp what Darwin did not: That matter does not matter unless someone or Someone precisely arranges it.
Many who enter the courage stage at first think that the war in which they find themselves will end in a few years. There comes a time in many lives, though, when a hard realization sinks in: It will not be over in my lifetime. That's when some give in while others proceed to the perseverance stage. That's where Meyer is: Signature in the Cell ends with a long list of testable predictions concerning the direction of science over the next several decades. Meyer predicts that further study will reveal the importance of "junk DNA" and the reasons for what seem to be "poorly designed" structures: They will reveal either a hidden functional logic or evidence of decay from originally good designs.
Life for ID Daniels may even grow harder as some Darwinists realize that time is not on their side. As ultrasound machines have undercut abortion, so information revolutions have led more scientists to embrace ID. As Meyer says, "When we encounter a computer program we can always trace it back to a computer programmer. . . . So the discovery of information in DNA points decisively back to an intelligent cause, to a mind, not a material process."
That discovery undermines the current Darwinian empire, which is and will be striking back. Meyer's wife Elaine occasionally asks him, "Is it too late for us to still be farmers?" It looks that way: Meyer is way past the point of no return for a placid academic life. And today's Daniels hang in there, as their predecessor two-and-a-half millennia ago did.
Going against the stereotype: Owen Gingerich and other Christian critics of ID
by Marvin Olasky
This year atheistic biologist Richard Dawkins refused my offer to schedule a debate in New York between Meyer and himself: Dawkins, who says that Darwinism makes for "intellectually fulfilled atheism," apparently does not want to lose his sense of fulfillment. But theistic evolutionist Francis Collins also attacks ID and is unwilling to enter into a public discussion with Meyer.
Some thoughtful evangelical professors believe the Bible allows for one kind of creature to become another by chance over time. Others compartmentalize: To use Francis Schaeffer's parlance, they put God in the "upper story" for devotional visits but macroevolution in the lower story where it rules their daily work. Some Christians in academia sat at the feet of materialist professors and have never transcended their graduate school training. Some evangelical professors have enough status anxiety already without suffering further indignity by being called anti-scientific.
Socrates in the City, the Christian gathering in Manhattan hosted by Eric Metaxas (see "Mission to Metropolis," Feb. 14), has witnessed attacks on ID by Collins and, last month, by Harvard professor emeritus Owen Gingerich, author of God's Universe (2006). Gingerich noted that today "even high school students study a great deal more about genetics than Darwin ever knew." He said he supports "lower case intelligent design" but opposes ID: He acknowledged that God created the universe but said such a consideration has no place in scientific discourse.
Gingerich takes that position because he defines science as "methodological naturalism": Anything supernatural cannot be part of science, so by definition ID has no place in scientific journals. I asked him why science should be equated only with naturalism: Why can't science be an attempt to find the most likely reasons why reality is as it is? In writing history books I haven't pretended to know exactly why certain events happened, but I've reported likely causes. In looking at the history of the development of life, can't we also assess likelihoods?
Gingerich is not willing to go that far, but Meyer is. He notes the importance of "generating a list of possible hypotheses" and then "progressively eliminating potential but inadequate explanations." In Signature in the Cell Meyer notes "the inability of genetic algorithms, ribozyme engineering, and prebiotic simulations to generate information without intelligence." Since the possibility of undirected materialistic causes producing life in its profusion is virtually nil, and since "conscious, rational intelligent agency . . . now stands as the only cause known to be capable of generating large amounts of specified information starting from a nonliving state," ID is by far the most plausible explanation.
Can science accept the concept of an intelligence beyond nature directing nature? If not, should the definition of science change?
Going against the party line: David Berlinski: A non-Christian ally of ID
by Marvin Olasky
The existence of David Berlinski is a problem for Darwinists who attempt to stigmatize critics by labeling all of them as religious creationists. The 67-year-old secular Jew and agnostic was born to Jewish-German refugees from Nazi Germany who fled to New York City. As a child he experimentally stuck a fork in an electric outlet. He has since shocked students through his teaching at Stanford, Rutgers, and at least eight other colleges and universities. He received his Ph.D. at Princeton University and has written curmudgeonly books such as The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions and Deniable Darwin and Other Essays.
Berlinski, proceeding from a scientific rather than a Christian viewpoint, sees "big holes in Darwinism. It's inadequate as a theory, and I feel very sympathetic, very warm, towards Intelligent Design." He also sympathizes with ID Daniels: "The academic world does not reward any kind of dissent . . . if you dissent from Darwin in any way, the suspicion immediately arises that you're going to be handling snakes next. The hostility toward the American evangelical community in particular and the Christian community in general (the Jewish community plays almost no role in this) is very powerful."
Perhaps because he cannot be typed as "some sort of religious nitwit," secular critics of Darwin sometimes confide in Berlinski: "There is a lot of dissent out there that is unexpressed. When I talk to mathematicians they say, 'We knew this stuff all along but we're not going to open our mouths.' When I talk to biologists, some of the good ones say very candidly, 'Darwin? That's just the party line.'"
Concerning Stephen Meyer's view that Darwin's theory will lose support as we gain more scientific knowledge, Berlinski says, "I think he's completely right. Either the gaps in Darwin's theory will shrink or they will expand, and I think the second is much more likely both in biology and physics." He adds, "We have to maintain a completely open mind, and I see no reason that the insights of Christian theology, Jewish theology, and Islamic theology should be ruled out of court at the very beginning because they're incompatible with a certain idea of what science is really about."
Flossing a lion: Darwin’s Origin gets a stealthy evangelistic introduction
by Alisa Harris
Richard Dawkins is suggesting that students rip out part of the latest edition of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species—the Christian introduction challenging Darwin's theories.
Frustrated that students are getting a "lopsided view of their origins," author and evangelist Ray Comfort realized that On the Origin of Species was in the public domain, which meant he could publish his own edition with his own introduction and distribute it across college and university campuses. He wrote a 54-page introduction challenging Darwin's views and with the help of evangelism organization Living Waters, recruited 1,200 volunteers to distribute 170,000 books at 100 universities.
The introduction starts with Darwin's biography and goes on to talk about the evidence against evolution: DNA as a sophisticated language that could not evolve by chance, the lack of transitional fossil forms, and the "irreducible complexity" of the human body. Comfort also argues that Darwin held racist and sexist views, and he traces Hitler's racism back to Darwin.
Because of Dawkins' suggestion and other talk of book burnings and protests, Living Waters decided to move up the date of distribution—from publicly announced Nov. 19 to Nov. 18. Comfort said a UCLA student protester told him, "You're not supposed to be here today. We're not ready."
Tristan Miller, the president of Bruin Alliance of Skeptics and Secularists at UCLA, said his group planned to hand out counter-fliers, pro-evolution materials, and free T-shirts. As for book burnings, "We would never do anything of the sort," he said. From Miller's perspective, the event was more about evangelism than science.
Comfort doesn't hide his evangelistic purpose, especially since the end of the introduction includes the gospel story and an invitation to accept Christianity. His goal is not only to turn people from evolution but also to bring them to Christianity, he said.
Living Waters will continue to print and distribute its edition across college campuses, but the when and where is secret, Comfort said: "Atheists will be trying to find out what universities we're going to visit and when we're going to visit them, but they have more chance of flossing the teeth of a lion at the L.A. zoo at feeding time than they have of getting that information."
Copyright © 2009 WORLD Magazine
Second, "The Humanist of the Year Award" found here.
Comes a Horseman
By PZ Myers
Published in the November/December 2009 Humanist
PZ Myers is a University of Minnesota biology professor who specializes in evolutionary developmental biology. He is also the author of the widely read and acclaimed science blog Pharyngula, which resides at Seed magazine's science blogs site. As a vocal atheist and skeptic of all forms of religion, superstition, and pseudoscience, Myers was a founding member of the pro-evolution website The Panda's Thumb and has long been a leading critic of creationism and intelligent design. Myers was honored as the 2009 Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association at its 68th annual conference in Tempe, Arizona. Introducing Myers at the June 6 award ceremony, Humanist editor Jennifer Bardi shared two stories demonstrating that, "while PZ Myers is a scientist, an educator, and a writer foremost, don't put it past him to pull a stunt or two that have sharp critical teeth." The first, about Myers being deceived into appearing in the anti-evolution film Expelled, ended with Myers being barred from the screening (while his guest Richard Dawkins gained entry) and heading directly to the nearest Apple store to blog about the fiasco. The second involved Myers' "Great Desecration" of a Eucharist wafer in response to an incident in which a University of Central Florida student received death threats and condemnation from conservatives nationwide when he stole a communion wafer to protest student fees being used toward religious services at the school.
The following is adapted from Myers' speech in acceptance of the Humanist of the Year award.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THIS GREAT HONOR. I also thank you for that very nice introduction. It was a little bit humbling because it brings to mind a great quote from Monty Python's Life of Brian that really puts a proper perspective on what I am. And the quote is from Brian's mother who says, "He's not the Messiah! He's just a very naughty boy." Not that I ever considered myself any kind of Messiah, of course, but yes, a naughty boy. I think a little naughtiness goes a long way and so it's a fair cop.
I do like to think that there's a bit more to it, though. And so what I'd like to do is tell you where I'm coming from, where I see myself, why I think the way I do, and a little bit about where you all come in.
Surely you've heard of the four horsemen. I'm not talking about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the book of Revelation; I'm talking about Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, popularized as the four horsemen of the New Atheism. They are all widely read authors of popular books who have been largely responsible, I think, for vaulting atheism into the public consciousness in the last few years. It's a slightly unfortunate analogy though, and I don't quite know why they're running with it. One problem, of course, lies in matching up identities. I can sort of see Hitchens as War but the other three are going to have to divvy up Pestilence, Famine, and Death. And this is probably not the best image we want to get across about humanism and atheism.
Another problem with the Four Horsemen analogy is the number. As we all know, there are quite a few more vocal people who have been active in atheism and humanism and secularism in general than just the four. What about Victor Stenger or Pascal Boyer? Richard Carrier, Julia Sweeney, Dan Barker? Don't they get horses? And what about me? You know, I'm as atheist as those others and I'm probably "atheier" than some of them. (Although I do have to admit I haven't written a book yet. I'm on sabbatical this year to finish my book, so maybe I'll get a horse after all.)
So I'm going to very prematurely declare myself a fifth horseman. I picture myself, though, as a little guy on a very small pony trotting after the other four. However, I'm waving a great big banner that has the words, "The Internet" on it. That's me. And I think it's important because, sure, John of Patmos (who wrote the book of Revelation) personifies War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death but I don't think any apocalypse is complete without the Internet in there somewhere, and so I have to fill that vital role. (If you don't believe me, try reading the comments on YouTube sometime. You'll figure the end really is near.)
So how does a professor at a small liberal arts university in the middle of nowhere get 2.5 million hits on his website every month? I really have to credit the topics—namely science and atheism—that are a large part of what I discuss there. I'm one of those people who intertwine the two and tangle them up, which has turned out to be extremely popular. So I can't take full credit; I've just happened to hit on a particular nerve in the culture right now.
And speaking of science and atheism, I agree completely with Richard Dawkins' statement that evolution made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. But I also go a step further and say that a proper appreciation of the nature of the universe directly demolishes the pre-scientific conceptions of an active interventionist God. If you understand the science, you ought to be an atheist. Of course, humans are complicated and very contrary creatures who are really good at clinging to comforting beliefs in the face of the evidence, so the strongest word I can use there is "ought"—ought to be atheists. We can't simply say that scientists are atheists because there are those who aren't. There was a time when I myself had no problem reconciling or, I think more accurately, partitioning scientific and religious beliefs. But I was eleven years old, and I grew up.
When I was a little kid I was a major nerd. (I know—you can't believe this, right?) I had all the major afflictions. I memorized dinosaurs—all the Latin names, geological eras, the distributions, the names of the bones, the whole shebang. Like a lot of little kids I was really engrossed with that. I may have gone a little farther than most in that I dissected road kill for fun and my mother would sometimes get upset because when she was cooking I would collect chicken hearts and run them down to the basement with batteries and do unholy experiments on them. And it wasn't just biology. I was also really into the space program. I was born the year Sputnik was launched and grew up during the glory days of NASA. I built model rockets and had model airplanes hanging all over the ceiling of my bedroom. You would have looked at me then and thought, "This kid is going to be a virgin forever." Okay, a real nerd.
But here is something that sometimes surprises people. I went to church regularly. I wasn't one of these born-again zealots; I was just a kid. But the truth be told, I actually liked church. Maybe the sermons were a little boring for an eleven-year-old but these were friendly folks. Unlike some, I never experienced repressive horrors or abuse, nothing but a positive, wholesome interaction with people who were happy to be members of this quiet little Lutheran community. Good people all around. It also wasn't a fire-and-brimstone church. Hell was almost never mentioned. I went to Sunday school and I went to church and I was in the choir. I was an altar boy (oh, boy). My mother even has blackmail material which she calls photographs to prove it.
So there I am, a conventional little nerd; I'm mostly well-adjusted and normal. And like most people I'm looking at the world through two lenses. There was my left brain that was reaching out analytically and thinking about dinosaurs and about microscopes and about rocket ships and all those nifty science-y things. And then there was this right brain that was all hymns and Bible stories. And all was well until, of course, the two combined. As we have known from the movies, never cross the streams because that is bad. That is very, very bad.
Well, there is a scapegoat here. NASA crossed my streams and that is what I'm here to tell you. NASA is responsible for me being an atheist.
You see, when I was a boy we had the traditional Lutheran Christmas. We would go to church on Christmas Eve and then get together at my grandparents' house for a Scandinavian dinner. There would, of course, be things like the American turkey but we would also have lefse (a traditional soft Norwegian flatbread) and lutefisk. (I do not have fond memories of fish jelly soaked in lye, ok? That was just part of the cultural baggage that came along with me.) My great-grandfather would recite the Lord's Prayer in Norwegian for us. And afterwards I, being the oldest kid would sit down with the whole family and show off my literacy by reading from the Bible. I would read the story of Jesus' birth from the book of Luke. And this was our Christmas every year. It was great. I have absolutely no complaints—well, except for the lutefisk.
But one Christmas was special. I raced through that Bible reading because there was something on TV I had to watch that night. Some of you of a certain age may remember this—Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968. Yes, Apollo 8 was in orbit around the moon and they were going to broadcast from lunar orbit. So here I am, my right brain is fully engaged in all this ritual and fun stuff of the Christmas celebration and my left brain is just kind of throbbing with anticipation. Oh boy, I'm really into this rocket-ship stuff, and now I'm going to watch it on TV. Finally we turn on the television and there it is. Again, those of you who remember this remember the stunning Earthrise image they showed of this big, blue globe of the Earth rising over the horizon of the moon. It was spectacular right there on television. And I'm just sitting there in absolute awe. And then one of the astronauts, William Anders, speaks and these were his first words, "For all the people on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send to you."
At this point I'm on the edge of my seat. If you've seen the movie A Christmas Story you may remember the part where Ralphie Parker receives the Little Orphan Annie secret decoder ring. He rushes into the bathroom and locks the door in this frenzy of excitement as he scrambles to decode his first message from the Ovaltine radio hour. This was me at the point Anders begins to speak. I just know he's going to say something really marvelous.
Of course, Anders goes on and the analogy of the movie becomes just perfect. If you remember the movie, the message was something like, "drink your Ovaltine." Anders goes on and what does he say? He says, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness."
Whoa, wait a minute! I thought. Then the other astronauts, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman, continued. They read a big chunk of the first chapter of the book of Genesis. And seriously, it was just like getting a commercial for Ovaltine. It was like opening that big present under the Christmas tree and discovering that it was a big, new pair of wooly underwear—an utter disappointment.
Now, my family seemed to think this was all very nice. And I think in general the public response in this country was positive to what it deemed a nice, affirmative message. The Christian moderates just ate it up. But I had been expecting something true and something deep. I wanted to know about the moon. Here we sent these astronauts there, and I wanted to know, what does it look like? Where did the moon come from? What do you see when you are up there? I wanted awe and I wanted wonder and I wanted truth. I wanted science and I wanted knowledge. And what did I get? I got drivel.
Okay, I know, a lot of people think Genesis is great poetry and lovely metaphor and I say go ahead and think that. It's fine. Lots of people really like the language of the Bible and I can't blame them. But you see, at that moment, I saw it side by side with this awesome reality and it suffered. It was trivial and tawdry against this lunar horizon, against this globe of the Earth, against this black, star-spattered sky and aboard this incredible feat of human engineering. And here they were, resurrecting 5,000-year-old myths. And that was what they thought we wanted to hear.
Now, I can't pretend that in that instant I had an epiphany and became an atheist. I did not. What I felt was discomfort, like I was missing something. It took several more years of gradual intellectual disaffection from the church before I actually left. But I can say that in that moment in 1968, which I still remember so vividly, the first seed of doubt was planted and I saw religion for what it was—a flawed and limited human interpretation, crudely plastered over the grandeur of reality. And it got worse. Much, much worse.
I did not become an astronaut. Instead, I fell in love with biology, which to me is far more complicated and much more interesting than space. And what particularly engrossed me was evolution and development. These are the study of dynamics of change over long and short periods of time. It is what I have spent my whole life now studying. And guess what, Genesis is still haunting me. It's still after me, because in this country many people think the book of Genesis is a serious alternative to biology.
Take the creation story, which, it turns out, is really easy to find in the Bible; it's in book one; chapter one; page one. How convenient. (This is a major advantage to creationists, by the way, since you don't really need any higher math skills or even the ability to count to find this text. I'm actually sure we'd be living in a much happier world if whoever wrote this book had decided to put this story on page seventeen because knowing people's attention spans, they'd never find it and they wouldn't be pestering us with it.) But, anyway, I can summarize it very briefly. God snaps his fingers six times and creates these gigantic, broad categories of nature in a single day. Each announces that they are good and God takes a break on day seven. That is really the whole content of chapter one.
It's not very satisfying. There is nothing in the way of explanation about how God does it and the order of creation is just plain weird. It doesn't match up with anything science tells us about the order of things appearing. There is no evidence. There is no experiment. There is no observation. He doesn't even cite a source, right? And there is absolutely no detail. I mean, look at day five. That's when God creates whales and birds, kind of lumping those two together, and then apparently waves his hand over all this other stuff that appears in the oceans which is not named. It doesn't even mention squid. Nowhere does the creation story mention squid. And I mean, really, if I were the creator and the universe was initially nothing but water as it says in verse two of Genesis, I would have created cephalopods on day one. And then I would have taken six days off.
Anyway, chapter one of the book of Genesis is a page-and-a-quarter long; it's flimsy. Unfortunately, what happens is that creationists read this one page and they set this against, say, my four years of undergraduate biology, my five years of graduate research, my six years of post-doctoral study, the sixteen years after that spent as a science professional, and they also put it against all the scientific literature. They place this page in the great balance of their minds, right? They put this in one pan and on the other side is all of reality—the universe, the cosmos, everything, right there on the other side, and they weigh them.
I have pointed out the triviality of this far-too-influential page of the book before and I often rip it out. I've had people sputter at me in horror or gasp, "This is a great literature! This is a wonderfully human attempt to understand the world and it is revered by millions of people and you have just belittled it." And I have to say yes. Yes, it probably should be considered great literature, but so what? What I'm saying is that as a way to understand the world, it's a flop. It's an attempt to impose a limited vision of reality on us and it has to be appreciated appropriately. This is not a science book. Even the theologians will tell us this. (Ask Barry Lynn—he'll tell you this isn't a science book.) It isn't even a Little Orphan Annie secret decoder ring. It is one page among the billions written by human beings trying to explain the world. And it's actually weaker than most.
And this is why I oppose religion. It's not because it kills people, although it does. It's not because it poisons everything, although it does. It's not because it is nothing but a philosophical construct even though that's all it is, and I actually kind of like philosophical constructs. Even moderate religion is an exercise in obscurantism, the elevation of feel-good fluff over substance. I oppose it because it is a barrier to understanding, a kind of simplistic facade thrown up to veil knowledge with a pretense of scholarliness. It's an imaginary shortcut that leads people astray, guaranteeing that they never see the real glory of a cell or of the stars. And I honestly hope that once people see the creation story for what little it is—one thin sheet of tissue paper—they will be able to crumple it up and toss it aside.
I'm not saying we should all run out and burn Bibles. Keep them. Appreciate them as books that have shaped history. There are some good parts and some bad parts that are relics of ancient days and they even contain cultural touchstones that teach us something about ourselves. But appreciate it for what it is, not for what it's not. It's not a magic recipe book that describes anything much beyond some narrow but influential tribal mythology, this tiny little slice of skewed history. I began with the mention of the Four Horsemen. As you might have guessed by now, I'm an atheist. And as you probably already knew, that was a biblical reference. We throw out biblical references all the time; it permeates the culture. My middle son was an English major and he once cussed me out because he said I never introduced him to the Bible and here he was reading Shakespeare. You can't make sense of Shakespeare without knowing something about what's in the Bible. You have to understand something about this horrible, awful, wonderful, puzzling, appalling, amazing, terrible little book in order to know what people like Dawkins and Dennett and Harris and Hitchens are talking about, and appreciate the irony and humor of the fact that the most prominent atheists in the world are referring to themselves as biblical scourges. We would be poorer for it if we did not have a grasp of this source text that permeates our culture.
So let me close with one more Bible quote that will answer a question I raised at the very beginning, which was, why only four horsemen? Revelation 9:16 is very useful. It says, "The number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them." You heard it, the horsemen need two hundred million riders. So my final message is this: humanists, mount up.
PZ Myers, PhD, is an associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, Morris, author of the blog Pharyngula, and the 2009 Humanist of the Year.
First, "2009 Daniel of the Year" Award, found in World's December 19, 2009 issue. Found here.
2009 Daniel of the Year
Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, fights to show that all lives have eternal value because they are the work of a Creator and not the product of chance
by Marvin Olasky
WORLD's 12th annual Daniel of the Year does not save lives abroad, as Britain's Caroline Cox and Sudan's Michael Yerko do. Nor does he regularly save lives of the unborn, as Florida's Wanda Cohn does through her pregnancy center work. No, Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, fights to show that those lives have eternal value because they are the work of a Creator and not the product of chance.
This fall Meyer came out with a full account of what science has learned in recent decades: Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (Harper One, 2009) shows that the cell is incredibly complex and the code that directs its functions wonderfully designed. His argument undercuts macroevolution, the theory that one kind of animal over time evolves into a very different kind. Meyer thus garners media scorn for raining on this year's huge celebration of the birth of Charles Darwin 200 years ago and the publication of On the Origin of Species 150 years ago.
Meyer's Seattle-area office is filled with books and papers, drawings of the interior of plants, and trilobite fossils—obviously evolved, a Darwinist would say. Hanging from the ceiling is an obviously created mobile that displays sets of eyes along with pictures of people from many cultures. That mobile, made by Meyer's teenage daughter, reminds him of the passage from 2 Chronicles 16 that notes how "the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward Him." Those with biblical faith in God see both fossils and the mobile as works of intelligence.
From his office Meyer has ventured forth to debate at least nine prominent Darwinians on CNN, NPR, FOX, the BBC, and other venues. In it he has written numerous newspaper and magazine columns in defense of Intelligent Design (ID), as well as an academic article that became notorious five years ago when Richard Sternberg, a Smithsonian-affiliated scientist, agreed to publish it in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. Darwinian higher-ups demoted Sternberg for allowing the other side to have its say. They interrogated him about religious and political beliefs.
ID proponents regularly receive that type of harassment: No lion's den, but denials of tenure and media depiction as anti-science. Ironically, scientific advance is now backing ID, which starts with the idea that—in Meyer's words—"certain technical features in a physical system reveal the activity of an intelligence or a mind. A simple example might be Mount Rushmore: You drive into the Dakotas and you see carvings of the presidents' faces up on the mountainside, and you immediately recognize that you're dealing with a sculpture, an intelligence, rather than an undirected process like wind and erosion."
Our new ability to peer into cells also shows ID: Meyer says, "We don't see little faces but we do see other indicators of intelligent activity, such as the digital code that's stored in a DNA molecule, or the tiny little miniature machines, the nanotechnology, the sliding clamps and turbines and rotary engines that biologists are now finding inside living cells." Darwin did not know any of that and Meyer, 51, did not always know it. His career shows the four-stage pattern that is common among intellectual Daniels: Questioning, discernment, courage, and perseverance.
Meyer's questioning stage came in the 1970s and 1980s. He grew up nominally Catholic—he, his wife, and their three children now attend Covenant Presbyterian in the Seattle area—and as a teenager "had a long and tortuous conversion experience. I was constantly asking myself questions and over-thinking things. In my junior year in high school I vowed that I would not think about Christianity for two whole weeks and I broke the vow within a day. I probably was already a Christian but I had so many questions and I wasn't sure."
At Whitworth College in Spokane, Professor Norman Krebs introduced Meyer to books by Francis Schaeffer that helped him answer theological questions and also led him to a philosophy of science: "I was very taken with Schaeffer's argument from epistemology that the foundation of the scientific enterprise itself rested on certain assumptions that only made sense within a theistic worldview, in particular, assumptions about the reliability of the human mind."
Meyer after graduation kept thinking about "the big questions" and "was first inclined to accept the evolutionary explanation of things mainly because all of my college science professors did." While working as a geophysicist in Texas, he dropped in on a conference concerning the origin of the universe and of life: "Nearly all the panelists acknowledged that there was no materialistic, evolutionary explanation for the origin of the first life . . . the veneer of objectivity in the discussion broke down and some of the scientists started scolding and lecturing this other scientist about his giving up on science. . . . It got really personal and kind of ugly."
Non-questioning minds would have steered clear of what looked like trouble. Meyer's reaction: "I want to know more about this debate"—so he accepted a fellowship that allowed him to study at the 800-year-old University of Cambridge, which includes among its alumni Isaac Newton, Darwin himself, and 85 Nobel Prize winners.
The question that occupied Meyer at Cambridge was, "Could this intuition of a connection between information and intelligence be developed into a rigorous scientific argument?" He "began to study the scientists who had developed a scientific method for studying biological origins. That led me, obviously, to Darwin, and from Darwin to his mentor, the famous 19th-century geologist Charles Lyell, who had pioneered the method of studying events and causes in the remote past. . . . Lyell had a way of distilling this principle of reasoning: He said we should be looking for presently acting causes, or as he put it, 'causes now in operation.'"
Meyer recalls the beginning of his discernment stage: "When I saw that phrase, 'causes now in operation,' the light went on, because I thought, 'What is the cause now in operation that's responsible for the creation of digital code, of alphabetical information in a digital form?' There's only one: intelligence. So I realized that by using Darwin and Lyell's principle of reasoning, you could make a compelling scientific case for Intelligent Design." That type of evidence assessment is different from the standard scientific method emphasis on laboratory analysis and experimentation, but it's what historians use in looking at singular past events and inferring their causes from evidence left behind.
When Meyer completed his dissertation, "Of Clues and Causes: A Methodological Interpretation of Origin of Life Studies," the University of Cambridge in 1991 awarded him its prestigious Ph.D. Meyer, having proceeded through questioning and discernment stages, had to decide whether to enter the courage stage. Everyone knows that microevolution—change within species—occurs, but the critical issue is whether the descendants of dinosaurs become birds through natural selection. Denying macroevolution leaves scientists unprotected even at some Christian colleges.
Meyer says, "You ask how someone gets the moxie to take something like this on. Part of the answer is that I didn't know any better when I was young. I was just so seized with this idea and these questions: 'Was it possible to develop a scientific case? Were we looking at evidence that could revive and resuscitate the classical argument from design, which had been understood from the time of Hume and certainly the time of Darwin to be defunct?' If that was the case, that's a major scientific revolution."
Courage becomes a determinant once we count the cost and see that it's great. Meyer's first inkling came when "talking about my ideas to people at Cambridge High Table settings, and getting that sudden social pall." But the cost was and is more than conversational ease: San Francisco State University in 1992 expelled a professor, Dean Kenyon, who espoused ID, and other job losses have come since. Meyer and other ID proponents saw "that this would be very controversial. One of the things that emboldened all of us who were in the early days of this movement was meeting each other. In 1993 we had a little private conference [with] 10 or 12 very sharp, mostly younger scientists going through top-of-the-world programs in their respective fields who were all skeptical. I think the congealing of this group gave everyone the sense that this was going to be an exciting adventure: Let's rumble."
Meyer taught from 1990 to 2002 at his alma mater, Whitworth. Then he and his family moved to Seattle and full-time work at the Center for Science and Culture, which he had planted in 1996 following "an electric conversation" with famed free market economics writer George Gilder, a Discovery Institute leader. Gilder understands that the creative ingenuity of the human mind, and not material stuff by itself, leads to wealth creation. Similarly, biological functions arise from information in DNA, which points to a designing mind. Our computer age knowledge of the role of information technology helps us to grasp what Darwin did not: That matter does not matter unless someone or Someone precisely arranges it.
Many who enter the courage stage at first think that the war in which they find themselves will end in a few years. There comes a time in many lives, though, when a hard realization sinks in: It will not be over in my lifetime. That's when some give in while others proceed to the perseverance stage. That's where Meyer is: Signature in the Cell ends with a long list of testable predictions concerning the direction of science over the next several decades. Meyer predicts that further study will reveal the importance of "junk DNA" and the reasons for what seem to be "poorly designed" structures: They will reveal either a hidden functional logic or evidence of decay from originally good designs.
Life for ID Daniels may even grow harder as some Darwinists realize that time is not on their side. As ultrasound machines have undercut abortion, so information revolutions have led more scientists to embrace ID. As Meyer says, "When we encounter a computer program we can always trace it back to a computer programmer. . . . So the discovery of information in DNA points decisively back to an intelligent cause, to a mind, not a material process."
That discovery undermines the current Darwinian empire, which is and will be striking back. Meyer's wife Elaine occasionally asks him, "Is it too late for us to still be farmers?" It looks that way: Meyer is way past the point of no return for a placid academic life. And today's Daniels hang in there, as their predecessor two-and-a-half millennia ago did.
Going against the stereotype: Owen Gingerich and other Christian critics of ID
by Marvin Olasky
This year atheistic biologist Richard Dawkins refused my offer to schedule a debate in New York between Meyer and himself: Dawkins, who says that Darwinism makes for "intellectually fulfilled atheism," apparently does not want to lose his sense of fulfillment. But theistic evolutionist Francis Collins also attacks ID and is unwilling to enter into a public discussion with Meyer.
Some thoughtful evangelical professors believe the Bible allows for one kind of creature to become another by chance over time. Others compartmentalize: To use Francis Schaeffer's parlance, they put God in the "upper story" for devotional visits but macroevolution in the lower story where it rules their daily work. Some Christians in academia sat at the feet of materialist professors and have never transcended their graduate school training. Some evangelical professors have enough status anxiety already without suffering further indignity by being called anti-scientific.
Socrates in the City, the Christian gathering in Manhattan hosted by Eric Metaxas (see "Mission to Metropolis," Feb. 14), has witnessed attacks on ID by Collins and, last month, by Harvard professor emeritus Owen Gingerich, author of God's Universe (2006). Gingerich noted that today "even high school students study a great deal more about genetics than Darwin ever knew." He said he supports "lower case intelligent design" but opposes ID: He acknowledged that God created the universe but said such a consideration has no place in scientific discourse.
Gingerich takes that position because he defines science as "methodological naturalism": Anything supernatural cannot be part of science, so by definition ID has no place in scientific journals. I asked him why science should be equated only with naturalism: Why can't science be an attempt to find the most likely reasons why reality is as it is? In writing history books I haven't pretended to know exactly why certain events happened, but I've reported likely causes. In looking at the history of the development of life, can't we also assess likelihoods?
Gingerich is not willing to go that far, but Meyer is. He notes the importance of "generating a list of possible hypotheses" and then "progressively eliminating potential but inadequate explanations." In Signature in the Cell Meyer notes "the inability of genetic algorithms, ribozyme engineering, and prebiotic simulations to generate information without intelligence." Since the possibility of undirected materialistic causes producing life in its profusion is virtually nil, and since "conscious, rational intelligent agency . . . now stands as the only cause known to be capable of generating large amounts of specified information starting from a nonliving state," ID is by far the most plausible explanation.
Can science accept the concept of an intelligence beyond nature directing nature? If not, should the definition of science change?
Going against the party line: David Berlinski: A non-Christian ally of ID
by Marvin Olasky
The existence of David Berlinski is a problem for Darwinists who attempt to stigmatize critics by labeling all of them as religious creationists. The 67-year-old secular Jew and agnostic was born to Jewish-German refugees from Nazi Germany who fled to New York City. As a child he experimentally stuck a fork in an electric outlet. He has since shocked students through his teaching at Stanford, Rutgers, and at least eight other colleges and universities. He received his Ph.D. at Princeton University and has written curmudgeonly books such as The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions and Deniable Darwin and Other Essays.
Berlinski, proceeding from a scientific rather than a Christian viewpoint, sees "big holes in Darwinism. It's inadequate as a theory, and I feel very sympathetic, very warm, towards Intelligent Design." He also sympathizes with ID Daniels: "The academic world does not reward any kind of dissent . . . if you dissent from Darwin in any way, the suspicion immediately arises that you're going to be handling snakes next. The hostility toward the American evangelical community in particular and the Christian community in general (the Jewish community plays almost no role in this) is very powerful."
Perhaps because he cannot be typed as "some sort of religious nitwit," secular critics of Darwin sometimes confide in Berlinski: "There is a lot of dissent out there that is unexpressed. When I talk to mathematicians they say, 'We knew this stuff all along but we're not going to open our mouths.' When I talk to biologists, some of the good ones say very candidly, 'Darwin? That's just the party line.'"
Concerning Stephen Meyer's view that Darwin's theory will lose support as we gain more scientific knowledge, Berlinski says, "I think he's completely right. Either the gaps in Darwin's theory will shrink or they will expand, and I think the second is much more likely both in biology and physics." He adds, "We have to maintain a completely open mind, and I see no reason that the insights of Christian theology, Jewish theology, and Islamic theology should be ruled out of court at the very beginning because they're incompatible with a certain idea of what science is really about."
Flossing a lion: Darwin’s Origin gets a stealthy evangelistic introduction
by Alisa Harris
Richard Dawkins is suggesting that students rip out part of the latest edition of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species—the Christian introduction challenging Darwin's theories.
Frustrated that students are getting a "lopsided view of their origins," author and evangelist Ray Comfort realized that On the Origin of Species was in the public domain, which meant he could publish his own edition with his own introduction and distribute it across college and university campuses. He wrote a 54-page introduction challenging Darwin's views and with the help of evangelism organization Living Waters, recruited 1,200 volunteers to distribute 170,000 books at 100 universities.
The introduction starts with Darwin's biography and goes on to talk about the evidence against evolution: DNA as a sophisticated language that could not evolve by chance, the lack of transitional fossil forms, and the "irreducible complexity" of the human body. Comfort also argues that Darwin held racist and sexist views, and he traces Hitler's racism back to Darwin.
Because of Dawkins' suggestion and other talk of book burnings and protests, Living Waters decided to move up the date of distribution—from publicly announced Nov. 19 to Nov. 18. Comfort said a UCLA student protester told him, "You're not supposed to be here today. We're not ready."
Tristan Miller, the president of Bruin Alliance of Skeptics and Secularists at UCLA, said his group planned to hand out counter-fliers, pro-evolution materials, and free T-shirts. As for book burnings, "We would never do anything of the sort," he said. From Miller's perspective, the event was more about evangelism than science.
Comfort doesn't hide his evangelistic purpose, especially since the end of the introduction includes the gospel story and an invitation to accept Christianity. His goal is not only to turn people from evolution but also to bring them to Christianity, he said.
Living Waters will continue to print and distribute its edition across college campuses, but the when and where is secret, Comfort said: "Atheists will be trying to find out what universities we're going to visit and when we're going to visit them, but they have more chance of flossing the teeth of a lion at the L.A. zoo at feeding time than they have of getting that information."
Copyright © 2009 WORLD Magazine
Second, "The Humanist of the Year Award" found here.
Comes a Horseman
By PZ Myers
Published in the November/December 2009 Humanist
PZ Myers is a University of Minnesota biology professor who specializes in evolutionary developmental biology. He is also the author of the widely read and acclaimed science blog Pharyngula, which resides at Seed magazine's science blogs site. As a vocal atheist and skeptic of all forms of religion, superstition, and pseudoscience, Myers was a founding member of the pro-evolution website The Panda's Thumb and has long been a leading critic of creationism and intelligent design. Myers was honored as the 2009 Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association at its 68th annual conference in Tempe, Arizona. Introducing Myers at the June 6 award ceremony, Humanist editor Jennifer Bardi shared two stories demonstrating that, "while PZ Myers is a scientist, an educator, and a writer foremost, don't put it past him to pull a stunt or two that have sharp critical teeth." The first, about Myers being deceived into appearing in the anti-evolution film Expelled, ended with Myers being barred from the screening (while his guest Richard Dawkins gained entry) and heading directly to the nearest Apple store to blog about the fiasco. The second involved Myers' "Great Desecration" of a Eucharist wafer in response to an incident in which a University of Central Florida student received death threats and condemnation from conservatives nationwide when he stole a communion wafer to protest student fees being used toward religious services at the school.
The following is adapted from Myers' speech in acceptance of the Humanist of the Year award.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THIS GREAT HONOR. I also thank you for that very nice introduction. It was a little bit humbling because it brings to mind a great quote from Monty Python's Life of Brian that really puts a proper perspective on what I am. And the quote is from Brian's mother who says, "He's not the Messiah! He's just a very naughty boy." Not that I ever considered myself any kind of Messiah, of course, but yes, a naughty boy. I think a little naughtiness goes a long way and so it's a fair cop.
I do like to think that there's a bit more to it, though. And so what I'd like to do is tell you where I'm coming from, where I see myself, why I think the way I do, and a little bit about where you all come in.
Surely you've heard of the four horsemen. I'm not talking about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the book of Revelation; I'm talking about Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, popularized as the four horsemen of the New Atheism. They are all widely read authors of popular books who have been largely responsible, I think, for vaulting atheism into the public consciousness in the last few years. It's a slightly unfortunate analogy though, and I don't quite know why they're running with it. One problem, of course, lies in matching up identities. I can sort of see Hitchens as War but the other three are going to have to divvy up Pestilence, Famine, and Death. And this is probably not the best image we want to get across about humanism and atheism.
Another problem with the Four Horsemen analogy is the number. As we all know, there are quite a few more vocal people who have been active in atheism and humanism and secularism in general than just the four. What about Victor Stenger or Pascal Boyer? Richard Carrier, Julia Sweeney, Dan Barker? Don't they get horses? And what about me? You know, I'm as atheist as those others and I'm probably "atheier" than some of them. (Although I do have to admit I haven't written a book yet. I'm on sabbatical this year to finish my book, so maybe I'll get a horse after all.)
So I'm going to very prematurely declare myself a fifth horseman. I picture myself, though, as a little guy on a very small pony trotting after the other four. However, I'm waving a great big banner that has the words, "The Internet" on it. That's me. And I think it's important because, sure, John of Patmos (who wrote the book of Revelation) personifies War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death but I don't think any apocalypse is complete without the Internet in there somewhere, and so I have to fill that vital role. (If you don't believe me, try reading the comments on YouTube sometime. You'll figure the end really is near.)
So how does a professor at a small liberal arts university in the middle of nowhere get 2.5 million hits on his website every month? I really have to credit the topics—namely science and atheism—that are a large part of what I discuss there. I'm one of those people who intertwine the two and tangle them up, which has turned out to be extremely popular. So I can't take full credit; I've just happened to hit on a particular nerve in the culture right now.
And speaking of science and atheism, I agree completely with Richard Dawkins' statement that evolution made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. But I also go a step further and say that a proper appreciation of the nature of the universe directly demolishes the pre-scientific conceptions of an active interventionist God. If you understand the science, you ought to be an atheist. Of course, humans are complicated and very contrary creatures who are really good at clinging to comforting beliefs in the face of the evidence, so the strongest word I can use there is "ought"—ought to be atheists. We can't simply say that scientists are atheists because there are those who aren't. There was a time when I myself had no problem reconciling or, I think more accurately, partitioning scientific and religious beliefs. But I was eleven years old, and I grew up.
When I was a little kid I was a major nerd. (I know—you can't believe this, right?) I had all the major afflictions. I memorized dinosaurs—all the Latin names, geological eras, the distributions, the names of the bones, the whole shebang. Like a lot of little kids I was really engrossed with that. I may have gone a little farther than most in that I dissected road kill for fun and my mother would sometimes get upset because when she was cooking I would collect chicken hearts and run them down to the basement with batteries and do unholy experiments on them. And it wasn't just biology. I was also really into the space program. I was born the year Sputnik was launched and grew up during the glory days of NASA. I built model rockets and had model airplanes hanging all over the ceiling of my bedroom. You would have looked at me then and thought, "This kid is going to be a virgin forever." Okay, a real nerd.
But here is something that sometimes surprises people. I went to church regularly. I wasn't one of these born-again zealots; I was just a kid. But the truth be told, I actually liked church. Maybe the sermons were a little boring for an eleven-year-old but these were friendly folks. Unlike some, I never experienced repressive horrors or abuse, nothing but a positive, wholesome interaction with people who were happy to be members of this quiet little Lutheran community. Good people all around. It also wasn't a fire-and-brimstone church. Hell was almost never mentioned. I went to Sunday school and I went to church and I was in the choir. I was an altar boy (oh, boy). My mother even has blackmail material which she calls photographs to prove it.
So there I am, a conventional little nerd; I'm mostly well-adjusted and normal. And like most people I'm looking at the world through two lenses. There was my left brain that was reaching out analytically and thinking about dinosaurs and about microscopes and about rocket ships and all those nifty science-y things. And then there was this right brain that was all hymns and Bible stories. And all was well until, of course, the two combined. As we have known from the movies, never cross the streams because that is bad. That is very, very bad.
Well, there is a scapegoat here. NASA crossed my streams and that is what I'm here to tell you. NASA is responsible for me being an atheist.
You see, when I was a boy we had the traditional Lutheran Christmas. We would go to church on Christmas Eve and then get together at my grandparents' house for a Scandinavian dinner. There would, of course, be things like the American turkey but we would also have lefse (a traditional soft Norwegian flatbread) and lutefisk. (I do not have fond memories of fish jelly soaked in lye, ok? That was just part of the cultural baggage that came along with me.) My great-grandfather would recite the Lord's Prayer in Norwegian for us. And afterwards I, being the oldest kid would sit down with the whole family and show off my literacy by reading from the Bible. I would read the story of Jesus' birth from the book of Luke. And this was our Christmas every year. It was great. I have absolutely no complaints—well, except for the lutefisk.
But one Christmas was special. I raced through that Bible reading because there was something on TV I had to watch that night. Some of you of a certain age may remember this—Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968. Yes, Apollo 8 was in orbit around the moon and they were going to broadcast from lunar orbit. So here I am, my right brain is fully engaged in all this ritual and fun stuff of the Christmas celebration and my left brain is just kind of throbbing with anticipation. Oh boy, I'm really into this rocket-ship stuff, and now I'm going to watch it on TV. Finally we turn on the television and there it is. Again, those of you who remember this remember the stunning Earthrise image they showed of this big, blue globe of the Earth rising over the horizon of the moon. It was spectacular right there on television. And I'm just sitting there in absolute awe. And then one of the astronauts, William Anders, speaks and these were his first words, "For all the people on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send to you."
At this point I'm on the edge of my seat. If you've seen the movie A Christmas Story you may remember the part where Ralphie Parker receives the Little Orphan Annie secret decoder ring. He rushes into the bathroom and locks the door in this frenzy of excitement as he scrambles to decode his first message from the Ovaltine radio hour. This was me at the point Anders begins to speak. I just know he's going to say something really marvelous.
Of course, Anders goes on and the analogy of the movie becomes just perfect. If you remember the movie, the message was something like, "drink your Ovaltine." Anders goes on and what does he say? He says, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness."
Whoa, wait a minute! I thought. Then the other astronauts, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman, continued. They read a big chunk of the first chapter of the book of Genesis. And seriously, it was just like getting a commercial for Ovaltine. It was like opening that big present under the Christmas tree and discovering that it was a big, new pair of wooly underwear—an utter disappointment.
Now, my family seemed to think this was all very nice. And I think in general the public response in this country was positive to what it deemed a nice, affirmative message. The Christian moderates just ate it up. But I had been expecting something true and something deep. I wanted to know about the moon. Here we sent these astronauts there, and I wanted to know, what does it look like? Where did the moon come from? What do you see when you are up there? I wanted awe and I wanted wonder and I wanted truth. I wanted science and I wanted knowledge. And what did I get? I got drivel.
Okay, I know, a lot of people think Genesis is great poetry and lovely metaphor and I say go ahead and think that. It's fine. Lots of people really like the language of the Bible and I can't blame them. But you see, at that moment, I saw it side by side with this awesome reality and it suffered. It was trivial and tawdry against this lunar horizon, against this globe of the Earth, against this black, star-spattered sky and aboard this incredible feat of human engineering. And here they were, resurrecting 5,000-year-old myths. And that was what they thought we wanted to hear.
Now, I can't pretend that in that instant I had an epiphany and became an atheist. I did not. What I felt was discomfort, like I was missing something. It took several more years of gradual intellectual disaffection from the church before I actually left. But I can say that in that moment in 1968, which I still remember so vividly, the first seed of doubt was planted and I saw religion for what it was—a flawed and limited human interpretation, crudely plastered over the grandeur of reality. And it got worse. Much, much worse.
I did not become an astronaut. Instead, I fell in love with biology, which to me is far more complicated and much more interesting than space. And what particularly engrossed me was evolution and development. These are the study of dynamics of change over long and short periods of time. It is what I have spent my whole life now studying. And guess what, Genesis is still haunting me. It's still after me, because in this country many people think the book of Genesis is a serious alternative to biology.
Take the creation story, which, it turns out, is really easy to find in the Bible; it's in book one; chapter one; page one. How convenient. (This is a major advantage to creationists, by the way, since you don't really need any higher math skills or even the ability to count to find this text. I'm actually sure we'd be living in a much happier world if whoever wrote this book had decided to put this story on page seventeen because knowing people's attention spans, they'd never find it and they wouldn't be pestering us with it.) But, anyway, I can summarize it very briefly. God snaps his fingers six times and creates these gigantic, broad categories of nature in a single day. Each announces that they are good and God takes a break on day seven. That is really the whole content of chapter one.
It's not very satisfying. There is nothing in the way of explanation about how God does it and the order of creation is just plain weird. It doesn't match up with anything science tells us about the order of things appearing. There is no evidence. There is no experiment. There is no observation. He doesn't even cite a source, right? And there is absolutely no detail. I mean, look at day five. That's when God creates whales and birds, kind of lumping those two together, and then apparently waves his hand over all this other stuff that appears in the oceans which is not named. It doesn't even mention squid. Nowhere does the creation story mention squid. And I mean, really, if I were the creator and the universe was initially nothing but water as it says in verse two of Genesis, I would have created cephalopods on day one. And then I would have taken six days off.
Anyway, chapter one of the book of Genesis is a page-and-a-quarter long; it's flimsy. Unfortunately, what happens is that creationists read this one page and they set this against, say, my four years of undergraduate biology, my five years of graduate research, my six years of post-doctoral study, the sixteen years after that spent as a science professional, and they also put it against all the scientific literature. They place this page in the great balance of their minds, right? They put this in one pan and on the other side is all of reality—the universe, the cosmos, everything, right there on the other side, and they weigh them.
I have pointed out the triviality of this far-too-influential page of the book before and I often rip it out. I've had people sputter at me in horror or gasp, "This is a great literature! This is a wonderfully human attempt to understand the world and it is revered by millions of people and you have just belittled it." And I have to say yes. Yes, it probably should be considered great literature, but so what? What I'm saying is that as a way to understand the world, it's a flop. It's an attempt to impose a limited vision of reality on us and it has to be appreciated appropriately. This is not a science book. Even the theologians will tell us this. (Ask Barry Lynn—he'll tell you this isn't a science book.) It isn't even a Little Orphan Annie secret decoder ring. It is one page among the billions written by human beings trying to explain the world. And it's actually weaker than most.
And this is why I oppose religion. It's not because it kills people, although it does. It's not because it poisons everything, although it does. It's not because it is nothing but a philosophical construct even though that's all it is, and I actually kind of like philosophical constructs. Even moderate religion is an exercise in obscurantism, the elevation of feel-good fluff over substance. I oppose it because it is a barrier to understanding, a kind of simplistic facade thrown up to veil knowledge with a pretense of scholarliness. It's an imaginary shortcut that leads people astray, guaranteeing that they never see the real glory of a cell or of the stars. And I honestly hope that once people see the creation story for what little it is—one thin sheet of tissue paper—they will be able to crumple it up and toss it aside.
I'm not saying we should all run out and burn Bibles. Keep them. Appreciate them as books that have shaped history. There are some good parts and some bad parts that are relics of ancient days and they even contain cultural touchstones that teach us something about ourselves. But appreciate it for what it is, not for what it's not. It's not a magic recipe book that describes anything much beyond some narrow but influential tribal mythology, this tiny little slice of skewed history. I began with the mention of the Four Horsemen. As you might have guessed by now, I'm an atheist. And as you probably already knew, that was a biblical reference. We throw out biblical references all the time; it permeates the culture. My middle son was an English major and he once cussed me out because he said I never introduced him to the Bible and here he was reading Shakespeare. You can't make sense of Shakespeare without knowing something about what's in the Bible. You have to understand something about this horrible, awful, wonderful, puzzling, appalling, amazing, terrible little book in order to know what people like Dawkins and Dennett and Harris and Hitchens are talking about, and appreciate the irony and humor of the fact that the most prominent atheists in the world are referring to themselves as biblical scourges. We would be poorer for it if we did not have a grasp of this source text that permeates our culture.
So let me close with one more Bible quote that will answer a question I raised at the very beginning, which was, why only four horsemen? Revelation 9:16 is very useful. It says, "The number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them." You heard it, the horsemen need two hundred million riders. So my final message is this: humanists, mount up.
PZ Myers, PhD, is an associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, Morris, author of the blog Pharyngula, and the 2009 Humanist of the Year.
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