Tuesday, I taped an iChannel @issue program about Bill Maher’s new film Religulous (religion = ridiculous). The other guests were Chad Derrick, an Orthodox Jew who is W-5’s assistant producer and Farzana Hassan, president of the Canadian Muslim Congress. [The show will air in January.]

Our host, Kevin O’Keefe (scroll down), recruited me in part to address science issues the film raises.

Unfortunately, the film raises few science issues. Essentially, Maher wasted the time of a number of Christians in science. He gave astronomer George Coyne and geneticist Francis Collins very little opportunity to explain how they so easily reconcile their faith with their science, preferring to focus on a guy who plays Jesus at a Florida attraction and another guy who thinks he is Jesus. Nothing like shooting fish in a barrel and then awarding oneself a prize for a good aim …

Similarly, when interviewing non-materialist neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, Maher did not trouble his audience with the information that Newberg, the author of several books on neuroscience and spirituality—and a colleague of my lead author on The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard —does not agree with Maher’s perspective. I can’t begin to calculate the volume of the outcry I’d be hearing if Ben Stein’s Expelled film about the intelligent design guys had similarly made it sound as though British atheist Richard Dawkins had the least sympathy for them.

Yes, Dawkins told The New York Times that Expelled was misrepresented to him, and that he would not have taken part, had he known Ben Stein’s sympathies. But Dawkins might have turned that information up, had he done a modest amount of research. In any event, as anyone who has seen Expelled knows, he gets the opportunity to make his position quite clear. Not so Andrew Newberg, who is filmed running through Grand Central Station, saying something ambiguous …

By now, you are probably getting the impression that I didn’t like the film, which is a correct impression. Contrary to stereotype, I am not outraged by it; I would say only that if you want to see a film that points out the real problems in traditional religion, save your money; this isn’t the one. Anyone can waste the time of smart people and make fun of simple people. As Indian-born American Christian commentator Dinesh D’Souza has pointed out, this backfires when the truckers Maher is ridiculing begin to pray for him. We suddenly realize what a vain egotist he is, when he is accidentally contrasted with humble and sympathetic people whose lives have been transformed by their faith in Jesus.

D’Souza, incidentally has offered to debate Maher, just as he has debated other famous atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett. If Maher accepts (so far he hasn’t), he had better do some homework. D’Souza, author of What’s So Great About Christianity?, is one of the sharpest young policy analysts in the United States today.

The film is also full of dropped balls. Maher, for example, interviews Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis (a young earth creationist ministry). Ham makes clear that he considers biblical literalism (= a six-day creation) the only correct way of reading the Book of Genesis. Now, not only do Christian convert Francis Collins and Jesuit priest George Coyne disagree with him, but they have made a point of saying so in print. The obvious film strategy would be to try to get them all together to discuss it. But that wouldn’t suit Maher because it would quickly become obvious that a range of interpretations is considered orthodox among Christians. As I reassured Farzana on @issue, the only thing an orthodox Christian cannot believe in good faith is that God is not in control of what happens in the universe. All the rest must be determined on the basis of evidence.

One thing that troubles me about a film like this is its witness to the decline in the quality of discourse in our society. Suppose I hired a crew and made a film about atheism: I dwell at length on the views of a mass murderer serving life in a federal prison, a homeless crack addict, a vegan hermit who invented his own no-God religion based on flying saucers, and so forth.

Oh, and I offer mere cameo appearances to top intellectual atheists of our time, just enough to claim to have been “fair.” What have I proven except that it is just as easy to belittle atheists as Christians? But I would hardly deserve much thanks for demonstrating what no reasonable person can doubt.

Denyse O’Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain (Harper One, 2007)

Also just up at The Mindful Hack:

Consciousness: Pioneer neurosurgeon on a key question regarding our minds - double consciousness

Altruism: Lessons from the Heroes of Mumbai

C. S. Lewis: Some excerpts for your evening’s enjoyment

How NOT to build a multicultural society …

Can ideas be reduced to purely material causes?

New atheism: Widely read but mostly dead, commentator says

Muslim clerics refuse to bury Mumbai attackers

Do animals have souls?

Loss of civility can lead to loss of life

Methods of probing the brain at work – while communicating with the research volunteer – have made neuroscience a very cool toy indeed. Functional magnetic resonance imaging has done for brain studies what the diving bell did for ocean studies. But all good science risks attracting junk science. And today I am going to talk about a junk science – neuropolitics.

With any luck, by the time this column sees print, we will no longer be hearing much from politicians for a while. But, knowing a timely fad when they see one, enterprising groups of researchers in psychology and neuroscience have been dabbling in “neuropolitics” — with predictable results.

In “Political Science: What Being Neat or Messy Says about Political Leanings” (Scientific American, October 13, 2008) Jordan Lite skeptically chronicles neuroscience-based explanations for voting behavior. Here’s an attempted explanation of a surge of sympathy for the Republican VP candidate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, after she was announced:

Circuits of cells called mirror neurons that fire or send out signals when we see someone act in a way that’s familiar may have played a role in a 20-point, post–Republican Convention swing in allegiances among white, female Obama supporters to the GOP ticket, says Marco Iacoboni, author of the book Mirroring People: The Science of How We Connect with Others. Pundits credited John McCain’s pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate for the shift, but Iacoboni says there’s reason to believe biology played a role.

At the most basic level, mirror neurons—in the form of empathy with Palin—may have temporarily dazzled swing female voters, says neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, author of the 2006 book The Female Brain, which explores hormonal and other influences on the brains of women and girls.

“The mirror neurons in your brain are going, ‘ding, ding, ding—this person is just like me,’” Brizendine says. Those mirror neurons are working with the insula, a section of the limbic system involved with emotions and gut feelings, she says. Both operate at a subcortical, or nonthinking, level dubbed the “sub-Blink level” after New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling 2005 book Blink about gut instincts.

These comments handily illustrate a common factor in junk neuroscience: The attempt to find occult explanations for behavior. By “occult” explanations, I mean explanations that are not needed if we assume that the voter is behaving consciously and (in her own terms) rationally.

The text of the proposed explanations addresses mechanisms in the brain, but the subtext is that no one could conclude on rational grounds that sitting governor Palin might make a better vice president than career senator Biden. So we are asked to consider neurons or hormones or the “nonthinking” “sub-Blink” level as an explanation instead.

Lite quotes neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps’ caution that “neuropolitics” is “too nascent” a discipline to justify such strong conclusions. Actually, neuropolitics is a bogus discipline whose purpose is to use the trappings of neuroscience to flag the generally liberal political beliefs of academics as more scientific than those of the average voter. Such studies are an excellent demonstration of confirmation bias — seeing only the evidence that supports what we already believe.

As it happens, much sound research has been done on how people decide who to vote for. Briefly, many voters do not think much about politics, but vote for a candidate who sounds “reasonable” — generally, the one they hear the most positive news about. Some always vote for or against the incumbent. Others are canvassed at the workplace to vote for, say, the “pro-union” party or the “pro-industry” party. In some regions, the region-friendly party routinely wins. Religious figures often suggest a direction for the vote of the faithful. Some voters, having paid little attention to the issues or party policy, “do their duty” by voting for an ethnically reassuring name or photo. Some factors are harder to predict. There is the disputed Bradley effect, for example — voters may reassure pollsters that they intend to vote for a minority group member, when they will in fact vote for reasons listed above.

The neuroscience around how we make choices is a fascinating study, and I certainly don’t want to discourage it. But serious study must begin by addressing the large existing fact base of rational and conscious factors that sway voters, not by proposing exotic theories about irrational and unconscious factors, theories that merely flatter the vanity of professors.

Also just up at The Mindful Hack

Non-materialist neuroscience: Jeffrey Schwartz on business leadership

Multidirectional skepticism? – skepticism finding its true voice?

New Scientist hit piece an “unusually atrocious” article?

New Scientist: From the “Just connect the dots, and … ” files

In “Political Science: What Being Neat or Messy Says about Political Leanings” (Scientific American, October 13, 2008) Jordan Lite tackles the “hard science” question, “Do genes determine whether you’ll be liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican?”

What if they did? Then we could dispense with elections in favour of DNA tests. Anyone who doubts that many academic would prefer such measures has not noted the drift to hard core materialism, or naturalism. In a recent study, for example, 78 per cent of evolutionary biologists were pure naturalists — that is, they maintain that there is no God and no free will. Obviously, if there is no free will, democracy is not clearly a defensible system.

This “research” is a classic in finding what you are looking for

Of course, “Neat or Messy?” research is not motivated by anything so grubby as politics, right? …

Read the rest here:

Also, just up at The Mindful Hack, a blog on neuroscience and spirituality questions that supports The Spiritual Brain:

US cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker defends freedom of expression in Canada (Is materialist Pinker also among the prophets?)

Sorry, but Your Soul Just DIDN’T Die (Tom Wolfe changes his mind)

Adopting a dog can be as good for your health as pills?

Arch-atheist Dawkins now thinks serious case can be made for deistic God?

So says Paul Verna, senior analyst at eMarketer, citing a study by Decipher, done for Technorati:

“Blogs are now mainstream media,” said Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati, in an interview with eMarketer. “We’ve certainly seen that with the number of professional, semiprofessional and passion/enthusiast bloggers who are creating real media experiences. At the same time, you’re also seeing mainstream media come the other direction to add blog content.”

comScore Media Metrix found that blogs had 77 million unique visitors in the US in August 2008, compared with 75.1 million unique visitors to MySpace and 41 million to Facebook. In July 2008, comScore’s ranking of the top 10 entertainment Websites included four blogs. Two of those, OMG and TMZ, were rated Nos. 1 and 2, respectively.

Two thoughts in response: Writers and publishers increasingly must add blogging to their mix.

Second, we must watch closely Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission’s recent efforts to start “regulating” content on the Internet. It’s a job they’d like, but not one that anyone needs them to do. Remember. the original reason for regulation was the limited bandwidth. That just does not apply to the Internet.

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist, Denyse O’Leary’s news and culture blog about the intelligent design controversy:

Expelled DVD released today, to brisk sales, more hit reviews

Method used determines which evolution story is told

Great offer! Get Ben Stein’s Expelled – plus new book and earlier ID films

Columnist: Regulate the Internet? Shut down the broadcast regulator instead!

Liberal fascism: What it is and why you should care

A recent study from Baylor University suggests that the answer is yes. In “Look Who’s Irrational Now” (Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2008), Mollie Ziegler Hemingway notes,

“What Americans Really Believe,” a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.

Now, that in itself should not be a surprising finding. For one thing, traditional religious groups tend to oppose occult practices, so the regular attender is likely to be aware of the group’s negative view.

One can’t help but recall King Saul and the Witch of Endor in 1 Sam 28:

When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid; terror filled his heart.

6 He inquired of the LORD, but the LORD did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets.

7 Saul then said to his attendants, “Find me a woman who is a medium, so I may go and inquire of her.”

“There is one in Endor,” they said.

8 So Saul disguised himself, putting on other clothes, and at night he and two men went to the woman. “Consult a spirit for me,” he said, “and bring up for me the one I name.”

9 But the woman said to him, “Surely you know what Saul has done. He has cut off the mediums and spiritists from the land. Why have you set a trap for my life to bring about my death?”

Saul’s original view, however “non-diverse”, was the normal one for traditional Western monotheistic religion. The image above, from Wikimedia Commons, features Saul and the Witch, and – I think – pretty much captures the terminal goofiness of all that stuff.

Another interesting Baylor finding: Higher education does not affect whether people believe in ghosts, psychic healing, haunted houses, demonic possession, clairvoyance, and witches.

I am not sure what to make of this finding, as reported, because the beliefs are not all equally ridiculous. As Mario Beauregard and I noted in The Spiritual Brain, there is some laboratory evidence for telepathy as a consistent low-level effect.

And demonic possession is an especially difficult case for surveys. Traditional religions assume that possession is possible in principle, so adherents may say that they believe in it in principle. But they may almost always seek other explanations in practice, believing that God would not permit possession to happen to believers. That does not mean that they literally deny the possibility.

The haunted houses I will simply pass by …

In any event, as for late night comic Bill Maher – the inspiration for Hemingway’s Wall Street Journal piece – and the author of Religulous, an anti-religious documentary:

it turns out that the late-night comic is no icon of rationality himself. In fact, he is a fervent advocate of pseudoscience. The night before his performance on Conan O’Brien, Mr. Maher told David Letterman — a quintuple bypass survivor — to stop taking the pills that his doctor had prescribed for him. He proudly stated that he didn’t accept Western medicine. On his HBO show in 2005, Mr. Maher said: “I don’t believe in vaccination. . . . Another theory that I think is flawed, that we go by the Louis Pasteur [germ] theory.” He has told CNN’s Larry King that he won’t take aspirin because he believes it is lethal and that he doesn’t even believe the Salk vaccine eradicated polio.

Wow. I am old enough to have been in the long line of people getting the Salk vaccine at my local elementary school in Regina, Saskatchewan, in 1956, and I remember the general disappearance of the polio scare in the following years.

Anyway, it turns out that traditional religion is an excellent prescriptive against many superstitions and much pseudoscience

Note: With “psychic healing,” we need to define our terms carefully. There is massive evidence for the placebo effect (in research studies, people often get better because they believe they will). Is that psychic healing?

This qualification probably did not affect the surveys of religious folk because they would attribute the healing to the power of prayer and would not use the word “psychic” to explain matters. The main research question in recent yeas has been to distinguish between the effect of prayer for one’s own health and prayer for the health of others – intercessory prayer – which, for many, is a religious duty.

Also just up at Mindful Hack
Near death experiences: Respectful interview with near death researcher in Time Magazine

The Spiritual Brain: A “great primer” on the mind-body debate, says reviewer (= how does the mind control the body when the mind is immaterial and the body is material)

Neuroscience: Getting beyond the mind-body problem

Neuroscience: Where materialism misleads us

Evolutionary psychology: Misunderstanding superstition

Newspeak was the official language of Oceania, and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year 1984 there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his sole means of communication, either in speech or writing. The leading articles of the Times were written in it, but this was a tour de force which could only be carried out by a specialist, It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050. Meanwhile, it gained ground steadily, all party members tending to use Newspeak words and grammatical constructions more and more in their everyday speech. The version in 1984, and embodied in the Ninth and Tenth Editions of Newspeak dictionary, was a provisional one, and contained many superfluous words and archaic formations which were due to be suppressed later. It is with the final, perfected version, as embodied in the Eleventh Edition of the dictionary, that we are concerned here.

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of IngSoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever.

This change especially impacts concepts like “free.”

Principles of Newspeak: To give a single example – The word free still existed in Newspeak, but could only be used in such statements as “The dog is free from lice” or “This field is free from weeds.” It could not be used in its old sense of “politically free” or “intellectually free,” since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispenses with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.

You can read more Principles of Newspeak here.

By the way, the idea of IngSoc is by no means farfetched. In The Spiritual Brain, Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and I discussed quite serious attempts to purge from the language words that imply that people have inner lives or free will (p. 119).

Tellingly, Frank Furedi cites – as a recent example – the term “mentally ill.” It is to be replaced by “user of mental health services.” Notice the underlying assumption that persons deemed mentally ill do use such services …

Hat tip to reader Dave Gosse.

Here is the Introduction to The Spiritual Brain.

See also Free speech and intellectual freedom – some thoughts

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist:

“Evolutionary biologist”? How about“historical biologist”?

Female spiders eat their mates because, like, they (drum roll) EVOLVED that way … or because size matters?

Intelligent design and popular culture: The ghost of Darwin rises – in a play

Mark Steyn’s “Lights Out on Liberty” speech

What happens when intellectual freedom dies?

Some of the visceral hatred of Sarah Palin is, of course, completely understandable. As commentator Bill Whittle perceptively noted,

Sarah Palin has done more than unify and electrify the base. She’s done something I would not have thought possible, were it not happening in front of my nose: Sarah Palin has stolen Barack Obama’s glamour. She’s stolen his excitement, robbed his electricity, burgled his charisma, purloined his star power, and taken his Hope and Change mantra, woven it into a cold-weather fashion accessory, and wrapped it around her neck.

That no one thought Palin could achieve this may be inferred from Ben Stein’s early pointed dismissal (which annoyed many fans of Expelled because Palin is not a Darwin hack). In fairness to Ben, he may have mistaken Palin for one of the cackling horde of entitlement/extortion babes who want to play with the boys – by girls’ rules.

No doubt the Dem campaign will regroup tomorrow, but meanwhile, I want to draw attention to the culture war over Trig Palin (the Palins’ youngest son, and what it tells us about the culture in which evidence for design in the universe is so very unwelcome.

Trig, as most know, has Down syndrome, a genetic disorder. It usually features retardation as well as physical problems, though the degree varies greatly from one individual to the next. Years ago I interviewed a young Canadian actor who had Down syndrome, read a book by a young British author who also had it – and have just learned today of the passing of a Canadian artist of some note who lived with the disorder for half a century. Most people with DS today can be educated, live as young adults in group homes, and undertake light responsibilities. Recent medical advances enable most to reach middle age.

However, 90% of American children who have the disorder are aborted, often late in pregnancy. Thus, I wasn’t surprised when intrepid Canadian blogger Wendy Sullivan (the Girl on the Right) alerted me to this Palin hate site, featuring ridicule of the infant Trig. Now, the site is a troll hole, to be sure, but it inadvertently draws attention to widespread American attitudes to children like Trig.

Recently, LA broadcaster Frank Pastore invited Jill Stanek, the Oak Lawn, Illinois nurse whose testimony about babies who survive abortions and are left to die triggered the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in Obama’s state. She recalls how she got involved:

… if they were aborted alive, they were allowed to die in the hospital’s soiled utility room without any medical intervention whatsoever.

This came home to me one night when a nursing coworker was taking a little baby boy (who had been aborted because he had Down syndrome) to our soiled utility room to die because his parents didn’t want to hold him and she didn’t have time to hold him that night. When she told me what she was doing I couldn’t bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone and so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived. Needless to say, this was a life-changing event, …

A curious coupling of pictures that: Trig Palin, help up by his family before an adoring crowd … . The nameless, abandoned Oak Lawn child held by a lone, caring nurse in the soiled utility room …

It was Barack Obama who later prevented the Illinois “born alive” legislation from being passed. Although many clouds of smoke have billowed from his handlers’ offices, Obama quite clearly opposed protection for children such as the Oak Park boy, where the overwhelming majority of legislators supported it.

How strongly does Obama feel about his stand? When political reporter David Freddoso was asked by Bill Steigerwald “What the most damning thing you say about Obama’s ideology or belief system?”, he replied:

Sen. Obama promised to a gathering of Planned Parenthood last July that his first act as president – and that’s what he said, “my first act” — won’t be to bring home the troops from Iraq, or to set up a government health care system or any of the other things that Barack Obama has promised. The Number One thing, the top priority, his first act, is to sign a bill called the Freedom of Choice Act, which re-legalizes partial-birth abortion, among other things. Fine. People have all kinds of opinions about abortion. People are pretty much in agreement about partial-birth abortion – that they don’t want it. But that will be his first priority, and that he would go so far as to pander to Planned Parenthood and say that at their gathering last July, is really, really amazing to me.

No, David, it is not amazing. Not in a country where far more boys with Down syndrome will die alone in a soiled utility closet than live in a family.

Obama, I think, knows his country well.

Or does he? From the dawn of history, most human beings have known that there is – in any event – Another country, whose governor hates nothing and no one that he has made. And influences from that country sometimes make their way here.

As a traditional Christian, I believe that even now in that country, my childhood friend Johnny (1948-1957), who had Down syndrome, has placed his bet – and is smiling.

Also, just up at The Mindful Hack, my blog on the reality of the human mind:  

Neuroscience: Individual brain cells spotted in act of retrieving memories

Religion and health: Some teens more, not less, depressed due to religion?

Religion and violence: Do materialist intellectuals have answers?

Reviewer thinks The Spiritual Brain should have been longer?

If you need a book that tries to explain religion and doesn’t succeed …

Also just up at Colliding Universes, my blog on competing theories on the nature of our universe:

Physics: No escape from philosophy through equations?

Does our solar system occupy a unique position in the universe, or just an ordinary one?

Extraterrestrials: Several million UFO reports later … the state of the question

More demolition teams trying to blow up the Big Bang

Do you have time to hear about some new theories … of time?

Now, if the butterflies would just appear out of nowhere …

Chaos theorists stumped by butterfly effect?

Physics: No escape from philosophy through equations?

Does our solar system occupy a unique position in the universe, or just an ordinary one?

Extraterrestrials: Several million UFO reports later … the state of the question

More demolition teams trying to blow up the Big Bang

Do you have time to hear about some new theories … of time?

Now, if the butterflies would just appear out of nowhere …

Chaos theorists stumped by butterfly effect?

Previous research has shown that teens who are active in religious services are depressed less often because it provides these adolescents with social support and a sense of belonging.

But new research has found that this does not hold true for all adolescents, particularly for minorities and some females. The study found that white and African-American adolescents generally had fewer symptoms of depressive at high levels of religious participation. But for some Latino and Asian-American adolescents, attending church more often was actually affecting their mood in a negative way.

Why?

The results suggest that something unique was affecting adolescents within these two groups when they went to church often. Petts believes that the traditional nature of religion for these two groups may be conflicting with the ideals and customs of mainstream American society. This conflict may be putting additional stress on these youth as they try to balance competing principles and traditions, he said.

“Asian and Latino youth who are highly involved in a culturally distinct church may have a more difficult time balancing the beliefs of their family and their traditional culture with mainstream society. Their religious institution is telling them what should be important in their lives and how to behave, and mainstream society is saying something else,” he said.

Here’s a thought: It is possible that the Asian American and Latino youth are disproportionately from families that have not lived in the United States as long, and the teens may not realize that the consumerist values aimed at them in advertisements are simply not compatible with a spiritual tradition(= You can’t serve two masters). White and African-American teens from a religious background would likely take that for granted.

Also, just up at The Mindful Hack:

Neuroscience: Individual brain cells spotted in act of retrieving memories

Religion and violence: Do materialist intellectuals have answers?

Reviewer thinks The Spiritual Brain should have been longer?

If you need a book that tries to explain religion and doesn’t succeed …

We are constantly reminded about the destructive consequences of religion — intolerance, hatred, division, inquisitions, persecutions of “heretics,” holy wars. Though far from the whole story, they are, nevertheless, true. There have been many awful consequences of religion.

What one almost never hears described are the deleterious consequences of secularism — the terrible developments that have accompanied the breakdown of traditional religion and belief in God. For every thousand students who learn about the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials, maybe two learn to associate Gulag, Auschwitz, The Cultural Revolution and the Cambodian genocide with secular regimes and ideologies.

For all the problems associated with belief in God, the death of God leads to far more of them.

So, while it is not possible to prove (or disprove) God’s existence, what is provable is what happens when people stop believing in God.

The number one reason, he says, is

Without God there is no good and evil; there are only subjective opinions that we then label “good” and “evil.” This does not mean that an atheist cannot be a good person. Nor does it mean that all those who believe in God are good; there are good atheists and there are bad believers in God. It simply means that unless there is a moral authority that transcends humans from which emanates an objective right and wrong, “right” and “wrong” no more objectively exist than do “beautiful” and “ugly.”

and second,

Without God, there is no objective meaning to life. We are all merely random creations of natural selection whose existence has no more intrinsic purpose or meaning than that of a pebble equally randomly produced.

He also writes, however,

If there is no God, the kindest and most innocent victims of torture and murder have no better a fate after death than do the most cruel torturers and mass murderers. Only if there is a good God do Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler have different fates.

… and that set me thinking. Is that true?

As a traditional Christian, I believe that people begin to experience in this life the ultimate destiny that their personal choices hint at. Hitler, for example, became progressively madder and more murderous and finally committed suicide in a bunker, ending World War II in Europe. Mother Teresa lived to be 87 and fell asleep quietly after dinner, with the knowledge that many thousands of people had been helped by her Sisters of Charity.

True, she had many spiritual struggles, and I have written and spoken them. These struggles originated in the difference she experienced between the visions that first inspired her to reach out to the streets of Calcutta and the practical difficulties of making it happen. But even in this world, she was surely more blessed in poverty than Hitler was in power.

On that view, what happens after death is the maturing of a process that has already begun beforehand.

Mario and I were on Dennis Praeger’s show recently.

Also, just up at The Mindful Hack, my blog which supports The Spiritual Brain, a neuroscientist’s case for the existence of the soul (Harper One 2007)

Human evolution: But who decided that the Neanderthals were dumb in the first place?

Free will: Can you believe in it as a merely irrational preference?

Consciousness: Half an oaf is better than none?

Spiritual Brain sells out in Dutch translation

Religion: Why “evolutionary” explanations don’t really work

The difference between thinking and consciousness

Mind: Current science less and less precise as it approaches the mind?

Atheist bigots: Avoiding serious questions and targeting ignorant religious folk

L’Intelligence spirituelle : Introduction (en francais)

Brain: How much does brainpower matter to success? Some surprising answers, only one of which matters much

Neuroscience: Yes, we do think while we are asleep. And we solve problems too.

Neurotheology: Bad neurology and bad theology?

Consciousness: So familiar and yet so puzzling …

I also happened to mention to him the frothier bits of speculation about the multiverse, and he replied,

Your comments and criticisms of the ‘multiverse’ speculation are well taken; basically it’s gibberish. That peer review journals publish this stuff is a stark statement of the fallibility of scientists. Admittedly, the atheist do-gooders have a problem with the prevailing Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe: it looks like creation ex nihilo! The theory was first advanced by Father Georges Lamaitre in 1927 and was endrosed by Pope Pius XI in 1952. So Dawkins types understandably find it a bit embarrassing. There’s an alternative to the Big Bang–the steady state theory, for which there’s extensive empirical evidence. The steady state is rather more amenable to their position than the Big Bang, yet as far as I know they never discuss it. Maybe they don’t know about it.

I think they think it was refuted. But don’t forget, Steady State was – as Stephen Hawking pointed out, a good theory – for one thing it could be falsified by evidence. That compares pretty favourably with the many mere speculations that seem to dominate cosmological discussions.

Here’s Caton’s page on Steady State theory. He grumbles, “NASA’s more ideology infected than the American Medical Association, which is pretty far gone.”

Come to think of it, agnostic mathematician David Berlinski has also published a skeptical look at Big Bang theory. Berlinski is skeptical of a lot of cosmology. Here is one of his comments from his interview with The Observer’s Ron Rosenbaum (June 7, 1998)

Speaking of the knee-jerk acceptance by trade book publishers of every faddish cosmological theory in the aftermath of Stephen Hawking’s success with A Brief History of Time , he said, “A lot of stuff that gets into print is simply nonsensical. Alan Guth’s derivation of something from nothing [in The Inflationary Universe ] is simply incandescent horseshit . Don’t tell me you’re deriving something from nothing when it’s transparently obvious to any mathematician that this is incandescent nonsense.”

Like most traditional Christians, I am partial to Big Bang theory because it backs up a theist’s intuitions about the universe. Indeed, for, one evangelistic ministry aimed at the science-minded, the Big Bang is a central apologetic device. But that is precisely the reason people like me need to stay in touch with reasonable skepticism about it.

Here’s a bit of what I wrote about it in By Design or by Chance?:

The story goes that Hoyle and two other physicists, Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold, went out one night in Cambridge in1946 to see a horror movie. It was one of those movies with a circular plot so the final scene is the same as the opening scene. Later that night, over glasses of brandy in Bondi’s apartment, the physicists were inspired to wonder if the universe is really like that movie. The end is just replaced by the beginning, over and over again.

In 1948, in a bold move, they proposed a new theory, the Steady State universe. They began by noting that the best evidence for the Big Bang is the fact that the universe is expanding. Most scientists assume that the universe is expanding from its own origin in a single point, as Lemaître had said.

However, Hoyle’s team argued, suppose the universe is expanding a little bit at a time, from everywhere at once? Perhaps hydrogen atoms, the simplest ones, can come into existence all by themselves by spontaneous generation. Just a few here and there, maybe one particle per cubic kilometre per year.9 It would add up, they said. The galaxies move apart because the new atoms shove other matter aside, and create an expanding—but still eternal—universe.

So . . . not with a Bang, but with a whimper, the universe leaks into existence.

Such a small whimper of creation eludes strict bookkeeping. To sticklers who demanded to know where all the individual newborn hydrogen atoms were coming from, the Steady State physicists replied with a question of their own: Is spontaneous creation of single atoms a bigger mystery than a Big Bang, according to which the whole universe comes into existence suddenly from nothing? So on either side there is a mystery. But which mystery is the real one?

And which is just a good plot device for a science fiction movie? That was the question they were posing.

Much later:

The Envelope, Please . . .

In the study that tested the two theories, the Big Bang predicted the correct amount of helium—about 25 percent—but the Steady State was way off.

In Hoyle’s own words:

Our results, together with further developments by William Fowler, Robert Wagoner and myself, became what even to this day is pretty well the strongest evidence for the big bang, particularly as the arguments were produced by members of what was seen as the steady state camp.

That did not stop Hoyle, who stubbornly continued to search for a No Bang theory to the end of his life. Most scientists respected him for his stubbornness, as was evident in the many eulogies written at the time of his death in 2001. Because he needed to find a source for atoms other than the Big Bang, he ended up doing important research on the way in which heavier elements are produced inside stars.

Also, just up at Colliding Universes (my blog on theories about our universe):

Major media, imagining themselves sober, think there are many universes, not just double vision

Flatland: Helping us think about the dimensions of our universe

Science fiction mag discovers intelligent design theory

Weird news from far-off galaxies …

Big Bang exploded? Seriously, is there room for reasonable skepticism about the Big Bang?

The number 137 has its own Web page? Why?

Origin of life: Random origin of life was exploded by 1970s discovery – who didn’t get the memo?

Astronomer argues that we can test whether Earth is fine-tuned as a science lab

Our unique solar system is less probable than our universe? – a reader writes

Science writer Marc Kaufman informs us in “Search for Alien Life Gains New Impetus” (Washington Post, July 20, 2008) that

Few believe that the discovery of extraterrestrial life is imminent. However, just as scientists long theorized that there were planets orbiting other stars — but could not prove it until new technologies and insights broke the field wide open — many astrobiologists now see their job as to develop new ways to search for the life they are sure is out there.

And if they fail, it certainly won’t be for lack of trying. On Mars for example, NASA’s robotic lander Phoenix is scooping up soil and ice, in pursuit of material that could only come from life forms, perhaps long dead ones. So far, Phoenix has found many of life’s essential nutrients. Mars also had plenty of water long ago. In the wake of these discoveries, there is much talk of the earth-shattering implications of finding life on other planets. But, Kaufman cautions,

To some, debating the implications of discovering extraterrestrial life is premature at best, because — all UFO ‘sightings’ aside — none has ever been found.

Actually, debating the implications isn’t premature, it’s “postmature.” The discussion is already over as far as most of the public is concerned. As Kaufman’s reference to UFOs hints, many people already believe that civilizations far more technologically advanced than ours exist. They are hardly going to settle for long-extinct one-celled organisms on Mars!

In a 2005 poll in connection with National Geographic Channel’s Extraterrestrial, two-thirds of Americans said they believe life exists on other planets. Of these, eight out of ten think that alien civilizations exist that are more advanced than ours. I can’t find a recent Canadian poll just now, but Tiffany Crawford notes (Canwest News Service, July 18, 2008) that there were 836 alleged UFO sightings by Canadians in 2007 — a near 12 percent increase over 2006. The higher number of “sightings” is likely due to the fact that more people are looking more often, perhaps because of specials such as Extraterrestrial.

In other words, given that so much of the public already believes in extraterrestrial life without evidence, the idea’s effects should be evident now. And that is why I am skeptical of the oft-heard claim that finding extraterrestrial life will be a world-changing science discovery. Quite the contrary, persistent failure to find such life would have a much more profound effect. That effect can be glimpsed from a most revealing conversation between Richard Dawkins and Ben Stein in the recent Expelled documentary, featuring the intelligent design controversy. Well-known atheist Dawkins, recognizing the hopeless snaffle of current origin of life research, admitted that he could accept the idea that life was brought here by intelligent aliens. In other words, he could accept the idea that intelligent aliens created life — but not that God did.

Dawkins is the leading edge of a trend. Belief in extraterrestrial life is much higher among non-churchgoers than among churchgoers, and that’s no accident. Non-churchgoers have a much bigger investment in advanced (and godless!) alien civilizations. In that case, the aliens might, as Dawkins suggests, be able to do some tasks that most churchgoers attribute to God.

But suppose all our searches turn up nothing more than this: Simple life forms once existed on Mars but not any more. We already know that bacteria got started on Earth almost as soon as the planet cooled (an awkward fact for those who believe in a long, slow evolution of life). Bacteria may also have got started on Mars, but failed to thrive there. Or possibly, they migrated from Mars on material flung through space by the seething early planets. In that case, we are worse off than before in understanding the origin of life. Currently, we do not know how life came into existence, but such a discovery would mean that we also don’t know where.

And suppose we also find that many Earth-like planets orbit stars other than our sun (exoplanets) but few or none have life — until we go there ourselves? Is that God’s providence? Either finding will probably move the public in the direction of increased belief in God.

Also, just up at Colliding Universes (my blog on current ideas about our universe and other universes):

The number 137 has its own Web page? Why?

Origin of life: Random origin of life was exploded by 1970s discovery – who didn’t get the memo?

Astronomer argues that we can test whether Earth is fine-tuned as a science lab

Our unique solar system is less probable than our universe? – a reader writes

Millions of universes out there? Multiverse is incompatible with naturalism (materialism) it tries to save! – Philosopher William Lane Craig’s view

Extraterrestrial life: Are media “hypocritical” or just not able to change their story at this point?

Perchlorate on Mars? Neither good nor bad (but actually bad) for life?

Rare? Solar systems like ours are rare?

The black hole: Does it or doesn’t it destroy information?

What Big Bang theory and Thomas Aquinas’s proof of God have in common

Origin of life: There must be life out there! vs. There can’t be life out there!

Big Mars announcement in the works – and still bigger rumours

Origin of life: Intelligent design theory and creating life in the lab

Journalist Denyse O’Leary is the author of By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy and co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain A neuroscientist’s case for the existence of the soul (Harper: August 2007).

In rebuttal – Theory needs a paramedic, not more cheerleaders

Denyse O’Leary

Re “What is it about evolution theory that Albertans don’t get?” (August 12, 2008), Rob Breakenridge has cobbled together key talking points of the American Darwin lobby. The resulting column is an excellent illustration of why one should not write about big topics without basic research.

The 2005 Judge Jones decision in Pennsylvania, to which Breakenridge devotes much of his column, has not crimped the worldwide growth of interest in intelligent design. That is no surprise. A judge is not a scientist, and Jones cannot plug gaping holes in Darwin’s theory of evolution. Evolution is—contrary to its (largely) publicly funded zealots— in deep trouble, for a number of reasons.

The history of life has not been the long, slow “survival of the fittest” transition that classical evolution theory requires. Life got started on Earth soon after the planet cooled. All the basic divisions of animal life took shape rather suddenly in the Cambrian seas, about 550 million years ago. Later, there was, for example, the “Big Bang” of flowers and the Big Bang of birds, where many life forms appear quite suddenly.

Modern human consciousness is one of these leaps, judging from the superb cave paintings from recent millenniums. The creationists whom Breakenridge derides may be wrong on their dates, but not on much else.

Breakenridge hopes that we can enlighten backward Albertans by teaching more “evolution” in Alberta schools. But that won’t help. Textbook examples of evolution often evaporate when researchers actually study them (instead of just assuming they are true).

For example, the peacock’s tail did not evolve to please hen birds; hens don’t notice them much. The allegedly yummy Viceroy butterfly did not evolve to look like the bad-tasting Monarch (both insects taste bad). The eye spots on butterflies’ wings did not evolve to scare birds by resembling the eyes of their predators. Birds avoid brightly patterned insects, period. They don’t care whether the patterns resemble eyes. Similarly, the famous “peppered moth” of textbook fame has devolved into a peppered myth, featuring book-length charges and countercharges.

And remember that row of vertebrate embryos in your textbook years ago? It was dubbed in the journal Science one of the “most famous fakes” in biology—because the embryos don’t really look very similar. And Darwin’s majestic Tree of Life? It’s now a tangleweed, or maybe several of them.

We seldom see evolution happening. Michael Behe’s Edge of Evolution (2007) notes that for decades scientists have observed many thousands of generations of bacteria in the lab. And how did they evolve?

Well, they didn’t. Worse, when evolution is occasionally observed (and widely trumpeted), it often heads the wrong way. For example, bacteria evolve antibiotic resistance by junking intricate machinery, not by creating it. Cave fish lose their eyes. But we don’t need a theory for how intricate machinery gets wrecked. We need a theory for how it originates and how it develops quite suddenly. Evolution, as we understand it today, apparently isn’t that theory.

We aren’t going to improve science education by teaching Darwinian fairy tales.

Breakenridge informs us that in a recent Angus Reid poll, “A shockingly low 37 per cent of Albertans supported the position that humans beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years.” Well, good, let’s drive the numbers lower still. That position is an article of atheist dogma. Evidence for it is hailed as a truth we must all embrace; evidence against it is shrugged off as a temporary setback. Try doubting the dogma, and you could end up starring in Ben Stein’s Expelled, Part II.

Breakenridge also frets, “An even greater number of Albertans—40 percent—agreed that humans were created by God within the last 10,000 years.” That’s easy to explain. It was the only other option (barring “don’t know”). The ever-popular “God uses evolution” choice wasn’t offered.

Forced to choose between excluding God and including him, I’d pick option two, even though I accept NASA’s estimate of our Earth’s age (4.5 billion years) and consider common ancestry a reasonable idea.

My guess is, Albertans diverged from the national norm because they considered the question more carefully than some folk. History, anyone?

This summer a meeting of key evolutionists took place at Altenberg, Austria, to revise the theory. So, Albertans, if you haven’t started believing it yet, don’t bother. Right now, the theory needs a paramedic, not more cheerleaders.

Denyse O’Leary is a journalist and blogger who is the author of By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy and co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist’s case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

(Note: I put this opinion piece up because I was beginning to receive correspondence about it, but could not find a link to the Herald, and in any event wanted to link readers to my sources. Thanks to Jane Harris-Zsovan for the scan.)

by Denyse O’Leary

Yesterday a friend told me about a new movie he thought I should see. Starring comic Ben Stein, it shows how dangerous it is for a scientist today to say that there is evidence of design in the universe or life forms.

I knew about Expelled, the widely denounced political documentary. I had announced its existence on my blog in August [2007].

I honestly wondered whether the film would ever be shown because, almost immediately, prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins claimed they had been tricked into taking part. Yoko Ono sued the filmmakers over the use of a couple of bars from John Lennon’s “Imagine.” The film was supposed to be released on Darwin’s birthday but was pulled for edit. The screening at Mall of the Americas was overshadowed by an uproar when local biology professor P. Z. Myers was refused admittance by producer Mark Mathis. (Myers is well known for advocating the firing of intelligent design sympathizers.)

Security was so tight that even the Canadian screenwriter Kevin Miller couldn’t get a copy because of piracy concerns. When I needed to confirm a quote I had to ask Mathis to give me a transcript from his own copy on his laptop.

Last Thursday I finally saw the film at the premiere in Toronto. To me the controversial content was nothing new; I had been covering the firings, the denials of tenure and the scurrilous abuse of design theorists and their sympathizers for years. I have long since learned that to many materialist atheists, “liar” means “a person who puts forward information that does not support atheism” and “fraud” means “an opponent who cannot simply be dismissed.”

I recall a meeting at which a distinguished elderly scientist expressed considerable anger at the turn things had taken as he surveyed a row of younger colleagues who had suffered because their research findings simply do not support materialism.

I should take a moment to underline the nature of the problem, because there is considerable misunderstanding about that. Few ideological atheists care if a scientist shouts that Jesus is Lord in a chapel somewhere. Some wouldn’t even care if she witnesses at work. Indeed, they may boast of their tolerance. And the scientist may never notice a problem. She3 may even believe and insist that no problem exists.

A problem arises when the scientist uncovers evidence that better suits design than materialist atheism an then insists that it be treated as evidence-not mere “faith.”

That is what young Cuban American astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez did. Gonzalez, who discovered several planets orbiting stars other than our sun, went on record as saying Earth is bit just an average planet in the galaxy. The view he opposes is a cornerstone of materialist doctrine. The evidence shows, he said, that Earth is fine-tuned for life and discovery.

Other astronomers did not choose to argue with Gonzalez over the evidence. They denied him tenure – as the subpoenaed documents showed – on account of his public disclosure of the evidence for his position.

I recommend Expelled even though it does not provide a clear explanation for why there is an intelligent design controversy. In one sentence: Many recent discoveries do not support a materialist position, but increasingly that position is enforced as an orthodoxy – as what “science” is really about, as the position scientists must take. However, I believe that a multi-part TV series is needed to unpack the many facets of this growing controversy.

My favourite scene features Ben Stein, mathematician David Berlinski and physicist Gerald Schroeder standing by the remains of the Berlin Wall, as if to say that the old way of understanding nature as the handiwork of a great Craftsman (Psalm 19:1) will survive this two-century materialist blip. (This column originally appeared in ChristianWeek, August 2, 2008)

Other posts you may be interested in:

From The Post-Darwinist:

Enron and Darwinism – a perfect fit?

Burying Darwin while he is still hot? The Altenberg 16 (Yesa, they are, they just aren’t admitting that that stuff they are pouring on him is dirt.)

More weird news from Darwin’s new world: The Myers cracker controversy

Conservative blog charges: The ID think tank is in league with Islamic radicals

Literary Darwinism: Crap? Lit crit chasing its collective tail?

From Mindful Hack

Economic decisions: Complex but not irrational?

Animal minds: Monkeys understand money? No, of course not, but efforts to pretend they do are hilarious

Neuroscience: How complex is your brain? More than you can easily imagine!

Hunting, herding, hiding, and hustling – that explains our social relationships?

Psychiatrist Jeff Schwartz speaks on what drugs can do for you – and what you and your mind must do for yourself

From Colliding Universes:

This summer’s fashion in origin of life theories is diamonds (Well, of course, because diamonds are a swirl’s best friend … )

Extraterrestrials: Younger astronomers less likely to believe than older ones?

So what if fossil bacteria are found on Mars? Polls show many Americans expect Star Trek!

Talking to origin of life scientists: Like giving a bobcat a prostate exam?

Carl Sagan and celebrity cosmology: Was he the best cosmology could do? Or the best celebrity could do?

Increase in UFO sitings in Canada – what’s behind that?

Stephen Hawking, miffed over science funding cuts, to move to Ontario, Canada?

In November 2007, Dutch researcher Marjo Korpel identified an imposing document seal at the Israel Museum, first catalogued in 1964, as belonging to the prophet Elijah’s nemesis, Jezebel.

There has been much scholarly chinwagging since then about whether the seal really belonged to the infamous queen. In its favour are the fact that the name Jezebel is rare and few women in the 9th century BC were powerful enough to have one.

That same month, workers trying to save a teetering tower in Jerusalem’s ancient City of David stumbled on what looks like Nehemiah’s controversial 5th century BC wall. Archaeologist Eilat Mazar commented that the discovery was greeted with amazement because many scholars argued that the wall never existed.

In March 2008 a “rich layer of finds” was unearthed from the First Temple (Solomon’s Temple), dating from the 8th to 6th centuries BC. It included pottery and figurines, and the signet ring of someone named Netanyahu ben Yaush—thought to be a senior official. The area had been covered by a Roman road, thus hidden from plunderers for thousands of years.

Better still, in April, among the many cuneiform tablets in the British Museum was found a receipt given to royal official Nebo-Sarsekim of Babylon (see Jeremiah 39) for a donation of gold to a temple in about 595 BC. Archaeologist Irving Finkel told Britain’s Daily Telegraph, “If Nebo-Sarsekim existed, which other lesser figures in the Old Testament existed? A throwaway detail in the Old Testament turns out to be accurate and true. I think that it means that the whole of the narrative [of Jeremiah] takes on a new kind of power” (April 19, 2008).

In February 2008, archaeologists announced that they had finally found the sarcophagus of Herod the Great (37 BC–4 BC). There ended a mystery: Ancient historian Josephus recounted that the unpopular monarch was buried at Herodium, his lavish city. But many previous excavations had failed to find him. The workers found his sarcophagus smashed to bits and the bones removed—most likely during the Jewish rebellion of 66-72 AD, which ended when Rome destroyed Herod’s Temple and dispersed the Jews.

According to archaeologist Amiram Barkat, “At Herodium, Herod built one of the largest monarchical complexes in the Roman Empire, which served as a residential palace, a sanctuary, an administrative center and a mausoleum. Herod first built an artificial cone-shaped hill that could be seen from Jerusalem, on which he constructed a fortified palace surrounded by watchtowers that he used solely in wartime.” (Haaretz, February 7, 2008)

A man whose taste for self-aggrandizement (on taxes and plunder) reached these heights was not likely to welcome the learned strangers looking for a child “born king of the Jews”.

Archaeologist Finkel speaks of Nebo-Sarsekim’s receipt giving the Biblical witness “a new kind of power.” Is that perhaps because we realize that the Bible is mostly about real people like ourselves—people who expect receipts?

The oft-heard claim that the Bible recounts mere myths or propaganda was first advanced seriously in the 18th century before archaeology came into its own. Today, a single recovered artifact can establish a historical existence—and there is still lots of ground to excavate.

One outcome is that skepticism has focused in recent years on artifacts that supposedly debunk the Bible. One thinks, for example, of the 2006 claim, into which National Geographic sunk millions, that an apocryphal Gospel of Judas shows that Jesus’s betrayer was really a nice guy. More than seven million people watched the film and many more read the book. Later, the claim was found to rest on mistranslations and missing words. And National Geographic has been credibly accused of “scholarly malpractice” (Chronicle Review, May 30, 2008).

We can choose to believe the Bible or not, but based on historical experience, I would surely not advise anyone to bet against it.

Denyse O’Leary (oleary@sympatico.ca) is a Toronto-based Canadian journalist and blogger who is the author of Faith@Science: Why science needs faith in the 21st century ( J. Gordon Shillingford, 2001), and By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004, an overview of the intelligent design controversy), and co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain (Harper: September 2007). Her current blogs are the Post-Darwinist, the Mindful Hack, and Colliding Universes.

My other recent stories:

Today at Colliding Universes (a blog that supports a book I want to write with a physicist about goofy theories in cosmology that are simply intended to avoid the fact that our universe is  fine-tuned for life):

“Privileged planet” astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez: Dissing St. Carl in his own church – my column on line (Yes, Gonzalez is the guy who was denied tenure in that big flap at Iowa State University because his findings don’t square with materialist theories.)

Will the cosmic multiverse landscape ensure the triumph of intelligent design? You’d be surprised.

Murchison meteorite claimed to hold genetic materials … well, maybe

The Butterfly Effect: Totally wrong? Not even wrong? Not even a butterfly?

Science teaching: The peril in the big questions

You heard it here first, or last, or anyway here: The universe is a donut

Could God live in an infinite sea of universes? Depends …

Well now, and what of Berlinski’s Devils

Who reads popular books on cosmology? Well, almost everyone who actually reads, it seems

Teacher: Big ideas without science methods are blank cheque

And today at the Post-Darwinist (supports By Design or by Chance?):

Jailed Canuck media mogul Conrad (Tubby) Black endorses ID-friendly Jindal for McCain’s veep

Straw in the wind: Science writer tries to figure out why intelligent design theory doesn’t go away

From my mailbox …

Expelled movie’s screenwriter – recently demoted from “evil” to “stupid” – regains “evil” status

Brain evolution gene?: Move over already yet, gay gene, fat gene, and God gene!

The Right’s war on science? Lot’s of ink spilled there, but how about the Left’s war on science?

Teacher accused of burning cross on student’s arm and of teaching creationism

Write! Canada coverage highlights intellectual freedom risks, troubles of book industry

Write! Canada 2008: CD of my business course for writers available – an inexpensive gift for a writer you may know

Also, today at The Mindful Hack (supports The Spiritual Brain)

Real Buddhism scholar to “neural Buddhists”: The Buddha does not infinitely morph and would never drop two grand for “meditation gear”

The Spiritual Brain gets Award of Merit at Write! Canada, plus Mario gets tenure

Free will: How can a guy who doesn’t believe in free will take credit for writing a book? I mean …

Evidence? If you are a materialist, trust me, you need never bother with evidence.

Alzheimer helps atheist appreciate God. Yes, really

Evolutionary psychology: Speculation rather than sound science, says new MIT Press book (= Future lies with “Clan of the Cave Bear” fiction)

World’s ten worst books?: Read them so you don’t end up living them.

Evolutionary psychology: The “meme” generates a fruitful hoax, if nothing else

Sci Phi Show podcast features scholar on near death experiences

Psychology: Jokes help us survive even when we daren’t laugh aloud

Psychology: If people were robots, safety devices would abolish most accidents, but …

Spirituality: Today’s students spiritually repressed?

Brain: Find me those darn pigs … or else! A poem that sends up materialist neuroscience.

Evolutionary psychology: The selfish gene in the art world

Evolutionary psychology: Key concept of “memes” trashed as “one of the bigger crocks hatched in recent decades”

Does a recent discovery in honeybees “prove” that the “selfish gene” exists?

It was certainly not my special favourite because I like the idea! No, rather because it looks so wholesome, and is in fact so evil. Satan, after all, can look like an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14)! Anyway, a couple of weeks later, the happy OBAYTM ads were plastered over with the notice “Luckily, OBAY isn’t real.” Teens were advised to check out post-secondary education in Ontario for themselves, and not rely only on family advice.

A number of causes could use a spoof like OBAY to get their point across, causes that might be more important in the long run.

Consider some of the issues I have written about here in ChristianWeek in the past few years, issues where the official story could use an edit or two:

- Human embryonic stem cells are essential for lifesaving research? Anyone who disagrees is merely a “denialist”? No, recent research shows that adult cells from volunteers can be coaxed to do the same job.

- We don’t need to worry about the origin of donor kidneys if they are not from totalitarian states? Yes, we do need to worry. Many Third World democracies’ intentions are sound, but their enforcement lags. Kidneys can be stolen without murder. Sign that wallet card!

- Obesity is a huge problem (so to speak)? Yes, sort of. But we need to ask, what kind of problem and for whom? Claims about high death rates from obesity have been seriously downscaled in recent years. Also, “overweight” is not the same thing as “obese” and is probably not a key source of ill health, provided the overweight person exercises. In North America and Western Europe, extreme fashion-conscious thinness may be more of a problems. That’s why some catwalks now ban models whose body mass index shows that they starve for attention.

Experts are human, and they must work with whatever information they have. So experts getting it all wrong is not a new problem. Recently, I was reading Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder’s book, The Science of God (1997). He reminds us that in 1894, Albert Michelson, who had measured the speed of light in 1887, delivered the main address at the dedication of the Ryerson Physical Laboratory of the University of Chicago. Michelson took the opportunity to declare that “The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered.”

Another great scientist, Lord Kelvin (after whom the temperature system “degrees Kelvin” is named), agreed with Michelson. He remarked in 1900 that there were just “two little dark clouds” on the horizon of Newton’s physics, namely, the velocity of light and the puzzling phenomenon of blackbody radiation. Kelvin himself was certain that these troubling little clouds would be blown away shortly.

Yet, as Mario Beauregard and I note in The Spiritual Brain (2007), “all of modern physics—relativity and quantum mechanics—derives from these two little dark clouds.” (p. 172)

It was only five years after Lord Kelvin’s address that Albert Einstein’s brilliant relativity papers blew off many official physics certainties. Heisenberg’s quantum mechanics later dispatched most of the rest. Like many official systems, nineteenth century physics was tidy but wrong. The good news is that vast science progress resulted when wrong ideas were confronted, not merely defended.

There is a message here for Christians, of course. Our challenge is to encourage people to live the gospel, so that they see that the gospel is true for themselves. Then they no longer merely accept it on authority (John 4:42). Their understanding will deepen over time, as physicists’ understanding of our universe has deepened over time. By contrast, OBAY and WhyBecauseISaidSo provide peace and quiet, but no advance in knowledge and little nourishment for the spirit.

Journalist Denyse O’Leary (http://mindfulhack.blogspot.com/) is the author of By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy and co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist’s case for the existence of the soul (Harper One 2007).

(This column was originally published in ChristianWeek, March 28, 2008.)

Just up at Mindful Hack:

Things we know but cannot prove: Another nail in the coffin of materialism.

Excerpt: “We are at an undisputed edge of naturalism in computing and math. There is no TOE. Does science have a TOE? If so, will we ever know we are at the edge?”

The fours be with you! (You will be “fours”ed to cooperate with this words/numbers game. (Hey, it’s Friday night!)

Altruism: Why it can’t really exist but why it does anyway

Evolutionary psychology: Eliot Spitzer is a kludgebrain!, psychologist opines (but so are we all)

Mind and medicine: The placebo effect – Did your doctor just prescribe you a quarter teaspoon of coloured sugar? Maybe …

Materialism: When the store is on fire, hold a fire sale: Excerpt: So this is the latest pseudo-explanation of the soul? I could do better myself! How about this: Minds that are accustomed to think in terms of a future have difficulty grasping the idea that there is no future after death.

Way simpler, to be sure, but materialists wouldn’t buy it because I forgot to drag in the Paleolithic cave guys telling stories around the fireside – the staple of evolutionary psychology.

Fitna: A thoughtful Muslim’s response The predicted riots largely didn’t happen, but where to go from here?
Excerpt: And while we are here: Dial-a-mob/rent-a-riot behaviour is NOT copyright to Middle Eastern Muslims. I ran into the same thing among the American Ivy League elite in May 2005, when the New York Times bungled a story I broke on my other blog, The Post-Darwinist, claiming that a film about to be shown at the Smithsonian was “anti-evolution.” It wasn’t; it did not even address the subject. But zillions of Darwinbots, as I called them, behaved exactly as if it had. It’s a good thing that no one gives them sharp objects to play with.

Rupert Sheldrake’s guide to New Atheism (which makes it sound like New Coke, really)

Can a transplanted heart lead to transplanted thoughts? Well, maybe, but the mechanism might be fairly conventional.

Why science without God destroys itself: Because the alternative idea of a multiverse is a step into magic, that’s why

Just up at the Post-Darwinist

Darwin dating: Only a Darwinist would think of something this vulgar

Expelled ten days later – Yoko Ono is suing over the use of John Lennon’s Imagine – which you can hear on YouTube.

Churches should holler for Jesus and schools should indoctrinate Darwin?

The miracle of the disappearing prof: St. Charles Darwin’s fanatics make Prof. Nancy Bryson disappear

Blogging: Crocodile, crocodile, cry me some tears (The circulation-bleeding New York Times feels sorry for people like me. Yeah really.)

Blog seeks the firing of Baylor U’s anti-ID president

Darwinism and atheism: No connection whatever?

Expelled: Did Darwin really lead to Hitler? Better question: Did the suggestion lead to free publicity?

A kind correspondent wants to know why I am not in Expelled (”Well, for one thing, I wasn’t kicked out of anything for making the intelligent design controversy my major beat. Oh sure, people laughed at me in 2001 when I said it would be one of the biggest stories of the decade by mid-decade.”)

Reasons to Believe: Reasons to Believe: Old Earth Creation ministry thumbs down on Expelled film – claims there is no persecution of ID theorists

New for blogroll: Atheism is dead

 

American physician Joseph Murray transplanted a kidney from recently discharged soldier Ronald Herrick to his identical twin Richard, who was dying of kidney disease. Richard, fearing for his brother’s life, wanted to call off the operation. But Ronald said no, I’ll risk it.

Remarkably, the operation worked, and Richard went on to live another eight years. Dr. Murray received the Nobel Prize in 1990. By then, kidney transplants had become a fact of medical life. According to one estimate, four hundred thousand lives have been saved by kidney transplants.

But fast forward to 2008. This year Interpol issued one of its rare red notices, urgently seeking the arrest— anywhere on the planet—of the mastermind of a kidney theft ring.

Yes, yes, it seems like the stuff of urban legend, but in some parts of the globalized world, having one of your kidneys stolen is a genuine risk.

The Interpol red notice manhunt ended last week near Kathmandu, Nepal, when Brampton, Ontario (Canada), resident Amit Kumar was arrested on charges of theft of kidneys. The allegations (at this point they are merely allegations) include claims that barely literate labourers were held at gunpoint until clinic staff sedated them and harvested a kidney, sometimes without mention of compensation.

Sam Dolnick, writing for Associated Press, reports the story of one such victim, recounting, “The last things Mohammed Salim remembered were the knees pinning him to the ground, the guns pointed at his head, and finally, the injection that sent him into oblivion. When he awoke, he was in agonizing pain, uncertain where he was or why he was wearing a hospital gown.” Salim was told he would be shot if he told anyone that a kidney had been removed.

It is said that some of the patients for kidney donations were from Canada.

Actually, kidney transplants are a perfect setup for medical crime because most humans can live— perhaps for decades—with only one kidney. So kidney theft is not immediately and obviously murder, the way a stolen heart or liver would be. Not only that, but people who are seeking a kidney may linger on dialysis for years, waiting for their chance. So thee is a large group of potential customers. And how many questions will some recipients ask, when suddenly offered another chance at a comfortable life?

Of course, most Third World kidneys are not stolen with violence. They are simply sold. That makes sense. People who have received a promised sum are less likely to complain to the police, as Salim, quite sensibly, did. Most donors’ compensation is only a small fraction of the total profit for the clinic anyway, not usually enough to justify the risks of Interpol.

So, welcome to the worst of globalization! Medical tourists seek out well-outfitted underground clinics in residential areas of Indian cities, including some of the same cities that host the call centres where a polite and intelligent person helps you with your computer woes.

Strange as it may seem, near the very place where that polite and intelligent person is patiently helping you open up and rewire your computer, “kidney scouts” prowl the labour markets, looking for people who have nothing to sell but their body parts. They scout on behalf of Westerners with $50 000 to spend, who hope for a dialysis-free life. They seek people who look forward only to family obligations to five children or perhaps an equal number of nieces and nephews, or perhaps their aged parents. People for whom $2 500 is an unbelievable fortune.

We can, more or less, control what happens to organ donations in Canada (or the United States). But our rules don’t apply elsewhere, where people may weigh the cost of a kidney against the chance at a better life for their extended family.

So we must ask ourselves, how many lives, among poor and perhaps foolish people, have been ended by these practices. We can be sure of one thing: If they need world class medical care, they will not get it, barring a miracle.

Solutions? Well, one solution is, sign that drivers’ licence wallet card that gives doctors the right to remove usable organs if you have been declared dead. When we make donor organs available within our own system, we help prevent abuse in systems where we have no control.

Note: This column originally appeared in ChristianWeek. (March1, 2008).

Journalist Denyse O’Leary (http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/) is the author of By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy and co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

Today at The Mindful Hack:

Hurting oneself to hurt others not a useful social strategy … duh!

Decline of secularism leads to panic among new atheists?

Great review of The Spiritual Brain in Canada’s Medical Post, by a reviewer (a retired surgeon) who also offers a detailed page on the true causes of pain.

Large questions require the language of myth, not shopping bills

Spotted: Mario’s colleague non-materialist neuroscientist Jeff Schwartz in Expelled movie’s supertrailer

Mind vs. meat vs. computers: The differences

Language feature unique to humans

Chuck Colson’s Breakpoint reviews The Spiritual Brain

Enlightenment ideals justify mass slaughter?

Just for fun: Fractured Latin hits the religion news

Today at the Post-Darwinist:

As Expelled film set to open, Darwin lobby sets up attack site

Will Expelled succeed at the box office?

Expelled: Intellectual property vs. intellectual territorialism

Wanted: Social scientist to study Expelled release

Today at The Design of Life blog:

Why SETI hasn’t found any space aliens yet

Excerpt: Gonzalez and fellow astronomer Hugh Ross have pointed out,

Over the last four centuries the CP [Copernican Principle] has evolved from a simple claim that the Earth is not located at the center of the solar system to an expansive philosophical doctrine that the Earth, and particularly its inhabitants, are not special in any significant way.

It is worth noting that the Copernican principle is not testable. It is simply an assumption. If right, it will aid research, but if wrong, it will impede research.

Suppose it is wrong? Could that be one reason why the SETI search for extraterrestrial civilizations has not turned up any results for forty years, despite early optimism? Visit SETI and see for yourself.

Plus: “Anti-science” and the mind-body problem

Excerpt: Is knowing reasons why materialism isn’t true “anti-science”?

What should scientists do if they find evidence that does not confirm materialism? There is quite a lot of that in neuroscience, including the hard problem of consciousness and the placebo effect.
[ ... ]

Under promissory materialism, scientists are expected to ignore or explain away evidence that doesn’t support materialism.

Today at the Overwhelming Evidence blog:

Group vs. individual selection – left wing vs. right wing biology?

Intelligent design films on the Internet

Wars on science? Hey, we are all anti-science now

So many different meanings for “evolution” – no wonder we get confused!

Shock for scientists: First animals complex, not simple

From Mutation Works: Evolve your own musical cave man. (And if he turns out to be a great, yawping troll, please reclassify him as an anthropoid ape and send no photos).

Does Deep Ecology require intelligent design?

Does a high level of information increase the moral worth of an entity?

Recently, theExpelled movie’s line producer Mark Mathis (yes, the former TV news hound) and I discussed (Intelligent Design hits Hollywood! Will Hollywood hit back?) the way in which legacy media bighairs and establishment science bores close ranks to pretend that the universe shows no evidence of intelligent design. And – as the film, to be released in April, shows – they do not scruple to wreck the careers of anyone who knows better and says so.

This is despite the fact that almost all the great scientists have admitted the evidence for design. It was what converted the world’s best respected academic atheist,Antony Flew, who talks abut that in his book, There IS a God.

But mediocre men are often unaffected by what moves their betters … they do not rise to the experience of the ideas themselves, they simply repeat them as dull mantras, collect their pay, and stump off home.

Anyway, a while back, Mark and I had talked about how to get across to people the problem we face: Increasingly, tax-supported science at universities is in the hands of dogmatic and unimaginative atheists with a vested interest in denying evidence of design in the universe or life forms. Here’s what I suggested:

You asked me to consider the question of how to interest the public in a Big Idea.

I’d suggest that we look at how disturbing social trends relate to the Big Idea.

For example, look at the enormous growth in the last half century of genuine admiration of self-destructive lifestyles and behaviour. You can see it clearly by looking at the difference between traditional culture heroes and modern ones.

The Man Called Cash, for example, had his problems with drugs, but he wasn’t making records that called June a bitch and threatening to whack her around. He was divorced, but he wasn’t a deadbeat dad. And he didn’t celebrate his drug problems; he overcame them.

How times change! Entertainment media shamelessly cash in on today’s celebration of loser lifestyles in rap music.

Historically, this is highly unusual. There is nothing “natural” about exalting self-destructive, criminal lifestyles. It was more natural for my peers to admire Neil Armstrong and Terry Fox than for today’s teens to admire rappers and drunken celebs exposing their posteriors.

How did it come about? One direct cause is atheistic materialism as the defacto public religion.

Atheistic materialism neither proposes any type of behaviour as correct nor holds anyone responsible for their behaviour. The wrong behaviour just means that you don’t spread your selfish genes.

But many people do not care whether they spread their selfish genes or not. So self-destructiveness and irresponsibility are merely some choices among many.

No, most viewers won’t care about the Big Idea for its own sake. But they may care about how it filters down to our families, and our communities.

Here’s the case: If the universe is designed, being a drug-addled, louse-infested, violent loser ISN’T cool, it’s NOT just one choice among many. It’s a denial of reality.

And the Expelled team asks only for an hour and a half of viewers’ time to explain why intellectual freedom must be restored in the sciences so that the case for a designed universe can be heard.

A powerful weapon, that, for the viewer.

Readers, what do you think?

And while I am here anyway:

Today at Salvo:

Here’s my recent piece in Salvo, a pop sci mag that either rocks or shocks, depending on whether you think that popular science MUST front for materialism (it doesn’t). Here’s my article about a nutritionist who did a study on whether prayer helps, found that it did, and was subjected to a savage onslaught from materialists and religious conventionalists, all of whom just wanted to shut him down.

Today at The Mindful Hack:

Row between philosophers over consciousness
pulls better than your average Britcom

Are you a believer? You must be if you think that the future is real

The most significant thing about ex-atheist Antony Flew is that he was NOT convinced by an old tyme religious experience but by the evidence from science. So what gives with the “new atheists”?

One reason why The Golden Compass tanked at the box office?

Today at the Post-Darwinist

Evolutionary psychology: Where do I go to get my tax money back? These profs know less than I do!

A thought for your Evolution Sunday service … On why you shouldn’t hold one!

Today at The Design of Life blog

Was Mendel wrong? Yes, he might have been. Amazingly. here for more. That’s part of what cutting edge science is about. Authorities could be wrong. (If your kid is being taught materialism in science class, encourage the kid to go to Design of Life blog. The book is even better, actually.)

One line I’ve been hearing recently goes like this: Abstinence education doesn’t prevent teen delinquency.

Huh? You mean she isn’t shoplifting cool jeanswear down at the WalMart because she is at home stark naked having sex? Stands to reason, I suppose that she wouldn’t need the jeans … but … like …

The key issue here is “life chances”. If a teen gets pregnant, there are better and worse options, but no good ones. By comparison, delinquency doesn’t really matter. A sixteen year old high school dropout raising a baby on welfare isn’t even technically a delinquent, provided she started her sex life after her big 1-6. But what about her life chances? What about her kid’s life chances? Quite honestly, I would rather she shoplifted at the WalMart. That’s only stuff, after all, not lives, so the situation is easier to fix.

Getting a kid to put off sex for even a year is worthwhile. Even a year can make a difference in decision-making capacity. The same young person who shouldn’t drink in a bar, buy smokes, or drive on the highway should also not be making decisions about sex – and parents should see to it that she doesn’t have to.

By the way, what’s with all this stuff about “contraceptives just for extra safety”? Would you say to your kid, “I don’t want you smoking but I am going to leave a pack of cigarettes here in the cupboard because if you do start, you might be tempted to buy or steal them from the corner store …”? Of course not, because if you really don’t want the kid smoking, you won’t smoke yourself and you won’t allow Joe Smoke in the house either. Same with casual sex …

But caution! Countercultural lifestyles take courage and planning. You and your kid are the bane of both privately and publicly funded enterprises. So don’t be surprised if people try to get at your kid behind your back …. but only for the kid’s own good, of course …

Funny, when I was a teen I thought my dad was difficult, but now that he’s old and I’m aging fast, I see it all so differently. A relationship with a kid can last a lifetime, even if there are bad patches along the way.

I dedicated my most recent book to my dad, and I meant every word when I wrote,

I wish to acknowledge my father, John Patrick O’Leary, who has maintained an interest in the central ideas of civilization all his life, encouraging me in this and all such projects, – Denyse O’Leary

Writing that dedication was the best moment of the book for me, actually. And for him too, I expect. If you have a daughter, I hope she does something for you some day, that shows that she knows how hard you tried and how much your relationship with her meant to you.

Also:

If God didn’t create the universe, his Replacement from the celestial temp agency is pretty Good.

Catholics: I get mail. And so does B16

Business is not a Darwinian jungle!

Mythbusting: The Catholic Church and the Galileo myth

The Pope vs. howler monkey standins

Nine predictions if intelligent design is true

Dhimmis for Darwin? Well, we do live in strange times … !

Prediction, retrodiction, and malediction: Scenes from the life (?) of a blogger

Are prayer studies a waste of government money? No way!

Fellow atheist blasts Richard Dawkins in Skeptical magazine

Neuro this and neuro that and neuro go away! …

Is human consciousness just a trick to ensure survival?

How do unconscious people know when to wake up?

Design of life: Give me a home where the beefalo roam …

Origin of life puzzle: Popular science media solve it every few weeks

Extinction: And so good night, the final curtain

Some excerpts:

When the Western Standard magazine printed the Danish cartoons of Mohammed two years ago, I was the publisher. It was the proudest moment of my public life. I would do it again today. In fact, I did do it again today. Though the Western Standard, sadly, no longer publishes a print edition, I posted the cartoons this morning on my website, ezralevant.com.  

I believe that this commission has no proper authority over me. The commission was meant as a low-level, quasi-judicial body to arbitrate squabbles about housing, employment and other matters, where a complainant felt that their race or sex was the reason they were discriminated against. The commission was meant to deal with deeds, not words or ideas. Now the commission, which is funded by a secular government, from the pockets of taxpayers of all backgrounds, is taking it upon itself to be an enforcer of the views of radical Islam. So much for the separation of mosque and state.

I have read the past few years’ worth of decisions from this commission, and it is clear that it has become a dump for the junk that gets rejected from the real legal system.

That’s my first point: the commissions have leapt out of the small cage they were confined to, and are now attacking our fundamental freedoms. As Alan Borovoy, Canada’s leading civil libertarian, a man who helped form these commissions in the 60’s and 70’s, wrote, in specific reference to our magazine, being a censor is, quote, “hardly the role we had envisioned for human rights commissions. There should be no question of the right to publish the impugned cartoons.” Unquote. Since the commission is so obviously out of control, he said quote “It would be best, therefore, to change the provisions of the Human Rights Act to remove any such ambiguities of interpretation.” Unquote.
The commission has no legal authority to act as censor. It is not in their statutory authority. They’re just making it up – even Alan Borovoy says so.

The full text is here.

Note: This is a different case from the human rights charges faced by Mark Steyn and Maclean’s Magazine for printing an excerpt from Steyn’s America Alone.