"When he says 'we will restore science to its rightful place,' he isn't talking about Silicon Valley. He is talking about government grants to university researchers," writes Henry in the comments of Ann Althouse's post on Charles Krauthammer's column re why Obama's Inauguration speech was so tedious. [Full disclosure: From the moment he called us a racist back in December of 2006 in the disingenuously presented afterglow of Oprah's endorsement, we've been constitutionally — both physically and philosophically — unable to listen to the "soaring rhetoric" of the former President Elect. Hot air has never been our thing.]
"Benedict XVI: internet a new way to speak of God" headlines one of the top videos on Papa Ratzi's YouTube website.
Noisome folks on the left and right are shouting at each other over the scientific divide. It's the angry anti-science believers vs the angry anti-religion scientists. Both sides are into demonizing "the other." Yawn. Same old same old. Into that miasma, this voice of reason from commenter itellu3times at Little Green Footballs:
The left has built itself this fantasy that Bush hated and ignored science, based on the fact they did not fund a useless and ethically difficult subset of stem-cell research, and did not believe in global Algore.
Left-wing (pseudo-) scientists worldwide are getting all warm and teary about their upcoming unicorn grants.
Apropos of which, we emailed off a challenge this afternoon to John Brockman, "founder of the nonprofit Edge Foundation, Inc. and editor of Edge, the highly acclaimed website devoted to discussions of cutting edge science by many of the world's brilliant thinkers, the leaders of what he has termed 'the third culture'":
Thank you so very much for your thought-provoking publication, a great stimulator of lively discussion.
Re your forthcoming publication of "brief responses by selected contributors" addressing the question of "whether there is a philosophical incompatibility between religion and science," may I suggest that you consider asking the most brilliant mind out there who argues for their compatibility, Pope Benedict XVI? It seems to me that the loudest among the anti-religion scientist atheists protest too much, lacking the self-awareness to realize that their own fervor against faith is itself a kind of secular faith.
As I wrote a couple of years back, citing Oriana Fallaci's famous "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true," "It doesn't require religious faith to believe in something worth fighting for."
Herewith, a republication of our March 19, 2006 blogpost "It doesn't require religious faith to believe in something worth fighting for,"
Ball? What ball? Tiny on deck in the arc of Tuck's chipboard fabric-cutting board during early-morning ball play.
"I believe that the antagonism between reason and faith will only grow more pervasive and intractable in the coming years," writes Sam Harris, author of the New York Times bestseller, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, at The Huffington Post. According to the blurb at his book's web site, "Mr. Harris is now completing a doctorate in neuroscience, studying the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty with functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)." Right up our alley. He came to our attention this morning as the purveyor of an email from Muslim journalist Irshad Manji — blogged here and here — forwarded by our good blogfriend Annie of AmbivaBlog. [Click here to sign petition.] Googling revealed that not only does he blog at Huffington, but we ourselves have had occasion to quote him in one of our favorite Darwin-related posts, "There is a grandeur in this view of life."
Tiny and the superball (just off camera to the right) pose an ongoing challenge to the photographer's hungry eye. For every keeper, there are dozens of shots where she has just exited stage right or left when the shutter finally clicks. Note dark blue jabot, upper left, Tuck's first, brilliantly executed finished segment of the new living room swags and jabots.
While we share Sam Harris's view of science as the key to "our rational description of the universe," we disagreed then — as we do now — with his dismissal of religion:
To win this war of ideas, scientists and other rational people will need to find new ways of talking about ethics and spiritual experience. The distinction between science and religion is not a matter of excluding our ethical intuitions and non-ordinary states of consciousness from our conversation about the world; it is a matter of our being rigorous about what is reasonable to conclude on their basis. We must find ways of meeting our emotional needs that do not require the abject embrace of the preposterous. We must learn to invoke the power of ritual and to mark those transitions in every human life that demand profundity — birth, marriage, death, etc. — without lying to ourselves about the nature of reality.
Between frenzied moments of batting and pouncing, Tiny retreats to a corner of the room to regroup.
Mr. Harris is understandably troubled that "irreconcilable religious commitments still inspire an appalling amount of human conflict," but it isn't religion per se but human nature itself that's the problem/challenge in our view. As we blogged here — citing anthropologist-turned-psychologist Pascal Boyer's brain-scan studies addressing the question "Why has belief proved so resilient as scientific progress unravels the mysteries of plagues, floods, earthquakes and our understanding of the universe?" — that's just the way we are after the great winnowing process of evolution:
By injecting nuns with radioactive chemicals, by scanning the brains of people with epilepsy and studying naughty children, scientists are now working out why. When the evidence is pieced together, it seems that evolution prepared what society later moulded: a brain to believe.
As well as providing succour for those troubled by the existential dilemma, religion, or at least a primitive spirituality, would have played another important role as human societies developed. By providing contexts for a moral code, religious beliefs encouraged bonding within groups, which in turn bolstered the group's chances of survival, says Boyer.
The early-morning light illuminates a cat's-eye view of the dining room as playing field, where the props of Tuck's sewing project lend interest and mystery.
Bonding within groups — the importance of being noticed — is one of the ur-themes of this blog (check out Neo's latest, "Dueling: defending one's honor" for a great take on the topic). Still, we couldn't agree more with Sam Harris when he writes "While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities":
Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive. It has also obliged us to lie to ourselves -- repeatedly and at the highest levels -- about the compatibility between religious faith and scientific rationality.
All that jazz. We love the liquid counterpoint of cat's paw and table paw and whiskers and superball and early-morning light as Tiny trips the light fantastic.
Does he realize his argument about ideas that are "patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive" applies equally to Islamist bile and the politically correct pronouncements of our fellow citizens of the left? It's not faith vs. rationality, but intolerance vs. tolerance. Render unto Caesar, as we've blogged before. It doesn't require religious faith to believe in something worth fighting for. The shining city upon a hill shimmers in our mind's eye. As Oriana Fallaci wrote — and we are forever quoting — "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true." We were touched by the poignant naiveté of Sam Harris's unself-aware statement of his own brand of secular faith:
When we find reliable ways to make human beings more loving, less fearful, and genuinely enraptured by the fact of our appearance in the cosmos, we will have no need for divisive religious myths. Only then will the practice of raising our children to believe that they are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu be broadly recognized as the ludicrous obscenity that it is. And only then will we stand a chance of healing the deepest and most dangerous fractures in our world.
There must be something true. Try human nature. As Kerry of The Smoothing Plane asks in the comments re Mr. Harris's desire to "find reliable ways to make human beings more loving," "Make them …? We who?"
it is a very interesting post.
which is no surprise...
Posted by: hnav | January 24, 2009 at 10:43 PM
With the passing of folks like Bill Buckley and Richard John Neuhaus, now more than ever conservatives need to push forward a concerted effort to involve ourselves in high-volume trade of intellectual discourse. I am tired of being painted as not only lacking intellect, but fostering anti-intellectual values, by the mainstream media.
Ben Stein's "Expelled" illustrates just how ingrained this prejudice has become.
Thinking is not owned by liberals - no matter how much of the private sector they wish to buy up.
Posted by: Elizabeth | January 25, 2009 at 10:26 AM
"find reliable ways to make human beings more loving,"
Mothers have always dealt with this. The thing is... there is something called the heart and the will.
You can see it early on. If there is no conscience, nothing can put it there except a supernatural event.
Children watch their role models carefully from at least six months on. If there is no love given to them they fail to thrive.
And what is the liberals' definition of "being more loving?" anyway? Is it being more compliant? More unquestioning of liberal norms? Less outspoken?
It seems to me that liberals have crept into an Augustinian theological discussion if they deem to take on the word "make."
In Genesis, God said, "Let us make man in our image after our likeness…"
We all know what happened after that.
Oh the humanity.
Even God didn't force mankind to love Him. He let us make the choice.
Posted by: Laura Lee Donoho | January 25, 2009 at 01:31 PM
It is my belief that religions are a summation of the experience of mankind. In an effort to live in a world in which we can experience freedom and live and let live, rules of behavior must exist. These beliefs are not relative. Some produce better results than others.
Posted by: goomp | January 25, 2009 at 05:47 PM