reflections on truth

blog 2.0!!

2006-10-06T17:47:00.000-07:00

well, it's here. i've appreciated the gracious people at blogspot and their clunky software for hosting this site and giving me my first foray into blogging culture. but, in the words of the m people, "i'm moving on up". i’m switching to wordpress for four reasons: 1) better content organization, as with categories; 2) straightforward creative license with html, css, and php; 3) integration with my parent site bohemianscientist.org; and 4) a very kind host (hats off to you, lomak). though unlikely, the old posts from this site may begin to trickle on, slowly. please update your bookmark (or your 'list of sites to avoid'), take two advil for the pain, and read me in the morning.

are humans getting dumber?

2006-10-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

just found out about the very small release of mike judge's new film idiocracy and read a nice review at slate. apparently, it's everything you'd expect from the creator of beavis and butthead in the time of george w bush: a humor that laments incompetence and laziness. i'm in no rush to see it, thanks to a few other reviews, one of which sums it up best: the movie is "so puerile and gross that[,] though the movie wants to say something about the dumbing down of America, it winds up not so much commentary as part of the problem." there's also a conspiracy theory saying that the distributor (FOX) intentionally squelched the film...

mr. wilson!!!

2006-10-01T16:56:00.000-07:00

what was supposed to be a week away from blogging turned into a healthy month; i'll be making up lost time in the next few days.

first up, e.o. wilson's new book The Creation: A Meeting of Science and Religion came out this past month and was just reviewed in the magazine
first things by particle physicist
stephen barr. he compliments wilson's engaging prose on the intricacies of nature and the debt we owe it, but ultimately recognizes wilson's insistence on naturalism for what it is--idolatry. wilson's commitment to the "ancient, autonomous creative force" of nature has been unabashedly prevalent in all of his books on religion and science, including one i reviewed (consilience: the unity of knowledge) for the journal revisions: a journal of christian perspective (see pdf or html).

while he emphasizes that we should take care of the environment, he accuses Christians of being anti-green because of their belief in an afterlife. this misrepresentation of the christian camp has continued for far too long, despite pleas and arguments to the contrary (briefly, one quick-and-dirty argument for pro-green christianity is that God has created this world for His glory and has created us to be stewards of it... so, we should be).

one nice point that barr brings up is wilson's poor understanding of Christianity: "he plays with the word creation, even choosing it as the title of his book, while evincing no grasp of whati it means. in its traditional and profounder meaning, creation is that timeless act whereby God holds all things in existence. it is not an alternative to natural theories of origin or natural explanations of change [...] did this insect evolve or is it created by God? to ask tat is as silly as to ask whether polonius died because hamlet stabbed him or because shakespeare wrote the play that way."

blogpuku

2006-08-24T22:03:00.000-07:00

forgive my anticipated blogging hiatus; thanks to qualifying exams, i won't be at it again till september 8 or so. but by then, i'll be due for some lengthy entries. in the meantime, please meditate on and accept my ritual seppuku-styled (though, fortunately, transient) shaming as a small token of my self-induced retribution and sincere apologies (that's me, with the ponytail).

hearty HAR HAR: brain genes in humans

2006-08-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

a new study from ucsc shows that a gene active during cortical development in humans is a lot different from its counterparts in other mammals. HAR1F, active in Cajal-Retzius cells during development and possibly interacting with the protein reelin (involved with cortical layering), was recently identified in a non-coding region of human DNA: it had changed forms 18 times compared with its analogue in chimps. meanwhile, it (and a second, related HAR gene) are virtually identical in non-human mammals. the hunt for what makes our brains so special is taken up with equal fervor in computational biology and theology, and, as always, the findings in one don't by necessity negate the claims of the other...

see the original article, or nature's reader-friendly intro, or the BBC coverage.

chick eggs the next cash cow?

2006-08-12T13:54:00.000-07:00

nature ran an article this week on the ethics and economics of human egg donation. the gist is that scientists and ethicists are concerned about whether to pay women for eggs obtained for research on therapeutic human cloning. paying women for their ova has gone on for a while... in our daily princetonian, we had the first national ad for egg donorship back in '97 ("looking for 5'8"-5'11", blonde, SAT >1400, female of Swedish descent to donate some eggs for $40,000"). america has continued to have occasional cases in which a couple will pay exhorbitantly for some cute eggs, though i think remuneration is outlawed in britain. but IVF and research are two different issues, and only a few known madcap opportunists--such as woo suk hwang, of south korean shame--have paid for (or coerced women into donating) human eggs.

on june 30th, a task force set up by the International Society for Stem Cell Research released a draft of guidelines, which simply demonstrate how little consensus there is on the issue. according to the article, it's open to public debate till september 1, at which point, i suppose, public debate is officially closed.

my current thinking is that the whole question is irrelevant. i go against the establishment on this one, but i'm actually against IVF in principle, since it necessarily generates unused embryos. if it hadn't been for these storehouses at hospitals and fertility clinics, there never would have been such contention about "what we should do with all these embryos from 30 years of IVF!" and we could have addressed the social policy regarding ES cells with a little more clarity. sadly, the 'byproducts' of IVF are still oft ignored (or forgotten) even by more conservative politicians... perhaps because its benefits have already been realized by the conservative community. at any rate, there are lots of issues here (not the least of which is the potential to solve more than one problem by adopting "at-risk kids") that require some ethical and scientific maturity. unfortunately, as jon stewart helps us recognize, we're not there yet. but, more to the point, because of the deep moral issues associated with the status of the human embryo, i'm not convinced it should be used for research using federal funding. private funding? not so sure... but with regard to whether the cash would put too much pressure on underprivileged women to undergo a dangerous, invasive procedure, we have a precedent. in america, private organizations pay habitually-pregnant crack addicts to have their tubes tied. sure, it funds their next couple of hits. but no matter how strong a libertarian you are, you've got to admit that it's a pretty good idea.

the godhead: "mother, child, and womb"

2006-07-25T02:15:00.000-07:00

in response to a friend's claim that the traditional conception of the trinity (God the father, son, and holy spirit) can be exchanged for any other instructive "metaphor", i write this:

i appreciate, [friend], your desire to be inclusive and open-minded...demonstrating the very spirit of Christ. i do think, though, that we need to be careful and consistent with our terms. the labels--father, son, and holy spirit--of the trinity aren't metaphors--what is the metaphor of a holy spirit? while our understanding of the persons of the trinity might be sullied by our flawed fathers or sinful sons, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

the trinity represents an organic relationship that is simultaneously unitary and trinary (electrical engineers, stop cringing :)... the mystery of the trinity has been mulled over since tertullian... and it culminated in unitarians and others who found the idea of an ontological trinity unintelligible (moses stuart and w.a. brown, for example). but, we find reference to a trinity of these particular three persons throughout the Bible (the father and son in both testaments, and the spirit first explicitly manifested in acts).

karl barth revived the trinity with some 220 pages on its doctrine in his dogmatics, and presents the three persons in terms of God's speaking: He is Revealer (father), Revelation (son), and Revealedness (holy spirit). (your guess is as good as mine on the office of the spirit..he says the spirit is the very content of the revelation). barth explains their offices in terms of truth revealed (john 1), but doesn't reject or recast the persons of the trinity: they are still father, son, and holy spirit.

at best, there might be room for didactic analogies to the trinity, in light of man's weakness, where analogy refers to an aspectual comparison to reality whereas a metaphor is a wholistic comparison (where the former is meant to explain a relationship in part, the latter in full). historically, people have used analogies such as mist, cloud, rain; intellect, affections, will, (augustine); thesis, antithesis, synthesis, (hegel); subject, object, and subject-object, (olshausen). all of these lack the divine personality inherent in the father-son-spirit relationship. and while mother-child-womb might have value for describing a specific personal relationship in the mystery of the Godhead, it can't replace the specific biblical relationships (see matthew 3.16, 4.1; and all of john, especially 1.18, 3.16, 5.20-22, 14.26, 15.26, and 16.13-15). i really appreciate this explanation, from berkhof's systematic theology (which has a good general discussion of the doctrine of God, and specifically the trinity, pp 82-99) :

The communicable attributes of God stress His personality, since they reveal Him as a rational and moral Being. His life stands out clearly before us in Scripture as a personal life; and it is, of course, of the greatest importance to maintain the personality of God, for without it there can be no religion in the real sense of the word: no prayer, no personal communion, no trustful reliance and no confident hope. Since man is created in the image of God, we learn to understand something of the personal life of God from the contemplation of personality as we know it in man.

in the end, the nature of the trinity is a grand mystery beyond our capacities, but praise God that we can even meditate on Him! in mystery is opportunity, enabling us to share in love the joy of the gospel with others, and to appreciate the personal struggles of others as they wrestle with divine truth: " to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law; to those who are without law, as without law (not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ), that I might win those who are without law; to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. Now this I do for the gospel’s sake, that I may be partaker of it with you." (i cor 9)

let's remember both the unfathomably perfect and the intimately personal nature of the Godhead, and our responsibility to share His love!

(also, thanks [other friend] for making the important distinction between pca and pcusa [which the article somewhat blurred]... the pca def has a rich, biblical, and necessarily Christ-centered theological tradition. i'd wholeheartedly recommend the small pca congregation i've joined in downtown LJ:new life mission church of la jolla.)

the failure of liberal christianity

2006-07-24T22:00:00.000-07:00

the la times ran a nice op-ed last week on the disintegration of the american liberal church--that is, the people who deny the divinity of Christ, ignore biblical directives on homosexuality, and take feminism to the absurd. at one conference, "participants 'reimagined' God as 'Our Maker Sophia' and held a feminist-inspired 'milk and honey' ritual designed to replace traditional bread-and-wine Communion."

while you might be sympathetic to some or all of these causes, consider that the traditional theology of the Church is focused on the divinity of Christ... A celebration of women (or men!) that obscures the sacrament of God has no place in a service of worship: we kneel at the foot of the Cross, sprinkled with Christ's blood; we don't coo in Sophia's arm, milking at her teet.

{also note when you're reading the article, the presbyterian church USA referred to in the oped is entirely different from the "presbyterian church in america (PCA)", which unabashedly affirms the Word of God as Truth, and Jesus Christ as Savior.}

a representative quotation:

It is not entirely coincidental that at about the same time that Episcopalians, at their general convention in Columbus, Ohio, were thumbing their noses at a directive from the worldwide Anglican Communion that they "repent" of confirming the openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire three years ago, the Presbyterian Church USA, at its general assembly in Birmingham, Ala., was turning itself into the laughingstock of the blogosphere by tacitly approving alternative designations for the supposedly sexist Christian Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Among the suggested names were "Mother, Child and Womb" and "Rock, Redeemer and Friend." Moved by the spirit of the Presbyterian revisionists, Beliefnet blogger Rod Dreher held a "Name That Trinity" contest. Entries included "Rock, Scissors and Paper" and "Larry, Curly and Moe."

but it's myspace!

2006-07-13T23:31:00.000-07:00

according to slashdot, hitwise says myspace overtook yahoo mail as the internet's most popular site. today, slashdot summed up the tons of responses they received to the original post in a waste-no-time review. it's informative (and encouraging to see that many people--albeit slashdot readers--recognize the social evils associated with the site)

"Reader caitsith01 speaks for many with an evaluation of MySpace as "for the most part intensely narcissistic and inane," and writes "People are presented with a tool for publishing absolutely anything, about any topic they choose. Instead of presenting thoughtful, creative or otherwise valuable content, the vast majority elect to pointlessly ramble about themselves in minute detail or engage in endless back and forth with other users about nothing in particular. Which is fine, but it shouldn't have the legitimacy of other web content. [...] Perhaps it's time to move past the blog hype and to consider some method for differentiating personal diaries (i.e., what used to be a personal homepage), social chit chat (i.e., what used to be a bulletin board, IRC, or IM activity), and publications with actual content. Right now the net is awash with an ever-expanding tide of rubbish and there is very little to assist in finding the few really interesting and high quality publications among the garbage. Ultimately it's depressing that, given the ability to communicate our ideas to anyone on earth, most of us can't come up with anything better than pictures of ourselves drinking too much and mass-produced but ineffectual rebelliousness."

is dna the language of god?

2006-07-13T21:47:00.000-07:00

nature this week covered a new book by geneticist and public christian francis collins, best known for heading up the human genome project. the article's pretty drab, but i'm anxious to check out a copy of the book. i also enjoyed reading vehement atheist PZ Myers' blog response to the article (in which he's quoted) along with other comically atheistic musings on his site.

the summary: collins writes book about how faith and science are compatible. typical atheists like dawkins bash it. but because collins disses creationism and ID, he gets praise from some unlikely people, like the head of an anti-ID lobbying group.

judging from the article, the book seems to push for greater dialogue about faith and science and for greater lay appreciation of the fact that they are not mutually exclusive (the article cites that 40% of scientists in america are also christians). a call to the discussion table by a scientific figurehead is certaintly welcome. but i'm anxious to see if the book lays out some suggestions for the exchanges once we're seated. the critical thing missing in many of today's "debates" about religion and science (including the ones that go on daily in labs) is nuts-and-bolts philosophy. to be sure, most scientists are at home in the land of logic, but don't have time and/or desire to read nuanced tomes on epistemology. still, as long as someone knows the arguments--and the onus of responsibility, i think, sits on the christians' shoulders here--the claims and conclusions of christianity and secularism can lead to fruitful debate... and, in many cases, a reconsideration of whether naturalism is an air-tight worldview.

Genomics luminary weighs in on US faith debate
Erika Check
Top geneticist asks the God question.

Is it really possible to combine dedication to science with belief in God? In a new book, prominent US scientist Francis Collins sets out his case for combining a strong religious faith with a zeal for the scientific method. But his views have already sparked debate, with critics suggesting that more talk of religion is the last thing that science needs.

Collins, who directs the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and headed the Human Genome Project, has never hidden the fact that he is a devout Christian. But he has never spoken quite so publicly about his faith. He says he felt compelled to write his book because the popular debate on faith and science has become dominated by extreme voices, leaving many feeling that there is no way to reconcile religious and scientific views of the world. "Our society is not well served by portraying a future which is either entirely secular or entirely religious in a fundamentalist way," he says.

Collins also hopes the book, The Language of God (Free Press, 2006), will provoke thought in academia, where, he says, the subject of faith isn't exactly popular. "In most academic circles, a discussion of spiritual matters tends to clear the room fairly quickly."

Discussion, Collins suggests, might rectify the misconception that most scientists are atheists. Surveys find that about 40% of US scientists believe in God, but Collins says that is not reflected in science's public face. That hurts science, he argues, because it drives away curious people who might also be religious believers.

Collins takes a strong stand against some religious beliefs, such as creationism and 'intelligent design'. He considers both to be views that restrict faith to covering gaps in scientific knowledge, leaving it in a tenuous position.

Instead, Collins embraces a theology sometimes called theistic evolution, or BioLogos. This embraces the idea that human evolution occurred through natural selection according to God's plan, and that God instilled humanity with certain characteristics, including a 'moral law', that can't be explained by science.

"The moral law is a signpost to a God who cares about us as individuals," Collins says. "God used a mechanism of evolution to create human beings with whom he could have that kind of fellowship."

Many scientists disagree strongly with such arguments. Some suggest that science is on the defensive today — not just in the United States — and that society needs exactly the opposite of what Collins suggests: less talk about faith and more about reason. Religious concerns are largely behind the US law restricting federal funding of stem-cell research, for example. And many feel threatened by the influence of intelligent design in science education.

In the United States, "the default position right now is to assume that religion is perfectly OK", says Paul Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota in Morris and author of the popular science blog Pharyngula. "Collins is taking that default position, and while a large majority of scientists will shrug their shoulders, a few voices will be shouting out, saying 'wait a minute, this is nonsense'."

"I cannot see how this could be good for science — supernaturalism is fundamentally anti-scientific," says Richard Dawkins, a biologist from the University of Oxford, UK. "Scientists work hard at trying to understand. Supernaturalism is an evasion of this responsibility. It's a shrug of the shoulders."

Dawkins acknowledges that, particularly in the United States, there might be tactical reasons for trying to get on with religious people. "That is a perfectly reasonable political stance, but it has nothing to do with truth."

Others welcome Collins's book, however. "I think it's helpful when scientists of Francis's prominence speak out on the compatibility of faith and science," says Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, a group based in Oakland, California, that lobbies against creationism.

Scott agrees with Collins that so far the harshest voices have achieved most prominence, and that this situation doesn't help either side. "Creationists love quoting Dawkins and Daniel Dennett," she says. "But those individuals don't represent the fairly sizeable proportion of non-theists who are not out to destroy religion."

a winner on sex

2006-07-09T17:22:00.000-07:00

two opeds on premarital sex, one each from nytimes contributor lauren winner and chuck colson. i'm most impressed with winner's assessment of the flawed 'chastity pledge':

"Pledgers promise to control intense bodily desires simply by exercising their wills. But Christian ethics recognizes that the broken, twisted will can do nothing without rehabilitation by God's grace. Perhaps the centrality of grace is recognized best not in a pledge but in a prayer that names chastity as a gift and beseeches God for the grace to receive it."

i've argued a version of this point with my own grandmother at thanksgiving dinner: without Christ, abstinence doesn't make much sense (of course, if you're stoically reasoned, you'll recognize that most if not all research demonstrates that abstinence is the healthier choice). i'm chaste because i'm a christian.

at any rate, the fact that abstinence education hasn't worked in practice (see below) is important to recognize for policy. but, more important, i think, is that this fact can be used in arguments against a successful naturalistic moral system. think about it... maybe i'll post on it later.

both articles are reproduced below.
______________________________________
Saving Grace
Lauren F. Winner.
New York Times. May 19, 2006. pg. A.25

Lauren F. Winner is the author of ''Girl Meets God'' and ''Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity.''

The recent Harvard study that found teenagers' virginity pledges to be ineffective should come as a surprise to no one. Several studies had already come to that conclusion. If we are truly to help our teenagers adopt the countercultural sexual ethic of abstinence until marriage, Christians concerned about the rampant premarital sex in our communities need to rethink, rather than simply defend, young people's abstinence pledges.

It is awfully easy for Christians to blame our community's sexual sins on the mores of post-sexual revolution America -- to criticize Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs, to natter on about how ''Grey's Anatomy'' portrays sexual behavior that doesn't square with Christianity.

But perhaps it's more important that we reconsider how we talk about sex in the church. For although the church devotes an immense amount of energy to teaching about sexuality -- just go to the Christian inspiration section of your nearest Barnes & Noble and compare the number of books about chastity to books that challenge, say, consumerism -- many Christians still ''struggle with'' (in that euphemistic evangelical phrase) premarital sex, adultery and pornography.

So why is the church's approach to teaching chastity falling short? Consider the popular ''True Love Waits'' virginity pledge: ''Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship.''

This pledge and others like it are well meaning but deeply flawed. For starters, there's something disturbing about the assumption that teenagers are passively waiting for their future mates and children, when the New Testament is quite clear that some Christians are called to lifelong celibacy. (Paul, for example, did not have a mate or children, and Dan Brown's fantasies notwithstanding, Jesus's only bride was the church.) Chastity is not merely about passive waiting; it is about actively conforming our bodies to the arc of the Gospel and receiving the Holy Spirit right now.

Pledgers promise to control intense bodily desires simply by exercising their wills. But Christian ethics recognizes that the broken, twisted will can do nothing without rehabilitation by God's grace. Perhaps the centrality of grace is recognized best not in a pledge but in a prayer that names chastity as a gift and beseeches God for the grace to receive it.

The pledges are also cast in highly individualistic terms: I promise that I won't do this or that. As the Methodist bishop William Willimon once wrote: ''Decisions are fine. But decisions that are not reinforced and reformed by the community tend to be short-lived.''

During our first year of marriage, my husband and I lived in a small apartment inside a church. On Tuesdays, Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon met downstairs. As I got to know some of the regulars, I began to wonder if there wasn't something the church could learn from the 12-step groups in our midst.

After all, what are 12-step groups but communities of people expecting transformation? People show up because they want to change, and they know that making a promise by themselves -- I will stop drinking -- won't cut it. Alcoholics Anonymous explicitly recognizes that transformation works best when a community comes alongside you and participates in your transformation.

Christians, like 12-step group attendees, are people who are committed to becoming, to use the Apostle Paul's phrase, new creatures. Living sexual lives that comport with the Gospel is one part of that.

Perhaps pledges for chastity need to be made not only by the individual teenager. Perhaps we also need pledges made by the teenager's whole Christian community: we pledge to support you in this difficult, countercultural choice; we pledge that the church is a place where you can lay bare your brokenness and sin, where you don't have to dissemble; we pledge to cheer you on when chastity seems unbearably difficult, and we pledge to speak God's forgiveness to you if you falter. No retooled pledge will guarantee teenagers' chastity, but words of grace and communal commitment are perhaps a firmer basis for sexual ethics than simple assertions that true love waits.

Keeping a Pledge
Grace, Transformation, and Community

Chuck Colson

July 5, 2006

I read the New York Times every day. But I can't remember the last time I found profound theological wisdom in its columns—that is until recently.

Lauren Winner, an insightful new voice among Christian writers, graced the New York Times op-ed pages with a straight-talking explanation of Harvard's recent studies showing that abstinence pledges have proven ineffectual among teenagers. According to Winner, we shouldn't be surprised.

Now before getting defensive, listen to her well-grounded theological explanation: "Pledgers promise to control intense bodily desires simply by exercising their wills. But Christian ethics recognizes that the broken, twisted will can do nothing without rehabilitation by God's grace."

This is no less than the apostle Paul teaches us in Romans 7. Winner further proposes, "Perhaps the centrality of grace is recognized best not in a pledge but in a prayer that names chastity as a gift and beseeches God for the grace to receive it." She also rightly draws our attention to the brash individualism of such pledges. Quoting Methodist bishop William Willimon, she writes, "Decisions are fine. But decisions that are not reinforced and reformed by the community tend to be short-lived.''

To that I say, "Amen!" Winner re-affirms something that the Church has known but all too often forgotten: true transformation requires God's enabling grace. And because of the way God created us to reflect the inherent relational nature of the Trinity, transformation happens best within the context of community. I applaud Winner's nudging reminder that the community of believers must be indeed just that, a community, supporting and enabling that counter-cultural commitment to God's ways.

Unwittingly, Winner's argument also point to the lessons we've discovered in working in some of the most difficult trenches of transformation—the prisons. Simply more education or a pledge before the parole board won't help prisoners stay out of prison. True change of will requires God's enabling grace and power.

And for that change to seep down deep, prisoners need a community of support. They need volunteers who will open up the Word of God and show them how to live, mentors who will come alongside and share their lives, and most of all, they need the open arms of a church community to embrace them and support them when they return.

And this is perhaps what grieves me most about the recent decision from a judge in Iowa, ruling against the faith-based prison program, the InnerChange Freedom Initiative. Shutting down programs like IFI will only succeed in hurting the community, by standing in the way of the only transformation that really works.

The IFI program works because it does exactly what Winner and I've talked about. It provides a way for grace-filled transformation to occur in the context of community. In so doing, it is a witness to the Church of what it has too often forgotten, and a witness to the community of the only true power to change.

pssst...

2006-07-09T15:48:00.000-07:00

forgive the current events, but this is important.

reuters reported this morning that the bush administration has been keeping a major intelligence activity secret from the house and senate. michigan republican pete hoekstra, chair of the house intelligence committee and an ardent bush supporter, sent him a four-page letter of criticism warning that his decision was potentially illegal. two more years...

the paradox of gay rights: who's really intolerant?

2006-06-25T18:54:00.000-07:00

christian magazine first things ran a nice response to this week's firing of Robert Smith, a Washington Metro board member, for saying that homosexuals are "sexual deviants" on cable tv. for washington post coverage, click here.

i have two questions:
1) who bothers watching this kind of tv (or any, for that matter... unless it's the world cup)?
2) what does this irrational intolerance of a traditional religious belief demonstrate about america more generally?

after 50 years of tv, still no-one can acceptably answer the first question. but the second is dealt with well in this response, reproduced from first things (nod to ryan anderson for the heads-up on this). it's long, but worth the read.

June 21, 2006

Joseph Bottum writes:

A friend emails thoughts on the recent firing of a transportation commissioner in Maryland for remarks about homosexuality:

Back in 2004, Rocco Buttiglione was nominated to be the commissioner of justice on the newly formed European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union. A distinguished political philosopher and a friend and confidante of Pope John Paul II, Buttiglione had a long and admirable career of public service, but various members of the European Parliament objected vehemently to Buttiglione’s views on homosexuality. A Roman Catholic, Buttiglione had said publicly that he believed that homosexual conduct was immoral. He was quick to add that he thought discrimination against individuals with a homosexual orientation was also immoral and indeed illegal under European law, but that made no difference. The committee considering Buttiglione’s candidacy advised against approving him, and when the whole European Parliament, which was to make the final decision, gridlocked on the nomination, Buttiglione withdrew his candidacy.

The lesson many people drew from this incident was that a devout Roman Catholic, or indeed anyone who ascribed to the traditional view in Western civilization that homosexual acts are immoral, was unfit for high office in the European Union. Some people thought, however, that such things could not happen in the United States.

But we live in rapidly changing times. Earlier this week, Robert L. Ehrlich, the Republican governor of Maryland, abruptly removed from office one of his appointees to the board of directors of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), an interstate agency that oversees public transportation in the Washington, D.C., area. The appointee, Robert J. Smith, had been a regular guest on a local cable news show in Maryland, and on the June 9 program, the topics discussed on the show included the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, which would limit marriage in the United States to unions of one man with one woman. In the course of the discussion, Smith referred to gays and lesbians as “persons of sexual deviancy.” He later reiterated to reporters that he “consider[s] homosexual behavior as deviant” and explained that this view stems from his Roman Catholic faith. To be sure, “deviant” is a harsh word, and Smith would have done better to stick close to the more careful formulations used in Catholic doctrine, but in context it was perfectly clear that Smith was affirming the moral doctrine taught in the Catholic religion and in a dwindling percentage of other Christian denominations.

The response to Smith’s remarks was explosive. In removing Smith from office, Governor Ehrlich said, “Robert Smith’s comments were highly inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable. They are in direct conflict to my administration’s commitment to inclusiveness, tolerance and opportunity.” The WMATA chairwoman said that Smith’s remarks reflected “a high level of intolerance” and that she “was surprised that someone who sits as a public official on a board would make that kind of a statement.” One of Smith’s fellow board members, however, said it most succinctly, asserting, “To defend this point of view is beyond the pale.”

That last phrase arrests the attention. What Governor Ehrlich and Smith’s colleagues on the WMATA board were saying is not just that they disagree with Smith about the moral quality of homosexual conduct, not just that Smith’s views are in error, not just that his views are unreasonable, but that they are immoral. Indeed, nothing less would justify Ehrlich’s decision to remove Smith. Ehrlich could hardly admit that Smith’s views were reasonable, the kind of thing that a person may in good faith believe even if Ehrlich himself disagreed, and yet nevertheless justify removing Smith from an office that has no significant connection to gay rights on the basis of those beliefs. No, what is being said here is that Smith’s views on homosexual conduct, which are the views of the Catholic religion and of a great many Americans (both religious and nonreligious), are, in the words of Smith’s former colleague, “beyond the pale”—beyond, that is to say, the range of beliefs that moral people might hold in just the same way that, say, racist beliefs are beyond the pale. Only bigots think that way.

Asked to back up this claim, Governor Ehrlich might have cited the authority of the United States Supreme Court. Back in 1994, Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority in Romer v. Evans, held that a state constitutional amendment prohibiting the state and its cities and counties from enacting anti-discrimination laws related to homosexual orientation or conduct violated the federal Constitution, because it was “inexplicable by anything but animus toward” gays and lesbians and “lacks a rational relationship to legitimate state interests.” Many have read this case as meaning that, in the view of the Supreme Court, a negative judgment on homosexual conduct or orientation lacks any rational basis and so must be the product of irrational animus. Such a reading makes sense of Justice Kennedy’s otherwise not especially coherent opinion in Lawrence v. Texas.

Notice, too, how quickly both Buttiglione and Smith were to refer to their Catholic faith. Supporters of both quickly cast the treatment they received as a form of religious persecution—as if the belief that homosexual conduct is immoral were a peculiarly Catholic, or at least Christian, tenet, and that using that belief to exclude someone from public office would amount to religious discrimination. That may be, but in fact the Catholic Church has always taught that the moral norm against homosexual conduct is not peculiarly Catholic, that it is rather part of natural morality and can be known by reason in natural moral philosophy. In his Laws, for example, Plato argued against such conduct and would have prohibited it, all on the basis of purely philosophical arguments (636a-c, 835c-841e), not religious taboo. But we have reached the point that, at least in disputes conducted in the news media, rational arguments on the merits of this subject are hopeless; only an appeal to a different kind of nondiscrimination norm might work.

The removal of Robert Smith is thus an early-warning sign. Unless things change in ways now quite unforeseeable, it will not be very long before the principle of traditional Western morality that homosexual conduct is immoral will be contrary to the public policy of the United States. As this new public policy takes hold, it will filter through the law and society just as other anti-discrimination norms have. Adherence to the new policy will be a de facto requirement for holding public office, and, as private entities adopt the policy as they have other anti-discrimination norms, people adhering to the traditional moral view will become unfit to serve as directors of public corporations, as officers of professional associations, as union officials, and as university professors. Organizations that do not ascribe to the policy may lose government licenses necessary to carry on their business, become ineligible to receive grants and subsidies, and be disqualified from bidding on government and other contracts. Catholic Charities in Boston recently had to cease arranging adoptions because Massachusetts required that it not discriminate against same-sex married couples in placing children. Organizations not ascribing to the new policy may even lose tax-free status under the Internal Revenue Code to which they would otherwise be entitled. This happened to Bob Jones University because of its racist policies; there is no reason why, a few years hence, the same thing could not happen to Notre Dame because of what will be called its homophobic policies.

Many people will say that this is alarmist nonsense. Perhaps so, but in the long history of the world, human beings have shown themselves highly intolerant of those who disagree with them about their cherished moral beliefs. The Puritans, for example, came to the New World seeking religious freedom, gained power in Massachusetts (ironically, the same state that now gives us same-sex marriage), and promptly began persecuting those who dissented from their orthodoxy. Even among those who preach toleration most loudly, genuine toleration is often scarce once the power to be intolerant has been gained. One of the many wonders of the American experiment is that the American people, throughout most of our history and with some shameful exceptions, have been astonishingly tolerant even of those who disagreed most flagrantly with the majority’s values. There is no guarantee, however, that such generous toleration will continue.

Indeed, there is some reason to think it may not. For the Americans who have been so tolerant over the past two centuries have been for the most part deeply committed to a particular set of moral and religious values largely derived from Protestant Christianity. But as political scientists Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio wrote in First Things, during the last thirty years, self-consciously nonreligious people have emerged as potent actors on the political stage promoting an overarching secular worldview.

This worldview evolved organically out of the American experience, of course, and the people who uphold it are sincere advocates of various forms of tolerance. But they are also generally inclined to believe that the traditional view that homosexual conduct is immoral is the product of the irrational animus of which Justice Kennedy spoke. More to the point, such people have never yet, as a class, held sufficient political power to be intolerant of those who dissent from the core values of their worldview. As such, they are still untested, and it remains to be seen whether, should they come to achieve majority power, they will be as tolerant of traditionally religious Americans as traditionally religious Americans long were of them.

Perhaps they will, for many such people are clearly persons of genuine goodwill, but the general experience of human nature down the centuries does not encourage optimism, and if things end as they are now beginning, those who accept the traditional norms may well end up the moral equivalent of Klansmen.

america slips, part II

2006-06-25T00:38:00.000-07:00

a reflection on oppressive policy by a 60s poet.

Stupid America

stupid america, see that chicano
with a big knife
in his steady hand
he doesn’t want to knife you
he wants to sit on a bench
and carve christfigures
but you won’t let him.

stupid america, see that chicano
shouting curses on the street
he is a poet
without paper and pencil
and since he cannot write
he will explode.

stupid america, remember that chicanito
flunking math and english
he is the picasso
of your western states
but he will die
with one thousand masterpieces
hanging only from his mind.

Abelardo “Lalo” Berrientos Delgado, 1969

america slips, part I

2006-06-25T00:23:00.000-07:00

some stats on how the US ranks on several social issues.

USA Ranking on Adult Literacy Scale: #9
(#1 Sweden and #2 Norway)- OECD

USA Ranking on Healthcare Quality Index: #37
(#1 France and #2 Italy)- World Health Organization 2003

USA Ranking of Student Reading Ability: #12
(#1 Finland and #2 South Korea)- OECD PISA 2003

USA Ranking of Student Problem Solving Ability: #26
(#1 South Korea and #2 Finland)- OECD PISA 2003

USA Ranking on Student Mathematics Ability: # 24
(#1 Hong Kong and #2 Finland)- OECD PISA 2003

USA Ranking of Student Science Ability: #19
(#1 Finland and #2 Japan)- OECD PISA 2003

USA Ranking on Women's Rights Scale: #17
(#1 Sweden and #2 Norway)- World Economic Forum Report

USA Ranking on Life Expectancy: #29
(#1 Japan and #2 Hong Kong)- UN Human Development Report 2005

USA Ranking on Journalistic Press Freedom Index: #32
(#1 Finland, Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands tied)- Reporters Without Borders 2005

USA Ranking on Political Corruption Index: #17
(#1 Iceland and #2 Finland)- Transparency International 2005

USA Ranking on Quality of Life Survey: #13
(#1 Ireland and #2 Switzerland)- The Economist Magazine ...Wikipedia "Celtic Tiger" if you still have your doubts.

USA Ranking on Environmental Sustainability Index: #45
(#1 Finland and #2 Norway)- Yale University ESI 2005

USA Ranking on Overall Currency Strength: #3 (US Dollar)
(#1 UK pound sterling and #2 European Union euro)- FTSE 2006....the dollar is now a liability, so many banks worldwide have planned to switch to euro

USA Ranking on Infant Mortality Rate: #32
(#1 Sweden and #2 Finland)- Save the Children Report 2006

USA Ranking on Human Development Index (GDP, education, etc.): #10
(#1 Norway and #2 Iceland)- UN Human Development Report 2005

cantique de jean racine

2006-06-21T12:53:00.000-07:00

to prepare my mind for worship today, i listened to faure's transcendent Cantique de Jean Racine.

you'll enjoy listening to it; click here.

here's the french, then a decent english translation:

Verbe,égal au Très-Haut, notre unique espèrance,
Jour éternel de la terre et des cieux;
De la paisible nuit nous rompons le silence,
Divin Sauveur, jette sur nous les yeux!

Répands sur nous le feu de ta grâce puissante,
Que tout l'enfer fuie au son de ta voix;
Dissipe le sommeil d'une âme languissante,
Qui la conduit à l'oubli de tes lois!

O Christ soit favorable à ce peuple fidèle
Pour te bénir maintenant rassemblé.
Reçois les chants qu'il offre à ta gloire immortelle,
Et de tes dons qu'il retourne comblé!

Word, equal to the Almighty, our only hope,
Eternal light of the earth and the Heavens;
We break the peaceful night's silence,
Divine Saviour, cast your eyes upon us!

Spread the fire of your mighty grace upon us
May the entire hell flee at the sound of your voice;
Disperse from any slothful soul the drowsiness
Inducing it to forget your laws!

Oh Christ, look with favour upon this faithful people
Which has now gathered to bless you.
Receive its singing, offered to your immortal glory,
And may it leave with the gifts you have bestowed upon it!

(text from the choral wiki)

how to make a powerpoint presentation

2006-06-17T23:25:00.000-07:00

i just got back from al gore's new documentary on global warming, though it more accurately could be titled:
"Al Gore: Public Crusader for Tomorrow's World"
or simply
"How to Scroll through a Powerpoint (Keynote) Presentation on a Plane, in a Room, at a Desk, in a Car, on a Couch, ..."

that last one made it to the final cut, when the editors (yes, there were editors! but more on this later) finally decided it was too clunky.

at any rate, i spent a lot of time in the movie thinking about the movie (which usually isn't a good sign). for proper reviews, check out IMDb's list of external reviews. i just want to comment on a few specific things.

this movie was intentionally appealing to the archetypal republican.

everyone knows the democrats (and republicans) are intensely concerned about this year's senate elections and the presidential election in 08. republicans just spent more than $5 mil on a winning election campaign to replace san diego's corrupt, republican 'duke' cunningham. how can republicans continue to win, in california no less, with the state of affairs in america as they are?

in answering that question, democrats have strategized, i think, to present its candidates as 'real americans', with as much apparent genuineness as W (i say "apparent" with full knowledge of its connotations here). in my mind this movie is one of the most overt recent attempts to "humanize" and "americanize" a democrat. forget that gore is "no longer in politics" and that global warming is "not a political issue; it's a moral issue." gore is still part of the democratic machine, and global warming is still a political issue. i'll spell these out:

1. gore is part of the democratic machine.
even if he's no longer talking to democratic strategists, he's forever emblazoned in this generation's conscience as a democratic figurehead. his activities out of office are a good indicator of what 'democrats are really like'. the man we see out of office is a hard-working, compassionate son of a politician-farmer, with great foresight and reputable goals. in short, he's everything W claimed to be, but, well, wasn't. as if those associations weren't enough, gore, as if stealing pages from the republican playbook, sounded more like W than i'd ever remembered: i never knew him to be so laborious in his speech, so awkwardly deliberate in his presentation. sure, at times there were light jokes and cheap shots, which, if they weren't wit, were at least evidence of a brain. but he was, i think intentionally, being awkward... mostly when he talked about himself, his home, his family, the stuff of life in almost entirely contrived and unnecessary cut-to scenes of where he grew up and motivations for working on global warming. to me, it seemed blatant that he was at the same time demonstrating his political prowess and social conscience (a one-up on W) and showing that he was more down-home american (beating W at his own mid-west game). still, it left a bad taste in my mouth, since these kind of irrelevant appeals to political genuineness have the distinct flavor of, well, bull sh't.

2. global warming is a political issue.
here's the logic:
global warming results from oil. oil is republican. republican is political. thus global warming is political. as we say in math, quod erat demonstratum.

percolating in the public conscience is the conviction that oil makes rich, corrupt, republican tycoons richer (and perhaps more corrupt and more republican...witness: Iraq war). oil fatcats and their federal compatriots piss off most americans. so, by lining up against the oil companies, democrats befriend the american public. they're with "us" on this issue...and it's an issue inextricably linked to the wars and corruption of this mismanaged republican administration.

so in both of these respects, democrats are the good guys in an uphill battle we americans have to join. if that's not political, what is? fortunately, though, i think they're on to something. oh the power of grassroots in the internet age... but that's another post. who knows if it'll work in awakening republicans to the possibility of voting democratic.

so, do i think you should see this movie? global warming is an extremely important issue, but the facts you get from the movie (plus some) could be learned in fewer than 15 minutes at realclimate.org (see below). so unless you wanna see gore toting his mac all over the globe, don't bother. BUT, change your habits, if necessary, to produce less (or no) CO2 emissions.

postscript 1. this movie does give tons of evidence for the importance of addressing global warming. i appreciate that it's bringing a sense of urgency about the problem to a wider audience.

postscript 2. this movie is intensely boring. all i wanted after 8 straight days of 16+ hours of daily work was a relaxing movie. instead, i got a very poor, needlessly long lecture. admittedly, i shouldn't have gone to a documentary. but my friend suggested it, and it was decently reviewed (nobody wants to be 'that guy' who says the global warming movie sucks; that's tantamount to making a 'special olympics' joke.) without enough footage of the majestic glaciers we're out to save, the audience was left watching gore--not known for stirring speeches--being gore. most of the time (75%ish), he's lecturing to a bunch of other people, who themselves get antsy by the end (i swear there were people in his audience ready to fall asleep, let alone the old guy snoozing across the row from us in the actual theater). he also takes a page from michael moore, incorporating instructional cartoons, albeit less humorous than moore's galumph through the history of the white man's oppressive politics. and then, there're the non-sequitor flashbacks...

for serious information, visit realclimate.org, especially their index, organized thematically. (hat tip to Yeung for this reference)

impoverished public discourse, absent public action

2006-06-13T23:44:00.000-07:00

this past week, wired news had a two-part series ("what if they gave a war?" and "you say you want a revolution?") from copy editor tony long. it's another tired, political wake-up call for an overly materialistic america. in fact, it reminds me in some roundabout way of the now-classic onion article "nation's liberals suffering from outrage fatigue" back in 04:

"With so many right-wing shams to choose from, it's simply too daunting for the average, left-leaning citizen to maintain a sense of anger"

while long's articles are a bit clunky, i always applaud efforts to crawl out of the soul-sucking vortex that is american commercialism (i also applaud efforts to avoid mixed metaphors, but that's another post...). not much is new in what he says (and in my opinion, some of it's misguided), but there are a few nice points. in particular, social movements lose steam and originality when they're used as profit engines: "Once Madison Avenue smells money, you can sound the death knell for any original idea."

"And nothing sells to the "youth demographic" like the idea of being a rebel. Well, guess what? The iconoclast has been marketed out of existence, too. This is a nation of sheep. Slick magazines, TV and, increasingly, the internet tell us what to buy, what to wear, how to think. (Cosmopolitan even tells you how to have an orgasm.) Mass culture has extracted our collective rebel bone. If only the British had marketed themselves better in 1776, we'd still be swearing fealty to the Crown."

in the end though, what do we do about our dangerous current situation in america? his to-do list is lackluster. essentially, he believes in self-improvement. sure, it looks like "broadening your horizons" or something, but in the end, it seems like a selfish schedule. to me, social justice is imbued with power and endurance when it has a firmer purpose.

but i want to get back to this idea: "the iconoclast has been marketed out of existence." i'm afraid the traditional iconoclast is still alive and well, and with good reason. more crap gets published and ideas get thought everyday that simply aren't worth paying attention to. but iconoclasm in the chic, counter-culture sense seems pretty dead to me, and i think this is the idea to which he's referring. i think i know the very date of its death, in fact. american-teen-nouveau-iconoclasm died when the simpsons let us listen to a conversation two rockers--the archetype of this heterodoxal persona--are having at some concert:

"are you being sarcastic, dude?"
"i don't even know anymore."

body-mod artists and our sense of...magnetism

2006-06-07T23:35:00.000-07:00

some wacky body-modification artists decided it'd be cool to put magnets in their ring fingers to sense the world in a new way. the magnets respond to EM fields, oscillate a bit, and activate somatosensory receptors in ways distinct from, say, touching a table or washing your hands. so the implant allows its user to reliably discern electrical activity unavailable to natural human senses. it probably won't go commercial (thanks to infections and uselessness), but you have to admit, it'd be fun being powder for a day.

from the article:
"Huffman and other recipients found they could locate electric stovetops and motors, and pick out live electrical cables. Appliance cords in the United States give off a 60-Hz field, a sensation with which Huffman has become intimately familiar."

princeton reunites

2006-06-01T21:44:00.000-07:00

i'm off to my brother's graduation this weekend, conveniently coincidental with princeton reunions, which claims the following distinction:

"The top three events every year in terms of barrels of beer consumed are the Kentucky Derby, Princeton's Reunion, and the Indianapolis 500." (wikipedia)

fun facts:
- reunions has its own website, which is separate from the regular princeton site (the trustees are happy about that one...). also see this photo-essay.
- the event has been memorialized on wikipedia.
- you can even buy vintage princeton reunion budweiser beer cans on ebay for the next few days.

reunions is a testament to princeton's sense of community... by which, of course, i mean, it's an embarrasment to any sense of decency, propriety, and social conscience. most alums, utterly sloshed, demonstrate annually just how elusive such decency can be (last year, a girl right in front of me pulled her skirt to her ankles and, without the slightest inhibition, started peeing on some ivy... oh the symbolism). often, at the infamous "fifth year", the downtrodden, world-beaten, still-single, workaholics find the men and women they'll hastily and drunkenly marry (and even more hastily divorce). and at the "ten year" and up, ceo's, vc's, proballers, and trustfund babies all compete to see who can donate the most cash to old nassau. i've heard princeton makes more in a night of reunions than all year from tuition.

but there are redeeming moments to the event. ralph nader and his class of 55, fed up with the irresponsible bacchanalia, used the time to start the hugely successful class of 55 social justice projects and funding. and tons of other alums use the time to catch up, 'network'...whatever that means, and work for good. i'll have a full report when i get back.

when it's all said and done, though, what i'm most excited about, of course, is my bro, Andrew, a philosophy phenom who'll be teaching english in malaysia next year. i'm so proud of him.

altruistic bacteria putting humans to shame

2006-05-29T22:11:00.000-07:00

richard dawkins, in his 1970s must-read the selfish gene, brings up altruism as an apparent paradox, if we take evolution at face-value. of course, he goes on to describe how it is that what we humans naively perceive as 'helping someone in need without expectation of reward', is really a mere behavior instantiated in genes bringing some selective advantage to its beholder.

two cool articles in the last two weeks have addressed this issue in single and multi-cell organisms. first, a group from tubingen, germany showed that a single nucleotide polymorphism changed cheating cells into helper cells. the scientists instantly marketed it in LA, where blondes by the thousands flocked to the product promised to end relational woes. after a quick biology lesson, those still awake left dejected.

second, this week a group from u arizona published an article suggesting how a gene promoting altruism could get into the gene pool initially. since do-gooders don't seem to have much selective advantage, this had been a mystery for a while. in volvox, a self-organizing multi-cellular creature, a gene called RegA shuts down reproductive functions in all but 16 lucky cells in the organism...kind of like our somatic and germ cells. for example, one of your retinal ganglion cells won't be reproducing anytime soon, but it keeps on the lookout for that special someone with whom some of your...other... cells will enjoy the pleasure of reproducing. so, these researchers found that a homologue of RegA found in single-cells is used to shut down extraneous functions when the going gets rough. the story goes that the activity of this gene, which was originally favored for some other function, was exploited for the sake of multicellular reproduction... one of the earliest and most obvious forms of altruism.

of course, the scientists make sweeping claims suggesting that this is how humans do it too. two of my favorite:

"In evolutionary terms, Nedelcu said, there may be no fundamental difference between altruism in Volvox and the generosity that inspires people to give, say, to charity."

and even better:

"Moreover, in tough times, people often come together; so do many bacteria."

now if they'd hurry up and figure out the gene for where i left my keys yesterday...

a puritan prayer

2006-05-29T01:08:00.000-07:00

i was deeply convicted by a prayer of confession dubbed "The Precious Blood", which we read as part of a weekly service at my church recently. some of it is below:

Sin is my malady, my monster, my foe, my viper,
born in my birth,
alive in my life,
strong in my character,
dominating my faculties,
following me as a shadow,
intermingling with my every thought,
the chain that holds me captive in the empire of my soul.

Sinner that I am, why should the sun give me light,
the air supply breath,
the earth bear my tread,
its fruits nourish me,
its creatures subserve my ends?

Yet your compassions yearn over me,
your heart hastens to my rescue,
your love endured my curse,
your mercy bore my deserved stripes.

Let me walk humbly in the lowest depths of humiliation,
bathed in your blood,
tender of conscience,
triumphing gloriously as an heir of salvation.

from The Valley of Vision, put out by Banner of Truth, a publishing company specializing in Puritan literature.

narnia zone

2006-05-28T23:49:00.000-07:00

interesting blogger from new zealand or, as she calls it, narnia zone. this post from march 2006 is an informative round-up of some recent clashes and conversations between science and christianity.

"evangelicals learn to love big government"

2006-05-26T19:20:00.000-07:00

the wall street journal editorial page ran an article on a new breed of evangelicals who seem to embrace big government ideals to accomplish covenantal responsibilities. though it's a bit awkwardly written, the piece raises a good point by quoting a scholar from the Acton Institute:

"You can't be compassionate with other people's money. Even worse, they're not thinking about the consequences of these policies. They're too busy feeling warm and fuzzy and absorbing liberal ideas."

it finishes with a look at the ONE campaign:

Groups representing more than 40 denominations have signed on to the public declaration of the so-called ONE campaign, whose mission is to dedicate 1% of the U.S. budget to foreign aid each year. ONE boasts the support of George Clooney, Naomi Watts and, of course, Bono. It's all very hip, and very vague. "ONE isn't asking for your money," the Web site declares. "We're asking for your voice." Well, actually, ONE is asking for your money, but the checks go to the IRS rather than directly to charity.

i'm as glad as anybody that the evangelical community is trying to seek creative ways to fulfill its perceived responsibility and work for 'common good', whatever that is. but i agree with the columnist that, if it's their responsibility, they should do it... not the government. between friends, i'm a small government guy at heart.

robot-lizard climbs glass

2006-05-23T23:03:00.000-07:00

stanford researchers have designed a gecko-like robot whose feet exploit van der waals forces to climb up flat surfaces. check out the video here (24mb video).

no consciousness sans electrodes

2006-05-22T22:17:00.000-07:00

while stanford researcher bill newsome has been talking about this for a while, he recently made public his desire to have electrodes implanted in his own brain. he wants to know the conscious experience of having (read: 'what it's like to have') one's visual decision-making affected by electrical stimulation to area MT, which is involved in motion discrimination.

this is a noble or a selfish act, depending on whom you talk to. but that issue aside, i disagree with his fundamental assertion:
"If we understand the system completely (from input to output) at a cellular level, but still do not know exactly what causes conscious mental phenomena, we will have failed."

sure, it sounds good, but there's an underlying assumption in his claim, namely, that the source of conscious mental phenomena is knowable by scientific means. let's unpack that.

1. "knowable" - whatever the causes of conscious mental phenomena, we can know them. determining what is knowable has a long history (try wikipedia's article on epistemology). many scientists and idealists believe that mental phenomena are identical to physical phenomena (we all know this as the "mind-body problem"). but there are good arguments against this, in my opinion. and, even if you don't buy my opinion, it's undeniably an unsolved issue: i'll give a shiny nickel to the first person who can demonstrate that we humans can, in principle, know all things about mental phenomena.

2. "by scientific means" - whatever the causes of mental phenomena, they can be addressed and answered by the tools of science. this amounts to scientism. simply because science has helped us to answer some questions about how the brain works, we cannot simply assume that it'll help us answer all of them. oh yeah, and all the remaining questions about the mind. don't get me wrong, i'm in neuroscience because i think it can help us answer tons of questions... just maybe not all of them.
note that it's unclear whether bill actually believes this. his interest in doing this experiment suggests that he think that the subjective experience of MT stimulation contains some data that are unmeasurable with traditional scientific tools. or he might just want someone to pay him to shock his own brain.

in the end, what will we learn from bill's experiment? well, to some extent, the experiment has already been done by penfield in the early 20th century and by many current neurosurgeons. today, recording electrodes are implanted in epileptics' brains to determine the initiation zones of focal seizures. but these can be modified to stimulate brains. additionally, neurosurgeons push on random brain parts while awake patients describe their subjective experiences. last, noninvasive, temporary brain lesions are possible with a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation... so you can shock the right side of your brain and talk about the experience of losing all muscle control on your left side, as you try to pick yourself up off of the floor. two nickels to the sap who wants to do that experiment.

so what'll we learn? well, bill might learn something. but will it count as science? and if doesn't, will it bring us any closer to a fully physicalist understanding of the conscious brain.

in the meantime, it looks like he's still waiting for the right surgeon: "If the risk of serious postsurgical complications was one in one hundred, I wouldn't do it. If it was one in one thousand, I would seriously consider doing it. To my chagrin, most surgeons estimate the risk to be somewhere in between my benchmarks."

doctor woe

2006-05-22T12:15:00.000-07:00

the boston globe just began a new segment on area doctors' experiences on the job. this one, from a psychiatrist whose patient committed suicide two days after discharge, is especially poignant. it brings home the complexity of our minds and impotence of modern medicine:

"Can we really just add up the number of missing serotonin molecules in a person's brain, plug in the number of previous suicide attempts and recent losses, and neatly solve the equation? I doubt it."

shameless plug

2006-05-18T21:34:00.000-07:00

my new, though currently pretty scant, website is now up, graciously hosted by the great lomak, a partner in crime:

www.davematthewslab.com

suggestions welcome...

who's god? who's godel?

2006-05-18T19:14:00.000-07:00

a new study from researchers at harvard and u chicago asks the question "how do children learn about science and god?" (link to press release).

while the researchers find things like 'children add interpretation to learned items', the most interesting conclusion (to me, at least) was that children are more confident about the scientific information they learn than the religious information. from the press release:

"We don't have a firm view on why it is they're a bit more confident on the scientific information," says Dr. Harris, "but one possible plausible reason is that when we talk about things like germs or body organs, we talk in a very matter-of-fact fashion. We don't say, "I believe in germs," we simply take it for granted that they exist." In talking about religion and other spiritual matters, however, adults tend to assert the existence of God more strenuously, possibly raising doubts in children's minds as to the existence of an unseen deity.

a few points of interest:

1) i wonder whether harris meant "tenuously" rather than "strenuously". it's remarkable enough that children can learn a particular item of knowledge. but here, they're also learning meta-knowledge, that is, to what extent an item of knowledge represents the actual world. but harris's suggestion about "strenuous assertion" would require the sociological acuity of a nathaniel hawthorne...at childhood! her claim amounts to the following:
a) the kid encounters an item of knowledge.
b) the kid remembers it.
c) the kid evaluates the fervor with which the teaching adult spoke and makes the following judgment:
c1) if spoken stolidly, believe it.
c2) if spoken without confidence, don't believe it. (this is not explicit from their research)
c3) if "strenuously asserted," question it. the adult is probably insisting on it because it ain't true.

it's hard to construct an environmental or even a common social situation in which encountering and recognizing such a form of subtle reverse psychology directly from the teacher would be evolutionarily advantageous. indeed, it seems that this assertion (kids question things that adults insist on) requires some hoop-jumping in order to be reconciled with another evolutionary argument, the common claim of religion-as-human-construct. in particular, how can humans be inclined both to doubt what they're told about religion, and to accept what they're told about religion? (well, there are at least a few creative ways to claim that both are simultaneously true, but i'll curb the urge to write them... i'd be interested if anyone wants to post their favorite way)

enough ranting on what was probably a misnomer.

2) this study is potentially century-dependent: conducting this research 200 years ago would have flipped the results, i bet. for example, asking a kid in 1800 questions about electricity and about the Christian God, he'd have much more to say--and i'd imagine more confidence in saying it--regarding God. obviously, electricity was a fledgling science (heck, they were thinking of current as a fluid rather than a field and of magnetism as about as valuable as a piece of bread toasted to look like the virgin mary... how times have changed). so you could say that this poor kid would at least be more confident of something like simple mechanics in physics (newton's stuff, remember?), which he might know something about if he went to a good school like boston latin. ah, i'd reply, if he went there, he could tell you about mechanics in latin or greek, since the culture then held the serious study of religion (and the language learning it entails) in such high regard.

so what? well, the assumption (or well-reasoned observation, depending on to whom you talk) is that we believe these "scientific" things more because they're more believable. but, most of us couldn't say, let alone reproduce, thomson's experiment demonstrating the existence of the electron back in 1897. sure, we'd say "but i know the electron exists because it's making my computer run right now!" but how different is that reasoning from the faithful christian who might say "i know god exists because he's saving me right now!"

the culturally convoluted and logically incoherent claims about epistemology in the domains of "science" and "religion" are fodder for many years of research...

(note: the limited access original article is here)

chinese spy worked with US's lockhead for 10+ years

2006-05-17T20:08:00.000-07:00

we all know china has a spy program. and if we're honest with ourselves, we'd realize that spies are likely in our scientific ranks. still, this story on reuters (about a chinese who tried stealing american arms secrets from inside for about a decade) comes as a jolt to me.

neural computation

2006-05-17T19:50:00.000-07:00

the annual joint symposium on neural computation is being held this weekend at the salk institute. it includes a poster from yours truly:

A Tunable Silicon Hodgkin-Huxley Neuron
Jonathan D. Driscoll, Stephen D. Larson, James B. Aimone, David W. Matthews, Gert Cauwenberghs

unfortunately, the ucsd neurosciences retreat outside of LA is also scheduled for this weekend.

...oh the humanity!!!

some clever (and crazy) inventions

2006-05-16T01:33:00.000-07:00

new scientist columnist barry fox scours US patent offices for new, kooky inventions. the one for this week is particularly exciting: the human cannonball launcher. i was disappointed that one of my recent ideas had already been patented: the snore-sizzler, which forces contraction of relaxed soft tissue in the breathing column by electrical pulses generated when the sleeper snores. it's probably for the best, though; the lawsuits would have been a pain.

madness mechanism

2006-05-16T01:17:00.000-07:00

a paper in this week's pnas describes a possible mechanism for why fluoxetine (of prozac fame) effectively combats depression. in particular, the dudes find neurogenesis among a certain class of progenitor cells, as opposed to dentate gyral cells, using a mouse reporter strain. see nice lay coverage in new scientist.

i usually steer clear of hype-generating, easily-accepted-by-major-journals, stem cell papers since they're often just observational, but SSRIs are of personal interest...

more lasers...now they're faster than the speed of light!

2006-05-14T23:25:00.000-07:00

it looks like lasers are faster than...themselves. a sweet experiment at u rochester shows light exiting an optical fiber at virtually the same moment it enters. see the site for a brief explanation, or the article (in science) for the whole shebang ("observation of backward pulse propagation through a medium with a negative group velocity").

hot stuff...coming through

2006-05-14T23:14:00.000-07:00

a new laser shot through sapphire, heating it faster than any previously recorded explosion. in a brilliant display of comic prowess, nature reports: "The experiment was a blast, say physicists who reckon their laser can drive temperature increases of a billion billion (10¹⁸) degrees per second, although they could only keep it going for a couple of hundred femtoseconds (with a femtosecond being 10^-15 s)." (the picture is of two incisions left by the laser)

more science fraud

2006-05-14T23:02:00.000-07:00

a chinese computer scientist, who supposedly designed China's first dsp chip, apparently faked all the research, stealing the plans from a foreign company. nyt asks: "Could Mr. Chen's downfall, they ask, represent an example of how even smart and successful people in China are being forced to cut corners to meet the nation's hyper-ambitious goals?"

The article included this ominous quote: "Professor Chen is really unlucky," said a male student named Wu, who asked not to be further identified for fear of recriminations. "He lied and was caught. I think there are other people faking their research, but they haven't been caught yet. He's probably not the worst."

I'm glad nyt steered clear of challenging the peer-review process on this one. research fraud is of primary importance, and it's understandable that the larger community has begun to question science's system of checks. but it's dangerous and irresponsible to reject the peer-review process as flawed when it's not only worked quite well in general, but also has no viable alternative.

book-scanning vs book-burning... you decide

2006-05-14T22:14:00.000-07:00

the ny times just ran a nice article on google's book scanning project, couching it in the age-old dream of assembling all knowledge in one space: "Since [the library at Alexandria in 300 BC], the constant expansion of information has overwhelmed our capacity to contain it [...] until now."

the amount of info to scan is staggering: "From the days of Sumerian clay tablets till now, humans have 'published' at least 32 million books, 750 million articles and essays, 25 million songs, 500 million images, 500,000 movies, 3 million videos, TV shows and short films and 100 billion public Web pages." this would fit on 50 petabytes (the value of peta--which i previously thought to be ~zero
...just kidding, don't hatemail me--is 10^15).

google's goal for the project: "make it easier for people to find relevant books – specifically books they wouldn't find any other way such as those that are out of print – while carefully respecting authors' and publishers' copyrights." (obviously, they've had to deal with some po'd publishers already)

of course, i think most of us derive some simple, irreplaceable pleasure from reclining with a tangible book whose pages come from chopped-down trees. i doubt we have anything to fear. but even if we do face a future of exclusively digital print, at least it'll protect against the crazies at landover baptist. {note added later: to those concerned, the landover site is a parody on fundamentalist religion, specifically fundamentalist christianity. i don't share the views or the sentiment of its message. to the extent that its designers think it legitimately undermines thoughtful christianity or offers any serious response to spiritual conviction, i'd recommend they grow up. it's just a funny, stupid website.}

Baldwin gene expression

2006-05-05T09:32:00.000-07:00

...and the Onion parodies Allen's achievement. hilarious.

gene expression in the brain

2006-05-03T20:06:00.000-07:00

the Allen Institute in Seattle has re-released a database of gene expression data for some 20,000 genes throughout the mouse brain. the information was collected by an automated process of tissue sectioning (coronal and saggital planes) and in situ hybridization. previously, there were some concerns about the quality of the data, but at least some of these concerns have been addressed. some related links, courtesy of futurefeeder, a sweet site: [High-Resolution Brain Atlas][Blue Brain : The First Complete Virtual Brain][Cartography of the Digital World][Brain Cells on Demand][Scan my Brain & Tell me What I See][Adult Brain Cell Growth][Non-Invasive Brain-Computer Interface]

the value of research

2006-04-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

please forgive the blogging-hiatus...i've been building a 2 photon microscope (nod to alex mcdonald for the wikipedia article) and prepping for a 180-mile desert race. but alas, the news just don't stop:

a new study on the economics of life-improving and life-extending medicines demonstrates the value associated with research aimed at these ends. as a mind-boggling example, the economists claim a cure for cancer would be worth $50 trillion (i know what i'm doing this weekend)! this kind of study is timely as the bush administration considers huge cuts in life sciences research in favor of physics research more applicable to its war machine. in principle, though, it's important for biomedical researchers to be reminded of the sense of urgency in their work: people die daily from diseases whose cures are around the corner.

as a reminder, though, biological science has two primary goals: to address human medical issues (dubbed "biomedical research", "medical research", "applied biology", etc) and to reveal the way carbon systems work (often called "basic biology"). fortunately, these two often go hand in hand. but it's my conviction that the latter is worth studying independent of the former, and i spend most of my time thinking about basic neuroscience. so, to be clear, this economics work applies to basic biology research only to the extent that such research informs and brings about advances in biomedical research (and eventually a valued end product).

john fleming weighs in on islam

2006-03-28T12:59:00.000-08:00

this has little to do with science, but i had to post it: john fleming, a fantastic english prof at princeton, wrote in yesterday's Daily Princetonian about culturally-instituted disregard for the bellicose nature of islam. he cites what looks like an important new book called: The Myth of Islamic Tolerance. he also complains about the fact that a double standard exists in how the media treats christianity versus islam...

research on researchers

2006-03-26T17:30:00.000-08:00

an anthropologist at Princeton is studying the differences among researchers from different disciplines, such as cultural anthropology and experimenal psychology. with the increase in interdisciplinary research, this is an important topic. the article doesn't give much in the way of 'results', but it mentions that these two fields are ripe for inter-departmental tension because of different methods of research: psychology looks at pseudonatural behavior in contrived environments with few variables, whereas anthropology looks at natural behavior in natural environments with many variables.

i've actually wondered about this myself: natural scientists seem to think and interact in ways that are often consistent within disciplines, such as geneticists behaving as other geneticists. is this nature (people who act this way tend to end up in genetics) or nurture (people who go into genetics end up trained to act this way)? a study of the interactions among researchers of different natural science fields on interdisciplinary projects (especially those in neuroscience, which sees some of the strangest collaborations, from psychologists to physicists) would definitely yield some interesting results about perceived institutional hierarchies within the natural sciences, and how they're played out in professional interactions. actually, i suppose we all know the results already: physicists are snobs, psychologists are strange, and biologists are lovers of minutiae.

News Round-up

2006-03-23T20:43:00.000-08:00

Too many stories, too little time...

1. maybe there isn't life on mars. (science daily)
2. first real-time movie of protein formation from RNA. the lab (Xie) has a paper each in nature and science this week. (science daily)
3. a sorry excuse for yet another review of Dennett's Breaking the Spell. I was particularly disappointed with this author's assumptions about political stance and religious belief. Plus (and this is one of the few times you'll see me supporting Dennett), he didn't really assess the book according to what it's trying to accomplish.
4. panspermia in reverse: life didn't come from outerspace... it went there. (nature)
5. sharks side with the US in war on terror, thanks to implants in their brains. if only convincing humans were so simple... (vnunet, new scientist)
6. review of a new book about a cool 20th c. scientist i hadn't heard of before: J.D. Bernal (nature)
7. neon light as art. (nature)
8. a GFP-tree glows when it's thirsty! (reuters)
9. Mark Noll leaves Wheaton to replace a retiring George Marsden at Notre Dame. for those outside Christian circles, Noll is an essential academic who's helped to reinvigorate the evangelical intellect, especially with his book 'The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind'. to demonstrate his mainstream acceptanceL "His book America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln was named "the most significant work of American historical scholarship" in 2002 by The Atlantic." (christianity today)
10. and more to come...

Deus ex machina

2006-03-17T01:26:00.000-08:00

amazon.com just posted a new book called God from the Machine : Artifical Intelligence Models of Religious Cognition (Cognitive Science of Religion Series). It has an ambitious and strange program: the author creates a model town, then, "using rules for individual and social behavior taken from the social sciences, he models a complex community where residents form groups, learn to trust or distrust each other, and develop religious faith. Bainbridge's straightforward arguments point to many more applications of computer simulation in the study of religion. God from the Machine will serve as an important text in any class with a social scientific approach to religion." it sounds like a lot of fun, but having modeled things with strict physical parameters, I know that you can generally make a model do what you want. i'm interested to check out his models, but i fear that the book will just serve as fodder for social scientists already engaged in undermining any faith.

God by the Numbers

2006-03-16T23:30:00.000-08:00

An article in this month's Christianity Today uses three unlikely coincidences in mathematics and its applications as evidence of a divine mind. all three have shown up at length before:

1. the probability that the universe was created at random, since slight deviations from its finely-tuned physical constants would make sustainable life impossible. (Beckenstein-Hawking formula)

2. the probability that enough favorable mutations could have occurred since the Big Bang 15 billion years ago. (Dembski)

3. the elegance of e^(pi*i)+1=0, about which an MIT math prof once said, "There is no God, but if there were, this formula would be proof of his existence."

if you're interested in this sort of thing, these are each well known examples worth looking into. they're definitely worth thinking about.

i don't find (1) particularly compelling, unless there's an upper bound on the amount of time in which universes can emerge and disappear. without such a temporal bound, any number of universes with any number of tuned parameters could be tried before arriving at the present one. (2) is interesting, but i haven't yet read Dembski's original argument. the way i've heard it presented, this thesis seems to ignore some evolutionary biology. and (3) is pretty incredible, but drawing conclusions from this sort of thing is speculation.

nonetheless, it's worth returning to these improbabilities every once in a while, to marvel that this place exists...

original research on the origins of origin-science

2006-03-11T20:14:00.000-08:00

a cool new article from the history of science looking at the contributions of three early-20th century thinkers on the science of the beginning of life. below are quick notes:

the famous Urey-Miller experiments (you know, the ones from 1953 showing that amino acids could form from a simulated early-earth environment containing the elements and a high-energy source) can be traced to the physicalist contributions of three key scientists:

1. Alexander Oparin - life is a "self-regulating dynamic equilibrium of a system of catalytic reactions". his 1924 pamphlet The Origin of Life revealed his strong physicalist leaning against the weakly-developed alternatives of panspermia (a system in which life pops up all over) and neo-vitalism (which simply rejected any system aiming to explaing biology solely interms of physics and chemistry).

2. JBS Haldane - similar work to Oparin, but applied specifically to the viral system, such as bacteriophage. he emphasized life's reproductive capacity.

3. Leonard Troland - also desired to explain all biology in terms of the "organic catalyst" (enzyme), and emphasized the essential reproductive nature of all life.

these three were physicalists within the domain of biology. of course, we can draw parallels to similar arguments raging today regarding more abstract fields (psychology, sociology, etc), whose dependence (or supervenience) on "lower-level" natural sciences may not be as clear-cut. but, i think we should take care not to extrapolate too far from what science has already demonstrated. in other words, just because we can show that a lot of biology can be explained in terms of the principles of chemistry and physics, it doesn't mean prima facie that more abstract or messy sciences (and especially non-sciences) can be expalined in terms of the principles of natural sciences. to claim that science explains everything when it hasn't is just bad science.

What's a virus, that you are mindful of it?

2006-03-11T19:28:00.000-08:00

scientists have discovered a monstruous virus, called the mimivirus, which "is so much more genetically complex than all previously known viruses, not to mention a number of bacteria, that it seems to call for a dramatic redrawing of the tree of life." (cover article in discover mag). studies of viri have always been enigmatic, from the original experiments prompting continued debates about whether the virus is truly "alive",
to the renegade-style sea-faring science by j craig venter, whose group has discovered millions of new viri in two years (the previous total of known species was 4000).

to be honest, i thought the mimivirus had been discovered several years ago by abc and drew carey (whose humor is anything but contagious) in his sitcom sidekick character of the same name.

THIS JUST IN: media sensationalizes science!

2006-03-11T18:04:00.000-08:00

a UK thinktank has discovered that the media sensationalizes science. INCREDIBLE! we see it all the time in biology research, but, autologically, reports of their finding may be the first account of sensationalized social science...

fortunately, irresponsible reporting isn't true across the board, thanks to innovative grad students doing, for example, this, which tells it like it is.

some new primate genetics...

2006-03-11T10:11:00.000-08:00

two interesting developments in primate/human genetics.

one group has found that some 700 human genes have changed significantly over the last 5 to 10k years. these genes are likely relevant for complex traits such as olfaction, bone structure, skin color and--of particular interest--neurological function...and some strange, lower-level functions, like electron transfer (see stories in nytimes and new scientist). the PLOS biology publication uses a novel analysis of new SNP data from the HapMap Project to demonstrate positive selection.

second, a letter to nature confirms a 30-year-old hypothesis that the phenotypic differences between humans and other primates are regulated by different transcription factors rather than entirely different genes. see reuters science news coverage.

obviously, these findings are consistent with one another. but it's funny that they point to two opposite evolutionary methods to bring about variation among species (changing gene regulation versus changing the genes themselves).

author aghast: gas geeks don't gas

2006-03-06T01:18:00.000-08:00

a short and sweet essay in the NY Times (Feb 28) commends a group of scientists for their recent humility in research on the Oracle of Delphi. they found that a crossing of faults releases trance-inducing gases just below the Oracle, suggesting a physiological reason for her euphoria. the author (William Broad), whose new book on the Oracle was just released this month, rightly praises these scientists: "In short, the scientists, while solving a major riddle of antiquity, wisely left other mysteries untouched."

and again: "The modesty of the Delphic investigators stands in contrast to some of the world's top scientists and their champions, who have claimed that science can answer questions far beyond the usual realm of physical phenomena, such as puzzles of religion, culture, ethics and, most important because of their centrality to the rest, mind and consciousness." after citing the sweeping and unsubstantiated reductionism of Dennett (see earlier post) and E.O. Wilson (see Revisions Magazine, Summer 2005), Broad recognizes that "such views are more hope than fact, as the best theorists concede, and can exhibit a kind of arrogance."

well done.

how's this a who's who?

2006-03-06T00:28:00.000-08:00

a who's who of biotech was just published by nature biotechnology using a readership poll. the journal features Bill and Melinda Gates as leaders in the category of 'ethics and biotech'. they deserve credit, having endowed their foundation which addresses health concerns, among other things, with $29 billion. and, in order for researchers to rope in a grant ($6 bil so far), their disease of interest must be "widespread, neglected, and representative of the public health disparities between developed and developing countries."

the authors concede that "prominent opponents of biotech were not included, although their contribution to the debate about the use and uptake of new technology is a given". they did include a few people who actually do ethics, in the philosophical sense, including Thomas Murray (of the Hastings Center), Renato Martino (Catholic cardinal), and Arthur Caplan (bioethicist). still, how is this a who's who of ethics and biotech if the authors have given places to personalities only on the 'pro' side of the fence? this is like making a who's who of the super bowl and only including the names of seahawks players...

be sure to check the shortlist of nominees (291 in all categories).

The Tree of Life

2006-03-06T00:07:00.000-08:00

a group at the European Molecular Biology Lab in Heidelberg, Germany has published an improved 'tree' of evolutionary relationships in this week's Science. their genomic analysis reduced noise by excluding from analysis those genes introduced by horizontal gene transfer, a process in which genetic material from a parent is swapped into an organism other than its progeny (this has been hailed as "a new paradigm for evolutionary biology", and is potentially very dangerous). fair enough, this may not have much to do with Christianity, but their new analysis is cool.

the climate of climate control

2006-02-26T22:21:00.000-08:00

Science magazine is running an article on a collaborative effort of evangelical Christians and scientists (many of whom are Christians themselves) to mandate restrictions on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. the work is celebrated as a paragon of successful collaboration for the betterment of society: "the successful coalition around global warming could point the way toward finding common ground on other issues, such as fetal health and mercury contamination, on which the public is divided."

Armageddonites

2006-02-26T22:08:00.000-08:00

a new article by Jon Utley at antiwar.com addresses the problem of fundamentalist, dispensationalist Americans too self-righteous to recognize the blatant errors in their pro-war stances, which are (at best) based on bad eschatological interpretations of the Book of Revelations or (at worst) on the musings of LaHaye and Jenkins in their Left Behind series (links to these books are omitted for the edification of the reader). fortunately, dispensationalism, especially in its most virulent forms, represents the views of only a fraction of American Christians (though an admittedly dangerous fraction). unfortunately, Utley gives short shrift to a large segment of informed American Christians whose convictions about Christ's teachings lead them to a progressive, anti-war stance (see, for example, Sojourner's magazine), and prompt social action and reform that is anything but vengeful. (nod to Sam Wang for pointing out this article)

Intellectualism and the Academy: Princeton U's Revisions Journal

2006-02-26T17:04:00.000-08:00

starting last year, some Princeton students started Revisions: A Journal of Christian Perspective. its second issue recently went online, and it's worth a read.

Apologetics at UCSD

2006-02-26T17:00:00.000-08:00

a new group has started in the past few months at UC San Diego called Apologetics and Right Reason. they've already taken up several opportunities to address issues of concern to scientists and to Christians, as well as more general questions in apologetics. see the site for regular updates.

new book: Dennett's Breaking the Spell

2006-02-26T16:40:00.000-08:00

a recent review from NY Times Book Reviews on Daniel Dennett's new one Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. still touting strict physicalism, Dennett tries to explain away religion by describing its evolutionary-psychological origins. according to the review, written by Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, he fails miserably. A powerful excerpt from the review: "You cannot disprove a belief unless you disprove its content. If you believe that you can disprove it any other way, by describing its origins or by describing its consequences, then you do not believe in reason."

origins

2006-02-26T16:37:00.000-08:00

no, not of life. but of this blog. this'll be a feable attempt to organize some useful links and brief responses to some current (and some older) ideas at the intersection of science and Christianity. it'll serve more as a pointer to other resources than as anything else. Also, it'll avoid (pretty strictly) the all-too-pervasive intelligent design debate...there are other, bigger issues.