Category Archives: media

Collins versus Dawkins

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NPR’s Fresh Air ran two major interviews on faith and science last week: Richard Dawkins (last Wednesday) followed by Francis Collins (Thursday). Dawkins, of course, made his name as an evolutionary biologist and has recently published The God Delusion, an atheist’s manifesto for the 21st century. Collins is an evangelical Christian who headed the Human Genome Project, now working with the NIH, who has himself just released a defense of scientific Christianity titled The Language of God. The contrasts between the two are informative.

Dawkins comes across as more moderate than I’ve heard him in other interviews; his argument is basically that science explains the physical world better than religion, religion comes with a built-in danger of extremism, and we can find all the meaning we need in science’s explanations of the world. Quoting Douglas Adams, he says that his teenage discovery of evolutionary theory “about wrapped it up for God.”

Collins makes a (to me) highly familiar defense of a theistic scientist’s worldview, making much of his awe before the wonder of the human genome. He points out that science is not necessarily equipped to prove (or disprove) the existence of God, but also persists in talking about “evidence” for the Divine. Citing C. S. Lewis, he argues that faith and evidence are not only compatible, but actually pretty close to the same thing.

My conclusion, after listening to them back to back: they’re both wrong. In this exchange, Dawkins is the more lucid of the two, but his argument founders on his absurd insistence that science’s explanations of the physical world are also adequate to provide that world with meaning. Just because I know why the world is the way it is doesn’t tell me how it should be, especially as regards the best ways for human beings to live together.

Although I’m more in agreement with Collins, his argument feels mushy to me. I can’t agree with his (and Lewis’s) assertion that faith is somehow ultimately based on reasoning from scientific evidence. My judgments of what is (and is not) in accordance with the example of Jesus Christ are far more aesthetic than logical. I can’t quantify why a given behavior is Christly – but I trust that, with prayer, I can make that decision. Likewise, my “evidence” for belief in the Divine is so different from scientific evidence that it probably doesn’t deserve the name. What I have are feelings that are evoked by my experience of Creation and the people in it – this, not scientific fact, is the substance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things unseen.

Ding-dong, the Religious Right is dead?

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In a triumphal column over at Time.com, left-leaning political preacher Jim Wallis declares that “the Religious Right’s era is over.” This week’s New York Times Magazine is running an opinion piece that asks whether Democrats may be “narrowing the religion gap.” Is it time to start celebrating?

Not yet. Here in Moscow, Idaho, the Religious Right is still alive and kicking. Wallis’s will truly have arrived when the most visible representatives of Christianity in this sleepy little college town are no longer the members of near-cultlike Christ Church – and when I don’t have to spend my time in church mostly avoiding talking about my career in science and my time in the lab mostly avoiding talking about my faith. As for the Times article, its thesis is not that the Religious Right is losing steam, but that churchgoing Democrats will bring “welcome moderation” to the Culture Wars. Meanwhile, the worldwide Anglican Communion has given the American Episcopalian Church eight months to stop blessing same-sex unions. Moderation, it seems, may be understood to mean that liberals will tack right – but not that conservatives will give an inch to the left.

Of course, the tide can be turned, and it’s the responsibility of every liberal Christian to present to the world a face of Christ that isn’t defined by prejudice or powerlust. But we’ve still got a long way to go.

Have you heard about B flat?

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I’m officially a fan of Morning Edition’s Friday science report, “Krulwich on Science”. It’s a lighthearted look at current and past science that manages to communicate a real sense of wonder about the world around us. Today’s piece, “Have you heard about B flat?” is a delightfully wonky exploration of a completely inexplicable pattern, the recurrence of a particular musical note throughout nature, that recalls Douglas Adams at his weirdest. Another favorite of mine is “Charles Darwin and the racing asparagus”, in which David Quammen helps Krulwich build a playful picture of the gentleman scientist at work.

Hussein Hanged: guess what – it makes things worse

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Over on Slate.com, Christopher Hitchens directs the full force of his vitriol at the shameful execution of Saddam Hussein’s, well, execution: “The zoolike scenes in that dank, filthy shed (it seems that those attending were not even asked to turn off their cell phones or forbidden to use them to record souvenir film) were more like a lynching than an execution.” Is Hitchens, the great defender of the Iraq invasion, working on a change of heart?

Possibly the most important point that he makes in generalizing the Hussein execution debacle into something approaching a critique of the death penalty: the cruel spectacle of a fallen dictator mocked by those he once tormented is not so far removed from the slightly more civilized executions that occur regularly in the United States. Although an extreme example, it points to the motivations underlying every killing performed by the state in the name of justice, and suggests that the value of the death penalty to society may be much less than we like to think.

Here we go again

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Slate reports on right-wing ribbing directed at Barak Obama’s middle name. Which is, unfortunately, Hussein. Having grown up with a surname that rhymes with “odor,” I can sympathize.

Key phrase: having grown up. Is the conservative wing of the comentariat so hard up for substantive criticisms of the junior senator from Illinois that they’re forced to resort to the sort of tactics I last encountered firsthand in elementary school? I’m not convinced yet that Obama is as good a choice for President as he is charming, but I hope that if he runs, he encounters critics who can demonstrate they’ve graduated the sixth grade.

Why?

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Blogging is a terribly, terribly egotistical activity. It assumes that the world in general cares what I, personally, have to say about whatever topics catch my fleeting, Internet-era attention. It’s so egotistical, in fact, that some people (bloggers all) have carelessly described blogging as journalism, by which standard anyone who turns to anyone else and says, “so I read/heard/saw X in/on The New York Times/NPR/CNN and I think …” is a journalist. Even with the tiny taste of journalistic experience I have (three years on my university’s campus newspaper), I know that journalism takes far more than an opinion.

So if all I have to offer is an opinion, why should anyone care? My dad used to say that opinions are like assholes – everyone has one, but you don’t show them off in polite company. But I spend a lot of time online these days – both for work and to read the news – and it’s hard not to see that todays politics is increasingly driven by what’s said online, whether or not what’s said is worthwhile.

To the extent that I have something valuable to say, it’s because I think I can offer a perspective that isn’t represented anywhere else out there. My background crosses some of the major cultural divides of present-day politics: I’m a baptized member of the Mennonite Church who grew up in rural, conservative Lancaster County, PA, and I presently live in Idaho, in one of the few congressional districts in the nation to remain solidly Republican in the 2006 election. However, my parents raised me to view the Bible as an important, not infallible story; I voted for the Greens in 2000 (for every post except President); and I’m living in Idaho because I’m earning a doctorate in evolutionary biology in the excellent biology department at the University of Idaho. Does that make my perspective unique enough to rate a personal soapbox? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.