Jef's web files - Myth and Mysticism

Myth & Mysticism

Sat, 30 Apr 2005 23:35:43 -0400

Mysticism seems to be part of our human nature. A desire to know or be part of something greater than ourselves, a sense of oneness with the universe, and a feeling of reverence for the great unknown resonate within us.

For many, organized religion or spiritual beliefs make intelligible one's path through life and place in the world. Whether or not they fully accept the abstract tenets of their adopted belief system is often secondary to the perceived benefits of belonging.

For others, recognition of the mystery of which we are part, and gratitude for the life we experience, fills these human needs more simply and directly.

To better understand these aspects of ourselves and others is the goal of this section.

Grasping the Depth of Time as a First Step in Understanding Evolution

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 11:23:51 -0400

Last month a team of paleontologists announced that it had found several fossilized dinosaur embryos that were 190 million years old - some 90 million years older than any dinosaur embryos found so far. Those kinds of numbers are always a little daunting. Ever since I was a boy in a public elementary school in Iowa, I've been learning to face the eons and eons that are embedded in the universe around us.

I know the numbers as they stand at present, and I know what they mean, in a roughly comparative way. The universe is perhaps 14 billion years old. Earth is some 4.5 billion years old. The oldest hominid fossils are between 6 million and 7 million years old. The oldest distinctly modern human fossils are about 160,000 years old.

The truth of these numbers has the same effect on me as watching the night sky in the high desert. It fills me with a sense of nonspecific immensity. I don't think I'm alone in this.

One of the most powerful limits to the human imagination is our inability to grasp, in a truly intuitive way, the depths of terrestrial and cosmological time. That inability is hardly surprising because our own lives are so very short in comparison. It's hard enough to come to terms with the brief scale of human history. But the difficulty of comprehending what time is on an evolutionary scale, I think, is a major impediment to understanding evolution.

Scientists Speak Up on Mix of God and Science

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 11:16:30 -0400

At a recent scientific conference at City College of New York, a student in the audience rose to ask the panelists an unexpected question: "Can you be a good scientist and believe in God?"

Reaction from one of the panelists, all Nobel laureates, was quick and sharp. "No!" declared Herbert A. Hauptman, who shared the chemistry prize in 1985 for his work on the structure of crystals.

Belief in the supernatural, especially belief in God, is not only incompatible with good science, Dr. Hauptman declared, "this kind of belief is damaging to the well-being of the human race."

But disdain for religion is far from universal among scientists. And today, as religious groups challenge scientists in arenas as various as evolution in the classroom, AIDS prevention and stem cell research, scientists who embrace religion are beginning to speak out about their faith.

Why God's in a class by himself

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 09:48:09 -0400

Intelligent Design creationism resurfaced in the news last week after President Bush's remarks were (mis)taken by IDers to be a solid endorsement for the teaching of ID in public school science classrooms. (Bush's science advisor, John H. Marburger III, said that "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology" and "intelligent design is not a scientific concept.")

One magazine reporter asked for my opinion about whether one can believe in God and the theory of evolution.

I replied that, empirically speaking, yes, you can — the proof being that 40% of American scientists profess a belief in God and also accept the theory of evolution, not to mention that most of the world's 1 billion Catholics believe in God and accept the theory of evolution. But then this reporter wanted to know if it is logically consistent to believe in God and the theory of evolution. That is, does the theory of evolution — if carried out to its logical conclusion — preclude belief in God? This is a different question. Here is my answer.

A Time of Doubt for Atheists

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 09:23:49 -0400

With the religious making inroads in popular culture and politics, nonbelievers yearn for higher power in Washington.

It's been years, decades even, since the Almighty was so hot.

The evidence is everywhere. President Bush rallied the faithful to hold on to the White House. A book by an Orange County preacher extolling God's purpose in our lives stays a bestseller for more than two years. And Hollywood, frequently seen as a den of iniquity, is courting a more spiritual audience in movies and TV.

Faith is the new must-have, evident when a major leaguer points skyward after his base hit, when a movie star credits the Big Guy for his Oscar, when the Justice Department backs the display of the Ten Commandments at two state capitols, and when it defends the Salvation Army's requirement that employees embrace Jesus Christ.

So where does that leave the fraction of Americans who define themselves as godless? Although the percentage of Americans who claim no religion is about 14%, less than a quarter of them identify themselves as atheists, according to recent polls.

Some are using humor to cope, such as actress Julia Sweeney in her one-woman play "Letting Go of God," which ran in Los Angeles for several months this year. "It's really because I take you so seriously," she tells an imaginary God, "that I can't believe in you."

IMAX theaters reject film over evolution - Some theaters in South believe 'Volcanoes' a tough sell

Sat, 26 Mar 2005 10:59:15 -0500

IMAX theaters in several Southern cities have decided not to show a film on volcanoes out of concern that its references to evolution might offend those with fundamental religious beliefs.

"We've got to pick a film that's going to sell in our area. If it's not going to sell, we're not going to take it," said Lisa Buzzelli, director of an IMAX theater in Charleston that is not showing the movie. "Many people here believe in creationism, not evolution."

The film, "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea," makes a connection between human DNA and microbes inside undersea volcanoes.

Creationism in Science Class Angers Educators

Sun, 07 Nov 2004 12:14:43 -0500

The city's school board has revised its science curriculum to allow the teaching of creationism, prompting an outcry from more than 300 educators who urged that the decision be reversed.

School board members decided that a state law governing the teaching of evolution was too restrictive. The science curriculum "should not be totally inclusive of just one scientific theory," said Joni Burgin, superintendent of the district of 1,000 students in northwest Wisconsin.

Last month, when the board examined its science curriculum, language was added calling for "various models/theories" of origin to be incorporated.

The decision provoked more than 300 biology and religious studies faculty members to write a letter last week urging the board to reverse the policy. It follows a letter from 43 deans at Wisconsin public universities.

"Insisting that teachers teach alternative theories of origin in biology classes takes time away from real learning, confuses some students and is a misuse of limited class time and public funds," said Don Waller, a botanist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Review Delayed on Sale of Creationist Book at Grand Canyon

Fri, 15 Oct 2004 17:39:51 -0400

Visitors to the information plaza at Grand Canyon National Park are told how the Colorado River carved the great chasm over millennia through the rocks of the Colorado Plateau. But nestled among the hiking guides and souvenirs sold at the plaza bookstore is a book that tells a very different story of how the canyon came to be.

A federal review of whether the book -- which asserts that the canyon was created in a matter of days as a result of the same flood that had threatened to sink Noah and his ark -- should be sold at the park has been delayed for months as officials wrestle with the issue of separation of church and state.

"Grand Canyon: A Different View," compiled by Colorado River guide Tom Vail, includes essays by creationists who maintain that the canyon's sedimentary strata were formed by deposits from Noah's flood and that the canyon's age should be based on a biblical rather than an evolutionary timeline -- making it just thousands of years old, not the 6 million years that geologists say.

Considering the Odds, 'Miracles' Are Strictly Ho-Hum Stuff

Mon, 20 Sep 2004 23:46:38 -0400

Alexander Pope, the 18th century English poet, captured the essence of science — uncovering hidden order in the apparent chaos of nature — in his 1734 "Essay on Man":

All nature is but art, unknown
to thee;
All chance, direction, which
thou canst not see;

All discord, harmony, not
understood;
All partial evil, universal
good:
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,

One truth is clear, Whatever is,
is right.

As the publisher of Skeptic magazine and the "Skeptic" columnist for Scientific American, my job is to seek natural explanations for apparently supernatural phenomena, for which there is no shortage of belief. A 1996 Gallup poll of American adults, for example, found that 96% believed in God, 90% believed in heaven and 79% believed in miracles. A 2002 National Science Foundation survey reported that 60% of adult Americans believed in ESP, 40% thought that astrology was scientific and 30% believed in UFOs. One explanation for such high rates of belief may be that 70% of Americans still do not understand probability.

Although explanations vary greatly across the supernatural landscape, one especially effective tool is a principle of probability called the Law of Large Numbers, which states that an event with a low probability of occurrence in a small number of trials has a higher probability of occurrence in a large number of trials. We begin by defining a miracle as an event so improbable that the odds against it occurring are a million to one. Let's then say that on any given 10-hour day in which we are alert and out in the world, we perceive things at a rate of about one per second, or 36,000 a day, or about a million a month. The vast majority of these percepts, of course, are completely unremarkable — people walking by, cars driving past, conversations and the like. But one in a million may stand out as spectacularly unusual, perhaps extraordinary enough to call it a miracle, but it has a natural explanation.

Darwin-Free Fun for Creationists

Sat, 01 May 2004 19:28:34 -0400

Robert and Schön Passmore took their children to Disney World last fall and left bitterly disappointed. As Christians who reject evolutionary theory, the family scoffed at the park's dinosaur attractions, which date the apatosaurus, brachiosaurus and the like to prehistoric times.

"My kids kept recognizing flaws in the presentation," said Mrs. Passmore, of Jackson, Ala. "You know — the whole `millions of years ago dinosaurs ruled the earth' thing."

So this week, the Passmores sought out a lower-profile Florida attraction: Dinosaur Adventure Land, a creationist theme park and museum here that beckons children to "find out the truth about dinosaurs" with games that roll science and religion into one big funfest with the message that Genesis, not science, tells the real story of the creation.

MeaningOfLifeTV

Mon, 29 Mar 2004 01:32:05 -0500

MeaningOfLifeTV - So Many Questions - So Little Time...

Atheist Presents Case for Taking God From Pledge

Thu, 25 Mar 2004 09:35:27 -0500

Michael A. Newdow stood before the justices of the Supreme Court on Wednesday, pointed to one of the courtroom's two American flags and declared: "I am an atheist. I don't believe in God."

With passion and precision, he then proceeded to argue his own case for why the daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in his daughter's public school classroom violates the Constitution as long as the pledge contains the words "under God."

Dr. Newdow, a nonpracticing lawyer who makes his living as an emergency room doctor, may not win his case. In fact, justices across the ideological spectrum appeared to be searching for reasons he should lose, either on jurisdictional grounds or on the merits. But no one who managed to get a seat in the courtroom is likely ever to forget his spell-binding performance.

Georgia Takes on 'Evolution'

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 16:04:13 -0500

A proposed set of guidelines for middle and high school science classes in Georgia has caused a furor after state education officials removed the word "evolution" and scaled back ideas about the age of Earth and the natural selection of species.

Educators across the state said that the document, which was released on the Internet this month, was a veiled effort to bolster creationism and that it would leave the state's public school graduates at a disadvantage.

"Scientific theories tell us what is possible; myths tell us what is desirable."

Mon, 12 Jan 2004 20:00:55 -0500

"Scientific theories tell us what is possible; myths tell us what is desirable. Both are needed to guide proper action."
- John Maynard Smith

Reason and Faith, Eternally Bound

Fri, 26 Nov 2004 13:54:57 -0500

One might have expected the forces of Reason to be a bit weary after a generation of battling postmodernism and having its power and authority under constant scrutiny. Reason's battles, though, continue unabated. Only now it finds its opposition in the more unyielding claims of religious faith. This latest conflict is over seemingly incompatible ways of knowing the world. It is a conflict between competing certainties: between followers of Faith, who know because they believe, and followers of Reason, who believe because they know.