CHE has a very interesting little piece about presentations given at TED conferences. He contrasts two speakers, one who “got the whole nerdy hipster thing going” and another who wore a blazer (but cut brains into thin slices like deli meats. I was the MC for TEDxPSU last year at Penn State and I may offer a presentation this year, so I have been thinking about what makes a good presentation myself.

Part of the enthusiasm for these talks is the fervor of the moment, face it, TED is a geek rally, a sort of Burning Man for those who don’t want to get naked, paint themselves, and do pot (or at least none of those things while sitting in an auditorium). Still, there is great value in TED talks, they can be marvelous gems and I have found them very useful in classes. But should we go for the O or the HMMMM. I think I would rather make folks think, have them still sitting in their chairs saying to themselves, “wait a minute, he might have a point.”

Slavin [hipster] got a standing ovation, while Jones [brain butcher] received fairly enthusiastic but still-seated applause.

So what does that indicate? Well, here’s what a blog post on the TEDActive site has to say:

The standing ovation is the original test of crowd wisdom. The audience reaction (and soon the online reaction) seems like a good predictor for which ideas at TED will stick and have a lasting impact on large scale.

Really? I enjoyed Slavin’s presentation and thought it was entertaining and insightful. I enjoyed Jones’s presentation, too—though, to be honest, not as much because he’s stiffer on stage. But the dude is thin-slicing the brain, people. I’m going to argue that what he’s up to has the potential to have a more lasting impact on a larger scale than the clever stylings of an app maker.

The rise of TED in recent years is amazing. Asking smart people from diverse fields to present their most brilliant ideas in 18 minutes is, in itself, brilliant. It’s awesome that there can be viral videos, like this one, that are about education and creativity rather than overly dramatic chipmunks.

But I think whether TEDsters leap from their seats and slap their palms together says more about the polish of the performer than the staying power of a particular idea.

 

So today was the last day for Endeavor and just one more shuttle launch to go.

 

Those Ammonites were are hard crusted bunch. Tough in a fight (or for dinner).

When I saw the title I thought perhaps it was a discussion of leviathan exacting revenge on the ancient peoples of the Transjordan or some such. Which would have been odd, given the Ammonites’ geographic location, but still perhaps there was some biblical connection. Nope. Apparently an “ammonite” is an ancient, and extinct creature akin to the modern nautilus.

A shelled fossil discovered in an amateur’s collection may harbor the first direct evidence of prehistoric sharks eating ammonites some 150 million years ago.

via Shark Teeth Found Stuck in Ancient Ammonite Shell | Wired Science | Wired.com.

 

Now I have said before that I have no quarrel with evolution, but I find the suppositions of evolutionary development put forward often terribly amusing, not to mention facile (like Michael Polin’s personification of corn in Omnivore’s Dilemma). In this case I have to wonder why evolution, which is supposed to move along the lines of least resistance, chose to ignore the wings that the bird already possessed. Hmmm. Too fat and small wings….nah, let’s go with the claws!

I have my doubts…

 

Surely it should be something like Newton v Einstein or Luther v Zwingli. An imperfect analogy to be sure! And please offer better ones. Newton and Einstein being personally separated by hundreds of years further weakens that pairing. But my point is that radio and TV talking heads aside many of those in this debate are “on the same side.” To say that “deniers” are all anti-intellectual non-scientists is incorrect. Rather, many involved in this debate are in fact scientists who disagree as to how to interpret the data and what conclusions to draw from such data. The debate is actually still very much within the same house.

As with any debate there is a lot of name calling going on and this is actually what got me mulling today. I do not like the assertions of “anti-intellectualism” being made and that may be the topic of another post. But one thing is clear to me. That phrase and its corresponding semi-hidden suggestion that if you are anti-intellectual you are also a right-wing conservative Christian (as one colleague recently stated). I think this Galileo=Climate Scientist analogy is intended to tar their opponents with a similar brush.

So there must be a better analogy and perhaps you can help me find it. In the meantime I think we need to be a little more charitable towards one another in this debate, even while recognizing each feels their own position carries an incredible imperative.

 

In the past few weeks we have had several different events, two conferences and one speaker, on campus relating to climate change. Conservative Christians, I was told, refuse to accept climate change because they feel that it is a trojan horse, admitting to anthropogenic climate change would require that they also admit that evolution is true, thus (I was told) conservative Christians reject the premise. I don’t deny that many conservative Christians may well board that train of thought, but I haven’t met them or talked with them (and I have chatted with many about these issues).

While I never would have connected these two topics in this way the bringing together of them both made me realize that I approach them both with a common “hermeneutical principle” (if you will). As I have already suggested in discussing Gen. 1 evolution is and should be a non-issue for Jews and Christians. Why? Because the Bible does not speak to the mechanics of creation, instead it speaks simply to the fact that everything was created by God. So long as people do not assert based upon evolution that God does not exist (a non sequitur) then evolution is no threat. And in fact evolution is the best explanation that scientists have to date that allows them to do science.

I am finding that a similar approach to climate change. I am not a scientist so I cannot say definitively who is correct in these debates. But I do understand that we are called to care for this creation, it is one of our primary duties as those created in the image of God. So it shouldn’t really matter whether or not Al Gore is right that NYC will be underwater in 2057. What we ought to be asking our selves is whether or not we are being good stewards of the creation that God has given us. I would say that we are not. That is not to say that we were wrong to develop the car, for example, or nuclear reactors. But now we know that the gasses coming out of our tailpipes isn’t exactly healthy for us or the rest of the planet. We are being negligent if we do not use those same creative abilities to come up with alternatives.

So what is my hermeneutical principle that I see running through these two scenarios? (1) That we begin with the biblical testimony. (2) When it is not in conflict with science then (3) the claims of science should be given an open and honest hearing. And we should not throw out good advice, just because it may come from those who don’t believe in God. We should not care for this creation for the sake of the creation, but for the sake of the Creator who charged us to “till and keep” the Garden.

 

I read the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education articles with interest to see if and in what way they mentioned Collins’ faith. CHE waited until well down into the story and then tackled it head on.

Reactions from university associations did not touch on Dr. Collins’s publicly expressed religious views, including his 2007 book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, and his founding of the BioLogos Foundation, which promotes “harmony between” science and faith.

A spokesman for one of the groups said officials weren’t available to discuss the matter. But Mr. Lively said he saw no problem with Dr. Collins’s attempts to find common ground between science and religion, and believed it might actually help him on Capitol Hill.

“He’s clearly a believer, but he’s certainly not a closet creationist,” Mr. Lively said.

IHE mentions it in the third paragraph of the article but did not suggest any potential conflict.

Collins has also been influential for his writings on the link between science and religion, most notably writing a book called The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press).

I have great respect for Collins as a scientist and a person of faith and I look forward to seeing the development of NIH under his watch. His biggest challenge right now will not be scientific or religious, it will be administrative as they try and sort through the thousands of grant applications associated with the stimulus package.

 

The space station as it looked in August 2005. For most of its habitable history (about eight years), the ISS has had room for just three crew members. But in just the last few weeks, that capacity has doubled to allow six people at a time to call the space station home. Another recent addition: a water regeneration system that will help produce drinking water out of, among other things, the astronauts’ own urine.

Photo by NASA

Caption by Jonathan Skillings

 

Myers is a biologist at the University of Minnesota at Morris who has a national following for Pharyngula, the blog on which he regularly exposes and lambastes efforts by creationists to undermine the teaching of evolution. A few weeks ago, he wrote a blog entry in which he defended a University of Central Florida student who protested the presence of religious groups on his campus by taking a Eucharist — the small wafer blessed in Roman Catholic services and then seen as the body of Christ — and removing it from the service rather than consuming it. Myers, in an entry entitled “It’s a Frackin’ Cracker” — questioned why this was such a big deal.

Ever since, Myers and his university have been bombarded by e-mail and other messages attacking him and calling for the university to punish him for insulting Catholic teachings.

On Thursday, Myers responded by staging what he called a “great desecration.” For the desecration, he took a communion wafer (sent to him by a supporter in the United Kingdom, who removed it from a church there), and pierced it with a rusty nail. (“I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date,” Myers quipped on the blog.) He then threw it in the garbage with a banana peel and coffee grounds, symbols of refuse. But to show that he wasn’t picking on Catholics, Myers added to his mixture some ripped out pages of the Koran. As a proud atheist, Myers isn’t a member of a faith that he could desecrate at the same time so he took a text he does cherish — The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins — and tore some pages out and added them to the trash.

In a blog posting that describes the attacks he has received and then features a photo of the desecration, Myers finishes with a call to question everything….

The university has since removed a link to his blog from his department’s website, but will do not other action claiming academic freedom. I am not sure that this really falls into that category, at all. While I do not condone the extreme behavior Myers reports receiving in emails from certain Catholics I do think his actions are unduly aggressive and boarder on “hate speech.” I agree with the analogy in the statement from Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

It is a sure bet that UMN would not tolerate a white professor who worked a comedy club on weekends trashing blacks.

I don’t know that such a situation would result in dismissal and removal of a tenured professor, but I do think it would bring about severe action, rightly so. This sort of clearly stated hatred of religion apparently does not warrant the same response.

Now I want to be clear about my position as well. I am reformed enough in my theology and secure enough in my faith that his actions don’t disturb me or even strick me as “sacriligious” (especially since one has to have a sense of the sacred in order to do something sacriligious and Myers clearly does not view the world in such a way). I do find it rude and disrespectful of other people. This gets back to Drew’s post which first brough Myers to my attention, “Should Atheists ‘Respsect’ Religion?” Of course Myers and others of his sort say “no,” since religion is lunacy in their view.

A major part of the academic enterprise is not just the freedom to say what we like, but the patience and willingness to listen to ideas other than those we agree with. Myers seems unwilling to be a part of a broader community, one that is diverse not just in gender or ethnicity but in world views.

 

One common answer to the question of respect to religious belief that I have encountered in many an argument is an unqualified No.  It is a simple argument with little persuasive rhetoric.  Religion should not be respected or even much tolerated due to its track record of human harm and its basis in that which has, in the common parlance of the argument, not one shred of evidence .  This seems to be the foundation for the entire whirlwind of extremism regarding the theft of a consecrated Eucharist wafer and the less than hospitable reaction from one PZ Myers.  Ken Brown tracks much of the debates here and here .

In previous debates with agnostics, atheists, anti-theists, apatheists, etc. I have heard one refrain that is puzzling: “I do not and should not have to respect your belief in God.”  The root of this lack of respect comes from the proposition that any kind of belief in that which has no empirically substantiated evidence that essentially meets the rigor of external verification and validity deserves no real respect at all.