Science

Evolution & Climate Change: Trojan Horse or Straw Man?

(You can tell this will be an academic-type post because I used a colon in my title.)

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.

Francis Collins named new head of NIH

Jul 9th, 2009

by Christian Brady.

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This announcement was a long-time coming. I actually spoke with Dr. Collins several months ago to invite him to PSU to speak on science and religion and he declined. He did not say way (“taking some time”) but I had a pretty strong hunch, as did anyone else following this nomination process.

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.

Happy Birthday Space Station!

Dec 1st, 2008

by Christian Brady.

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This is the last project my father worked on in his career with NASA. This year is the 10th birthday of the station, although it continues to grow and be rebuilt. CNET has some great photos.

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

Academic Sacrilege

Jul 28th, 2008

by Christian Brady.

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Remember the “Frackin’ Cracker” debate? A biologist from U of MN mocked the Catholic community’s response to a student having removed a consecrated host from a service. Well Myers made good on his promise to destroy, mock, and desecrate a host if sent to him. Inside Higher Ed has a good round up of the results.

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.

Gaining Atheists’ respect?

Jul 14th, 2008

by Christian Brady.

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Drew Tatusko has a very good post , linking to a university altercation that had escaped my notice, addressing whether or not atheists should respect religion.I have come across this quite often, particularly in a debate with Jonathan Culler at Cornell (I will post about that some day, it happened years ago now), where the atheist will insist that they do not need to "respect" ignorance. Here, I will let Drew explain and be sure to read it all , it is quite a long post, but well worth it.

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.