Imagine...A Complex Creation

Sit at my Right Hand

2009-07-09T22:20:00.003-05:00

Throughout the Bible, the right hand is favored. If you want to honor someone, then you put them on your right hand. It is often argued that this is merely a cultural expression. Jewish and Middle Eastern culture favors the right hand. Indeed, this idea is supported by the numerous references to the "right" in the Qur'an, and specifically with the benefits of being on the right hand. Certainly, Muslims today take the concept much further than the West, with the right hand used for communication and the left for the...unmentionables. And of course, these cultural practices are probably based in the reality that the majority, 90% of us, are right-handed, and thus this is the preferred arm of use.

But now, we see a further biological justification. New studies indicate that we are more likely to grant a request if it is asked into the right ear. It seems that this idea of favoring someone at your right is not merely cultural, but is deeply ingrained biologically, and likely the authors of the Bible were unknowingly basing their descriptions of God on this. (Alternatively, God is communicating through our cultures, and what he knows of the cultures he designed.) Interestingly, women in the studies were more likely to grant the right ear than men, indicating perhaps a greater predisposition to grant requests.

Now, this may be simply a cultural expression in our right-handed cultures, and further study is warranted, looking at those who are left-handed to see if there is a different response, and performing controls with cultures that have a greater percentage of the left-handed. In the meantime, it appears that our understanding of God is based in part on God's understanding of us. Though we in the West may no longer be so tied to chirality, we still operate with an innate understanding of it's import. God speaks through culture, through his prophets, but regardless of our hope for free-will, we also operate under some basic instincts. We listen and grant a request if it is on our right. Though God of course has no body, and therefore no right or left, he also, figuratively, is more likely to grant the request to those on his right hand.

We should therefore strive for this, to sit at the right hand of God. We should not demand it, but rather ask. But as the pericope of the Sons of Zebedee indicates, the way one asks for this honor, to gain the place where God is more likely to hear your requests, is to become a servant of all, taking the last and lowest place. This brings honor, and God's ready ear, to grant our requests. And, I suspect, that the more we take this place of the lowest, the more likely we are to ask for that which God is more likely to grant, just as we grant the requests to those on our own right.

Controlling Love

2009-06-20T09:59:00.000-05:00

A pet provides a means of control. We want to be able to control nature around us, not to live in harmony. We want to find a way to conquer- even if it means changing the very genetic code of wild animals to tame them. We try to to control animals emotionally, projecting our own thoughts and feelings upon them, as a recent study with dogs convincingly demonstrated. If the owner thought the dog had done something, the dog looked guilty to the owner. If the owner scolded the animal, the dog looked more guilty to everyone who observed the dog. If the dog had done nothing wrong, and was scolded, he looked most guilty.

This stems from communication barriers between dramatically different cultures. If I can mean one thing and communicate another to a human from a different culture, how much more dramatically will be the divergence in communication across species lines! Consider the simple hug, of arms around the neck, that we primates love to do. To the dog, even the pet dog, this is an act of aggression, going after the vulnerable jugular veins, and it is only with great effort that our tame wolves are able to control themselves- as evidenced by the enlarged whitening of their eyes in fear response. (Incidentally, a physical trait that we two species do share.) Thus love from one species communicates as attack to another.

But we are the dominant "wolf" in the pack, and we lay the ground rules. The dog tries desperately to follow them, and is happily assisted by some 30,000 years of selective breeding to more effectively read human expressions and emotions. Indeed, we have not been so well bred to them. So when the dog sees us angry and demanding that they have done something wrong, the dog knows the proper response to ameliorate the head wolf: act ashamed, or rather, lower the head and look up in the submissive posture- whatever it takes to make us happy. When the human sees this, usually, the anger begins to dissipate, for the human then feels they have asserted themselves to some degree over nature, have controlled something in their life.

We desperately want to believe our dogs and other pets are intelligent and can understand us. But intelligence is relative. They aren't intelligent when compared to whales, primates, or pigs. They are quite intelligent when compared to rodents. But that's not a level of intelligence that extends to the knowledge of good and evil, to the awareness that they have done something inherently wrong. It is an intelligence that is able to avoid discomfort and pursue comfort, regardless of inherent morality. Comfort comes from doing what the pack leader wants, what the human owner wants.

For us, comfort comes from loving, and being loved. Of course, the best way to do this is with humans. But for some, it just doesn't seem to work out. Because humans are messy. You can't control them, like you can a dog. When you try to, it's bad all around. A healthy human relationship is one without control, but with learning to love that which does not obey your every command, and should not obey it. Animals, on the other hand, can be taught to do whatever we want, or nearly everything. It is decidedly more convenient. It's a lot less messy. It's a lot less love, in the deep sense of agape, loving the unlovable.

And so, just as we all create God in our own image, we do the same to our pets. We look for ways to make them more human, to respond the way humans respond, or rather, the way one particular human responds- ourselves. We want to see a mirror image with fangs and fuzzy fur, that cocks it's head cutely and responds as we would want to respond. It is like a Bizzaro World reapplication of Christ's relationship principle. Not "Do to others as you would have them do to you," but "Expect others to do as you would do."

And this is not to say that this is in any way wrong, when applied to animals. But let us realize what we are doing, and realize what are reasonable expectations of our pets. Yes, our dog can learn to behave and follow our rules. It can not feel wrong, or be ashamed, or engage in a meaningful relationship. What we see there is our own projections of reality, and our pursuit of that is merely incestuous relationship, a bird enamored with its own reflection.

What do you do when your Theory is too good?

2009-06-10T22:53:00.001-05:00

For so long now, we've been patiently explaining how evolution works, to all those who want to listen. It does not produce Hopeful Monsters, with an X-Men-like change in one generation. None of us are going to get Healing Factors or the ability to shoot lasers out of our eyes. It's a slow process, taking generations, and hundreds of thousands of years. This is why the argument by Literal Creationists that no dog has ever produced a cat is so silly. It is nothing but a straw man, for no biologist has ever argued anything remotely like that. Given the right environmental factors, over many, many generations, and a hundred thousand years, the remote descendants of dogs might appear to look more like cats than they do today- but that's a big if. And granted, fast reproducing species like bacteria and viruses do show evolution in our lifetime, with a high rate of Darwins (the units of evolutionary speed), so that we can easily trace how the HIV virus evolved in different environments into different "species", or types. (The environment in that case would be various populations of us, depending on our sexual activities.) But bacterial and viral selection has never been as sexy, if you'll pardon the pun.

Now, in the span of a few generations- twenty-six to be exact- and in eight years, guppies show selection towards various fecundity (birth) levels, depending on their environments. When put into two streams where there were no guppies, the stream that had predators produced guppies that had many offspring (since some of them would be eaten), and the stream without predators produced fewer offspring. (For those that say that no new species if formed, all that is required there is for isolation change producing a slight tweak in reproductive structures, or time of breeding, or proteins on the egg, etc.)

This study dramatically shows how it is environment which drives evolutionary change, and the formation of new populations and species. A stable environment is unlikely to produce major changes or many species; a quickly changing environment, like that the dynamic equilibrium of the coral reefs, produces the greatest diversity of any ecosystem. But who knew that evolution could actually happen so quickly.

The question isn't why organisms evolve so slowly. It is more, how is it that they evolve so quickly, with so little encouragement? And granted, this does nothing to help the macrofauna in the 6th Mass Extinction Event we are causing. But does it provide some hope for the more quickly breeding microfauna?

An Inherent Right to Freedom?

2009-06-09T23:42:00.000-05:00

?As much as physics is an inherently Arminianist science, so is biology inherently determinist. As a biologist, I believe everything is determined by my genetic code and my environment. This nicely dovetails with my belief in predestination, wherein I feel Calvin didn't go far enough but Augustine's ideas are right on (though sadly not completely accepted by the Roman Church). So it is with pleasure that I read another study affirming my perspective- the MAOA gene is found to be linked to aggression in males, and is more prevalent in more violent societies.

We often want to believe we are free to make our own decisions, especially in Western societies, especially in America. But to what extent is this true? We will trot out the arguments that one can not be held accountable for their actions if they did not freely make them- but if I go through every step of a decision, am I not as culpable, even if it can be found what actually motivated that decision? If I have a genetic disposition to alcoholism and grow up in a heavy car culture, it is more likely that I will drink and drive- and yet I am fully responsible when I do so.

And yet, excessive drinking, or drinking and driving, or adultery, or violence- all of these are sins. They are all missing the mark, all not hitting the target that God has for us. So this sin, this tendency, that we all have, in different ways, is written into our genetic code. And since many studies show the same actions in other primates, we can be fairly well assured that this tendency in our genetic code predates our existence as a species, predates the humans who are Homo sapiens - "wise men" - with the ability to discern good and evil. That which we did without the knowledge of good and evil (note the text never says the far more reasonable "knowledge of evil") was in no way evil, for we were amoral, not immoral, not knowing good and evil. Once we obtained that knowledge, once our brains reached that magical point of being able to differentiate, we became culpable.

Thus our actions and very sins are predetermined, and every year we learn new ways in which our genes have dictated our lives. Does this mean that the individual who discovers they have MAOA should just give up- that there's no hope, and they will always be violent? No! It means they are now aware that there is something inside them making them violent, and they must work on it. Or the society with the greater prevalence of MAOA now realizes they have a greater work to do in that society. This is just as when we all learn that we have a certain tendency, we now know the area to work on to pursue spiritual growth, and salvation sola morphe, striving to change to be more like Christ, as he called us to do, picking up our crosses to willingly suffer at the hands of violence without being violent ourselves.

And if they do the concerted effort to change, and resist their genetic tendency, that resistance will have been predetermined too.

But this is not enough. It is unfair to those with MAOA, or any such gene. (For we all likely have some sort of detrimental gene with a tendency towards sin, and more than one!) Jesus speaks quite forcibly against violence, even calling the possession of weapons a sign of wickedness. But that doesn't mean there is no place for war and violence in Christianity. On the contrary! For Paul says, "Our weapons are not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual powers." As Christians, we are called to continuously fight against the demons. This involves prayer, yes, but the Pauline passage makes it clear that this fight also involves righteousness and discipline, truth and readiness, listening to the Spirit with faith, and love.

What is needed is a transference of the enemy, of the other, for those afflicted with MAOA. In this way, their resonance of the curse becomes a blessing for the entire body, as Jesus did with his death on the cross. This was the same transference that the early Christians went through, in that violent time of first century Roman rule, when they called those who did not believe pagoni, meaning "the civilians". The term "Pagoni" was not an insult or attack, but rather an indication of who we, as Christians, are called to protect, not through force of arms, never through force of arms, but through force of prayer and love.

Thus those afflicted with MAOA now become those empowered by it, with Christ's redemption of even a gene for violence, as they come to the forefront of spiritual warfare, working against the powers of evil, and for the care of those they once might have attacked.

Who wants to live forever?

2009-06-08T20:09:00.002-05:00

The great band Queen once had a song "Who Wants to Live Forever", notably played as the theme song to the Highlander TV Series. (There should have been only one.) In Highlander, there were Immortals who could only be killed by having their heads chopped off. The drawback is they were incapable of having children.

Geneticists have recently discovered a mutant line of nematodes wherein their non-sex cells (somatic cells) behave like sex cells. (Nematodes are round worms that are the most populous species on Earth, present in nearly every living organism, to such an extent that if all other organisms were removed, the general outline of the organisms would be visible from the nematodes within them. Yes, that means you, dear reader.) This leads to stronger cells throughout the nematode, ensuring their longevity, which in turn fits with some hypothesis that organisms make a choice between reproduction and eternal life, wherein organisms get old because they are investing in creating and raising young.

So here's the question: if you could choose, to be like the Immortals or mutant nematodes, would you choose to live forever, if it meant you could never have offspring? Granted, this is really only a viable question for those who don't have kids, since of course any parent is going to say they wanted to have their kids. And for many, they believe they will live forever, in new bodies, in the New Earth and Kingdom. But my question is, if you could live forever now, in this body, but never have offspring- would you choose to? I'd be interested in hearing both from those who believe in eternal life and those who don't.

As for me, it's a no-brainer. I'd far rather have the kids, even if it meant dying in the next couple years.

My Mom's a Monkey

2009-05-30T15:57:00.000-05:00

Okay, not really, of course. She's an ape, a primate, but lacking a tail, she's no monkey, and her ancestors never were either. They were primates, like her, going back to the days of lemur-like creatures. And rather famously all over the news of late, we have discovered Ida, a precursor transition fossil, showing the links between monkeys and apes.

A note about terminology. The press loves to use the word "missing link", crowing about discoveries, as do the Literal Creationists, decrying the truth of those same discoveries. In truth, scientists don't talk about ideas like "missing links". It implies that there is something missing out there, in particular, linking two organisms or two species, and that it can be found. This makes for a convenient idea with Literal Creationists, as they can always suggest that the Missing Link has yet to be found. But there can never be such a thing.

As Zeno pointed out long ago, you can never reach the halfway point; as Heraclitus said, everything is in flux, so you can never jump into the same river twice. (His disciple pointed out you can never jump into the same river once.) Species are not concrete entities- they are constantly changing entities, in every generation. There is not a time when you can point to this and say it is Homo rhodesiensis, and to another, and say that is Homo sapiens. There is not an individual or fossil individual that would be exactly halfway in between, to be "the moment" when the transition occurred. It's not logically possible.

But evolutionary science dictates that you also can't find that transitional moment, even if it was there. Fossils are simply too rare, so that the vast majority of the 99% of species that have gone extinct will never be found. Certainly, it's possible that we have occasionally come across such an individual, who is roughly halfway between two other known species- but the odds are simply too much against it. And if we do find a halfway point, we would then have a new Missing Link to discover, between that species and the first, ad infinitum.

This is why scientists, as opposed to Literal Creationists and the media, discuss "transitional fossils". These are fossils that represent a half-way point, like the wondrous Tiktaalik, but we recognize that this species is not actually in our evolutionary history, but was probably a branching point, much as Homo erectus is a cousin, and not an ancestor. Evolution is not a tree with most branches reaching the top, but a Christmas tree, with the vast majority of species going extinct. We find only clues in different organisms that would give a sample indication of what would be a halfway point- a transitional fossil.

And Darwinius masillae, Ida, is just such a transitional fossil. And of course, as soon as she was discovered, there was the litany from Literal Creationists and Intelligent Designers that she wasn't a "missing link", and we still needed to find the real missing link etc. But there was another line of attack, suggested directly or indirectly by various people- that there is no way our ancestor could be a "monkey". Again, evolution doesn't suggest this, and Ida is no monkey. But more intriguing is why there would be such a visceral reaction to the idea of one's ancestors being monkeys.

One repeatedly runs into the idea that this in some way diminishes humanity, if our ancestors are monkeys. And though there is some resistance from the same groups to the idea of ancestors being fish, or bacteria, or amphibians, it is the monkey and "gorilla" idea that most offends. And this seems a bit odd. Why would this be the case?

There may perhaps be a relic from the egregious ties of African-Americans to monkeys, a legacy we thought was past, but is still used to this day in reference to even the First Lady. It may be that some few individuals still think this way, and don't want their (white) selves tied to the same insult they perceive of African Americans. But this can't be true for the majority who strenuously object to any ties between us and monkeys. Again, they reject Evolutionary Theory, but they have a more visceral reaction to this particular connection, claiming that it somehow diminishes humans to be tied in his manner. Continuously, in the objections to our tie to monkeys, comes the idea that it diminishes humans- and this is found in the earliest objections to Darwin's theory.

This is a mystery. For the majority of these people are Christians. And they follow a text that says humanity was made from dust, that God considers us as so still. We are but worms- even maggots! Is not a worm, and even a maggot, a far worse comparison that that of a monkey? The Bible makes it clear that we are nothing on our own, in our own status.

In the emotional objections of the Literal Creationists (as opposed to the reasoned objections), one continuously gets the idea that humanity must be elevated, as if they believed that what Hamlet says in jest should be so in truth- What a piece of work is man?!

And yet, in those same passages, it is clear that because of our nothingness, God cares for us. It is precisely when God calls us worms that he says he will help us. It is when he calls us dust that he rises in pity. God cares about the outcast and the downtrodden first. He desires to be the servant king. He asks only that we ask for his help, that we affirm that we are nothing without him.

Which leads inexorably to one conclusion. The writings of Literal Creationist and IDists indicate that they reject the tie to monkeys because it lowers our status. Our lowliness of status is affirmed continuously in the Bible. Indeed, the Bible ties directly our lowliness of status to the compassion of God, and, to the extent that we affirm our lowliness and need of him, he comes to assist us. And so, when any of us reject our lowly status, or any status because we perceive it as lowly, we reject the offer of help from God, and reject the idea of God as God.

Creating Life is Easy

2009-05-29T13:27:00.000-05:00

There's a short miniseries on TV these days, Impact, suggesting that the moon is hit by a Brown Dwarf, causing the moon to hit the Earth and destroy it, unless someone saves the day. The finale plays next Sunday, and I'm really hoping they don't repeat the tired last ditch save, and actually destroy the Earth this time. Because, really, there is no way that we could remove a Brown Dwarf from the moon and reverse the moon's trajectory enough to save the planet, assuming the Brown Dwarf had hit the moon and forced the moon towards us, and I'd like there to be some semblance of science in this movie. Because if the moon is headed for a collision with us, that's it- just like when the Mars-size body ran into us 4.5 bya (billion years ago), creating the Earth-Moon system. We have no idea what the Earth was like before that point, if there was life, or there was an Earth, because a Mars-size object hitting a Venus-size objects just completely remakes everything.

But it may be that a major bombardment of our planet by giant asteroids wouldn't liquefy the planet, or destroy all of life. I recently contemplated how the extermination of our species is not necessarily a bad thing, that life will find a way, and this study appears to be further thinking along those lines. The Earth was hit by many huge asteroids between 4.4 and 3.9 bya, and it has been assumed that they sterilized the planet. But numerous simulations were run in this recent study, and researchers increased the magnitude of the bombardment by ten times the level that is thought to have occurred, and still all of life wasn't sterilized. In fact, it may well be that this sterilization allowed life to develop- again, death and tragedy being the pathway to life.

More intriguing is that this Heavy Bombardment of the Archean Period may have actually helped life first evolve, providing a haven for creation. This is because of the massive heat energy being put into the open system of Earth, and energy provides what is needed to build the earliest cells. It was previously believed that the asteroids would have destroyed everything, so this energy wouldn't have helped, and the earliest life could have formed was only 3.9 bya. (Our earliest fossils, stromatolites, go back to 3.5 bya.) This string of studies indicates life could have formed 4.4 bya, a mere 100 million years after the final formation of our planet and satellite!

Literal Creationists love to focus on the origin of life, as the holy grail that evolution can't surmount, because it is just too difficult. (Though of course, the origin of life is not a matter of evolution or biology, but rather chemistry.) As I mentioned in an earlier post, we are increasingly finding with studies like this that making life is really not that hard. It has long been though that it took a mere billion years to first form life; now it may be a tenth of that, only 100 million years. Rather, the amazing feat is the formation of multicellular life, waiting some 2.5 to 3.5 billion years, and if Literal Creationists are looking for a deus ex machina of God's intervention, this is really where they should be looking- at the hard stuff! (Though of course, there are good hypothesis for explaining the delay, such as the need for collagen in multicellular life, and collagen requiring a lot of oxygen, and therefore we needed to wait billions of years for cyanobacteria to add that particular poison to the Earth's atmosphere.)

Life is cool, but that is not the amazing part. God's greatest creation is evolution, and I worship at his feet not only penultimately for the creation of life. The far more impressive feat is finding a way to link those cells together.

Where Magic and Miracles and Method Meet

2009-05-15T23:41:00.000-05:00

It has been long known in science that acupuncture is just bunk, to use the technical term. We know this, because we have found no evidence that it is true, that it works. And in science, something is true only when it has been experimentally proven to be true. We might feel that it works, but until it is proven through the scientific method, we do not accept it as true. Thus scientists tend to look at belief in acupuncture as the same level as denial of Global Warming or evolution, or acceptance of alchemy.

A recent study found that acupuncture works better than normal medical practices for curing back pain. There have been a few studies that have indicated this in the past, but they have been largely discounted, due to errors like exceedingly small sample size. What was intriguing about this study is that it found that acupuncture works better than standard medical practice- and so did simulated acupuncture. People reportedly felt better about their backs to a statistically significant degree, whether or not the needle was put in at "acupuncture points" or randomly on the body, and whether or not a needle was used in the prescribed manner, or merely a toothpick. The conclusion is that acupuncture works through a placebo effect, or else simply pricking areas of the body is all that is needed for the alleviating of pain.

This is not to deny that there is a spiritual world out there, outside the realm of science. It may well be that acupuncture works because people put their faith in it. It may work in the same way that magic does. But that's where it gets dangerous.

The problem with acupuncture is the theory that is proposed behind it- energy fields. They might work just fine in Star Wars, but they have no place in science, because there has never been any established evidence for them. They can't be studied, or even identified. And so for science, they don't exist.

But as the Great One, Stephen Jay Gould, pointed out, there is NOMA- Non-Overlapping MAgisterium. Science and Religion both have their place, but they are different places. Now, Gould limited NOMA too much to merely the ethical realm, denying any possibility of the miraculous. If we accept the miraculous, then acupuncture can very well be effective, on the magical or miraculous level. And this is where it gets dangerous.

Science is real. It measures real physical effects. But - and I know some will be horrified to see me write this - so is magic, and so is the miraculous. And the latter two are different from each other.

Magic is believed in, and some would argue it effective merely because of that. If you believe in something enough, then through psychosomatic effect, it works. And that is probably true some of the time. But I have had too many experiences, read of too many, heard of too many by those I trust, to deny it's power. The same is true of the miraculous. But magic is something where we attempt to control reality through supernatural means. For the miraculous, there is never an attempt to control. It is an asking, from a "higher power", for assistance. It is the higher power that is in control, not us.

Of course, this rightfully indicates that the line between magic and the miraculous can often get blurry. There are many times when we approach God, asking for a miracle, with a demand, expecting him to come through. Or we try to manipulate him, by doing certain actions, saying certain words, speaking for long enough, going through the right motions, in order for him to come through. It is good to expect things from God, for this is faith. But our faith needs to be that which trusts that God will be there for us- not that God must work in a particular way. For when we believe that, or try to do certain actions or say certain words, we've stepped into magic.

Thus we can see that science and magic are similar. Both are attempts to control our reality. But science, I would argue, is a legitimate attempt. It is the understanding that we can change reality because of our experience in the physical; it is using physical means to change physical reality. I drop the ball and expect it to hit the ground because of my experiences with gravity, or because of experiments, but I know it will do so not because of any kind of supernatural intervention, by me or a god.

And this is the problem with acupuncture. Currently, as it stands, there is no scientific support for it. It is not changing reality through physical means. Is it then miraculous, or magical? The practitioner or patient rarely go in asking for God's help in the matter. But even if they do, as some do when they go in for radiation therapy or surgery, asking for God to miraculously be involved at the same time as modern science and medicine are operating, they are relying in part on this other thing. The woman who asks God to heal her of Swine Flu while taking antibiotics is trusting both God and the drugs; the man who asks God to heal him through acupuncture is trusting both God, and the needle. Since there is no physical proof for the efficacy of acupuncture, we are forced to conclude that it is a supernatural method to achieve material results. It is precise actions to bring a change. It is not science, nor miraculous- it is magic. It is an attempt to control our reality through supernatural means.

And while magic may be appropriate for some, it is never appropriate for the Christian, precisely because it is an attempt to control reality, rather than letting God control. It is warned against repeatedly, in the Old and New Testaments. It is the original sin of Babel. It is the belief that we can be God, that we can reach God on our own merits, through our own actions- that we can be the gods ourselves, and in control of all the Heavenly Realms.

Tragedy is in the Eye of the Beholder

2009-05-06T10:04:00.000-05:00

It is an awful thing when people die. But death is not the end; it is always a beginning. A great man once said, "Life will find a way." It is true. No matter what we do to destroy our planet, life will find a way. The issues of Global Warming aren't that we will destroy all life (we won't), or that we will severely limit the amazing diversity of creation (we will, and we are), but rather that we will create an environment that is completely inhospitable for us.

But in death there is life. Not a sparrow falls, that God is not with it, and not a creature dies that it is not returned to the web of life. In every death, there is food for others. In every birth, there is the survival of one sperm among millions, and that life resulted only through the death of those millions. Even in that theological dreadnought, the ichneumon wasp, whose larval children devour the living caterpillar from the inside, it is through death that we find life. This is the message of biology, and the message of Christianity. Without the central tenant of death bringing life, the religion has nothing to offer itself. But this message was woven in the very fabric of the last 3.5 billion years of life, in the thread of our DNA.

These thoughts are prompted by a long-term undersea study of a continuously evolving volcano near Guam. The researchers have found that the newly erupting vents are quick to be colonized by never-before-seen species. The oceans there heat up and acidify, killing thousands of creatures, who rain down as seemingly magical food to the waiting acidophiles below. As our penchant for fossil fuels increasingly acidifies the ocean, this study helps scientists understand how these organisms can adapt.

I am reminded of another recent paper, suggesting that volcanoes or artificial aerosols could be a helpful last-ditch attempt to stave off Global Warming. It may well be that we end up praying to God for great eruptions throughout the planet, as we once had, in order to reverse what we have done. These eruptions could destroy millions of lives, and have been viewed throughout history as the judgment of God- and yet we would be reduced to praying for their onset.

But God may not choose to answer those prayers. We may destroy the planet as a livable place for us, and most of the species. But the organisms left- they will find a way. There will only be a few, but given another hundred million years, and life will have evolved in glorious new ways. We will have destroyed the beauty of creation, but we don't need to be around to see how it rebounds. Who knows if this is not the Apocalypse spoken of by John? We will still enter the Kingdom one day, but we don't need to be the final species that God deals with. He can make the rocks cry out in praise of him- he doesn't need Homo sapiens to do it. Another intelligent species, looking far different from us, can evolve in a few hundred million years, to fill in the niche gap we left. And they may well do a better job of caring for the Garden than we did. It's hard to imagine them doing worse.

I thought by now I'd ... date a girl made out of wires...

2009-04-25T21:32:00.000-05:00

Five studies have dove-tailed recently. Four studies indicate that a TV will help take the place of relationships. Something we all already knew- if you have lost a relationship, or fear that you might, the TV becomes a surrogate. But not just any TV- it must be shows that you really enjoy. Any TV won't help. TV fills in that gap of relationship when you are watching characters that you really care about- like Cheers, or Friends, or whatever you personally enjoy.

A separate paper looks at the increasing use of automation and computers in research, to the extent that they are beginning to replace scientific researchers themselves. The authors caution that humans will always need to be in the loop, but we are increasingly seeing that we need computers to accomplish what humans once did, due to the complexity of certain studies.

There is an obvious synergy in these two studies. We are looking at that which is artificial to replace people- in one case, relationships, and in another, one's livelihood.

The authors of the first studies are quite clear that TV is not as good as real relationships. In this regard, it is much like the manner in which some lonely people look toward their pets for comfort, and others speak of how they have much better relationships with animals than humans. It is easy to have a relationship with an animal, as you can read so many of your own emotions into the animal. Humans are more complex, and more messy. Easier still is to watch passively the characters you care about, where you can imagine your own response to them, and how they would act. The end result is the entire relationship takes place exclusively, or largely, in one's own mind.

Is this an entirely bad thing? We are created in the image of God. What does that mean? The word "image" was the same word as "idol" in ancient Hebrew, referring to the seat of the god. No one believed that the god was the same as the stone image they made- they believed it was the seat of that deity. We were created to be the seat of YHWH, the one true God. But the Hebrew of Genesis makes it clear- it is not we as individuals who are created in the image of God. No, rather, "He created humanity in his image, male and female he created them." It is the male and female together that are in the image of God. It is the relationship of love that holds the seat of God. And, one might argue, the relationship of those most different, for the different is more difficult to love, and therefore shows a greater love- and therefore, to an ultimate degree, it is the relationship between men and women, whether erotic or platonic, that shows this image of God most greatly.

So we are in God's image. And God is creator. Is it an entirely bad thing if we create life- even intelligent, sentient life? Is this not fulfilling God's destiny for us, that we also create, just as he did? It does not make us God, for he is still the ultimate, but it would make us attempting to follow in his steps. And since all life has evolved, including us, we have in that sense already participated in the creation of life, along with every other species on this planet (particularly the 99% of species now extinct). It is indeed God's gift to us, through evolution, to allow his children to participate in the process of creation through evolution. And in this, the passive process of evolution, we come closer to God himself. How much more so in the active process?

These are only possible suggestions. Hesitationally offered, much as Origen did when he suggested the pre-creation of the soul, though those works were still declared heretical centuries after his death.

But even if this is so, certainly this is not what we see on TV. For just as it is the most difficult relationships where love still exists that most show the image of the eternal God, so it is the heart of relationships that one has no control over them. A relationship of command and fiat is no relationship at all. Relationships by nature are messy, and praise God. Relationships are those things where I have no control, and I must give up my pride and concept that I can do as I want. And it is only in that humility, not considering equality with God a thing that must be demanded, that I find real love.

But the relationship of the TV is par excellant the relationship of control. It is in the imagination, it is self-fulfilling and self-filling. It is no relationship at all. When one is down and depressed, it may seem to be a filled hole, but that hole is only sinking sand.

Likewise, the creative process may soon be replaced by computers. Computers are learning to be creative, though humans are still necessary for research- and probably always will be. Computers are needed for analyzing data, and will increasingly be needed for this. But we lose something of ourselves when we give up those most human of traits- curiosity and creativity- to machines. For those of us like myself who find the appreciation of nature a moment of worship, there is here, also, a loss of relationship, with God, and yes, with the data itself, when one gives up these opportunities for joy to a computer. Were these computers with all of the abilities of humans, with all of the independence of thought and emotion, it would be different. But we aren't there yet- and aren't likely to be for centuries. As such, our increasing use of computers in research decisions would lead to a loss of what it means to be human- what it means to be in relationship.

The great band Swirling Eddies/Daniel Amos had a song once, "It's the Eighties (So Where's Our Rocket Packs?" One line stated "I thought by now I'd have a robot run the vaccum, and date a girl made out of wires..." What matters is not what the individual is made of, but what is inside. Do they have the soul, the independence, to make love a challenge- and therefore to make love real? But we aren't there yet. Any techonology we use becomes a replacement, and a removal from our status as the image of God.

Our Responsibility in the Infliction of Pain

2009-04-05T17:07:00.000-05:00

For years, I have taught what I was taught in college, the central maxim of invertebrate research: "No brain, no pain." You must have a brain in order to comprehend the notion, "Ouch- this hurts!" Yes, you can respond to stimulus without a brain, much as a bacteria would- it is too bright, so it moves away, it is too hot, so it moves towards the cold. But it requires a bit more than a collection of ganglia to process the concept of pain.

We all have pain receptors as one of our nine senses. (Smell, Taste, Sight, Hearing, Touch- and separate receptors in the skin for Heat, Cold, Pressure, and Pain. It's just that five of our senses are in the same organ- skin- so we lump them together.) Without those pain receptors, we wouldn't know pain. Those rare individuals, such as some lepers, who lose the ability to sense pain realize at their own peril how valuable a sense this is. Much as we might like to get rid of it, it helps us avoid problems like losing a limb because we didn't know how much it was being damaged by the acid.

But it is more than pain receptors. All of us (capable of reading this blog) also have brains, and rather impressive ones at that, capable of comprehending elementary thoughts like those here, or the sublime, like, "Ouch! This hurts!" You don't need to be self-aware to comprehend this, but you do need to be able to experience subjective reality, much as your dog or cat do. Your dog doesn't sit there contemplating his existential existence- he does know when something is happening to him.

For a long time, we have found this not to be true of the invertebrates. Excluding the amazing cerebral Cephalopods, invertebrates just don't really have brains. They have collection of ganglia- nerve cells- but nothing really complex to call a brain. And therefore nothing capable of understanding subjective reality, such as pain.

Thus, when scientists work with invertebrates, we have some greater amount of leeway. When pithing a frog for dissection, one must be very conscious of the pain inflicted. You do so only for a greater good, such as helping students understand how a frog works, and you do it quickly, to minimize the pain. This issue isn't present when vivisecting a crawdad, or an ant, or a snail. It is a great responsibility and burden to inflict pain on an animal, and you do so only when necessary. That necessity is removed when dealing with vast majority of invertebrates.

This is not to say that we can then willy-nilly kill any sort of invertebrate creature we want. For we are psychological beings, some would say with a soul, and when we kill another creature, or inflict pain, or appear to do so, it has an effect on our own souls. Much as a child playing non-stop Halo learns that it is okay to kill others without repercussions, stepping on ants who don't feel pain teaches the child that our actions that appear to harm life can be done with impunity. The lobster sounds like it is screaming when being boiled alive, but it is only the air escaping from between the animal's carapace. It has no brain, so therefore can't feel pain. Yet, that sound of screaming has an effect on the chef or any human, and can lead to a deadening of the emotive center which is the very definition of sentience- our own sentience. It is the effect of our actions on all creatures which matter even when dealing with those lower lifeforms, as evidenced by the clear trend of boys stepping on ant hills, often leading to boys harming dogs and cats, and then to seeing even other humans as mere fodder for their schadenfreude tendencies.

But we clearly distinguish those creatures that we care for for our own mental health, and those we care for because of the mental health of the creature itself. And lest an individual think they do not- that they care for all creatures because they are creatures, that they are vegetarian, or following Buddhist principles- I challenge them to fully apply that concept. Quit eating the yogurt, full of so many bacteria. Quit using antibiotics, killing off those nasty bacteria. Quit living, in fact, for your body is constantly fighting off those bacteria in the inner replay of evolutionary force. This is not merely rhetorical allegory. As pointed out in the introductory paragraph, bacteria sense- but not one suggests they have the ability to feel pain. There is a line, and everyone draws that line, albeit at different points. Even the Buddha did not care for germs in the same way (though of course he could not possibly be aware of their existence). Sensing does not entail sentience, although it is a precondition for it. Where, therefore, do we draw the line?

As I said, at the place where there is a brain. And it can be argued where there is enough of the animal to have a brain, or how much ganglia and brain is needed to comprehend pain. Clearly a virus does not have it, nor a sponge, nor an anemone- and certainly not a plant, all the pseudo-scientific theories out there not withstanding. And for a long time, we have been bolstered by the teaching that the invertebrates, excepting the Cephalopods, also fall into this non-sentient category.

Until now. Until today. For a study has just come out indicating that small hermit crabs also feel pain. They subjected the crabs to mild shocks, not so much that it would make them leave their shells, but enough that, when offered a better, shockless shell, they rejected their old home for the new one. This indicates a step towards not simply responding to stimuli, but actually remembering what is negative- or being aware of one's subjective environment and feeling pain.

More study is certainly needed before final conclusions can be drawn. Technically, if true, it would apply only to hermit crabs, but could be extended out reasonably to other Crustacea. It does not indicate that organisms with less of a brain, such as the adult Tunicate or earthworms, could also feel pain, and one would hope for similar studies on other groups of animals to determine if there is a like response. Similarly, one would like control studies conducted on organisms like jellies and sponges, who obviously have no way to comprehend pain, being completely brainless, to see if they respond in the same way, indicating that the study does not indicate surprising new sentience.

All those caveats withstanding, it brings one to pause for a moment. To consider. As the authors of the study rightly bring up, it has an effect on all those Crustacea we catch and eat. Is the best being done to minimize possible pain as they come up in the net. (No.) Certainly little is done for fish, but we also know that fish have very few pain receptors. If this study is born out, it may, and should, revolutionize the way we approach fisheries management.

But closer to home, it causes me to consider how I have treated all those organisms in the past. Like I intimated above, I have always been careful even with the organisms that don't seem to be sentient, if only for my own sentience. But there is care and there is care. And I can assuredly state that I have not cared for these worms and crawdads and snails with the thought that they were capable of experiencing pain. I have considered this for months now.

And it troubles me greatly.

Revenge might be a good cold dish, but not a lifeplan.

2009-04-04T16:18:00.000-05:00

A new study indicates that people who engage in revenge are less likely to find work, or keep it. There is "positive reciprocity" and "negative reciprocity". The positive is when you do something nice for someone who does something nice for you; the negative is the opposite. Some people are more positively reciprocal, others more negatively reciprocal. Those who are positive have more friends and make more money, because, the study found, they work harder for more pay. Negatively reciprocal people are not encouraged by higher pay, but will work less for lower pay, or try to harm the company they're working for. They also are less happy.

I personally would prefer a study that doesn't relate to pay. I look at money as a necessity to get by, but not as something I inherently want. Nor am I interested in the mammon that one can gain with the money. Certainly, I like the occasional book, but money is an inherently negative concept to me, because of my cultural upbringing. This study looks at something that is a root of all kinds of evil- money- as the primary incentive. It could be argued that those who are inspired by money do better by the standards of their society, when working in a capitalist system. The study therefore has some flaws that need to be addressed.

But let us take it at face value. Let us accept the basic premise as it stands. I still find it a rather primitive motivating force- Utilitarian, rather than Kantian ethics. Certainly, Kant leaves a lot to be desired, but what was positive in his ethics was the Categorical Imperative- the good is that which, if done by everyone at all times, would still be good. It bears a resemblance to the Utilitarian ethic (also known as the George Bush ethic) - "Do what is best for the greatest number of people." And yet the Categorical Imperative is worlds apart from the ethic of the Utilitarians. Ultimately, the Utilitarian ethic degenerates into mob rule, where the majority dictates upon the minority. Kant asked us to consider what was best for everyone, and not just what served the greatest number. He argued that ultimately, if it was not something that everyone could do, then it was not worth doing.

The Categorical Imperative bears a more than passing resemblance to the ethics of Jesus- "Do to others as you would have them do to you." Jesus' ethic was rather often that the good of the one, or the few, outweighs the good of the many- for in Jesus' ethics, there was no differentiation between the good of the many and the good of the one. (Witness the story of the Garasene Demoniac, where Jesus condemns the livelihood of ten cities so that one man might be saved from demonic possession.) The ethic of Jesus takes it a step further, best exemplified in the Gospel by Luke- the best action is not that which serves the majority, or even all people, but that which serves the minority- those outcast- for our needs and desires are (and should be) inseparable from those so outcast. It becomes the ethic of the minority, but not those who rule. It is rather the ethic of the minority who do not rule.

This is rooted in the the difference between the ethic of Jesus, and how that ethic is commonly interpreted. It is not "Do unto others so that they will do unto you." There is never any expectation of return. It is how you would want them to treat you. But it is love of your enemies, which Jesus also calls for. It is love for those who mistreat you, who hate you, who despise you- to pick up your instrument of torture and gruesome death and follow in the path of Jesus.

We come back to the root of the study. The difficulty with the premise is that those who get ahead are those who are considering their own best interests. They are happier than those who desire harm for another, attacking those who attack them, for they are motivated by doing good for those who do good to them. But this motivation is ultimately selfish in origin. It is more limited than the Utilitarian Ethic, considering what is good for the greatest number. It is more limited than the Categorical Imperative, considering what is good for all. It is more limited than the ethic of Jesus, considering what is good for the lost sheep. It has no place for doing good to those who mistreat you.

Yes, it undoubtedly works. You do better in this society if you are positive and encouraging. It would make sense that you would have more friends. But that does not make it right. One would want to see further studies, looking at less materialistic societies, to see if the "getting ahead" was dictated by the materialistic basis of society. And one would want to compare those who are encouraged by an Positive Reciprocal Ethic, with those motivated by Utilitarianism, Kant, and Kingdom Desires.

All of this is not to say I'm at that exalted Kingdom level. Or the level of Kant. Or the level of even John Stuart Mill and the Utilitarians. For I have to merely think back to my last time driving on the freeway, and see how much more I was focused on Negative Reciprocity. But how, pray tell, could one possibly apply the ethics of Jesus to the American freeway system, and expect to ever get anywhere?

God with us, in our Death

2009-03-21T15:26:00.000-05:00

John Haught writes one of the finest works in the emerging genre of evolutionary theology. In it he describes how Christianity is really only fully fulfilled in the light of evolution; and evolution only makes sense fully within the Christian myth. His central point in this is the kenosis, Christ's emptying of himself by becoming man, suffering as a human, and dying on the cross, all for love. Haught extends this out to the central Christian principle of panentheism to answer the troubling question of theodicy. God is not everything, but rather everywhere, and in everything. He then contemplates, how does this then answer the problem of suffering? Evolution did not invent theodicy, but it certainly accentuates it, as there are constant billions of creatures who suffer and die, even if one excludes those lacking in brains and therefore the capacity of suffering. And these countless creatures are doing this long before "sin" entered the world through humanity, and death through sin.

It is answered in part, that God cares for all his creatures- and even those items that he did not breath life into. He cares not only for the moving animals, but the growing trees, and the sitting-and-doing-nothing rocks, waiting to erode. He may care for some creatures more than others, but each and everyone is his creation, and he loves them dearly. And he is present with all of them, at each moment of their lives, no matter how long or short the lives are. And for those capable of suffering, long before the cross, Christ took up their suffering upon himself, suffering with them in every moment, mourning with them, feeling the splagxnizomai compassion of identification and empathy.

The journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica denotes an extraordinary find in Inner Mongolia in China. An entire herd of young Sinornithomimus dongi has been found entrapped in mud. It's rare to find a herd of fossils of one species; rarer still to find some with their last meal in their stomachs, and such details as eye bones preserved, and how they died.

From World Science's summary:

These animals died a slow death in a mud trap, their
flailing only serving to attract a nearby
scavenger or predator.
The skeletons showed similar exquisite preservation and were mostly facing the same direction, the researchers said, suggesting that they died together and rather quickly.
Two skeletons fell one right over the other. Although most of their skeletons lay on a flat horizontal plane, their hind legs were stuck deeply in the mud below. Only their hip bones were missing, the likely handiwork of a scavenger working over the meatiest part of the body bodies shortly after the animals died.
Plunging marks in mud surrounding the skeletons recorded their failed attempts to escape.

What do we do with such details, of suffering and death? It happened so long ago, 90 million years ago. Like a tragedy on the other side of the world, or watching one unfold in a fictional drama on TV, there is nothing we can do about it. But we can remember,

That God was with them.
He was with them in their suffering, and their
dying.
He knew them, and remembered them.
He was with them in their
coming in,
and their going out.

And he wept with them too.

And we can pray the prayer we always pray, knowing that God's will will be and is and has been done, but we pray to align ourselves with the Spirit of God, that we might follow him in this kenosis:

Lord, be with them, even the least of these your creatures.
As you have been, as you will be, as you shall be, in the enternal now.
And teach me your compassion.

Warning: This Post X-Rated

2009-03-11T22:32:00.000-05:00

Did that get your attention? Did you start reading this because of the title?

Are you still reading even though you feel like you shouldn't, because you want to see what is written next, or better yet, what pictures are included below the fold? (Yes, there are pictures.)

A new study came out showing what many have long believed- warning labels on games make it more likely that youth will rent and play the game. The violence and sex that are offered are too alluring. Though the study was limited to games, it is reasonable to extrapolate that a higher rating of MA, R, NC-17, or X also make it more likely that youth will want to watch the program or movie. And let us not limit it to youth, but be honest, that there is a certain titillation that attracts most adults as well.

Why is this? Why do we want to see what we feel we should not see? Why does a warning make it all the more enticing? Why do we sometimes believe that what is hidden is more enticing and needs to be revealed?

This is an ancient issue, of course, going back to the Garden, when the forbidden fruit proved too enticing, and the man and woman were convinced by the serpent to eat of it. (Medieval Europe thought it was an apple.. I tend to believe the fruit was a coconut, and thus Eve's first words after biting into it were, "Ouch.") From the writing style, this is obviously myth, but that doesn't make it untrue- rather myth is often more true than the cold logical progression of events we often describe as reality. This is a reality the Genesis authors are expressing- that we find we do that which we should not do, especially when we have been warned against it.

And yet, we also know that God is omniscient (by definition), and certainly knows the hearts of humans. He knew that warning humans to not eat would cause them to eat. (Again, not that there was an actual fruit and eating experience, but rather the story reveals something of the nature of humanity and the nature of God. Thus, the authors are describing a God who would entice humans in precisely the way he knew they could be enticed.) God does not tempt, but he certainly leads us into temptation- else why do we pray that he not? And this is a story of a God who placed a pleasing fruit- or more to the point, placed a pleasing commandment, in front of our eyes, practically begging us to disobey. Why? Because this is the way he created us. This is the way the laws he set up guided the evolution of our brains. We want what we can not have, or even better, what we should not have.

Why would a good God do this? Why would he give us a law when he knows the very giving of the law would lead us to disobey it? Without laws, we wouldn't have known it was wrong, and would have continued in our ignorance, without doing wrong. Without laws, we would not have been tempted to disobey, and feel impelled to disobey though we knew it was wrong, just because we knew it was wrong. There was a time long ago when we acted without a knowledge of good and evil, like the other animals. The actions we then did were not immoral, but amoral, but when we learned the difference between good and evil, the actions we had done in innocence were now evil. Had God not allowed this greater awareness to rise in us, we might never have had the brain capacity to worship him, but we also would no longer be acting in evil.

In the same passage where Paul speaks of his body warring against itself, he also states that, when we do what we don't want to do, we affirm that the rule is good. It is in this context that he has perhaps the most complicated and dense portion of all his letters (and yet the summation of all his theology), describing how the law is not sin, but rather the law showed us what sin was. Its presence meant our actions became sin, and its presence made it that more enticing to commit sin. And there is here no hope- there is law, and sin, and condemnation.

Until the next pericope, where Paul points out only one hope- the grace of God, as expressed in the death and life of Jesus the Christ. Pelagius was wrong. Without this grace, we can not succeed. He was right in what the Eastern Church took up to a more fuller extent- our Spirit must work with the Spirit of God to find this life-changing. This is the divinization of Athansius, that God became human that we might become divine.

There is no hope. A 14-year old boy will continue to buy the games rated M and AO. I will continue to want to go to the NC-17 movie. You will continue to want to enter the website stating "For over age 18 only." There is no hope on our own, because it is our nature. We were evolved to this. We can only change when we accept the divinization by God, allowing his Spirit to work to change us through the death of Jesus, in the hope of following him into that glorious resurrection when all things are made new. Even he said, "Not my will, but yours be done." We must make an active choice to subsume our will. And this can only be done by the presence of the living Spirit.

Tony Campolo's Great Mistake

2009-03-01T14:46:00.000-06:00

I don't know that I've ever been more disappointed to read something online. I respect Tony Campolo so much. I have been lead to the Truth by his words so often. I had the pleasure of meeting him at the Pasadena Tab, when I was with the Salvation Army and he lead a conference there. This is a man who has consistently upheld the liberal end of evangelicalism, who calls for us to honor the social justice cries of the Gospel. He has truly helped me come closer to Christ. And now, he publishes this.

If you haven't heard, or haven't read, in the latest issue of Christianity Today, Campolo comes out strongly against the teaching of evolution, or "Darwinism", as he calls it. (Darwinism is a dismissive insult purposely used by Literal Creationists, to try to turn evolution into a religion.) Campolo doesn't come out and say that evolution is wrong, but rather argues that it should not be taught, for the philosophical, social, and religious implications and beliefs of Darwin are monsterous.

I was shocked to read this. Campolo is a level-headed guy, with great reasoning and logic, who speaks for a non-literalist interpretation of the Bible. Yet down the line he quoted the standard Literalist arguments used against evolution. I would have wished that someone else had emailed this article in under his name, and that he was the victim of identity theft, rather than believing that you actually wrote this.

Evolution should or should not be taught in schools because it is either the truth, or it is not. What the results are of the theory, or how people use it, are rather irrelevant. The truth shall set you free, regardless of what kind of truth that is. And it just so happens that there is probably no other scientific theory out there that has more evidence for it than the Theory of Evolution. In this article Campolo proved that he might be a great theologian and pastor, but that he knows very little about science.

Campolo claimed that Darwin directly advocated eugenics and the wiping out of inferior races. In truth, Darwin is rather famous for being an abolitionist, and speaking against what would be later known as eugenics. Certainly, the Intelligent Design crowd and the Discovery Institute often quote him out of context to try to say the opposite, ignoring the very next line where he says (to paraphrase anachronistically), "If eugenics were actually practiced, it would be horrible." And I have no doubt that his beliefs on race aren't up to our standards today- but the same could be said for Lincoln, and more easily said.

Campolo points out another common Literal Creationist argument, that the long title of "Origin of a Species" refers to the preservation of the races. This is true, but the long title of Origin isn't used as much in referencing the work because the word "races" in the 19th century means more than just humans. Indeed, today, the same is still true in biology. My professors would speak of races of seastars, meaning different colors of the same species of Patiria miniata. Since Darwin doesn't really ever get to the evolution of *our* species in Origin, when he used the term "races", he was quite clearly referring to animals in general.

Campolo brings up the rather tired argument tying the Nazis to evolution, the same one that was brought up in the awful Expelled movie by Ben Stein. These arguments are completely inaccurate every time they are blindly repeated. In Campolo's condemnation of the ethical implications of evolutino, he ignored, or more probably had not read, the numerous statements by Darwin that his biological theory should not be used as an ethical paradigm. Yes, the Nazis used evolutionary theory incorrectly to support their beliefs. (Indeed, their distortion of evolution was so great as to advocate the opposite of what evolutionary theory advocates.) They also used a distortion of Christianity to do the same. Campolo knows that Satan loves to distort the truth, and to use lies to advance his agenda. That doesn't mean we should throw out the Christian faith.

Campolo then refers to some others who were tied to the Nazis and evolutionary theory. Tod o this, he refers to Ernst Haekel as German, and therefore is to be lumped with the Nazis. This smacks too much of the same that Campolo accuses Darwin of. Haekel made mistakes, but he also contributed a great deal to biology. His drawings of plankton were immaculate and advanced our understanding of them a great deal. Though he fudged his drawings of ontology recapitulating phylogeny, his basic premise was sound and is still followed today. Indeed, it is a foundational principle of EvoDevo Synthesis that has supplanted the NeoDarwinian Synthesis of Evolutionary Theory.

Remember, if evolution is true, and the evidence indicates it is, than it is also a work of God. And for my money, a more powerful God creates in this manner than in the Q snap-your-fingers style of the IDists or Literal Creationists. There are many authors and theologians now who are discussing not only how Christianity and evolution are compatible (see Kenneth Miller), but how the theology and the science of the two are interwoven and dependent on each other (see John Haught, Darrel Falk, and Denis Edwards). Yes, we affirm with Campolo that humans are in God's image, and unique in that way. But if evolution is true, then by attacking evolution, one is attacking the very work of God.

I Love the Taste of Love in the Morning

2009-02-27T15:35:00.000-06:00

More holistic societies are aware of the connection between morality and the body; of how our emotions and our logic are intertwined. Job speaks of tasting "bitterness of the soul", the Psalmist calls us to "taste and see that the Lord is good". In our society with it's Greek dualistic inheritance, we seek always to divide the sayings, and thus the physical can never have an impact on the spiritual. The best it can get is a symbolic representation, such as baptism and communion in most Protestantism. And this is not even symbolism in it's original sense, participating in the referent, but rather simply an icon- in the sense of those computer images on our screens.

Thus it is encouraging to come across a study indicating that the physical reaction to immorality is very similar to the physical reaction to bad taste. It is what one would expect, if there isn't a neat division between the spiritual and the physical. Our awareness of morality should develop from both our endocrine and our nervous systems. If there is an inherent morality out there, and it isn't merely arbitrary, then it should pervade all of creation, and not only our thought patterns.

But the authors of the study seem to have gone down some odd rabbit trails, in their attempt to argue that morality is not absolute but only defined by the individual or society. Their words use phrases like "the origins of morality", rather than merely the origins of our awareness of morality. Quite obviously, it can not be proved that morality is absolute- or at least, not in the space of a single blog post. But equally, it can not be proved that morality is not. And if so, the assumptions on morality and ethics should be clearly stated by the authors of a study of morality and ethics. This is especially true when such bias is so evident. For there is nothing inherent within the discovery - that our facial reaction to bad taste is eerily similar to our facial reaction to something morally disgusting - to suggest that it was our morality that was evolving, with those that were selected against unable to be aware of the negative consequences of poison, disease, and behavior that we today describe as immoral but previously was simply dangerous. It is equally likely that it was our response to morality that was evolving, as those who were selected against were those who did not realize the negative consequences of immoral behavior.

Indeed, the study authors, in their conclusions, are comparing apples and oranges. For them, poison and disease are all too real, and we develop a response to them. For them, morality is simply something that evolved, without an appeal to Plato's Perfect Forms, and our development was coming up with this marvelously marvel notion of morality.

But if anything, our notion of morality is precisely what did not evolve. Certainly our awareness of it did, but not the morality itself. For we have to only look around our world and quickly discover that it is those who are most unjust who advance. The race in this world is to the strong, the fast, and the lier. He who cheats wins, and seldom gets caught. Various notions of the evolutionary development of altruism are quite true, but they run against the stronger cord that not playing by the rules will more often lead to success. Were morality successful in evolutionary terms, we would not so often forget it, and yet still hold it as a goal. Were it merely an arbitrary idea and not inherent in the very reality of being, we would not so often forget it and yet still believe it should be followed. A couple of years ago we found that our close cousins, the chimpanzee, have gone on hunting parties with fashioned weapons, even killing other primates with them. Their actions are immoral when they attack their own species, if they were human, and had the awareness of good and evil. As it was, their actions were completely amoral (and not immoral)- but also horrifically successful.

To succeed, go out, and sin boldly. But recognize that that nagging feeling in the back of your mind comes from centuries of evolutionary development- the awareness that there is another reality, a moral reality. And when you breach it, it tastes a bit like MSG.

Going to Church Can Cause People to Kill

2009-02-23T23:57:00.000-06:00

A new study out of New York and BC suggests that the single greatest correlative factor between suicide bombings is regular attendance at religious gatherings. It is not devotion, or piety, or prayer, but participation in corporate worship. This was true for both Jews and Muslims. Among groups that lack traditions of suicide bombings, like Hindus and the three largest branches of Christianity, the same underlying principle was found- those who regularly attended places of worship were more likely to display parochial altruism- willingness to die for your group combined with a strong negative perception of "the other".

What am I to make of this study? Obviously, it is not accurate to say that when you attend a mosque or church you have to be concerned that someone in attendance is likely to blow themselves up or support others blowing themselves up, nor was this study suggesting that. Rather, it was stating that the best single indicator of this willingness or support was attendance at corporate worship.

There are so many questions, that remain unanswered, that we would need further study for. I want to know to what extent do good things result from this tendency, like feeding the poor. It is harder to have major social justice action when you are on your own. I'd like to know how this tendency to view the world as us vs. them, or to kill people by killing yourself, compares to membership in other corporate entities, like clubs, political groups, or the military. And I wonder to what extent this study is simply revealing one aspect of how we are more likely to get things accomplished, positive or negative, when we are part of a group. Perhaps it is that one can more easily get fired up for a cause, for good or bad, when you're part of a group- which kind of makes sense.

Perhaps the study reveals that a small subset of those who are more inclined to groups are more willing to get fanatical if they are part of a group, and those who are not inclined towards groups but are inclined towards violence, we call loners who go on shooting sprees in colleges. This could be particularly true when you consider the inherent biases towards individualism that scientists from Canada and the US would hold, as opposed to the group-think present in most of the world. Thus it may be the presuppositions of the scientists themselves that are expressed here, as individualistic Western societies tend to see less value in working with groups, and tend to fear any coherent group as a cult.

Perhaps more disturbing than the tendency to suicide oneself is the tendency to look down on other groups. It is one thing to be willing to die for your group, and perfectly understandable. It is a good thing to die for a cause greater than oneself, to do something far, far better than one has ever done before, to go to a place far, far better than one has ever known. In Christianity, it is to follow in the way of its founder, and to do it with love of one's enemies and murderers, without harming another- this is the way of true martyrdom.

But when this laudable attitude is combined with hatred or mere dislike of another group, it is a dangerous attitude indeed. It may therefore imply that any religion or group that does not have embedded in its very core a love for enemies - perhaps, if the Parable of the Good Samaritan is any indication, an even greater love for one's enemies than one's friends- is inherently dangerous. For such a belief system, that values one's group over that of the other, when combined with the power and motivation the group can create, is a dangerous entity in this world. Of such a way lies the Crusades, countless jihad, and every nationalism the world has berthed.

And perhaps we need to pay attention to the aspect of prayer. For the study juxtaposed those who prayed regularly (as a definition of fervor in religion), with those who regularly attended religious services. Thus those who pray regularly did not correlate with support for suicide bombers; attendance at the mosque regularly did. And perhaps for some, the rituals of corporate worship in any faith come to supplant the intimate, direct relationship in prayer, something possible individually or corporately. The study didn't measure the amount of non-ritualistic intimate prayer of those who do or do not attend public services. But it is this direct relationship with God that allows us to learn to depend on him, and to be able to forgive the insults and attacks of others, most notably by definition our enemies. It is this dependence that allows us to know God's love for us, and therefore to truly love the other with the love that God had for them before the world began.

Tales from the Lorax

2009-02-22T22:23:00.000-06:00

Long ago, it was told to us that the care for the land was intimately connected to the care for the other. How we treat another human can not be divorced with how we treat the environment. Saving the land is saving the poor; ending war is protecting nature itself. We see this in the call to the Year of Jubilee, in which the Israelites were called to depend on God by letting the land lie fallow every 7th year. Incidentally, this allowed the land to rejuvenate, and provided a fuller crop in subsequent years- a practice we now know as sound farming. This was a time connected with a restoration of justice, and a return to equity- a practice we now know as socialism. In other places the prophets command to not

add house to house
and join field to field
until there is no more room
and you alone are left in the land.

There was an awareness that greed can become unbounded, and lead to devastation. In a culture that was intensely corporate, so unlike our modern American individualistic society, the concept of being left alone was horrible indeed. It would come about because some had desired "modernity", cities and human construction, taking over nature, and acquiring more and more for themselves at the expense of the masses of the poor. And this was because, as far as we know, the Year of Jubilee was never applied, save perhaps once, under King Josiah. God's people ignored his teachings on equality, poverty, and the environment. And when people refused to give up their land, those with wealth and power would take by force what was not freely given, as predicted by the prophet Samuel.

Years later, another prophet, and more than a prophet, a leader in the Early Church, James, again tied in the concern for the poor with war and strife, as he pointed out that fighting comes from coveting, in turn coming from desiring with wrong motives- just before he has perhaps the strongest condemnation of the rich to be found in the Bible, whom he argues inherently gain their wealth on the backs of the oppressed, through exploitation and murder.

Now we find studies to back up these basic principles. Conservation International has recently found that most of the world's hotspots directly correlate with the areas of the greatest war and killing. Hotspots are places with extreme biodiversity and extreme endangerment- they have a disproportionate number of unique species, that are disproportionately likely to soon go extinct. 81% of major human conflicts in the last fifty years took place in these hotspots.

An intriguing corollary to this is the suggestion that perhaps we innately prefer the areas with greater diversity, hearkening back to something in our ancient, more natural roots before cities, and thus tend to fight over what we don't have, but all want. There may be an evolutionary mandate to desire these spots, but there is a Biblical warning for why we fight over them. Contrary to groups like the Quiverfull Movement, recently highlighted on NPR, the Biblical mandate is not simply to always have more children. For another aspect of I Isaiah's warning on adding land to land until there is no room left is that we can produce too much for the land to sustain- as has happened in the areas where species are most threatened, and the areas of greatest warfare on the planet. When this happens, we desire more for us, and our offspring, and those in our group, be that nationalism or religious bigotry. The easiest way to achieve this is by manipulating others to give us more, as James warns of. When that doesn't work, force of arms is often very convenient.

And the result of all this is always foremost the death of others: the troops of one's own country, the enemy, and the innocent civilians. This is always by far the greatest tragedy of war. But we now see, what we should have always seen, that warfare and murder also leads to the deaths of countless other species of animals and plants. And since we don't exist in a biological vacuum, but are intimately connected with the rest of the planet for our very emotional and physical survival, the continuation of war could lead directly to our own extermination as a species.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Unintelligent Designer

2009-02-15T00:46:00.000-06:00

Scientists have been able to create a model of what our Australopithecine ancestor's heads looked like- and in particular their jaws. They've found that our ancestor-cousins had much stronger jaws than we do.

I know everything is a trade-off. I know that if they had really strong jaws, then there was probably some detriment too. It's not like evolution dictates that things get better and better, but rather that every organism just gets continually adapted to changing environments. I still want those strong jaws that could crush large hard nuts.

I wish I didn't have lower back problems. But I know I must, as all humans do with age, because I walk on two legs. I know my back works better for a four-legged animal, but evolution works with the material it has. If I walked on four legs, then it's unlikely that I would have developed the intelligence I have to post blogs, for it is believed that intelligence was a byproduct of being able to see for greater distances and judge distance when standing on two legs in the savanna- not to mention the ability to use tools because my hands are freed from walking. If I had a narrower stance, then the vertebrate I have would work just fine on two legs, thank you. But then women would have a narrower stance. (Sure, women could have lower back problems only. But 1) that would be sad and unfair, and 2) evolution works with what it gets.) If women had a narrower stance, then they would be unable to fit our rather bulbous heads through the birth canal. If we had smaller heads, they could do it, on two legs, without back troubles. They could even have fewer birth pains, for they could keep us in longer, and allow us to develop further, as our head wouldn't be too large for the birth canal upon emergence. The trade-off of intelligence is so great, that our heads are not only too big to fit through a narrow birth canal, but we have to be born neotenously, born with fewer developed features than most animals, including other primates. That means we are dependent for post-natal development on our parents, to a ridiculous degree not seen in other mammals or primates.

If God is a smart God, could he have created us with all of these features? Could he have found a way to have us walk on two legs, be smart, give birth without pain, have short gestation periods, have short post-natal development, have working back bones without pain, and yes, most importantly, super strong jaws capable of crushing hard nuts? Yes, of this I have no doubt. The God I believe in could have done that all. So why didn't he? Why didn't he make us with bodies that work better than they do now, with cooler add-on features?

I have forced to conclude he is stupid. He made mistakes. If, that is, I believe he created using a snap-your-fingers-with-a-brilliant-flash-of-light style, like Q of Star Trek. And I just have trouble believing that a stupid God rules the cosmos. If however, I believe that God created using the process of evolution, then suddenly everything falls into place. Evolution is an incredibly beautiful and complex theory, and it would take the truly divine- and truly intelligent- to come up with such a process. And evolution doesn't create novel structures and processes; it works with the material it has, using work-arounds, to develop new features that are in truth new ways of using old features. And I have the confidence that one day, we will receive just such a body as here described, when we receive our new, fully physical bodies, made like Jesus' post-resurrection body, able to do far more than we can now imagine, where there will no longer be any pain or suffering.

So, the choice is: A smart God, using evolution, or a Literal Creationist God, who is rather stupid. You decide.

What's a half billion years among friends?

2009-02-05T22:31:00.000-06:00

This past week, astronomers found the closest extrasolar planet to the size of Earth. It's only twice as big as us, which is significant, because you need something about our size to develop life, and not simply life on an orbital moon. Unfortunately, it's also so close to it's star that its year is only twenty days, and therefore its surface temperature is a balmy 1000°C- so basically a planet of liquid magma. It doesn't matter at that temperature if you've got lots of water; no life is going to develop there.

But I started to think. It wasn't so long ago that our planet was of a similar temperature and composition. Well, 4.5 bya (billion years ago). I suppose that is a stretch of time. And we were able to cool off because there is such a great distance between us and our star; the planet CoRoT-Exo-7b doesn't have that option. (Yes, extrasolar astronomers have no imagination.) But if it did- if it were further out- it wouldn't be a planet so different than ours, give or take 4 billion years.

We think we are so special, because we have all this life, and advanced life forms to boot. And we are special. Even if life is found elsewhere, it's not everywhere, as our own solar system shows us. But that doesn't give us the right to symbolically lord it over other planets, anymore than we in America can look down at a fledgling democracy in Iraq, forgetting that our government in our first thirteen years collapsed because it was unworkable. Our planet went through great initial turmoil, with some 500 million years of magma and cooling down, before there could even be the beginnings of an inkling for life.

This is why I never think that life itself is all that amazing. Recently, I looked at some stromatolites so close I could reach and touch them. These are fossils of algal mats from 3.5 bya. That means, it took only half a billion years from molten lava to the first life forms. And since life is notoriously difficult to fossilize, life probably began significantly earlier than 3.5 bya- that's just the earliest date we have for fossils. It took another billion years to get anything with a nucleus in it. It took another 1.3 billion years before we could get anything multicellular. It was another 700 million years after that (500 mya) before we got the diversity of multicellular life and phyla that we have today, and then some. If we're looking at the time it takes, the development of life itself is actually the easiest thing in the world. It is getting something multicellular that's difficult, and even more difficult than that, a cell with a nucleus, guiding all the internal workings. The Intelligent Design advocates are barking up the wrong tree. I need no Designer, Intelligent or otherwise, to make life. That's the easy part. It's the development of a nucleus that's difficult. It's the instant creation of a multicellular organism that would be impressive. That is what I must conclude, in that evolution took so long to form them. Complexity is an inherent function of time and natural selection.

Saving Lives, One Stove at a Time

2009-01-29T15:15:00.000-06:00

We all know there is a grave problem in global warming and increased pollution. Stockholm University recently came out with a study that showed a large percentage - 66% - of the brown haze that constantly plagues South Asia and the Indian Ocean is caused by burning of wood and dung, and not coal and oil. Sadly, this pollution is not merely an inconvenience, but results in many deaths in the area. But what can we do about it?

I want to point you to another report, this time from NPR. The Onil Stove was created to save burns and dramatically increase efficiency. But it is also built with cheap materials, and the inventor, Don O'Neal, refused to make any money off it, giving the design away instead. This may well be the answer to helping the people of South Asia. Obviously, they need to continue to use fuel for cooking and cold winter nights. The use of the stove will allow them to meet these needs, while saving lives throughout the area through reduced pollution.

But though the stoves are cheap, in many areas of the world, they run some twenty times daily family income. So please go to Helps International, and donate there for the Onil Stove. And tell them that you want them to expand. Currently, the Onil Stove is only available in parts of Latin America, as Helps only does its very good work in that area of the world. Your voice, and your donation, can encourage Helps to expand into India, and alleviate the pollution and deaths in South Asia.

"Lord, I believe; help me produce more oxycotin."

2009-01-21T17:17:00.000-06:00

Yes, it's been almost two years, that I've let this blog lie. There seemed to be waning reader interest at the time, but I've noticed more comments of late. And I've felt the muse as well, so I am returning to post, on occasion, my musings on the interaction between science and faith.

Recently, World Science published a summary of research on trust in dogs. It's been discovered how "puppy dog eyes" work. The expression in a dog, or anyone else, produces oxytocin, the "trust hormone". If your dog does something bad, and you look at him when he's got that sad gaze, you are more likely to forgive him. His expression has changed the chemistry in your brain, causing you to trust him, and decide that your dog didn't mean it. If you do not look at your dog when he has this expression, then the chemical is not produced in your brain.

Rather intriguing on its own. But I wanted to look at the results for this in terms of trust and faith in God. Obviously, God doesn't provide us with an expression that we can see. But the hormone can be produced in other ways- the key is, the hormone is associated with trust. We know that now, faith is being sure of what you hope for, and certain of what you do not see. Faith is quite clearly a form of trust.

And yet, without faith it is impossible to please God. Not because he's out to come up with arbitrary rules, but rather that he desires the best for us, and knows we will be most joyful if we rely on him, if we trust that he is out for us- which is what faith is in the simplest terms. Happily, even when I lack it, God is still there. If I deny him, he will deny me. But if I am faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot deny himself. Even when I lack faith, he is still there for me.

But now we learn that trust- and therefore faith- is something chemically determined. This is not to negate our responsibility, but rather to say that it is something which, to a degree, we have no control over. In truth, it is nothing new to know that hormones influence our emotions. But faith seems to be something so much more than an emotion. And yet, I must rely on my oxycotin levels in order to fully have it.

Perhaps this is the reason for the prayer of the father with the possessed son, a prayer echoed down through the ages, in the masses of the faithful, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief." There is a level that we can believe to. But not on our own. Even that is beyond us, without help. We must have faith - trusting in God to help - even to get more faith. And now we know what we are asking for.

And so, please pray with me now: "Lord, I believe; help me produce more oxycotin."

There's a Hole in my Ocean, Dear Darlin, Dear Darlin

2007-03-08T18:59:00.000-06:00

I just can't stop writing. This week's list of articles just had too many provocatively juicy tid-bits. One of the articles mentioned a giant hole in the Earth's crust, under the ocean, in the middle of the Atlantic. When we say large hole, we mean 1000s of square kilometers.

This is heady stuff. This is huge. The crust is oceanic and continental crust, and the continental crust is thicker, and lighter, and so rides higher than the oceanic crust. The crust covers the entire planet, and covers over the mantle. When it doesn't, we get volcanoes. The volcanoes come from a hole opening up a few square feet in size.

We have no idea what's going on here. We're investigating now, but it's completely new. And this is wonderful. It is not only about my favorite area of science, the ocean- it's a testament to the best of science. We don't know a lot. We want to know more. Science is about discovery, and curiosity, and knowing more, and recognizing that we don't know everything- and hopefully never will.

At the moment we know very little about this gigantic gash. It's hard to know how it fits into current Plate Tectonic theory. There is an incredibly remote possibility that it doesn't fit with Plate Tectonics, and the theory would have to be substantially reformatted. Likely we'll have to figure out how it fits in, and this will lead to some significant advances in Plate Tectonics and our understanding of the Earth's crust. Either way, the scientific method is open to experiencing the new, and going where the evidence leads. It is in this that science has it's glory. For in science, something is true until it is proven false- and there always remains that possibility that even the greatest of our theories will one day be overturned.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

2007-03-07T01:26:00.000-06:00

As hinted at, the last downloads from World Science were just too juicy not to post more than one response. So let us consider how finding that God is angry makes us angry- it causes us to sin.

I sent in an unposted letter to World Science, complaining about the nature of this study, and a number of errors. The study authors seemed to be rather uninformed of the Bible in their own right, thinking this passage was a parable (as if that genre was invented at that point in time) rather than part of the historical genre. They used what they claimed was an obscure passage, the end of Judges. It is horrific, for certain. But if you study the Bible at all, hardly obscure. They had students from BYU and secular Amsterdam read the passage, and half of each group read an addition saying God had sanctioned the violence. Half of each of those groups were also told that the passage was from the Bible, and the other half that it was a newly unearthed manuscript. Then they had them blast noise at another. Those that had religious background, thought the story came from the Bible, or thought God had encouraged the violence, all were more aggressive with the noisemaking.

Some of these results may be flawed because of the errors in the study, such as BYU students potentially being more aware of what the authors of the study think is an obscure passage, and therefore knowing the passage comes from the Bible even though they are told it was a new manuscript. It would be interesting were this study attempted among Christians, or Quakers for that matter, as the Mormons are arguably a religion that focuses less on grace and pacifism. Additionally, of course, LDS values the Book of Mormon much higher than the Bible- a book that is filled with a great deal of violence- the same as the Old Testament.

But for all these caveats, I think there are still some valuable lessons we can pull out here. You become that which you dwell on. It is possible to focus on the God of wrath, and on the Old Testament, at the expense of the New, and of Grace. We've all been in churches like that; the lucky ones have only visited. I'm not one of the lucky ones. And what I've noticed is that, those churches that focus on the Old Testament over the New, do have a greater propensity to aggressive interactions with adults, and corporal punishment towards children. Nothing scientific in this; just my experience.

But of course, the God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament. God is working the same way at all times, but in different cultures, and within the Schoolhouse of Faith, building humans up to a point where they can accept Christ, working in them to the extent that they can understand, in the way each culture can understand. So then, how do we explain this passage?

One wonders if the author of the study included the last line. After multiple genocides, ethnic cleansings, and rapes, it says, "In those days there is no king in Israel; each did that which is right in his own eyes." Text must always be read in context- cultural and that of the text itself. The authors of the text clearly don't condone what has happened, but blame it on the lack of a king. Read in the context of the book shortly following, Samuel, one comes to understand that they refuse to have God as their king. (While each book stands alone, I'm referring here to the Hebrew understanding of theology once the books are both part of cannon.) So when we read the passage, we come to understand that this is the state of humanity, when we are not lead by God.

It is often stated that violence on TV and in the movies will lead people to be more violent. I agree with that, but this study might suggest something different. That violence in the movies is only going to be most prescriptive if we treat what is happening there as coming from an authority. Now it may well be that many see Arnold Schwarzenegger as an authority (even outside the State of California). But it is possible that shows like 24 and Alias aren't near as harmful as the Left Behind series, for such a film combines violence with God, the ultimate authority figure, and posits that He is behind some of this violence. (Indeed, there is a large wing of the Church that believes that God will bring on the End Times with violence, and even a segment of that wing that believes that Christians should hasten that coming with violence of their own. And thus we have blind American support for Israel.) When God is behind the violence, we begin to believe that we can be behind it to.

This study suggests also that there is a larger problem than that of the movies. Even when we are reading a text, if it is an authority that is coming out and advocating violence, or if we see that as such, we tend to turn to violence. Thus it becomes incumbent on us to teach Truth from the pulpit. This passage, as awful it is, and surely it is the most awful in the Bible, needs to be taught, and from the pulpit. For if people were understanding the true message of the passage, they would not be lead astray into thinking that there is a God who advocates this kind of thing. Passages of Christ's love of enemies and giving up His life for His enemies need to be taught as well. And overall, contemplating God's great love for us- for all of us, each one of us. What is taught to the flock will be put out by the flock. What a great responsibility is on those who would presume to be teachers.

Every Death is Remembered

2007-03-05T02:12:00.000-06:00

This week is regrowing spinal tissue; a strange new gash in the seafloor; how red makes us do poorly on tests; believing in an angry God makes angry people; a pandemic currently among bees in America; and the giant particle smasher which is the center of our galaxy. While admittedly the angry God motif is intriguing and perhaps one I'll need to return to, I've decided to focus instead on cosmic death rays.

My thoughts these past few weeks have been greatly informed by Keith Miller's Perspectives on an Evolving Creation. It is nearly axiomatic that death is part of our religion, probably more so than any other. Without the presence of death, the cross is meaningless. Somehow, and theologians get to argue how ad nausea, the voluntary undeserved suffering and death of one man allowed me to have life, and have it abundantly.

I've been reflecting on how this isn't really a new idea. His death brought forth life par excellent, yes, but the foundation for it was present long before. Everywhere we look in creation, death brings life. It is only by the death of millions of microbes that I can live, or the death of a few big oxen that end up on my plate. Cells had to die in order for me to first form in my mother's womb. Because of limited resources only a certain number of organisms can survive in any particular environment. As some die, others are able to develop into the new spaces, and develop into new ways. Jesus referred to this idea when he said that "unless a seed falls to the ground and dies it can not produce life". He calls us all to give up the old man or woman, to pick up our crosses, and follow Him. I think God set up the principle for the last few billion years, that it would be abundantly clear in every area of life, so that we could finally embrace the soteriology that Christ's ultimate death brings ultimate life.

Then today I read of a new type of gamma ray bursts, greater and therefore more deadly than anything else seen before. It is hypothesized that they could completely wipe out even the most hardy life if they occur close enough to a planet with life on it. And we can see the bursts at least daily somewhere in space.

What kind of God does this? What kind of God incorporates cosmic death rays into His creation, and death into the basic processes of life?

I don't know. I'm not going to try to answer all of the problem of pain here. But I think part of it is that there is something in the very nature of things that allows for life to come from death; that sees the value in death for providing a new formulation and a new creation. This is the mystery of the cross- a good man could die, and so save everyone else, conquering death.

But there is a another mystery here. Another hypothesis is that one of these gamma bursts actually did hit our planet, back in a time period called the Ordovician, 450 million years ago. It was the third biggest mass extinction in our planet's history. (We're currently going through the largest.) It had nothing really directly to do with us humans, the pinnacle of creation. Most of us don't know anything about this extinction, or all these amazing and diverse creatures that once lived at that time, on the land and the seas.

But God does. And I think that's the point. He is aware of all of His creation. He knows if a sparrow falls to the ground and dies. He cares if it dies from falling, or from cosmic rays. He cares about a trilobite dying 450 million years ago- however it died. He is the Great Empathizer, feeling with the pain of all of His creation.

Laurie Bratten points out in Perspectives that this creation is made for God, not for us. Yes, as far as His creation goes, we're pretty special. But we're not everything. Babel should have taught us that. (Although it didn't.) As God tells Job, "Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no man lives, a desert with no one in it, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass?" He is aware of every aspect of creation, and intimately involved in it- whether or not we are aware of it now, or ever will be. He knows what happens to the trilobite, and orchestrates the ecology of a sea long dead and disappeared, before we ever came on the scene. There's something humbling in that- that there is so much out there that we as humans will never know, for His creation is just too vast. It is not made for us, but rather for His glory.

When I think on what He has made, and all the years of work He has put into it, I worship my Creator. None can compare to Him, none can even begin to approach the richness of his awesome power and imagination. He has made a universe, and it exists in simple monument to His glory.

War Dance, It's a Sin

2007-02-22T23:47:00.000-06:00

According to World Science, playing video games makes for good surgeons (which we already knew from watching Scrubs); archaeologists are rethinking how important the Clovis people were in Native American history; birds plan what they're going to eat (or at least scrubs do); and there's a new genetic link to autism (again). Oh, and we found some wild chimps who came up with the idea on their own of making and using spears to hunt other animals.

That's kind of big, actually. It used to be we were the only ones who made plans as a species (those scrub jays proved us wrong there). It used to be we were the only ones who built homes (bowerbirds). We were the only ones who used language- except for animals too numerous to mention. But at least, please God, we are the only ones who develop our own weapons of warfare? Please, at least we are unique in this respect?

No, looks like others can do this too. Pan troglodytes has been found doing the nasty, finding new and inventive ways to kill others. They appear to have figured this out without any human help (although room must be given for the possibility of them observing humans). This particular tribe of chimps cuts off branches, sharpens them with their teeth, and then goes on hunting parties, which are at least occasionally successful, having killed a bushbaby, a relative of the chimp. They don't just go after rats or pigs, they even attack their own relatives. Just like us. Next thing you'll know they'll be writing their own blogs.

The article discusses how this has far-reaching implication for how we understand our own evolution. Tool use has been thought to be limited to the genus Homo, based on archeological evidence. But if Pongidae can use tools, then perhaps tool use was far earlier, with Australopithecus. After all, all fossil evidence is very limited, and tells an incomplete story. Additionally this particular chimp tribe was composed primarily of adolescent and young adult spear-hunters, whereas most chimp hunters are older adults, bolstering the idea that innovative ideas are learned quicker by the younger generations. And the spear-hunters are mixed gender, unlike most chimp hunters who are exclusively male, indicating that perhaps the first tool inventors were of both genders, as other evidence also indicates.

But besides this being a blow to our ego in uniqueness, this discovery also might have something to say about the nature of evil and warfare. In the Genesis myth the humans are cast out of the garden for eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It had a long name, and justifiably so. But we usually truncate that name, wanting to call it the Tree of Evil. I think there is a valuable point in the long name. It was when we humans were able to distinguish good and evil, as God makes a point of later in the story, that we also were capable of sin. And the ability to distinguish good and evil requires a certain higher reasoning, a certain cognitive development. To know that this or that action is absolutely wrong, or absolutely right, means I have to have a certain level of thought. Before that point, the action is morally neutral.

It might be argued that a dog knows if it's done something wrong. But the dog knows it's master believes something is wrong, or right, and learns to internalize that. Don't eat the master's children. That's bad. Doesn't matter that my wolf ancestors might have done that, if I do it, I don't get food, I sleep outside, or I get killed. It learns new rules. But the dog is simply incapable of understanding the more abstract notion of an absolute right or wrong.

If I lack a certain level of thought, I can plop my children in another live being and have them eat that other being alive as much as I want. I am not sinning. I simply don't know right from wrong. I can have sex with my sister while still inside the womb, and then die, and my children do this over and over again. It's not wrong- there's no brain, and certainly no higher thought involved.

But the moment I reach that point, that magical level of thought, be that in the Upper Neolithic, or the beginnings of Homo sapiens, or when Hominidae first arrived on the scene- whenever that happened- I knew good from evil. The moment we were this aware, we sinned. Sadly, simply on this level of reality, intelligence could not be divorced from sin. For we were aware of the difference between the two, and we always end up choosing, at some point, no matter how insignificant, sin. We choose to miss the mark and turn from God and good.

The chimpanzees invented spears. They're hunting another species, but another primate. In all the millenia of chimpanzee evolution, odds are they've done this before, if they came up with the idea now. It's not necessarily a new idea with humans. The chimpanzee might use the new invention on each other, as we once did. After all, there are attacks and infanticide and matricide and all kinds of killing among wild chimpanzees- including clan warfare. Spears would just give an edge. But there is a difference. When we do it, we know good from evil, even if we've forgotten. When we invent gigantic spears that can fly across the Atlantic and impale hundreds of thousands in a single flash, we know what the evil is, and what the good would be. The chimpanzees don't. They operate out of forethought, and a certain degree of intelligence, but they have not learned the difference between good and evil. Likely the ability to invent spears was there before we reached this cognitive development point. Likely we even invented spears and attacked other clans with them. But at the point when we first learned enough to know good and evil, we also learned it was wrong, and it became wrong.

And likely the same moment when we could reason well enough, when we reached the ability to sin, is when we also were designated in the image of God, capable of fully cognitively worshipping the Creator.

The Wonder of Growth

2007-02-16T20:52:00.000-06:00

World Science has posted new articles on: a seed vault to protect genetic diversity in the future; parent's don't realize how heavy their kids are; origami has some really cool mathematical properties; naps cut heart disease; pot helps reduce pain if you have AIDS; and how Cleopatra was ugly.

We may well have found the youngest star ever. There in the midst of the famed gases of the Eagle Nebula, so well publicized through the Hubble Telescope, in the Pillars of Creation, is a bit of gas and dust dense enough to be a protostar, and probably very similar to what our sun was like.

Some have argued that God created the world, the universe, everything, in seven days. Others say He did it all long ago, over millions of years, or that He does it repeatedly, when something is just too irreducibly complex and He needs to step in. I guess I'm just not interested in that kind of god. A god who started everything, made everything, and then stepped back. My experience is with a God who is so intimately tied into His creation that He is present everywhere within it. He is so close to it that He breathes part of His Spirit into a portion of it.

To argue that He started everything off and then stepped back, even if only 6,000 years ago, strikes me as just...incomplete. Even saying He still sustains creation isn't enough. The main thrust of His act died, as if stillborn on the table. It lacks panache, finesse, a hope of wonder, the excitement of a truly new thing. I want a God who does something new- rivers in the solitude that eventually cut canyons from the mountains.

How much more exciting to think that He is out there still, forming new stars! Oh, certainly through the path of stellar evolution (not at all related to biological evolution, except as a platform), via the actions of gravity and randomness. And yet, present through it all, for in Him, the stars live and move and have their being. Perhaps He started it all off, and set it all up, so that it worked and meshed perfectly. I don't mean that all of the universe is perfect- but rather that the processes are wondrous. The concept of continuous change, of life and death, of building and destroying- who could imagine it?

And if He started it all off, does that negate His intimate presence? Does that diminish Him? I think rather it increases His glory, that He doesn't need to step in at every moment (or every few thousand years for the IDists), to tweak some bit that's wandered off in the wrong direction.

This also in no way denies His presence in the miraculous, where He interjects Himself for our sake to show some manifestation of the numinous. Whether or not that type of interjection was predetermined or concurrent with our reality is rather immaterial, for a Being outside of time.

What that stellar evolution lacks in DNA intricacy it makes up for in grandeur. It is certainly possible to look into the Heavens and deny there is a God. Ontological proof isn't the point. Rather it is simple worship. Here is One who revels in His creative acts, continuing them for the pure joy of it.

The God I follow dwelt among us for awhile, then dying and rising again. The myth of the dying God takes on new flesh in Christianity, and is central to the story, recapitulated continually throughout the life of the early church. Death brings life. There is value in undeserved suffering. Not that it is good, in any way. But rather that the Creator comes alongside His creation, and suffers with them. And in the process affirms the age-old myth of death and rebirth.

In stellar evolution, this is present, too. Stars go nova, becoming nebula, from whence new stars are born. There in the Eagle Nebula new stars are born. And research in January indicates that six thousand years ago the Pillars of Creation were destroyed by supernovae. It is hoped that some of these protostars remain. We'll find out in about a thousand years. But the cycle of birth and death will continue regardless. As will the wonders of a continuously changing creation.

It's only appropriate to follow tradition- let the woman make the first move.

2007-02-10T15:55:00.000-06:00

Well, World Science has a wide variety of research posted this week. Some cichlids use logic to determine who is the weaker fish in a fish fight, and then hang out with the weaker. Other cichlids have sex with their sisters, possibly to increase parenting skills. There's possibly a rejuvenation pill out there, new ideas on the operation of cosmic blasts 100 billion times stronger than our sun, and a new collider in the works. Action video games help visual acuity more than Tetris, Global Warming is bad, and we're a step closer to understanding how drugs cause hallucinations.

I'm interested in waxing a bit anthropological today though, looking at the African island of Orango, part of Guinea-Bissau. There the women chooses her husband by placing a specially prepared dish of fish in front of him, and he has no right to refuse. Then the woman has four months to build their home, at which point they are officially married. The article is looking at the cultural transition the society is going through, as modern ideas begin to creep in through work off-island- like the idea that the man should initiate.

This has led to some conflict, with different individuals choosing the traditional role and others choosing the modern way. But what I found most horrifying was the introduction of Christian missionary ideas into the equation. Don't get me wrong- got nothing against Christianity, or the right of a religion to share it's ideas. But its the form that this particular sharing is taking that is disturbing.

Christianity has a long and honorable history of sharing about it's ideas, while maintaining cultural purity in every way possible. For instance, the first great female evangelist, Nina, tried very carefully to honor the culture of 4th century Georgia, while sharing about Jesus. At the same time Christians have fought against certain elements of the culture, like the setti practice of India.

But in more recent centuries there developed the missionary practice of ignoring culture if it didn't fit with the particular religious interpretations of the missionaries. Thus the Hawaiians were told to clothe, stop the hula, and restrict their sexual activity, all in the name of a propriety that exists nowhere explicitly in the Bible. Or schools attempted to conflation their country of origin with the culture of the Gospel, believing that the people they were reaching out to needed to become more Western or European or American in order to become more Christian. At times there is a clear moral guideline that needs changing (don't burn women while they're still alive); at other times it's an issue of humility, recognizing that God could speak to different cultures in different ways.

There have been a rash of books in the last couple decades, like Elizabeth Elliot's Passion and Purity or Josh Harris' I Kissed Dating Goodbye, that argue that a woman is told by the Bible and God to be a wallflower, and to wait for the man to act. She must be passive, and he is active. This is simply ordained in the ways of nature, and God. Let's move beyond that this is selective quote mining and proof texts, seeking to simply confirm dominant cultural values. Let's move beyond the ignoring of Song of Songs ("my breasts are as towers") or Ruth (feet were usually a euphemism for another body part in ancient Hebrew culture). It also completely ignores the many strong women of the ancient church, like Junia, the apostle mentioned at the end of Romans. Pederson does an excellent job in her book pointing out the strong feminism of Jesus, Paul, and the early Church, encouraging women in the role as leaders. Sadly a few centuries later this is all erased through misogynist Church Fathers.

Now the missionaries on this island are telling the women it is wrong for them to initiate in relationships. That Jesus is against it. That if they are to be Christian, they have to let the man lead.

I've got nothing against individual women deciding that a man should initiate. In some cultures, this may be more appropriate. But for someone to misuse Jesus and the Bible to argue that this is in the very nature of things is highly inappropriate. This inappropriateness just heightens in intensity when people of another culture are told to change their ways, rather than allow women to initiate and lead.

Whenever we enter a culture, we bring in changes. Most often in the case of the modern West, these are technological changes (and MTV). It becomes incumbent therefore for the guest in a culture to be very careful of the changes they bring. Are these changes truly necessary? Are we truly improving the quality of life of those we are trying to love? I say to these missionaries, that the people of Orango appear to know more about the teachings of Christ and the apostles than you. Sadly by the time the Orango have the technology to be able to read this blog, they will likely also have been thoroughly influenced by the modern ideas of female submission.

Beware Roving Packs of Rat Sperm

2007-02-02T17:01:00.000-06:00

This week's World Science download was replete with wonders. You might have seen this on the evening news, but we found the probable village of the creators of Stonehedge. Scientists are urging robots to dig deeper for life on Mars, as it's more likely to be found where exposure to radiation hasn't damaged spores over the last billion years. Vomiting is found to be the most horrible sound (but in a horribly flawed study of online users self-evaluating what sounds they dislike the most). Gastric cancer probably killed Napoleon. And really cool- an early dinosaur probably didn't fly like a dragonfly, but rather like a biplane- with four wings!

And packs of rat sperm might work together to compete against sperm from other males. That's just a beautiful sentence. Because mice and rats reproduce so much, often more than one male's sperm can be found in the vaginal canal of the female. And because their sperm have a hook on the head they can link up together in giant balls, which allows them to swim faster and stronger. Then one individual spermatozoa in the sperm ball will reach the egg first, and his brother sperm die off, sacrificing themselves for the sake of their brother, and winning against the sperm of another male rat.

Altruism is always a sticky point for evolution. If the foundation is that you compete to carry on your genes, then why sacrifice your life for another? If there is a sacrifice, then often we try to find out why, explaining it away as trying to continue on your genes. So every ant in a colony is more closely related to it's sister ant than to the queen, and so they are more likely to fight to defend each other, as that will carry on their genes.

Is altruism really so amazing though? In most cases, in the animal kingdom and among humans, altruism occurs firstly to those within your family, and then to those further afield. It is almost always only expressed towards one's own species. In the case of humans, there is the added dimension of a mind, capable of reformatting the definition of family to include those in a community, the entire species, or even those like dogs and cats, of other species.

Lions therefore have been known to sacrifice their opportunities to reproduce for the sake of others in their pride. But again, they are at least distantly related to those in the pride (and usually as close as brother and sister), allowing for part of their genes to continue. But is it really so surprising that an evolutionary mechanism could have developed to continue on offspring that are not directly your own? Imagine for a moment where a mother produces offspring that are inherently sterile, but who assist the reproductively viable offspring. Would not the viable offspring be more likely to live, thereby continuing on the genes to produce some offspring that are viable, and some that are sterile?

For a long time biology has been focused on competition- and rightfully so. But what about the amount of cooperation that also occurs? Could not this also be guided by evolutionary mechanisms of natural selection? Joan Roughgarden asks these questions in Evolution and Christian Faith, an excellent look at the relationships between Christianity and evolution. He suggests that evolution is indeed an imperfect theory (as all scientists would agree), but that it could be drastically improved by focusing on cooperation.

Would it be heretical to say that perhaps biology has been too masculine in orientation? Of course there is no way to state how men and women are- we can only speak in generalizations. But science has long been a strongly male domain. I found in my experience the only exception to that was in marine biology. Although a generalization, it does seem many psychological studies indicate that human males like to compete. And although there are certainly exceptions, and new studies have been looking at the prevelance of female bullies, it does seem like human females tend towards cooperation. Could it be that scientists have simply ignored data because of a general predeliction towards certain values? It wouldn't be the first time. Those of us who are racist saw the data indicating that whites were superior, because we wanted it to be there, ignoring contrary data that didn't fit with our desires. Lynn Margulis was finally able to prove that mitochondira developed from endosymbiosis, a cooperation between two very different species- but she had to fight for years before she was accepted, and for a long time was laughed at in the biology world for the idea that organisms could cooperate like that.

Dr. Roughgarden points out that one of the biggest reasons Literal Creationists have a knee-jerk reaction to evolution is because of the idea of competition, in that it goes so much against the grain of Christ's teachings. And indeed it does, unless we expand and redefine genetic similarity to all those within the Church, and all humans. We certainly wouldn't want to change biological facts to fit the belief systems of a particular religion. But what if there actually is more of a fit than we normally credit? What if, in addition to competition, cooperation also rules the biological world? Our own bodies not only harbor numerous parasites, but also symbiotic bacteria. Again, the very mitochondria of our cells were once separate prokaryotes. However multicellularity arose, it involved the merging of various cells. Today the cells of our bodies cooperate with each other. When they don't, we have a word for it. We call it cancer.

These rat cells may be only a more overt demonstration of how individuals work together. It may be that the ethic of evolution involves not only "red in blood, tooth and claw", but also profound cooperation, and self-sacrifice. If so, the research has only begun.

We learn in Sesame Street the value of cooperation. We also learn that in the nature of God, who has always been eternal Love. Love requires a lover and a lovee, and we see the explanation of this in the doctrine of the Trinity, wherein God loved the other of Himself for all preternity. He taught us the value of this through community in the early Church, where all gave up what they had and shared it in common, so no one was in need- but everyone had houses, lands, brothers, and sisters 100-fold. In the same way I grew up with limited private property, sharing all in common with 80 others, and with 20 houses and cars and countless brothers and sisters. Self-sacrifice through cooperation is an enduring ethic of God. And it would seem that He placed at least some of the ethic within His creation, even down to the level of rat spermatozoa.

The last shall be first.

2007-01-22T01:20:00.000-06:00

Ducks will negotiate over how much they help each other in parenting. Scientists find the area of the brain that is responsible for altruism. Rare black diamonds may come from outer space. The earliest records of Homo sapiens sapiens in Europe have been found, near Moscow, 45,000 years ago, with the earliest sculptures, in the form of small heads.

And winning the Nobel Prize adds two years to your life. They were able to determine that the money was statistically irrelevant. It's the social status that's gained that extends the lifespan- but scientists aren't sure what the mechanism is.

This brings up some intriguing questions. What is status? Does the social status need to be in the eyes of society, or in the eyes of the individual? Is the gain in life from the undeterminable perks from everyone looking up to you? Or is it from the well-being that you feel as holistic being, knowing that you are valued? Or perhaps from the well-being you feel in valuing yourself?

The determination of status will very from culture to culture, and within cultures. If this is true, the Masai with the most cows will live the longest. (But you'd have to do that study separating out the economic value of the cows.) What if status is determined by how simple your lifestyle is? An Indian Guru has high status in part because he is an asthetic. When I was growing up we valued the person who could go procuring the best (dumpster-diving).

We used to play a game when I was a child and we were standing in line. We'd all try to be in the last person in the line. We'd heard that Jesus had said "The last shall be first, and the first last." In our primitive understanding of that we'd try to be the last in line, and playfully make fun of the person who was in front, because they'd get to go to Heaven last. As kids we didn't really understand the meaning of the passage, but there is a basic point there. If you're following the ethics of Jesus, then status doesn't really matter. You shouldn't be figuring out if you'll be sitting at the right hand of Jesus, or even Alfred Nobel. You should strive to be the last, to take the worst seat, and be like Jesus, with no place to lay your head and without wealth. In doing this, you'll be offered the best seats, and be first in Heaven and the Kingdom of God. So if a society has this standard of social standing, does that mean the poor and debased would live an extra two years?

No, because part of that debasement is for the left hand not to know what the right hand is doing. To say your prayers in private to avoid the honor associated with prayers, and to give in private so your reward will be in Heaven, and not here on Earth. Were status to be gained in the doing of these deeds, they would no longer be following the Way. If status were given for being poor, the Poor would quickly cease to be so. Two years might be gained for the attempt, but it's hardly the original call.

Here's the deal. Jesus' path wasn't a call to social advancement. But it wasn't even a call to a good life. It was a call to a hard life, with a lot of suffering. He told everyone to pick up their electric diodes, apply jelly to their skin, and sit down in the chair to be electrocuted. (Modern translation.) It is a call to expect death, and indeed to welcome it for the Joy of seeing the Lord and serving Him. It is being willing to die. It is therefore completely contrary to that evolutionary call that runs through all of us to reproduce and live as long as possible to reproduce as much as possible. It is perhaps akin to those Australian Redback Spiders, wear the male says to the female, "Take, eat, this is my body," and jumps into her jaws. But he does this in order to have a better position for mating. We're called to jump into the jaws of our oppressors as our Lord did, with no hope or expectation of improved mating.

Evolutionary paradaigms are descriptive, but there is nothing in them that must be prescriptive. And I increasingly believe that the Christian moral paradaigm is to negate evolutionary drives. It is not as if God made a mistake when he set up the paradaigm of natural selection. But creatures aware of good and evil as we are have a different set of standards. The female Australian Redback Spider is not committing any sin when she feeds off her mate to feed their new children.

Different societies have different standards. Most societies seek to elevate themselves in order to gain status, power, and wealth. Is it any wonder then that the scientists chose to do their study of status and longetivity on Nobel Prize winners?

A New Old Thing

2007-01-10T18:44:00.000-06:00

How cell division leads to assymetry in the body. Superstrings helping with The Theory of Everything. The first stars might have been SuperGiants. Nightmares and suicide are linked (and women have more nightmares than men). We found the part of the brain that lets us envision ourselves in the future, and it appears to be linked to the envisioning of the past. (I think my future lobe is pretty enhanced, from the amount of time I spend daydreaming impossible possibilities.) A particularly interesting study that allows scientists to now completely say whether or not someone will buy a product: if the area in the brain devoted to wanting an object wins out on the area feeling the pain of paying money. Interesting because it's a branch hypothesis off this suggests that people buy more with credit cards because it's painless- deferred payment and abstract payment means our brains don't comprehend the real pain of buying.

It would appear that Ithaca, the island of Ulysses in the Odyssey, is a bit mysterious. There's a modern island by that name, but according to the Odyssey Ithaca is the Westernmost island of the Ionian chain- modern Ithaca doesn't fit this. But the Westernmost island is far too big to fit the Odyssey description. However, the Western tip of this island, Kefalonia, has a peninsula, connected to the main portion of the island by a narrow isthmus. A 122 m borehole hit no bedrock, but only loose sediment, leading to the beginnings of an idea that the isthmus was filled in by landslides over the intervening 3,000 years.

It has long been believed that Homer's Ithaca was modern Ithaca. Although it is axiomatic that what we believe to be true can turn out to be false later, I find this to be particularly true in post-dictional science, anthropology and archeology. Our dearest held beliefs of the way things were, the way things must be, get overturned with time, as we learn new things about the way it truly was.

This isn't always true. The book of Daniel is controversial as it has indications of a later writing in the Inter-Testemental Period, yet it has strong indications of an earlier writing as well. It refers to items that were known at the presumptive time of writing, yet forgotten for millenia, only to be rediscovered in the modern era. What we thought was true was claimed to be overturned, and then reversed again as some pointed out the historical awareness.

Yet very often the old understandings need tweaking at least. As we learn more about the nature of myth and discover there is no indications of a worldwide flood, the Noahaic Flood ceases to make sence, except as a localized event featuring the breaking of the Bosphorus. Christianity and Judaism are no longer as unique as we begin to discover our immense debt to Zorastrian concepts like Heaven, an afterlife, satan, and cosmic dualism. As I read The Quest for the Historical Muhammed I learn that our long held assumptions about Islam might not hold water- like that the Hadith might have no accuracy at all, the Qur'an might have been written 2 centuries after it's presumptive writing, and Mohammed (pbuh) might not even exist. Obviously these are far-ranging thoughts, and I don't agree with all of them. But it represents the nascent attempt to apply historical criticism to Islam, something long done on Christianity (and often used in Islamic apologetics).

The Odyssey took place so long ago, it seems it represents both sides of this conflict. Like the flood, we are now learning our long-held assumptions on the place of Ithaca were incorrect. Yet, like Daniel, we are finding that the original writing was more correct then we long thought. Homer didn't err (in this case)- he wrote of a real place, and accurately described it.

It is indeed hard to parse the mysts of time. It requires painstaking research, brushstroke by brushstroke. And it requires a suspension of belief. A belief that my holy traditions are always right, or my interpretations of them, will obscure the truth behind those traditions. And a belief that my modern science has discovered everything, or is somehow superior to the knowledge of the Ancients, will also suspend the march towards true understanding. It would seem that the path of humility, the willingness to admit that we might be wrong, and the embrace of adaptability and change are the only sure ways of reaching the truth. It is like the old Shaker spiritual is correct path: To turn, turn, will be our delight, till by turning, turning, we come round right.

A Bird in the Fist

2007-01-02T19:31:00.000-06:00

Nothing really grabbed my attention this time around. But I remain committed to the Method. So, World Science posted articles on the diversity of comet dust; Bush's rather surprising decision to label the polar bear as endangered, meaning that oil drilling could be curtailed in the Arctic areas because of global warming, rat dreams, a hormone that increases trust and mind reading, and the one I was thinking on, how we (mammals) might have flown before birds.

Turns out the article is talking about gliding more than flying, and the animal looks suspiciously like a squirrel (but it's in a different order), so I guess I don't feel the shivers down my spine upon reading this. But it's interesting to note how important it is for us. That no matter what the outcome or meaning of the article, it grabs the attention because it's a mammal. We tend to be quite biased in this matter- something Stephen Jay Gould (pbuh) often pointed out. Anything mammalian, or remotely mammalian, gets higher focus and interest. This is certainly true in the popular press and imagination, but even creeps into scientific journals. I suppose this should be no suprise, as the money for scientific research has to come from somewhere, and that's usually not scientists. But also, most scientists tend to be mammals. We care more about those that are similar to us. We care to such a great extent we even extend that maxim to subgroups within our own species, to our detriment. It's important to learn about the earliest flying mammal because it has mammary glands (well, half of them did), hair, live birth (again, half of them)...Better yet, what if we got there before that other group, that has the audacity to do something we can only dream of doing without machines, and we got there before them in the very thing they have the cheek to crow about so much?

I'm reminded of something Van Baer described, that early creationist who first pointed out similarities in embroys between different species. (It was a time when all evolution was believed to progress in discrete lines, so pointing out similarities between species would actually be an argument against evolution.) In 1828 he described a situation where a conference of birds were discussing those horrid mammals. They might say that "'Those four and two-legged animals bear many resemblances to our own embryos, for their cranial bones are separated, and they have no beak, just as we do in the first five or six days of our incubation; their extremities are all very much alike, as ours are for about the same period; there is not a true feather on their body, rather only thin feather-shafts, so that we, as fledglings in the nest, are more advanced than they will ever be . . . And these mammals that cannot find their own food for such a long time after birth, that can never rise freely from the earth, want to consider themselves more highly organized than we'?" It's all a matter of perspective, and bias.

This World Science article is interesting to most of us, and to me, simply out of old-fashioned patriotism. I value the mammals more. Doesn't matter that personally I find invertebrates infinitely more fascinating. Some part of me wants to be the first in the air- or at least to have some part of me having been the first in the air. I always want my group to be first, no matter how I struggle against this desire. It's in my genes, after all- my group first means my genes go forward, in some sense. Perhaps that's the final explanation and cause for all the strife that we have. Our quarrals and fights result from the desires that war within us, for we ask with wrong motives, that we might spend on our own pleasures- the greatest pleasure of all, to have us, our group, supreme. Perhaps then it's the final call, to go beyond our naturally selected drive, and come to the place where we are satisfied immensely, eternally, if the other guy wins.

The water of life, and death.

2006-12-14T22:54:00.000-06:00

A plethera of interesting topics. That old medical practice of sexism, the diagnosis of hysteria, might actually be real. Galaxies might evolve through a combination of nature and nurture. Laughter heals disease, and they've finally figured out why it's contagious- it has to do with our tendency to mirror a person in a conversation. But I'm going to contemplate in a different way today, combinging two articles.

We may have found evidence of flowing water on the Martian surface. Going on right now. If it's true, it could provide a valuable base for that mythical day when we land on the planet. Maybe even grow some right find Bradbury crops there.

It also appears that Global Warming will no longer melt the polar ice cap by the year 2100, as previously predicted. It looks like it will be 2040. This is probably due to a runaway positive feeback loop where ice reflects heat and less ice reflects less heat. And less ice allows warmer currents further North. Seeing as polar bears and others are dying off at alarming rates, this will have equally magnifying effects on the Artic ecology. To the side is the North pole 6 years ago, and 33 years from now.

But every bit of ice that melts also means more water rising in other places Places like Bangladesh with 147 million people, or the Maldives, the lowest country in the world, with a maximum natural height of 2.3 meters, the lowest in the world. Most or all of both countries will disappear by century's end, meaning 100s of millions now refugees, without even the hope of a homeland to go back to. And that's just the two countries most effected- it doesn't include the vast numbers of mostly poor living on the coasts around the world who don't have America's money to build dikes around their major cities.

That's the best case scenario. More probably they're not homeless. It's that they're dead.

Two different studies. One finds water of life. The other water of death.

Jesus said, "I am the water of life. She that drinks of me, shall never thirst again." This is the same Guy who earlier had demolished "the whole world" in a flood. Same substance, same guy, different results. Water is powerful wet stuff, with an emphasis on it's power. It is neither good nor evil, but bringing results depending on the situation. God is only good, and yet his actions result in life, and countless deaths. According to Rabbinic tradition, one of the three things satan can not do is kill- this remains God's perogative. How can a good God do both? How can He use the same substance for both harm and help?

I think in all things it depends not on God, but on us. God remains the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow (with that minor tweaking of the incarnation). The water still has the same properites- 104.7 degrees between the two Hydrogens allowing for some rather too convenient Hydrogen bonding, making life possible. But we change. God is everywhere- nanini, naninina, and in all things. Then how is it possible for us to say, "God is with us right now." or "Come, Jesus, Come"?

Theodore of Mopsuestia said that the Logos dwelt in Jesus "by His good pleasure". As a Christology it fell far short, basically being more Nestorian than Nestorius. But a professor of mine, Dr. Thompson, pointed out that it was a rather nice description of God's presence with us. He is everywhere, but at times He exists by His good pleasure, when we are aligned with Him.

In the same way His actions are everywhere the same. But whether or not they bring harm or help to us is determined to what extent we are aligned with Him. Sometimes it is punishment, and therefore our moral actions that align us with our just desserts. But certainly many times tragedy hits us without punishment. And then God is still the same, seeking our good. But perhaps at times we have difficulty in seeing His good, and what He will bring us in the fullness of time.

Such is not the case of course here. In the fullness of the meaning of original sin, we have wrought this upon ourselves. Water is a gift of God, giving us original life and sustaining us, allowing us possibly to reach further into the Heavens. We have squandered that gift in our search for another liquid, fossil fuels. We spurned the gift of God and chose a poor substitute, destroying that which we were called to care for. And we now reap what we sowed. For in 33 years we will no longer have a polar ice cap, and a great deal more misery. God did not change, and neither did His gift. We chose to reject the gift, our calling, and our God. Let the chaos of the waters reign.

I Thought By Now...

2006-12-06T04:55:00.000-06:00

The oldest religious practice to date has been found- worshiping pythons in Africa 70,000 years ago. Some of the genetic code has been discovered for male pregnancy in seahorses. It sucked to be a Neanderthal, health-wise. Birds are starting to go through some genetic drift as their songs fit to accommodate the deeper noise of city life. And NASA reveals their plans to put a base on the moon by 2024.

This last one briefly caught my eye. A guy on PBS was talking about this tonight- how there might be water there, on the sunny side of the moon there's lots of sun for nearly constant solar power, it's safer than space, it's a great training field for Mars...Sounds like a good idea. I hope they do it. But I thought they were going to do this in 1985.

It just seems like everything's slowed down. Don't you remember how there was supposed to all of this amazing scientific advancement by now, that we lived with day by day? Remember in the 60's, with the kitchen of the future- that was supposed to be here by the late 70's. We're still waiting. Oh, we can do most of it. But either it's not economical, or for reasons similar to the Tuckermobile and the EV1, it's blocked by the Powers That Be.

What was it that got us to the moon? Simply, fear. Sputnik was up there, smiling down on all of us, proof that the Communists were actually better than us. Then they sent a guy into space first, and then the first woman. (And to our eternal shame, it took us 20 years to duplicate this feat.) In fact, arguably, they were doing better than us across the board, until they also had to fight proxy wars with us continuously, and discovered they couldn't do all that and feed their people too. Might even be an argument that Communism is more successful than Capitalism as long as the world is at peace. But that of course is heresy.

Sputnik was a wake-up call. We suddenly realized the Soviets were beating us, and were doing better in us than science. This impelled us to get off our butts and start working, and learning. The Space Race was a large contributor to finally repealing the old laws going back to the Scopes Monkey Trial which mandated teaching Literal Creationism, and the beginnings of universal evolution teaching in schools throughout America. We finally realized we needed to learn science, not because it was interesting or a high pursuit, but because we could not be beaten by those who didn't know how to value materialism, capitalism, and economic growth.

But now, we just don't have that motivation. China is perhaps the biggest commercial force on the planet, or soon will be, and they've got nuclear weapons. But they only recently sent someone into space for the first time. When we aren't in a race with someone, we just don't care enough about the science.

Now, the amazing new developments are all small, in a computer, or a cell phone. Actually, they're even less noticeable- they're in the ether of the web, somewhere in between computers. We don't see the big changes. Cars are stuck without major structural changes for some 60 years now. The Big Three figured out they could change the pretty fins and colour and get enough people to keep buying new ones. Kitchen machines are not that different in basic structure from the way they were 30 years ago. Oh, there are changes, but it seems so slow. Perhaps it's that the imagination of science fiction can progress more quickly than anything real. But it also seems that we are less inspired to progress. When was the last major invention that was widespread? I don't mean a new computer program, as important and valuable as those are. But an actual three-dimensional invention, that a guy can tinker with in his back garage, fulfilling the American dream? It seems that now you need a few advanced degrees or hours in front learning Colbol to do anything significant. At least since Velcro.

Daniel Amos was one of those rare bands that did quite well in music, climbing with country music to the top of the Christian charts, but quit, realizing that they weren't being authentic for them. They changed over to New Wave, producing numerous albums after that, and never again doing well in the music charts. The sound remained steady, despite numerous name changes as well, including Daniel Amos Band and Swirling Eddies. You could count on them for good sound and biting, deep lyrics, always requiring the listener to think.

They had one song on the album "Vox Humana" called "(It's the Eighties, So Where's Our) Rocket Packs?". Prophetic as always, Daniel Amos summed up the situation well.

"I thought by now we'd walk the moon
And ride a car without no tires
And have a robot run the vacuum
And date a girl made out of wires.
No things don't change that much, do they?
We are still out of touch,
by now we should discover,
just how to love each other...
I thought by now we'd live in space,
And eat a pill instead of dinner,
And wear a gas mask on our face,
a President of female gender..."

I look forward to our base on the moon. But unless the Chinese get in on the act, or someone else like the Saudis, I don't see the U.S. being inspired enough to actually do it, even by 2024.

I've got an agenda.

2006-11-30T03:22:00.000-06:00

Quite a plethora of interesting studies came down the wire today. Studies included a 2000 year old computer recently discovered and that sitting up straight is bad for your back. Success is linked to genetics, although the authors of the study equate success in general with money. (Considering my heritage, this doesn't bode well for me.) And our DNA may be able to tell us the likelihood that a wife will cheat on her husband. My particularly favorite quote from the last one: In other words, if the man and woman had half the genes in common, the woman would have on average nearly half a lover on the side. Ah, yes. Half a lover. Those were the days.

But today we'll look at the accusation that the NSTA, the National Science Teacher's Association, refused to accept free copies of An Inconvenient Truth because of oil influence. I find this article interesting because just last night, before I'd read the download, I saw Jay Leno joking with Al Gore about this very issue on the NSTA. Secondly, the NSTA has been a very valuable organization, one that I actually consulted last year when looking for guidance as a science teacher. And lastly I find the inverse of such accusations now made against me.

The basic story is the producers of An Inconvenient Truth offered 50,000 free copies to science classrooms around the nation, through the NSTA. If you haven't seen this movie, you should. It is truly one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. It isn't the most well-made, but it lays out the facts neatly and cleanly, in a format more clear than I've ever seen it, so that all can understand what's going on. After watching it many have suggested it should be shown in science classrooms. So for no charge, Gore offered the movie so students could learn about this. He is even doing something unheard of in the film industry- the movie producer is encouraging people to buy the movie and then give it away to a friend, so that as many as possible can view it, though with reduced proceeds for the movie.

The NSTA turned down the offer. They said that they were concerned about political endorsement or encouraging special interests to also request film distribution. And they also said that it would cause risk for certain supporters and make it harder for them to raise funds. One of their supporters is Exxon-Mobil.

The thing is many climatologists have endorsed the movie. There is no longer any scientific disagreement that global warming is occurring, or any real disagreement that it's cause is the Greenhouse Effect via human actions. Even the Pentagon has come out in support of this- not an institution known for it's sterling environmental record. But there is one group that has consistently come out against global warming: the oil industry, lead by Exxon-Mobil. This doesn't bode well for the purity of the NSTA.

It is disappointing to hear about this. Their political or special interest arguments are stronger, but still- there's a difference between politics and issues. Al Gore was once a candidate and politician, but he's not running for anything any more, and not at this time. Unless working to build houses for the poor is a political issue, because Jimmy Carter does it? Politics is the attempt to raise oneself or lower another, to gain influence- but it's about issues. Global Warming is an issue that politicians take a stand on, but it's a serious issue that needs addressing.

But the greater concern is of course the oil influence. Here it appears that the NSTA is taking a political stance, in the true sense of politics- looking for influence and the money that breeds influence. To accept the DVDs would not have been political; to refuse them was.

This has hit home because I have recently been obliquely accused by some of having an agenda when teaching at my old school- specifically supporting evolution and environmentalism. Basically it's been said that I'm making science political. There has been an expressed desire by some at my old school to make sure future biology teachers don't have these biases. I find this ironic since teachers there were repeatedly encouraged to ingrain positive civic values in our students.

I had to leave the position over the issue of teaching evolution as the backbone construct of all biology- what all scientific publications agree with. But of all the moral issues out there, the one that comes closest to the heart of the biologist is naturally environmentalism. We don't get to really discuss social issues like racism or treatment of women or caring for the poor. Those are important, but they just don't easily fit into the scientific curriculum. The environment does. If it ceases to exist, I'm out of a job. I'd be hard pressed to conceive of a biology teacher who wasn't an environmentalist. It'd be like being a vet who hated animals, or a car repairman who insisted that the only way to get around was by bike.

It is personal for me, too. I wouldn't teach this in the classroom because it's religion, and my own beliefs, but my feelings on the environment aren't merely that life is wonderful and amazing, and should continue. It's not simply that I want to continue to have life. It's that I believe God commanded it, in the garden, when he called us, as the very first command, to care for it. The Psalmists repeatedly cry out at the beauty of this creation, to give honor to God. Biology is wonderful because it reveals some of the Creator.

Environmentalism is the ethic of trying to preserve the environment- the ecosystem. I want to help keep it around so we can discover new medicines. I want to make sure the food web continues so we can survive as a species. I want to enjoy studying it. I want to help preserve it because God made it. But most of all, I want to keep it around because it is worship, to study it, and see the unique ways God put it together, the myriad evolutionary interlocking paths in the ecology revealed to us. It is a way to glorify God.

But I wouldn't teach all that. I separate my personal views from the classroom, from science, and responsible ethics. A student needs to learn how biology happens. I would hope they develop an ethic to care for the planet. How they arrive at that ethic is their own concern.

As teachers we walk a find road. We don't want to unduly influence, and we certainly don't want to teach religion. And yet civic values are also taught in school- indeed, it is often the primary medium. It might be an ethic of sharing in preschool, or learning to not cheat in junior high- but it's taught. And make no mistake- those are values- ones that many culture, most cultures, agree to, but not all. How we come to those values being positive varies among individuals and cultures.

We all have an agenda. Every moment of our lives, we walk with agendas and beliefs. What is in contention at my old school, or with the NSTA, is rather the nature of the agenda: which agenda is positive, and which is negative; which should science support, and which should it deny. The issue before me and the NSTA is the agenda of the environment. Is it the natural stance when teaching about biology to support the environment, and work to preserve it, and encourage that preservation ethic in the students. A biology teacher, or association like the NSTA, is at fault when they do not pursue these ethics.

I've shared a number of practical and more ethereal reasons why this ethic is important. Global Warming in particular is going to have disastrous effects on our people, increasing extinction, raising water levels, increasing storms, killing thousands of people, and leading to hundreds of thousands of refugees (in the most conservative of estimates). I could go on, and others have. This is the single greatest environmental catastrophe we have ever faced as a species- greater than those comparatively slow-moving ice ages that came and went. And therefore it is the single greatest application of the importance of teaching an environmental ethic.

But let me leave you with one final example of why it should be taught. Shortly after coming into office, George Bush met with "an unnamed expert", and decided to withdraw from the Kyoto Accords. It is rumored that this same expert is the one he met with in 2005, one Michael Crichton, who wrote a fictional piece called State of Fear, which suggests that Global Warming is false, but that the effects are being caused by a mass conspiracy of scientists. The only problem is that Michael Crichton has then repeatedly publicly said he believes much of this. And Bush stated he was much in agreement with Crichton's views. This, from an administration that has one of the worst environmental records in history, is close friends with Big Oil, and has done nothing to try to stop Global Warming. What might the world be like if Michael Crichton, or George Bush, had learned more science, or developed more of an environmental ethic, when they were in high school?

You better believe I have an agenda.

Race Is

2006-11-25T03:19:00.000-06:00

Pot is bad for you, and good for you. In doses smaller than a joint, it's bad; in large doses good- but all pot degrades into smaller doses. They're working on the first quantum computers. We may be able to make hearts from one stem cell from a baby. Molecules provide an anchor for memories. Black holes spin really fast. And the article for today's musings: race seems to be based on DNA .

Geneticists have found that humans can vary as much as 12% in their genetic code, putting paid to the notion that we are 99.9% identical. That idea of mass similarity seems to have no scientific merit, as attractive as it is. About 12% of our DNA varies in the number of copies it has- and this tends to correspond with the ethnic group self-identification of individuals. Basically there are genetic differences between those of European, African, and Asian descent. And this isn't a crack-pot study- it's the third study recently to indicate massive differences by race.

How does this work, considering recent studies have indicated that we are 97% the same as chimpanzees and 99.5% the same as Neanderthals? How then can we as humans be 12% different? As I understand it, our DNA between one human and another is still much more similar than between us and another species or subspecies. We still have a much smaller genetic diversity than most species, indicating perhaps a historical bottleneck. However, up to 12% of our DNA varies- and this corresponds to traditional racial classifications. It's been long known that there are differences in certain points, such as the African-American heightened tendency towards sickle-cell anemia. But this is the first study to quantify the difference to such a great degree.

What it doesn't indicate: that one group is superior to another, or that genetics are the big deal. As the study mentions, wolves and dogs are almost completely genetically the same, but they act and look far different. Culture and gene expression both play a role in differences.

And yet, this should come as no suprise. It is standard evolutionary fare: a population breeding separately with another population will start to build up genetic differences. Indeed, this is how we are able to determine that the Austrailian Aboriginals isolated themselves from the rest of the species long ago, 30,000 years ago- the oldest isolation split we know of. The longer a group is isolated, the more different one would expect the genes to be, leading eventually to a speciation event.

Perhaps there's something here to celebrate. And to learn. We are different, yet equal. It's hard to grasp. But it's what we find in the Garden. Eve is created as a help-meet, equal to Adam. And yet she is far, far different. God calls the most different, male and female, to learn to love each other. Love is not easy, and it's not supposed to be. It's harder especially to love those that are different. It's far easier to love myself, or at the very least, my clone. I think that's a big reason why God calls us to love a woman- to learn to love the different.

And now we see how this opportunity is present in groups of people as well. Not only are they different culturally, but also biologically. Yet just like men and women, no group is inferior or should be subservient to another. We are suddenly impressed with the huge realization that "those other people" are really different. And equal to me, both spiritually and hopefully in the world of human affairs. It's no longer a matter of my group being better, or pretending that we are all the same in a giant melting pot. I now have to learn what true love is- loving the different. I now have the opportunity to struggle through that to reach true love.

Perhaps one day there will be discovered that there are certain genetic tendencies that make one group better than another in certain areas- stronger legs or some such. But probably at that point we will have reached the future state that everyone is predicting- through interbreeding we are all dark-skinned, with those recessive traits of blond hair and blue eyes nearly bred out of existence. It's through the process of loving the different that I discover my basic similarity to them.

Who's Your Daddy?

2006-11-18T03:17:00.000-06:00

Today's World Science revelations included Spider Monkeys having developed a natural perfume based on leaves (naturally used most often by the males); dark energy has been around for a long time and is causing the universe to expand at an increasingly fast rate; red wine is good; and new subatomic particles. I'll be focusing on the sequencing of Neanderthal DNA.

This is pretty cool stuff. Based on a Neanderthal thigh bone they have found a genetic similarity between us and them of 99.5%, although in many places they are more similar to chimpanzees than us. (By comparison humans and chimpanzees differ by 96%, and rats from mice by ten times that amount.) The DNA shows that the last time we had a common ancestor was 706,000 years ago, and that our DNA hasn't mixed for the last 330,000 years. (The last time chimps and us had a common ancestor was 6 million years ago.)

We, Homo sapiens, arrived in Europe between 40,000-50,000 years ago. Neanderthals disappeared completely between 33,000-24,000 years ago. And ever since then scientists have wondered why.

There's been two primary hypothesis. Firstly that we killed them off. This makes us somehow better adapted to the climate. We didn't necessarily have to kill them off through warfare- it could have been that we simply outcompeted them for space and food, though some studies indicate signs of violence on Neanderthal bones. Perhaps the change in climate at the time was one that Neanderthals were pre-conditioned to not be as adaptive to, but our Cro-Magnon ancestors were. If this is the case, then they are a separate species at the end, with no mixing between us, and should be called Homo neanderthalis.

The other option is that they disappeared through sex. Or rather, that they are still with us. We interbred with them to such an extent that their genes merged with us, and traces of Neanderthals still remain in modern humans. In which case they would be a subspecies, and properly called Homo sapiens neanderthalis. Of course, this wouldn't exclude the possibility of Homo sapiens sapiens (us) killing off large portions of them as well. And in either scenario, we once were of the same stock- the species concept is somewhat arbitrary, as it is always in a state of evolving flux. We can only say that if an animal can't, or doesn't, interbreed with another animal, it is of a different species. (Higher taxa are determined in a far more general manner, losing even this minimal definitiveness.)

This study indicates that the killing option was more likely. If the last time our genes were the same was 330,000 years ago, this was a long time after we diverged as modern humans, 130,000 years ago. Therefore we weren't around to interbreed with the Neanderthals at the time our DNA indicates similarities. However, other recent studies of the DNA of the very same bones indicate great similarites between the two lines, indicating continued sexual activity between the two groups.

The data is therefore still indeterminative at this point. However, the earlier study indicating sex between the two parties used a method that some say results in incomplete results mixed with intrusive DNA. This same analysis suggests that the difference between human and Neanderthal DNA will show to be less than that between the highly diverse African human populations. I'm personally rooting for the sex option, and I still have hope that it becomes the final conclusion. Probably a big part of this is my natural liberal bias- "Make love, not war" and all. Just a much more romantic notion to think that they disappeared that way, rather than us committing, however inadvertedly, the first and greatest mass genocide of our species. It doesn't help that the ones possibly committing this were my European ancestors.

But there are other reasons to hope for this. We know that Neanderthals had tools, cared for their injured, made art, abstract thinking, and probably buried their dead. This means something pretty far advanced. And however one determines the presence of the soul, life after death seems to be a big part of that, as it indicates the presence of a belief in the afterlife, and therefore some sort of religious belief.

Even more so, Neanderthal brain cases were larger than our own. They were also larger in body, and their brains were structured differently than ours- but there is the possibility that they were actually smarter. Solid evidence indeed that a bigger brain is not necessarily a selective advantage. I'd hate to lose out on all of that brain, culture, and heritage, wasted away, without a memory or a presence. Better to hope, however indefinite the evidence is at the moment, that there is a bit of Neanderthal in me, and you. Better to take the opportunity to glory in the compliment of intelligence, the next time somebody calls you a Neanderthal.

In the Beginning

2006-11-14T03:16:00.000-06:00

New ways to remove radiation from humans; gays are more likely to suffer from addictions; what causes SIDS; and how pollution makes people stupider. This is particularly true for those born between 1960 and 1980, because of exposure to lead in gasoline. Bummer. Evidently this population has had marked increased in retardation and autism, decrease in attention span, and half as many with an IQ over 130. That's just really depressing.

But the article I'll focus on is some intriguing experiments looking at similarity between Saturn's moon Titan and the primordial atmosphere of Earth. Chemists have reproduced Titan's methane-nitrogen atmosphere with the application of UV light to create long-chain hydrocarbons, and astronomers have noticed these same chemicals in Titan's atmosphere. Similar chemicals are created with a methane-carbon dioxide base, the posited primordial Earth atmosphere.

The origin of life is problematic, for a few reasons. One, it's important to biology, but it's not really biology. There's no genes yet, there's no reproduction- it's the beginning of all that. So it's not really the biologists who are experts in this; it's more the chemists. And of course, it's hard to get data on it, and we still don't know a lot about how it all started. In truth there is no theory yet for this part- it's only different hypothesis. Lastly, it seems to have happened only once.

One hypothesis is that God created everything like Q, with a snap of His fingers. Not a scientific hypothesis, but it's there. And it could have happened. I can't think of any alternate scientific hypothesis that can reject it at this point- we just don't have enough evidence on how it happened through natural means. But I can think of a couple good theological reasons why it didn't happen that way.

The Literal Creationist and Intelligent Design hypothesis due injustice not only to science but also to religion, specifically Christianity. For they posit a weak God. As with the title of this blog, their God is too impotent to be able to do a complex creation- the creation must be made ex nihilo in the blink of an eye. It has none of the beautiful complexity of a multi-evolving community.

But even more, it does injustice to the concept of a miracle, and therefore of God. We repeatedly see God doing miracles for a purpose. They are signs, to point the way. They are not to prove the existence of God- nothing can- but rather signs to help us understand the nature of God. So I ask. Who exactly were these early supposed miracles for? The dodo? Triceratops? Sea Scorpions? No, it was far earlier than that. Not even the Archaea, those oldest and perhaps most primitive of bacteria, are around to see the beginnings of life. All we have are the rocks as silent observers. The argument that these were signs of God's existence for humans millions (or thousands) of years later is far too weak, for the signs left for us are far too inconclusive. In the case of evolution, there is too much evidence to the contrary. But for both the origin of life, and evolution, and anything else, there is not the clear overriding evidence to support a Q-snap for a creation event- which would be required if this were a sign for things to come- namely us.

As to it being a sign to help us understand God, I'd ask what does it reveal of God to say he creates in a moment, rather than through a process? That actually leads to some excellent discussion, but for another time. But such can not be an argument for Literal Creation vs. Evolution- it is rather that, once we understand the process, we can better understand who God is.

The final reason why God would not have created life in a supernatural event is that it limits God. It is the limit of the God in the Gaps, which ultimately does more injustice to God than it does to science, although it does great injustice to the latter as well. For it limits God. It puts Him in a box, saying He can only operate at certain times. It is a miracle, when we can't figure out how it might have happened. Then God steps in, and "poof", there is an elephant. Or an eye. It says God can't create through natural means- he must resort to being The Great Magician. But God uses miracles for a reason, not just for fun. If we believe what the Bible indicates.

The Literal Creationist hypothesis therefore ultimately reduces the intimate presence of God. We learn nanini, nanini na- God is everywhere. He is not all things, but He is in all things. He is a part of it. In Him we live and move and have our being. The existence of anything, by any process, is a miracle. Yet according to Intelligent Design, God created at only certain points, when it was too complex to do otherwise, and everything else evolved. So God is somehow less present in certain moments of creation. It is less of a creative event if it happens through evolution; it is less fully God.

That's not the kind of God I'm interested in. I'm interested in a God who is intimate in every moment of creation, who is intelligent enough to design a system that boggles the mind. Miracles do not happen because God must do them, and the natural processes He designed will not suffice. They happen so we can know Him.

So, I reject the premise that the formation of first life happened through a Q-like miracle. It was certainly a miracle, but one that occurred through natural means. What those natural means are...I'm not telling. We truly don't know yet. But science is philosophically naturalistic- it must use the same system for understanding the natural world. Otherwise, whenever we don't understand something, we simply stop working, and chalk it up to an act of God. Which kind of grinds things to a halt. Killed someone recently? Use the "God-made-it-appear-like-me-but-it-was-someone-else" defense. Works every time.

The formation of first life can't have occurred through a supernatural event, primarily for theological reasons. We don't yet have all of the evidence for the natural formation, but based on the beginnings of it, I'm sure it will eventually come in.

Science does very well with the repeated event. Not so well with the event that happens only once. And the formation of first life appears to be the singular event par excellant. Or is it? Was life formed once, or multiple times? I'd say the evidence is fairly clear that it formed only once. All life portrays certain similarities. We have the same base pairs on DNA (or in a few cases like HIV, RNA), leading to the same proteins. Statistically, it didn't have to happen that way. If life had formed a few times, you would expect differences in descendants. Even more telling, all natural organic molecules portray the same chirality. Molecules can go to the right or left in their polarization of light- and there's a 50:50 chance it would be one of the other- or they can be symmetrical and not go either way. All organic molecules are left chiral. If you tried to consume something, say on another planet, that was right chiral, or had no chirality, you'd get either very sick, or maybe just die. You wouldn't be able to consume it as nourishment. So it's a good thing all organic molecules on this planet have the same chirality. But since they do, and to be working organic molecules, they could have chosen right or left, this is another powerful argument for a common origin for all life. And since there seems to be no good supernatural explanation (again, in the sence of a Q-like moment) for the formation of first life, even though the formation of first life is a singular event, I would suggest it can be naturally explained.

Of course, we may discover life with the opposite chirality on this planet one day, but for now, we are left with evidence indicating too much commonality in all life. But this begs the question as to why life only arose once.

There's the question on how life first formed. But I have thought recently, there's an even better question on why it formed only once. And why don't we continue to see it arising now? Granted, that might be happening- but we have yet to see it, and if it were occurring, one would think that by now we would have observed it in a lab or in nature. If the conditions were just right for it to arise once, why not more than once? Why not more than once in the Archean Eon, the first biological time period, or more than once and still continuing today? It appears that the conditions of the early atmosphere that allowed the formation of life were anaerobic and involved particular gases and lightning. Such a grouping of events doesn't occur commonly today, with our poisonous oxygen atmosphere. But it does occur in certain places on the planet, or on other planets. If life was so unstoppable that it formed spontaneously before, why not in those places? It didn't even have much time to form- most recent evidence that it was as recently as 3.5 billion years ago there was life, allowing for only half a billion years for life to form after the Earth stopped being molten. This indicates that the formation of life is very likely- it is a probable event. And yet, still, it isn't here, again.

(Note that for the ID crowd, the claim is that life has been created numerous times, and therefore, should be observed now- but they have no good explanation as to why it has not been observed being formed ever in the history of humanity, past myths on spontaneous generation not withstanding.)

I haven't forgotten the main point of this essay. I've just been taking my time getting there. This newest research provides dramatic further answers as to why life hasn't formed again. The chemistry of the early Earth's atmosphere was so radically different that it hasn't been repeated. A methane-based atmosphere, exposed to UV light as it had no Ozone Layer to protect it, could have produced the building blocks of life. But such an atmosphere does not now exist, and hasn't for a long time.

Much more research of course remains to be done, to get from those building blocks to life. We have seen the development of amino acids spontaneously from organic molecules, and spontaneous formation of nucleotides (the building blocks of DNA) into self-replicating RNA. We've known for a long time that lipid bilayers automatically form the cell membrane. But there remains a lot of research to be done to get from there to a functioning cell. And left a mystery is why life didn't evolve more than once in that original atmosphere. Of course, perhaps it did, and the other forms were unable to compete with our ancestors.

Often it is claimed that there are gaps in the evolutionary lineage. I am impressed at how, again and again, evolution will predict an outcome, and the evidence will eventually be found- very similar to the process of Biblical archeology, which is also often gainsaid. Just as evolutionists for a century and a half were attacked for lacking the evidence for the fossil record of whales, and we now have a complete record, so the predictions of the origins of life are starting to fall into place, one molecule at a time.

A Gloss on the Epistemology of the Spirit

2006-11-02T03:14:00.000-06:00

For the 2nd installment of the World Science Review, I had a hard decision. There was the use of antimatter in medicine, the benefits of red wine, and elephant self-recognition in the mirror. Even more intriguing were the possibility of evidence indicating our relation to Neanderthals, the likelihood of the oceans completely dying by 2048, and cultural tendencies to see the world as related to self verses other objects. Difficult choice. But I finally decided on studies of brain chemistry in glossolalia- speaking in tongues.

The article says that those speaking in tongues have less control over language centers of the brain, and they have less activity in the area of the brain that usually shows self-control. The authors of the study state that naturally, it must mean some other undiscovered part of the brain is in control, and that they look forward to "demystifying" glossolalia. They affirm that their results are what you would expect from the claim made by those speaking in tongues to be "out of control".

I must admit a certain knee-jerk dislike of this research. Or at least the conclusions drawn from it. And that forced me to try to figure out why.

It's not the mention of demystifying. I just think that's completely wrong. The researcher speaks of it as if that would be a good thing. A life without myth is a life not worth living. And just because something is fully understood, if it ever could be, doesn't mean it has lost its sense of wonder, its power of myth, or its taste of the numinous. That can still be there, if we are willing to search for it.

I think it relates more to the natural assumption that there must be some other part of the brain that is in control, if the frontal lobe is not. And that bothers me. I want to believe that God is control when I'm speaking in tongues, not a subsidiary lobe. I don't want science to discover something else.

But of course, this is exactly the same issue that we dwell with in the evolution/creation debates. For Literal Creationists would propose a God of the Gaps, a God who works in between the areas of knowing. Wherever we don't know, there is God. And we constantly restrict God to a narrower and narrower Modernist sphere, as we learn more and more. But the Intelligent Design projection of God into irreducible complexity ultimately means that we stop all research once we declare something to be irreducibly complex- God did it, who can understand it? But I don't think that God desires us to stop our investigation into His creation at any point. To do so is to cease to investigate Him.

And that's what I'm doing in being bothered by this research. I want them to not find where this cranial blood is flowing, ever. I want it to remain a mystery, indicating the presence of God. But I must deal with the real possibility that the locus of control is one day found.

To take a different tack: science studies the repeated, physical phenomena. It must remain in epistemologically materialistic. Therefore it cannot study the miraculous. The singular event, the insertion of spirit into matter, such as the Virgin Birth, is beyond the abilities of science to investigate, to prove, or disprove.

Are tongues miraculous? Is our definition of miracle sufficient, claiming it to be a singular event? Let's take a different sort of miracle, that of healing. Happens all the time, to varying degrees- supernatural healing. Does this then make it no longer miraculous? No! Indeed, it is perhaps the epitome of the miracle. So then by what right do we now claim a miracle to be a singular event?

Because a basic part of science is uniformitarianism, such that events repeat themselves, throughout all of life, all of science. And they repeat themselves to a very large degree. Truly, the odds are just too great against an animal like the dodo re-evolving without the assistance of future genetic recombination. But natural selection proceeds in the same manner in many different organisms. DNA is the same, transcribing into RNA- and has been the same for 4 billion years.

But supernatural healing is not. This sort of healing involves a direct interaction between God, or a spirit, and the healer, and the healed. It involves each of them as body-persons, interacting with the supernatural realm. Those who would reduce supernatural healing to a systematic procedure reduce it to mere science, and rob it of it's glory. And in the process, they allow science to be able to study it. And be sure, science will find it to be less than it is claimed. For if science can study it, then it must not have been supernatural to begin with.

So now I return to tongues. A repeated event, repeated many times, in many individuals. But more than that, a supernatural event. A unique interaction between the living God, or a spirit, every time. Even more so than healing, for it is an opportunity to directly commune with the living God, as He comes to speak in you what you can not speak yourself. This is unique supernatural interaction, and therefore can not be studied by science.

How is this any different from the hypothesis of a literal creation? Why should one be a supernatural event, and the other not? Leaving aside the overwhelming evidence in favor of evolution, I'd claim they are both fully supernatural events, and therefore both can not be studied. And they are physical events, and can therefore be fully studied. It's the imposition of the supernatural that science can not study. And in the case of origins, in what way God was or was not present within the formation of the planet and it's life is simply beyond the ken of science. But to claim that the planet was created in a Q-like moment by snapping the fingers is wholly different from the claim that science can not see the spirit in tongues. It would be more the claim that, when someone is speaking in tongues, it happens in another dimension that can not be observed, and that we are imagining the person praying in tongues before us. For the evidence is there- both for an evolution and for people speaking in a strange language. And God can be fully present in both, but in a way never discernible by science.

Yes, science can determine where the blood is flowing, and that the frontal lobe is not being used, and the person does not appear to have conscious control of what they are doing. (We leave out of course those cases where the person is faking tongues, or thinks they are speaking in tongues but has honestly fooled themselves. Both definitely do occur, and I suspect far too often. It would be interesting to compare the brain scans of such individuals with those honestly speaking in tongues, if a rubric could be effectively constructed.) And honestly, science may one day discover that another lobe has all the activity. But what matters is the interpretation. Some may come and say then, "See- it was all a self-deception!" And they would be justified in their interpretation. Others may say, "See, this is how God chooses to interact with us. When He speaks to us, He does so using a different part of the brain, so that we are no longer in control." And this also would be a valid interpretation.

As for me and my house, we're going to go pray in the Spirit.

"I'm not gay!" the dog barked.

2006-10-30T02:26:00.001-06:00

World Science has a weekly email of the latest, most intriguing scientific discoveries and experimental results. You can subscribe to them at their site and they'll send you the latest. Inspired by recent readings of natural history by the Great One, Stephen Jay Gould (peace be upon him) in The Panda's Thumb, this blog will be a weekly take on a World Science article.

This last week had some very interesting reports. How the dinosaurs actually died, the oldest known organic molecules discovered, and why vampires are simply mathematically impossible. Hard to decide on one. But I picked "A Wild, and Gay, Kingdom". Turns out, contrary to what has often been thought, being gay is not unnatural, at least as far as animals go. There's actually a very high incidence of single gender sexual interaction in different animals. I know. Why pick an uncontroversial topic for a first post?

As I mentioned on the World Science Commentary, I have a number of problems with this exhibition, or rather, how it was presented. Boekman, heading the exhibition organizers, states that homosexuality occurs in many animals, especially herd animals, and in a number of them, it is actually a more common coupling than heterosexuality. Therefore in certain species most individuals are gay. However, just because an animal engages in a homosexual act, doesn't make him or her gay, anymore than it does with humans. That's the problem the gay community often has interpreting the Kinsey Report. They claim that, based on it's results, 10% of humans are gay. However, that's not what the report says. Not only was it a study of Americans only, but it stated that 10% engaged in homosexual acts at some point in their lives; less than 2% were committed to exclusively gay relationships. This is closer to what we actually find in other studies. And likewise, just because in some other species most of the individuals engage in homosexual acts, doesn't make them gay. Indeed, the exhibition supports this finding, in that exclusively gay organisms are a far smaller percentage than those that have the occasional gay fling, or even the regular gay interaction. The latter makes them bi, not gay.

Secondly, as part of his justification for the argument of the widespread presence, Boekman even mentions invertebrates and worms, with the implication that this makes it normative for humans. But I'm sorry, invertebrates are just too different to make that leap. Especially worms! I mean, come on- they're hermaphrodites!

This brings me to the argument from nature. Yes, one argument that's been used against homosexuality is that it's "not natural", because it doesn't normally occur among humans. And it's true, this exhibition blows that argument out of the water. But just because something occurs in nature, or doesn't, doesn't make it morally normative for humans. A similar mistake was made when misguided fools tried to apply evolutionary principles to human groups to claim that whites were superior. Biology shouldn't dictate morality. When it does, we usually go the wrong direction, fatally so. Biology is great for answering the What. Not the Why.

Second, God made each animal unique. It should follow it's own rules. Not to imply that non-humans can operate under a morality. It's not like they ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil. But let's be honest, there's nothing wrong with a hermaphrodite sleeping with a hermaphrodite, or a protandrous fish changing gender- that's how they were designed. But there's a problem with us trying to be hermaphrodites, or changing gender- we're not designed that way.

Now, I'm not using design like that Intelligent Design hypothesis. But God's made us to be the way we are- whatever that means. We worship Him best by being what we are. You can do it spiritually, or emotionally/physically. When we try to change what we are (say, to become a hermaphrodite), we do damage to our psyche. Unless we should reproduce like the Dinophilus Annelid's sibling mating, which produces 4 offspring in each egg, 3 female and 1 male? The male then has sex with it's sisters, dies within the egg, and the three sisters hatch to recapitulate the entire cycle. If homosexuality is wrong or right, it has nothing to do with nature, or what other animals do. It has to do with what God has called us to, what will bring us the most Joy, allowing us to fully worship Him. And that's a question that can be answered in religion, or philosophy, but not biology.

Third, the argument from natural selection: Boekman discusses how common homosexuality is, suggesting that it has naturally developed a number of times in many animals. No argument there. But the mere reporting of the fact is not enough. Where's the mechanism? I want to know what the advantage to homosexuality is. Why are organisms which do this selected for, even in the minority? One could argue that it helps in establishing bonding or dominance rituals- and indeed, this has long been argued by biologists. Yet Boekman poo-poos this explanation, stating that biologists have an inherent bias against homosexuality and refuse to see it as a sexual act. If it is a sexual act, then why does it continue to evolve? What selects for it? Is it a mere spandrel? (That's quite the spandrel.) Inherently, homosexuality is selected against. Biology is all about sex. An organism can't continue it's offspring, and fulfill it's evolutionary duty, without it. Biologically, without reproduction, it has failed. An organism committed to homosexuality only can not continue it's genes, and therefore can not continue the genetic coding towards homosexuality. Therefore there must be a non-sexual selection for homosexuality, if it continues. Dominance and friendship seem to be better explanations within evolutionary theory.

Lastly, my biggest issue with the study is likewise in regard to sex. It would seem the organizers are very unaware of the meaning of sex. Perhaps because this exhibition is on the bridge of two different disciplines. I would imagine (not knowing for sure) that in anthropology, sex refers to two individuals enjoying each other in reference to their reproductive organs, often with orgasm. However, in biology sex refers to the mixture of gametes. Unless Boeckman has a rather novel proposal for how this might occur between two sperm or two eggs, gay interactions between animals are not sex, by biological definitions. There is no way they can be. Hence previous researches are quite correct to not refer to this as sex.

It's beginning to appear that the exhibition organizers have a bias and an agenda.