Wednesday, July 19, 2006
by Natalie Angier
In the course of reporting a book on the scientific canon and pestering hundreds of researchers at the nation's great universities about what they see as the essential vitamins and minerals of literacy in their particular disciplines, I have been hammered into a kind of twinkle-eyed cartoon coma by one recurring message. Whether they are biologists, geologists, physicists, chemists, astronomers, or engineers, virtually all my sources topped their list of what they wish people understood about science with a plug for Darwin's dandy idea. Would you please tell the public, they implored, that evolution is for real? Would you please explain that the evidence for it is overwhelming and that an appreciation of evolution serves as the bedrock of our understanding of all life on this planet?
In other words, the scientists wanted me to do my bit to help fix the terrible little statistic they keep hearing about, the one indicating that many more Americans believe in angels, devils, and poltergeists than in evolution. According to recent polls, about 82 percent are convinced of the reality of heaven (and 63 percent think they're headed there after death); 51 percent believe in ghosts; but only 28 percent are swayed by the theory of evolution.
Scientists think this is terrible—the public's bizarre underappreciation of one of science's great and unshakable discoveries, how we and all we see came to be—and they're right. Yet I can't help feeling tetchy about the limits most of them put on their complaints. You see, they want to augment this particular figure—the number of people who believe in evolution—without bothering to confront a few other salient statistics that pollsters have revealed about America's religious cosmogony. Few scientists, for example, worry about the 77 percent of Americans who insist that Jesus was born to a virgin, an act of parthenogenesis that defies everything we know about mammalian genetics and reproduction. Nor do the researchers wring their hands over the 80 percent who believe in the resurrection of Jesus, the laws of thermodynamics be damned.
No, most scientists are not interested in taking on any of the mighty cornerstones of Christianity. They complain about irrational thinking, they despise creationist "science," they roll their eyes over America's infatuation with astrology, telekinesis, spoon bending, reincarnation, and UFOs, but toward the bulk of the magic acts that have won the imprimatur of inclusion in the Bible, they are tolerant, respectful, big of tent. Indeed, many are quick to point out that the Catholic Church has endorsed the theory of evolution and that it sees no conflict between a belief in God and the divinity of Jesus and the notion of evolution by natural selection. If the pope is buying it, the reason for most Americans' resistance to evolution must have less to do with religion than with a lousy advertising campaign.
So why is it that most scientists avoid criticizing religion even as they decry the supernatural mind-set? For starters, some researchers are themselves traditionally devout, keeping a kosher kitchen or taking Communion each Sunday. I admit I'm surprised whenever I encounter a religious scientist. How can a bench-hazed Ph.D., who might in an afternoon deftly purée a colleague's PowerPoint presentation on the nematode genome into so much fish chow, then go home, read in a two-thousand-year-old chronicle, riddled with internal contradictions, of a meta-Nobel discovery like "Resurrection from the Dead," and say, gee, that sounds convincing? Doesn't the good doctor wonder what the control group looked like?
Scientists, however, are a far less religious lot than the American population, and, the higher you go on the cerebro-magisterium, the greater the proportion of atheists, agnostics, and assorted other paganites. According to a 1998 survey published in Nature, only 7 percent of members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences professed a belief in a "personal God." (Interestingly, a slightly higher number, 7.9 percent, claimed to believe in "personal immortality," which may say as much about the robustness of the scientific ego as about anything else.) In other words, more than 90 percent of our elite scientists are unlikely to pray for divine favoritism, no matter how badly they want to beat a competitor to publication. Yet only a flaskful of the faithless have put their nonbelief on record or publicly criticized religion, the notable and voluble exceptions being Richard Dawkins of Oxford University and
Daniel Dennett of Tufts University. Nor have Dawkins and Dennett earned much good will among their colleagues for their anticlerical views; one astronomer I spoke with said of Dawkins, "He's a really fine parish preacher of the fire-and-brimstone school, isn't he?"
So, what keeps most scientists quiet about religion? It's probably something close to that trusty old limbic reflex called "an instinct for self-preservation." For centuries, science has survived quite nicely by cultivating an image of reserve and objectivity, of being above religion, politics, business, table manners. Scientists want to be left alone to do their work, dazzle their peers, and hire grad students to wash the glassware. When it comes to extramural combat, scientists choose their crusades cautiously. Going after Uri Geller or the Ra‘lians is risk-free entertainment, easier than making fun of the sociology department. Battling the creationist camp has been a much harder and nastier fight, but those scientists who have taken it on feel they have a direct stake in the debate and are entitled to wage it, since the creationists, and more recently the promoters of "intelligent design" theory, claim to be as scientific in their methodology as are the scientists.
[...]
(Read the whole article here)
[Natalie Angier is a science reporter for the New York Times and author of Woman: An Intimate Geography, Natural Obsessions, and The Beauty of the Beastly. In 1991 she won a Pulitzer Prize for her science reporting.]
Friday, July 14, 2006
From Kansas.com:
Michigan community bills Kansas church over protest no-show
Associated Press
MUNDY TOWNSHIP, Mich. - A Genesee County community is billing members of an anti-gay Kansas church $5,000 for seeking police protection for a protest at the funeral of a Marine killed in Iraq, then failing to show up, officials said.
A church member said the bill is a joke and will be ignored if it arrives.
Members of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., have demonstrated at the funerals of U.S. military personnel, saying the deaths are God's punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality.
Widespread opposition to the protests has led to passage of federal and state laws restricting demonstrations at funerals.
The church told officials that they planned to demonstrate at a recent memorial service for Marine Lance Cpl. Brandon Webb, 20, of Swartz Creek. It was held at Swartz Funeral Home in Mundy Township, about 50 miles northwest of Detroit.
Officials said the church members asked for special police protection and broke an agreement for security service when they failed to arrive.
"They didn't even give me a courtesy call to say they weren't coming," township police Chief David Guigear told The Flint Journal.
Westboro church member and lawyer Shirley Phelps-Roper said group members bought airline tickets but said the Holy Ghost told them at the last minute to stay home. [...] (read more here)
COMMENT:
Wow, all disasters are blamed on the oh-so-terrible sin of some people diverting from the supposed sexual orthodoxy of pious, Republican, hard-working, beer-drinking, foot-ball fanatic, blithely consumeristic, anxiously ordinary, fat, pious, fundamentalistic Christians likely regretting the good ole times of lynching!
And, note, now the HOLY GHOST (whatever that is, sounds like something primitive tribes would speak about) has enough time and care to give travel recommendations. This is the funniest part.
SHUT THE DUCK UP DUDESSSSS! Seek help!
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
More US troops charged with Iraqi girl's rape and murder
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Monday July 10, 2006
The Guardian
Four more soldiers have been charged with the rape and murder of a young Iraqi woman and her family, the most explosive of the five war crimes investigations currently under way in Iraq.
A fifth soldier was charged with dereliction of duty for failing to report the events of the night of March 12 when a group of soldiers are alleged to have abandoned their checkpoint to enter the home of an Iraqi family in the town of Mahmudiya. They allegedly raped and killed a young woman inside the house, and shot dead her parents and young sister.
In recent weeks, 16 soldiers have been charged with murders in Iraq - more than during the first three years of the war. No Marines have been charged so far in the worst alleged atrocity, the killing of 24 Iraqis at Haditha, but that has been overshadowed by the Mahmudiya episode.
Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has demanded an independent investigation into the alleged rape and killings, and said the immunity granted to US troops in Iraq has encouraged abuse. Sensitivities in the case deepened yesterday as Reuters news agency reported that the rape victim was only 14 years old. [...]
(Read more here)
COMMENT: Abu Ghraib, Haditha, probably a number of other unreported or covered-up atrocities, and now this rape and murder of a 14 year old child and the killing of three of her family members, including one child. It seems like these "spreaders of freedom and civilisation" are just able to give incredible examples of barbarism, inhumanity and brutality.
And, sorry, the idea of just a few "rotten apples" simply is not credible, given the framework of impunity and inhumanity suggested by a country that wages an illegal war, justifies torture and steps over international conventions on human rights. I do believe that Iraq's prime minister is right when he demands that the immunity granted to U.S. troops should be revoked (read here). Everybody should respect the law, and people who commits crimes in Iraq should be judged there.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Jesus Christ - The Musical
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Excerpt from New York Times' column "Don't Turn Us Into Poodles" by Nicholas D. Kristof (via Raw Story):
"When I was covering the war in Iraq, we reporters would sometimes tune to Fox News and watch, mystified, as it purported to describe how Iraqis loved Americans. Such coverage (backed by delusional Journal editorials baffling to anyone who was actually in Iraq) misled conservatives about Iraq from the beginning. In retrospect, the real victims of Fox News weren't the liberals it attacked but the conservatives who believed it.
Historically, we in the press have done more damage to our nation by withholding secret information than by publishing it. One example was this newspaper's withholding details of the plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. President Kennedy himself suggested that the U.S. would have been better served if The Times had published the full story and derailed the invasion.
Then there were the C.I.A. abuses that journalists kept mum about until they spilled over and prompted the Church Committee investigation in the 1970's. And there are secrets we should have found, but didn't: in the run-up to the Iraq war, the press — particularly this newspaper — was too credulous about claims that Iraq possessed large amounts of W.M.D.
In each of these cases, we were too compliant. We failed in our watchdog role, and we failed our country."
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Britons see US as vulgar empire builder
By Ben Fenton
(Filed: 03/07/2006)
Britons have never had such a low opinion of the leadership of the United States, a YouGov poll shows.
As Americans prepare to celebrate the 230th anniversary of their independence tomorrow, the poll found that only 12 per cent of Britons trust them to act wisely on the global stage. This is half the number who had faith in the Vietnam-scarred White House of 1975.
Most Britons see America as a cruel, vulgar, arrogant society, riven by class and racism, crime-ridden, obsessed with money and led by an incompetent hypocrite. [...]
COMMENT:
Only 12% of Britons trust the wisdom of the USA one global stage according to the YouGov poll.
It looks like the Public Relations department of the White House is not really doing a great job is it? But then again, what words could counteract the eloquence of facts? Deception, lies, incompetence, corruptions, cronyism, squandering of human and economical resources, disrespect of the law and of human rights, extraordinary rendition, torture, Guantanamo Bay... The list is too long.
By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Monday, July 3, 2006
President Bush told the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case that he directed Vice President Dick Cheney to personally lead an effort to counter allegations made by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV that his administration had misrepresented intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Iraq, according to people familiar with the president's statement.
Bush also told federal prosecutors during his June 24, 2004, interview in the Oval Office that he had directed Cheney, as part of that broader effort, to disclose highly classified intelligence information that would not only defend his administration but also discredit Wilson, the sources said. [...]
Monday, July 03, 2006
From Raw Story:
"A new book, titled "Oath Betrayed: Torture Medical Complicity and the War on Terror", claims a new pattern of behavior among military doctors unlike any previous American war. The book's author, Dr. Steven Miles, researched U.S. Military records and found what he claims to be astonishingly unprofessional behavior. [...]" [read more and see video here]
