NPR, Religion, and Media Bias

National Public Radio show hosts are avid enthusiasts of the agnostic author.  It must be at least once a week that another author is brought on to discuss their new book about science and afterlife.  My problem with this reporting is that every story is the same… “G-d doesn’t exist… everything else is commentary.”

A short while ago, a story praising David Eagleman’s book, “Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives” was the first to really begin to bother me. Earlier this week Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s book, “36 Arguments for the Existence of G-d: A Work of Fiction” was featured.  These books, and the radio shows that publicize them have the appearance of embracing consilience and intellectual freedom, but are actually vehemently anti-religious.  Why is it so hard for show hosts and authors to accept that the existence of G-d does not need rational proof? For some people, rational proofs are important, but I’ve never understood the desire for a rational proof to demonstrate the existence of G-d.  Would any of these same people want a rational proof to demonstrate the identity of their soul-mate?  Would such rational proofs suffice to explain why a mother loves her son or daughter, or why we live and die?

“All things in creation are dependent on their creator for their continued existence, but He does not need any of them. Therefore, the reality of His existence is not like that of any creation.”  Maimonides

So two goals remain: 1) to keep a closer watch on NPR programming to tell if there really is an anti-religious bias in their choice of authors and book reviews, and 2) to write the response book, “36 Arguments against the Existence of G-d: A work of fiction.”

Intellectual Freedom & Chanukah

Chanukah is a festival of freedom.  It is written in the Hayom Yom for the seventh night of Chanukah that,

The campaign of the Greeks was aimed to “make them forget Your Torah and violate the decrees of Your will” (Sidur p. 59); as the Midrash (Bereishit Raba 16) puts it, (the Greeks demanded) “Write…that you have no share in the G-d of Israel.” It was a war against G-d. “Let them study Torah,” the Greeks implied. “Let them practice the justice-mitzvot and the ‘testimonial’ observances. But they must not mention that the Torah is G-d’s Torah and the mitzvot are the decrees of His will. Torah and mitzvot must be severed from G-dliness.”

Torah and mitzvot, of course, have no meaning without G-dliness; they cannot exist independently.  In this passage, the Lubavitcher Rebbe points out the intimate deception in the Greek argument.  They weren’t interested in simply regulating behaviors but rather in acquiring power and controlling individual freedoms.    We celebrate Chanukah to remember the Macabeean revolt that defended the individual’s right to believe and defeated the intimate deceptions of the Greeks.  There are at least three ways I feel this war going on today:

1 – Science & Creationism.  Any argument here ultimately presents a false dichotomy; it is as oxymoronic for a scientist to embrace faith in their work as it is for a religious individual to rely on the scientific method to justify their faith.  So when politicians and activists engage in heated debates on this topic, then the real goal is to conquer, to exert power over how the other person chooses to live their life.

2 – Climate Change.  There’s really no question that recycling is a good thing to do.  The same may be true for lots of other individual choices ranging from shower duration to mode of transportation.  However, there is no direct (simple) connection between these “sustainable” practices and global temperature.  So any efforts to claim that changing global temperature is the motivation behind current national and global legislation efforts are clearly intimate deceptions.  What’s really at stake is power and who gets to decide what decisions an individual is allowed to make.

3 – Evolution by Natural Selection vs. Symbiogenesis.  A recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences included a series of articles that argued for and against a controversial hypothesis, that the larval form of lepidopterans evolved by symbiogenesis of ancient lepidopterans with onychophorans.  When these articles came out, there was a great uproar among my colleagues against the hypothesis, with arguments mainly focusing on the unorthodoxy of the idea.  We celebrate Darwin so much in biology that it’s unfortunately easy to forget that natural selection is not the only way that evolution may proceed (as Lynn Margulis so well demonstrated throughout her career). But when we attack ideas simply because they are foreign, we sacrifice intellectual freedom and trade the pursuit of knowledge for the pursuit of power and stability.

Festival of Light 5770

A Bit Cliche, Don’t You Think?

This quote by W. Beran Wolfe posted on a friend’s new blog caught my eye:

If we want to know what happiness is we must seek it, not as if it were a part of gold at the end of the rainbow, but among human beings who are living richly and fully the good life. If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double Dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar gold button that has rolled under the cupboard in his bed room. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living 24 crowded hours of the day.

The passage goes on to suggest that a philosophy of constructive altruism be pursued as a means to a satisfying and happy life.  Among the philosophy and religious texts, I think it is common to find mainly a discussion of the altruistic giving up of yourself for a greater good.  The alternative is the capitalistic, self-centered, and objectivist approach.  I think constructive altruism though, may have a firm foundation in two domains, within both the ants and the Lubavitchers.  We frequently discuss the evolution of altruism in species such as ants and bees, but almost always with a cringe or a bite of the tongue.  This is because 100% pure altruism (where there are benefits to a second individual but only costs to the first) is so hard to reconcile within the framework of natural selection.  Once we can put aside the syntax limitations of altruism though, we are free to recognize that acts that may seem altruistic are in fact often quite helpful all around.  When this observation is combined with the fact that often the individuals involved are related, there is no more obstacle to this pattern of behavior evolving within natural selection.  Which is good since the ants are among some of the most ecologically dominant species on this planet!  With regard to constructive altruism, the Lubavitchers seem to have caught on too.  Other religious individuals are content to spend their whole day immersed in Torah study without interruption and without action.  But Lubavitchers live a life of outreach, based on a pillar of strength in their families, community, and Rebbe.  Individuals that sacrifice some of their time for study to go out and embrace the world, share a smile, lend a helping hand, and make possible the most brilliant mitzvot; these individuals truly embrace the created world and in so doing honor its creation.

The Evolutionist’s Emuna Shlaymah

A couple years ago, as we departed for the airport after the annual meeting of The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB), I found myself waiting for the shuttle and looking to start a conversation with the gentleman beside me.  Thinking it was a halfway intelligent way to break the ice, I asked, “So what organism do  you study?“  Many people at the conference seemed to focus on a particular model organism to address their specific set of questions, e.g., bats or moths to study flight mechanics, sea anemones to probe biomechanical constraints on evolution, or zebrafish to investigate the neural control of locomotion, so inquiring about the identity of his lab-pet seemed a reasonable thing to ask.  His response though, is one that’s lingered in my mind ever since.  He poignantly criticized me for thinking that his research would be driven or limited by a choice of animal group to focus on.  Rather, he explained that his interests were in the broad evolutionary transitions life as a whole has experienced.  In that respect, his research had taken him to work with many different creatures, from prehistoric plants to modern-day  dinosaurs.  In fact, the scientist I was chatting with was none-other than Kevin Padian, professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and the Museum of Paleontology at UC Berkeley, relatively famous for his testimony during the intelligent-design challenging Dover trial.  Enjoying a round of Pacifico in the airport while waiting for flights home, Dr. Padian and I discussed a range of topics including insect evolution and the arthropod transition from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems.  The whole enounter was charmingly memorable mostly due to the positively inviting nature with which Kevin drew me into conversation.

The need for open-minded, philosophical, and inviting conversation comes up as a theme in a recent book review written by Padian in the open-access journal, PLoS Biology.  In the review about a book that asserts the factual “truth” of evolution, Padian points out that truth is not necessarily objective, rational, or even categorical.  He writes,

The problem is…. truth is a personal thing. This is not to say that all morality is subjective and all ethics conditional, and we don’t need to rehash philosophy here. But it seems important in a book entitled Why Evolution Is True to engage the question of truth—and whose truth—at least a bit.

Scientists are rationalists, believers in the power of reason, of observation of the natural world, the formation of patterns, the testing of inferences. I said “believers” deliberately. Do we “believe” in the results of our investigations? We shouldn’t; we should accept them provisionally pending further testing.

Just as scientists are prone to accepting as truth those data which are produced following the hypothesis-testing approach of the scientific method, other communities have alternative established criteria.  For example, essentially the whole field of paleontology relies on a different, more statistical, method for establishing scientific facts as experiments testing hypotheses about events in the past are extroadinarily difficult to pursue without time machines.  And effectively all of experimental scientific inquiry relies on a different kind of foundation than fields such as pure mathematics or physics in which knowledge frequently comes only in the form of axium, theorem and proof.

If the average abstract mathematician and experimental biologist would have a hard time convincing each other of their respective ways of knowing the world, then it should be no surprise how challenging this conversation is when it is between secular scientists and the religious community.  To say that one “side” is about fact and truth and the other is about belief is patently absurd.  The perfect faith, or emuna shlaymah, of a common Jew could easily be surmounted in magnitude by the empassioned dogma of a scientist (e.g. Richard Dawkins) on his high horse.  To have any kind of meaningful conversation, belief must be recognized as such; i.e. a personal set of decisions about how to understand the world and your place in it.  Scientists cannot successfully assault others to “Believe in Evolution!” any more than a preacher can assault a congregant to “Believe in G-d!”  Putting aside the great shield of belief though, we are free to farbreng, to engage in discourse, to learn, to share knowledge, and grow as individuals.  Then it might be possible for an individual to believe in the G-d they choose and at the same time understand how something like evolution crafts the ever-changing diversity of life on this planet.  It might also then be possible for the scientist to take note of just how much belief is present in our stitched-together knowledge of how the natural world works; if any of that hubris can be transformed into identifying and asking some long overlooked great unanswered questions, then the next scientific revolution may be just around the corner.

Reference:

Padian, K. (2009) Truth or consequences? Engaging the “truth” of evolution. PLoS Biol 7(3): e1000077. PLoS Biology is an open-access journal, so I can provide the PDF download link to Padian’s article here.

Ant Photo #4

Fossilized ant in amber

Ahavas Yisrael: Science is catching on…

Why are we here? The first Chassidic rebbe, the Baal Shem Tov, taught that “a soul may descend to earth and live for seventy or eighty years for the sole purpose of doing a favor for another.“  Indeed, one of the main principles in Judaism is Ahavas Yisrael, that we should love our neighbors, our brothers, and our communities, just as we would ourselves.  The Lubavitcher Rebbe taught that there is no difference between this love of a neighbor and love for Torah or love for G-d, that they are all of the same essence.  As such, their pursuit is about as close to a purpose of life as can be expressed.  What about from Science’s point of view though?

Modern Biology describes life in the capitalist vocabulary of resource limitation, competition, fitness, and selection.  Patterns of speciation and extinction have followed life for as long as its traces can be found in the fossil record.  We discuss adaptations as fortunate events (i.e. probabilistic) that correlate with differential survivorship and fecundity.  If they make it possible for you to produce more successful offspring than your neighbor, then those progeny will have better access to environmental resources and their offspring will likewise benefit all to the detriment of the neighbors (i.e. unless the neighbors also evolve; see Red Queen Hypothesis in the glossary).

But just as science that speaks with only one voice isn’t really science at all, it is particularly interesting to consider an alternative hypotheses to the question.  While studying the evolution of the cell in the 1960s, Lynn Margulis developed a theory of symbioses to explain how mitochondria came to be established within eukaryotic organisms.  It didn’t involve competition so much as mutual benef.  For decades, she was ridiculed and rejected by the community until genetic developments were able to confirm her controversial ideas.  Dr. Margulis’ evolutionary theories however, are still not well represented in mainstream thinking.  She has recently refered to the dominant Neo-Darwinist thinkers as, “a minor twentieth-century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon Biology.”

Margulis’ endosymbiont theory of evolution may be spreading roots in the field of social insect research.  Here, scientists are trying to understand the evolution of altruistic behaviors in which organisms have evolved that cannot themselves reproduce and in fact may sacrifice their lives for the sake of others.  For a long time, the “answer” to the problem was Kin Selection Theory, and while this may be valid in some cases, its strict dependence on relatedness between organisms is a challenge when altruism is found to occur between unrelated organisms (e.g.,  seed harvester ant queens that cooperatively found colonies).  One of the leading ideas to explain altruism is that selection can act, not only on the level of an individual’s genes, but on the collective higher levels of biological organization.  E. O. Wilson and David Sloan Wilson recently described species-level selection as “the fact that group-level adaptations are seldom locally advantageous and, therefore, must be favored at a larger scale to evolve.”  Their model still invokes competition, but it is clear that competition occurs at different scales and on some levels, it may not be the dominant factor.  The Wilsons ended a recent paper in the The Quarterly Review of Biology with a cute Jewish analogy:

When Rabbi Hillel was asked to explain the Torah in the time that he could stand on one foot, he famously replied: “Do not do unto others that which is repugnant to you. Everything else is commentary.” Darwin’s original insight and the developments reviewed in this article enable us to offer the following onefoot
summary of sociobiology’s new theoretical foundation: “Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.”

It scares me to consider how great of an effect our sociological frame of mind can influence our understanding of nature and corrupt our abilities as scientists.  It nevertheless is predominant and requires revolutionary figures to bring us back to reality (e.g., Kinsey and Roughgarden). Modern biology has rapidly developed and has done so during the explosive growth of capitalism within the last century.  The acceptance of the capitalist way of life as the primary “good” for society is almost without quesiton, and the same is pretty much true for Neo-Darwinism.  Perhaps the recent economic crash will make it more possible for our theories to evolve to rely less on competitive drives and more-so embrace cooperative behavior.  The Jewish concept of Ahavas Yisrael may find a foothold in science, and we may come to realize that, as Albert Einstein once said,

“The illusion that we are separate from one another is an optical delusion of our consciousness.”

Halacha, Sex, and Biological Fitness

The whole theory of evolution in modern biology revolves around the principle of biological fitness.  Definitions of fitness have changed over time, but the main idea remains the same, i.e., in a system with limited resources, an organism that produces relatively more offspring will be more likely to pass its heritable traits on to future generations and thus be more “fit” with respect to evolutionary change (avoiding extinction and surviving speciation).  In practice (i.e., in the lab) we commonly estimate fitness by reproductive success (number of offspring).  This isn’t always straight-forward though, as we next may want to consider the relative viability of those offspring.  For example, will they actually be able to have more offspring themselves than progeny from a smaller clutch would be?  Just because they came out, do they matter?  Apparently there is an interesting analogy of this question in Judaism, where there is an extended development of the concept of an individual and its value over time, extending from before they are born and the G-dly soul has yet to enter the body, to their path through the birth canal, and continuing to change over thirteen years during maturity into adulthood.  We don’t congratulate a pregnant mother, as the unborn child has yet to embrace mitzvot, and even the newborn baby may be considered a miscarriage if, G-d forbid, it dies before thirty days.  Nevertheless, Judaism places extreme emphasis on producing babies, primarily stemming from the first thing commanded of us, in Genesis 1:28, that we be fruitful and multiply.  It seems modern science’s understanding of biological fitness is a concept that has been around in the Torah for quite some time!  So sex is a very necessary and important thing, and Judaic sources do anything but shy away from this function of life.  Describing the understanding of sex in Judaic scripture as, “powerful, magical, dangerous, and holy,” Jay Michaelson in his recent book goes on to explain,

So too, in the Talmudic tradition, where sex is celebrated, feared, regulated, and endlessly discussed.  First, most of the Rabbis frowned on celibacy.  The Talmud in Yevamot 8:7 records Rabbi Eleazer ben Azariah as saying that “anyone who does not engage in procreation nullifes the Divine image.”  Yet Talmudic sex is much more than procreation.  If the tales in the Talmud are any indication, our sages were passionate beings whose attitude toward sexual matters ranged from boastful pride (even about the size of their anatomy) to extreme reverence for beauty and its power to bring about inspiration or calamity.  The Talmud is not prudish; it recommends foods for good sex (Eruvin 28a and Kiddushin 2b), discusses multiple orgasim (Niddah 13a) and the length of time required for sexual intercourse (Sotah 4a), frowns upon wearing clothes during sex (Ketubot 48a), and explicitly permits oral sex (Nedarim 20a-b).  It is also insistent that a husband provide his wife with sexual pleasure during “her time” (onatah), listing the required frequency of sex [Kethuboth 61b] according to the occupation of the husband: every day for those with no job, twice a week for laborers, once a week for mule drivers, once a month for camel drivers, once every six months for sailors.  Within the Talmud’s various parameters, sexual love is celebrated and sanctified.

The values placed on producing new life have extroadinary consequences throughout halacha and form the basis of many decisions in the field of jewish medical ethics.  Abortion of an unborn fetus, for example, can be justified in conditions that place the mother’s health at risk.  At the root of this decision is a differential understanding of who is alive and when.  The Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, wrote in 1983,

The Bible does not specifically deal with either criminal or therapeutic abortion.  But in legislating on the liability for assaulting a pregnant mother and causing a miscarriage, the text in the Book of Exodus (21:22) implies that the destruction of an unborn child is not culpable as murder, and that the fetus does not, therefore, enjoy the same absolute title to life as an existing human being.  The Talmud takes this an important step further by ruling in favour of an embryotomy where a difficult delivery otherwise threatens the mother’s life…. Similar considerations govern the attitude to birth control.  Where genuine fears exist, attested by reliable medical opinion, that a renewed pregnancy might possibly cause some serious risk ot the mother, rabbinical verdicts on the use of contraceptive precautions would generally be liberal.

Another example of perhaps surprisingly progressive and liberal leanings of orthodox Judaism is found with respect to human cloning.  Rabbi Nissan Dovid Dubov gave a lecture available online on this issue, covering topics from the development of reproductive technologies, to who owns our DNA and the ethical considerations of cloning.  Coming full circle though, our ability (or inability) to define life also impacts our understanding of death.  Not surprisingly, there is debate about what it means to die.  I’m most familiar with invertebrates and an extroadinarily fuzzy definition of death there; indeed, you can remove the head from an ant or cockroach and they will continue to be functional animals for quite some time.  As such, we are forced to not discuss life and death, but the relative functionality of different animal systems (water loss rate, neuron excitability, metabolic rate, etc.).  I was under the impression that our medical understanding of death in humans would be somewhat more advanced.  Apparently, in modern science, it really isn’t.  In hospital emergency rooms, death is ascertained not by some complicated recording of the brain or heart, but rather by checking for a variety of reflexes that we presume are indications of brain function.  Judaism defines death as cessation of respiratory and cardiovascular function.  Is one definition really more valid than the other?  It is an important question, with ramifications for when euthenasia may be applied or organs harvested.  Is science the right place to turn for an answer?  If so, has it actually supplied a sufficient one?

Ant photo #3

Two sisters sharing information and nutrients

Physicists as prophets?

It has been suggested that the softer the science is, the more extreme is the conflict between science and religion.  For political scientists it is life and death, anthropologists go nuts over it, biologists get all worked up and defensive, chemists and engineers hardly have the time, physicists enjoy it, thinking themselves at times on par with the prophets, I’m told, and mathematicians… well they operate on a ‘higher’ level where it doesn’t even enter the picture.

Hypotheses about the Afterlife

In an interview on NPR this afternoon, author and scientist David Eagleman discussed his recent book, “Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives.“  As creative fiction, his work is perhaps an amusing read as it compels the reader to stretch their imagination about the nature of G-d, man, life, and the afterlife beyond the standard norms that dominate in judeo-christian society and even the world’s religions as a whole.  Scientific progress requires this kind of imaginative capability for the production of novel hypotheses.  Unfortunately, the way science is too-often taught with a dogmatic focus on laws and facts to memorize and too-little attention stimulating ideas about science’s plethora of major unanswered questions, we handicap the potential for future generations to make groundbreaking discoveries.  Interestingly so, I think the same is true in the realm of religion.

We (or at least, society does) propogate the idea of G-d as an old white man in the clouds, perhaps with a checklist, and a pass/fail scorecard that determines our fate in the afterlife.  I’m no cultural historian, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this is a mentality formed in youth when to them, parents are equated with the ultimate of higher powers and life is about finding out what kind of bad things you can get away with and still have playtime, and if you go too far, how to apologize and quickly make up for your transgressions before dessert is withheld.  G-d as a concept was never imposed on me as a child, and this societal view of G-d and the afterlife is not one I subscribe to.  Whether this is a result of my own developmental pattern or concepts unique to Judaism remains to me, unclear.

I know far more about hypothesis testing in science than about what the orthodox Judaism position is on the afterlife.  Hypotheses are the ideas that drive scientific experimentation.  The more hypotheses that are tested (and subsequently either supported or rejected), the more we know about the natural world, by definition.  However, to qualify as a hypothesis, the ideas they embody must be testable.  This is a non-trivial axiom of the modern scientific method as it sets the primary boundary on the kind of knowlegdge science can help us acquire.  Suggesting that his book of (non-testable) ideas about the afterlife constitutes a collection of hypotheses, Dr. Eagleman does immense damage to the public’s understanding of scientific method and consequently the very role of science in society.  We cannot test a hypothesis about the afterlife, and so science has no power to say anything about this body of inquiry whatsoever.  To know about the afterlife, if such a thing can be knowledge at all, we must turn to other sources.

But why focus on afterlife, when we are so deeply entrenched in this life?  Considering a similar set of options is  the apt scientist, who, observing that species diversity changes over time, instead of proposing a hypothesis about a divine exterminator, rather considers ecological hypotheses about resource competition and adaptation.  We would laugh out of the department any PhD-gadol who thought he could explain the K-T extinction by means of a divine exterminator.  Should we also similarly laugh out of consideration any body of beliefs that depends on rewards after we die?  I whole-heartedly think so.  Judaism is a religion that I consciously subscribe to and believe in, in part, because it acknowledges the physical reality of the world we live in.  We are challenged with transforming this world not after we die, but while alive, through the performance of mitzvot, good deeds.  Paraphrasing the words of the Rebbe, we need to make here on this planet, starting in our own hearts and backyards, a dwelling place for G-d.  I’m sure there’s a lot more philosophy and scripture relating to this mandate, but for now, I’ve got my hands full tilling this small patch of soil before me.

Redefining Evolution

Alfred James Lotka (1880-1949) was an influential Jewish scientist whose research blended physics, chemistry, biology and mathematical disciplines.  I am currently trying to understand his work on formulating a natural (physical) law for evolution.  He wrote in 1922,

It has been pointed out by Boltzmann that the fundamental object of contention in the life-struggle, in the evolution of the organic world, is available energy. In accord with this observation is the principle that, in the struggle for existence, the advantage must go to those organisms whose energy-capturing devices are most efficient in directing available energy into channels favorable to the preservation of the species.

Lotka’s ideas were picked up and developed by HT Odum in the context of the Maximum Power Principle.  I’m not sure what the current state is of these ideas, but it’s interesting (and necessary) to nevertheless note that our thinking about evolutionary principles is still very much a work in progress.

Ant Photo of the Week

In the spirit of Alex Wild’s beautiful photographs (and blog), I present a photo of Pogonomyrmex californicus, a seed harvester ant from southern California.

Daughter of one, sister to six-hundred

150 years of thinking and wisdom

In his compendium, Mishna Torah, one of the greatest sages (and physicians) in Jewish history, Maimonides, compelled his readers to learn science.  Through the wisdom (chachmah) earned by way of the scientific method we have the path to life’s ultimate fulfillment, the knowledge of G-d and unity in life.  As such, I extend a personal “thank-you” to Fellow of the Royal Society, Charles R. Darwin, on this anniversary of his birth (though the Jewish anniversary is still a week away) and the anniversary of the publication of his seminal text.

It is unfortunately common among religious crowds to find ideas in Darwin’s work to focus on as points of contention.  It is similarly disappointing to find that it is becoming common among our scientific community to find reasons to drive an ever greater wedge between believers and athetists.  It was perhaps Darwin’s crowning achievement, not to discover evolutionary principles, but to synthesize them from a collection of discordant fields of research.  So let us keep this spirit in mind, continue to search for truth and unity, and celebrate.

Dennett the Designer

I just listened to a TED talk [youtube link] by Daniel Dennett in which he presents a few interesting contentions having to do with “the reverse engineering of religions.”  It starts with a sugar-coated suggestion that today’s “brilliantly designed” religions be taught in a mandatory fashion in schools, right along with reading and writing.  I recognize this as a perfectly benign and actually admirable proposition.  Having gone to public school and having been exposed to many religious backgrounds, I appreciate this worldview and I appreciate the freedom granted to me by my parents who did not impose a faith on me in my youth.  Dennett goes out of his way to discuss the sheer power of religion.  He does this first in the positive light of how it can bring people together and motivate them towards good deeds and a meaningful life.  He discusses “the fact” that religions have evolved over thousands of years to become these perfectly designed tools for guiding human interactions.  While I disagree with that contention with respect to Judaism, let’s tentatively accept it for the sake of the argument.  The next part of his argument though, is that today, “We yield the paintbrush” and as such, no longer have need for religion, and so we should all be atheist.  Who then, I ask, guides us?  Is it to be Al Gore?  Daniel Dennett?  G-d forbid, Richard Dawkins?

There are a lot of wonky things in modern religious discussion.  Dennett points to, for example, Rick Warren’s suggestion that pre-Noah, the world was irrigated from the ground up.  Walking on campus today, I saw two men on soap-boxes; one proclaiming that we were all to be saved with JC’s help and the other, not more than 20 feet away, condemning us all to eternal damnation, in the same individual’s name.  There are nutcases everywhere though.  In Washington right now, senators are commiting hundreds of billions of dollars (ones they don’t even have) to a program that we have absolutely no scientific evidence or reliable predictions about the probability of its success.  As a country, we are fighting two concurrent wars… the justifications for which  I am estimating hardly five percent of americans even think about on a daily basis.  And on campus tonight, despite the university’s decision to impose mandatory furloughs on all staff and professors… spotlights shine up into the sky to paint the clouds with streams of photons that are apparently more valuable than the education of our students. I reject Dennett’s contention that religion (alone) drives people to do wrong things.  To the contrary, it is among the few positively motivating forces in the world today.

When religion is forced into extinction… when Richard Dawkins becomes the moshiach for the world’s atheists… who will stand up to say what is right and what is wrong?

Dennett would point to the wonders of evolution and say something like, ‘nature will do the trick.’  Now I surely won’t deny evolution… but I do ask, is that the world we want to choose to live in?  As far as I understand the origins of human civilization, the whole point has been to bypass natural selection (and the consequent eventual extinction of our species).  But if we return to nature, who can predict what will happen to us?

Newton, Darwin, and Abraham

What do the towering english scientist Newton and revolutionary naturalist Darwin have in common with Avraham Avinu, the father of the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian peoples?  Monotheism.  Newton didn’t discover anything terribly new in the world, but rather brought together the works of groundbreaking scientists like Kepler and Galileo into a unified theory (the law of gravitation).  Similarly, Darwin didn’t either invent or discover evolution so much as he brought the ideas of selection, environmental resource limitation, and species diversity together into a unified framework.  And Abraham?  He turned his back on the plethora of deities out there to embrace monotheism, enter a covenant with Hashem, and proclaim for all to hear that the lord is our G-d and the lord is one.  Contradictions do not exist in the world.  Where one is perceived, truth lies hidden in the distance.  The prolific biologist, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson comments on the elegance of unity in the created world, “For the harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty” (On Growth and Form, 1942).  Indeed, two of the great driving forces in the world today are about bringing together the human intellect and spirit to be able to unify the forces of the natural world (grand unification theory) and similarly bring harmony to the peoples of the world (through the coming of Moshiach).  Perhaps the two quests are not so different from each other as you might think.

Eusociality and Proverbs 6:6

King Solomon writes, “Go to the ant, you sluggard; see her ways and become wise…” (Mishlei 6:6).  It is a truly magnificent commandment, one many of us are continuing to follow today.  I think it’s terrific that Solomon recognizes that ants are all essentially female.  (Males exist, but only for a short while and die soon after mating, if not in the act itself.)  He also goes on to recognize some of the defining characteristics of the organization of social insect colonies by continuing with the following verse, “for she has no chief, overseer, or ruler….“  Indeed, whether Solomon refers here to a worker or to a queen, he is spot-on accurate.  Colonies exhibit patterns of behavior, be they in the form of the division of labor or efficient foraging networks, but these happen without centralized control.  We currently talk about these patterns as being emergent properties that are a result of self-organized complexity.

So how is the study of these patterns and their emergence possibly of a topic of interest to anyone who isn’t a myrmecologist?  My research is begining to show that the patterns of energy use by ant colonies resembles the same pattern of energy use by an organism.  Recent work has also suggested that the pattern may hold for entire cities.  It may be that there is a universal law out there, governing the relationship between size, growth, and energy use.

Camponotus festinatus

Rashi’s commentary tells us that we can also look to Solomon’s myrmecological analogy as inspiration.  As much as a colony is always actively engaged in its activities of sharing food and growing, we should likewise engage in the study of Torah and the pursuit of mitzvot.

Does science make belief in G-d obsolete?

The Templeton Foundation published an advertorial a short while back featuring prominent scientists weighing in on the answer to the question above and I remember them catching my eye when I saw it between the pages of Science.  It was remarkable to note how many giants in the field were open-minded to the question.

Check out the essays online: A Templeton Conversation: Does Science make belief in G-d obsolete?

One of my favorite essays is by a physics Nobel Laureate, William D. Phillips, who presents essentially three arguments: (1) why science and religion can be non-contradictory; (2) why scientists may be drawn to belief, and (3) why he believes.  As for his last point, let me quote from his essay,

“I believe in God because I can feel God’s presence in my life, because I can see the evidence of God’s goodness in the world, because I believe in Love and because I believe that God is Love.”

Ultimately, his belief is not about a rational argument.  His belief is not because someone was able to prove the number of days in creation or the existence or not of evolution.  And while it is not a scientific argument per se, it is not an irrational one either.  It is 100% rational and real — it is based on knowledge, i.e., his own observations and feelings.  If we can not trust what we see and feel in life, then what does that leave?  It spells a death not only to joy and passion in life, but also a death of the scientific method (itself based on observation and faith in the epistemological validity of those observations).

Another fantastic Templeton page asks the question, “Does the Universe have a purpose?” and is worth taking a look at just to see the variety of answers from individuals such as physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel, and biologist Jane Goodall.

Hayom Yom for Darwin’s Birthday

Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday is being celebrated around the world this week, along with the 150th anniversary of his book, On The Origin of Species.  Festivities are mostly centered on the english-date of his birth, February 12, 1809, but as a Jewish scientist I’d like to also celebrate his Jewish birthday (or at least what you might have called his Jewish birthday if Darwin hadn’t been a passionate believer in the Anglican faith).  So assuming he was born in the morning, according to Chabad’s nifty calculator, Darwin’s birthday is on the 26th of the month of Sh’vat (this year it’s on February 20th).

Darwin was born in a truly exciting time in the Jewish calendar.  During these weeks, we read in the Parsha about the exodus from Egypt, the parting of the sea, and the gathering at Mount Sinai before Hashem.   Within the last week’s writings in the Hayom Yom, there are a number of entries about intellect.  I’ll hopefully post more on these soon, but the one this year for Darwin’s birthday is particularly interesting, so here it is:

Ahava, affection, is the breath of life in the Avoda of Chassidus. It is the thread that binds chassidim to each other, that binds Rebbe to chassidim and chassidim to Rebbe. Ahava works in a direct way (initiated affection) and also in a reflective way (responding to the other’s affection). It knows no barriers and transcends the limits of time and place.

So on Darwin’s birthday, let us cherish love.  We should have ahava for each other, regardless of our outward appearances, be they Jewish, Atheist, Creationist, Muslim, or Agnostic.  Darwin saw so many different beaks on the Finches he collected from the Galapagos, but through those differences, he was able to see a common thread that united them, evolution through natural selection.  We should do well to also strive to find not division, but unity in life.