Eureka! Jihad!

To me, those two words just don't go together well. But the current leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, seems to think differently as he has recently called for scientists (in particular nuclear scientists and explosives experts) to join him and his followers in declaring holy war against the West. And why would they want to do that, you may wonder? Al-Masri has an interesting recruitment strategy:

"The field of jihad (holy war) can satisfy your scientific ambitions, and the large American bases (in Iraq) are good places to test your unconventional weapons, whether biological or dirty, as they call them," he said.

So, are your mad scientist ambitions unappreciated by your peers? Are you feeling too confined by pesky ethical guideliness and so-called "morals?" Come join the jihad! We're planning to kill all of these infidels anyway, so if you'll come lend us your expertise, we'll be glad to let you experiement on them!

Hmmm, this all sounds a little bit familiar.

Faith Diagnosis, Medical Healing

My friend coprinus is a doctor working down in Guatemala. If I understand his goals correctly, he is trying to understand the traditional network and practice of medicine at the local level (concentrating mostly on what we might call mid-wives among indigenous peoples of the area) in order to see how various resources might be brought to further empower and strengthen these medical workers.

An interesting story posted on his blog/field journal caught my attention. In it, he describes a traditional healer (an aq’omanel) who has what can only be called a professional medical knowledge of the plant life in the area. Not only does he know which plant can be used to treat which ailment, but he knows exact preparation techniques and dosages as well. As corpinus puts it:

When he is talking to me about individual plants and their uses, he sounds a lot like an allopath or a pharmacist. For example, I ask for a natural treatment for caries and he gives me a prescription down to the ounce, duration, method of application. He does this for at lest a dozen conditions: gastritis, diabetes, ulcers, lice, dandruff, menstrual irregularities, and so on. When however, he starts talking about diagnosis things change.

It seems that while the aq'omanel relies on medical knowledge for healing, he relies chiefly upon spiritual practice for diagnosis

He tells me how it is very important for the aq’omanel to meditate and pray every day. Without this spiritual discipline he will be unable to diagnose properly. He talks about how once when he was working in the fields he came across some sacred stones, which he says were a gift from someone. I do not catch who exactly: God, or his ancestors, or the spirit of the mountain? He states his grandfather also had sacred stones, and his mother also used a piece of sacred jade in her work. The method that Diego uses to diagnose is to manipulate these stones over the body of the patient, then he can sense in his soul what is the proper diagnosis. Divination is an essential element of the work of many traditional healers. The use of stones, which come as sacred gifts, is very common.

He also talks about the role of belief in the healing process. How important it is for the patient to have faith in the power of the remedies and of the aq’omanel. At the same time, he talks about the importance of rigorous compliance with the prescriptions

The story struck me for a couple of reasons. One is the fact that this aq'omanel sees no conflict in embracing both spiritual and medicinal means to ridding the body of physical ailments. It reminded me of the recent recognition in many of America's medical schools that good doctors should be sensitive to the religious beliefs and faith needs of their patients. The second thing that struck me is the contrast with the Christian practice of faith healing. In that practice, typically someone comes with ailment that has already been medically diagnosed by a doctor, but which medicine was unable to cure. Then God is invoked to bring healing to the person. But here with the aq'omanel, things are reversed. Spiritual assistance is sought at the first step, diagnosis, rather than the last.

The Pope and Evolution

For the last half a century, the Catholic Church has recognized the validity of the theory of evolution as a way to account for the diversity of life on earth. Pope Pius XII started things off, I think, with the statement "The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, insofar as it inquiries into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter." In 1996 Pope John Paul II endorsed this view, calling evolution 'more than just a hypothesis' and stating that faith and evolution were compatible.

The position of Pope Benedict XVI, however, has been more difficult to decipher. At World Youth Day back in April, he stated that "science supports a reliable, intelligent structure of matter, the design of Creation" and then yesterday stated that according to such theories derived from Charles Darwin's work, the universe is "the random result of evolution and therefore, at bottom, something unreasonable." Much has been made of these comments in the media and around the science blogs, but I don't think its as much a departure from earlier positions as one might think. In particular, it seems the pope doesn't have a problem with the idea of common ancestry. When he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he presided over the church's International Theological Commission, which stated that 'since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism.' "

Going a little beyond the soundbites, its clear that the Pope's problem is not with Darwinian evolution, but with neo-Darwinian evolution and specifically with the idea that evolution is an unguided process with random origins and random results. In this he is on the same page with Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, a former student and close advisor. In a NYT's piece a while back, Schonborn wrote that "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense -- an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection -- is not."

The Catholic position here is an entirely reasonable one from both a religious and scientific perspecitive. From the religious perspective, it recognizes that nothing in Christian teaching is incompatible with the idea of common ancestry. However, there is a very real incompatibility between Christian teaching and the idea that the diversity of life on earth and man's central role in it are the result of random (and therefore purposeless) chance. The creation stories in Genesis tell us that the earth and man were brought into being intentionally and with purpose in mind. The Church is right to defend this. From the scientific perspective (and this is more controversial), I think skepticism about the randomness of evolutionary change is warranted, mostly because we simply do not understand all of the mechanics of genetic change and the randomness of these changes is largely just a basic assumption. It may turn out that genetic changes are constrained in some ways we do not currently understand, greatly reducing the number of possible outcomes from 'random' mutation.

I wanted to point all of this out to counter some of posts out there like this one at Pharyngula which portray the pope's statements as being fully anti-evolution or stories like this one or this one which take his words as an endorsement of Intelligent Design. So far, at least, that's not the case. As with all things, to get to the root you have to dig below the surface.

Complexity, Simplicity and the Draw to Faith

Whenever a synthesis of faith and science is discussed, it is typical to hear Pslam 19 quoted. 'The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.' In other words, if we look closely at the world we live in, we'll clearly see that God is the one who created it. Many scientists of faith agree that this is the case, but if you listen closely you notice that there are two very different views on how it is that God can be perceived in nature.

Biologists and those in related fields often marvel at the complexity and intricacies of the natural world - the amount of information in a single DNA strand, the complex functionings of our bodies' various system, the intracate web of an ecosystem, etc. When one comes to appreciate the complexity of the natural world, they argue, one cannot help but fathom that there must be an intelligent God who put it all together. This is in fact part of the argument behind Intelligent Design's doctrine of irreducible complexity - things are so complex, they say, that they must have been designed purposely by an intelligent creator.

On the other side of the room, however, sit physicists of faith. Rather than pointing to the world's complexity, these scientists point in the opposite direction. For it has been the great pleasure of physicists to discover that the incredibly complex structure of the universe can in most cases be described with a few simple principles. This is so incredibly surprising and the principles work together in such elegant ways that one cannot help but see the genius of it and suspect there is a Genius behind it.

While I am always happy to hear any kind of scientists talk about why their work draws them to faith, in my opinion these two properties of the natural world do not sit on a level playing field when it comes to revealing God through his creation. Marveling at the complexity of cellular regeneration is all well and good, but marveling is all it is. How much one marvels at something will very much depend on one's personal experience. When I moved from Florida to Illinois some years ago, I used to marvel at the snow falling. I got used to it. Simplicity, on the other hand, is not a relative term. When you've explained a complex phenomenon in simplistic and elegant terms, you have discovered something about the nature of the thing, you have figured out not just how it works, but why it works the way it does and why it could never work any other way. You see that the thing was no accident, but the result of a confluence of very general, natural principles that themselves need little explanation. When that happens, it is difficult not to see the thing has having purpose and as having been on purpose.

It is my conviction that eventually biologists will talk the way physicists do about nature (sorry to leave you out, chemists - I've actually heard chemists give testimony on both sides of the room). Due mostly to technological advances, I think biology is on the verge of a revolution in discovering the simple and elegant principles that underlie some of those extremely complex systems and processes that invoke our awe. I think we'll one day understand evolution the same way we understand the Big Bang - as the result of a precise and beautiful calculation highly unlikely to have occurred and highly unlikely to have produced any result other than the one it did.

Sermon Notes

Dave Schmelzer, the scholar-preacher who leads the Greater Boston Vineyard in Cambridge, Mass., has a recent sermon entitled 'Does Serious Science Help or Hurt My Serious Faith?" Unfortunately, in the two days since I downloaded the sermon their main website has been entirely re-vamped and it seems their podcast isn't quite up to speed yet. I'll link to it when its back up.

Essentially, Schmelzer poses the question of whether the perceived conflict between science and faith has any meat to it. Using quotes from scientists such as Richard Dawkins, Francis Collins, Stephen Hawking, and other scientists from his own congregation, he makes two conclusions. One is that science actually draws us toward faith and suggests that Scripture actually promotes scientific investigation through passages such as Psalm 19.

On the other hand, as one of his interviewees points out, science and faith do come into conflict when they compete for the same historical story. The question for the faithful then becomes, how do I remain faithful to the authority of scripture and tradition while also being faithful to what science is revealing? The tension isn't always easy to resolve and in my opinion the church has always done a bad job resolving it.

Schmelzer concludes with some vague suggestions about how evolution and biblical authority do not conflict, pointing out that one of the fathers of American Christian fundamentalism, B. B. Warfield, believed Darwinian evolution to be correct. He also includes what could be interpreted as a slight jab at Intelligent Design, though those words are never mentioned. Rather, he simply quotes Proverbs 19:2: "It is not good to have zeal without knowledge."

Flagellum Follies

One of the regular contributors over at the Panda's Thumb has a new article out in Nature Reviews Microbiology on the nature of the flagellum. Flagella, for those who don't know, are little whip-like organelles that (mostly unicellular) organisms use to move themselves around. Turns out they are fairly complex machines, which is why they can be found in just about any work making the case for Intelligent Design. Flagella are so complex, it is claimed, that they could not have evolved through a Darwinian process and therefore must have been designed by an active intelligence.

The crux of this argument lies on the particular proteins that compose the flagellum. 75% of those proteins, the argument goes, have no use outside of the flagellum itself. Since they are unique to the structure, a Darwinian process would have to develop each of them individually over time for uses that are no longer valid. The unlikeliness of this leads IDers to conclude flagella could not develope by evolution.

What Pallen and Platzack's article does is eliminate this argument by showing that nearly all of the proteins do in fact have homologues in biological systems outside of the flagellum. While this is a sound defeat for IDers, I think it has more significant than simply removing a common argument. The article is good science - it started with a question no one knew the answer to ("Do proteins in the flagellum have exterior homologues?") and did a lot of work to find out the answer. This kind of work exposes ID for what it is. Unlike the work described above which seeks to gain knowledge, ID actually depends on ignorance for its bread and butter. To label a natural object as 'intelligently designed' immediatley makes it uninteresting for further explanatory investigation. Rather, we can only stand back and marvel at its complexity. The flagellum is the perfect example. Upheld as the shining star of irreducible complexity, none of the ID scientists considered the possibility that the facts of protein uniqueness their argument depended upon might be incorrect. While ID proponents were running around shouting about how no one could possibly figure out the origins of the flagellum, real scientists were actually doing the work to find out.

Universal Morality

Prior to about 1960 or so the dominant scientific view of human nature was the Behaviorist school of thought. Basically, the idea was that the human mind/brain is created as a 'blank slate' upon which experience writes. The properties we develop as adult individuals and even as a species can be explained by examining the input we receive as we mature. It is difficult to understand what a hold this view had on the field of psychology, owing in no small part to how nicely it fit in with the dominant psychological therapy at the time, Freudian psychotherapy.

The Behaviorist view of things, however, was strongly shaken and ultimately shattered in the late 50s and through the 60s by the work of an unknown linguist named Noam Chomsky (though the remnants remain - I recall reading in my 10th grade psychology class that humans have no instincts). Chomsky claimed that at least some properties that the human species shares were not learned, but genetically innate. He claimed that, with regard to language, he could prove it, showing that language is a subconscious system that is learned subconsciously and therefore cannot plausibly be said to be taught or learned in the behaviorist sense of those terms. Since that time, and due in large part to advances in genetics technology, we've come to learn that many things about us - both particular and species-wide - are genetically determined, though it sometimes unsettles us.

But what about our values, our morals? Surely if there is one thing not encoded in our genes, its our judgements of right and wrong, right? But a new book by Marc Hauser, famed expert on the human and animal mind, claims that this isn't the case. Humans, he claims, have evolved over time a 'moral faculty' of sorts. Making moral judgements, he claims, is a part of being human and the ability to do so is encoded in our genetic make-up. Now, do not misunderstand, Hauser isn't claiming that we make any particular moral judgement because of our genes. If that were the case, there would be no way to explain why people disagree on moral matters. Rather, he is taking a page from Chomsky (a friend and collaborator) and claiming that humans are born pre-programmed with a set of universal principles which, together with input from our environment (including our parents, pastors, etc) gives us the ability to construct a system which we employ for moral judging. Just as we are born with a univeral set of principles that gives us the ability to acquire English or Japanese or whatever language we are exposed to, Hauser is claiming we are born with a universal set of principles that gives us the ability to acquire whatever moral system we are exposed to.

The claim is interesting and begs obvious questions, the most important of which is what boundaries these principles place upon the construction of moral systems. One also wonders when these systems are constructed. Is it as children? In that case, do we lose the ability to acquire moral judgements as adults as we do language? Does that explain why it may be much more difficult to alter our views on morality as adults than it is as children? That is what we would expect, anyway, if the parallels to language learning are to be taken seriously.

Blog Launch

Some of the great conflicts in American culture today are a part of an undeclared battle between dominant views of the scientific and religious communities. However, in my view as a professional scientist and life-long evangelical Christian, these conflicts are often based on basic misunderstandings about the nature of science and its methodologies or faith and its purpose. It is my belief that good science is capable of suggesting direction for good theology and good theology can provide a context for understanding the implications of good science. It is on this foundation that I am launching The Lame And The Blind, a blog whose purpose is to provide a mouthpiece and discussion forum for ideas relating to the intersection and confluence of science and faith.