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Keep your goals to yourself
Christine O'Donnell's Views On Sex And Porn Take Social Conservatism To The Extreme
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God vs. Science Isn't the Issue By William McGurn
God vs. Science Isn't the Issue By William McGurn

When the poet Matthew Arnold wrote of faith's "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar," the thought was that scientific inquiry had forever undermined claims to certitude. In hindsight we see Arnold was only half right. In place of Genesis we now have scientism—the idea that science alone can speak truth about man and his world.

In contrast to the majority of scientists whose wondrous discoveries seem to inspire humility, today's advocates of scientism can be every bit as dogmatic as the William Jennings Bryans of yesteryear. We saw an example a week ago, when the New York Times reported that many scientists view "outspoken religious commitment as a sign of mild dementia."

The reporter was Gardiner Harris, and the object of his snark was Francis Collins—the new director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Collins is perhaps best noted for his leadership on the Human Genome Project, an effort to map the genetic makeup of man. But he is also well known for his unapologetic talk about his Christian faith and how he came to it.

Mr. Harris's aside about dementia, of course, is less a proposition open to debate than the kind of putdown you tell at a private cocktail party where you know everyone in the room shares your orthodoxies. In this room, there are those who hold that God cannot be reconciled with what science has discovered about the human body, the origin of the species, and the beginnings of the universe. The more honest ones do not flinch before the implications of their materialist principles on our understanding of human dignity and human rights and human freedom—as well as on religion.

In 1997, for example, an International Academy of Humanism statement in defense of human cloning—whose signatories included scientists such as E.O. Wilson, Francis Crick and Richard Dawkins—went out of its way to attack the special dignity of human beings. "Humanity's rich repertoire of thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and hopes seems to arise from electrochemical brain processes, not from an immaterial soul that operates in ways no instrument can discover." They concluded "it would be a tragedy if ancient theological scruples should lead to a Luddite rejection of cloning."

Here's the problem: Almost no one really believes this. Not, at least, when it comes to how we behave. And the dichotomy between scientific theory and human action may itself have something to tell us about truth.

That's not to deny electrochemical brain processes and the like. It is to say that much as we may assent to the idea that we are but matter in motion, seldom do we act that way. We love. We fight. We distinguish between the good and noble and the bad and base. More than just religion, our literature and our politics and our music resonate precisely because they speak to these things.

 www.online.wsj.com, to read full click view

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"I disagree with all these experts. Somebody has to stand up to these experts."

"They are the experts, but science doesn't operate on consensus."

"Genetics is the foundation for modern biology, not evolution...Genetics goes back to a Christian monk who did precise data."

--Don McLeroy, Chair of the Texas State Board of Education, March 27, 2009

The debate on the teaching of evolution and Texas continues to evolve, mutate and creatively adapt though news sources, ranging from the Dallas Morning News to the Discovery Institute, are declaring premature and decisive victories. It depends on whose version of events one would like to believe. As they say, "perception shapes reality." The truth of the matter is that the story of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) is a sordid, implicit, complicated one and isn't anywhere close to resolution. The continuing struggle is not about science or even scientific process. Or even about fifteen elected adults in agreement that their sole purpose in public service is to ensure that students in public schools are learning concepts in line with international scientific standards. (Seven of the members are ideologues; six are equivocating ideologues; and two, Berlanga and Nuñez, are clear, concise voices of reason who have the humility--and audacity--to defer to the experts.)

If the issue is not one of sound science, what is it then? It is a fierce battle over language and the concepts language can potentially carry into the classroom.

What has been decided in a final vote by the SBOE on March 27 is a document of words that will guide science curriculum standards for a decade. The final draft is a convoluted, compromised collection of doublespeak. As SBOE chair Don McLeroy publicly declared as a defense for why experts are not needed: "There is stasis in the fossil record." Perhaps it is more accurate to say that there is stasis in the document, and that is a very sad milestone for Texas and beyond.

A larger issue is one of language and concepts, as guided by the document in question, making their way into textbooks. What is at stake could likely affect other states: Texas has economic clout as a buyer of textbooks which gives the SBOE the power to meddle in pre-publication matters in ways that publishers are willing to accommodate. SBOE's range of power in mitigating language is directly based on the curriculum standards. Other states that do not have leverage in volume sales or a similar structure in adopting textbooks stand a good chance of being disadvantaged by decisions made in Texas.

One outstanding example of how this could play out for other states is in the wording of an amendment--now a standard--that requires students to "analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning any data on sudden appearance and stasis and the sequential groups in the fossil record." According to Dan Quinn of the Texas Freedom Network, "McLeroy had argued that such data disproves the concept of common descent and will demand that publishers say as much in new textbooks [that] are adopted in 2011."

Most news reports are accurate on one point. It is true that the SBOE discarded the two decades-old language of teaching the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution theory. That decision came early in the proceedings; it was a compelling ruse for the string of compromised amendments that would follow. Amendments, now standards, that have groups like the Environmental Defense Fund issuing statements hours after the final vote. That is all to assume that the superorganism by the name of the Texas SBOE is capable of arriving at sound conclusions based on consensus as informed by the best and brightest minds that the scientific and activist community has to offer. In its current configuration, it is not.

Laray Polk is a multimedia artist and writer who lives in Dallas, Texas. She can be reached at laraypolk@me.com. This article was originaly published at Counterpunch

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blogs   100words
 
By Sean Maguire

In comparison to other passages from Joseph Heller's Catch-22 it isn't often quoted, but it should be.

The haunting and beautifully simple piece reads:

'Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all'.

The passage takes place after the protagonist Yossarian watches young Snowden die in the back of his plane. The event is repeatedly told throughout the novel always teasing at this great revelation that Yossarian had experienced- the revelation that 'man was matter'.

Not special, not a product of a breath of divinity but matter like everything else. 

After being in a potentially fatal car accident last week this line has been constantly coming back to me. I remember waking up just after the accident in a hospital with a doctor telling me I was having a cat-scan to check if I had brain damage.

Man was matter, and the centre of man (the mind) was also matter. We might generally conceive of the mind as somehow separate to the body- a floating you that is intangible and neverending, but in one fell swoop it can be brought back to what it really is: a fragile and spongy bit of tissue that can be destroyed in the stupidest and swiftest of seconds.