Religion in American life

[Kevin R]

The following link has an interesting poll (Pew) on religion (such as the controversy over creationism in schools) and politics in the US.

http://people-press.org/reports/display ... portID=254

I was amazed by the following:

“Despite these fundamental differences, most Americans (64%) say they are open to the idea of teaching creationism along with evolution in the public schools, and a substantial minority (38%) favors replacing evolution with creationism in public school curricula. While much of this support comes from religious conservatives, these ideas particularly the idea of teaching both perspectives have a broader appeal. Even many who are politically liberal and who believe in evolution favor expanding the scope of public school education to include teaching creationism.”

[Ralph]

What's new? Courts must insure the application of root constitutional values. If controlling laws were based on popular polls there would be no First Amendment rights for any political/social/ethnic/religious minority.

[Brendan]

The idea that there are two competing perspectives in biology is false, however popular. It isn't an issue like Big Bang vs Steady State in physics, which was resolved by the accumulated evidence.

The fact that evolution by natural selection poses no problems at all for many Christians and their theology doesn't seem to rate a mention as being taught. As far as I'm concerned, it's a theological debate, not a biological one, and if taught should not be in biology class.

But it's an American issue. No other First World country would seriously consider teaching creationism as biology to my knowledge. The rest of us can only watch, incredulous, from afar.

If you begin with an assumption that there must be an “other side “ you may end up scouring the margins of science or the fringes of lunacy to find it. As a result, proven facts, such as what we know about the earth and how its inhabitants evolved, are set on a par with claims that are known to have no basis in fact, such as creationism.
Tannem, Deborah – The Argument Culture [p 11]

[operafan]

I've come around to thinking they should allow religion in public schools. An agnostic myself, that has been a stretch. My rational is that my children are only being exposed to dead religions in history classes (yep, hard to take religion of all kinds out of the crusades, but they mostly manage). I really would like to see comparative religions taught so that the children are exposed to the pros and cons or at least the theologies of various religions, so that the children can have a platform from which to start thinking for themselves. I see creationism and intelligent design as attempts to get religion back into the classroom. I think that avoiding the problems of teaching religion as shirking the responsiblites of providing a well rounded education.

[Ralph]

I've come around to thinking they should allow religion in public schools. An agnostic myself, that has been a stretch. My rational is that my children are only being exposed to dead religions in history classes (yep, hard to take religion of all kinds out of the crusades, but they mostly manage). I really would like to see comparative religions taught so that the children are exposed to the pros and cons or at least the theologies of various religions, so that the children can have a platform from which to start thinking for themselves. I see creationism and intelligent design as attempts to get religion back into the classroom. I think that avoiding the problems of teaching religion as shirking the responsiblites of providing a well rounded education.

*****
Apart from the controlling First Amendment issue (NO justice on the Supreme Court would support TEACHING religion), pre-college students often lack the ability to deal with comparative religion issues. More importantly, such courses would surely alienate and alarm many parents who cling to the quaint idea that they should be deciding and controlling their kids' religious instruction.

[Barry]

The idea that there are two competing perspectives in biology is false, however popular. It isn't an issue like Big Bang vs Steady State in physics, which was resolved by the accumulated evidence.

The fact that evolution by natural selection poses no problems at all for many Christians and their theology doesn't seem to rate a mention as being taught. As far as I'm concerned, it's a theological debate, not a biological one, and if taught should not be in biology class.

But it's an American issue. No other First World country would seriously consider teaching creationism as biology to my knowledge. The rest of us can only watch, incredulous, from afar.

Agree completely. And as I've said before, I'll add that science cirriculum in public schools should not be determined by school boards and members of the public who don't have a clue about science. It should be determined by the only people who are really qualified to do so; scientists.

I think I've also mentioned that we got into the idea of a designer (not the ID theory specifically) in a philosophy class that I took as an undergrad. It's not an inappropriate subject (so long as it doesn't drift off into religious dogma) in general; just in science class.

[operafan]

Ralph wrote,

Apart from the controlling First Amendment issue (NO justice on the Supreme Court would support TEACHING religion), pre-college students often lack the ability to deal with comparative religion issues. More importantly, such courses would surely alienate and alarm many parents who cling to the quaint idea that they should be deciding and controlling their kids' religious instruction.

I agree that it would be alarming to parents, board of education members, school district admin, and the rest to have to deal with religion. It would be hard on the parents to have to allow a comp religion class, but we deal with alot of hard issues - we could rise to the occasion IMO.

In California we have a 'life issues' requirement for high school graduation. In that class the children/youth/teenagers are taught about birth defects, sex, social diseases, consequences of tobacco, drugs, and alcohol, etc. Life and death decisions they are going to have to make. The military and the rest of the employers are heavy presences on campus, to influence more life decisions. But no one allows 'death and there after' type of education or decisions. I find it ironic. I agree that children might not be able to deal with spiritual decisions (like joining a seminary) at 16 or 17, but IMO they should start thinking about them. Every 20 year old inately thinks that they are immortal but a) they are not and b) they should be thinking about abstract things like religion. I fully support the idea that they can reject the ideas, but they should at least know that the world and histroy is full of theologies that have shaped many events, and a set of ethics should be part of everyone's education.

[Brendan]

Perhaps full-blown comparative religion is a bit much for school, but largely because the fundamental philosophical concepts are absent. I would much prefer a course in basic Hellenic (Western) philosophy and cultural history that provides the necessary context for intelligent and educated religious inquiry to be conducted in the first place.

Looking at Hellenic philosophy and its history also provides a basis for the philosophy and methodology of science - knowledge of which would render creationism a non-issue, IMHO.

I say "teach philosophy and cultural history, not religion." That comes with maturity and spiritual practice/inquiry if one is interested/touched by grace, IMHO.

[BWV 1080]

The idea that there are two competing perspectives in biology is false, however popular. It isn't an issue like Big Bang vs Steady State in physics, which was resolved by the accumulated evidence.

The fact that evolution by natural selection poses no problems at all for many Christians and their theology doesn't seem to rate a mention as being taught. As far as I'm concerned, it's a theological debate, not a biological one, and if taught should not be in biology class.

But it's an American issue. No other First World country would seriously consider teaching creationism as biology to my knowledge. The rest of us can only watch, incredulous, from afar.

Yes, the main issue is with ID is not whether or not some of its points are credible (which I think some are) but the fact that it is philosophy, not science. Criticizing natural selection within the realm of science is OK if you have a naturalistic, testable hypothesis to counter it with. For example, Behe's argument that natural selection is not adequate to explain the complexity at the cellular / molecular level is a valid one and can (and has) been vigorously debated. But extrapolating Behe's criticism into proof of a supernatural agent is a philosophical argument, not a scientific one. Behe will never be taken seriously until there is some other scientific hypothesis to explain the phenomena he claims natural selection is inadequate to cause.

The other interesting point about ID, which has been noted by diehard 10,000 year old earth creationists, is how it lends absolutely no support to a literal historical reading of Genesis 1-12

[pizza]

The other interesting point about ID, which has been noted by diehard 10,000 year old earth creationists, is how it lends absolutely no support to a literal historical reading of Genesis 1-12

Aside from the rarely mentioned but highly pertinent fact that the reading and understanding of Genesis in any language other than its original Hebrew distorts much of its meaning, there are ID proponents, including those highly educated in the accepted sciences who, taking that caveat into consideration, have explanations for the so-called "literal historical reading of Genesis 1-12" that are perfectly compatible with scientific theory.

I've mentioned the work of Dr. Gerald Schroeder several times before when the subject arose, as it often has and is bound to again, and won't repeat the substance of his argument. It's readily available to anyone with an open mind, who has an interest in the subject and is willing to evaluate it for himself.

[herman]

In California we have a 'life issues' requirement for high school graduation. In that class the children/youth/teenagers are taught about birth defects, sex, social diseases, consequences of tobacco, drugs, and alcohol, etc. Life and death decisions they are going to have to make. The military and the rest of the employers are heavy presences on campus, to influence more life decisions. But no one allows 'death and there after' type of education or decisions. I find it ironic. .

The real irony of this is that US kids are entering college stupider and stupider because of all these mickey mouse courses consuming so much time on the curriculum.

It's one of the reasons why immigrant students (to use an inelegant term) in general vastly outperform US born students in college notwithstanding the language barrier - they didn't waste their precious teen years with this kind of nonsense in school.

It also has something to do with the quaint notion that parents can actually give their children a moral and intellectual framework of this kind, if they spend more time with them than just a couple hours quote unquote quality time per week.

[pizza]

In California we have a 'life issues' requirement for high school graduation. In that class the children/youth/teenagers are taught about birth defects, sex, social diseases, consequences of tobacco, drugs, and alcohol, etc. Life and death decisions they are going to have to make. The military and the rest of the employers are heavy presences on campus, to influence more life decisions. But no one allows 'death and there after' type of education or decisions. I find it ironic. .

The real irony of this is that US kids are entering college stupider and stupider because of all these mickey mouse courses consuming so much time on the curriculum.

It's one of the reasons why immigrant students (to use an inelegant term) in general vastly outperform US born students in college notwithstanding the language barrier - they didn't waste their precious teen years with this kind of nonsense in school.

It also has something to do with the quaint notion that parents can actually give their children a moral and intellectual framework of this kind, if they spend more time with them than just a couple hours quote unquote quality time per week.

Yeah. That must be why immigrant students come in droves to the US for their higher education -- it's in order to out-perform native born students who don't flock to Europe for theirs.

[jbuck919]

I've mentioned the work of Dr. Gerald Schroeder several times before when the subject arose, as it often has and is bound to again, and won't repeat the substance of his argument. It's readily available to anyone with an open mind, who has an interest in the subject and is willing to evaluate it for himself.

From what's available online, it sure looks a heck of a lot like pseudo-science to me. Not to mention that he is just plain a lousy writer.

[Rennaissance]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858, ... 14,00.html

One side can be wrong

Accepting 'intelligent design' in science classrooms would have disastrous consequences, warn Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne

Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne
Thursday September 1, 2005

Guardian

It sounds so reasonable, doesn't it? Such a modest proposal. Why not teach "both sides" and let the children decide for themselves? As President Bush said, "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes." At first hearing, everything about the phrase "both sides" warms the hearts of educators like ourselves.
One of us spent years as an Oxford tutor and it was his habit to choose controversial topics for the students' weekly essays. They were required to go to the library, read about both sides of an argument, give a fair account of both, and then come to a balanced judgment in their essay. The call for balance, by the way, was always tempered by the maxim, "When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly half way between. It is possible for one side simply to be wrong."

As teachers, both of us have found that asking our students to analyse controversies is of enormous value to their education. What is wrong, then, with teaching both sides of the alleged controversy between evolution and creationism or "intelligent design" (ID)? And, by the way, don't be fooled by the disingenuous euphemism. There is nothing new about ID. It is simply creationism camouflaged with a new name to slip (with some success, thanks to loads of tax-free money and slick public-relations professionals) under the radar of the US Constitution's mandate for separation between church and state.

Why, then, would two lifelong educators and passionate advocates of the "both sides" style of teaching join with essentially all biologists in making an exception of the alleged controversy between creation and evolution? What is wrong with the apparently sweet reasonableness of "it is only fair to teach both sides"? The answer is simple. This is not a scientific controversy at all. And it is a time-wasting distraction because evolutionary science, perhaps more than any other major science, is bountifully endowed with genuine controversy.

Among the controversies that students of evolution commonly face, these are genuinely challenging and of great educational value: neutralism versus selectionism in molecular evolution; adaptationism; group selection; punctuated equilibrium; cladism; "evo-devo"; the "Cambrian Explosion"; mass extinctions; interspecies competition; sympatric speciation; sexual selection; the evolution of sex itself; evolutionary psychology; Darwinian medicine and so on. The point is that all these controversies, and many more, provide fodder for fascinating and lively argument, not just in essays but for student discussions late at night.

Intelligent design is not an argument of the same character as these controversies. It is not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one. It might be worth discussing in a class on the history of ideas, in a philosophy class on popular logical fallacies, or in a comparative religion class on origin myths from around the world. But it no more belongs in a biology class than alchemy belongs in a chemistry class, phlogiston in a physics class or the stork theory in a sex education class. In those cases, the demand for equal time for "both theories" would be ludicrous. Similarly, in a class on 20th-century European history, who would demand equal time for the theory that the Holocaust never happened?

So, why are we so sure that intelligent design is not a real scientific theory, worthy of "both sides" treatment? Isn't that just our personal opinion? It is an opinion shared by the vast majority of professional biologists, but of course science does not proceed by majority vote among scientists. Why isn't creationism (or its incarnation as intelligent design) just another scientific controversy, as worthy of scientific debate as the dozen essay topics we listed above? Here's why.

If ID really were a scientific theory, positive evidence for it, gathered through research, would fill peer-reviewed scientific journals. This doesn't happen. It isn't that editors refuse to publish ID research. There simply isn't any ID research to publish. Its advocates bypass normal scientific due process by appealing directly to the non-scientific public and - with great shrewdness - to the government officials they elect.

The argument the ID advocates put, such as it is, is always of the same character. Never do they offer positive evidence in favour of intelligent design. All we ever get is a list of alleged deficiencies in evolution. We are told of "gaps" in the fossil record. Or organs are stated, by fiat and without supporting evidence, to be "irreducibly complex": too complex to have evolved by natural selection.

In all cases there is a hidden (actually they scarcely even bother to hide it) "default" assumption that if Theory A has some difficulty in explaining Phenomenon X, we must automatically prefer Theory B without even asking whether Theory B (creationism in this case) is any better at explaining it. Note how unbalanced this is, and how it gives the lie to the apparent reasonableness of "let's teach both sides". One side is required to produce evidence, every step of the way. The other side is never required to produce one iota of evidence, but is deemed to have won automatically, the moment the first side encounters a difficulty - the sort of difficulty that all sciences encounter every day, and go to work to solve, with relish.

What, after all, is a gap in the fossil record? It is simply the absence of a fossil which would otherwise have documented a particular evolutionary transition. The gap means that we lack a complete cinematic record of every step in the evolutionary process. But how incredibly presumptuous to demand a complete record, given that only a minuscule proportion of deaths result in a fossil anyway.

The equivalent evidential demand of creationism would be a complete cinematic record of God's behaviour on the day that he went to work on, say, the mammalian ear bones or the bacterial flagellum - the small, hair-like organ that propels mobile bacteria. Not even the most ardent advocate of intelligent design claims that any such divine videotape will ever become available.

Biologists, on the other hand, can confidently claim the equivalent "cinematic" sequence of fossils for a very large number of evolutionary transitions. Not all, but very many, including our own descent from the bipedal ape Australopithecus. And - far more telling - not a single authentic fossil has ever been found in the "wrong" place in the evolutionary sequence. Such an anachronistic fossil, if one were ever unearthed, would blow evolution out of the water.

As the great biologist J B S Haldane growled, when asked what might disprove evolution: "Fossil rabbits in the pre-Cambrian." Evolution, like all good theories, makes itself vulnerable to disproof. Needless to say, it has always come through with flying colours.

Similarly, the claim that something - say the bacterial flagellum - is too complex to have evolved by natural selection is alleged, by a lamentably common but false syllogism, to support the "rival" intelligent design theory by default. This kind of default reasoning leaves completely open the possibility that, if the bacterial flagellum is too complex to have evolved, it might also be too complex to have been created. And indeed, a moment's thought shows that any God capable of creating a bacterial flagellum (to say nothing of a universe) would have to be a far more complex, and therefore statistically improbable, entity than the bacterial flagellum (or universe) itself - even more in need of an explanation than the object he is alleged to have created.

If complex organisms demand an explanation, so does a complex designer. And it's no solution to raise the theologian's plea that God (or the Intelligent Designer) is simply immune to the normal demands of scientific explanation. To do so would be to shoot yourself in the foot. You cannot have it both ways. Either ID belongs in the science classroom, in which case it must submit to the discipline required of a scientific hypothesis. Or it does not, in which case get it out of the science classroom and send it back into the church, where it belongs.

In fact, the bacterial flagellum is certainly not too complex to have evolved, nor is any other living structure that has ever been carefully studied. Biologists have located plausible series of intermediates, using ingredients to be found elsewhere in living systems. But even if some particular case were found for which biologists could offer no ready explanation, the important point is that the "default" logic of the creationists remains thoroughly rotten.

There is no evidence in favour of intelligent design: only alleged gaps in the completeness of the evolutionary account, coupled with the "default" fallacy we have identified. And, while it is inevitably true that there are incompletenesses in evolutionary science, the positive evidence for the fact of evolution is truly massive, made up of hundreds of thousands of mutually corroborating observations. These come from areas such as geology, paleontology, comparative anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, ethology, biogeography, embryology and - increasingly nowadays - molecular genetics.

The weight of the evidence has become so heavy that opposition to the fact of evolution is laughable to all who are acquainted with even a fraction of the published data. Evolution is a fact: as much a fact as plate tectonics or the heliocentric solar system.

Why, finally, does it matter whether these issues are discussed in science classes? There is a case for saying that it doesn't - that biologists shouldn't get so hot under the collar. Perhaps we should just accept the popular demand that we teach ID as well as evolution in science classes. It would, after all, take only about 10 minutes to exhaust the case for ID, then we could get back to teaching real science and genuine controversy.

Tempting as this is, a serious worry remains. The seductive "let's teach the controversy" language still conveys the false, and highly pernicious, idea that there really are two sides. This would distract students from the genuinely important and interesting controversies that enliven evolutionary discourse. Worse, it would hand creationism the only victory it realistically aspires to. Without needing to make a single good point in any argument, it would have won the right for a form of supernaturalism to be recognised as an authentic part of science. And that would be the end of science education in America.

[pizza]

I've mentioned the work of Dr. Gerald Schroeder several times before when the subject arose, as it often has and is bound to again, and won't repeat the substance of his argument. It's readily available to anyone with an open mind, who has an interest in the subject and is willing to evaluate it for himself.

From what's available online, it sure looks a heck of a lot like pseudo-science to me. Not to mention that he is just plain a lousy writer.

From his publisher:

"[He] earned his BSc, MSc and PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [His] doctorate is in the Earth Sciences and Nuclear Physics. Dr. Schroeder's yeshiva studies were guided by Rabbi Chaim Brovender at ITRI, and before that by the late Rabbi Herman Pollack. He is the author of Genesis and the Big Bang, the Discovery of Harmony between Modern Science and the Torah, published by Bantam Doubleday (now in six languages). His second book, The Science of God, published by Free Press of Simon & Schuster, was on the Barnes & Noble bestseller list for three months."

Have you read any of his books? If not, and I suspect the answer is no, perhaps you would gain some credibility, especially since you claim to be a teacher, if you first did and then offered some criticism of substance; assuming of course that you have the requisite scientific, linguistic and Biblical studies qualifications to meet him on his level.

[herman]

Yeah. That must be why immigrant students come in droves to the US for their higher education -- it's in order to out-perform native born students who don't flock to Europe for theirs.

Your sarcastical "rebuttal" does not seem to take into account the vast numbers of non-US students outperforming US-born students in US elite schools.

I'm guessing your thinking is, well, these foreign-born students still want to go to Harvard and Princeton, so we gotta be doing something right.

However, the issue is that the vast majority of US kids graduate from highschool intellectually lazy and with no basic knowledge to speak of, so that any French or even Russian 16-year old seems like an Einstein comparatively.

And I'm not saying this for chauvinistic reasons (I'm neither French nor Russian). I'm commenting on the enormous waste of resources material and spiritual. I taught at a US university, a pretty good one, and was astounded at some of the students I had, and not because they were so smart.

[jbuck919]

I've mentioned the work of Dr. Gerald Schroeder several times before when the subject arose, as it often has and is bound to again, and won't repeat the substance of his argument. It's readily available to anyone with an open mind, who has an interest in the subject and is willing to evaluate it for himself.

From what's available online, it sure looks a heck of a lot like pseudo-science to me. Not to mention that he is just plain a lousy writer.

From his publisher:

"[He] earned his BSc, MSc and PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [His] doctorate is in the Earth Sciences and Nuclear Physics. Dr. Schroeder's yeshiva studies were guided by Rabbi Chaim Brovender at ITRI, and before that by the late Rabbi Herman Pollack. He is the author of Genesis and the Big Bang, the Discovery of Harmony between Modern Science and the Torah, published by Bantam Doubleday (now in six languages). His second book, The Science of God, published by Free Press of Simon & Schuster, was on the Barnes & Noble bestseller list for three months."

Have you read any of his books? If not, and I suspect the answer is no, perhaps you would gain some credibility, especially since you claim to be a teacher, if you first did and then offered some criticism of substance; assuming of course that you have the requisite scientific, linguistic and Biblical studies qualifications to meet him on his level.

Here is an online excerpt from the preface to his book The Hidden Face of God:

A single consciousness, a universal wisdom, pervades the universe. And more than that. The discoveries of science, those that search the quantum nature of subatomic matter, have moved us to the brink of a startling realization: all existence is the expression of this wisdom. In the laboratories we experience it as information that first physically articulated as energy and then condensed into the form of matter. Every particle, every being, from atom to human, appears to represent a level of information, of wisdom. The puzzle we will confront in this book as we study the behavior of the atomic building blocks of all matter and then the functioning of biological cells is from where does this information arise? There is no hint of it in the laws of nature that govern the interactions among the basic particles that comprise all matter. It just appears as a given, with no causal agent evident, as if it is an intrinsic facet of nature.

The concept that there might be an attribute as non-physical as information or wisdom at the heart of existence in no way denigrates the physical aspects of our lives. Denial of the pleasures and wonder of our bodies is a sad misreading of the nature of existence. The accomplishments of a science based on materialism have given us physical comforts, invented life-saving medicines, sent people to the moon. The oft-quoted statement, "not by bread alone does a human live" (Deuteronomy 8:3), lets us know that there are two crucial aspects to our lives, one of which is bread, physical satisfaction. The other parameter is an underlying universal wisdom. There's no competition here between a metaphysical spirituality and the material. The two are complementary, as in the concept 'to complete.'

And you are defending that gobbledygook on the basis of an appeal to the authority of credentials?

[Ted]

I have tried to read Schroeder and have found his ramblings too painful to continue with.
Quite frankly,I’m shocked that someone as seemingly intelligent as Pizza would recommend out and out drivel like this as reading material, not to mention using it as some kind of ammunition to foster his argument.
It’s another sad example of intellect taking a back seat to blind faith

[BWV 1080]

Especiallya as Scheoder appears to be espousing Pantheism, not Theism

[pizza]

I've mentioned the work of Dr. Gerald Schroeder several times before when the subject arose, as it often has and is bound to again, and won't repeat the substance of his argument. It's readily available to anyone with an open mind, who has an interest in the subject and is willing to evaluate it for himself.

From what's available online, it sure looks a heck of a lot like pseudo-science to me. Not to mention that he is just plain a lousy writer.

From his publisher:

"[He] earned his BSc, MSc and PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [His] doctorate is in the Earth Sciences and Nuclear Physics. Dr. Schroeder's yeshiva studies were guided by Rabbi Chaim Brovender at ITRI, and before that by the late Rabbi Herman Pollack. He is the author of Genesis and the Big Bang, the Discovery of Harmony between Modern Science and the Torah, published by Bantam Doubleday (now in six languages). His second book, The Science of God, published by Free Press of Simon & Schuster, was on the Barnes & Noble bestseller list for three months."

Have you read any of his books? If not, and I suspect the answer is no, perhaps you would gain some credibility, especially since you claim to be a teacher, if you first did and then offered some criticism of substance; assuming of course that you have the requisite scientific, linguistic and Biblical studies qualifications to meet him on his level.

Here is an online excerpt from the preface to his book The Hidden Face of God:

A single consciousness, a universal wisdom, pervades the universe. And more than that. The discoveries of science, those that search the quantum nature of subatomic matter, have moved us to the brink of a startling realization: all existence is the expression of this wisdom. In the laboratories we experience it as information that first physically articulated as energy and then condensed into the form of matter. Every particle, every being, from atom to human, appears to represent a level of information, of wisdom. The puzzle we will confront in this book as we study the behavior of the atomic building blocks of all matter and then the functioning of biological cells is from where does this information arise? There is no hint of it in the laws of nature that govern the interactions among the basic particles that comprise all matter. It just appears as a given, with no causal agent evident, as if it is an intrinsic facet of nature.

The concept that there might be an attribute as non-physical as information or wisdom at the heart of existence in no way denigrates the physical aspects of our lives. Denial of the pleasures and wonder of our bodies is a sad misreading of the nature of existence. The accomplishments of a science based on materialism have given us physical comforts, invented life-saving medicines, sent people to the moon. The oft-quoted statement, "not by bread alone does a human live" (Deuteronomy 8:3), lets us know that there are two crucial aspects to our lives, one of which is bread, physical satisfaction. The other parameter is an underlying universal wisdom. There's no competition here between a metaphysical spirituality and the material. The two are complementary, as in the concept 'to complete.'

And you are defending that gobbledygook on the basis of an appeal to the authority of credentials?

It may be difficult for you to accept Schroeder's writings; I recall you saying that the music of Bruckner and Mahler was difficult for you to accept, but it was clear that in the case of the music you admitted, or at least tended to imply that the onus was on you and not the composers -- probably because to claim the reverse wouldn't make much sense considering its relatively widespread acceptance among those interested. I was merely pointing out that Schroeder is a well-qualified and widely read author. And as in both music and literary style, matters of personal taste differ.

I assume that the answer to my original question is that you haven't read any of his books and thus have no basis for your feeble attempt at "criticism"; you prefer to lift a prefatory paragraph or two, obviously written as an introduction to a larger, more comprehensive work, addressed to open minded people interested in the subject, out of its context and shift the onus of "defending it" with a spurious claim of "appeal" to credential authority. There is nothing to appeal. Quite frankly, and as in the case of music with which you have difficulty, I don't give a flip whether you accept it or not, and I suspect that neither Schroeder nor his publisher would care as well.

[pizza]

I have tried to read Schroeder and have found his ramblings too painful to continue with.
Quite frankly,I’m shocked that someone as seemingly intelligent as Pizza would recommend out and out drivel like this as reading material, not to mention using it as some kind of ammunition to foster his argument.
It’s another sad example of intellect taking a back seat to blind faith

Funny -- I was just about to say the same about your ramblings. For a supposedly intelligent person, I wonder how you can justify ad hominem criticism of works you admittedly haven't read in their entirety, as well as suggesting that my views depend upon "blind faith", whatever that may mean to you.

I've read Schroeder, heard him lecture and debate with his academic peers, and have nothing but the highest regard and respect for his open-mindedness and intellect, as do most of the professionals in his field who disagree with him.

It's amusing and yet sad to encounter such negative visceral reactions to his work by laypersons who have no basis whatsoever for substantive criticism of his writings.

[operafan]

In California we have a 'life issues' requirement for high school graduation. In that class the children/youth/teenagers are taught about birth defects, sex, social diseases, consequences of tobacco, drugs, and alcohol, etc. Life and death decisions they are going to have to make. The military and the rest of the employers are heavy presences on campus, to influence more life decisions. But no one allows 'death and there after' type of education or decisions. I find it ironic. .

The real irony of this is that US kids are entering college stupider and stupider because of all these mickey mouse courses consuming so much time on the curriculum.

It's one of the reasons why immigrant students (to use an inelegant term) in general vastly outperform US born students in college notwithstanding the language barrier - they didn't waste their precious teen years with this kind of nonsense in school.

It also has something to do with the quaint notion that parents can actually give their children a moral and intellectual framework of this kind, if they spend more time with them than just a couple hours quote unquote quality time per week.

It takes the proverbial village to raise a child. No, I don't think that a few hours in a classroom will make children moral, ethical or educated. A class like 'life experiences' is only an arrow in the quiver of general education. In California we have an extensive anti-tobacco education program (to sight an example that doesn't involve sex or religion) that has brought youth smoking down to about 15% from a national average of 25% - so IMO education works.

I personally do not feel qualified to teach comp religion/theology/philosophy. In my opinion that kind of knowlege and teaching involves not only a great amount of education, but teaching skills, and wisdom- not easy, but I would like my children exposed to it. Many children used pick this sort of thing up from family members. With the prevailence of the two income family, divorce, and the post WWII nuclear family, and job transfers wide ranges of child to/with/on adult experiences have been wiped out. Uncles don't get to play with/teach nephews - etc. The shortfall has to be picked up somewhere. It may be a quint idea (in Hermann's words) to think that one can can instill moral framework in a child if one just spends time with them. IMO children learn morals like they learn to learn, and if the parent is a lousy example, lousy teacher, lousy motivator, then the child needs to have that lack addressed somewhere.

I think immigrants perform well in colleges here because we only see the cream of the the crop - not the trash collectors, the welfare wasterals, etc. They come from their parts of society where education is respected, and polylingualism envied or even demanded. Our colleges find them attractive because in most cases they will pay full non-resident fees, which means that they were well off for starters.

[Ted]

P Wrote:

have nothing but the highest regard and respect for his open-mindedness and intellect

I can’t argue with you there P
But a writer he isn’t
I have recommended Simon Singh’s “Big Bang” to you several times, but since it deals with Science and not Genesis I suppose you find it irrelevant

[pizza]

Yeah. That must be why immigrant students come in droves to the US for their higher education -- it's in order to out-perform native born students who don't flock to Europe for theirs.

Your sarcastical "rebuttal" does not seem to take into account the vast numbers of non-US students outperforming US-born students in US elite schools.

I'm guessing your thinking is, well, these foreign-born students still want to go to Harvard and Princeton, so we gotta be doing something right.

And I'm not saying this for chauvinistic reasons (I'm neither French nor Russian).

I'm happy to see that your European chauvinism has no internal borders.

The fact is that American education isn't aimed at directing students to "elite" schools. It has a much broader range of objectives.

[operafan]

Yeah. That must be why immigrant students come in droves to the US for their higher education -- it's in order to out-perform native born students who don't flock to Europe for theirs.

Your sarcastical "rebuttal" does not seem to take into account the vast numbers of non-US students outperforming US-born students in US elite schools.

I'm guessing your thinking is, well, these foreign-born students still want to go to Harvard and Princeton, so we gotta be doing something right.

And I'm not saying this for chauvinistic reasons (I'm neither French nor Russian).

I'm happy to see that your European chauvinism has no internal borders.

The fact is that American education isn't aimed at directing students to "elite" schools. It has a much broader range of objectives.

I beg to disagree about American education not being aimed at directing students to "elite" schools. The idea that the American worker of the future will have to be the 'knowledge' worker (self retrain at will) has tricled down to the lowest levels of education. A BA is the former equivalent of a high school diploma - not because nothing is taught in high school, but one now needs to be computer literate, and cosmopolitan to a certain degree. The competition for Advanced Placement classes is extreme, and the pressure to have at least 9 on one's high school resume is intense. In the 70's maybe 30-40% of high school grads went to college. Today that number is 70%. Companies like Oracle will only accept grads from certain elite colleges for their 'kernel' development group - and these elite colleges know this well, using it to recruit new students.

[Ted]

Let me ask you a question Pizza:
Is there one person on this board you have agreed with or has ever agreed with you?
I don’t think you can answer that in the affirmative
Of course I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing

[herman]

It may be a quint idea (in Hermann's words) to think that one can can instill moral framework in a child if one just spends time with them.

Iwas actually referring to Ralph saying it is "a quaint idea" that parents should help direct their children's religious and ethical choices, and I did so tongue in cheeck, because I not only think it is still the way it happens in most cases, and I also think it is the best way. If they don't like it later on, they have at least something to rebel against.

I think immigrants perform well in colleges here because we only see the cream of the the crop - not the trash collectors, the welfare wasterals, etc. They come from their parts of society where education is respected, and polylingualism envied or even demanded. Our colleges find them attractive because in most cases they will pay full non-resident fees, which means that they were well off for starters.

Of course there are lots of immigrant trash collectors, too, and don't forget the proverbial cabbie.

However that still doesn't address the issue of an unusual proportion of students from other educational cultures who wind up in Harvard and Princeton. Pizza, laboring with a major chip on his shoulder, thinks I'm talking about a Europe vs US thing, which clearly shows he's so out of it that he doesn't know a great many of these foreign students are from Asia.

And no, it is not about collecting non-resident fees. It is about an intellectual drive too many pampered US highschool graduates cannot nearly match.

[jbuck919]

The supply of places at highly selective US colleges is far exceeded by the demand of US high school graduates well qualified to take them. That is why admission there is so competitive.

[Ralph]

Let me ask you a question Pizza:
Is there one person on this board you have agreed with or has ever agreed with you?
I don’t think you can answer that in the affirmative
Of course I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing

*****

Pizza and I have often agreed on professional matters. While I don't debate religious dogma with anyone he and I concluded that God created the contingency fee system and made American lawyers his annointed for that purpose.

[Teresa B]

I've mentioned the work of Dr. Gerald Schroeder several times before when the subject arose, as it often has and is bound to again, and won't repeat the substance of his argument. It's readily available to anyone with an open mind, who has an interest in the subject and is willing to evaluate it for himself.

From what's available online, it sure looks a heck of a lot like pseudo-science to me. Not to mention that he is just plain a lousy writer.

From his publisher:

"[He] earned his BSc, MSc and PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [His] doctorate is in the Earth Sciences and Nuclear Physics. Dr. Schroeder's yeshiva studies were guided by Rabbi Chaim Brovender at ITRI, and before that by the late Rabbi Herman Pollack. He is the author of Genesis and the Big Bang, the Discovery of Harmony between Modern Science and the Torah, published by Bantam Doubleday (now in six languages). His second book, The Science of God, published by Free Press of Simon & Schuster, was on the Barnes & Noble bestseller list for three months."

Have you read any of his books? If not, and I suspect the answer is no, perhaps you would gain some credibility, especially since you claim to be a teacher, if you first did and then offered some criticism of substance; assuming of course that you have the requisite scientific, linguistic and Biblical studies qualifications to meet him on his level.

Here is an online excerpt from the preface to his book The Hidden Face of God:

A single consciousness, a universal wisdom, pervades the universe. And more than that. The discoveries of science, those that search the quantum nature of subatomic matter, have moved us to the brink of a startling realization: all existence is the expression of this wisdom. In the laboratories we experience it as information that first physically articulated as energy and then condensed into the form of matter. Every particle, every being, from atom to human, appears to represent a level of information, of wisdom. The puzzle we will confront in this book as we study the behavior of the atomic building blocks of all matter and then the functioning of biological cells is from where does this information arise? There is no hint of it in the laws of nature that govern the interactions among the basic particles that comprise all matter. It just appears as a given, with no causal agent evident, as if it is an intrinsic facet of nature.

The concept that there might be an attribute as non-physical as information or wisdom at the heart of existence in no way denigrates the physical aspects of our lives. Denial of the pleasures and wonder of our bodies is a sad misreading of the nature of existence. The accomplishments of a science based on materialism have given us physical comforts, invented life-saving medicines, sent people to the moon. The oft-quoted statement, "not by bread alone does a human live" (Deuteronomy 8:3), lets us know that there are two crucial aspects to our lives, one of which is bread, physical satisfaction. The other parameter is an underlying universal wisdom. There's no competition here between a metaphysical spirituality and the material. The two are complementary, as in the concept 'to complete.'

And you are defending that gobbledygook on the basis of an appeal to the authority of credentials?

It may be difficult for you to accept Schroeder's writings; I recall you saying that the music of Bruckner and Mahler was difficult for you to accept, but it was clear that in the case of the music you admitted, or at least tended to imply that the onus was on you and not the composers -- probably because to claim the reverse wouldn't make much sense considering its relatively widespread acceptance among those interested. I was merely pointing out that Schroeder is a well-qualified and widely read author. And as in both music and literary style, matters of personal taste differ.

I assume that the answer to my original question is that you haven't read any of his books and thus have no basis for your feeble attempt at "criticism"; you prefer to lift a prefatory paragraph or two, obviously written as an introduction to a larger, more comprehensive work, addressed to open minded people interested in the subject, out of its context and shift the onus of "defending it" with a spurious claim of "appeal" to credential authority. There is nothing to appeal. Quite frankly, and as in the case of music with which you have difficulty, I don't give a flip whether you accept it or not, and I suspect that neither Schroeder nor his publisher would care as well.

So many quotes, so many opinions! So here's mine. I have mentioned that I did read Schroeder's "Science of God." I have not read "The Hidden Face of God." I disagree with jbuck that the above Schroeder quote is gobbledygook. In fact, I think he has a valid point as far as metaphysics and philosophy. Insofar as he defines "God" as this pervading wisdom, or information, who could deny that he might be right? Buddhists speak of the same wisdom with everything in the universe being a manifestation of it. We humans don't know and will never know by the methods of science.

There are many who have used meditation, mysticism, etc, to reach a point of awareness of being part of something universal, some "consciousness," or "wisdom." Some authors have said this is simply a brain phenomenon that occurs with deep meditation, and can be duplicated with psychotropic drugs. They may be right, for all I know. But then again, who's to say the meditators and/or druggies are not really tapping into a universal consciousness?

But this is not really what science is trying to deal with, except in the broadest, most philosophical of terms. "Intelligent Design," which I have decried more than once, is not synonymous with Schroeder's comments, but is part of an agenda to get creationism into biology classes as opposed to evolution.

My disagreement with Schroeder is pertaining to his book "The Science of God," in which he tries to fit the creation and evolution of the universe into the Procrustean bed of Genesis. In this case I think he overreaches to make current scientific theories fit the Bible.

All the best,
Teresa

[pizza]

Let me ask you a question Pizza:
Is there one person on this board you have agreed with or has ever agreed with you?
I don’t think you can answer that in the affirmative
Of course I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing

\

The answer is yes. But what difference does that make, Ted? Should personal opinion be shaped by external approval, group-think and consensus? Isn't that what your question implies?

[Kevin R]

What's new? Courts must insure the application of root constitutional values. If controlling laws were based on popular polls there would be no First Amendment rights for any political/social/ethnic/religious minority.

Ralph,

Of course public opinion can't determine policy (the Ludlow amendment being a good example). What was new to me was the last sentence of the quote.

[Corlyss_D]

Let me ask you a question Pizza:
Is there one person on this board you have agreed with or has ever agreed with you?
I don’t think you can answer that in the affirmative

I agree with most of Pizza's opinions expressed here. True, we had that little contretemps over the Schaivo case, but that was an anomaly.

[Corlyss_D]

I listened in dismay to Franklin Graham's comments about the tragedy in New Orleans and frankly he would have been better off keeping his mouth shut or restricting himself to phone numbers where people could donate to the recovery effort thru his organizations.

[Corlyss_D]

Of course public opinion can't determine policy

???? It does all the time.