Who gets to be “on top”? Science versus Religion

For centuries, established religions have asserted that science should be viewed through the lens of religion.  Over the past few years, scientifically-oriented writers have turned that view on its head.  They have asserted that it is more appropriate to view religious practices through the lens of science.

The recent flurry of books includes the following:

  • Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, by Pascal Boyer (2002)
  • The Human Story, by Robin Dunbar (2004)
  • Breaking the Spell, by Daniel Dennett (2006)
  • Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, By David Sloan Wilson (2003)
  • How We Believe, by Michael Shermer (1999)
  • Why God’s Persist, by Robert Hinde (1999)
  • The End of Faith, by Sam Harris (2004)
  • Attachment, Evolution and the Psychology of Religion, by Lee Kirkpatrick (2005)
  • In Gods We Trust, by Scott Atran (2002)

Though I own each of these books, I have completely read only half of them; I’m partly through the others.  They are a priority on my reading list given the high stakes of failing to understand religious practices (religious tensions and wars everywhere one cares to look). 

For anyone just getting started in this area, I recommend Dennett’s 2006 work, Breaking the Spell.  This book is classic Dennett: eloquent, heartfelt and clear.  He works extra hard so that he is not only preaching to the choir. He spends the first one-hundred pages working to convince Believers to give him a chance.  It’s quite an extraordinary opening gambit.

Most of the above books concern …

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Good news on Internet neutrality

This, from http://www.freepress.net/ :  A bipartisan majority on the House Judiciary Committee yesterday passed the "Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act" -- a good bill that would use antitrust law to protect Network Neutrality. Special thanks to those of you who called the key members who cast the deciding votes. The question…

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Social conservatives become “pro-choice” to oppose life-saving vaccine for cervical cancer

You might think that social conservatives, especially those in the so-called "pro-life" crowd, would welcome the use of a new vaccine that is virtually 100% effective against two deadly strains of cervical cancer that account for 70% of such cancer deaths and that kill over 3,700 women each year.  Unfortunately,…

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Social norms: conscious choice or unconscious ancestor worship?

Let's do a thought experiment.  Start with a cage containing five monkeys.  Inside the cage, hang some bananas by a string from the ceiling and place a ladder underneath it.  Before long, one of the monkeys will go to the ladder and try to climb towards the bananas.  As soon as…

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The Grinch was much more evil than we thought.

Behold the incredibly evil Grinch!

“I know all about him,” you might think.  “He’s the guy who almost dumped Christmas over the cliff.  Thank goodness that he saw the light in the nick of time.”

In the classic Dr. Suess story, the Grinch’s heart grew three times right there by the edge of the cliff.  But it was at that same precise location that the true evil of the Grinch manifested itself.  How so?  Let me tell you!

It was at the edge of the cliff that the Grinch realized that Who villagers had just about learned a huge lesson that night.  They had almost learned that they did not need all those Christmas baubles.  They learned that forging a meaningful community didn’t require decorations, sugary treats or glittery whatnots. They realized that maintaining a strongly-knit community could be accomplished without the things money buys. 

As already mentioned, the residents of Who-ville held hands and sang together, their angelic voices drifted up to the precipice where the evil Grinch (small “e”) was disrupted in his evil (small “e”) quest to dump the Christmas kitsch where it actually belonged: into some far-away God-forsaken place. If the Grinch’s heart grew three sizes that day, though, his capacity for evil simultaneously grew tenfold. 

[This was predicted by Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil.”  Arendt wrote that it was thoughtlessness, not intentional or premeditated acts, that predisposed people to engage in the greatest evils.]

The Grinch’s (capital “E”) evil impulses then took …

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