The Order of the Universe

In Michael Shermer's book review that I mentioned here, he says that he once did a survey where he asked people to explain why they believe in God. "The most popular reason given was: 'Good design, natural beauty, perfection, and complexity of the world or universe.'" Is that the first reason that comes to your mind? It isn't for me.

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 Why should we believe in God? It seems to me that one of the first answers should be, "Because he has revealed himself to us." Now depending on denomination, the form of that revelataion is different. One of the things that has always set Mormonism apart from other major denominations is that God's revelation of himself is much more recent that any of those in the mainstream Christain tradition (or Jewish or Muslim).

 

Closely connected to this ought to be answers based on personal experience. I think one of the best pieces of advice one of my undergraduate science professors gave was that our belief in God should be based on positive experience, not gaps in our knowledge. Is a belief in God that does not include personal experience worth much?

 

So why would the most popular response be something along the lines of "order of the universe?" It seems to me that some form of this answer is really the common denominator of all believers, and sometimes the last reason left to believe. Maybe this explains its popularity. It was used by those who have no other reasons, and by those who think of it as the only answer that others will accept.

 

I certainly don't see it as a strong argument--not by itself. Used alone, is it any more powerful than, "Because chocolate tastes really good"?

 

At a recent priesthood meeting, a member of the Stake presidency put me on the spot during his lesson by asking me, "Jared, you're a scientist--how orderly is the universe?" My mind raced through a number of answers. It was really a digression from his main point and I didn't want to cause trouble, so I just said, "Pretty." While some aspects of the universe are like clockwork, others seem much more like the swirling of water. Purpose and progress can be different from or encompass more than order, I think. It was not the appropriate time to get into that, but I didn't want to give pseudo-scientifc endorsement to an orderly idealism, so I tried to give a supportive answer with some wiggle room.

 

If you were to take that survey, what would your first answer be? What should it be?

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Two Items from Science magazine

This week's Science is out today and I found a couple of interesting non-research items.

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First is the editorial by editor-in-chief Donnald Kennedy titled, "Twilight for the Enlightenment?" I think it is a little on the alarmist side, but he points at several trends that worry him. First is the meddling with public education to the detriment of the sciences. He does not give any citations, but he says that even "geology materials are being rewritten because their dates for Earth's age are inconsistent with scripture (too old)." Second he criticises President Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief policies. Although it is supposedly "evidence-based," Kennedy apparently sees it as "faith-based" without grounding in reality. However he is a little vague on this point. Lastly he laments that certain scientific inquiries are proscribed (ie embryonic stem cell research) based, not on universal ethical problems, but on religious beliefs held by some and not others.

 

I'm not going to express any opinion on it--just take it for what it is.

 

The other item of interest is a book review by Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine. The book is Dawkins' God, by Alister McGrath. I haven't read it, but it apparently takes on Richard Dawkins' criticisms of religion. Overall the review is more positive than I expected it to be. However, Shermer is disappointed because McGrath does not engage a central issue.

 

I was eager to read Dawkins' God because of the gladiatorial weight of the contestants and what they represent. And although McGrath presents many side issues in a pleasantly readable fashion (e.g., Darwin's religiosity, the historiography of science and religion, and how and where religion embraces science), he dodges the biggest question of all, the question at the heart of Dawkins's writings: Is there a God? Whether Dawkins is simplistic or sarcastic or sardonic is a secondary issue. By elevating it to the primary focus of the book, McGrath missed an opportunity to make his case, pace Dawkins, and give us the very best arguments in his arsenal. With McGrath, I still do not know why he believes in God. With Dawkins, there is no doubt about where he stands.

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Is an Academic Bill of Rights a Good Idea?

There has been a little bit of discussion about the concept of an "Academic Bill of Rights" on some of the science blogs lately. The latest issue of Nature has a little write-up on the trend being pushed by David Horowitz, and it seems like a bad idea to me.

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Along with introducing protection from discrimination based on political or religious convictions, a bill being proposed in Florida calls on faculty members to refrain from introducing "controversial matter" unrelated to the course subject. It also requires them to present "serious scholarly viewpoints" other than their own.

Although the bill was written primarily with the humanities in mind, it would apply to all academic disciplines. On 22 March, Dennis Baxley (Republican, Ocala), who is backing the bill, said that it would make sure that alternatives to evolution are not shut out of universities.

Alright--so you are a professor at a university. You've spent years researching and defending your particular area of interest. You have to teach undergraduates the basicis of your discipline and hopefully inspire a few to follow in your footsteps. But since some non-experts don't like your field of study, the law mandates that you also provide other perspectives than your own.

Questions: How many alternatives should you have to cover and how much time should they get? Do you have to present the alternatives with a serious look or are you allowed to roll your eyes and speak in a sarcastic tone? Don't most serious scholars cover serious alternatives anyway? Are you allowed to say why your perspective is superior or do you have to make it look like a tie? As students move through their major, do they have to hear about the same alternatives in every class--after all if someone didn't take the introductory course they may have missed the alternative perspectives? Does this apply to graduate courses also? How would this be enforced? Doesn't this whole idea violate conservative principles regarding government intrusion?

Republicans ought to run away from garbage like this.

Baxley, a close ally of Governor Jeb Bush, says the outraged reception is evidence that academics are too inflexible. "I've been called an ass in the school newspaper at the University of Florida," he says, "and that demonstrates exactly what I am talking about."

It also demonstrates what I am talking about.

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Must Read Articles in Dialogue

I recently purchased a DVD that contains all issues of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought up through 2004. (Thanks to Justin Butterfield for bringing it to my attention.) For $35 I think it was a pretty good deal. Each article is in PDF format, which is nice. However, since each element of the magazine (table of contents, articles, etc) is a separate file, and all of the files are in one folder, browsing is a little difficult. You can search an index, which is definately helpful but not perfect. (You can also read some Dialogue back-issues online. See the links on my sidebar.)

 

Relative to some on the bloggernacle I am new to the more serious world of Mormon scholarship, but I do know that Dialogue has published some important articles over the years. I would like to invite participants in the bloggernacle to comment on what they see as must-read articles in Dialogue. Articles need not be science related. I'm not interested in poetry or fiction, but if you really love those you can post them too. Give as much of the author's name, title of the article, vol, no, (or year) as you can remember. I'll fill in the info as necessary.

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Do I Smell Pseudoscience in the Air?

I ran across this MSNBC.com report about Shaper Image's Ionic Breeze air purifier. Consumer Reports says that the thing is bunk--it does not remove dust, smoke, and pollen very well, and produces ozone. In response, Sharper Image's lawyer said something lawyerly:

It is astonishing that Consumers Union [publisher of Consumer Reports] would continue its misguided efforts to attack the judgment and experience of millions of Americans who are satisfied with the performance of the Ionic Breeze products.

Really got to the issues didn't he? I've seen an info-mercial and heard radio commercials for the thing and I've always been a little skeptical. Looks like my skepticism was justified.

 

However, if anybody would like to provide testimonials in the comments, feel free to do so.

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Virus-Host Co-speciation: SFV

Nature recently had an interesting article about parasite-host co-speciation. Simian foamy viruses are retroviruses that are prevalent among non-human primates. Although they establish a persistant infection, they have not been associated with any disease and no naturally occuring SFVs have been isolated from humans yet.

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Switzer et al looked at the polymerase gene of 44 different monkey and ape SFVs and a mitochondrial gene from 55 primate species. These genes are highly conserved, so they don't change much over time. Using the sequences of these two genes, the researchers built independent phylogenetic trees. The resulting trees gave similar results both in grouping and in divergence times. In other words, the SFV evolution matched the host evolution in terms of who split off from who, and when. There were some incongruities that suggested cross-species transfer of virus. Overall they had statistical support for 22 co-speciation events.

Here is the abstract:

Although parasite-host co-speciation is a long-held hypothesis, convincing evidence for long-term co-speciation remains elusive, largely because of small numbers of hosts and parasites studied and uncertainty over rates of evolutionary change. Co-speciation is especially rare in RNA viruses, in which cross-species transfer is the dominant mode of evolution. Simian foamy viruses (SFVs) are ubiquitous, non-pathogenic retroviruses that infect all primates. Here we test the co-speciation hypothesis in SFVs and their primate hosts by comparing the phylogenies of SFV polymerase and mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit II from African and Asian monkeys and apes. The phylogenetic trees were remarkably congruent in both branching order and divergence times, strongly supporting co-speciation. Molecular clock calibrations revealed an extremely low rate of SFV evolution, 1.7 x 10(-8) substitutions per site per year, making it the slowest-evolving RNA virus documented so far. These results indicate that SFVs might have co-speciated with Old World primates for at least 30 million years, making them the oldest known vertebrate RNA viruses.

I think that co-speciation is one of the more fascinating and supportive aspects of evolutionary theory. There are also foamy viruses that infect other mammals (eg. cats). I will leave it to the reader to predict what we should find if those viruses and their hosts were included in the above analysis.

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Conference and Other Musings

Another GC has come and gone. It wasn't a very intense one for me, but a few talks did stand out to me.

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I thought it was interesting that Pres. Hinckley talked about a scholarly book he was reading about the Bible. It shows that he has an active and inquiring mind (more on this in a moment.) He then talked a little about the celebration of Joseph Smith this year. It will be interesting to see how this develops. I am especially eager to read Richard Bushman's forthcoming biography. (I've put my wife on notice that when it comes out, I am buying it.) With the increased focus on Joseph Smith will also come greater discussion of controversial issues. Some are uncomfortable but we'll have to face them anyway.

I think that anybody with even a little intellectual curiosity has a private list of issues that they would like to hear discussed in Conference. However, usually the Brethren don't even get near these issues--at least the ones on my list. Perhaps this is more of a blessing than a curse, since it would multiply reasons for people to disagree with them. There are some issues that I think cannot be avoided for much longer, in my non-seer opinion, because they will begin to affect missionary work. (Can I coin a new LDS on-line abbreviation: IMNSO?) But we shall see.

To change the topic slightly, I have been reading a little about LDS intellectual controversies that have occured in the last few decades. I have been impressed that when Pres. Hinckley has been involved, he has usually shown tolerance--or even support--for the intellectual community. He has by no means been a door-mat and has acted against them from time to time, but he seems to respect honest inquiring minds. Perhaps his early interest in journalism has played a role here. Perhaps his association with David O. McKay also contributed.

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Links You May Like

I've seen some interesting things out on the web lately and thought I would bring them to your attention.

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First of all let me say that I'm not a big fan of the April Fool's thing. Nevertheless I think this joke and its legacy are pretty funny--Neandertals playing bagpipes with their noses, and creationists that believe(d) it.

This page over at FAIR is kind of interesting. It deals with demographics of Mormons. Things like suicide rate, divorce, birth rates, etc.

By way of Clark at Mormon Metaphysics, I read this post dealing with anti-intellectualism in Christianity. Read both links.

If you aren't already familiar with these websites and you are interested in the natural sciences, you need to visit Talk.Origins.org and EvoWiki.

If you want a basic introduction to evolution, or even if you know a fair amount about it, you should check out Understanding Evolution. It is written so that a high school student could understand and I think it is worth your perusal. The web resources page has a lot of interesting links that you should explore. I'll highlight a couple of them next.

If you have high-speed internet, you need to check out Becoming Human. It is an interactive documentary that discusses hominid palenontology and anthropology. It is narrated by Donald Johanson and among other things, he tells the story of his discovery of the hominid fossil named Lucy (he tells why "Lucy" stuck as the name). Anyway I think it is a pretty cool site and worth your time if you are interested in such things.

This site has some interesting information. There are brief overviews/interviews by notable evolution experts such as Donald Johanson, Douglas Futuyma, and Niles Eldredge.

Well, that should keep you busy for a while. You'll probably be watching General Conference this weekend, but be sure to come back and follow some of these links.

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