Science, Stephen Hawking, and Free Minds

Last night my 11-year old daughter Sally asked me if I’d like to watch “Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking” with her. How could a mom refuse that invitation? So we cozied up in our jammies and tuned in. It was a great show, and highly educational. But not in the way you might think.

The subject of this, the first installment of a series on the Discovery Channel hosted by Hawking, was Aliens. The show opens with Hawking alone in an empty room in his wheelchair. We hear his computerized voice say,

Hello. My name is Stephen Hawking, physicist, cosmologist, and something of a dreamer. Although I cannot move, and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind, I am free.

Another narrator picks up from there,

Free to explore the universe and ask the big questions. Such as, Do aliens exist?

The question, Hawking says, cuts to the heart of how we see our place in the universe. “Are we alone?” He thinks probably not, even though scientists have been looking and listening out for about forty years to no avail. The narrator continues, speaking for Hawking,

The possibilities are infinite. How do we know where to look?

The answer brings us back home to Earth, where the only known examples of life exist. From there, Hawking explains what is currently known about the origin of life on Earth:

Exactly what triggered life here is still a mystery, but there are several theories.

He presents two. The most common theory is that life began purely by accident in pools of primordial soup. Images on the screen evoke Darwin’s “warm little pond,” teeming with amino acids randomly bumping into one another for eons and eons until just the right combination of circumstances caused just the right bump:

It somehow just happened … the ultimate lucky break that started the chain of life.

That’s the first theory. The other one is an

intriguing idea, called Panspermia, which says that life could have originated somewhere else and have been spread from planet to planet by asteroids.

Let’s pause there. Panspermia, as I pointed out in this article from Salvo 11, falls within the boundaries of Intelligent Design theory (ID), with which regular Salvo readers are familiar.

I explained Panspermia and ID to Sally. It took about one minute and she grasped it well enough. Then we re-wound the recording to listen again to Hawking’s musings about the first, and “most common,” theory. He admits the improbability of it,

It is extremely unlikely that life could spontaneously create itself, but I don’t think that’s a problem with this theory. It’s like winning a lottery. The odds are astronomical, but … someone hits the jackpot.

“Yes, Sally,” I said, “but that’s because someone outside the system created the lottery, and funded it so that it could be there in the first place.”

Light bulbs went off immediately. “Ah-HAH,” she laughed out loud. “I didn’t think of that, but that makes sense!” We laughed together for a moment then watched the rest of the show.

The point I’d like to make is she’s a 6^th grader, and she’s capable of thinking with a free mind, taking in competing theories about something, and, to a certain extent, analyzing them. This is how critical thinking skills are developed. But as this Crosshairs, also from Salvo 11, points out, wherever the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) gets its way, teachers are prohibited from informing students about competing scientific theories concerning the origin of life, including the one offered, though not by name, as a valid theory by no less a science luminary than Stephen Hawking. (The NCSE also opposes students being informed of different views concerning global warming, but that’s another issue for another post.)

Stephen Hawking is an amazing and inspiring man, and we enjoyed watching his show. I’d like to focus on that ideal of a free mind and note two things. First, the NCSE, by intentionally ignoring ID (and vehemently opposing it when active ignorance is no longer an option), limits free inquiry and hinders, rather than advances, science. They do our children a disservice.

Second, while Hawking does believe that alien life likely exists, including life of superior intelligence, he allows no room for the possibility that that intelligence might be a supernatural being. In so doing, I suggest he limits himself and his scientifically brilliant mind more than he realizes. To limit experimental science to only those things which can be seen, heard, and touched is reasonable. To limit your mind and imagination after the same manner hinders free inquiry.

Even a 6^th grader can understand that.

This post first appeared in the Salvo Signs of the Times blog. (By the way, a very interesting discussion ensued. If you like open discussions, check it out.)

Score Two for Phil Mickelson

When Phil Mickelson won the Masters last weekend, his wife Amy was at the 18^th hole waiting to share the moment. When Mickelson came off the green, there was Amy, wearing, in the words of one commentator, “a smile bigger than her sunglasses.” They hugged, both of them in tears, for a very long time.

Phil and Amy Mickelson

Ahhh … the thrill of victory. Yes, victory is thrilling, but there’s a story behind this story that transcends sports. Amy was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, and for eleven months has been undergoing chemo and radiation. She has not travelled at all during that time, but mustered her strength to see his final strokes that day. “I want to recognize my family,”’ Mickelson said, choking up during the victory ceremony. “My wife has been through a lot this year, and it means so much to us to share some joy together. She’s an incredible wife and an incredible mother, and she has been an inspiration for me this past year in seeing what she went through. I’m so happy that she and our three kids are here. It was such an emotional week, and I’m having a hard time putting it into words.”

There was another media sensation at the Masters. Tiger Woods returned to professional golf after having taken several months off in the wake of publicity concerning his serial adulterous affairs. His estranged wife, Elin, and the couple’s two children did not attend the Masters this year.

On display that last day were two very different approaches to love, sex, and marriage. One takes an anything-goes approach. This  is the view we see in pop culture, for example in Glee and The Big Bang Theory. Sex is what it’s all about, and if it feels good, do it.

The other views sex as a part of marriage and marriage as a solemn commitment. Sex is good, but it also serves a higher purpose – that of bonding a couple together and preserving the integrity of the family for the resulting children.

What was really on display at the 18^th hole was the inevitable outcome of each. The Woods family, except for Tiger, was absent and their future remains uncertain. Ironically, the Anything-Goes approach to sex inevitably leads to broken relationships and fractured families. Just look at Tiger.

The Mickelson family has endured pain and difficulty too, and their future is also uncertain, but in an entirely different way. They remain an integral unit, and at the Masters, they shared their joys and sorrows as one family.

One commentator noted, “Finally, we have some justice in the world. The right man won.” I say he’d already won before setting foot on the course.

This post first appeared in the Salvo Signs of the Times blog.

No Intelligence Allowed

In the Crosshairs: NCSE – The National Center for Science Education

Background:
In the early 1970’s, a high school textbook, Biology: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Life, written by teacher Stanley Weinberg, was submitted for adoption in Texas, a vanguard state for textbook publishers as its purchasing power influences decisions for much of the country. Weinberg’s book, which strongly emphasized evolution, encountered opposition but was ultimately accepted. A few years later, the Institute for Creation Research published a resolution encouraging school districts and state legislatures to promote a “balanced presentation of evolution and scientific creationism.” It specifically clarified that “this is a suggested resolution, to be adopted by boards of education, not legislation proposed for enactment as law.”

Nevertheless, Weinberg began to organize “Committees of Correspondence.” Taking the name from Colonial American groups established to maintain contact among like-minded communities, Weinberg aimed to keep interested parties informed about what he saw as troublesome interventions into scientific matters. In 1983, the loosely connected network incorporated into the non-profit National Center for Science Education (NCSE), and in 1987, anthropologist Dr. Eugenie Scott, who describes herself as “Darwin’s golden retriever,” became executive director.

Wanted For:
According to its website, the NCSE provides “information and resources for schools, parents and concerned citizens working to keep evolution in public school science education.” The mission is “vital,” it says, because evolution is “fundamental to a comprehensive understanding of all biological disciplines.”

But no one is attempting to eliminate evolution from the curriculum. Some are simply asking, Shouldn’t students also learn about other scientific theories that dissent from Darwinism? In 2004, Dr. Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture published a peer-reviewed article arguing that materialistic theories cannot account for the origination of new biological forms – one of a number of weaknesses in evolutionary theory – and suggested Intelligent Design (ID) as an alternative theory. Dr. Meyer and the Discovery Institute were not recommending mandatory teaching of ID. Instead they advocate teaching the controversy – that is, simply informing students about both the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory.

Nevertheless, the NCSE cries, Creationism! (Anathema!) This constitutes antievolution! “‘Intelligent design’ theory,” writes NCSE board member Barbara Forrest, is “the most recent – and most dangerous – manifestation of creationism.” Dr. Scott’s warning is more nuanced, cautioning of “closet creationism being introduced through wording not obvious to those unfamiliar with the history of the controversy.”

Nearly two decades after the introduction of ID, the NCSE has yet to countenance it as an alternative theory. Instead it continues to maintain that asking about other theories undermines the goal of science education. “There is no competing scientific theory for the pattern of diversity of life on earth.” They might as well have said, “Don’t ask that question.”

Most Recent Offense:
In August of 2009 Eugenie Scott, graying, grandmother-like, and still executive director, advised scientists to choose their words carefully when discussing evolution. Labeling anyone who critically examines evolution a creationist, Dr. Scott explained, “Creationists have done a splendid job of convincing the public that evolution is weak science ….” Instead of saying you “believe” in evolution as one might “believe” in God, Dr. Scott suggested, “you might say you ‘accept evolution.’”

To keep evolution safe, she called on scientists and people who care about science to pay attention to local elections and vote for the right people. “Ultimately the solution to this problem is not going to come from pouring more science on it.”

Apparently, for evolution to predominate, something other than science will be required.

This article first appeared in Salvo 11, Winter 2009.

Related Articles:

• Dogmatic Signs A Review of Signature in the Cell by Phillip E. Johnson
• Signs of Desperation? Early Responses to Signature in the Cell Are Easily Dismissed by Casey Luskin
• Documents Reveal Intolerance Towards Intelligent Design at the California Science Center by Casey Luskin
• Darwin’s Quantum Leap - Three facts of life Darwinism fails to explain
• PZ Myers – Atheist Supremecist

Sex and the iWorld

Sex and the iWorld: Rethinking Relationship beyond an Age of Individualism
by Dale S. Kuehne
Reviewed by: Terrell Clemmons

For most of Western history, Kuehne says, questions of identity were of little concern. People were born into a matrix of relationships – family, village, tribe, – each of which incurred mutual obligations and responsibilities, and the context of which largely established one’s identity. This world, founded upon ancient philosophy and revealed religion, Kuehne calls the tWorld, ‘t’ for tradition.

With the Enlightenment, though, came a questioning of tWorld assumptions about the existence of God, the authority of religion, and most pertinent to the subject at hand, any claim to an objective standard of right and wrong. When Galileo and other scientists opposed opinions and statements of the Church on scientific matters, Science began to assert itself, not as a complementary way of knowing truth, but as the superior, in fact the sole, means of ascertaining truth. Enlightenment thinkers rightly observed that science can make no determinations about morality, but wrongly extrapolated that since Science could not speak on it, there was no way anyone could speak on it. Thus was born the moral ethos of modernity: There is no objective right or wrong, there are only personal preferences.

This profound shift in moral reasoning gave birth to the iWorld, which views individual freedoms as sacrosanct and holds that maximum individual liberties will translate into the greatest amount of happiness and fulfillment in life. According to iWorld ethics, you can do anything you want as long as you don’t tell someone else what to do.

Though the fruit of iWorld sexuality wasn’t fully manifested for centuries, it was inevitable that iWorld pleasure-seeking would eventually cast off burdensome tWorld responsibilities and boundaries in relationships. Sex and the iWorld takes a thoughtful look at the harvest, paying special attention to how iWorld thinking has affected our understanding of marriage, sexuality, and relational fulfillment. For example, whereas tWorld, relationships were largely a set matrix into which a person was born, iWorld relationships are entered into by choice for the purpose of self-fulfillment and tend to last only as long as both parties want them to. As a result, iWorld sexuality leads to a kind of relational consumerism where partners attempt to get everything they can out of the relationship before it ends, a utilitarian approach to that leaves people lonely, insecure, and feeling like they’ve been used.

The question that drives Keuhne is, Which world produces the most satisfying and fulfilling lives? The answer he suggests is not a return to the tWorld, for it had its shortcomings, but a transition into the rWorld. The rWorld is founded upon the conviction that fulfillment and satisfaction in life flow from quality relationships more than any other factor. Despite the title, only one chapter specifically discusses sex, but seven chapters of groundwork were required before he could make his point about it: iSex is a personally and socially disastrous dead end.

Sex and the iWorld is neither a diatribe nor a moral treatise. It’s a humble invitation to reason together about how best to find meaning and fulfillment in life. iWorld inhabitants of every persuasion can find illuminating points to ponder in Kuehne’s words.

This article first appeared in Salvo 11, Winter 2009.

Related Articles:

• Life (or not) According to the Big Bang Theory