• Happy Friday! Half the world’s population could face a global-warming-induced food crisis by 2100, according to a new study.

• And then there’s the floods…

• Need proof that evolution’s more than just a “theory”? Look no further.

• The fruit flies are back! And this time, it’s not just Palin dissing them.

• “Dear Obama: Please bring me cap and trade legislation this year.” A wish list from environmentalists.

• The U.S. isn’t the only tech sector getting slammed by the downturn.

• And now for a lesson in brutal honesty: How much does racism really bother you?

Mashing scientific evidence into a pulpy soup of agenda-laden misinformation seems to be a common theme for the modern GOP. The latest (and arguably most egregious) example is outgoing EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, whose reign has been dominated by a poverty of factual information, with hard science routinely twisted to suit political designs.

In a scathing profile in the Philadelphia Enquirer (via ThinkProgress), writers John Shiffman and John Sullivan delve into the cult of mediocrity that dominated Johnson’s time at the agency. The piece is filled with forehead-slappers like the following:

Perhaps one of the best insights into Johnson’s vision for EPA can be found in written testimony he submitted to a Senate committee this year. In the document, Johnson laid out his top 11 goals.

No. 1 was clean energy, particularly approving drilling for “thousands of new oil and gas wells” on tribal and federal lands. No. 2 was homeland security.

Environmental enforcement and sound science ranked ninth and 10th.

And that’s not even the worst of it:

Johnson approved pesticide testing on human subjects, lowered the monetary value of a human life by $1 million, reduced air pollution reporting requirements for corporate farms, and altered a chemical risk-assessment program that has slowed analysis to a crawl.

To top it all off, Johnson is described as using the following reasoning against his critics:

He believes in the Bush agenda and, like his boss, said his resolve is fueled by his deep Christian beliefs.

It is a faith he developed early in life. Johnson’s strongest association outside the EPA is his relationship with his alma mater, Taylor University, one of the nation’s oldest evangelical colleges…

Johnson majored in biology. At Taylor, that includes discussion of creationism.

When asked to articulate his view on the creationism/science debate, Johnson responded with the following:

It’s not a clean-cut division. If you have studied at all creationism vs. evolution, there’s theistic or God-controlled evolution and there’s variations on all those themes.

Sure, there are variations. Unfortunately, none of them are grounded in actual fact. But then, neither are Johnson’s policies.

Related:
RB: Is Bobby Kennedy Really the “Anti-Science” Choice for EPA Head?
RB: Global Warming Denial in the Senate: The Latest Chapter
RB: Rant of the Day: Hitchens Slams Palin on Science

Karl Giberson, physics professor, author, and P.Z. Myers nemesis, thinks—perhaps rightfully—that there’s no reason you can’t have it all: knowledge and understanding of evolution, belief in God, and adherence to Christianity. Planting his feet in such a roiling middle ground puts him in a unique position that warrants discussion. Enter the Templeton Foundation, self-appointed adjudicator of the God-science debate. In Monday night’s event at the Harvard Club in New York, the organization brought Giberson together with resident agnostic Michael Shermer, an author and the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine.

In a rather tepid exchange (though after Hitchens, a fistfight would seem tame), the two men danced around what’s wrong with creationism, why religion may be more than a result of evolutionary psychology, and whether there’s a “reason” to believe in God.

Shermer got things rolling with a question about why evolution and Christianity—which, he said, is “about God’s relationship to Christ”—are so consistently combined in American culture. “The U.S. has always been very religious and very entrepreneurial,” Giberson responded. “And assaulting religion turned out to be successful entrepreneurially.” True enough, though a fundamentally weak point when you consider that promoting religion has been just as—if not more—profitable.

On the issue of “what’s wrong with creationists,” Giberson criticized the group for “spin[ning] the Creation story into pseudo-science” and “elevat[ing] Genesis beyond what is appropriate.” His objection to this approach wasn’t so much that it was contradictory to all scientific evidence, but rather that it “rob[bed Genesis] of everything that is interesting.” Of die-hard young creationists, who Shermer diplomatically singled out as “not dumb” and “not ignorant,” Giberson dismissed them as overcommitted to Biblical literalism: “They have all these reasons for making the Bible supernatural…They want to be able to read the Bible as if it was written very recently.”

Another benefit of religion, he proposed, is that it fills in the moral gaps Darwinism leaves behind: “Darwin doesn’t give you statements of morality.” In fact, he argues, “morals are conflicting with science,” on issues like procreation—pure Darwinism supports the idea of promiscuous sex, for example.

As to why he believes in God, Giberson offered the following:

“Part of me wants to go with the…argument that it makes the world so much more interesting. I’d rather have the mysteries that come with belief in God. I’m not convinced religion can be all explained away as evidence of evolutionary psychology…[Religion] suggests a possible solution for the deepest mysteries science hasn’t been able to solve.”

Maybe so—but it also does its darndest to undermine those “mysteries” science has already nailed.

Related:
RB: God 0, Atheism 2: Hitchens Eats Another Religious Figure for Lunch
RB: This Week’s God-Science Face-Off: Rick Warren v. Sam Harris
RB: Rant of the Day: Hitchens Slams Palin on Science

Humans have been historically eager to kill each other. Throughout history, we’ve thought up all sorts of nutty reasons to slaughter our fellow man that had nothing to do with immediate survival of the fittest. We tend to chalk all these wars up to cultural differences fed by a species-wide need to be ideologically right (and impose that right-ness on others), along with a knack for weapons discovery culminating in a technology boom that’s constantly supplying bigger and better ways to off each other. Add governments to the mix, and you’ve got a big steaming pile of questionably necessary interspecies violence.

So it’s a little—but not a lot—surprising that the growing scientific consensus is that war not only dates back to the origins of humankind, but has also played “an integral role” in or species’ evolution. According to this theory, which emerged during a recent conference at the University of Oregon, the war “instinct” was present in our common ancestor with chimps, and has been a “significant selection pressure on the human species,” as evolutionary psychologist Mark Van Vugt put it.

His and his colleagues’ reasoning goes something like this: Evidence exists to show that war and humans have been friends since the beginning (fossils of early humans show wounds consistent with combat injuries). As such, we would have evolved “psychological adaptations to a warlike lifestyle.” To this end, researchers have presented “the strongest evidence yet that males—whose larger and more muscular bodies make them better suited for fighting—have evolved a tendency towards aggression outside the group but cooperation within it.”

In other words, men have evolved to be team players within their own clans, and be warriors with everyone else—much like the behavior observed in chimpanzees, who regularly engage in short bursts of intergroup violence to weaken neighboring groups of males.

So should we resign ourselves to a future of ever-escalating violence due to our Darwinist predisposition for war? Not necessarily, says John Tooby, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who insists on looking at the bright side:

“The interesting thing about war is we’re focused on the harm it does… But it requires a super-high level of cooperation [within military organizations].”

Fair enough. Now if we could just figure out how to apply that trait to government.

Related:
RB: Over a Year After YouTube Ban, Military Launches “TroopTube”
RB: How Green Is My Army?

A few weeks ago, we recounted a debate between atheist posterchild Christopher Hitchens and Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, a prominent physicist and theologian. In the wake of around 20 requests for visual proof of what went down, we also promised to post a video of the debate once it became available. Cut to today, when, via the Templeton Foundation, you can watch the event in its entirety here.

Related:
God 0, Atheism 2: Hitchens Eats Another Religious Figure for Lunch

Additional Coverage of the Debate:

Newsweek
The Daily News
Vanity Fair
The National Review Online

This week, Newsweek joins the rising tide of forums holding the “God Challenge”: pit a religious figure (generally of the Christian persuasion) against a hardcore atheist, and let them battle it out over the existence of God. This week’s contestants are mega-preacher Rick Warren, of California’s Saddleback Church, and Sam Harris, philosopher and author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, with editor Jon Meacham acting as referee.

The conversation, for the most part, sticks to the general formula: Is there a God, what evidence do we have either way, should the Bible be interpreted literally, does prayer really “work.” No surprise, the points and counterpoints meet with the same language barrier that dominates nearly all of these attempts to “translate” religion into rational terms, and vice versa.

Harris, for his part, is no stranger to debates like these, and holds his own through questions about the existence of secular morality and the ability to be spiritual without believing a doctrine. He does, however, fall into the paternalistic “I know better than you” trap that can’t help but alienate the billions of humans who do believe in God. Telling people they’re stupider than you is simply never a winning strategy.

Meanwhile, Warren makes a few interesting points about personal responsibility and divine justice. But he sets himself up as easy prey with exchanges like the following:

WARREN: One of the great evidences of God is answered prayer. I have a friend, a Canadian friend, who has an immigration issue. He’s an intern at this church, and so I said, “God, I need you to help me with this,” as I went out for my evening walk. As I was walking I met a woman. She said, “I’m an immigration attorney; I’d be happy to take this case.” Now, if that happened once in my life I’d say, “That is a coincidence.” If it happened tens of thousands of times, that is not a coincidence.

There must have been times in your ministry when you’ve prayed for someone to be delivered from disease who is not—say, a little girl with cancer.

WARREN: Oh, absolutely.

So, parse that. God gave you an immigration attorney, but God killed a little girl.

WARREN: Well, I do believe in the goodness of God, and I do believe that he knows better than I do. God sometimes says yes, God sometimes says no and God sometimes says wait. I’ve had to learn the difference between no and not yet. The issue here really does come down to surrender. A lot of atheists hide behind rationalism; when you start probing, you find their reactions are quite emotional. In fact, I’ve never met an atheist who wasn’t angry.

Which is essentially saying that sometimes you can control fate by “praying” to God, and sometimes you can’t, but the act of surrendering control should only happen once you realize all those fervent prayers aren’t being answered. That humans foolishly try to control nearly every aspect of life is a germane point—just look at the headlines to see how utterly out of control things are, despite our best efforts otherwise. But rather than explore this human tendency, and how religion alleviates/causes it, Warren heads straight for the defend-your-position-by-attacking-your-opponent tactic so reminiscent of modern political campaigns. Which, as we’ve seen, aren’t exactly the paths to agreement and rational discourse.

The L.A. Times has a source who claims to have spoken directly to Palin about dinosaurs in 1997, when she was mayor of Wasilla. Stephen Braun reports that the notoriously soundbite-ready VP nominee told Philip Munger, a music teacher at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, that “dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time” 6,000 years ago—an statement that’s so horribly incorrect on so many levels, yet still all too common in creationist lore. Munger said Palin insisted that “she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks.” Were these pictures on display here by any chance?

Granted, Munger is no fan of the photogenic governor: He writes the actively anti-Palin blog ProgressiveAlaska, and has appeared on ultra-liberal Air America radio to speak out against her. Still, unless yet another blogger digs up evidence that he’s lying, there’s no proof that their exchange is a myth. And, of course, all this could be cleared up by a simple Q&A with Palin herself—if such a thing was possible.

Image: Flickr/williac

Are you there God, and if so, will you please provide an emissary that can go head-to-head with Christopher Hitchens without getting spectacularly flayed?

That was the pertinent issue during yesterday’s “Big Questions conversation” at the Pierre Hotel, hosted by On Faith and the John Templeton Foundation. The luncheon pitted Hitchens, the anti-theist poster child, against Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, a physicist, theologian, and author of God at the Ritz: Attraction to Infinity.

Given the pro-God squad’s spectacular failure the last time it staged a debate like this, the buzz among the predominantly male and heavily tweeded crowd was, “Will Albacete bring his A game against a man known for his periodic disembowling of religious delegates?”

The answer, unfortunately, was a resounding no. While the monsignor presented a charismatic and sympathetic figure—his Isaac Hayes-esque vocal resonance was worth the trip alone—his arguments, if one could call them that, didn’t make it past a freshmen theology class.

Albacete’s strategy seemed to be to dance around his opponent—never has “I agree with you completely” been so frequently uttered by a Catholic priest to a hardcore atheist—and rely on his ecclesiastical gravitas to give credence to his chief points: that science and religion can co-exist; that human beings are biological creatures defined by faith; that religion and faith are separate entities; and that science has not provided sufficient proof that God doesn’t exist to squelch the belief that He does.

All of which could be sound claims if argued effectively, with cogent reasoning and specific examples to counter the obvious holes that Hitchens wasted no time presenting: The burden of proof rests on deists, not atheists, to prove there is a God; no scientific evidence exists to support the assertion that Jesus Christ was the son of God, or even existed; and the tenets of organized religion are nothing more than the “delusions” of humankind needed to sustain our desire for pageantry and meaning.

Rather than hit these atheist talking points head on, the Monsignor sputtered and evaded his way through the hour, clinging to an agenda focused on capitulation short of outright renunciation of belief. Religion, he admitted, has done “a lot” of harm, but “science has been [just] as misused.” When Hitchens accused Albacete of flippancy concerning the pain Christianity has caused despite the total lack of existential evidence, the priest responded: “I have seen evidence in my experience that Jesus Christ existed.” Excellent! An original point! So what was this evidence? Too bad we never found out—either he had no answer, or was unwilling to share.

It’s unfortunate that Albacete brought so little from his distinguished career and thoughtful writings, which demonstrate a commitment to open-minded discussion of an issue that has brought humanity to an impasse. Instead he seemed intent on emerging from the Upper East Side with his dignity intact, as well as besting the king of one-liners in a soundbite contest. A few highlights:

“To me, faith is the problem…it’s like trying to explain to your uncomprehending family why you’ve fallen in love with so and so.”

“You could substitute for Christ the Great Lizard, for all I care.”

“When I was looking [to woo] my women, I did not send them equations.”

“As I try to live a decent life…something extraordinary enters my life and moves me the way nothing ever has before. Was it what I drank? Was it the pizza? Was it what I’d been smoking? Most of the time, it is!”

So there you have it: It might be God, or it might be bad pizza. Lets hope the next champion of God (an imam perhaps?) that battles Hitchens is armed with a slightly more compelling response.

This post has been appended to reflect that Hitchens is an anti-theist rather than an anti-deist.

So, yeah, Sarah Palin was named as McCain’s VP choice last Friday, in the slim chance that you hadn’t heard. The pro-hunting, anti-choice, pro-drilling, experience-lacking Alaskan governor already has the media—and much of the country—talking in circles about whether her nomination is a boon for women, conservative voters, the GOP, etc.—or a disaster. But while her “talk tough” ways may sound progressive, and her willingness to penetrate the “good ‘ol boys network” may signal a positive direction for the GOP, her views on teaching creationism are anything but encouraging.

The daughter of a public school science teacher (sweet irony), Palin had this to say during the Alaskan governor’s race when asked about teaching creationism in public schools (via Tapped):

“Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of information.

Healthy debate is so important and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both. Growing up with being so privileged and blessed to be given a lot of information on, on both sides of the subject—creationism and evolution.

It’s been a healthy foundation for me. But don’t be afraid of information and let kids debate both sides.”

When later asked to clarify her position, she backtracked into “I’m just promoting the free exchange of ideas” territory:

“I don’t think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn’t have to be part of the curriculum.”

She added that, if elected, she would not push the state Board of Education to add such creation-based alternatives to the state’s required curriculum…

“I won’t have religion as a litmus test, or anybody’s personal opinion on evolution or creationism,” Palin said.

Which sounds like exactly what it is: a political maneuver to stick to the conservative, pro-ID platform while still ostensibly supporting science. But the most alarming remark came next:

Palin has occasionally discussed her lifelong Christian faith during the governor’s race but said teaching creationism is nothing she has campaigned about or even given much thought to.

We’ve covered the Sisyphean efforts science teachers are making to get some semblance of evolution taught in their classrooms—and the high costs that science “ineducation” may have on this country in the future. This is an issue that draws fierce disagreement nationwide and requires a full understanding of the complex theories—and mass influx of misinformation—that are dominating the debate. Do we really want a vice president who’s never really given it much thought?

The New York Times has a report this week on the hoops teachers are jumping through to teach evolution in public schools. Specifically, it follows the efforts of David Campbell, a Florida biology teacher who does an astonishing job of compromising, tip-toeing, and cajoling, all to get his students to accept—and maybe even learn—the process of evolution.

Overall, the piece paints a bleak picture for teachers, made all the worse by the lack of a clear nationwide mandate for teaching the subject. Despite all the scientific evidence we have, some states are still stacking obstacles in the path of instructors who want to devote class time to human evolution. This summer, Louisiana passed a law protecting the right of local schools to teach “alternative” (i.e., non-scientific) theories for the origin of species, while the Florida Department of Education didn’t explicitly require its public schools to teach evolution—or, as the legislature calls it, “the organizing principle of life science”—until February of 2008.

Even if teachers manage to dodge sketchy state restrictions, there’s still the matter of parents. Campbell, who helped write Florida’s standards on teaching evolution, found himself barraged with complaints from angry parents when he taught the subject, and was even undermined by his colleague and fellow bio teacher, who offered a competing lesson plan she called “Evolution or NOT.” (Her backup plan for what to tell particularly curious students? “I think God did it.”)

The U.S. is teetering on the edge of losing its place as the world’s premiere harbor for science research. With experts already foretelling our demise as a science superpower—and, with China already set to surpass the U.S. in published physics papers by 2012, there’s been nothing to suggest the predictions are wrong—we’re not doing ourselves any favors by undermining basic science education with religious dogma. It’s tragic to think that tomorrow’s preeminent biochemists or geneticists could be sidelined by high school lessons questioning whether there’s Biblical evidence for the origin of human life.

Earlier this month, the Sixth International Conference on Creationism took place in Pittsburgh. Sponsored by the Creation Science Fellowship and the Institute for Creation Research, the week-long event billed itself as a “highly technical, peer reviewed symposium, with planned rebuttals and discussions.” Papers submitted for the conference were put through a “technical review process” that included the following criteria:

Is the Summary’s topic important to the development of the creation model?

Does the Summary’s topic provide an original contribution to the creation
model?

Is this Summary formulated within a young-earth, young-universe framework?

Does this Summary provide evidence of faithfulness to the grammaticohistorical/normative interpretation of Scripture?

Of course, precisely which peers did the reviewing hasn’t been revealed, though it doesn’t take much effort to guess that every one of them is a staunch creationist of the “young-Earth” variety.

Jason Rosenhouse, who writes EvolutionBlog and has been covering the conference in detail, had the following to report:

Sadly, while I have generally been impressed with the personality and temperament of many of the people I have met at these conferences, the fact remains that they are hopelessly ignorant of science. This ignorance is exacerbated by the annoying fact that so many of them fancy themselves highly knowledgeable indeed.

His point is apparent in some of the papers accepted for discussion:

* Big Bang: Fact or Fiction?
* The Beginning of Human Life: Re-Evaluating the Biblical Evidence
* Relativistic String Dynamics Support Biblical Creationism
* Electrodynamic Origin of the Force of Gravity
* Oceanic Circulation Trends … during Noah’s Flood

Relativistic string dynamics? Electrodynamic origins? These titles may be the equivalent of political rhetoric (sound and fury signifying just about nothing) but they certainly sound impressive and “scientific.” At the very least, the CSF and ICR are going to some pretty grand lengths to paint the rubric of “legitimate academic research” on a set of beliefs that are, as Rosenhouse describes it, “a patina of science and calm argumentation, with the revival tent never lurking far beneath the surface.”

Not to be outdone, the Atheist Alliance International Convention will be held on September 25th – 28th, and will feature a Mexican buffet, an awards dinner with a performance by Jill Sobule, and a guest speaker list including Secular Coalition lobbyist Lori Lipman Brown, Skeptic Magazine publisher Michael Shermer, and P.Z. Myers. At least the atheists know how to have a little fun.

Image: iStockPhoto

As a fellow scientist (I have a Ph.D. in physics), I share Myers’ enthusiasm for fresh eyes, questioning minds and the power of science. And I worry about dogmatism and the kind of zealotry that motivates the faithful to blow themselves up, shoot abortion doctors and persecute homosexuals. But I also worry about narrow exclusiveness that champions the scientific way of knowing to the exclusion of all else. I don’t like to see science turned into a club to bash religious believers.

Granted, there’s a back story to his argument: Giberson, the founding editor of the erstwhile Science & Theology News and the author of Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution, became the object of Myers’ criticism after a previous Salon Q&A regarding Giberson’s new book. In a somewhat self-righteous move, Giberson responded with the current essay suggesting that Myers had wrongfully targeted him, and that his dismissals of the theologian’s arguments were themselves a form of dogma.

No surprise, Myers then fired back on his blog, charging Giberson with taking details out of context and countering Giberson’s charge of zealotry with a stock defense: that Myers’ absolute belief in science can’t possibly be replacing God because there is no God to replace.

Ultimately, their circuitous arguments are akin to two men speaking different languages: Myers simply can’t/won’t speak Religion, while Giberson has appointed himself translator of a fundamentally irrational concept—that intangibles like God and faith do and should exist—to a hardcore rationalist audience. Neither is objectively right, and both are interpreting facts and creating “reality” to fit their own agendas.

While Giberson has a point—rebutting religious absolutism with scientific absolutism is a recipe for hypocrisy—his arguments include a bag of rhetorical tricks, including using a few flimsy criteria to categorize science as a “religion,” and crafting himself as the white knight of theology in the face of a modernist/secular regime that seeks to stamp out man’s faith in God. As the current administration’s policies, not to mention the political climate, demonstrates, it’s hardly the atheists who hold the upper hand.

Meanwhile, Myers won’t acknowledge that belief in God can exist within an “intelligent” person—an attitude that doesn’t resonate with the majority of the planet’s six billion people. Which isn’t to say it’s wrong, but the refusal to acknowledge that others both think/feel differently, and may be justified in doing so, draws obvious comparisons to religious zealotry.

• With all signs pointing to a tanking economy, it’s nice to know that one area can still rake in the dough: The video game industry.

• Will Wikipedia shut the doors on its self-governing open edit system?

• How do scientists love thee, Wall-E? Let us count the ways. Over at Slate, associate editor Daniel Engber scolds the film for its inaccuracies about obesity, while neuroscientist and Frontal Cortex blogger Jonah Lehrer discusses Pixar’s apparent hat-tip to Darwin.

• Still, Pixar may have a point: U.S. obesity levels continue to rise.

• Whither the salmonella-laden tomatoes? The FDA shifts its eye towards peppers.

But the people—the American ones, at least—are still fond of their God-created species. Then again, maybe people’s stance on evolution depends on the way you ask the questions.

Science Finds God
Lest ye think that science and religion can never co-exist, some evolution-supporting scientists are totally into God. Others have even gone so far as to use one (science) to figure out the other (religion).

But regardless of where you come down on the question, the Vatican wants you to know that if we ever find alien life, “the extraterrestrial is [our] brother“—offering a new dimension to The Brother From Another Planet.

In the Courts
Intelligent design in schools may have died its legal, if not popular, death in Kitzmiller v. The Dover Area School District. But creationists have decided to rebrand: Now they’re advocating teaching about the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution. Hopefully this new rephrasing will also get bounced out of a federal court within the next few years.

Some time between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago, something wonderful happened inside the heads of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. The light went on. We woke up to a sky full of repeating patterns, to an Earth incessantly shaped by wind and water, to environments shared with a wild abundance of life. Most importantly, we woke up to interior lives that responded to this vast “found” world with an emerging culture of painting, carvings, and music.

An essential aspect of this new human culture was mythological narratives of origins and endings. These grand myth systems set us in context against the backdrop of the experienced universe. Our mythologies created meaning by both explaining the world and interpreting the human place within it. Imagination and observation were braided strands of these narratives. Builders of Neolithic monuments with their multiple astronomical orientations were, in their way, paying attention to the world while simultaneously attending to internal responses to the night sky and the cycle of the seasons.

These were our beginnings. These were the imperatives that would later evolve into the modern forms of science and religion. We have been at this game for a long time.

The reason I, as a non-believing scientist, care about the so-called science and religion debate is because it touches something very deep and very ancient in us. As a passionate advocate for science, I believe the current form of the debate, with its insistence on a narrow choice between faith and reason, misses something elemental in our long march across those millennia. Asking questions about science and spiritual endeavor (as opposed to institutional religion) means going beyond what science explains.

While the tired traditional debate is always about explanations (the sullen arguments for creationism) a broader discussion does not have to keep this focus. In the end, we are asking what science means as cultural endeavor. We are asking how it creates meaning as a background of ideas and stories which sets us against our day-to-day lives. And that is exactly the point at which we might see something simultaneously ancient, new, and full of possibilities.

A different and enlivened perspective on science and religion would remember where we came from over 50,000 years. It would acknowledge the function within us that spiritual endeavor carried for all that time. It would understand how we cannot help but carry on with these traditions of thinking and feeling. Then it would use what we have learned and take us someplace new.

Science is one of the supreme achievements of human culture—it is one measure of the best we are capable of, and the best we can aspire towards. Our lives have been made immeasurably richer through its practice and its boons. What has mostly been missed, however, is the capacity of its worldview to open us up to that character of life that can only be called sacred.

Rather than thinking of this contentious word “sacred” as speaking to some imaginary supernatural realm, we could see it differently. We could see it as that attitude of attention that science asks of us in response to even the smallest thing. Every sunrise, every birdsong, every anthill passed on the way to some errand is worthy of rapt of attention if we are willing to step through that doorway. Science is not a philosophy; it’s an approach to the world with rules which guide our attention and reason. In that approach, it shows us what is sacred in the mundane. It makes the ordinary stand out and speak for itself. Through that attention, science simultaneously connects us with many millennia of spiritual tradition, and turns those traditions on their head. What is sacred is not part of some far-off realm of ideals and angels. It is right before us, always.

There is no doubt that the fruits of science and technology have enriched our lives. There can also be no doubt that our world has become saturated with its poisons as well. From climate change to resource depletion, we face issues so vast and so new that marshaling the collective will to act will require new mythologies of our planetary habitation. Any path forward to get us through this dangerous bottleneck cannot focus simply on the application of science. It must go farther to embrace the wise application of science. That will not be a simple matter of reason. Our response to the challenges we face will also come from what we hold most dear, what overflows with value for us. In a word our response will come from what we take to be sacred. That is why the science and religion debate matters. That is why finding a different perspective on science and spiritual endeavor is about more than echo chamber debates about creationism vs. Darwin.

Fifty-thousand years ago, when we began the radical, ceaselessly creative act of creating culture, the seeds of both science and religion were already present. Now, with a fully mature scientific tradition developed, we come to another turning point in evolution that will likely demand a creativity that is just as radical.

I’ll keep posting on these other topics at www.constantfire.com while starting work on my next book (and continuing with the astrophysics day job of course).

Adam Frank is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester who studies star formation and stellar death using supercomputers. His new book, “The Constant Fire, Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate,” has just been published. He will be joining Reality Base to post an ongoing discussion of science and religion—you can read his previous posts here, and find more of his thoughts on science and the human prospect at the Constant Fire blog.