Book Review - Allah: A Christian Response

You might remember that last year I wrote reviews of books by Nabeel Qureshi. The latter review of No God But One covered a crucial topic for Qureshi: Are Islam and Christianity really all that different?

A friend of mine suggested my next book be Miroslav Volf's Allah: A Christian Response. In fact, he actually bought the book for me; thanks again, friend. 

I think understanding this book starts with understanding the author. Volf's Wikipedia page carries a lot of noteworthy accomplishments and glowing references. Theologian, seminary professor, author, public intellectual, White House advisor . . . the man has a long and reputable résumé. There is a strong theme throughout his work, however, of interfaith engagement, the most relevant work being his crafting of the "Yale Response" to "A Common Word." 

This book seems to have been an outgrowth of that work, though in this case, Volf's audience is fellow Christians, or at least that's what he claims in the book. The central question Volf seeks to answer in Allah is, "Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?" Nabeel Qureshi answered the question in the negative. Volf, in the course of the book, says, "Yes, we do worship the same God." (If you're interested in hearing these two debate the matter, there's audio of just that.)

Volf spends a lot of time laying his groundwork, but his basic argument follows that of "A Common Word," arguing that Muslims and Christians worship the same God because of their common ground, a faith centered in the love of God and the love of neighbor. He spends a great deal of the book unpacking these ideas. 

I really struggled to finish this book. My first inclination while reading it was to call Volf a hack. That isn't fair or charitable, but it was born out of irritation, and a sense, as I worked my way through the chapters, that Volf was not dealing with the topic in an honest manner. I can't know the process by which Volf reached the conclusions he did; I can't unpack the people he's met or the books he's read. However, I can at least respond to the arguments he's made, and they are not convincing, as far as I'm concerned.

On Origins and the Molecular Basis of Life

I've said on a number of posts, mostly about the possibility of life on other planets, that I don't particularly buy into the idea of a chemical origin of life. This often leads to some awkwardness in my professional life. I have advanced degrees in life sciences; how can I disregard actual science in favor of a purely religious point of view?

I don't reject a naturalistic explanation of the origin of life on purely religious grounds. Even in the absence of a motivating faith, the ideas regarding the chemical origin of life don't inspire confidence. Frankly, I find it requires more faith to believe that life arose out of a primordial soup than not, a conclusion in search of evidence to support it, and the evidence is wanting.

In all of the posts where I've mentioned this, I've said that I ought to explain why at some point. This is an attempt to do so, and like the theory itself, this explanation is complicated.

Chasing the Wind: Of Pain and Sovereignty

In my last entry of the series, I didn't dwell on the text of Ecclesiastes in order to present some arguments that I'd need to return to later. In retrospect, my discussion on God's sovereignty would have been all the better for consideration of the following text, although it was already lengthy enough. My purpose last time was addressing the criticism that our actions and lives cannot be meaningful if they cannot actually change the outcome. God's sovereignty, in that consideration, prevents us from having Meaning because nothing we do matters.

Although I did address this argument, it turns out there's another aspect of God's sovereignty which weighs on the heart.

For everything there is an appointed time, and an appropriate time for every activity on earth: 

A time to be born, and a time to die;
     a time to plant, and a time to uproot what was planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
     a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
     a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones;
     a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to search, and a time to give something up as lost;
     a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to rip, and a time to sew;
     a time to keep silent, and a time to speak.
A time to love, and a time to hate;
     a time for war, and a time for peace. 

What benefit can a worker gain from his toil?  I have observed the burden that God has given to people to keep them occupied. God has made everything fit beautifully in its appropriate time, but he has also placed ignorance in the human heart so that people cannot discover what God has ordained, from the beginning to the end of their lives.

I have concluded that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to enjoy themselves as long as they live, and also that everyone should eat and drink, and find enjoyment in all his toil, for these things are a gift from God. 

I also know that whatever God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it, and nothing taken away from it. God has made it this way, so that men will fear him. Whatever exists now has already been, and whatever will be has already been; for God will seek to do again what has occurred in the past. - Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 (NET)

Chasing the Wind: Our Story

I mentioned in the first entry for this series that I've been re-reading some philosophy books. In A.J. Ayer's essay, The Claims of Philosophy, I came across this paragraph:

But for now, it may be objected, suppose that the world is designed by a superior being. In that case, the purpose of our existence will be the purpose that it realizes for him; and the meaning of life will be found in our conscious adaptation to his purpose. But here again, the answer is, first, that there is no good reason whatsoever for believing that there is any such superior being; and, secondly, that even if there were, he could not accomplish what is here required of him. For let us assume, for the sake of argument, that everything happens as it does because a superior being has intended that it should.

 . . . The point is, in short, that even the invocation of a deity does not enable us to answer the question why things are as they are. 

I've left out the details of the argument, and Ayer goes on like this quite a bit more; Kai Nielsen repeats Ayer's argument in his essay, Linguistic Philosophy and "The Meaning of Life." (I don't recommend the latter. Linguistic Philosophy, as a field, seems like endless pontification on what the meaning of "is" is with the assumption that such navel gazing is profound.) There's much to say in response to this line of argument, but it becomes easier to do so in the context of the Christian world view. In other words, the response to all of these different formulations and perspectives on Meaning becomes understandable in the light of the story Christians tell about the Meaning of Life.

Maybe this comes off as surprising to some. Christians have an answer to the question of Meaning? What is the Christian answer here?

We were made to be in relationship with God.

Does that seem too simple? It really isn't. To make the most sense of this, we have to go back to the beginning. Before that, really.

Chasing the Wind - A Legacy of Knowledge

A while back, Neil DeGrasse Tyson was speaking in front of an audience, and was asked, "What is the meaning of life?" This was his answer:

So — what is the meaning of life? I think people ask that question on the assumption that 'meaning' is something you can look for and go, 'Here it is, I found it. Here's the meaning. I've been looking for.' That scenario, however, doesn't consider the possibility that 'meaning' is something you create. You manufacture it for yourself and for others. 

So when I think of 'meaning' in life, I ask, 'Did I learn something today that I didn't know yesterday, bringing me a little closer to knowing all that can be known in the universe?' If I live a day and I don't know a little more than I did the day before, I think I wasted that day. So the people who, at the end of the school year, say 'The summer! I don't have to think anymore!' — I just don't know. To think brings you closer to nature. To learn how things work gives you power to influence events. Gives you power to help people who may need it — to help yourself and your trajectory. 

So when I think of the meaning of life, that's not an eternal and unanswerable question — to me, that's in arm's reach of me everyday. So to you, at age six-and-three-quarters, may I suggest that you explore nature as much as you possibly can. And occasionally that means getting your clothes dirty because you might want to jump into puddles and your parents don't want you to do that. You tell them that I gave you permission.

His questioner was six years old, so you can see how this is an answer for a child on some level. He might just as well have added, "Eat your veggies and drink your milk." You can also see the post-modern perspective in there as well, replacing Meaning with "meaning," where "Whatever gets you through the day" is meaningful. To each his own, etc. I'll have to address that another day.

All the same, Tyson is a scientist (well, depending on who you ask), and this is definitely a scientist's answer on the question of Meaning.

Chasing the Wind

I've been working on one of those "Read the Bible in a year" plans for ... well, for a while now. I might finish it at some point. Earlier this year, I found myself in the book of Ecclesiastes. It's not a book most people are familiar with; after all, it's the Wisdom Book that isn't Proverbs, and much of what it says comes off as strange, to say the least.

Yet, after reading it, I went back and read it again. Then a third time. Something about this was really sticking in my mind for some reason. Why was it so familiar?

It took a while to hit me: Ecclesiastes is a philosophical text about the Meaning of Life.

Non-Combat Gameplay

First things first:  If you think video games can be more than just mindless entertainment, and actually enjoy considering their potential and meaning, then you should be watching Extra Credits over at The Escapist.

That said, their most recent video was about non-combat gameplay.  In short:  A great majority of video games are mostly played through combat, and while this is both entertaining and a cheap way of introducing tension and drama, it neglects the many other aspects of life that video games could entertainingly portray in order to tell a good story.

Why is this so?  I imagine it's the same reason sex, by which I mean scantily clad females, is so ubiquitous in video games.  A great deal of both the creators and the players are male; while this has balanced somewhat in the last decade or so, men seem to be the dominant force in the industry.  And let's face it:  Men like violence.  I don't mean this in any sort of denigrating way, it's just the sort of fantasy which we enjoy.  Let's save psychology and philosophizing about why that is for another time.

Could you make a game that is entertaining which doesn't involve combat?  I've no doubt.  But I think the thing that will ultimately make that sort of game successful is a good story, not good mechanics.

The problem is that unless you have programming good enough to respond to a wide variety of player inputs, these sorts of games will probably be a long series of if/then statements.  If player does X, computer responds with Y.  Which is fine, and I'm sure it can be more complicated than that, but it will eventually boil down to predictable management of minutiae, which is going to be problematic for this sort of gameplay.

The entire idea is that you're offering a different way of overcoming obstacles in these games.  Not combat, basically.  If you don't replace the elements that make combat a cheap dramatic resource (tension, risk, the unknown possibilities), then the gameplay becomes formulaic.

Which is not the kiss of death for game, as I said; it's just that the impetus is then on making a good story.  I loved the Phoenix Wright games, and I think they're an excellent example of this sort of thing.  But I'm skeptical we'll ever see a game that fully replaces combat with philosophical debate, pushing the cloak and sheathing the dagger.

Research ethics and animal use

The other day, I was talking with some of the new students in my department. I was rather curious why most of them wanted to work in microbiology rather than immunology, and it turned out that the reason had a lot to do with an unwillingness to work with animals. For several of these students, there was no justification for harming animals; at least, "in the name of science," wasn't good enough for them.

Yesterday, during our monthly ethics seminar/discussion, the topic fell to lab animal care and rights. Several people had stories falling one way or the other, either researchers who refused to use anything but cell lines (and even then, some refused to use animal derived cell lines), while others told tales of of lab techs who would euthanize their animals by whacking their heads against the counter, or smacking them in the head with a stick. Blech.

The mission leader stated that 52% of the public opposes animal use in research. I don't know where he read that, but it's a dangerous number all the same. He only had one explanation for such opposition, but I can think of a few reasons to add to it:

1. Ignorance. The thought was that people oppose animal research because they don't really understand how much benefit it brings, how widespread its use is, how much caution and care is taken in the use of laboratory animals, etc. I find it likely that this makes up the majority of that 52%. At least, I hope that's the case. These people likely oppose it when asked for a survey, but don't care enough to make an issue out of it during an electoral cycle.
   
   
2. Naturalism. These are people who think that most modern, biological sciences are tampering with things that ought to be left well enough alone. This is the same group that rabidly opposes "frankenfoods" and other uses of bioengineering. I don't think this is a large segment, but they are quite vocal, and visible, when they want to be.
   
   
3. Anthropomorphism. The fundamental justification behind the use of animals in research is that the life of a mouse (or rabbit, goat, rat, frog, etc.) is not worth the same as a human; the loss of a mouse to save the life of a human is, thus, a "no-brainer." If you place any sort of equivalence between human life and animal life, I'm not sure there's much to be done to convince you that animal research is worthwhile. For what it's worth, I dislike this position most of all because the end result is often people who will attempt to kill researchers in an attempt to "save" the lives of their research animals.

Oh, I'm probably oversimplifying things, but I think scientists need to hope that most of that 52% falls into the first category. My colleagues keep suggesting that scientists need to become more visible in the public eye, defending their efforts and justifying their work. I don't necessarily disagree, but it's awfully dangerous to be a spokesman for animal research these days.

Autocratic Mash Note

Keeping with a theme, I guess, Thomas Friedman's column for today was yearning for the type of benevolent rule we see in . . . China? Yeesh.

Anyhow, Jonah Goldberg isn't buying it. Nobody in their right mind is.

Health care not a right

I saw this post over at National Review's The Corner, and it rang true with me, largely because I've had this argument dozens of times before.

The idea that we have a right to health care is quite dangerous. All rights we've enshrined heretofore were things that could only be taken away from you; life, liberty, etc. Health care, like any other good or service, is something that can only be given.

If we enshrine a right to something that must be given to us, it creates an ever-dreaded slippery slope. At what point do the rights stop? and who gets to decide?

The Banality of Evil

Today in lecture, we were discussing the diagnosis of genetic diseases, sickle cell anemia and thalassemia in particular.

Thalassemia is a rather brutal disease when one is homozygous for the disease. It's not pretty. The lecturer discussed various methods by which the Italian island of Sardinia reduced the number of cases of people with the advanced form of the disease. Genetic counseling and widespread testing lead to people not having children if they were at risk of having diseased children.

If that had been all, I would have been fine with it. The professor also decided to mention prenatal testing, and cited abortion as the obvious outcome of such a procedure. She made reference to Italy legalizing abortion in the 70s, and apparently no one has looked back. She made a joke about the Pope being free to mind his own business. Some people in the class chuckled.

I'm not going to pretend that such decisions are easy to make. It's certainly a heavy matter to find out that your child is going to be born with a painfully crippling disease. This doesn't change the morality of such a decision, but I'm not going to trivialize it.

Still, the amazing thing to me was how glib the professor was about the matter, as if she was referring to something as simple as an appendectomy. Some people laughed when she acted glibly about it; I think you could have picked my jaw off the floor.

There are some thing I'll just never understand.

Genetics as a model

Yesterday I had the great opportunity to sit in on a lecture by a professor from John Hopkins. His talk was on ciliopathies, which might not sound terribly exciting, but the man was a terrifically engaging speaker.

There's probably little interest in hearing about any of that stuff amongst you readers, but he did use it to emphasize an overarching message about scientific bias. In the world of disease genetics, it seems there's a tendency to think in terms of, "one disease, one gene." Especially in the idea that what you observe in the inheritance patterns is definitive. This guy, Nicholas Katsanis, instead argued that incomplete penetrance demands that such thinking be put aside and alternative explanations examined. The end result being that most genetic diseases are incredibly complicated, with most of the involved mutations to the pathways providing only a percentage of the observed result. That is to say, three individual mutations might not show any sort of disease phenotype, but combinations of those mutations could give a spectrum of disease severity. He related this to his research by showing that genes which are written off as having nothing to do with a disease can, in fact, contribute to a disease state.

It's not really my intention to turn this blog into the "scientific bias" show, but if such problems can exist in biological sciences, why can't it be a problem for people involved in global warming research?

Making things Wright

Today's issue of the Chicago Tribune had a lot of articles about the relationship between Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama. Of course, the paper officially defended Sen. Obama and continued to promote his campaign for President. However, after reading so many articles about the matter, I've come to one conclusion: Nobody writing for this newspaper either understands, or chooses to acknowledge, the real reason Rev. Wright is such an issue.

The constant refrain is that things Rev. Wright says "may be considered 'controversial,'" as if he were just guilty of saying things people didn't want to hear. Others tried to make the problem about Wright's "lack of patriotism," and his "God d**m America" statements, particularly in attributing them to Obama. That is, of course, a problem, but it's not the heart of the situation.

The real problem is that Rev. Wright buys into the most outlandish of paranoid conspiracy mongering regarding the US government, and preached it from his pulpit. This includes examples such as his declaration that the US government created AIDS in order to commit genocide against minorities, or that it gives crack and other drugs to inner city minorities in order to . . . well, does it matter why? In addition to all of this, Wright is part of a movement of theologians who are essentially the black version of the KKK, at least philosophically. When you credit theologians who declare that the only God they can believe in is one who is only for blacks, and that this God must always be seeking to destroy the white oppressor . . . that is a severe problem. This isn't even going anywhere near the offense Christians ought to be taking at such a perversion of their beliefs.

Here is where it starts to get slippery: So many people will acknowledge at least the most venial of Wright's sins, but then question how it has any relevance to Obama and his campaign. I must state unequivocally that this association completely disqualifies Obama for being President of the United States.

There's an old saying (I don't recall the source anymore) that once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, but three times is enemy action. Barack Obama sought out Wright. He has sat in the man's church for twenty years, and has referred to him as a mentor and a spiritual guide. Everything about this relationship indicates that it is more than just a casual acquaintance. What does this say about the judgment of a man who has been running on exactly that? I find it impossible that this kind of talk only recently cropped up at Trinity UCC, or that Obama never heard anything of the sort in twenty years of church membership. That kind of cop-out just strains credulity in a silly way. It either means that Obama's church membership was always a political expediency, or that he didn't care about such insanity from the pulpit. Either way, it reflects poorly on him, and makes his two very different speeches about Wright very opportunistic. It shows him to be just another weaselly politician willing to say whatever sounds right at the time to get elected.

That is why Rev. Wright matters. That is why Barack Obama is unfit to be our next President. It is just a tragedy that people are either unable or unwilling to accept it.

Grand Theft Retort

I write about the various musings of Dr. Albert Mohler from time to time, so I hope you won't mind if I bring him up again. Earlier in the week, Dr. Mohler dedicated his daily radio program to discuss the release of Grand Theft Auto IV. As you can imagine, he didn't have much good to say about it. How convenient for this post, then, that he condensed the program into a blog post.

There's a lot for me to agree with Dr. Mohler regarding this subject. I can't really defend the content of GTA games, as I'd never play them myself. Games where the goal is to act criminally do not sit well with me. Anti-heroes are not what I would consider to be enjoyable escape.

That out of the way, Dr. Mohler makes a lot of mistakes in how he approaches this subject generally. While he acknowledges that these games are clearly meant for adults and not for children or teens, he seems to place equal blame on both the parents who buy these games for their children and on the creators for making the game in the first place. This is just indefensible. Should we not create things for adults only for the risk that children will be given access to it by the irresponsible? Should we ban the Bible at the risk of children reading about Lot and his many adventures?

Additionally, Dr. Mohler never explicitly comes out against video games in general, but his thematic approach is to deem them "inappropriate" at best. As in, "What responsible adult would waste their time with such things when there are other important matters to be dealt with?" This is a trend I hear a lot, and it's quite annoying. So many people tend to treat any form of entertainment with disdain, as if you're wasting your life by enjoying anything of the sort and good Christians would be better off reading the Bible than getting bogged down in that junk.

The problem is that so many people selectively apply these things. Video games are bad for you, but television is okay. Movies are bad, but literature is just fine. Card games are evil, but board games are fun for all! Take your pick, someone has argued against or for any of the above.

I can't defend people who do anything obsessively, especially when it gets in the way of real obligations and healthy lifestyle choices, but this vendetta against video games in general is misguided. There is nothing unbiblical about video games. Even if you consider it a waste of time to play them, that is your opinion. People can certainly enjoy them while maintaining a healthy balance in their life.

An Ethical Dilemma

Yesterday I was in Baltimore, interviewing at the University of Maryland for their graduate program in microbiology and immunology. One of the professors I talked with had some research that struck my interest quite readily. He was describing the project to me for a few minutes, and I was listening eagerly, until this happened:

Him: Blah blah blah, so that's the project. Also, we have another project starting up analyzing stem cells.

Me: Oh, that sounds very in . . . ter . . . esting . . . Um, what kind of stem cells did you say?

Him: Oh, human embryonic stem cells. We're working on blah blah blah . . .

Yeah. His other research sounded quite interesting, but ESCR? I wouldn't do that myself, and I don't support it. Could I ethically work for someone who does it?

I prefer 'Man-Child,' Thank You

This article just drips with self-important hyperbole. Mid-twenty young men are the epitome of irresponsibility, living as perpetual teenagers because they can, avoiding all those nasty things like marriage and children, yada yada yada.

As a mid-twenties male, this ruffles my feathers just a bit. I could cite examples from my own life to explain why her generalizations are pure rubbish, but I think one point will do it nicely.

She laments the number of young men who aren't married and makes it out to be a problem with the men.

News flash, Kay: This means that there is an equally large number of mid-twenty women out there who are not married.

In large part, the move away from marriage is due to my generation's antipathy towards it; most will simply cohabitate and call it a day. Still, the women will have some similar reasons to men for not being married aside from a lack of desire to do so. Many would rather focus on their careers, or perhaps have found themselves so picky that there really isn't a suitable man out there.

Whatever their reasons are, if the young men aren't getting married, Kay, then neither are the young women, and they have to take credit for their own prolonged adolescence as well.

The Great Porn Debate

Last Wednesday, that legend of the not-so-silver screen, Ron Jeremy, came to UMSL for a debate on pornography with XXXChurch co-founder Craig Gross. For those not familiar with those names, Ron Jeremy is a porn star with thousands of "movies" to his name, while XXXChurch is an organization devoted to porn, either helping men to break their addiction to it or helping those in the industry leave it.

I'd wanted to go, but sadly it took place entirely during the class I teach on Wednesday nights. So, just as you'll have to, I had to suffice for The Current's article about it.

I wouldn't have thought Jeremy to be the philosophical type, so I wasn't expecting much. I don't think my expectations were entirely inaccurate; while he seems to have offered up some interesting arguments, it doesn't seem like anything new or particularly compelling. But then, I'm already fairly biased, and most articles of this nature tend not to do justice to the debates.

Something interesting has been brewing in my mind regarding porn and proof that it harms the participants ever since I heard about the debate. One of the most easily quantifiable proofs of harm to participants would be from STDs. I know California requires anybody participating in pornography to use a condom and be tested for STDs regularly, and I imagine that it's fairly standard for the industry either way. Still, there's a curveball in there I've been mulling over lately.

HPV.

Not the traditional "cauliflower penis" variety, but the cervical cancer-causing strains. I'm sure I'm misinformed somewhere in here, but here's what I think I know about the disease:

• It can be transmitted without showing symptoms
• It can only be tested for after symptoms have appeared in women
• There is no test for it in men, currently

In addition, I would add that condoms are of questionable efficacy in preventing transmission, but I'm uncertain about that mark. A lot of the articles I've seen on HPV lump the wart and cancer causing strains in together, and it seems like they would behave slightly differently when it comes to transmission. Can condoms prevent transmission? Can it be spread via oral sex? I'm uncertain, but so far as I've seen, the answers seem to be "maybe not" and "yes."

Anyhow, the point of this is to point out a big danger such a disease poses to people in pornography. Ron Jeremy probably has it, but he'll never be able to know for certain. For the women he gives it to, they'll never know they have it until it's too late to do anything about it, and in the meantime they are capable of spreading it around to others. On top of that, if condoms don't effectively protect against it, then there's no safe way to be in porn and avoid it.

Which, if you've read my paper on pornography and the First Amendment, this seems like causus belli (is that right?) for making pornography illegal; speech that causes direct harm is not protected by the First Amendment.

Of course, I welcome comments on this. I more than likely have things wrong on some count here, but I'm curious where people think I actually did go wrong.

GMOpinions

I've been taking a plant biotech course this semester, and it's been incredibly interesting. I've learned enough that I could probably create my own transgenic plants, given the right materials (and maybe a few good instructions as well). It's neat stuff, but not the right material for blogging. Well, that was until we started talking about the controversies surrounding genetically modified plants.

When I hear about the riots and protests that take place all over Europe regarding transgenic food crops, it strikes me as being a bit anti-science, with a hint of thinly-veiled agricultural protectionism. Still, we discussed some of the complaints in class, and I thought I'd share my thoughts on the matter. Feel free to contribute your own.

• "Superweeds" will devastate us all!

This isn't an unrealistic fear. Several species (~12) of Round-Up resistant weeds have been documented, and given its widespread use, there are probably more on the way. This can be curbed, by the use of a variety of herbicides, whether through cycling or through mixes, but we may still be in the situation of an ever-escalating arms race with the weeds.

Partially included in this is the risk that ultra-hardy crops might become weed-like and spread to areas where they'll choke out natural vegetation. This seems unlikely to me, at least anytime soon. After all, if we had a food crop that was anywhere near that robust, we wouldn't be worrying about insect resistance, drought resistance, and so forth.

• "Superbacteria" will become antibiotic-resistant

This is a bit of an offshoot from the first point. Some crops use genes encoding antibiotic resistance as a selectable marker, and the fear is that bacteria in your gut may pick up the gene and become resistant.

I'm not sure why this is a fear. The bacteria in your gut don't make you sick as it is, and you don't need antibiotics to fight them off. Additionally, the "antibiotics" used as selectable markers usually aren't used therapeutically for people anyhow, as some of them will hurt humans just as easily as plants or bacteria. They're more like general poisons than antibiotics, really.

• "I'm not eating that!"

The idea here is that unknown toxins or allergens may crop up in food and cause illness. This could be a conscious objection, or just a sub-conscious reaction that people may have, similar to the suggestion of eating insects or chilled monkey brains (the "yuck factor").

I'd say that the only good way to move past this one is education for the public. Transgenic foods undergo incredible amounts of testing before they're deemed safe for public consumption. They are tested to ensure that the chemical composition is identical to natural varieties. Should anything be different, it is tested to determine toxicity or allergenicity. Despite people's fears about heartless corporations, they won't risk billions of dollars trying to sell you food that will kill you. How do dead people buy more food?

• Monoculture will lead to large-scale crop losses

This is another somewhat valid fear. If a variety of transgenic plants is planted very, very widely, but suddenly becomes vulnerable to some epidemic problem (herbicide-resistant weed, insecticide-resistant pest, a mutant virus, etc.), then a famine and economic fiasco could result. This problem could be more probable if there is little genetic diversity amongst a country's crops.

The fact is, this is a problem for natural plants as well. Hawaii's papaya industry was nearly wiped out by disease ~15 years ago, and it was transgenic papaya plants that saved it. While tinkering may open the door for a problem, those same tools can be used to solve those problems when they arrive.

• Ecological damage

This is a difficult argument. The idea is that your transgenic crops may harm the environment, whether by leeching something harmful into the soil, or by killing beneficial insects through plants which produce their own pesticides.

There's been very little evidence for either of these happening, and I doubt the first would occur, again because these plants are tested for toxicity. However, it is possible that you could kill good insects. Discovering that fault would take longer than other indications or an unusable transgenic crop.

Still, it doesn't seem like a reason not to genetically modify crops. It seems like more of a "deal with it when we get there" kind of problem. In fact, transgenic crops allow for more environmentally farming practices, including no-till planting and less use of sprays.

• BigAg wants all your monies!!!

Okay, it's not quite that hysteric, but there are people who argue that a lot of this is just a grab by corporations to get rich off the backs of farmers. Since most transgenic plants are male sterile, the crops can't produce seeds to be used the next year. Instead, the farmer must purchase new seeds each planting season.

This complaint runs head-first into worries that transgenic crops might cross-pollinate with natural fields of said crop and produce something either unknown or unhealthy. The example might be from corn engineered to maximize ethanol production, or to produce an antibiotic or some other industrial compound.

This is solved slightly by using plants which aren't used for food crops as "biorefineries." As for the other problem . . . I'm not sure there's an easy solution to that. There's probably an argument to be made, from the corporation's perspective, that only being able to sell seeds to someone once would be fiscally dangerous. You could even argue that by forcing the buying of seeds each year, you can limit the potential for the development of superweeds/bugs by "updating" the crop.

(Heh. "Yes, I'd like to buy some corn 2.1." "Oh, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to move on to the next version, corn 3.0. We've added lots of great new features!")

Again, this doesn't seem like a reason to not make GMOs to me. Which rather sums up my thoughts on all of these issues. I don't think any of them are deal-breakers, because a lot of them can be avoided through prudent scientific/farming practices, while others are more "what if" types of problems, which could again be solved through the same technologies. Transgenic plants might make it possible to end world hunger some day. Why not take a stab at it?

Danger is relative

A newspaper article that recently showed up (I'm told it was from the Houston Chronicle, but I can't find it there anymore; this guy seems to have the article) asked what the "most dangerous idea in religion today" was, and gave the responses of five rather famous religious leaders, including the likes of Deepak Chopra and Rabbi Harold Kushner.

With the exception of Richard Land, all of the answers centered around the idea of extreme tolerance; it's dangerous to tell people their behavior is wrong, their religion is wrong, or attempting to convert anyone to your own faith. In other words, the underlying assumption in all of these is that there are many paths to God, none of them wrong, but attempting to claim that yours is the only path is itself wrong.

I find the premise of the article amusing, because this "today" thing is a bit of a stretch. Really, there's nothing new under the sun philosophically speaking, and that's especially true of religions founded millenia ago. Still, my own take? I'd have to give two answers.

If you're asking which idea is most dangerous physically, I'd agree with Dr. Land that violence in the name of God threatens us the most. There's a strong resurgence in the world of Islamic Imperialism, and its adherents are willing to go to any lengths to attack those they see as standing in the way of that. Whether that means gunning down a street full of civilians or suicide bombing a group of soldiers, these guys seek a theocracy by any means. Even more frightening, many in the world have become too frightened of appearing "intolerant" or "racist" to face the problem as it presents itself and opt to hide behind the skirts of a ticking clock. This problem isn't critical mass now, they must be reasoning, so I can get away with pushing it off to someone else to deal with. This vulnerability makes the problem far worse.

However, the most dangerous idea spiritually, the one most likely to hurt people when they face their maker, would be the very idea the religious leaders were defending, that there are many ways to God, that any and all expressions of religious belief, as long as they are sincere, will merit a man heaven.

I find such ideas to be a comforting thought if you'd rather not be serious about the matter, but reality is harsh. Some ideas are better than others, and when you have religious systems that present reality in ways fundamentally different from each other, both cannot be correct. Judaism teaches that Christians worship a false messiah . . . how could both possibly be on the same path to God? Islam teaches that Christians and Jews altered their scriptures and deny the truth Muhammad brought, which consigns them to Hell. How could these ideas all be leading to the same God?

I open the question up to you, readers. What do you consider the most dangerous idea in religion?

God of the Psychological Gap

If you read any of the Amazon.com reviews related to The Language of God (see my review here), you'd know that one of the common complaints about Collins's book is that, while he decries the use of "God of the Gaps" type explanations, he seems to fall into one himself, no pun intended.

Side note: I can't recall anymore. Is it correct to say Collins' or Collins's?

The complaint stems from Collins emphasis on CS Lewis's "moral law." He thinks that our inability to escape certain aspects of morality and altruism is an indication of divine origin. His critics argue that Collins essentially brushes off evolution-based, scientific arguments for the origins of human morality and settles for a "God of the Gaps" himself.

This has led me to ponder the problem a bit. How do you explain human morality from a naturalistic perspective?

As a scientist, I can only say that basing the answer on principles of evolutionary theory is no better than philosophical rhetoric. It leaves you with a hypothesis, and hypotheses must be tested if you're looking for a scientific answer.

So, how do you examine the origins of human morality? I can think of only two ways: Animal studies and computer models.

Here's an example of such a study: Researchers took rats and put them in connected cages with a wire mesh between them. Rats on one side of the cage would pull a lever, which caused rats on the other side to receive a treat (an oat flake). In Science magazine's most recent podcast, they talked about a similar study involving monkies and watermelon slices.

The results showed that untrained rats who were paired with trained rats in these scenarios became more likely to pull the lever for others. The study is thought to indicate something about altruism in rats, which might indicate origins for humanity.

Hm . . . maybe. I'm not so certain. First, they used rats who were trained to pull the lever. I'm not sure you can use this as any sort of indication of natural behavior. But then the untrained rats picked up on the behavior. Was this reciprocity, or were they imitating the observed behavior? I can't conclude which way, being neither an animal behavior specialist nor able to view their data, but I'm left quite skeptical. Such controlled situations do not go very far in convincing me that animals further down the evolutionary ladder imitate our uniquely human traits.

Then what of computer studies? The most recent Science podcast discussed a computer model for the development of justice systems in societies. The researcher on the other end of the phone tended to mumble quite a bit (they all do), but I gathered that "people" in the model tended to opt out of justice systems because doing actual punishment was too costly to society. Involvement became higher when other conditions were added in, though now I don't recall what those were.

I'm not really sure what this would indicate about humanity, but I'm a big skeptic of computer models of this nature. It's the old GIGO principle: Garbage In, Garbage Out. In other words, because you are programming into this model all of your assumptions and preconceptions, as well as putting a hard limit on the variables involved, the model is going to come out in a very specific way. If those assumptions are off or you've neglected variables, the model is worthless.
From my perspective, human behavior is too complicated to accurately model with computers. Yes, you can use observed principles and averages to predict outcomes, but this will never substitute for the wild unpredictability of human nature.

(Of course, Scott Adams would have a thing or two to say about the "unpredictability" of human nature, but that's not the issue at hand)

So, what's the conclusion here? I must admit my ignorance on the subject. I don't know hardly anything about the field, so there might be much more convincing studies out there. However, animal studies and computer models, at least from what I've seen, don't convince me.

This doesn't completely exonerate Collins in the "God of the Gap" accusation, but I think it's a start.