A few words on science and religion

I started my day reading my emails and came across the post of Sam Harris, an atheist who wrote the bestselling books "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation". His post was about a challenge for a debate he made to neuroscientist David Eagleman, author of "Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain".
In his post, Harris riled that The New Yorker wrote a profile story about Eagleman who could have made some comments against atheism. "While I admire much of what Eagleman has to say, I wrote that his espousal of 'possibilianism,' in lieu of atheism, was intellectually dishonest," said Harris.
I presume, you are wondering what 'possiblianism' means. It's also a new term to me and I can't find it in the dictionary. Scientists often coin their own words like neoevolutionist Richard Dawkins' "meme", which the Wikipedia says refers to "an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture"
Meme, the way I understand it, is like a copying machine of culture handed down from generation to generation. Now, "possibiliniasm," as I am trying to understand it from Harris, is taken from the word possibility tagged with "ism" to make it a doctrine or theory. The possible antonym could be "certaintism" or something like it.
We will leave the debate to them but I think I owe it to the followers of this blog to explain that Harris was piqued by Eagleman's accusation that Dawkins and some other atheists among scientists peddle "false certainty." I can easily relate to this because I also feel that oftentimes many scientists take the high road of certitude.
As I often said in my previous postings that, although I relished it during my college days, I have lost the appetite for debates, having seen the futility of it all. I just don't see the purpose of debates, particularly on religion and science, if not to display our intellectual prowess. Logic can only be as good as the premises or facts that are available to us.
You don't have to be a scientist or a doctor of philosophy to understand that science has barely scratched the frontiers of outer space, much less our inner space or our being, to claim that we have all the facts to prove or disprove that there is God. Science is just like a baby in a process of discovering the wonders around him.
Having said that, I would rather like to see science work side by side with religion to make this world a better place to live in, instead of making it as a tool to advocate the abolition of religion as some scientists are doing now. Religion, organized religion in particular, has its downside. But then science has its own.
Scientists like Dawkins and Harris view religion as a threat to this world because it breeds fanaticism that resulted in suicide bombings. In the same breath, it could be said that science has posed its own danger to mankind for ushering in industrialization that resulted in global warming that could make humankind instinct.
While writing this article, I tried to squeeze time in-between to read science articles to guard against making wrong assumptions and came across Dawkins's essay "Is Science Religion?" which he read before the American Humanist Association and which was said to have been published by the Humanist magazine in 1997.
In his essay, he advocated the teaching of science in schools and to encourage children "to reflect upon deep questions of existence, to invite them to rise above the humdrum preoccupations of ordinary life and think sub-specie aeternitatis (Wikipedia says it is Latin for "under the aspect of eternity").
I find Dawkins to be a very good writer who can push forceful arguments but I really wonder if teaching more science to school children could make all the kids rational adults. I find parallelism between this idea and Marxism's that we can overhaul man's nature to create a classless society.
I just don't believe in this premise. Much as we would like to, we cannot all be Dawkinses and Harrises. People are never born equal, there will always be those who will be born intelligent and those who will be born with the lack of it. Why is it so? We cannot turn either to science or religion to answer this question.
The reality is that this world has never been ruled by reason. It will not come to pass that, even if all of us become atheists, reason will prevail. The problem of this world is not religion but our arrogance and selfishness that makes people and nations quarrel among themselves. Although civilization has brought us to the digital age, we have never freed ourselves from the bondage of our pride.
The only way we can make this world a better place to live in is for us to respect each other, whether one is an atheist or a man of faith, an intellectual or not. Until science discovers all the mysteries of this universe, human logic will not have all the facts to know the "absolute truth," whatever that would mean.


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Life is a loaded dice

The decision of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to fight to death instead of stepping down from power at the height of the Libyan people's uprising against his 41-year rule reminds me of the Bible's counsel not to love the world.
"Do not love the world, or what is in it. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him," says the Bible in 1 John 2:15-17. The scripture does not talk here about simple love but about obsession for the flesh, wealth, power and fame
The next verse (16) provides the explanation. "For everything in the world - the craving of the flesh, the greed of the eyes and people boasting of their superiority - all this belong to this world, not the father."
The scripture is warning us about worldly temptations - the lust for the flesh and greed for wealth, fame and power - that drives many of us to abandon God and make us forget that life in this world is just a pilgrimage to the life beyond. It is telling us that these are not the ways of the divine.
When Gaddafi decided to fight at all cost, he was driven by his obsession for power which he seized from King Idrs in 1969 military coup. This is the same case with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad who refuses to step down despite the widespread protest against his rule.
The way I look at it, the scripture is tying to tell us that this world is not our permanent home and that we have to try rising above our mundane ways because our journey is a struggle between the flesh and the soul.
Religion has been telling us that this is a struggle between good and evil, but the idea does not appeal to many of us because it conjures images of angels and devils, which is not within the realm of human experience.
If we take an honest, deeper look into our own experiences and what's going on around us, we will know that life in this world is a struggle between our mundane ways and our lofty dreams and that life is a loaded dice, weighted in favor of our worldly desires.
Take the case of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was accused by a hotel maid in the United States of forcing her to do oral sex with him. Apparently, he succumbed to the call of the flesh. Although he was freed by the court mainly on the grounds that there was an attempt to extort money from him, there were reported evidence like semen on the woman's dress to prove that there was an attempt to force her to have sex with him, oral or whatever.
There have been a slew of world leaders known to have illicit affairs with women outside matrimony. There was Hitler, former US president Bill Clinton and the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, to name a few. Despite their stature in life, they had not been immune to the call of the flesh.
To some people, the obsession to amass material wealth, despite the Bible's advise not to hoard riches that rust, comes stronger. Politicians, in both the developed and Third World nations, are handy examples, along with the owners of corporate giants whose legendary greed for profit is obscene.
We often react with revulsion when he hear or read about people in high places getting involved in grave wrongdoings and yet if we take an honest look into our own experiences we will realize that we ourselves have succumbed to earthly temptation, one way or another, but most commonly, I am sure, to "boasting of our superiority."
The counterweight against obsession for worldly ways is our conscience, our sense of right and wrong and our concern for others, human virtues serving as proofs that we are more than flesh and bones and for which evolutionists grope for explanation.


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Navigating between faith and skepticism

Movie Review

Higher Ground

This movie has been designated a Critics' Pick by the film reviewers of The New York Times.



By A. O. SCOTT


There is something remarkable — you might even say miraculous — about the way “Higher Ground” makes its gentle, thoughtful way across the burned-over terrain of the American culture wars. The film, directed with disarming grace and sharp intelligence by Vera Farmiga (who also stars in it), is about the conflict between skepticism and religious faith, but it does not treat that battle as an either/or, winner-take-all proposition. Movies about belief and believers frequently succumb to woozy piety or brittle contempt, but “Higher Ground” belongs, along with Robert Duvall’s “Apostle” and Michael Tolkin’s underappreciated “Rapture,” among the elect. Focused with sympathetic intensity on the ordeal of a single soul, it illuminates, as though from within, a complex spiritual struggle.

Based on a 2002 memoir by Carolyn S. Briggs — originally called “This Dark World” — “Higher Ground” tells the story of Corinne Walker, played as a child by McKenzie Turner, as a teenager by Ms. Farmiga’s sister Taissa and in adulthood by the director herself. The young Corinne belongs to what appears to be a main-line Protestant congregation, where the pastor (Bill Irwin) urges the children to invite Jesus, whom he describes as a polite neighbor, into their homes.
But it is only later, when she joins a tightly knit, ecstatic band of worshipers, that Christianity becomes a significant force in Corinne’s life. A bookish, freethinking adolescent, >she falls in love with Ethan (Boyd Holbrook, later Joshua Leonard), who plays guitar and has a troubled, sensitive face that is almost a mirror of her own. She becomes pregnant, they marry young, and a near-catastrophe nudges them from the life of feckless young rock ’n’ rollers and literary dreamers onto the path of salvation.
“Higher Ground” flashes back to Corinne’s earlier life from an opening scene of her baptism, in a sun-dappled pond surrounded by rustling trees and happy faces. Though her subsequent experiences will be marked by growing ambivalence, the joy of that moment is never entirely dispelled. Corinne is smart and capable, and while her childhood was shadowed by the unhappy marriage of her parents (John Hawkes and Donna Murphy), she is hardly a desperate pilgrim clinging to easy consolation.
Nor is her church, in spite of some cultlike aspects, depicted as an outpost of repression and hypocrisy. Especially when Corinne is with her friend Annika (the amazing, earthy Dagmara Dominczyk) — who speaks in tongues to God and with easy candor about sex — she feels loved and listened to. The patriarchal ways of the pastor (Norbert Leo Butz) and his wife (Barbara Tuttle) grate on Corinne, in part because they stifle the intellectual curiosity that feeds her faith.
But the secular world has its own compromises and blind spots. Corinne’s gradual move away from her circle of believers (and Ethan) is not presented as an unequivocal liberation. What faith and doubt have in common is that both are hard work, and the hard-won wisdom of “Higher Ground” is that human nature does not necessarily distinguish between saints and sinners.
I don’t mean to make it sound as if the movie, which was written by Ms. Briggs and Tim Metcalfe, were preaching or making an argument. Nor does it aim for a soft middle ground of nervous tolerance. Instead, it presents the subjective facts of Corinne’s life as precisely and clearly as it can, refusing to condescend or sentimentalize anyone, and inviting you to sift through the nuances and find the answers for yourself.
As you might expect, given her professional background — a breakthrough performance in “Down to the Bone,” and she nearly stole “Up in the Air” from George Clooney — Ms. Farmiga lavishes solicitous attention on her actors, virtually none of whom strike a false note. The story has one or two (like a visit from Corinne’s feckless sister, played by Nina Arianda), and there are a few fantasy sequences that feel jarring and superfluous.
Ms. Farmiga’s greatest asset as a director may be her own face, a remarkably subtle and expressive instrument. Corinne is a woman of complex temperament and shifting moods, at some times searching for a simpler self, at others impatient to give voice to the full range of her thoughts and feelings. And all of the gradations of happiness, worry, fatigue, anger and mischief that she undergoes — in other words, the full range of her individuality — are at play in Ms. Farmiga’s features.
“Higher Ground” ends on a daring note of irresolution. Earlier, Pastor Bill has made reference to Revelation 3:16 — “because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I shall spew you from my mouth” — a verse that seems unequivocal in its condemnation of uncertainty. And the expectations of the audience may mirror this impatience. But there is nothing tepid about Corinne’s confusion, and there is also evident passion in Ms. Farmiga’s embrace of it.
“Higher Ground” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). No one is without sin.
HIGHER GROUND
Opens on Friday (August 26) in New York and Los Angeles.


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Our relativist values

A news story dispatched from Madrid on Thursday said Pope Benedict XVI appealed to young Catholics to resists the temptation of following "fashionable ideas" and be "led by the whim of each moment". The news story by the Associated Press added that the Pope urged them to build their lives on "solid rock, resistant to the onslaught of adversity."
The story comes out vague because it did not carry any background on why the Pope gave such a message to the young Catholics in Spain. Another story by AP, this time on the Pope's comments on "profit-at-all-cost mentality" gives us a little insight.
The Pope's visit was timed ahead of Spain's elections in the fall. The story said that, "While the church officially keeps out of politics, it will be sure to be watching closely because the outcome could affect Spain's direction on hot-button ethical issues".
Among the hot-button issues are "social reforms, including gay marriage and a law allowing 16-year-olds to get abortions without parental consent" which is being supported by the Socialists. On the other side of the political fence are "the conservatives which tend to back the church's thinking on such issues".
I am not very familiar with the issues on gay marriage, but reading some news items in the Internet I understand that gays want same-sex marriage legalized. I don't really get the point on why gays should make a big fuzz on the legalization of same-sex marriage when no country has a law prohibiting people of the same sex from living together.
Personally, I consider same-sex marriage as a non-issue. Since there is no law prohibiting people of the same sex from living together, why can't they just live together quietly? If there is any country banning people of the same sex from living together, then they should take their campaign there.
Abortion is quite a ticklish issue. It immediately raises a legitimate debate on whether we have the right to end the life of an innocent baby, aside from the psychological effects of such an act on the mother. It also raises questions on whether a 16-year-old girl is mature enough to decide for herself.
Abortion, especially involving teenage girls, is a complicated issue that has no easy answer. The issue, along with same-sex marriage, gives us a clear notion of what the Pope calls as "fashionable ideas" and why he raised the concern about people who tend to "take shelter in the here and now ... take refuge in their own opinion" and believe that "they need no roots or foundation other than themselves".
Indeed, our relativist values have generally made each of us an island among ourselves. There's an apt Filipino term for that: Kanya-kanya or to each his own. As life gets more complicated since the dawning of the industrial revolution in the 18th century, we have been slowly shedding off old-fashioned values, recoil into our individual shells and become more self-centered.
That brings us to the Pope's other gripe about Big Business's profit-at-all cost mentality. The Pope gave the message against the backdrop of the world's economies in shambles, from the United States to Europe and the Third-World countries, because nations as well as people tend to look after their own vested interests more than the common good.
The phone-hacking scandal that led to the closure of the newspaper "News of the World" in the United Kingdom recently, clearly amplified this issue. As the investigation of the scandal goes on, it appears that other newspapers run by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch were involved in it. To get ahead of competition, they have to violate the rights of people into whose lives they want to pry.
That brings us to the Pope's warning against our tendency to create "new gods" and to "believe that (we) need no roots or foundation other than (ourselves) ... to decide what is true or not, what is good and evil, what is just and unjust; who should live and who can be sacrificed in the interests of other preferences; leading each step to chance, with no clear path, letting (ourselves) be led by the whim of each moment."
The Pontiff's message opens a window to a sweeping landscape of what's going on around us, from the biblical times to what we now fondly call as a modern world, as we rush into the future in a journey that has no clear path but guided by random impulses. Civilization, which is supposed to bring us lofty ideals, gave us advanced technologies but has not lifted us from our banality.
Awed by the advances of science, which many of us has spun into a new god, we have replaced our old-fashioned values with self-centered ethics to get ahead in life. Many of us have discarded the virtue of humility for a new code of aggressiveness in our quest to ascend in the corporate ladder, even if that means stepping on the toes of other people.
Blinded by the allure of the worldly glitz and glitter, we are gradually abandoning, if we still have not abandoned, our spiritual quests because materialist science is teaching us that we have no soul, there is no life after death and hence we are not accountable to anybody but ourselves.
We have ceased to believe in our spirituality or religion as our compass in life's journey in "the here and now" because we have found human reason to be our new compass, forgetting that our relativist values have made us turn to reason merely as a convenient tool to justify what we have done, what we are doing and what we want to do.
Our relativist values give the Big Business on Wall Street the reason to put human conscience into the back burner and seek more privileges from the US government, although their owners and executives have amassed wealth more than what they need, even at a time when the rest of the American citizens are suffering from the economic slump that the corporate giants themselves have caused.
Our relativist values have driven our politicians into thievery in so many countries in blind pursuits to build material wealth, despite the admonition in the Bible not to amass wealth that rust. Corruption is no longer confined to Third World countries. Signs of it are slowly creeping in advance countries like the United States and Britain.
It is sad that in our shifting preferences for what is material, a growing number of hard-core scientists have turned to attacking religion for all the troubles of the world by looking at the flaws of churches - the wrongdoings of priests, pastors and other church leaders as if science itself has no flaws - instead of building on the positive virtues that the Faith has bequeathed to mankind.
A case of looking at the hole instead of the doughnut.


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A lost luxury ship

Pop star Lady Gaga was said to have been sued for copyright infringement for allegedly lifting her hit single "Judas" from a song written by an aspiring singer named Rebecca Francescatti.
Lady Gaga's song "Judas" was released earlier this year and featured in her latest album "Born This Way," according to the Indo Asian News Service which carried the story.
The news agency, quoting the online contactmusic.com, said Francescatti claimed that the tune of Lady Gaga's song "Judas" has a striking similarity with the piece "Juda" she composed in 1999.
In the lawsuit filed with a federal court in the US, Francescatti pointed out that her former brass player is now working for a music company that was responsible for creating 17 tracks for "Born This Way".
Her lawyer Chris Niro said that although the songs are of different styles the composition is the same and the chorus has the same melody. The bottom line of the case is that Francescatti wants "recognition of what she created".
The story stopped short of what kind of recognition she wanted but presumably it could be compensation for royalty.
The story, posted online by Yahoo!, caught my attention because it reminded me of my previous blog "Christianity must be a way of life" in which I wrote lengthily about our ego, the core of our being human.
Not that I find Francescatti driven by her ego when she filed the lawsuit. Probably it was more on the financial side - to be paid for royalty - or it could be both. Either way, she has all the rights to claim for "recognition of what she has created."
Our sense of pride makes it natural for us to make a living so that we would not be a burden to anyone. Nobody wants to be a pauper, nobody wants to lose one's self-respect. It would be different if we make unnecessary waves to attract public attention.
That brings me back to Lady Gaga, who wants to project herself as an illuminati or enlightened. Since my teenage daughter told me months ago that Lady Gaga was an illuminati, I could not help think how swift the world has changed.
Our relativist outlook seems to have muddled our sense of right and wrong. Seeing her video showing her almost naked and reading an article in which she was quoted to have said that she is a cheap date, I could not imagine how she could be an illuminati.
Some bloggers call her "illuminati puppet" with the insinuation that she is being manipulated to help project the "dark side" of the world. Without the religious undertone, I think "illuminati puppet" describes her well. I always associate enlightenment with the brain and not with the flesh, much less not with being an easy lay.
Lady Gaga is a perfect symbol of the crass materialism that has eroded our values over the past decades. Shedding off old-fashion worldview, we don't care anymore about the feelings - and the lot - of other people as long as we get financially wealthy.
It is ironic that our civilization seems to have advanced only in terms of technology but has lagged behind in the task of lifting human values. Although we are now in the digital age, our nature has not evolved far from where we came.
In the jungle of sky crappers, we are no more than cavemen playing the same game of survival of the fittest. In our neatly walled and carpeted offices, we often step on the toes of others just to get ahead in the corporate ladder. It is akin to science exploring our outer world without first conquering our inner space.
Even our sense of reasoning has become warp and weird. Logic is supposed to guide us to the path of clear thinking, but we have been using reason subjectively to justify our biases and self-interests. Most, if not all, of our lawyers are putting more premium on their fees than pursue the noble cause of justice. We condider others to be objective in their worldviews only when they cross over to our side.
This easily reminds me of the debates on religion. In a previous blog, I have pointed out that debate on religion is an endless exercise in futility. However tall is our claim to reason, we always tend to become emotional in the process. Because that's what we are. We have both the rational and emotional side of our being.
I am sure that atheists, who have held the view that we are an accident of time, will disagree that human nature, which is one of life's many mysteries, is designed - for whatever purpose, we can make an endless guess. Was the world designed to be a purifying furnish for the soul? And why? Until science finds the elusive absolute truth, the questions will be endless.
That's putting my position clear that I digress with the scientific postulate (neuroscience in particular) that the soul is a mere illusion created in our brain. Some, if not all, atheists feel some degree of spiritual yearning that they turn to other beliefs like pantheism. Well-known psychologist Susan Blackmore, who turned to Ten Zen for meditation, said in her essay "Why I have given up" parapsychology that abandoning the study "does not mean abandoning spirituality or spiritual practice".
The emotional side our lives convinces me that we could not rely on reason as the singular tool in our search for the absolute ttruth, which I believe we will discover in life after death. Reason, without spiritual compass, is a luxury ship lost in high seas.





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