International Censorship

Canon PowerShot SD700 IS

ƒ/2.8

5.8 mm

1/13

Sitting at the San Diego airport, I took at closer look at the oddities in the current Newsweek International. At the Synthetic Genomics board dinner, several people brought copies to share.

Every issue from Malaysia had been censored by hand. The issues from Hong Kong and Greece had not, and so we could see the offensive item that was so carefully blacked out with a permanent marker: cigars… plain cigars with no branding or markings of any sort. For some peculiar reason, the Malaysian government does not want images of cigars to be seen by its people.

Another international variance caught my eye. All over the world, the cover story was a headshot of Craig Venter with the text “Playing God – How Scientists Are Creating Life Forms or ‘Biodevices’ that Could Change the World.” Everywhere but the U.S., that is.

Not only did Newsweek decide not to run the “Playing God” cover in the U.S., they decided not to include the article at all for their American audience.

The punchy article concludes:
“Proof will come when the first discrete, self-maintaining, self-replicating, stable organic creature—Life 2.0—is created from scratch in the lab.

Proof won’t deter criticism from outside the scientific community. The idea that only God can create life is arguably even more fundamental to Judeo-Christian dogma than the 17th-century notion that Earth was at the center of the universe. Pope Benedict XVI has expressed outrage at scientists who ‘modify the very grammar of life as planned and willed by God’…

SynBio proponents are taking a new tack, and they’re not afraid of the implications. As James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA structure, says: ‘If we don’t play God, who will?’”

35 responses to “International Censorship”

lopsided apparatus

Jun 2, 2007 at 6:13 am

Not all Christians think alike; be careful not to assume unanimity amongst Christian communities. With all due respect, the Pope is not infallible, and in fact, his outrage which you mention strikes me as a symptom of bad theology. For a more progressive—and probably more reasonable—voice from Christian ethicists, see Ted Peters from the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. The ridiculous nail-biting over "playing God", Peters says, is not at all an expression of Christian doctrine, but rather an unfortunate vestige, via the story of Prometheus, of ancient Greek myth! Forget what the uneducated Bible thumpers may say about Dr. Venter’s and his colleagues’ work. Synthetic biology, in a theological context, is much better understood as a brilliant act of co-creation: not an abomination, but yet another wonderful way of engaging in God’s creative process. (This, of course, assumes that Bill Joy’s nightmares don’t come true.)

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PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE

Jun 2, 2007 at 7:39 am

Interesting censors especially the one on Craig Venter.

Quote
"For some peculiar reason, the Malaysian government does not want images of cigars to be seen by its people."
I would love to know, the why about of this one .
——————————
Talking about SynBio Steve, did you come across this article from :

Alan H. Goldstein
I , Nanobot Scientists are on the verge of breaking the carbon barrier — creating artificial life and changing forever what it means to be human. And we’re not ready. ( http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/03/09/nanobiobot/ or on lifeboat.com/ex/i.nanobot ) ?

I found it very interesting, and since it s your field, i was wondering what was your opinion about his point of view on what he call NanoBiobots… (if you get time ; )

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RRNeal

Jun 2, 2007 at 1:57 pm

Jonathan –
"Not all Christians think alike; be careful not to assume unanimity amongst Christian communities"

With all due respect, doesn’t the Bible (the accepted rulebook for an overwhelming majority of Christians) underwrite this unanimity? To deviate away from scripture is to deviate away from Christianity, no?

"Forget what the uneducated Bible thumpers may say about Dr. Venter’s and his colleagues’ work."

It remains extraordinarily hard (if not impossible) to forget the mass of "uneducated Bible thumpers" when a publication such as Newsweek would prefer to censor than to print something that would cause them untold grief, financially and otherwise, from the same people you advise to ignore. Their cumulative "thumping" continues to have an undeniable effect.

The morale of the story rests with the utter lack of enlightened thinking in this country at a most critical time in human history.

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jurvetson

Jun 2, 2007 at 8:11 pm

Great comments and links. I am reading the Salon piece; it has some delightful turns of phrase. I agree with the false dichotomy of natural vs. artificial constructs, but I don’t agree with some of the broad generalizations and predicted sequencing of future events. More on this later once I fully digest…

Meanwhile, I started my weekend with another non-U.S. publication, The Economist, and I am struck by the freshness of a pub that does not pander to popular delusions.

They write about the recent Malaysian Supreme Court decision that upheld the impossibility of changing religion from Islam to Christianity, and thus blocking Lina Joy’s ability to marry her Christian fiancé. Malaysia institutionalizes the propagation strategy of all of the world’s religions – that impressionable children should be indoctrinated in the religion of their parents – by forcing all children born by chance to Muslim parents to be Muslim themselves… irrevocably… for life. Those children never get a choice.

The Economist writes:

“Families have been divided because one parent was deemed to be Muslim despite insisting to the contrary.

In many places, constitutional guarantees of liberty are undermined by laws constraining religious belief. Indonesians, for example, are also obliged to state their religion on their identity cards and to choose between just six officially recognised faiths. The governor of the state of Rajasthan, in India, is being pressed by the state assembly to approve a law punishing conversion from Hinduism. Constraints on individuals’ rights to choose their beliefs are usually backed up by claims that religions are somehow “under threat”: a curious lack of faith—in faith itself.”

Well, we wouldn’t try to bind the mental fate of our children in America would we?

Turning a few pages in the same issue, one finds this (the author was clearly biting the tongue of cynicism throughout):

“DINOSAURS are monstrously exciting. Alas, museums with dinosaur exhibits tend to indoctrinate visitors with Godless evolutionary theory. So parents who believe that every word in the Bible is literally true have nowhere to take their tots for an uncorrupting fix of Tyrannosaurus rex.

Until this week. The Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky, on May 28th. Here impressionable youngsters can watch awesome animatronic dinosaurs interacting with primitive humans, just as Genesis implies they did, shortly after the beginning of time one Monday morning in 4004BC.

The founder, Ken Ham, raised $27m from thousands of pious donors to build it. The exhibits are as whizzy as any in a theme park. But starting with scripture and trying to force the facts to fit makes for odd science.

The museum says that, if Noah took two of every animal on his ark, he must have had dinosaurs. Could dinosaurs have fitted into a boat only 300 cubits (about 135m) long? ‘It is likely that God brought young adults. Being smaller, they would be easier to care for.’

The debate about the origins of everything is presented even-handedly. Some people trust God, accept that the universe is 6,000 years old and will go to heaven. Others trust human reason, think the Big Bang happened 14 billion years ago and, having abandoned God, are quite likely to start browsing the internet for pornography or commit genocide.”

P.S. With editorial like this, Economist subscriptions have recently boomed to all time highs…

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RRNeal

Jun 2, 2007 at 9:48 pm

Steve – your latest posting reminded me of a recent camping expedition through the Ozark Mountains to enjoy the spring weather in this beautiful part of the country. My wife and I happened upon a Museum of Earth History in the northern section of a populous midwestern state (not affiliated with the Creation Museum in Ky.). During our guided tour there were exhibits showing a fully-dressed Adam and Eve enjoying a walk through dense vegetation while casually observing an adult T-Rex staring up into the sun – poised in the popular yet anatomically-incorrect vertical posture. There was also a strange dinosaur along side of the bipedal carnivore which resembled E.T. that I couldn’t identify. After asking the guide what this mysterious creature was I heard the reply of "the serpent" (represented as a theropod "w/ feet" – oblivious to what physiological danger was reportedly in store for it). The final exhibit of this short tour showed two terrestrial reptiles of the early Jurassic (looked like Heterodontosauri) running across a glacier during the "last ice age" obviously disrespecting their thermoregulatory needs while flaunting the adapted ability to ice skate.

Admittedly it provided us some short-lived entertainment until we watched all of the children being led by their parents into the exhibit hall.

Very sobering, indeed.

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PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE

Jun 2, 2007 at 10:51 pm

It s a "sad" subject…and not just for the U.S but all over the world. I won t go in a big talk about it this time, i ll just do the connection and would recommand one more time this excellent and smart book from the great mind Richard Dawkins

The god delusion

The economist review

About these ""museumS"" ….well what can i say….. We are lucky. Lucky for our education, familly and environment. For some, the source of a wakeup call, from a religious education or "MustBelieve".

It s usually more obvious to see how lucky we are, among all the rest of humanity , to have everyday food, shelter, a home, health care, etc etc….
But i feel today after reading this post, or when i hear or read people like Dawkins, how lucky we are. To be able to go through this kind of believes and see further. To have a basic knowledge of what is a scientific mind or point of view.
All our scientifc knowledge may be "wrong" one day. But it will be, because of us, and not because of some "goD magical not understandable DontAsk divinity higher wish")
Because we will have think twice about our "Scientific believe" and be able to reform them…complete them. Because we will have, and are today, looking further and trying to understand the world we are living in.

Once, a friend told me…"Knowledge is the most important think after food,water,shelter,love,sex and all basic or more complex human’s need"….Well my friend, this as never been more true today, and about this subject….

—————
“God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture”

“The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry”

Richard Dawkins

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jurvetson

Jun 3, 2007 at 12:17 am

amen 😉

I promised to revisit the Salon piece. Overall, it is an interesting read, but I would not profess to have the same certainly about the future as the author, who presumably was being provocative for dramatic effect.

If I could strip the sensationalism, I would probably end up agreeing with most of what the author presents. Fundamentally, I share a similar interest in nanobiotech as a nexus of the sciences.

The author argues that medical nanobots will merge with our biology. While I agree that we will accelerate our evolution (largely at the network layer) and subsume matter into code, I would question the author’s assumptions of how we get from here to there.

Specifically, where do these powerful nanobots come from? I would bet that the biological, bottom-up path advances more quickly than the top-down mechano/engineering path. I’d look to nanobiobots coming from synthetic genomics before semiconductors, from microbes before MEMS.

And process wise, I think evolutionary algorithms will advance faster than pure design, and the potential to weave the two would be the most powerful (blog on this).

Early synbio applications will be in energy and materials, given the 3D fluid medium and the relative ease of engaging nature’s libraries to manipulate hydrocarbons and harvest energy from the sun.

My main criticism of the piece is the repeated reference to a “carbon barrier” as if future life forms will replace it with something better.

Carbon is a special element for the diversity of bonds that it can form. Helium or Neon-based life forms would be a non-starter. Sure, we can build nanobio neon pumps, but the inert noble gasses are unlikely to be the backbone of a conformational computer, like carbon is for our biology. I elaborate on this topic a fair bit in my Ode to Carbon.

Carbon is not an outdated “barrier” per se. We need not abandon carbon to diversify biology’s elemental toolbox or to expand its chemistries. In fact, many researchers are doing just that today by reengineering microbial metabolic pathways to engage in new “non-biological” chemistry and interact with a wide array of inorganic materials.

When I visited Nobel Laureate Smalley at Rice, he argued that the future of nanotech would be carbon based, due to its uniquely strong covalent bond potential, and carbon’s ability to bridge the world of electronics to the world of aqueous and organic chemistries, a world that is quite oxidative to traditional electronic elements.

Finally, as with any article like this, there will be various nits. Here are a couple:

• “The corollary: If all the information necessary to execute that minimum set of physical and chemical operations [to propagate life] can be stored in DNA or RNA, the life form is biological.”

This genetic reductionist definition implies that there is no “biological” life on earth. The information in human DNA, for example, when burned on a CD, is smaller than Microsoft Office. But by no means does it contain all the information we need to propagate as a life form. The DNA needs the context of an interpreter, and an interaction with its accustomed co-evolutionary environment to develop (e.g., neural pathway development). I think I know what he was trying to get at, but when writing laws and corollaries, precision of the prose is particularly important.

• “Third Law of Nanobotics: The carbon barrier will be eliminated when humans create the first synthetic molecular device capable of changing the state of a living system via direct, intentional transfer of specific chemical information from one to the other.”

This has already been done, but not yet published. Keep your eye out for a Science article in the near future. 😉

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OriginalGunner

Jun 3, 2007 at 3:07 am

Some of my colleagues are fundamentalists and after reading the God Delusion it’s become hard to maintain my “political correctness”. I’m currently reading Al Gore’s Assault on Reason, and he states quite well how important the separation between church and state is for us to maintain our democracy. He says he has faith, yet I don’t see it blinding him to (inconvenient) truths.

GNR (Genetics, Nanotechnology and Robotics) , now nanobiobots! In my brief foray into robotic technology I saw how hard it is to implement a vision system that uses landmarks in the house for navigation. I can understand the concept of DNA as merely a catalyst that requires quite specific environmental conditions to become life and to replicate that life. Is a virus a molecular device? Is it a nanobiobot? Are there software simulations that help us with modeling these interactions? Like folding at home. Have we modeled a virus yet? My approach to understanding complex systems is to take them apart until they just stop working, and then add back the last part slightly changed to see if still works. This reductionist approach is helpful in systems that have gathered a lot of cruft over their evolutionary lifetimes.

My son (he is 16) is studying biology, his current choice is molecular. He is in for interesting times…

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nels1

Jun 3, 2007 at 4:03 am

with respect to religion vs reason, monstrosities like the creationists’ dinosaur theme park make me throw my arms up in despair, hoping that the FSM will hear our sauce-laden prayers and come back to free us of this madness. however, i really feel that there are the beginnings of a paradigm shift occuring in public thought regarding faith, with many of us unable to sit back and take the onslaught of irrationality any longer.

thank FSM that we have the likes of Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens to begin this shift in thinking and make it no longer taboo to publicly declare oneself proudly as an atheist.

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msamaclean ©

Jun 3, 2007 at 7:06 am

Good discusion, all. The creation museum gave me quite a shudder when I first saw it on a fellow flickrer’s page,( cpurrin1), a ‘Darwinist.’ He has a link to the museum, for those who need to check it out. It’s hard to fathom parents taking their impressionable kids there and not giving them a choice of what they build their reality on. By the time they’re old enough to reason on their own, the die is cast and few are swayed.

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PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE

Jun 3, 2007 at 8:58 pm

amen 😉 in deed.
Thanks Steve for such a quick and interesting comments on the nanobiobots article.

And about :
"This has already been done, but not yet published. Keep your eye out for a Science article in the near future. 😉 "

I ll have my eyes OPEN. Just in case, let us know about it 🙂 because I would love to know more, who, how, what, where ..

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drona

Jun 4, 2007 at 5:32 pm

Phenomenal discussion, Steve!

It’s crazy what lengths religious people go to to protect their "installed base". It’s mind-boggling what countries with decidedly theocratic constitutions do. Even in a country like India which has a secular constitution and separation of church and state clearly articulated in the constitution the Hindu Majority is now trying to incorporate religion into the legal system. It appears that people in the world are mentally moving backwards in time.

One might have thought that with modern education and low poverty levels people would have eschewed such ideologies…but there are plenty of highly educated and rich countries in the world where it appears that the religious institutions are winning the battle over peoples minds.

Shows that people will do anything if they’re promised a place in heaven in their religious texts.

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angry shock

Jun 5, 2007 at 5:15 am

It´s interesting that none of the usual commenters (among which I am included) replied to this thread or engaged in the conversation. Maybe coincidence, maybe not… if not, it´s a good sign to me: we learned from the past experiences and moved on. Possibly for different reasons each, but moved on as a result. A sane thing to do, I deem. =)

(For it is so a very delicate topic, that is why I say this)

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nels1

Jun 5, 2007 at 7:47 am

"if someone strikes you on your right cerebral hemisphere, thou shalt not offer them your left."

…thus spake FSM.

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FlyButtafly

Jun 5, 2007 at 5:35 pm

It’s hard to fathom parents taking their impressionable kids there and not giving them a choice of what they build their reality on.

Isn’t that exactly what evolutionists do? Especially by flatly refusing to allow creation/ID to be taught in public schools side by side with the theory (remember, it is after all, still a theory) of evolution? Isn’t it reasonable to expect parents to teach their children their own ideology? Part of being a parent is giving your child a context to view the world in. If you have a set of beliefs that are important to you, would you not want to pass them down to your children? Even atheists do that, by refusing to teach their children anything about the idea of God.

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aeroculus

Jun 5, 2007 at 7:16 pm

@ FlyButtafly:

(1) Isn’t that exactly what evolutionists do (…taking impressionable kids & not giving a choice…)?
No. Many of my peers with young kids (myself included) teach about the world via evolutionary principles, but still allow the room for kids to question incessantly. oftentimes they become so utterly confused that they defer to a ‘designer’, which, for young kids, is ok…the important thing is that the critical thinking stage has clearly begun. When my kids ask questions about a god, my answer is always ‘what do you think’. watching the thought process in youngsters is absolutely fascinating. As disturbing as it is to me that museums like the one mentioned earlier in this thread (Museum of Earth History, etc..) exist, I am tempted to take my kids to a place like this just to see how they would react. I would love to see the expression on the face of the museum’s ‘curator’ (I picture a real life Ned Flanders) when my 5 year old bursts into a fit of laughter upon seeing an exhibit containing both dinosaurs and humans. And be careful not to confuse impressionable with curious.

(2) Especially by flatly refusing to allow creation/ID to be taught in public schools side by side with the theory (remember, it is after all, still a theory) of evolution?
No. Evolution is as much a fact as the periodic table. (see SJ Gould’s piece elaborating on this topic, as only he could: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_fact-and-theory.html). And the objection is not that religion cannot be taught in schools; the objection is that some want it taught as a descriptive tool for how and why the world is. Religion, no matter where one practices, comes down to a system of belief, which, is more than welcome in departments focusing on sociology, cultural anthropology, history (including the history of science), philosophy (etc). Creation/ID has no place in a science classroom at any educational level where observation and empiricism guide the subject matter.

(3) Isn’t it reasonable to expect parents to teach their children their own ideology?
Yes. The problem is that ideology should not be obfuscated with, and is not a replacement for, fact.

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jurvetson

Jun 5, 2007 at 9:34 pm

Your fine link picked up a ")" This one should work.

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PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE

Jun 5, 2007 at 9:56 pm

@Gi – we learned from the past experiences and moved on. Possibly for different reasons each, but moved on as a result. A sane thing to do, I deem.

: ) What did you learn ? : )

@aeroculus, nels1, drona, msamaclean, xGunner, RRNeal …welcome to all of us, as the NewCommenters generation lol

Thanks for the link steve, i was just looking at the website for it .

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jurvetson

Jun 5, 2007 at 11:32 pm

I love it! Look at nels workin’ it.
drona and xgunner just chillin’
And look at you: Spock’s head just exploded….

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angry shock

Jun 6, 2007 at 12:27 am

Neat!!! Love it too. I like to see both S and I as in a genealogy tree… the intergalactic family we are… you perceived it well. 😀

(Steve, this lad is gifted, we are in front of another visual search engine, my succesor… see what he done here, the connection, superbe:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gi/531735070/comment72157600315153985/ )

Clément, yours, once again is a good question. What I learned? Many things, some of which are very intimate, at a soul level, and hold the most important value. As for the other things not so personal, yet more "talkable" here… I learned, to sum up, this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gi/473844954/

These conversations made me realize that "rational" people are as much or more fundamentalists of their ideologies (as much as to call them "facts") than religious people… I thought, tho, that they were/are aware of this paradox, but no!!! They are at the same level of mediocrity as religious people is when they try to defend their beliefs as "truth" and "facts", yet the worse is that they spill such an arrongance and they love to swing in the "we are smarter" thoughts, something which doens´t happen among religious people…

In the meantime they offend others… and they say that they are radicals while they keep on celebrating CHRISTMAS and any other HOLYdays of their convenience, filled with explanations to do so (like: "we celebrate for santa claus… they switch catholic creed for cocacola crap… ain´t it an awesome advancement?!). =(

Hypocrisy if the disease of our times. Indeed. But they think themselves truth-full. so truthful not to even question themselves.

For me? I am neither both… the map is not the territorty http://www.flickr.com/photos/gi/480934983/ and I already burned my maps… I hold a metamap. And this converstaions here, as those you see in the sunday tv evangelist program, are alike. That´s what I learned. And that I hate seeing people wanting to feel more clever at the expense of saying that others are stupid.

That´s not the way it works for me. I passed this "i hate religion" dilema 13 ago… and given the opportinity to listen to anti-religion radicals, none of them showed me any convincing argument… on the contrary,, they were very much the lazy-butt type given the real chance to come to the front and "put their chest", hoping for others to do the hard work of explaining, and living a life according to their anti-religion principles (called "facts"), but not them… the petit-burguese type. So common. So boring.

The day I see you "science people" open to dialogue or open at all… (and not to this monologue with audience) I´ll perhaps come back interested. Thanks. =)

——–
[edit] P.S.: but I don´t mean to spoil the party, really, do go on with the conversation as if I said nothing, I was only asking your question, C. Seriously. [/edit]

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aeroculus

Jun 6, 2007 at 3:12 am

Steve: thx for finding the correct Gould link.

Alieness: As always, I look forward to your comments, and I couldn’t disagree with you more. Science has to be defended as ‘truth and facts’ because, as far as evidence to support a view in either camp goes, that is what we have to work with. Further, the "swinging in the we are smarter thoughts", which "doesn’t happen among religious people"??? Hardly! On the contrary, time after time, I hear of those who went through their ‘athiest phase’, and then their thoughts ‘matured’ so as to accept the notion of religion. Maybe when I experiment enough, and become ‘smarter’, I will come to the same conclusion (which of course will be logged as the final experiment in my lab book ; }… )

When something that seemingly can’t be explained causes some people not to settle for a vague explanation, but instead continue to search for more evidence, (whether through experimentation, reading, or introspection) that doesn’t at all mean that they think they are smarter than others. more curious, yes, but it is not in any way alluding to being smarter. I concede that the Dawkins/Dennett use of the term ‘bright’ is condescending, but , most empiricists don’t subscribe to using that term.

Most empiricists actually question themselves and their assumptions continuously. It is paramount not to take what you know too seriously, because constent questioning is how real knowlege advances, and what is truth today can be turned upside down tomorrow.
(here I insert the obligatory NNT plugs: Fooled by Randomness and the Black Swan…. http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com ).
In fact, I would actually love to be proven wrong! I would fully embrace evidence supporting ‘meaning to life’ or the notion that there is something else awaiting after I expire. And finally, ‘science people’, in fact, are open to dialogue now more than ever. Sound byte discussions that accompany pictures as part of a photo stream are just a microcosm of what is discussed at large.

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nels1

Jun 6, 2007 at 4:09 am

@PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE: LOL! yep, steve, i’m definitely workin’ it! i’m DJ’ing Lennon’s "imagine" – (i’ve always wondered how it came to be that in a world awash with religion, one of its most popular songs was written by an atheist.)

@Alieness: with respect, it is very patronising to enter a thread by saying that this discussion is "beneath" you in the sense that you’ve "been there already" and therefore no further discussions on this theme by anyone else would be deemed worthy…of your time anyway. i was more curious as to why you needed to state this fact rather than the fact that the other regulars hadn’t commented. aren’t you being guilty of the same "i am smarter than you" syndrome that you speak of?

as for a great example of a "debate" (or debacle) between a fundamentalist creationist and a "science person", i suggest you watch this long but fascinating video to see what reasoning is up against.

Michael Shermer vs Kent Hovind.

also, if any of you have the time, the entire court transcript of the dover vs kitzmiller trial is a fascinating read. there is great debunking of creationist myths and an exposure of their lack of intellectual honesty. there is so much insight, conflict, and humour in this whole trial that it would make a fantastic courtroom drama piece!

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angry shock

Jun 6, 2007 at 5:55 am

Nels: "aren’t you being guilty of the same "i am smarter than you" syndrome that you speak of?"

Exactly, that´s what I am doing… And that´s the funny thing of these conversations, you see the "high tone" in my speech, but you don´t see it in yourselves (in general). I am re-enacting which I see (the forms), but with a plot opposed to the main one. And this is your reply: You didn´t like it (the forms, first of all).

Now, I was replying to PhotoQuantique actually (which possibly may think like you on my reply, or not, who knows). For what I said, what I might have meant from my heart truly, and not exaggerated or distorted to make a point, that is something you may want (or not) to find in other places, mine. Who I truly am and think escapes this conversation domain.

For the rest, playing the scape-goat is not a problem, neither it is to being threathened of censorship or of looking embarrassing or something. I am a coach for serveral people, and this means you learn to be a temporary punching bag. Applied drama or role-playing might describe my attitude here more or less. Of course I sounded patrionising and such a pedant. I hope you can see, as one of the morals is: for many other people the sayings from the "science people" (as I vaguely called them) sound much like that too. And this (continuing with the psychology terms) awakens further Reactance (resistance).

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PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE

Jun 6, 2007 at 10:39 am

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

Bertrand Russell ( Source )

"From Gi-Now, I was replying to PhotoQuantique actually (which possibly may think like you on my reply, or not, who knows)."

Ok here i am : ) . Let s go for a walk, shall we : )

"From Gi-These conversations made me realize that "rational"
people are as much or more fundamentalists of their ideologies (as much as to call them "facts") than religious people… "

First, I think we have to make a difference between the concept, and the people, using them. Here is why :

Science and religion…or religion and science : ) are both humanMind creation. They are tools, advance tools, but creation of the human brain over the centuries, millenias….evolution ! And like any other tool, what make the difference is, who use them, and how.

Among scientists and religious, we ll find people, with a more or less open mind. We can have human with deap attachement to there believe, and some, willing to admit they were "wrong" and going for this new point of view, believe, theory. This is called conversion for religion, and…well…."Let’s start again or deeper"…for science = )

Now, there is a "little" difference in that. The religious person is making his believe in Faith. The "scientist" person is making his believe (because this is a form of believe too) on what is consider to be fact.

Faith definition wiki :To believe without reason, Faith is based upon the interpretation of the intangible (feelings, emotions, etc.) instead of the physically tangible and is primarily associated with religion in modern times.

"From Gi-(as much as to call them "facts")"

And the scientific person or "rational" people, are making it on facts.
Here we are, coming back to the concept..the tool, and not the persons them self. Now what is the diference between a believe on "fact" and one on faith ?

"From Gi-so truthful not to even question themselves"

Well the faith as it s teach by most religion (from my understanding, but my ignorance is vast,and only believe) is based on a believe without question or possibility to prove in anyway what the "Authority" is saying.
And, as some have point out: The more believer you have+ the oldest the religion is…the more the religion, must be TRUE, real and unquestionable.

Of course, we can question the believe in scientific facts too. For start, who among us, saw their blood through a microsope. Who saw and help to bild and understand perfectly, a particule accelerator. Who can say…the BigBang happened 14 billions years ago. My brain is working like that…without, at the end of the talk…say..because that s what him or her, leading scientists said….

So yes, there is some act of believe in science. If this is one of the point you wanted to make Gi, i ll agree with you.

"From Gi-That´s what I learned. And that I hate seeing people wanting to feel more clever at the expense of saying that others are stupid. "

I think this have nothing to do with religion. Of course one can make the connection between a person and his believe…but his feeling, of thinking that he is more clever, at the expense of saying that others are stupid come from something else than a truth over an other one, at the end !
And i don t feel, but that s a personal opinion, that anyone here, tried to make someone else feel stupid. They desagry, explain theire point of view…that s how i felt… And we can t ask to everyone to share our, more or less, deep reflection about human nature, reality, ignorance of our knowledge etc.. 🙂 but i ll come back on that at the end.

"From Gi-Hypocrisy if the disease of our times. Indeed. But they think themselves truth-full. so truthful not to even question themselves."

As i agree with you about the fact that all scientists believe (must?) what other scientists say…and said over human history, i ll point out that ALL of them…and you and me…can spend the time to invest, experiment, and discover the same things as any other human had or are doing now.

A religious person, based his faith on a "revelation" On some mystical, methaphysical, religious Books and texts…..teached from a "god" or divine truth.

I am the first to admite that among all this books, the bible, the coran, the tibetan book of death are deep and very intersting things to learn from. But ….we can learn them among other philosophy too . Or look at them as philosophy without the religious part, like bouddhism .

So we have two forms of believe. We have humanity. A brain who evolve to adapt to his environement. We have this univers where we are "living"… And it seems that because of the way our brain work…to creat and believe in concept is impotant . If one want to be able to analyse, make theory of how things work.
To be able to survive, adapat and use them for his own survival. Of course, one may like, agree or not with the most "working" (as to explain and be test) theory of today human knowledge (the Darwinian evolution) that explain life, its diversity and some of the why and how things work etc.

But at the end of the day…the scientist and the religious….will have to feed themself. Both of them will try to protect themself from being hurt or kill. And both..will try to spread life on earth…and beyond… So were does the "reality" of a believe stand? Why is it important ? Why should we talk about it !

I think, out of the fact that religious and scientist person are human ( obviously lol)..With the same desirs, fears, hopes, questions…The concepts,believes we use, to evolve and leave in group, and among life on earth, is very important. Because that s how one makes decisions.
That s why, one will help a person in the street, freezing to death. Or why, someone will kill. But all this have nothing to do with religion at the begining…but religion can, have, a big impact on how a person act…or a group..a country..and most humanity..

The way a living organism perceive his environement…is very important in the way he will be able to survive, or die, in front of a danger.If it can t analyse and understand, in his own way…own interpretation…or/and, what we call "believe" in human conceptualization…he will die…

In a world today, where conflicts have global scales and impacts. Decisions that are taken, are more important than never before. Since an organism, group (superorganism …) have a higher chance of surviving, by being able to analyse, extract, concrete and physical data.

The "system" of interpretations or believes, this organism will have (or select, when he, we, can)…is VERY important for him and his kind. And the more accurate his understanding of the world will be, the more chance this organism, person, child, will be free to chose and decided…And there is no need to talk about the Truth. This fight for The Truth, that separate people from a commun talk and exchange.

Now just a stupid question of logic. Who have the highest probability to survive :

-The organism that s looking in both side, up and down, of the road before crossing the street ? Because his observation, capacities, interpretations of direct contact, and experience with reality, showed him that cars or dinosaurs lol are crossing the street from time to time…and his fellow died..

-Or the organism, crossing the street without even looking or listening, or not trying to understand what all this is about, because his Leaders told him to believe that, everything will be ok ….without questionning it because…that s how it must be !?!

I know i know, that s a stupid question of logic…but i said so before = ). But.. is it realy….???

"From Gi-The day I see you "science people" open to dialogue or open at all… (and not to this monologue with audience) I´ll perhaps come back interested"

A little TimeLoop if you allow me =)

The map is not the terraine
"Words are not reality"
In some Time and Space
you will realize this
you will burn all your representations and concepts
and you will find me ….
Don t fear Humans, this day is far away 😛 (amen to Gi 😉 for the all idea)

The debat between religion and science is, and will stay open for a long time. Where some may feel the talks to be usless, or should be ignore for what they are…i would not agree, because of the consequence. I explained the reason upstair.

BUT , i think beyond this discution, about this human’s concepts of "TRUTH", believes in a religon or scientific knowledge, is something very important. And something we can start to imagine for the future of mankind. Something that goes, should goes,and must go, beyond simple opositions, like between Science/Religion. Beyond too simple concept like good/evil, truth or not over another one etc.

We leave in a world, far more complex everyday. And not just the structure, interactions etc…but in the way we discover, explore, look at ourself and the environment.

From time to time, revolutions in the understanding of the world, planet, univers… multiverse ?…happened and will again. All of them, as most here, i am sure know, changed our perception of the world around us.(well some of them..not as much as they may should have lol) Creating new believes on what the universe is, what we are, or are not etc..

Let me open the path for a futur walk. The same one i believe that go beyond what we were talking about up. And if you feel, it may lead to an OpenMind exchange, i ll be happy to walk through this one with you, as i am sure, a lot of people here, too..

"Words are not reality"

Planets . the Sun . the Stars . Galaxies. Consciousness : Subconscious. D.N.A . Memes. superorganisms…and beyond..

What if the next revolution in human kind is on it s way? What if …we are already there? What if, the debat between science and religion is a way to go through this road.What if…all our believes….words, and concept have to become wrong or out of date in the future….which they will.

Here is a very OpenMind "walk"…because it push to go further than anything we are use to deal with.
Before i finish i d like to thanks you for this long reading. Sorry for my english sometime =) …( Who said most of the time ? : ) I hope, i have been clear enough and open mind enough 😉
So here it is :

What is or would be this next revolution for you ?

Reply
nels1

Jun 6, 2007 at 11:51 pm

@Alieness: i’m sure you’re not a creationist, but i do like your creationist-like circuitous reply, hovering over this thread like a divine being, and intervening when you see fit 🙂

the issue is not whether or not you or religious fundamentalists or "science people" sound patronising or pedantic. it would be a sad fact if this were the case that it basically means that it would be the end of the discussion.

and to find fault with semantics such as saying that it’s offensive that people celebrate Christmas and holy days for convenience etc etc…let’s not sweat the small stuff here…

shall we compare this to how offensive religion is when, in the name of god:
– our fellow human beings are being persecuted and killed for their sexual orientation,
– women are stoned in public for adultury,
– children are genitally mutilated,
– wars are being waged by presidents who believe they were personally given a mandate from god,
– physicians are murdered by fundamentalists for performing abortions,
– young patients not old enough to consent to having a life-saving blood transfusion are at the mercy of their relgious fundamentalist parents,
– important stem cell research that could save lives and suffering is being hindered
– the teaching of scientific theories such as evolution is being eroded and taken away from our children…

the list goes on, but my time is not limitless.
on what’s offensive, let’s not sweat the small stuff here shall we?

you said of "science people", "…they think themselves truth-full. so truthful not to even question themselves."

this is the kind of generalisation that would be offensive to the "science people". regardless of attitudes such as being arrogant, patronising, and pedantic, it is a falshood to think that science people do not even question themselves. let’s not judge people by the attitudes, but rather by their thinking.

as a physician, we are guided by the findings and collective wisdom from studies done by scientists from around the world and use this information to the best of our abilities to treat our patients with the best information available to us at the time.

however, as time and learning evolves, what was once previously held to be true of a certain treatment is subsequently proven to be false after further study or the collection of more data, or the collection of better data, and the thinking of the collective wisdom changes.

where is the same intellectual rigour and honesty in the world’s religions? show me one religious person who would shed their long held beliefs in the face of incontrovertible evidence and i will show you a thousand scientists.

science is not a way of "being". it is a way of thinking.

@aeroculus: thank you for that fantastic link to Gould’s article. i only managed to find time to read it today:)

@PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE : thanks for the enjoyable walk:)

Reply
RRNeal

Jun 7, 2007 at 2:04 pm

@PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE: "Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines. "

Amen to that, my friend.

Reply
Victor1

Jun 7, 2007 at 10:29 pm

Why should humans be allowed to play God, when most are so lousy at just being humans?

Reply
RRNeal

Jun 9, 2007 at 4:13 pm

@Victor: Following this logic, would an alien’s first words to a human be "take me to your leader?" Only through an anthropomorphic lens does this make sense.

"The box was a universe, a poem, frozen on the boundaries of human experience." – William Gibson

Reply
jurvetson

Jun 28, 2007 at 11:17 pm

Regarding my earlier comment on the near-term progress on "changing the state of a living system via direct, intentional transfer of specific chemical information from one to the other”….

An important prelude to synthetic DNA transfer just came out in Science…. Here’s the summary via Sci Am:
Genome Swap Turns One Microbe into Another
Scientists successfully transfer the entire genetic code of one germ to another, bringing them a step closer to synthesizing life

As radical as this transformation is—transmuting one species into another by transferring just the genetic code—it represents only the first step toward man-made organisms. "Synthetic biology itself and the synthetic genome still remain to be proven but we are much closer to knowing that it is theoretically possible," biologist J. Craig Venter says. "Just the naked DNA, just the chromosome itself without any accessory proteins, is all that is necessary to boot up this cell system. It really simplifies the task."

Reply
nels1

Jun 29, 2007 at 2:02 am

that’s an amazing breakthrough!

we currently have the germ theory of disease, and in future, we will likely have the transmutation theory of treatment of viral diseases, whereby we are inoculated with a "treatment" helper virus which then targets the disease-causing virus and causing it to transmutate, thus rendering it harmless to us. the same concept applied to mitotic cells in cancer would also be a mammoth step forward in treating many of the currently incurable diseases.

an exciting time indeed!

Reply
jurvetson

Jun 29, 2007 at 3:48 pm

Yes… and we are investing in a new project that tightly couples microbial metabolic pathways necessary to their survival to the production of biofuels of interest. By knocking out the other metabolic paths, the designer organism starts out doing OK at biofuels production, but then it naturally evolves in its bio-refinery environment to do a better and better job over time. It’s an interesting way to fuse the power of purposeful design and evolutionary search.

http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge215.html#jcv just put out this tantalizing tidbit from Venter on his estimated timeframe:
Now we know we can boot up a chromosome system. It doesn’t matter if the DNA is chemically made in a cell or made in a test tube. Until this development, if you made a synthetic chomosome you had the question of what do you do with it. Replacing the chomosome with existing cells, if it works, seems the most effective to way to replace one already in an existing cell systems. We didn’t know if it would work or not. Now we do. This is a major advance in the field of synthetic genomics. We now know we can create a synthetic organism. It’s not a question of ‘if’, or ‘how’, but ‘when’, and in this regard, think weeks and months, not years.

Reply
nels1

Jun 29, 2007 at 5:32 pm

that’s brilliant – it’s always inspiring to see instances where lateral thinking and ingenuity bring two seemingly disparate disciplines together! it’s interesting to see how we are now not merely players on the stage, but have an active hand in potentially shaping the path of evolution.

i was thinking again about the concept of inoculating ourselves with a benign virus that then has the ability to disable a malign virus by using a transmutation to change it into a benign virus (sorry, it’s a terribly structured sentence, but it’s late here!). however, the possibility is that we could also inoculate ourselves with something which is not merely benign, but actually immunogenic as well, thus creating a much more rapid cascading effect in eradicating the malign virus when transmutations do occur.

venter’s projection of weeks and months as opposed to years…that’s amazing!

(p.s please keep us posted about the progress of the new project that you’re investing in)

Reply
PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE

Jul 22, 2007 at 4:32 pm

Thanks for the upgrade Steve

About the religion debat…i saw this video from the …
cnn Republican Debate Have fun ; )

Reply
jurvetson

Jun 29, 2008 at 7:48 pm

Reading the Economist this morning, When religions talk:

"Religious leaders, scholars and business people are meeting all over the world…

As well as repeating certain familiar commonplaces and negotiating certain familiar taboos, participants in inter-faith gatherings do sometimes run into real questions, that make a difference to the world at large. One such is how, if at all, freedom of speech can be reconciled with the Muslim demand for a ban on public statements or cultural products that offend Islamic sensibilities. At this week’s meeting in Malaysia, that question was addressed in a way that frightened the relatively few participants whose understanding of civil rights was rooted in a Western, liberal world-view.

Speaker after speaker called for some formal, internationally agreed restriction on the defamation of religion. “I can never accept that freedom of speech is morally right when it offends my faith,” said Prince Turki al-Faisal, a senior Saudi official (and former head of his country’s intelligence service).

… it can easily turn into a censor’s charter. In Britain, for example, a new law outlawing “religious hatred” would have made it impossible—at least in its early version—to express strong disagreement with the tenets of any faith. "

– Economist, June 14, 2008

Yes, this is in 2008.

Reply
nels1

Jun 30, 2008 at 2:27 pm

more like 1984:)

here’s another good article about the downfall of freedom of speech…"Sounds Of Silence."

Reply

International Censorship

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