Archive for May, 2007

The two busts on the bottom are by a Danish artist named Christian Lemmerz. Part of a larger installation at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen.

An installation view from the Statens Museum for Kunst - where many of the rooms display their artworks in the old European style of a mishmash grid as high as the ceiling.

Leah had me take a picture ot this miniature. Hopefully she remembers better what it is.

I have the kneejerk reaction that disbelieving in evolution should disqualify you from chief executiveship. But I read the whole thing because I also think people who discuss their beliefs intelligently should be listened to. Too bad this is nonsense.

The Senator, and need I remind everyone, potential Republican candidate for President, begins his opinion piece strongly enough, by noting that there are shades of gray between absolute belief in evolution and absolute belief in creationism. Senator Brownback is quick to point out that he turns to his religion to explain the origins of life and the "fundamental truth" of "[t]he unique and special place of each and every person in creation" and is content to accept what he calls "microevolution, small changes over time within a species."

And there we hit a rhetorical snag. What the Senator terms "microevolution" is in fact "evolution." Small changes happening over time within a species is essentially what the broad theory of evolution describes in toto. The prefix "micro-" both diminishes the conceptual importance of evolutionary theory and also makes it seem that the totally reasonable acceptance by the Senator of, again, what is in essence evolutionary theory under a different name in somehow in contrast to the more outlandish theory of "non-micro evolution" which the Senator appears to have created, in the fashion of his God, out of thin air.

Furthermore, the Senator continually returns throughout his op-ed to the idea that Faith consists of some set of tools or other for getting a handle on the world. He defines faith in a number of different ways:

• "faith deals with spiritual truths"
• "Faith seeks to purify reason"
• "Faith supplements the scientific method by providing an understanding of values, meaning and purpose"
• "faith — not science — can help us understand the breadth of human suffering or the depth of human love"

It might be naive of me (speaking as someone with limited faith), but I conceive of faith as being a highly-charged synonym for belief. Nothing more nor less. To be clear, I don't want to diminish the value of faith by stripping it of the various powers invested in it by the Senator. But, to my mind, each of the above definitions of faith is wrong.

• Faith is one of the things that causes us to assume there are spiritual truths, so in that sense faith deals with spiritual truths. But it does not reveal them, and it is not the only human impulse which deals with them. Surely reason has been put to the task of defining spiritual "truths" as well? Not to mention science (which, Senator, is not the same thing as reason).
• Reason seeks to purify reason. "Purify" is a muddled term here anyway (ironically), but I don't see how faith has anything at all to do with purifying reason in any sense of the word.
• Philosophy and ethics provide an understanding and development of values, meaning and purpose. Again, faith may indicate that such things exist, and are knowable, and philosophy and ethics may certainly be based upon religious doctrine or teachings of the faithful. But they need not be.
• I think he's thinking of empathy here.

Faith is not the exclusive realm of the religious - I would freely admit that I have faith in the theory of evolution, having not exhaustively tested it for myself in a controlled environment. I get that that means I'm making a leap, there. But I'm comfortable with that. The theory of evolution even, in my darker moments, brings me some comfort. Likewise, reason is not exclusive to scientists - Sts. Thomas Aquinas and Augustine are merely two examples of what must be a very large number of historical examples of people of faith who used the techniques of reason in the course of the practice of that faith (please note also that I don't believe faith to merely be a term referring to Christian or Catholic belief - but my tip of the mind knowledge of theologians in other traditions, including my own, is somewhat lacking, for which I offer my apologies).

Mr. Brownback repeatedly draws a clear semantic distinction between the faithful and scientists. "People of faith" vs. "Biologists." This is clearly a fallacy, as many scientists are people of various faiths and there are many faithful people who can accept at least a little bit of science. It seems as if we can reasonably conflate the two categories which the Senator has divided from each other needlessly, except to underscore that from where he stands, there is a clear conflict that must be waged.

Furthermore, Mr. Brownback makes repeated assumptions about the nature of life and reports them as facts or "truths" - spiritual or otherwise, without offering supporting evidence. "The unique and special place of each and every person in creation is a fundamental truth," he writes. But it isn't. It's not. Which is to say, Mr. Brownback has not proved this "truth" to my satisfaction and based on the evidence I'm aware of, it remains an open question. However, I am entirely comfortable with the Senator instead stating that he believes or has faith that each and every person has a unique and special place and indeed would find such a stated belief to be quite heartwarming (Needless to say, the term "creation" also indicated an incredible assumption on the part of the Senator).

In all of these respects - renaming evolution "microevolution," semantic creep as to the meaning of the word "faith", a nonsensical division between the "faithful" and the "scientists" and "faith" and "reason" (even as he seems to be attempting to reconcile the two) - Mr. Brownback does himself and the faithful he purportedly speaks to and for a disservice. His argument is against a straw man and reveals itself to be founded in what seems to me to be an irrational fear that he was not created by God on some kind of vast and unknowable assembly line.

Here's what I think about evolution: it is extraordinary that complex forms of life (not limited to human beings) could have come into existence and continued to exist for so long. And yet, given the known vastness of the universe and, indeed, what we have learned about evolution over the past hundred-odd years, it is also inevitable. That life may have begun accidentally and (until someone manages to prove otherwise) was certainly not intentionally "created" is perhaps inevitable, still amazing, and even more amazing in its inevitability. That's why evolutionary theory brings me comfort, though it does not (and need not) reassure me that there is any underlying meaning or intentionality to my existence and the existence of my fellow creatures.

When Leah and I visited Christiana we didn't get too much farther than the touristy area near the entrance. Gift shop, bar, outdoor cafe, etc. The worst violence we saw was dudes smoking blunts and playing backgammon. There's more than that going on.