Culture: Disagreeing with Francis Collins

TORONTO, ONTARIO - I recently finished reading the The Language of God by Francis S. Collins, the well-known geneticist that amongst other things led the government portion of the Human Genome Project. I'm probably one of the few readers who started the book without any wonderment about the fact that a prominent scientist like Collins could be religious--I've long held that there isn't necessarily a conflict between the two, and on Collins' key points in the book on the potential harmony, I essentially found myself in agreement. Instead, I read the book to find out what had compelled him to have faith--and found it quite unconvincing.

The key part of Collins' argument for the existence of God is the idea of the "moral code," or the nearly-universal tendency of human beings to exhibit a degree of selfless altruism. I agree with him when he points out that it is contrary to evolutionary theory in that "it cannot be accounted for by the drive of individual selfish genes to perpetuate themselves" since many exhibiting this behavior die before reproduction. Clearly, something other direct natural selection as described by Darwin or even Richard Dawkins' selfish gene theory is at work in creating this behavior.

Yet, I found Collins quite quick to dismiss possible explanations. He completely discounts the possibility of selflessness being a positive attribute in mate selection. He cites studies of "nonhuman primates that often reveal just the opposite--such as the practice of infanticide by a newly dominant male monkey, in order to clear the way for his own offspring" but fails to recognize other studies often held up Robert Sapolsky at Stanford that show "Alan Alda" male chimpanzees having reproductive success simply by being around females more often, rather than by being the alpha. It seems that even amongst non-humans, there are multiple paths to reproductive success, and altruism might actually help in attracting mates in some of them, thus potentially perpetuating itself.

What really surprised me, though, is that a geneticist would overlook the argument that a mutation that created altruism might also create another trait with a more clear evolutionary advantage and thus be perpetuated even though it might be harmful itself. The most common example of this kind of situation is sickle-cell anemia being linked with malarial survival--the same mutation that causes the sickle cells affords that person malarial resistance, which might actually be a net positive trade-off in survivability. Considering that we have yet to determine the chemical mechanism of altruism, it seems a bit presumptuous to assume that we will not, and that it might not be linked to something else that confers emotional strength, disease resistance, or some other clear advantage.

Furthermore, I find it rather ironic that Collins spends an entire chapter pointing out how new scientific discoveries are rendering the arguments made by intelligent design advocates moot--such as gaps in the fossil record (many of which have now been filled in by later discoveries). Could not the same process of continued discovery and improved theories eventually render his own arguments about the "moral code" being divine look unnecessary if a scientific explanation eventually comes forward? I don't know if that will ever happen, but the fact that Collins doesn't even seem to see the possibility is rather disappointing.

While I've never met him, the ideas expressed by Francis Collins in his book suggest to me that he is exactly the kind of deeply religious person with whom I could get along. He thinks about his beliefs in profound ways, applies critical thinking to his faith, and reconciles it with the world around him. I might reach a different conclusion based on the same facts, but there would be no arguing about the facts themselves, and any argument about the conclusions would be educational. People trying to reconcile science and religion should find value in his perspective, and more importantly can respect his leadership in trying to point out that reconciliation is not such a difficult task. In the end, that's why I was so disappointed in his reasoning in favor of faith--it doesn't offer much challenge to those who start out from an atheistic perspective.

Culture: In Defense of Ecumenism

TORONTO, ONTARIO - I've stated before on this blog that I think leadership and culture have a lot to do with whether people get along with one another or fight, and that Canada is a classic example of what happens leaders and tradition encourage people to figure out how to live together.

Therefore, I don't have much patience with people that insist on emphasizing differences between people, because I find that it just tends to undermine attempts to create, well, peace and order (if not good government). I don't know what his underlying agenda in doing so might be, but Stephen Prothero of Boston University provided a classic example in a recent Christian Science Monitor commentary.

I don't really disagree with any of the facts that Prothero presents as he argues that it is a "dangerous myth" to believe in a unity of religious faiths. It is true that religions offer distinct solutions to distinct problems, as he explains. Why wouldn't that be the case? To me, he undermines his entire presentation with this sentence: "The world's religious rivals do converge when it comes to ethics, but they diverge sharply on doctrine, ritual, mythology, experience, and law."

Isn't that the whole point of the ecumenist movement, that despite different cultures (which is really what his five enumerated areas represent), the underlying ethical standards are largely the same? Is it really "ignorant" to realize that religious cultures are very different in expression, but hold some things--what people like me would argue are the really important things--in common?

The statement that really kills me is this one: "Yet we know in our bones that the world's religions are different from one another." Really? (Never mind that most of what I know resides in my head, not my bones, since we must allow literary devices.) I have the exact opposite "gut feeling"--it seems to me most religions basically exist to help individuals cope with what they experience in their lives, providing a moral compass no matter what is around them, and that is fundamentally similar.

Prothero asserts that my perspective is ignorant, and that "like all forms of ignorance, it makes our world more dangerous." However, his version of dangerous seems to be that it prevents discussion and learning that would otherwise make the reasons for religious conflict more clear. I don't see how believing in a unity of ethics leads to a lack of dialog. It seems to me people don't talk to people that are different when they are told by leaders that the "others" are a threat, not because they think the "others" are the same.

Interestingly, if Prothero's real purpose is to create more discussion of the differences between religions, I completely agree with him. I don't expect a "magical" detente between Christians and Muslims, for example--I expect people to talk to one another and do a lot of hard work. I agree with him that the problem is often ignorance, but I believe that by dialoging and debating with people from other perspectives, one is far more likely to regard the "other" as members of the same human race and therefore not to be feared or attacked. Exactly how that is "dangerous" is beyond me.

I daresay Stephen Prothero needs to spend some more time in Canada and see some practical examples of peace, order, and good government.

Economics: Sin as an Irrelevant Concept?

TORONTO, ONTARIO - In an hour of the On Point radio program on Monday discussing the bankruptcy of General Motors, guest Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon and the American Enterprise institute made the statement: "Capitalism without failed companies is like religion without sin--it doesn't work." While I ironically agreed with much of his assessment of the government intervention in the auto industry, this kind of statement is exactly why I often lose respect for the right wing in the United States--they often don't see how their cultural perspective gets in the way of their own ideology, even when their logic is actually sound.

On its face, Meltzer's statement could be easily seen as culturally arrogant. Many non-western religions do not contain a concept of sin, at least in explicit terms, and thus practitioners could hear their religion being called non-functional. Buddhists, for example, who fundamentally believe in enlightenment by being freed from desire and hence suffering, would find it pretty hard to believe that an explicit system of divine moral codes is necessary as the foundation of religious faith. What a number of non-Abrahamic faiths tend to share is not a set of moral rules, but a sense of achieving balance with world, which is often situational rather than absolute.

Yet, that's not what really bothered me about the statement, as an educated person from a faith without an explicit concept of sin should still be able to understand the meaning of the statement. The concept of feeling "bad" (out-of-balance if not guilty) for doing the "wrong thing" (whether categorized as a sin or not) is a nearly universal concept, so the use of what sounded to me like Catholic vocabulary should be not be taken as an insult by people from other cultures when Meltzer likely would be just as happy with a more general concept in his analogy.

What bothered me was that the mind-set of sin seems in conflict with the free market economics Meltzer was trying to espouse. Human beings are expected to feel guilty (or "bad") when they realize that they have done the wrong thing and then make some effort to repent or otherwise be forgiven (or come back in balance). Corporations and businesses have no capacity to feel guilty, or really to feel anything at all. If they do the wrong thing, there is no incentive to repent--in fact, unless laws require them to do something, the boards of public corporations have a legal responsibility to their shareholders to NOT do anything that would reduce profits. Only in the most direct of consumer markets--where customers can become upset with a company and boycott its products--can the free market actually lead to changed behavior, and in some sense that kind of emotional behavior is even against the view of a rational free market, in which consumers base their decisions on the qualities (cost and utility) of the products in the markets alone.

The right wing often seems to think that a free market without government regulation actually will be self-correcting, that corporations will somehow "repent" for any "sins" that they commit. Yet, without laws and regulations holding the companies accountable for actions against the interest of society, that correction won't occur. This fundamental conflict between free-market and Christian thought is not necessarily unresolvable, but is rarely acknowledged and I suspect leads to problems making laws that adequately reflect either perspective or a balance thereof.

Again, I don't think any of this has much, if anything, to do with the government rescues of Chrysler and General Motors, which are about direct government intervention and not regulation. Yet, by invoking Christian rhetoric that points to what I consider a fundamental disconnect, I am led to wonder about quality of the rest of his logic, even if I started out inclined to find it sound (and, ultimately, do find it so). Such is the real danger of invoking the concept of sin in an free market economic context.