Ancient Rites

The only alternative to obeying religious edicts is heresy, a term that derives directly from the Greek word for "personal choice". Thus freethinkers are by definition heretics or, simply, whole cloth infidels, and only heretics and infidels can think freely. In fact, “individualism” and “heresy” are almost exact synonyms. Correspondingly — because everyone is inescapably, biologically, an individual — if one looks closely enough, everyone is a heretic to at least some degree. The biology of the human brain — indeed, the physical nature of any possible brain — precludes the perfect ideological fidelity demanded in many religious canons and vows. For example, a competent brain scientist could never honestly recite the thirteen points of Maimonides, because the scientist knows that all thought, and therefore all belief, consists at root of probabilistic (and therefore uncertain and imperfect) ion channel (and other biochemical) events. Thus the vows are epistemologically void, entirely aside from the truth of the religion's tenets, because of the inescapable intrinsic imperfection of the adherents. The recitation of vows of fidelity is a social ritual and is never true. It is one's obedience to the social requirement that one sustain the collective make-believe that is tested by social requirements to recite these vows.

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Humans have extensive phylogenetic mental infrastructure to enable and drive social learning (teachability). The adaptive benefits of social learning are overwhelming: the learner bypasses the (often prohibitively) laborious, dangerous, and intellectually formidable challenge of learning a profitable technique through non-social mechanisms. Particularly evident among children is the phylogenetic propensity of humans for slavish, obedient imitation. It is this primitive propensity that makes humans teachable, and it combines with the human powers of symbolic and abstract thought to promote human religion. Remarkably, this origin signifies that religions are inextricably intrinsic to civilization, wherever it arises and whatever lifeform builds and carries it. The economies of civilizations, and in particular their competitive rigors, cannot be accommodated without social learning. But the mental infrastructure of general teachability is also the mental infrastructure of conceptual viruses (or “memes”, to use Richard Dawkins's term).

The universal susceptibility to viral infection of sentiences that use social learning, follows from the undecidability of the halting problem, i.e. the general impossibility of determining the eventual results of running program. No matter how great the intelligence, there is always a risk that a cultural mechanism accepted for its apparent usefulness harbors a cleverly camouflaged counterproductive payload.

The human propensity to socially cooperate (to accept social authority, particularly when wielded by a charismatic leader), and to insist on cooperation (to seek and wield social authority), are also indispensable to civilization, because it is only through organization along lines of authority that social institutions (hence civilization) can endure. More specifically, no society with a deficit of social cooperation can compete economically or militarily with one that possesses this cooperation robustly. Cooperation thus has a vital role in civilization aside from its integral role in teaching, and is a second dimension of inextricable linkage between the mental infrastructure of civilization and that of religion. The phylogenetic propensity to enact and honor social authority may be key to the invention and popularity of the psychologically hominoid gods that are prominent in many religions.

A third, more subtle dimension of inextricable linkage, is the psychological capacity of humans for emotional control, and deferred gratification in particular. This facility equips humans for the complexities and competitive rigors of civilization, in which lengthy, complicated, concerted endeavors are much more rewarding in the end than are short-sighted hedonism and violence. In fact, the patience of a child in a deferred-gratification scenario is highly positively correlated with that child's SAT scores years later. It is impossible for those who lack this facility of emotional control, to compete with those who have it. But this facility interacts with the facilities of teachability and cooperation to enable the familiar promise that piety will be infinitely rewarded in a literal hereafter. This promise is prominent in Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, whose adherents comprise approximately 4.5 billion people out of a world population of approximately 6.5 billion.

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Religion was itself particularly adaptive in prehistory (while humans were evolving to their present form), when the rational approach, however doggedly followed, would not lead one to a satisfactory understanding of nature. The advantage of religion is that the human mind's inherent and otherwise insatiable curiosity, and the risks and expenditure of time, energy, and mental resources associated with its care and feeding, are checked, preventing it from engaging in a vain exploration of the yawning chasm that is the whole of reality. Of course, an artificial consensus also tends to preempt intra-group conflict.

Arguably, this is still adaptive for most people, as anyone who has attempted to master differential geometry, unified field theory, systems neuroscience, or indeed nearly any area of math or science currently undergoing development in academia, can readily attest. The life sciences and the social sciences, particularly economics, are now uniting with the mathematical constructs of complex dynamical systems theory to create a bulwark of very powerful models intellectually accessible to only a tiny sliver of humanity.

Thanks to Irving Wolfson MD and his brief contribution to the Evolutionary Psychology forum for the above idea regarding the “rational approach”.

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People who believe in their futures, and that providence will favor them, are more fecund than those who do not. At least that's the case anywhere that's even remotely civilized. The statistical evidence for this is overwhelming. In the 2004 election cycle, in terms of public and media-popularized perceptions, the presidential candidate of secularism (and of abortion availability) was John Kerry, and the candidate of theistic faith (and of abortion abolition) was George W. Bush. Thus election results can be used to effectively measure popular religious sentiment on a county-by-county basis, although inevitably there are other influences that color the results.

Bush-voting counties have significantly higher growth rates than Kerry-voting counties (many of which actually have shrinking populations). 97 of the 100 fastest growing counties in the US voted for Bush in 2004. This is part of a phenomenon that David Brooks of the New York Times calls ``natalism''. In The American Conservative, Steve Sailer finds that Bush carried 25 of the 26 states with the highest white fertility rates, while Kerry carried the 16 states with the lowest rates. In The New Republic Online, Joel Kotkin and William Frey observe that ``Democrats swept the largely childless cities - true blue locales like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boston and Manhattan have the lowest percentages of children in the nation - but generally had poor showings in those places where families are settling down, notably the Sun Belt cities, exurbs and outer suburbs of older metropolitan areas.''

In January 2005, the Petris Center at UC Berkeley released the results of a survey of mental health markers for the counties of California. Respondents were asked, among other questions, if they were "downhearted and sad". There is a correlation between counties with poor mental health as measured in this study, and counties with high margins of victory for Kerry. Similarly, there is a correlation of high mental health with high margin of victory for Bush. The two counties identified by the study as having the worst mental health, by their composite measure calibrated for economic circumstance, were also the two counties with the highest margins of victory for Kerry (68% in San Francisco County, and 51% in Alameda - those are margins, not totals!). The 18 counties sharing the highest health ranking were, with few exceptions, carried by Bush, most with a margin greater than 20%. Some of the exceptions tend to prove the rule. Sacramento is an urban core in a Kerry state that Bush came within a whisker of winning (Kerry by 285 votes, of 454310 total votes cast, a margin of .06%). Alpine (Kerry by 8 percentage points, of 699 total votes cast) and Mono (Kerry by 7 votes, of 5322 votes cast) counties may appear in the healthiest category only because they were aggregated with 5 counties all carried heavily by Bush. And it's highly significant that San Diego, the only major urban core in the healthiest category, was also the only major urban core in California won by Bush. Of the eight counties in the next-to-healthiest category, only Sonoma and Yolo were carried by Kerry, albeit in 36 and 21 point landslides respectively.

One would intuitively and logically expect that personal religion and a sense of a personal god, clearly comforting and affirming psychological influences, would be correlated with belief in a future wherein providence will be favorable -- in short, that theistic faith will be correlated with a lack of depressive psychological conditions. Likewise, one expects that a lack of personal religion and of a sense of a personal god would be correlated with doubt that the future will be providential, and so in affliction by depressive psychological conditions. As recounted above, this intuition is borne out by fairly decisive evidence. It is also inevitable that belief in a providential future correlates with fecundity, since children rely on future prosperity. This too is clearly borne out by the evidence, as discussed above. The negative sense is also amply evidenced. A recent (2005-Jan-22) headline in The Scotsman reads ``Self-doubt leaves French feeling down in the mouth''. France, indeed, has disastrously low fecundity, like the rest of Europe, and its secularization is rather advanced, as it is throughout Europe. Again, the exception tends to prove the rule: only the Muslim immigrant population in France (and elsewhere in Europe) has a high birth rate.

The evolutionary consequences of the dynamics outlined above are clear. There is a powerful and persistent pressure to maintain and propagate the hereditary traits that are conducive to theistic religious faith. They will be robustly and inexorably expressed in the population.

The religious instinct is the central enabler of the Hegelian dynamic. The instinct has two barely separable components: a predisposition to embrace premises on faith when the dividends of mental frugality are expected to outpace those of thorough investigation, and a predisposition to embrace on faith only a premise promoted by someone whose authority is respected. This latter predisposition is adaptive in and of itself, because it tends to instill social consistency and cohesion, equipping the community to work effectively as a team. Thus is enabled the cult of specialization, and the whole of Hegelian epistemology: the mutual deceptions of Hegel's heralded bureaucracy (following inevitably from the division of intellectual labor), and the horrors of Idealism and Positivism.

Inevitably, the religious instinct - since it is a prima facie abridgement and violation of reason - becomes a vehicle for those intent on concentrating social control in their own hands. It cannot be overemphasized that the purpose of religions is control over the actions of people, achieved through control over the thoughts of people. Etymologically, ``religion'' derives from the Latin for ``to tie back'', evidencing its binding, constraining character.

The god concept - common to many though not all religions - is the ultimate organizational corruption. A god would have total authority with no accountability. The priests and potentates who cite god as the source of their authority similarly wield total authority with no accountability.

Practical religion is sociocognitive warfare. With this realization, a great deal of what is considered by Americans to be ``culture'' or ``political systems'' is seen to actually be religion. For example, though communism in the USSR was atheistic (denied ``belief in the existence of one God viewed as the creative source of man and the world who transcends yet is immanent in the world'' (from Webster)), it was obviously a religion. As one peruses the litany of establishment tactics in my introductory essay, the burrowing of religion into the American cultural landscape becomes clear. Many of the tactics squarely aim to subvert reason.

``Religion'' and ``cult'' are two names for the same thing. Typically, the former term is used when referring to centuries-old institutions of sociocognitive warfare, and the latter when referring to new ones or ones which are of intermediate age and include significant doctrine that is inconsistent with, or not ancestral to, the doctrine of an old institution. Both Scientology and Catholicism are both religions and cults. When subordination to a new institution of sociocognitive warfare ceases to be stigmatized by those who are subordinated to older institutions, the new institution ceases to be considered a cult and comes to be considered a religion. Once an institution is considered a religion, it will continue to be considered as such, even if subordination to it is again stigmatized. This has occured with Judaism, the subordinates of which have been stigmatized by a variety of groups for a variety of reasons.

The engine by which mystical ideation becomes cultural doctrine includes three primary components: insanity, evil, and feebleness of mind. The insanity is embodied principally by schizophrenics, though also by individuals with certain other types of brain disease. The evil is embodied by the power lusting second hander. The feebleness of mind is embodied by ordinary people, of ordinary mental fortitude and ordinary susceptibility to memetic infection. By mental fortitude, I mean capacity to maintain rational consistency, particularly when presented with a concerted effort to befuddle.

Schizophrenics have minds that are qualitatively different from those of non-schizophrenics - in a manner of speaking, they do not have human minds. The difference is genetically correlated, and is anatomical and neurochemical in basis. The mind of a schizophrenic has a threshold of awareness and recognition that is either too low or too high. This has a variety of calamitous results for his capacity to think rationally. Of interest here are those whose threshold of awareness and recognition is too low, so that hallucinatory sensations and delusory patterns are perceived. Associations between meme vectors (as discussed in The Origin and Evolution of Culture and Creativity by Liane Gabora) are faulty, since effectively the association filter's Q is too low (that is, its region of sensitivity is too large). The schizophrenic is impaired in the formation and comprehension of fine analogies, since the low Q cannot maintain the distinctness of the two ideas whose symbolic topologies are being mapped together. Instead, they form artificially course analogies, artificially mapping together ideas that are not actually related. This results in their telling fanciful tales of unlikely causality, poesy, and lexical invention. They weave fantastically diverse memes into a largely senseless, but artful and memorable tapestry. L. Ron Hubbard was a schizophrenic.

Second only to the schizophrenics in the habitual confabulation of senseless, artful, memorable tapestries are those with prefrontal or amygdalar dysfunction. When portions of the amygdala or prefrontal lobe of the cortex are degraded, lesioned, or decoupled from the prefrontal lobe or amygdala (respectively), existence loses some of its subjective emotional reality. Crucially, the role of emotional consequence in planning is distorted, reduced, or eliminated. The capacity to reason and to use language can remain largely intact, but the intellectual products of such individuals reflect a distorted or absent emotional context. In fact, sociopathy - in which an individual is prone to the unfeeling infliction of cruelty - has essentially the same anatomy. Immanuel Kant had a prefrontal tumor.

The power lusting second hander, who is in a position to control the propagation of ideas through an apparatus of publication and censorship, tolerates and perpetuates that output of the insane which is of utility in his efforts to amass and maintain power over people and property. This system is most evident when the insanity is schizophrenia: the second hander acts as the filter which the schizophrenic's mind lacks, but the second hander's filter is malignant. The schizophrenic acts as the creativity which the second hander's mind lacks, but his creativity is madness.

The psychology of the power lusting second hander can be dissected into its two primary components. Power lust has a survival dividend because it tends to place the individual in a position to produce many offspring, and to provide those many offspring with social and material advantages conducive to their production of offspring. Being a second hander is essentially a character flaw, resulting from an individual's fear, lack of confidence, and laziness. It is never caused by a cognitive inability to be a first hander: being a first hander is not at all difficult in terms of the requisite intelligence.

Now, to treat the mentality of the masses, and how they come to be laid low by the above process.

Susceptibility to memetic infection is prerequisite for language acquisition, and since language capability bestows a decisive survival advantage, memetic susceptibility is essentially universal. This supplies the basic substrate by which the tenets of a religion are adopted as a set of ideas and symbols.

Non-linguistic socializability is another form of susceptibility to memetic infection. It is the capacity of an individual to incorporate himself into the community he is born into - particularly, the capability to adapt to social circumstance - the capability and tendency to adopt pre-existing community mores and problem-solving techniques. Failures to adapt or adopt impair one's capability to subsist and reproduce - though there is a sizeable incidence of people who do not adapt to their communities in the manner indicated by socialization, indicating that it is not decisive. The fundamental reason that the unsocializeable are ubiquitous, if relatively uncommon, is that without an insurance policy of cultural diversity, whole tribes can be extinguished by environmental or competitive insults the tribe lacks the collective mental wherewithal to overcome. The biological survival of the collective is necessarily predicated on the continuous actuality of individual diversity. Since the reverse is not true (individual survival is not predicated on survival of the collective), the intrinsic primacy of the individual is self-evident.

Three corollaries of the inborne propensity to socialize are (1) a tendency to adopt community doctrine without critical examination, as a method of minimizing the time and mental effort expended to learn how to avoid socially imposed penalties, (2) a tendency to follow instructions, including an awareness that disobedience leads to penalties, and (3) a tendency to accept the doctrine of service. It is tempting to explain the first as a pseudorationally implicit consequence of expedience (laziness and caution), but more likely, the uncritical adoption of certain behaviors is specifically selected for. The third is likely an inborn propensity, since service is precisely that type of socialization selected for according to the principles outlined in the previous paragraph. The awareness cited in the second is also likely inborne and specifically selected for. A particularly egregious example of instruction is the "command mystery" - that is, an instruction to refrain from contemplating the reasonableness of a tenet or statement. The proscription of idolatry common to Judaism and Christianity is an example of a command mystery, since "To believe, for example, that God literally came down on Sinai and literally spoke to our ancestors is to commit the sin of idolatry, which, in its purest form, reduces God to a natural/human phenomenon. People descend and speak, God does not--except in a mythic way" (quoting The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought by "noted theologian" Neil Gillman).

The cognitive and emotional constellation of phenomena known as "falling in love" evidently has a decisive survival dividend, as the capacity to do so is universal or nearly so. Mystic faith in its most dramatic form co-opts this reason-impairing attachment constellation. The centerpiece of the phenomenon is the uncritical rearrangement of one's values to accommodate the object of the sentiment, and facilitate its realization of its goals.

The capacity to enter trance states, though probably not unique to humans, constitutes in them a state of immensely heightened suggestibility and impaired discriminatory capabilities, often involving delusion, and in some cases involving hallucination. It is not clear if the trance is an evolutionary adaptation, or an incidental characteristic of brains that evolution could not correct, but regardless, its role in the practice and propagation of mystical ideation is evident and well known.

A type of limited trance, which can be described as awe, exists in humans, and is triggered by fixation on an isolated idea. In essence: if an individual is convinced through some means to consider an idea without considering the ideas which naturally relate to it, a more general state of dissociation is precipitated. The trance is largely or entirely a dissociative phenomenon.

Repetition of sensory constellations and of actions is also effective at penetrating the defense mechanisms of the mind and building memes. If an individual can be led by some means to repetition, a covert path to indoctrination is created. Many varieties of repetition can also induce trance states.

Music and dancing (which prominently feature repetitive structures) are tools whereby trance states in particular, and susceptibility in general, can be created. The intertwining of religion, music, and dance, is far older than civilization. Precisely how music exerts its effects on the human mind is yet to be understood, but the effects themselves are well-known. This transcript of GRAY MATTERS: Music and the Brain (1998-Mar) sheds some light on the issue. (Note that there is much in this transcript that I find offensive, in particular the false - in fact, absurd - premise that the dramatic chill sensation that music sometimes produces is a triggering of a phylogenetic baby-is-crying emotional response, and is particularly correlated with sadness and with the impression of a ``lonely, anguished cry in the wilderness.'' Chills are sometimes associated with these, but just as regularly, are associated with their antithesis - with an exultant climax of blaring, massed, densely harmonic sounds and coursing, thumping rhythm. Chills are likely a phenomenon that arises from certain sensory or cognitive transitions or inflections that produce a particularly resonant conscious wavetrain. The resonance is almost surely transduced to visceral state via the amygdala and its brainstem projections. The amygdala is cued to the resonance by the midline nuclei of the thalamus, which are components of the complex of thalamic nuclei that participate in the recruiting response. See The Symphonic Architecture of Mind for more on these themes.)

Sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, water deprivation, ingestion of psychotropics, and a variety of other traumatic stresses, also have roles in religious rituals stretching far into prehistory. In a manner similar to but more potent than that of music, these tools induce trances and susceptibility, and particularly, facilitate irrational ideation. They are psychotomimetic, predictably causing delusions and hallucinations. As such, they cause otherwise mentally sound individuals to have encounters with apparitions of the type described by religions, leading them to embrace tenets they would previously have rejected.

The spectrum of techniques enumerated above is the same spectrum used in brainwashing, and religion is simply mass brainwashing.

Opposed to this brainwashing is mental fortitude - the capacity to maintain rational consistency. This capacity varies widely, of course. One determiner of fortitude is intelligence itself, particularly the size, precision, and agility of the various types of symbolic and spatial reasoning facilities and working memories. The thoroughness and precision with which long term memories of utility are registered, the avoidance of registration of memories that are of little or no utility, the integration of memories with each other, the efficiency with which they are organized, the responsive activation of memories of instant utility, and the avoidance of activation of irrelevant memories, are all conducive to mental fortitude. Categorical adequacy is prerequisite. But beyond these basic ingredients, crucial is the firm rejection of any thought which is logically inconsistent with another thought logically established with greater confidence to accurately model reality.

In each mind, the mechanisms of mental fortitude square off against the mechanisms of susceptibility. In an ordinary individual, a rough balance is struck, in which he is rationally consistent in a broad spectrum of routine tasks and mundane subjects, but is not rational in those areas where his community has made a concerted effort to indoctrinate him. Religions by design impart doctrinal tenets which are broad in their impact, so that an adherent's decision-making process is colored by the religion quite often.

In some, mental susceptibility dominates mental fortitude, as discussed by Richard Dawkins in his essay, "Viruses of the Mind":

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Roman Catholics, whose belief in infallible authority compels them to accept that wine becomes physically transformed into blood despite all appearances, refer to the ``mystery'' of transubstantiation. Calling it a mystery makes everything OK, you see. At least, it works for a mind well prepared by background infection. Exactly the same trick is performed in the ``mystery'' of the Trinity. Mysteries are not meant to be solved, they are meant to strike awe. The ``mystery is a virtue'' idea comes to the aid of the Catholic, who would otherwise find intolerable the obligation to believe the obvious nonsense of the transubstantiation and the ``three-in-one.'' Again, the belief that ``mystery is a virtue'' has a self-referential ring. As Hofstadter might put it, the very mysteriousness of the belief moves the believer to perpetuate the mystery.

An extreme symptom of ``mystery is a virtue'' infection is Tertullian's ``Certum est quia impossibile est'' (It is certain because it is impossible''). That way madness lies. One is tempted to quote Lewis Carroll's White Queen, who, in response to Alice's ``One can't believe impossible things'' retorted ``I daresay you haven't had much practice... When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'' Or Douglas Adam's Electric Monk, a labor-saving device programmed to do your believing for you, which was capable of ``believing things they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City'' and which, at the moment of being introduced to the reader, believed, contrary to all the evidence, that everything in the world was a uniform shade of pink. But White Queens and Electric Monks become less funny when you realize that these virtuoso believers are indistinguishable from revered theologians in real life. ``It is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd'' (Tertullian again). Sir Thomas Browne (1635) quotes Tertullian with approval, and goes further: ``Methinks there be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith.'' And ``I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point; for to credit ordinary and visible objects is not faith, but perswasion [sic].''

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another example, from Newsday/Press Democrat 1990-Dec-23, by David Firestone:

"It remains one of the most baffling yet affecting phenomena in modern religious life: A beam of light or a spot of dirt in an otherwise ordinary place is perceived as the image of the Virgin Mary, and suddenly thousands of pilgrims descend on the site, turning it into a makeshift shrine. ...In previous years, it has been a vision in the sky, a glint off a car bumper, a face in a tortilla, a tear on an icon. ...But while church leaders are often loath to debunk a visionary experience, not wanting to damage the faith of thousands, they are also leery of letting such events get out of hand. If someone who claims to have communicated with the divine begins spreading teachings that are contrary to church dogma, bishops have not hesitated to step in."

In the United States, a religion such as Christianity or socialism is held by most as doctrine. The indoctrinal apparatus allows for some flexibility, of course, with many Christians rejecting the grossly absurd orthodox catalogue of miracles and myths, and many socialists rejecting the tenet of orthodox Marxism which dictates abandonment of Christianity. Importantly, none of these "compromises" have any bearing on the efficacy with which the religious fulfill the desires of the establishment that propagates the doctrine.

from CNN.com, 2009-Jan-15, by Elizabeth Landau:

Why so many minds think alike

You're in a room with 10 other people who seem to agree on something, but you hold the opposite view. Do you say something? Or do you just go along with the others?

Decades of research show people tend to go along with the majority view, even if that view is objectively incorrect. Now, scientists are supporting those theories with brain images.

A new study in the journal Neuron shows when people hold an opinion differing from others in a group, their brains produce an error signal. A zone of the brain popularly called the "oops area" becomes extra active, while the "reward area" slows down, making us think we are too different.

"We show that a deviation from the group opinion is regarded by the brain as a punishment," said Vasily Klucharev, postdoctoral fellow at the F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and lead author of the study.

Participants, all female, had to rate 222 faces based on physical beauty on a scale from 1 to 8. Afterwards, researchers told each participant either that the average score was higher or that it was lower than her rating. Some participants were told the average rating was equal to her rating. The researchers then chatted with the participant before suddenly asking the participant to do the rating again. Most subjects changed their opinion toward the average.

The two leading theories of conformity are that people look to the group because they're unsure of what to do, and that people go along with the norm because they are afraid of being different, said Dr. Gregory Berns, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.

Berns' research, which he describes in the book "Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently," found that brain mechanisms associated with fear and anxiety do play a part in situations where a person feels his or her opinion goes against the grain.

Participants looked at projections of three-dimensional objects, and had to identify which shapes were similar. As with the new study in Neuron, participants tended to shift their opinion to the majority view, although in this case the problems had objectively correct answers. The effect was also more potent in this experiment because actors were in the room to simulate a group with a shared opinion, he said.

But brain images revealed participants were not lying just to fit in. Changes in the activation of the visual part of the brain suggest the group opinion actually changed participants' perceptions of what they saw.

One reason behind conformity is that, in terms of human evolution, going against the group is not beneficial to survival, Berns said. There is a tremendous survival advantage to being in a community, he said.

"Our brains are exquisitely tuned to what other people think about us, aligning our judgments to fit in with the group," Berns said.

The most famous experiments in the field were conducted by Solomon Asch in the 1950s. He found that many people gave incorrect answers about matching lines printed on cards, echoing the incorrect answers of the actors in the room.

But unlike Berns' finding that fear and anxiety relate to this effect, Asch saw conformity studies reflections of people's reliance on one another for knowledge of the world, experts say.

The darker side of conformity relates to Stanley Milgram's experiments of the 1960s and 1970s, in which most people obeyed orders to deliver electric shocks to an innocent person in the next room. As in these studies, subjects caved into social pressure, presumably going against their own previous moral convictions.

The research calls into question decision-making bodies that operate by consensus, Berns said. For example, in the U.S. legal system, many cases are decided by the unanimous judgment of the members of a jury.

"You can't separate those judgments from the fact that you have 12 people who have to come to a unanimous decision, and have to conform their opinion to each other, so of course it will distort how they view evidence," he said.

"Any type of group decision-making process that does not require unanimous decisions is likely to make a better one," Berns said. "That applies to committees in particular."

What does it take to break the conformity effect?

Asch talked about the power of the "minority of one." When a unanimous group pressures the individual, that group is weakened as soon as one person breaks off.

"Anyone inclined to draw too pessimistic conclusions from this report would do well to remind himself that the capacities for independence are not to be underestimated," Asch wrote in a 1955 "Scientific American" article describing his research. "He may also draw some consolation from a further observation: Those who participated in this challenging experiment agreed nearly without exception that independence was preferable to conformity."

from the Economist, 2008-Jul-24:

Religious conversions: The moment of truth
In many parts of the world, the right to change one's beliefs is under threat

AS AN intellectually gifted Jewish New Yorker who had reached manhood in the mid-1950s, Marc Schleifer was relentless in his pursuit of new cultural and spiritual experiences. He dallied with Anglo-Catholicism, intrigued by the ritual but not quite able to believe the doctrine, and went through a phase of admiration for Latin American socialism. Experimenting with lifestyles as well as creeds, he tried respectability as an advertising executive, and a more bohemian life in the raffish expatriate scene of North Africa.

Returning from Morocco to his home city, he was shocked by the harsh anonymity of life in the urban West. And one day, riding the New York subway, he opened the Koran at a passage which spoke of the mystery of God: beyond human understanding, but as close as a jugular vein. Suddenly, everything fell into place. It was only a matter of time before he embraced Islam by pronouncing before witnesses that “there is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet.”

Some 40 years on from that life-changing moment—not untypical of the turning points that many individuals experience—Abdallah Schleifer has won distinction as a Muslim intellectual. Last year he was one of 138 Muslim thinkers who signed an open letter to Christian leaders calling for a deeper theological dialogue. The list of signatories included (along with the muftis from Cairo, Damascus and Jakarta) several other people who had made surprising journeys. One grew up as an English nonconformist; another as a Catholic farm boy from Oregon; another in the more refined Catholic world of bourgeois Italy.

Sometimes conversion is gradual, but quite commonly things come to a head in a single instant, which can be triggered by a text, an image, a ceremony or some private realisation. A religious person would call such a moment a summons from God; a psychologist might speak of an instant when the walls between the conscious and unconscious break down, perhaps because an external stimulus—words, a picture, a rite—connects with something very deep inside. For people of an artistic bent, the catalyst is often a religious image which serves as a window into a new reality. One recurring theme in conversion stories is that cultural forms which are, on the face of it, foreign to the convert somehow feel familiar, like a homecoming. That, the convert feels, “is what I have always believed without being fully aware of it.”

Take Jennie Baker, an ethnic Chinese nurse who moved from Malaysia to England. She was an evangelical, practising but not quite satisfied with a Christianity that eschews aids to worship such as pictures, incense or elaborate rites. When she first walked into an Orthodox church, and took in the icons that occupied every inch of wall-space, everything in this “new” world made sense to her, and some teachings, like the idea that every home should have a corner for icons and prayer, resonated with her Asian heritage. Soon she and her English husband helped establish a Greek Orthodox parish in Lancashire.

Following the heart

In the West it is generally taken for granted that people have a perfect, indeed sacred, right to follow their own religious path, and indeed to invite—though never compel—other people to join them. The liberal understanding of religion lays great emphasis on the right to change belief. Earlier this year, a poll found that one in four Americans moves on from the faith of their upbringing.

America's foundation as a refuge for Europe's Christian dissidents has endowed it with a deep sense of the right to follow and propagate any form of religion, with no impediment, or help, from the state. In the 1980s America saw some lively debates over whether new-fangled “cults” should be distinguished from conventional forms of religion, and curbed; but in the end a purely libertarian view prevailed. The promotion of religious liberty is an axiom of American foreign policy, not just in places where freedom is obviously under threat, but even in Germany, which gets gentle scoldings for its treatment of Scientology.

But America's religious free-for-all is very much the exception, not the rule, in human history—and increasingly rare, some would say, in the world today. In most human societies, conversion has been seen as an act whose consequences are as much social and political as spiritual; and it has been assumed that the wider community, in the form of the family, the village or the state, has every right to take an interest in the matter. The biggest reason why conversion is becoming a hot international topic is the Muslim belief that leaving Islam is at best a grave sin, at worst a crime that merits execution (see article). Another factor in a growing global controversy is the belief in some Christian circles that Christianity must retain the right to seek and receive converts, even in parts of the world where this may be viewed as a form of cultural or spiritual aggression.

A fighting matter

The idea that religion constitutes a community (where the loss or gain of even one member is a matter of deep, legitimate concern to all other members) is as old as religion itself. Christianity teaches that the recovery of a “lost sheep” causes rejoicing in heaven; for a Muslim, there is no human category more important than the umma, the worldwide community of believers.

But in most human societies the reasons why conversion causes controversy have little do with religious dogma, and much to do with power structures (within the family or the state) and politics. Conversion will never be seen as a purely individual matter when one religiously-defined community is at war or armed standoff with another. During Northern Ireland's Troubles a move across the Catholic-Protestant divide could be life-threatening, at least in working-class Belfast—and not merely because people felt strongly about papal infallibility.

And in any situation where religion and authority (whether political, economic or personal) are bound up, changes of spiritual allegiance cause shock-waves. In the Ottoman empire, the status of Christians and Jews was at once underpinned and circumscribed by a regime that saw religion as an all-important distinction. Non-Muslims were exempt from the army, but barred from many of the highest offices, and obliged to pay extra taxes. When a village in, say, Crete or Bosnia converted en masse from Christianity to Islam, this was seen as betrayal by those who stayed Christian, in part because it reduced the population from which the Ottomans expected a given amount of tax.

In the days of British rule over the south of Ireland, it was hard for Catholics to hold land, although they were the overwhelming majority. An opportunistic conversion to the rulers' religion was seen as “letting the side down” by those who kept the faith. Similar inter-communal tensions arose in many European countries where Jews converted to Christianity in order to enter university or public service.

In most modern societies, the elaborate discrimination which made religious allegiance into a public matter is felt to be a thing of the past. But is this so? In almost every post-Ottoman country, traces exist of the mentality that treats religion as a civic category, where entry and exit is a matter of public negotiation, not just private belief. Perhaps Lebanon, where political power is allocated along confessional lines (and boat-rocking changes of religious affiliation are virtually impossible) is the most perfectly post-Ottoman state. But there are other holdovers. In “secular” Turkey, the Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Jewish minorities have certain poorly observed rights that no other religious minority enjoys; isolated Christians, or dissident Muslims, face great social pressure to conform to standard Sunni Islam. In Greece, it is unconstitutional to proselytise; that makes life hard for Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons. In Egypt, the fact that building a Christian church requires leave from the head of state is a direct legacy of a (liberalising) Ottoman decree of 1856.

Tactical manoeuvres

But the Ottoman empire is by no means the only semi-theocratic realm whose influence is still palpable in the governance of religious affairs, including conversion. In an odd way, the Soviet Union continued the legacy of the tsars by dividing citizens into groups (including Jews or some Muslim ethnicities) where membership had big consequences but was not a matter of individual choice. In post-Soviet Russia, the prevailing Orthodox church rejects the notion of a free market in ideas. It seeks (and often gets) state preference for “traditional” faiths, defined as Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. This implies that other forms of Christianity are “poaching” if they seek to recruit Russians.

But issues of conversion are also painful in some former territories of the British empire, which allowed its subjects to follow their own communal laws. Take India, which once aspired to be a secular state, and whose constitution calls for a uniform civil code for all citizens. That prospect is now remote, and the fact that different religious groups live by different family laws, and are treated unequally by the state and society, has created incentives for “expedient” conversion. A colourful body of jurisprudence, dating from the British Raj, concerns people who changed faith to solve a personal dilemma—like men who switched from Hinduism to Islam so as to annul their marriage and wed somebody else. In 1995, the Supreme Court tried to stop this by saying people could not dodge social obligations, or avoid bigamy charges, by changing faith. What India's case law shows, says Marco Ventura, a religious-law professor, is the contrast between conversion in rich, liberal societies and traditional ones, where discrimination tempts people to make tactical moves.

And in many ways religious freedom is receding, not advancing, in India. Half a dozen Indian states have introduced laws that make it hard for people to leave Hinduism. These states are mostly ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But last year Himachal Pradesh became the first state led by the more secular Congress party to bring in such legislation: such is the power of Hindu sentiment that even non-religious parties pander to it.

The state's new law is billed as a “freedom of religion” measure, but it has the opposite effect: anyone wishing to switch faiths must tell the district magistrate 30 days before or risk a fine. If a person converts another “by the use of force or by inducement or by any other fraudulent means”, they can be jailed for up to two years, fined, or both. Local pastors say “inducement” could be taken to mean anything, including giving alms to the poor.

Supporters of such laws say proselytisers, or alleluia wallahs, are converting poor Hindus by force. It is true that Christian evangelism is in full swing in parts of India, especially in its eastern tribal belt, and that it enjoys some success. Officially, fewer than 3% of India's 1.1 billion people are Christian. But some Christians say the real total may be double that. Christian converts, most of whom are born as dalits at the bottom of the Hindu caste system, often hide their new faith for fear of losing their rights to state jobs and university places kept for the lower castes.

But it is unlikely that many Hindu-to-Christian switches are forced. In states with anti-conversion laws, credible allegations of conversion under duress have very rarely been made.

Anyway, India's arguments have more to do with politics than theology. Hindutva, the teaching that India is a Hindu nation and that Christians and Muslims are outsiders, has been a vote-winner for the BJP. Even in Himachal Pradesh, voters were unmoved by the Congress party's attempt to ride the religious bandwagon; the BJP still won the latest elections.

The contest between theocratic politics and a notionally secular state looks even more unequal in another ex-British land, Malaysia, where freedom of choice in religion is enshrined in the federal constitution, but Islamic law is imposed with growing strictness on the Muslim majority.

Until the mid-1990s, say Malaysian civil-rights advocates like Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, the federal authorities enforced religious freedom; the National Registration Department, a federal agency, would comply when anybody asked to record a change of religion. More recently, both that agency and Malaysia's top judges have deferred to the sharia courts, which enjoy increasing power in all 13 states of the Malaysian federation; and those courts rarely let a registered Muslim quit the fold. A recent exception was an ethnic Chinese woman who was briefly married to an Iranian; a sharia court let her re-embrace Buddhism, but only on the ground that she was never fully Muslim, so the idea of “Once a Muslim, always a Muslim” remained intact.

A more telling sign of the times was the verdict in the case of Lina Joy, a Malay convert from Islam to Christianity who asked a federal court to register the change on her ID card. By two to one the judges rejected her bid, arguing that one “cannot, at one's whims or fancies, renounce or embrace a religion”. Too bad, then, for any Malaysians who have a moment of truth on the subway, especially if the faith to which they are called happens not to be Islam.

from the Guardian UK, 2005-Oct-13, by Robert Winston:

Why do we believe in God?

[excerpt from The Story of God by Robert Winston -AMPP Ed.]

Faith in a higher being is as old as humanity itself. But what sparked the Divine Idea? Did our earliest ancestors gain some evolutionary advantage through their shared religious feelings? In these extracts from his latest book, Robert Winston ponders the biggest question of them all

The Dolley Pond Church of God With Signs Following was founded in Tennessee in 1909 by one George Went Hensley. This former bootlegger took to the pulpit in a rural Pentecostalist community in Grasshopper Valley. One Sabbath, while he was preaching a fiery sermon, some of the congregation dumped a large box of rattlesnakes into the pulpit (history does not record whether they were angry or just bored). Without missing a beat, in mid-sentence, Hensley bent down, picked up a 3ft-long specimen of this most venomous of snakes, and held it wriggling high above his head. Unharmed, he exhorted his congregation to follow suit, quoting the words of Christ: "And these signs will follow those who believe ... in my Name ... they will take up serpents."

News of Hensley's sermon spread through Grasshopper Valley; others joined him in handling snakes, and the practice caught on. There have since been around 120 deaths from snakebite in these churches, but most of the congregants tend to refuse medical help if they are bitten, preferring to believe that divine intervention will be more efficacious. Sadly, Hensley himself perished from a snakebite in 1955, and shortly afterwards the US government wisely acted to prevent the practice - although it is still legal in parts of the States.

Today, snake-handling continues mostly in small communities in rural areas of Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as pockets in other southern states. Participants feel that "the spirit of God" comes upon them as they open the boxes containing the snakes. Often lifting three or four of them up simultaneously in one hand, holding them high and allowing the creatures to wind around their arms and bodies, they praise God ecstatically.

To many of us, religious or not, this type of activity seems little short of outright lunacy. And it's certainly the case that religion and mental ill-health have long been linked. The disturbed individual who believes himself to be Christ, or to receive messages from God, is something of a cliche in our society. Ever since Sigmund Freud, many people have associated religiosity with neurosis and mental illness.

Many years ago, a team of researchers at the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota decided to put this association to the test. They studied certain fringe religious groups, such as fundamentalist Baptists, Pentecostalists and the snake-handlers of West Virginia, to see if they showed the particular type of psychopathology associated with mental illness. Members of mainstream Protestant churches from a similar social and financial background provided a good control group for comparison. Some of the wilder fundamentalists prayed with what can only be described as great and transcendental ecstasy, but there was no obvious sign of any particular psychopathology among most of the people studied. After further analysis, however, there appeared a tendency to what can only be described as mental instability in one particular group. The study was blinded, so that most of the research team involved with questionnaires did not have access to the final data. When they were asked which group they thought would show the most disturbed psychopathology, the whole team identified the snake-handlers. But when the data were revealed, the reverse was true: there was more mental illness among the conventional Protestant churchgoers - the "extrinsically" religious - than among the fervently committed.

A Harvard psychologist named Gordon Allport did some key research in the 1950s on various kinds of human prejudice and came up with a definition of religiosity that is still in use today. He suggested that there were two types of religious commitment - extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic religiosity he defined as religious self-centredness. Such a person goes to church or synagogue as a means to an end - for what they can get out of it. They might go to church to be seen, because it is the social norm in their society, conferring respectability or social advancement. Going to church (or synagogue) becomes a social convention.

Allport thought that intrinsic religiosity was different. He identified a group of people who were intrinsically religious, seeing their religion as an end in itself. They tended to be more deeply committed; religion became the organising principle of their lives, a central and personal experience. In support of his research, Allport found that prejudice was more common in those individuals who scored highly for extrinsic religion.

The evidence generally is that intrinsic religiosity seems to be associated with lower levels of anxiety and stress, freedom from guilt, better adjustment in society and less depression. On the other hand, extrinsic religious feelings - where religion is used as a way to belong to and prosper within a group - seem to be associated with increased tendencies to guilt, worry and anxiety.

It is possible that strong levels of belief in God, gods, spirits or the supernatural might have given our ancestors considerable comforts and advantages. Many anthropologists and social theorists do indeed take the view that religion emerged out of a sense of uncertainty and bewilderment - explaining misfortune or illness, for example, as the consequences of an angry God, or reassuring us that we live on after death. Rituals would have given us a comforting, albeit illusory, sense that we can control what is in fact ultimately beyond our control - the weather, illness, attacks by predators or other human groups.

However, it is equally plausible that the Divine Idea would have been of little use in our prehistoric rough-and-tumble existence. Life on the savannah may have been in the open air, but it was no picnic. Early humans would have been constantly on the lookout for predators to be avoided, such as wolves and sabre-tooth tigers; hunting or scavenging would be a continual necessity to ensure sufficient food; and the men were probably constantly fighting among each other to ensure that they could have sex with the best-looking girl (or boy) or choose the most tender piece of meat from the carcass. Why would it be necessary, in the daily scramble to stay alive, to make time for such an indulgent pursuit as religion?

Richard Dawkins, our best-known Darwinist and a ferocious critic of organised religion, notes that religion seems to be, on the face of it, a cost rather than a benefit: "Religious behaviour in bipedal apes occupies large quantities of time. It devours huge resources. A medieval cathedral consumed hundreds of man-centuries in its building. Sacred music and devotional paintings largely monopolised medieval and Renaissance talent. Thousands, perhaps millions, of people have died, often accepting torture first, for loyalty to one religion against a scarcely distinguishable alternative. Devout people have died for their gods, killed for them, fasted for them, endured whipping, undertaken a lifetime of celibacy, and sworn themselves to asocial silence for the sake of religion."

It seems at first glance as if Dawkins is arguing that religion is an evolutionary disaster area. Religious belief, it seems, would be unlikely, on its own merits, to have slipped through the net of natural selection. But maybe that interpretation of what Dawkins is saying neglects some of the further benefits that religion might well offer in the human quest for survival and security.

In his book Darwin's Cathedral, David Sloan Wilson, professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University in New York state, says that religiosity emerged as a "useful" genetic trait because it had the effect of making social groups more unified. The communal nature of religion certainly would have given groups of hunter-gatherers a stronger sense of togetherness. This produced a leaner, meaner survival machine, a group that was more likely to be able to defend a waterhole, or kill more antelope, or capture their opponents' daughters. The better the religion was at producing an organised and disciplined group, the more effective they would have been at staying alive, and hence at passing their genes on to the next generation. This is what we mean by "natural selection": adaptations which help survival and reproduction get passed down through the genes. Taking into account the additional suggestion, from various studies of twins, that we may have an inherited disposition towards religious belief, is there any evidence that the Divine Idea might be carried in our genes?

While nobody has identified any gene for religion, there are certainly some candidate genes that may influence human personality and confer a tendency to religious feelings. Some of the genes likely to be involved are those which control levels of different chemicals called neurotransmitters in the brain. Dopamine is one neurotransmitter which we know plays a powerful role in our feelings of well-being; it may also be involved in the sense of peace that humans feel during some spiritual experiences. One particular gene involved in dopamine action - incidentally, by no means the only one that has been studied in this way - is the dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4). In some people, because of slight changes in spelling of the DNA sequences (a so-called polymorphism) making up this gene, the gene may be more biologically active, and this could be partly responsible for a religious bent.

And it is easy to suggest a mechanism by which religious beliefs could help us to pass on our genes. Greater cohesion and stricter moral codes would tend to produce more cooperation, and more cooperation means that hunting and gathering are likely to bring in more food. In turn, full bellies mean greater strength and alertness, greater immunity against infection, and offspring who develop and become independent more swiftly. Members of the group would also be more likely to take care of each other, especially those who are sick or injured. Therefore - in the long run - a shared religion appears to be evolutionarily advantageous, and natural selection might favour those groups with stronger religious beliefs.

But this is not the whole story. Although religion might be useful in developing a solid moral framework - and enforcing it - we can quite easily develop moral intuitions without relying on religion. Psychologist Eliot Turiel observed that even three- and four-year-olds could distinguish between moral rules (for example, not hitting someone) and conventional rules (such as not talking when the teacher is talking). Furthermore, they could understand that a moral breach, such as hitting someone, was wrong whether you had been told not to do it or not, whereas a conventional breach, such as talking in class, was wrong only if it had been expressly forbidden. They were also clearly able to distinguish between prudential rules (such as not leaving your notebook next to the fireplace) and moral rules.

This would suggest that there is a sort of "morality module" in the brain that is activated at an early age. Evidence from neuroscience would back this up, to a degree. In my last book, The Human Mind, I noted that certain brain areas become activated when we engage in cooperation with others, and that these areas are associated with feelings of pleasure and reward. It also seems that certain areas of the brain are brought into action in situations where we feel empathy and forgiveness.

So religion does not seem to be produced by a specific part of our psychological make-up. Is it more likely, then, that religious ideas are something of an accidental by-product created by other parts of our basic blueprint, by processes deep in the unconscious mind that evolved to help us survive?

Shared beliefs

What identical twins teach us about religion

In the United States during the 50s and 60s,it was considered best to separate at birth twins who were to be adopted. This led to a number of these children being brought up by families who did not even know that their adopted baby had a twin; and sadly, the children themselves were brought up intotal ignorance of their "lost" twin.

Identical twins, of course, are formed in the uterus by the embryo splitting; so identical twins have exactly the same DNA.

Non-identical twins -growing from two separate eggs fertilised by different sperm - do not have identical genes, but will just share many general aspects of their genetic inheritance, as do any other brothers or sisters in one family unit.

Thomas Bouchard, professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, recognized that these twins, if compared with each other as they grew up, would provide an important way of measuring genetic and environmental influences.

His groundbreaking work in the 1980s and 90s gave rise to some extraordinary insights into which aspects of the human condition are more likely to be due to nature, and which to nurture.

In one study, Bouchard concentrated on72 sets of twins who had reached adulthood. He first established which of the twins (35 sets in all) were genuinely identical by genetic testing.

These were then invited to complete personality tests.

Such questionnaires, which are widely used by psychologists, pose questions in the form of statements, to which the respondents have to rate their level of agreement on a scale of one to eight. The following is a small sample of the many statements relating to religion:

· I enjoy reading about my religion.

· My religion is important to me because it answers many questions about the meaning of life.

· It is important to me to spend time in prayer and thought.

· It doesn't matter to me what I believe as long as I am good.

· I pray mainly to gain relief and protection.

· I go to my (church, synagogue, temple) to spend time with my friends.

· Although I am religious, I don't let it affect my daily life.

When Bouchard and his team compared the answers to these and other personality questions, they found strong statistical evidence that identical and non-identical twins tended to answer differently. If one identical twin showed evidence of religious thinking or behaviour, it was much more likely that his or her twin would answer similarly.

Non-identical twins, as might be expected (they are, after all, related), showed some similarities of thinking, but not nearly to the same degree. Crucially, the degree of religiosity was not strongly related to the environment in which the twin was brought up. Even if one identical twin had been brought up in an atheist family and the other in a religious Catholic household, they would still tend to show the same kind of religious feelings, or lack of them.

Work by several other scientists has inclined to confirm Bouchard's findings. One study, conducted by an international team at the Institute of Psychiatry in London under Dr Hans Eysenck, looked at information from twins living in the UK and Australia.

The researchers found that attitudes to Sabbath observance, divine law, church authority and the truth of the Bible showed greater congruity in identical rather than non-identical twins - again supporting the idea of a genetic influence.

Bouchard has consistently found in many of his studies that intrinsic religiosity -which seems to incorporate a notion of spirituality - is much more likely to be inherited. Extrinsic religiosity tends to be a product of a person's environment and direct parental influence. Bouchard also found that tendencies towards fundamentalism were also rather more likely to be inherited.

It is of some interest, too, that, in the populations that Bouchard and his colleagues have studied, women tend to have inherited rather more religious attitudes than men.

· The Story of God by Robert Winston is published by Transworld at £18.99. Winston's new series of the same name will be broadcast on BBC TV, starting in December.

from the Washington Post, 2004-Nov-13, p.B9, by Bill Broadway:

Is the Capacity for Spirituality Determined by Brain Chemistry?
Geneticist's Book 'The God Gene' Is Disputed by Scientists, Embraced by Some Religious Leaders

Dean H. Hamer has received much criticism for his new book, "The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired Into Our Genes."

Evangelicals reject the idea that faith might be reduced to chemical reactions in the brain. Humanists refuse to accept that religion is inherent in people's makeup. And some scientists have criticized Hamer's methodology and what they believe is a futile effort to find empirical proof of religious experience.

But Hamer, a behavioral geneticist at the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, stands by research he says shows that spirituality -- the feeling of transcendence -- is part of our nature. And he believes that a universal penchant for spiritual fulfillment explains the growing popularity of nontraditional religion in this country and the presence of hundreds of religions throughout the world.

"We think that all human beings have an innate capacity for spirituality and that that desire to reach out beyond oneself, which is at the heart of spirituality, is part of the human makeup," Hamer, 53, said in an interview at his Northwest Washington townhouse. "The research suggests some people have a bit more of that capacity than others, but it's present to some degree in everybody."

"The God Gene," published in September and featured in Time magazine's Oct. 25 cover story, is a sequel to "Living With Our Genes," a 1998 book in which Hamer examined the genetic basis of such behavioral traits as anxiety, thrill-seeking and homosexuality. Hamer said his previous research, most notably his work on anxiety, encouraged him to look into the genetic propensity for religious belief.

What he found was that the brain chemicals associated with anxiety and other emotions, including joy and sadness, appeared to be in play in the deep meditative states of Zen practitioners and the prayerful repose of Roman Catholic nuns -- not to mention the mystical trances brought on by users of peyote and other mind-altering drugs.

At least one gene, which goes by the name VMAT2, controls the flow to the brain of chemicals that play a key role in emotions and consciousness. This is the "God gene" of the book's title, and Hamer acknowledges that it's a misnomer. There probably are dozens or hundreds more genes, yet to be identified, involved in the universal propensity for transcendence, he said.

Furthermore, the scientific linkage of a gene with chemicals that affect happiness or sadness does not answer the question "Is there a God?" but rather "Why do we believe in God?"

"Our genes can predispose us to believe. But they don't tell us what to believe in," said Hamer, whose current research involves HIV/AIDS.

Critics in the scientific community argue that Hamer's conclusions are simplistic and speculative, relying too much on anecdotal evidence and too little on testing of the VMAT2 gene to determine other possible connections to behavior. They also wonder whether his findings can be replicated, a necessity in scientific research.

"The field of behavioral genetics is littered with failed links between particular genes and personality traits," said Carl Zimmer, a science author who reviewed the book in last month's Scientific American.

Some religious leaders welcome the idea of a genetic basis for spirituality and say it validates long-held teachings.

"I wondered for a long time why [the concept of] a genetic implant hasn't been put in print or been part of a conversation in the broad theological community," said Bishop John B. Chane of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. Chane associates Hamer's findings with the Apostle Paul's statement, "There are a variety of gifts but the same spirit."

Chane also welcomes the notion of genetic universality as a new, deeper way of promoting understanding among people of different faiths -- particularly Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all of which trace their beginnings to the same father, Abraham.

Others, such as Bishop Adam J. Richardson Jr. of the Washington area district of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, said that it's hard to quantify matters of the spirit and that attributing behavior to one's genetic makeup "can be a frightful thing." By analogy, saying that people are predisposed to be spiritual also means that criminals are genetically wired to be criminals and have no hope of rehabilitation.

"Why not just put them in prison and throw away the key?" he asked.

Richardson said there's also the danger of people losing hope, of believing their genetic makeup limits their development and personal growth. "In my own system, we do have choice. We always have choice," the bishop said.

Hamer said his own religious development began in a Congregationalist church, which he abandoned when he became a scientist. But he discovered new spiritual meaning when he began researching this book -- through, in part, Zen meditative practices he learned at a Zen center near Kyoto, Japan.

He likens spirituality to the capacity for language: Humans are genetically predisposed to have it, but the language people speak and the religion they practice are learned rather than inherited characteristics.

People are designed to communicate through language, but they speak English, French or Chinese because of the part of the world they grew up in. Similarly, genetic makeup urges people to believe in a Creator or find spiritual fulfillment, but culture, history and environment determine whether one is a Christian, Hindu, Jew, Buddhist or Muslim.

Although people can change or abandon that religious affiliation, they cannot rid themselves of the genetic propensity to be spiritual. But people can build on and develop that innate spirituality through meditation, prayer and creative arts such as music and painting. These practices can be done inside or outside organized religion, he said.

Hamer said he has received numerous comments from people who say that the dichotomy of spirituality and religion makes sense. "I always knew this, that I was inclined to be spiritual, even though I've always had a problem with religion," they tell him.

"I see more and more people doing things like yoga," Hamer said. "They do it initially because they want to get more flexible and look good and feel great. Then they find that once they spend some time sitting on a mat, doing nothing but concentrating on their body and clearing their mind of everything else, they say, 'That feels kind of good.' "

Such feelings can lead to an intuitive sense of God's presence, Hamer said. "We do not know God; we feel Him."

Organized religion can become so codified, so caught up with learned rituals, that the focus on spirituality gets lost, Hamer said. The resurgence of Pentecostalism and other emotion-based religions is one sign of the staying power of inherited spirituality, he said.

Megachurches, too, are part of this phenomenon and have widespread appeal because of the emotional aspects of worship, he said. "They have lots of music, video screens, the whole multimedia thing going on," he said. "They're tapping into that [innate spirituality]. It's fun and allows people to get into that spiritual frame of mind."

Hamer said more research has to be done to determine whether there is a genetic basis for other religion-related phenomena, including the existence of archetypes, the similarity of creation stories in various religions and the common characteristics of fundamentalism in Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Also left hanging is why women score much higher than men on transcendence tests.

"I'm not completely sure about that," Hamer said. "I just know that it's true. Women are more attuned to their emotional connections, and that's at the heart of spirituality."

from the New York Times, 2004-Nov-2, by John Langone:

REVIEW: THE GOD GENE
How Faith Is Hard-Wired Into Our Genes

Why, the geneticist-author of this provocative book asks, is spirituality such a powerful and universal force? Why do so many people believe in things they cannot see, smell, taste, hear or touch?

Dean Hamer, a molecular geneticist, argues persuasively that genes predispose humans to believe that "spirituality is one of our basic human inheritances," and that, indeed, there is a specific individual gene associated with faith. "I propose," he writes, "that spirituality has a biological mechanism akin to birdsong, albeit a far more complex and nuanced one."

Genes, Hamer adds, do not tell the whole story. Humans' genetic predisposition for spiritual belief is expressed in response to personal experience and the cultural environment, and it is shaped by them. But the genes, he says, "act by influencing the brain's capability for various types and forms of consciousness, which become the basis for spiritual experiences."

In other words, an inclination toward religious faith is no accident. What captured Hamer's attention was a gene, called VMAT2, that controls the flow of mood-regulating chemicals called monoamines in the brain. Crucial to making the connection was a scale called "self-transcendence," which, the author writes, "provides a numerical measure of people's capacity to reach out beyond themselves - to see everything in the world as part of one great totality."

How to measure such an amorphous linkage was tricky, given that one cannot simply examine the genome sequence and identify the location of any "God genes."

"Even if we knew the biochemical function of all the genes," he writes, "we would not know how they interact with one another, and with the environment, to mold a trait as complex as spirituality." So, convinced that the brain chemicals controlled by the "God gene" influenced spirituality by altering consciousness, he studied DNA samples from volunteers, trying to identify sequences of DNA that might be involved in the degrees of spirituality observed from one person to the next.

He was, he says, looking for what has been called the "causes of human diversity," not the reason that humans have aptitude for spirituality "but the reason that some have more or less than others."

Hamer is best known for a 1993 study linking male homosexuality to a region of the X chromosome. Other researchers tried to replicate the findings in 1999 but were unable to do so.

Hamer writes that while he found an apparent association between VMAT2 and spirituality, the gene is not the only one to affect spirituality. "It plays only a small, if key, role," he writes. "Many other genes and environmental factors also are involved. Nevertheless, the gene is important because it points out the mechanism by which spirituality is manifested in the brain."

He also points out that science can tell us whether there are "God genes," but not whether there is a God. "Our genes can predispose us to believe," he writes, "but they don't tell us what to believe in. Our faith is part of our cultural heritage, and some of the beliefs in any religion evolve over time."

Needless to say, many geneticists are skeptical. When Hamer told his former boss at the National Institutes of Health that he was writing this book, her suggestion was, "Wait until you've retired."

Another colleague said: "A God gene? That's got to be nonsense. Have you replicated it?" Theologians, too, are not always thrilled when science encroaches on their territory. "Theologians often see science as irrelevant, incomprehensible, or even destructive," Hamer said.

Still, he writes, the fact that spirituality has a genetic component implies that it has evolved for a purpose. "There is now reasonable evidence that spirituality is in fact beneficial to our physical as well as mental health. Faith may not only make people feel better, it may actually make them better people."

from Creative Loafing Atlanta, 2004-Nov-10:

Parallel universes
Darwinism favors evangelicals' survival over secular neighbors

"Cultures evolve as well as species, and that's what we saw with the religious vote" on Nov. 2, says Ed Larson, a history professor at the University of Georgia. Larson won the Pulitzer Prize for examining the collision of religion and science in his book Summer of the Gods, an unconventional look at the 1925 Scopes "monkey" trial.

In an interview with CL Group Senior Editor John F. Sugg, Larson had more than a few provocative thoughts on the unleashed power of religion evident in last week's vote.

Creative Loafing: Explain the Darwinian nature of the religious right.

Larson: There are survival characteristics associated with being an evangelical.

Are you talking about natural selection?

Who are the people having kids today? Immigrants, yes. That's one group. But among white, middle-class Americans, religious people are having children at a much higher rate. More and more and more children percentage-wise than non-religious people. There's a survival value in religious beliefs. They have a sense of purpose. They feel their mission in life is to multiply and be fruitful. The whole Darwinian concept -- evolution -- is on the side of evangelical Christians. They're growing by any measure.

What about the rest of society?

Take a look at Europe. The native Europeans are almost totally secularized. They're experiencing a negative growth rate. But their countries are flooded with immigrants with strong religious orientations, many of them Muslim. The demographics in Europe are changing. Over there, the replacement population looks different. In America, they look the same as the rest of us. But it's the same phenomenon. You see the rise [of religious fundamentalism] in Europe among the immigrant population.

Here, the growth of evangelicals has been tremendous, but since they look the same, no one noticed. The evangelism, it's not happening on the street, but at workplaces and on campuses. At the University of Georgia, there's a much higher percentage of evangelicals than when I came here 17 years ago.

The media all seemed astounded at the religious vote.

A century ago, newspapers reported on what the sermons were on Sunday. People knew what the preachers were preaching. That changed. A number of events -- the Scopes trial, abortion, prayer in school -- evangelicals withdrew. They talked among themselves, but they weren't evident to secular Americans except on rare occasions.

Is this something new in American history?

America never was a true secular society. There have been times in the past when religion grew stronger. Ben Franklin wrote about ... what was called the "Great Awakening." Later, in the 1820s, there was the "Great Revival." Those movements changed politics. The South was one of the least religious regions of the nation until the Great Awakening. That transformed the South.

How did that impact society?

The secular element in America is also deeply entrenched. There are two tracks developing parallel universes. They're living together but they don't see each other. One house on a street is evangelical, another house is secular. They're not truly neighbors.

Do we ever meet in the same space and time?

The most painful point of common culture is the election. Every four years, or every two years, these two parallel universes bump into each other. There are areas of overlap -- concerns over jobs, fighting terrorism. But there are areas of profound conflict -- abortion, gay rights. The sharpest conflict is likely to be over abortion. Roe vs. Wade could be reversed.

Why were Republicans so successful at motivating evangelicals?

The GOP was incredibly good at turning out the vote among evangelicals, something they didn't do four years ago. Gay marriage was clearly a motivating factor. The media has given it a lot of publicity. The ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Court tied the issue to the Democrats' candidate from the same state.

And ...

There's the tremendous cultural comfort evangelicals feel with George W. Bush. He has as similar story and experiences as do the evangelicals. His personal testimony resonates with Pentecostals and evangelicals. Even Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush couldn't match George W. Bush in that regard.

George Bush speaks of his miraculous turnaround. Jesus turned his life around. The story just fits with them.

Are we headed for a theocracy? Is this a defeat for the Enlightenment that guided the nation's founding fathers?

No. The Great Awakening was parallel to the Enlightenment during the late 18th century. At the time of the founding, there were a lot of backwoods, unenlightened people in America. People overreact. Evangelicals want government that reflects their values. But that doesn't mean they want a theocracy. Most definitely don't.

Where do the Democrats go from here?

I don't see the trend lines changing much. Ever since the revival took hold in the 1970s -- well, the Democrats have won two times. Jimmy Carter was a natural for evangelicals, whereas Gerald Ford didn't speak to them. Bill Clinton told the account of coming forward at a Billy Graham revival. He spoke in a voice to the religious that neither George H.W. Bush nor Bob Dole could match. Clinton was able to neutralize the evangelical [vote for Republicans] even though Reagan had been able to move them.

from the Times of London, 2006-Sep-13, by Tim Reid:

America is revealed as one nation under four faces of God
A survey shows that the way Americans see the Almighty is closely linked to their political beliefs

NINE in ten Americans believe in God but how they vote, or regard the Iraq war, depends on the very different views they have about His personality, according to a detailed survey of religion in the US.

It found that Americans hold four different images of God — Authoritarian, Benevolent, Critical or Distant — and these views are far more powerful indicators about their political, social and moral attitudes than any of the traditional categories such as Protestant, Catholic or Evangelical.

The study also suggests that America is more religious than previously thought, with only 5.2 per cent of respondents calling themselves atheist and 91.8 per cent saying that they believed in God.

In Britain, by contrast, 20 per cent say that they hold no belief in a higher power and only 38 per cent claim to believe in a traditional God, according to a 2005 survey.

The American survey, conducted by Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion in Texas, broke new ground in asking respondents how they viewed God's personality.

Researchers found that Americans hold four distinct views, and these “Four Gods” are remarkably accurate diviners of how an American thinks about everything from politics, abortion, taxation and marriage. “You learn more about people's moral and political behaviour if you know their image of God than almost any other measure,” said Christopher Bader, one of the researchers.

Nearly a third of Americans, 31.4 per cent, believe in an Authoritarian God, angry at earthly sin and willing to inflict divine retribution — including tsunamis and hurricanes.

People who see God this way are religiously and politically the most conservative. They are more likely to be less educated and have lower incomes, come from the South and be white evangelicals or black Protestants.

At the other end of the scale is the Distant God, seen by 24.4 per cent as a faceless, cosmic force that launched the world but leaves it alone. This is seen more by liberals, moral relativists and those who don't attend church. This God has most believers on the West Coast.

The Benevolent God, popular in America's Midwest among mainstream Protestants, Catholics and Jews, is one that sets absolute standards for man, but is also forgiving — engaged but not so angry. Caring for the sick is high on the list of priorities for these 23 per cent of believers.

The Critical God, at 16 per cent, is viewed as the classic bearded old man, judgmental but not going to intervene or punish, and is popular on the East Coast.

African Americans believe overwhelmingly (53.4 per cent) in an Authoritarian God.

Women tend towards very engaged images of God — Authoritarian and Benevolent — while men tend toward the Distant God, and are more likely to be atheist.

More than 80 per cent of those who see an Authoritarian God believe gay marriage is wrong, compared with only 30 per cent who view their God as distant.

Only 12 per cent of Authoritarians want to abolish the death penalty, compared with 27 per cent of those who see a Distant God. On Iraq, 63 per cent of Authoritarians see the war as justified, compared with 47 for Benevolent, 37 for Critical and 29 for Distant.

Nearly 54 per cent of Authoritarians believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks, compared with 23 per cent of those who believe in a Distant God.

“This is a very powerful tool to understand core differences in the United States,” said Paul Froese, a professor at Baylor. “If I know your image of God, I can tell all kind of things about you. It's a central part of your world view.”

Only one-fifth of those surveyed believed that God favoured the US. The researchers found one-third of Americans are evangelical Protestants, about a quarter are mainstream Protestant, one-fifth are Roman Catholic and 5 per cent are black Protestant.

Jews comprised 2.5 per cent of the population, while 5 per cent belong to other faiths. More than a quarter of Americans have read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, although it appeared to have had little impact on beliefs.

A majority said they believed in prophetic dreams, and four in ten say there were once ancient civilisations such as Atlantis. More than four in ten have seen Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

from The Atlantic Monthly, 1998-April, by E. O. Wilson, from http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98apr/bio2.htm:

The Origins of Religion

The same reasoning that aligns ethical philosophy with science can also inform the study of religion. Religions are analogous to organisms. They have a life cycle. They are born, they grow, they compete, they reproduce, and, in the fullness of time, most die. In each of these phases religions reflect the human organisms that nourish them. They express a primary rule of human existence: Whatever is necessary to sustain life is also ultimately biological.

Successful religions typically begin as cults, which then increase in power and inclusiveness until they achieve tolerance outside the circle of believers. At the core of each religion is a creation myth, which explains how the world began and how the chosen people -- those subscribing to the belief system -- arrived at its center. Often a mystery, a set of secret instructions and formulas, is available to members who have worked their way to a higher state of enlightenment. The medieval Jewish cabala, the trigradal system of Freemasonry, and the carvings on Australian aboriginal spirit sticks are examples of such arcana. Power radiates from the center, gathering converts and binding followers to the group. Sacred places are designated, where the gods can be importuned, rites observed, and miracles witnessed.

The devotees of the religion compete as a tribe with those of other religions. They harshly resist the dismissal of their beliefs by rivals. They venerate self-sacrifice in defense of the religion.

The tribalistic roots of religion are similar to those of moral reasoning and may be identical. Religious rites, such as burial ceremonies, are very old. It appears that in the late Paleolithic period in Europe and the Middle East bodies were sometimes placed in shallow graves, accompanied by ocher or blossoms; one can easily imagine such ceremonies performed to invoke spirits and gods. But, as theoretical deduction and the evidence suggest, the primitive elements of moral behavior are far older than Paleolithic ritual. Religion arose on a foundation of ethics, and it has probably always been used in one manner or another to justify moral codes.

The formidable influence of the religious drive is based on far more, however, than just the validation of morals. A great subterranean river of the mind, it gathers strength from a broad spread of tributary emotions. Foremost among them is the survival instinct. "Fear," as the Roman poet Lucretius said, "was the first thing on earth to make the gods." Our conscious minds hunger for a permanent existence. If we cannot have everlasting life of the body, then absorption into some immortal whole will serve. Anything will serve, as long as it gives the individual meaning and somehow stretches into eternity that swift passage of the mind and spirit lamented by Saint Augustine as the short day of time.

The understanding and control of life is another source of religious power. Doctrine draws on the same creative springs as science and the arts, its aim being the extraction of order from the mysteries and tumult of the material world. To explain the meaning of life it spins mythic narratives of the tribal history, populating the cosmos with protective spirits and gods. The existence of the supernatural, if accepted, testifies to the existence of that other world so desperately desired.

Religion is also mightily empowered by its principal ally, tribalism. The shamans and priests implore us, in somber cadence, Trust in the sacred rituals, become part of the immortal force, you are one of us. As your life unfolds, each step has mystic significance that we who love you will mark with a solemn rite of passage, the last to be performed when you enter that second world, free of pain and fear.

If the religious mythos did not exist in a culture, it would quickly be invented, and in fact it has been invented everywhere, thousands of times through history. Such inevitability is the mark of instinctual behavior in any species, which is guided toward certain states by emotion-driven rules of mental development. To call religion instinctive is not to suppose that any particular part of its mythos is untrue -- only that its sources run deeper than ordinary habit and are in fact hereditary, urged into existence through biases in mental development that are encoded in the genes.

Such biases are a predictable consequence of the brain's genetic evolution. The logic applies to religious behavior, with the added twist of tribalism. There is a hereditary selective advantage to membership in a powerful group united by devout belief and purpose. Even when individuals subordinate themselves and risk death in a common cause, their genes are more likely to be transmitted to the next generation than are those of competing groups who lack comparable resolve.

The mathematical models of population genetics suggest the following rule in the evolutionary origin of such altruism: If the reduction in survival and reproduction of individuals owing to genes for altruism is more than offset by the increased probability of survival of the group owing to the altruism, then altruism genes will rise in frequency throughout the entire population of competing groups. To put it as concisely as possible: the individual pays, his genes and tribe gain, altruism spreads.

Ethics and Animal Life

Let me now suggest a still deeper significance of the empiricist theory of the origin of ethics and religion. If empiricism were disproved, and transcendentalism compellingly upheld, the discovery would be quite simply the most consequential in human history. That is the burden laid upon biology as it draws close to the humanities.

The matter is still far from resolved. But empiricism, as I have argued, is well supported thus far in the case of ethics. The objective evidence for or against it in religion is weaker, but at least still consistent with biology. For example, the emotions that accompany religious ecstasy clearly have a neurobiological source. At least one form of brain disorder is associated with hyperreligiosity, in which cosmic significance is given to almost everything, including trivial everyday events. One can imagine the biological construction of a mind with religious beliefs, although that alone would not disprove the logic of transcendentalism, or prove the beliefs themselves to be untrue.

Equally important, much if not all religious behavior could have arisen from evolution by natural selection. The theory fits -- crudely. The behavior includes at least some aspects of belief in gods. Propitiation and sacrifice, which are near-universals of religious practice, are acts of submission to a dominant being. They reflect one kind of dominance hierarchy, which is a general trait of organized mammalian societies. Like human beings, animals use elaborate signals to advertise and maintain their rank in the hierarchy. The details vary among species but also have consistent similarities across the board, as the following two examples will illustrate.

In packs of wolves the dominant animal walks erect and "proud," stiff-legged and deliberate, with head, tail, and ears up, and stares freely and casually at others. In the presence of rivals the dominant animal bristles its pelt while curling its lips to show teeth, and it takes first choice in food and space. A subordinate uses opposite signals. It turns away from the dominant individual while lowering its head, ears, and tail, and it keeps its fur sleek and its teeth covered. It grovels and slinks, and yields food and space when challenged.

In a troop of rhesus monkeys the alpha male is remarkably similar in mannerisms to a dominant wolf. He keeps his head and tail up, and walks in a deliberate, "regal" manner while casually staring at others. He climbs objects to maintain height above his rivals. When challenged he stares hard at the opponent with mouth open -- signaling aggression, not surprise -- and sometimes slaps the ground with open palms to signal his readiness to attack. The male or female subordinate affects a furtive walk, holding its head and tail down, turning away from the alpha and other higher-ranked individuals. It keeps its mouth shut except for a fear grimace, and when challenged makes a cringing retreat. It yields space and food and, in the case of males, estrous females.

My point is this: Behavioral scientists from another planet would notice immediately the parallels between animal dominance behavior on the one hand and human obeisance to religious and civil authority on the other. They would point out that the most elaborate rites of obeisance are directed at the gods, the hyperdominant if invisible members of the human group. And they would conclude, correctly, that in baseline social behavior, not just in anatomy, Homo sapiens has only recently diverged in evolution from a nonhuman primate stock.

Countless studies of animal species, whose instinctive behavior is unobscured by cultural elaboration, have shown that membership in dominance orders pays off in survival and lifetime reproductive success. That is true not just for the dominant individuals but for the subordinates as well. Membership in either class gives animals better protection against enemies and better access to food, shelter, and mates than does solitary existence. Furthermore, subordination in the group is not necessarily permanent. Dominant individuals weaken and die, and as a result some of the underlings advance in rank and appropriate more resources.

Modern human beings are unlikely to have erased the old mammalian genetic programs and devised other means of distributing power. All the evidence suggests that they have not. True to their primate heritage, people are easily seduced by confident, charismatic leaders, especially males. That predisposition is strong in religious organizations. Cults form around such leaders. Their power grows if they can persuasively claim special access to the supremely dominant, typically male figure of God. As cults evolve into religions, the image of the Supreme Being is reinforced by myth and liturgy. In time the authority of the founders and their successors is graven in sacred texts. Unruly subordinates, known as "blasphemers," are squashed.

The symbol-forming human mind, however, never remains satisfied with raw, apish feeling in any emotional realm. It strives to build cultures that are maximally rewarding in every dimension. Ritual and prayer permit religious believers to be in direct touch with the Supreme Being; consolation from coreligionists softens otherwise unbearable grief; the unexplainable is explained; and an oceanic sense of communion with the larger whole is made possible.

Communion is the key, and hope rising from it is eternal; out of the dark night of the soul arises the prospect of a spiritual journey to the light. For a special few the journey can be taken in this life. The mind reflects in certain ways in order to reach ever higher levels of enlightenment, until finally, when no further progress is possible, it enters a mystical union with the whole. Within the great religions such enlightenment is expressed by Hindu samadhi, Buddhist Zen satori, Sufi fana, and Pentecostal Christian rebirth. Something like it is also experienced by hallucinating preliterate shamans. What all these celebrants evidently feel (as I felt once, to some degree, as a reborn evangelical) is hard to put in words, but Willa Cather came as close as possible in a single sentence. In My Antonia her fictional narrator says, "That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great."

Of course that is happiness -- to find the godhead, or to enter the wholeness of nature, or otherwise to grasp and hold on to something ineffable, beautiful, and eternal. Millions seek it. They feel otherwise lost, adrift in a life without ultimate meaning. They enter established religions, succumb to cults, dabble in New Age nostrums. They push The Celestine Prophecy and other junk attempts at enlightenment onto the best-seller lists.

Perhaps, as I believe, these phenomena can all eventually be explained as functions of brain circuitry and deep genetic history. But this is not a subject that even the most hardened empiricist should presume to trivialize. The idea of mystical union is an authentic part of the human spirit. It has occupied humanity for millennia, and it raises questions of utmost seriousness for transcendentalists and scientists alike. What road, we ask, was traveled, what destination reached, by the mystics of history?

Theology Moves Toward Abstraction

For many, the urge to believe in transcendental existence and immortality is overpowering. Transcendentalism, especially when reinforced by religious faith, is psychically full and rich; it feels somehow right. By comparison, empiricism seems sterile and inadequate. In the quest for ultimate meaning the transcendentalist route is much easier to follow. That is why, even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart. Science has always defeated religious dogma point by point when differences between the two were meticulously assessed. But to no avail. In the United States 16 million people belong to the Southern Baptist denomination, the largest favoring a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible, but the American Humanist Association, the leading organization devoted to secular and deistic humanism, has only 5,000 members.

Still, if history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout prehistory, when the brain was evolving. Thus it is in sharp contrast to the science of biology, which was developed as a product of the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms. The uncomfortable truth is that the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result, those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth face disquieting choices.

Meanwhile, theology tries to resolve the dilemma by evolving, sciencelike, toward abstraction. The gods of our ancestors were divine human beings. The Egyptians represented them as Egyptian (often with body parts of Nilotic animals), and the Greeks represented them as Greek. The great contribution of the Hebrews was to combine the entire pantheon into a single person, Yahweh (a patriarch appropriate to desert tribes), and to intellectualize his existence. No graven images were allowed. In the process, they rendered the divine presence less tangible. And so in biblical accounts it came to pass that no one, not even Moses approaching Yahweh in the burning bush, could look upon his face. In time the Jews were prohibited from even pronouncing his true full name. Nevertheless, the idea of a theistic God, omniscient, omnipotent, and closely involved in human affairs, has persisted to this day as the dominant religious image of Western culture.

During the Enlightenment a growing number of liberal Judeo-Christian theologians, wishing to accommodate theism to a more rationalist view of the material world, moved away from God as a literal person. Baruch Spinoza, the pre-eminent Jewish philosopher of the seventeenth century, visualized the deity as a transcendent substance present everywhere in the universe. Deus sive natura, "God or nature," he declared, they are interchangeable. For his philosophical pains he was banished from his synagogue under a comprehensive anathema, combining all the curses in the book. The risk of heresy notwithstanding, the depersonalization of God has continued steadily into the modern era. For Paul Tillich, one of the most influential Protestant theologians of the twentieth century, the assertion of the existence of God-as-person is not false; it is just meaningless. Among many of the most liberal contemporary thinkers the denial of a concrete divinity takes the form of "process theology." Everything in this most extreme of ontologies is part of a seamless and endlessly complex web of unfolding relationships. God is manifest in everything.

Scientists, the roving scouts of the empiricist movement, are not immune to the idea of God. Those who favor it often lean toward some form of process theology. They ask this question: When the real world of space, time, and matter is well enough known, will that knowledge reveal the Creator's presence? Their hopes are vested in the theoretical physicists who pursue the final theory, the Theory of Everything, T.O.E., a system of interlocking equations that describe all that can be learned of the forces of the physical universe. T.O.E. is a "beautiful" theory, as Steven Weinberg has called it in his important book Dreams of a Final Theory -- beautiful because it will be elegant, expressing the possibility of unending complexity with minimal laws; and symmetrical, because it will hold invariant through all space and time; and inevitable, meaning that once it is stated, no part can be changed without invalidating the whole. All surviving subtheories can be fitted into it permanently, in the manner described by Einstein in his own contribution, the General Theory of Relativity. "The chief attraction of the theory," Einstein said, "lies in its logical completeness. If a single one of the conclusions drawn from it proves wrong, it must be given up; to modify it without destroying the whole structure seems to be impossible."

The prospect of a final theory by the most mathematical of scientists might seem to signal the approach of a new religious awakening. Stephen Hawking, yielding to the temptation in A Brief History of Time (1988), declared that this scientific achievement "would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we would know the mind of God."

A Hunger For Spirituality

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Can we find a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and empiricist world views?

Unfortunately, in my view, the answer is no. Furthermore, the choice between the two is unlikely to remain arbitrary forever. The assumptions underlying these world views are being tested with increasing severity by cumulative verifiable knowledge about how the universe works, from atom to brain to galaxy. In addition, the harsh lessons of history have taught us that one code of ethics is not always as good -- or at least not as durable -- as another. The same is true of religions. Some cosmologies are factually less correct than others, and some ethical precepts are less workable.

Human nature is biologically based, and it is relevant to ethics and religion. The evidence shows that because of its influence, people can readily be educated to only a narrow range of ethical precepts. They flourish within certain belief systems and wither in others. We need to know exactly why.

To that end I will be so presumptuous as to suggest how the conflict between the world views will most likely be settled. The idea of a genetic, evolutionary origin of moral and religious beliefs will continue to be tested by biological studies of complex human behavior. To the extent that the sensory and nervous systems appear to have evolved by natural selection, or at least some other purely material process, the empiricist interpretation will be supported. It will be further supported by verification of gene-culture coevolution, the essential process postulated by scientists to underlie human nature by linking changes in genes to changes in culture.

Now consider the alternative. To the extent that ethical and religious phenomena do not appear to have evolved in a manner congenial to biology, and especially to the extent that such complex behavior cannot be linked to physical events in the sensory and nervous systems, the empiricist position will have to be abandoned and a transcendentalist explanation accepted.

For centuries the writ of empiricism has been spreading into the ancient domain of transcendentalist belief, slowly at the start but quickening in the scientific age. The spirits our ancestors knew intimately fled first the rocks and trees and then the distant mountains. Now they are in the stars, where their final extinction is possible. But we cannot live without them. People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will refuse to yield to the despair of animal mortality. They will continue to plead, in company with the psalmist, Now Lord, what is my comfort? They will find a way to keep the ancestral spirits alive.

If the sacred narrative cannot be in the form of a religious cosmology, it will be taken from the material history of the universe and the human species. That trend is in no way debasing. The true evolutionary epic, retold as poetry, is as intrinsically ennobling as any religious epic. Material reality discovered by science already possesses more content and grandeur than all religious cosmologies combined. The continuity of the human line has been traced through a period of deep history a thousand times as old as that conceived by the Western religions. Its study has brought new revelations of great moral importance. It has made us realize that Homo sapiens is far more than an assortment of tribes and races. We are a single gene pool from which individuals are drawn in each generation and into which they are dissolved the next generation, forever united as a species by heritage and a common future. Such are the conceptions, based on fact, from which new intimations of immortality can be drawn and a new mythos evolved.

Which world view prevails, religious transcendentalism or scientific empiricism, will make a great difference in the way humanity claims the future. While the matter is under advisement, an accommodation can be reached if the following overriding facts are realized. Ethics and religion are still too complex for present-day science to explain in depth. They are, however, far more a product of autonomous evolution than has hitherto been conceded by most theologians. Science faces in ethics and religion its most interesting and possibly most humbling challenge, while religion must somehow find the way to incorporate the discoveries of science in order to retain credibility. Religion will possess strength to the extent that it codifies and puts into enduring, poetic form the highest values of humanity consistent with empirical knowledge. That is the only way to provide compelling moral leadership. Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science, for its part, will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition and in time uncover the bedrock of moral and religious sentiments.

The eventual result of the competition between the two world views, I believe, will be the secularization of the human epic and of religion itself. However the process plays out, it demands open discussion and unwavering intellectual rigor in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

from Alternet.org, 2005-Mar-31, by David Morris:

The End of Reason

Organized religion elevates superstition to an entirely new level, so let's call its institutions by their proper name: superstition-based institutions.

For Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, until 2003 the deputy head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's most powerful office, seeing The DaVinci Code in a Vatican bookstore was the last straw. In early March he lashed out at Catholic bookstores for carrying the book, and directed Catholics not to read it. Why? "There is a very real risk that many people who read it will believe that the fables it contains are true."

Fables?

Dan Brown's phenomenal bestseller suggests that Jesus was an immensely popular and prophetic leader who married one of his closest associates and had a family. Archbishop Bertone and the Church maintain that Jesus was at the same time a man, the son of God, and God himself, that a virgin woman gave birth to him and remained a virgin, that a few days after he was killed he came back to life and shortly thereafter was taken up to heaven to spend an eternity directing the destinies of billions of people.

In a rational world the burden of proof as to which is fable would fall on the Church. But there's the rub. For when it comes to organized religion, no burden of proof is required. On the contrary, by definition, religion requires faith and faith renounces evidence. Taking a proposition "on faith" means to consciously and willfully refuse to examine the facts.

There is a word for this type of thinking: Superstition. Many dictionaries define superstition as "belief which is not based on human reason or scientific knowledge." The American Heritage Dictionary defines superstition as "a belief, practice or rite irrationally maintained by ignorance of the laws of nature" and "a fearful or abject state resulting from such ignorance or irrationality."

Of course, we all have our superstitions. I may refrain from walking under a ladder, or throw salt over my shoulder after a salt spill to avoid bad things from happening to me. But organized religion elevates superstition to an entirely new level. It demands that we govern our lives with superstition, promises us eternal salvation and bliss if we do, and threatens us with eternal damnation and pain if we do not.

It is long past time we stopped giving a free pass to organizations that refuse to be guided by reason and would force their unreason on the entire society. A first step would be to stop calling these "faith-based institutions" and start calling them by the synonymous and much more instructive term, "superstition-based institutions."

No Other Superstition But This One

Organized superstitions might be more socially supportable if their creed included a provision accepting the organized superstitions of others. Unfortunately, modern religions do not practice tolerance. For example Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore gained widespread fame and even adulation when he refused to obey court orders to remove from the Alabama Courthouse a huge stone tablet on which was inscribed the Ten Commandments. When he was asked how he would react to the suggestion that a monument to the Koran or the Torah also be placed in the Courthouse he brusquely declared he would prohibit such an installation.

A few months later, Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the new deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence explained why he knew he would win his battle against Muslims in Somalia. "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

The creationism vs. evolution debate also illuminates this intolerance. Christians insist that their creation myth represent the creationist side. But there are many creationist myths, many of which predated both Christianity and Judaism. If evidence is not needed, why exclude any superstitions? As Sam Harris notes in The End of Faith, "there is no more evidence to justify a belief in the literal existence of Yahweh and Satan than there was to keep Zeus perched upon his mountain throne or Poseidon churning the seas."

The impact of moving towards "superstition-based institutions" would be highly controversial, quite educational, and on the whole exceedingly salutary. Consider the impact on the audience if we switched the interchangeable terms in President George W. Bush's following statement, posted on a federal web site:

I believe in the power of superstition in people's lives. Our government should not fear programs that exist because a church or a synagogue or a mosque has decided to start one. We should not discriminate against programs based upon superstition in America. We should enable them to access federal money, because superstition-based programs can change people's lives, and America will be better off for it.

Fanatics and Zealots Destroying the Liberty of Thought

In her magnificent book, Freethinkers, Susan Jacoby describes the 230-year-old battle in the United States between reason and superstition. She discusses the post-Civil War period in which the battle may have been most evenly matched.

Robert Green Ingersoll, possibly the best known American in the post Civil War era and the nation's foremost orator, traveled around the country arguing about the harm that comes from self-congratulatory, aggressive and assertive organized religions.

He explained why the word God does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. The founding fathers "knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping, or in the keeping of her God, the sacred rights of man."

Ingersoll believed that reason, not faith, could and should be the basis for modern morality. "Our civilization is not Christian. It does not come from the skies. It is not a result of 'inspiration,'" he insisted. "It is the child of invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge -- that is to say, of science. When man becomes great and grand enough to admit that all have equal rights; when thought is untrammeled; when worship shall consist in doing useful things; when religion means the discharge of obligations to our fellow-men, then, and not until then, will the world be civilized."

In 1885, Elizabeth Cady Stanton explained how organized and assertive religions around the world have restricted women's rights. "You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman ... I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon a funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord', of course he can do it."

Stanton's enduring motto was, "Seek Truth for Authority, not Authority for Truth."

During the era when Ingersoll and Stanton spread their own form of the gospel, the Church was making ever-more explicit its own hostility to reason as a guide to human behavior. In 1869, Pope Pius IX convinced the First Vatican Council to proclaim, "let him be anathema ... (w)ho shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions, even when opposed to revealed doctrine."

His successor, Pope Leo XIII, in one of his best known encyclicals maintained, it "has even been contended that public authority with its dignity and power of ruling, originates not from God but from the mass of the people, which considering itself unfettered by all divine sanctions, refuses to submit to any laws that it has not passed of its own free will."

Other churches agreed. In 1878, geologist Alexander Winchell was dismissed from the faculty of Vanderbilt University in Nashville for publishing his opinion that human life had existed on earth long before the biblical time frame for the creation of Adam. Most Methodists supported the dismissal, arguing that Vanderbilt was founded by Methodists and dedicated to the goals of the church.

Some 45 years later, the famous Scopes trial opened. Most of us know that William Jennings Bryan was the lawyer for the prosecution of Scopes, a biology teacher who in his classroom violated Tennessee law forbidding the mention of evolution. What we may not know is that William Jennings Bryan was a three-time democratic presidential candidate and Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state. After the Wilson administration Bryan devoted himself to campaigning around the nation on behalf of state laws banning the teaching of evolution. For Bryan faith always trumped science. "(I)t is better to trust in the Rock of Ages than to know the ages of rocks; it is better for one to know that he is close to the Heavenly Father than to know how far the stars in the heaven are apart."

That was then. This is now. A few months ago, a dozen science centers, mostly in the South, refused to show Volcanoes, a science film funded in part by the National Science Foundation. The film was turned down because it very briefly raises the possibility that life on Earth may have originated at undersea steam vents.

Carol Murray, director of marketing for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, said that many people said the film was "blasphemous." Lisa Buzzelli, director of the Charleston Imax Theater in South Carolina, told The New York Times, "We have definitely a lot more creation public than evolution public."

Buzzelli's probably right. And that cannot bode well for America's future economic and technological leadership. A 1988 survey by researchers from the University of Texas found that one of four public school biology teachers thought that humans and dinosaurs might have inhabited the earth simultaneously. A recent survey by Gallup found that 35 percent of Americans believe the Bible is the literal and inerrant word of the Creator of the universe. Another 48 percent believe it is the "inspired" word of the same. Some 46 percent of Americans take a literalist view of creation; another 40 percent believe God has guided creation over the course of millions of years.

The Politicizing of Religion

I know most people who are reading this are asking, "Would you ban organized religion?" Of course not. Religion is an integral part of human existence. For tens of thousands of years humans have sought to explain the unknowable and have found comfort in believing that the death of a loved one may simply be the transition of that loved one to another, more sublime state.

But today organized religion has declared its intention to use its influence far beyond its congregation. The politicization of religion and the rise of a superstition-driven state may be the most important development in this country in many, many decades.

Tom DeLay, House Majority Leader and arguably the third most powerful person in Washington told an audience just a few weeks ago that the problems in America began when "they stopped churches from getting into politics ... Lyndon Johnson ... passed a law that said you couldn't get in politics or you're going to lose your tax-exempt status ... It forces Christians back into the church. That's what's going on in America ... That's not what Christ asked us to do."

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a leading candidate to become chief justice, has declared in oral hearings "the fact that government derives its authority from God." In January 2002, in a major speech revealingly titled "God's Justice and Ours," delivered to the University of Chicago Divinity School, Scalia favorably cited Paul's announcement, "For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God." And Scalia declared that the death penalty is God's will. "The more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral," he observed. "I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal."

One of President Bush's first acts in office was to create an Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Today 10 federal agencies have a Center for the Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The White House web site gives churches Do's and Don'ts for applying for federal assistance. It has funded 30 organizations to provide training and technical assistance for religious organizations desiring federal grants. And it guarantees that any religious organization in need of help will find a ready and willing person on the other end of the phone.

After failing to persuade Congress to change the law, President Bush, by Executive Order, rewrote the rules to allow federal agencies to directly fund churches and other religious groups. In 2003 such groups received an astonishing $1.17 billion in grants from federal agencies.

"That's not enough," H. James Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives recently told the Associated Press. He notes that another $40 billion in federal money is given out by state governments and "many states do not realize that federal rules now allow them to fund these organizations."

In 2003, an independent study found little activity or interest by states in contracting with religious groups. But federal intervention has persuaded them that future funding depended on their having these groups provide services. By Towey's count, 21 governors have established their own faith-based offices.

The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives maintains, "There is no general federal law that prohibits faith-based organizations that receive federal funds from hiring on a religious basis." It further explains that "for a religious organization to define or carry out its mission, it is important that it be able to take religion into account in hiring staff. Just as a college or university can take the academic credentials of an applicant for a professorship into consideration in order to maintain high standards, or an environmental organization can consider the views of potential employees on conservation, so too should a faith-based organization be able to take into account an applicant's religious belief when making a hiring decision."

One major program funded by the White House is Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries. It runs the InnerChange Freedom Initiative in prisons in Minnesota, Kansas, Iowa and Texas. The Christ-centered program offers prisoners privileges that include access to a big TV, computers, and private bathrooms in return for a hefty dose of Bible study and Christian counseling. As a condition of being hired, the program's employees are required to sign a statement affirming their belief in a literal interpretation of the Bible.

Superstition as a Lethal Force

Organized superstition in this country has begun to drive and guide social policy. The clearest example of this is the recent enactment by several states of laws that allow pharmacists and doctors and hospitals to refuse to treat patients whose behavior conflicts with the their superstitions.

The central problem with organized, assertive religion, of course, is that it endows superstition with a moral and messianic fervor. God-directed superstition can be a lethal force. Indeed, one might argue that this type of force is behind much of the violence around the world. The conflicts in Palestine (Jews v. Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians v. Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants v. Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims v. Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims v. Timorese Christians) and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians v. Chechen Muslims) constitute only a few of the places where religion has been the explicit cause of million of deaths in the last ten years.

Sam Harris discusses "the burden of paradise." Why are there suicide bombers? "Because they actually believe what they say they believe. They believe in the literal truth of the Koran ...Why did 19 well-educated, middle class men trade their lives in this world for the privilege of killing thousands of our neighbors? Because they believed that they would go straight to paradise for doing so."

To Harris, condoning the use of superstition as an important social force enables and encourages extremism. "The concessions we have made to religious faith," he maintains, "to the idea that belief can be sanctified by something other than evidence -- have rendered us unable to name, much less address, one of the most pervasive causes of conflict in our world."

In 1784, Patrick Henry introduced a bill in the Virginia General Assembly that would have assessed taxes on all citizens for the support of "teachers of the Christian religion." The bill's passage seemed certain. But then James Madison issued his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, eventually signed by some 2,000 Virginians.

"What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society?" Madison asked. "In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of Civil authority; in many instances they have seen the upholding of the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberty of the people."

The two-year debate over the assessment bill ended in its overwhelming defeat. Instead the Virginia legislature in 1786 passed an Act for Establishing Religious Freedom. The preamble to the original bill, written by Thomas Jefferson, declared, "Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their mind; that Almighty God hath created the mind free... ."

The final law contained only the last few words of Jefferson's preamble, "Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free ... ."

After the passage of the legislation, Jefferson wrote Madison to express his pride in Virginia's leadership on this crucial issue. "(I)t is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests and nobles, and it is honorable for us, to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare, that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions."

In early February 2005, the Virginia House of Delegates easily approved (69-27) an amendment to the state's constitution that would allow the practice of religion in public schools and other public buildings. A few weeks later the amendment was killed in a Senate committee (10-5).

It was a lonely victory for reason in this increasingly unreasonable time. The battle between rationality and superstition continues.

David Morris is co-founder and vice president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis, Minn. and director of its New Rules project.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2010-Feb-5, by Lawrence Harrison:

Haiti and the Voodoo Curse
The cultural roots of the country's endless misery.

Haiti has received billions of dollars in foreign aid over the last 50 years, and yet it remains the least developed country in the Western Hemisphere. Its indicators of progress are closer to Africa's than to those of Latin America. It has defied all development prescriptions.

Why? Because Haiti's culture is powerfully influenced by its religion, voodoo. Voodoo is one of numerous spirit-based religions common to Africa. It is without ethical content. Its followers believe that their destinies are controlled by hundreds of capricious spirits who must be propitiated through voodoo ceremonies. It is a species of the sorcery religions that Cameroonian development expert Daniel Etounga-Manguelle identifies as one of the principal obstacles to progress in Africa.

Voodoo is practiced mostly by poor Haitians, who make up the vast majority of the country's population. But all Haitians feel its influence, as one of my sons-in-law, who is Haitian and holds a graduate degree from Harvard, assures me. Wallace Hodges, an American missionary who lived in Haiti for 20 years, observed: "A Haitian child is made to understand that everything that happens is due to the spirits. He is raised to externalize evil and to understand he is in continuous danger. Haitians are afraid of each other. You will find a high degree of paranoia in Haiti."

But voodoo is not the only progress-resistant force at work in Haiti. The treatment of the slaves in French St. Domingue—the colony that would become independent Haiti in 1804— was particularly brutal. The Haitian slaves won their freedom through an uprising that left them in charge of their destiny, but they were left with a value system largely shaped by African culture and by the experience of slavery. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Sir Arthur Lewis, himself a descendent of African slaves, wrote that those who had experienced it "have inherited the idea that work is only fit for slaves."

What other factors contribute to Haiti's endless nightmare? Bad leadership is one obvious candidate. With the exception of Alexandre Pétion (1806-1818), Haiti has never had a president fully committed to modernizing the country. (Once again, we are reminded of the parallels between Haiti and Africa.)

Some stress policies and institutions when they try to explain the country's tortured history. But bad policies inevitably reflect the agendas of poor leaders—and thus the culture that nurtured them. Those of us who have worked at institution-building in countries like Haiti are well aware of the frustrations that attend such efforts, confirming the truth of Mr. Etounga-Manguelle's observation: "Culture is the mother. Institutions are the children."

Others cite the heavy indemnity that the French extracted from Haiti in 1825 for re-establishment of relations (originally 150 million francs over five years, later reduced to 60 million francs over 30 years) as a major cause of Haiti's poverty. It is also true that for several decades after its independence, Haiti was ostracized by other Western Hemisphere nations, the United States among them, out of fear that Haiti's successful slave rebellion would spread to their own slaves. U.S. policy was changed by Abraham Lincoln; official recognition was extended in 1862.

Still others argue that Haiti's problems are largely the result of a mulatto upper class that identifies itself with the former French masters and treats black Haitians as inferior beings. But for a good part of Haiti's history, black chiefs of state, Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier among them, ran the country.

While these and other factors may be relevant, none of them, even collectively, adequately explains the unending dysfunction of Haitian society. Haiti's predicament is caused by a set of values, beliefs and attitudes, rooted in African culture and the slavery experience that resist progress.

The Dominican Republic, which Haiti ruled between 1822 and 1843, has evolved as a more or less typical Latin American country with political instability and slow development. But even that slow development has clearly outpaced Haiti. The Dominican Republic is No. 79 on the U.N. Development Program's Human Development Index, while Haiti is No. 146 (out of 177 countries).

Haiti has received far more development assistance than Benin, the country in the Dahomey region of West Africa whence came the slaves the French imported into St. Domingue. And yet today Haiti's and Benin's level of development are strikingly similar. The British imported slaves into Barbados from the same Dahomey region, but Barbados remained a British colony until 1966, by which time the descendents of the slaves had become black Englishmen. Today, Barbados is a stable democracy on the verge of First World status.

Mr. Harrison, who ran the USAID mission to Haiti from 1977 to 1979, now directs the Cultural Change Institute at the Fletcher School of International Affairs at Tufts University. He is the author of "The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save it from Itself" (Oxford University Press, 2006).

from New Vision (Kampala) via allAfrica.com, 2004-Jul-7, by Moses Nsubuga and Chris Kiwawuloa:

Demons Attack Kiboga Pupils

Kampala -- Primary school in Kiboga district was closed in May after parents reported that their children were being attacked by demons.

Bisika Primary School, located in Butemba sub-county, was later re-opened but the pupils continued to live in fear. Another demon attack was reported on June 29, in the same school. Subscribe to AllAfrica

Bisika, a government-aided day primary school, is located five kilometres from Kiboga town. The well-furnished four-building school has 450 pupils.

The parents accused Isma Sserunkuuma, a man, who lives near the school, of bringing the demons locally known as mayembe. They said Sserunkuma wanted the demons from a witchdoctor to help him acquire wealth.

Acting on the parents' report, the Kiboga resident district commissioner (rdc), Margaret Kasaija, ordered for the arrest of Sserunkuuma and the closure of the school until the demons would be driven out of the school. Sserunkuuma is still in detention.

"I wonder why people really acquire demons and resort to bewitching others," Kasaija lamented before she cautioned the public against acquiring demons.

At the time of arrest, Sserunkuuma said he could not afford the demons' enormous demands. He said the demons demanded for 300 virgin girls and cows to provide them with blood for sustenance.

Sserunkuuma added that when he failed to provide the virgins and cows, he set them (demons) free. They then attacked the pupils. He pleaded that he had no intention of harming the school, but only failed to control the demons.

The demons reportedly affected primary four, five, six and seven pupils below 12 years. When attacked, the pupils gabble and run around the compound. Others undress and foam around their mouths.

They also shake violently as if shocked by an electric current. Parents also said they had to tie their children on pegs with ropes to avoid their disappearance.

The national chairman for traditional healers, Ben Ggulu, performed traditional rituals before the school was re-opened in May. He also healed 15 pupils, whose mental abilities had been affected by the demons.

Ggulu would hold herbs atop the pupils' heads to invoke the demons out of them. Using traditional charms, Ggulu spoke strange languages causing bark cloth-wound cow's horn to move around the place, a ritual he said he did to search for the demons.

"Sorcery has become a common practice in this district, especially in Ntwetwe, Kapeke, Kyankwanzi and Butemba sub-counties," Ggulu, who is also the Kapeke sub-county chairperson, said.

He noted that many people acquired demons without knowing their nature, adding that, "harmless demons do not ask for blood and human sacrifices."

Ggulu said some people use harmful demons to kill others in the struggle to gain wealth.

He said the Police had let the public down in handling witchcraft cases because they had failed to investigate such cases properly. He asked the Police to contact him in such cases.

"In such cases, the Police should be very careful because there are people who falsely accuse their neighbours of possessing demons for other interests," Ggulu said.

Ggulu appealed to parliamentarians to review the witchcraft law, which he said was weak.

Residents, some of whom, have migrated to other places in fear of the demons owned by their neighbours, said they were tired of endless mayhem caused to them by demons.

One Bisika resident, Isma Sserugya said Sserunkuuma's demons had not yet affected residents and boys in the school, arguing that they were convinced to believe that the demons were interested in virgin girls as Sserunkuuma disclosed on his arrest.

The district Police commander, Okwot Obwona, said most incidents of mob justice in Kiboga district were against witchcraft suspects.

The Bisika LCI chairperson, Diriyam Lukwago said, "I will not accept the practice of acquiring demons to go on in this village. We have even come up with a by-law to evict any one who will be found with demons."

Asked about the spiritual history of the residents, Lukwago said most of them were staunch believers, who did not believe in demons, adding that the Muslim community constituted the largest percentage.

The chairman asked residents to cooperate with his council to fight sorcery. The district director of health services, Dr. John Bosco Serebe, confirmed the incident but declined to comment further, saying the cases were still being examined in the district laboratory.

During the last demon attack, a priest Rev. Fr. Herman Kakooza was called in to pray pupils.

from the Wall Street Journal via OpinionJournal.com, 2005-Jan-21, by Tunku Varadarajan:

Scientific Unease
To some, all moons are saturnine.

Man has always been fascinated by the lamps in the sky. The ancient Babylonians invented math to calculate the movements of the moon and the planets. The Magi followed a star.

So the recent landing on Titan--Saturn's largest moon--of a probe dispatched from Earth all of seven years ago is but the latest fruit of the love affair between science and the human imagination. We've come a long way from Stonehenge.

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Though all God's children started pretty much with the same blank slate, the Western branch of the family has--over time and with gusto--immersed itself in science, growing to cherish its potency and, perhaps for that reason, permitting it a comfortable coexistence with religion.

Where conflicts have arisen between science and religion, our scientific empiricism--which is a source of our tolerance and of our ability to resolve conflict (mostly) without coming to blows--has usually ensured that our intellectual principles are not stifled by our prayers.

To be sure, the very empiricism that safeguards science has also been benign for religion, as biblical scholars--not to mention the ordinary faithful, schooled in biology--have sought to interpret old texts in ways that sit elegantly with modern truths. The Word has not been allowed to remain static or to become a laughingstock (except on boorish fringes), for an inherent part of our scientific temperament is humility.

Our imagination is fed, and fired, by science in ways that some other societies find offensive. But although the scientists in our midst do speak rather frankly and often practice their craft with an unseemly swagger, we do not live--even remotely--under a scientista tyranny. For this we must thank our innate skepticism, which extends even to technology, as well as our philosophers, who are always inclined to keep science on its toes.

In Western philosophy, it is just as valid a question--and just as intellectually respectable--to ask if science can explain everything as it is to ask if it can explain anything. And this is related to the question--which some might say has an almost theological flavor--of whether scientists are in the business of explaining phenomena or of merely describing them.

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The impact of science on our societies goes beyond the physics and chemistry of it all. Experiment is part of our political imagination, defining the limits of our reach and our ambitions; and, as we saw during the Cold War, it offers a compelling theater in which ideological competition can be enacted. Soyuz and Apollo, Yuri Gagarin and John Glenn: These names are as much a part of our scientific history as they are the stuff of our political memory.

In some cultures, however, science provokes neither admiration nor intellectual hunger but, instead, a fierce political resistance. V.S. Naipaul has written irrefutably of the conflict between the West and the Islamic world as being a conflict over modernity. In essence, the discord is about science and the imagination--our open-ended science and their tightly sealed imagination.

Our Islamist antagonists have an underdeveloped sense of science, chiefly because of their inability to let the (sacred) Word slip out of the mullah's grasp. The empirical will always struggle to exist alongside the religious in lands where godly texts are not open to candid evaluation. How can there be data-testing--and an impartial imagination--if no one asks hard questions, if one is taught that all the answers to everything exist already, in the Book?

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Science--like all providers of awkward truths--can be profoundly disconcerting. A Turkish friend tells me that when Apollo 11 completed its mission in 1969, his Ottoman grandfather--one of the last survivors of an ancien régime--refused to accept that the Americans had set foot on the moon. It was a kind of dawn that he was too tired, and too old, to rise to.

More than other achievements, technological landmarks have the effect of dwarfing all else and heralding a brand new era. Apollo 11, the first such modern landmark after Hiroshima, took place at the height of the race between two systems that competed for a claim to the future. The Titan landing has happened at a moment when the world is again divided, but with one side--alas--on a race to the past.

Mr. Varadarajan is editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal.

Cargo Cult Science
Some remarks on science, pseudoscience, and learning how to not fool yourself.

During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. (Another crazy idea of the Middle Ages is these hats we have on today—which is too loose in my case.) Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas—which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact, that we have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked—or very little of it did.

But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFO's, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I've concluded that it's not a scientific world.

Most people believe so many wonderful things that I decided to investigate why they did. And what has been referred to as my curiosity for investigation has landed me in a difficulty where I found so much junk to talk about that I can't do it in this talk. I'm overwhelmed. First I started out by investigating various ideas of mysticism, and mystic experiences. I went into isolation tanks (they're dark and quiet and you float in Epsom salts) and got many hours of hallucinations, so I know something about that. Then I went to Esalen, which is a hotbed of this kind of thought (it's a wonderful place; you should go visit there). Then I became overwhelmed. I didn't realize how much there was.

I was sitting, for example, in a hot bath and there's another guy and a girl in the bath. He says to the girl, “I'm learning massage and I wonder if I could practice on you?” She says OK, so she gets up on a table and he starts off on her foot—working on her big toe and pushing it around. Then he turns to what is apparently his instructor, and says, “I feel a kind of dent. Is that the pituitary?” And she says, “No, that's not the way it feels.” I say, “You're a hell of a long way from the pituitary, man.” And they both looked at me—I had blown my cover, you see—and she said, “It's reflexology.” So I closed my eyes and appeared to he meditating.

That's just an example of the kind of things that overwhelm me. I also looked into extrasensory perception and PSI phenomena, and the latest craze there was Uri Geller, a man who is supposed to be able to bend keys by rubbing them with his finger. So went to his hotel room, on his invitation, to see a demonstration of both mind reading and bending keys. He didn't do any mind reading that succeeded; nobody can read my mind, I guess. And my boy held a key and Geller rubbed it, and nothing happened. Then he told us it works better under water, and so you can picture all of us standing in the bathroom with the water turned on and the key under it, and him rubbing the key with his finger. Nothing happened. So I was unable to investigate that phenomenon.

But then I began to think, what else is there that we believe? (And I thought then about the witch doctors, and how easy it would have been to check on them by noticing that nothing really worked.) So I found things that even more people believe, such as that we have some knowledge of how to educate. There are big schools of reading methods and mathematics methods, and so forth, but if you notice, you'll see the reading scores keep going down—or hardly going up—in spite of the fact that we continually use these same people to improve the methods. There's a witch doctor remedy that doesn't work. It ought to be looked into: how do they know that their method should work? Another example is how to treat criminals. We obviously have made no progress—lots of theory, but no progress—in decreasing the amount of crime by the method that we use to handle criminals.

Yet these things are said to be scientific. We study them. And I think ordinary people with commonsense ideas are intimidated by this pseudoscience. A teacher who has some good idea of how to teach her children to read is forced by the school system to do it some other way—or is even fooled by the school system into thinking that her method is not necessarily a good one. Or a parent of bad boys, after disciplining them in one way or another, feels guilty for the rest of her life because she didn't do “the right thing,” according to the experts.

So we really ought to look into theories that don't work, and science that isn't science.

I tried to find a principle for discovering more of these kinds of things, and came up with the following system. Any time you find yourself in a conversation at a cocktail party—in which you do not feel uncomfortable that the hostess might come around and say, “Why are you fellows talking shop?”... or that your wife will come around and say, “Why are you flirting again?”—then you can be sure you are talking about something about which nobody knows anything.

Using this method, I discovered a few more topics that I had forgotten—among them the efficacy of various forms of psychotherapy. So I began to investigate through the library, and so on, and I have so much to tell you that I can't do it at all. I will have to limit myself to just a few little things. I'll concentrate on the things more people believe in. Maybe I will give a series of speeches next year on all these subjects. It will take a long time.

I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call Cargo Cult Science. In the South Seas there is a Cargo Cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he's the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.

Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they're missing. But it would he just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea Islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in Cargo Cult Science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school—we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked—to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can—if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong—to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for example, with advertising. Last night I heard that Wesson Oil doesn't soak through food. Well, that's true. It's not dishonest; but the thing I'm talking about is not just a matter of not being dishonest, it's a matter of scientific integrity, which is another level. The fact that should be added to that advertising statement is that no oils soak through food, if operated at a certain temperature. If operated at another temperature, they all will—including Wesson Oil. So it's the implication which has been conveyed, not the fact, which is true, and the difference is what we have to deal with.

We've learned from experience that the truth will out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in Cargo Cult Science.

A great deal of their difficulty is, of course, the difficulty of the subject and the inapplicability of the scientific method to the subject. Nevertheless, it should be remarked that this is not the only difficulty. That's why the planes don't land—but they don't land.

We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off, because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.

Why didn't they discover that the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of—this history—because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong—and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that. We've learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that kind of a disease.

But this long history of learning how to not fool ourselves—of having utter scientific integrity—is, I'm sorry to say, something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you've caught on by osmosis.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist. I'm not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you're not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We'll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, that you ought to do when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.

For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the applications of this work were. “Well,” I said, “there aren't any.” He said, “Yes, but then we won't get support for more research of this kind.” I think that's kind of dishonest. If you're representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you're doing—and if they don't want to support you under those circumstances, then that's their decision.

One example of the principle is this: If you've made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of result. For example—let's take advertising again—suppose some particular cigarette has some particular property, like low nicotine. It's published widely by the company that this means it is good for you—they don't say, for instance, that the tars are a different proportion, or that something else is the matter with the cigarette. In other words, publication probability depends upon the answer. That should not be done.

I say that's also important in giving certain types of government advice. Supposing a senator asked you for advice about whether drilling a hole should be done in his state; and you decide it would he better in some other state. If you don't publish such a result, it seems to me you're not giving scientific advice. You're being used. If your answer happens to come out in the direction the government or the politicians like, they can use it as an argument in their favor; if it comes out the other way, they don't publish it at all. That's not giving scientific advice.

Other kinds of errors are more characteristic of poor science. When I was at Cornell. I often talked to the people in the psychology department. One of the students told me she wanted to do an experiment that went something like this—I don't remember it in detail, but it had been found by others that under certain circumstances, X, rats did something, A. She was curious as to whether, if she changed the circumstances to Y, they would still do, A. So her proposal was to do the experiment under circumstances Y and see if they still did A.

I explained to her that it was necessary first to repeat in her laboratory the experiment of the other person—to do it under condition X to see if she could also get result A—and then change to Y and see if A changed. Then she would know that the real difference was the thing she thought she had under control.

She was very delighted with this new idea, and went to her professor. And his reply was, no, you cannot do that, because the experiment has already been done and you would be wasting time. This was in about 1935 or so, and it seems to have been the general policy then to nut try to repeat psychological experiments, but only to change the conditions and see hat happens.

Nowadays there's a certain danger of the same thing happening, even in the famous field of physics. I was shocked to hear of an experiment done at the big accelerator at the National Accelerator Laboratory, where a person used deuterium. In order to compare his heavy hydrogen results to what might happen to light hydrogen he had to use data from someone else's experiment on light hydrogen, which was done on different apparatus. When asked he said it was because he couldn't get time on the program (because there's so little time and it's such expensive apparatus) to do the experiment with light hydrogen on this apparatus because there wouldn't be any new result. And so the men in charge of programs at NAL are so anxious for new results, in order to get more money to keep the thing going for public relations purposes, they are destroying—possibly—the value of the experiments themselves, which is the whole purpose of the thing. It is often hard for the experimenters there to complete their work as their scientific integrity demands.

All experiments in psychology are not of this type, however. For example, there have been many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes, and so on—with little clear result. But in 1937 a man named Young did a very interesting one. He had a long corridor with doors all along one side where the rats came in, and doors along the other side where the food was. He wanted to see if he could train the rats to go in at the third door down from wherever he started them off. No. The rats went immediately to the door where the food had been the time before.

The question was, how did the rats know, because the corridor was so beautifully built and so uniform, that this was the same door as before? Obviously there was something about the door that was different from the other doors. So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging the textures on the faces of the doors exactly the same. Still the rats could tell. Then he thought maybe the rats were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell. Then he realized the rats might be able to tell by seeing the lights and the arrangement in the laboratory like any commonsense person. So he covered the corridor, and, still the rats could tell.

He finally found that they could tell by the way the floor sounded when they ran over it. And he could only fix that by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one after another of all possible clues and finally was able to fool the rats so that they had to learn to go in the third door. If he relaxed any of his conditions, the rats could tell.

Now, from a scientific standpoint, that is an A-Number-l experiment. That is the experiment that makes rat-running experiments sensible, because it uncovers the clues that the rat is really using—not what you think it's using. And that is the experiment that tells exactly what conditions you have to use in order to be careful and control everything in an experiment with rat-running.

I looked into the subsequent history of this research. The subsequent experiment, and the one after that, never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any of his criteria of putting the corridor on sand, or being very careful. They just went right on running rats in the same old way, and paid no attention to the great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to, because he didn't discover anything about the rats. In fact, he discovered all the things you have to do to discover something about rats. But not paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of Cargo Cult Science.

Another example is the ESP experiments of Mr. Rhine, and other people. As various people have made criticisms—and they themselves have made criticisms of their own experiments—they improve the techniques so that the effects are smaller, and smaller, and smaller until they gradually disappear. All the parapsychologists are looking for some experiment that can be repeated—that you can do again and get the same effect—statistically, even. They run a million rats—no, it's people this time—they do a lot of things and get a certain statistical effect. Next time they try it they don't get it any more. And now you find a man saying that it is an irrelevant demand to expect a repeatable experiment. This is science?

This man also speaks about a new institution, in a talk in which he was resigning as Director of the Institute of Parapsychology. And, in telling people what to do next, he says that one of the things they have to do is be sure they only train students who have shown their ability to get PSI results to an acceptable extent—not to waste their time on those ambitious and interested students who get only chance results. It is very dangerous to have such a policy in teaching—to teach students only how to get certain results, rather than how to do an experiment with scientific integrity.

So I wish to you—I have no more time, so I have just one wish for you—the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom. May I also give you one last bit of advice: Never say that you'll give a talk unless you know clearly what you're going to talk about and more or less what you're going to say.

An adaptation of this address appears in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (W W Norton & Co, 1984).

In 2002 Mike Jay published an article on the surviving cargo cult in Tanna, Vanuatu, Melanesia, including photos. The culture is remarkable and pitiful.

from MichaelCrichton.net, by Michael Crichton:

Why Politicized Science is Dangerous

(Excerpted from State of Fear)

Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.

This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.

I don't mean global warming. I'm talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago.

Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H. G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in states from New York to California.

These efforts had the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the National Research Council. It was said that if Jesus were alive, he would have supported this effort.

All in all, the research, legislation and molding of public opinion surrounding the theory went on for almost half a century. Those who opposed the theory were shouted down and called reactionary, blind to reality, or just plain ignorant. But in hindsight, what is surprising is that so few people objected.

Today, we know that this famous theory that gained so much support was actually pseudoscience. The crisis it claimed was nonexistent. And the actions taken in the name of theory were morally and criminally wrong. Ultimately, they led to the deaths of millions of people.

The theory was eugenics, and its history is so dreadful --- and, to those who were caught up in it, so embarrassing --- that it is now rarely discussed. But it is a story that should be well know to every citizen, so that its horrors are not repeated.

The theory of eugenics postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. The best human beings were not breeding as rapidly as the inferior ones --- the foreigners, immigrants, Jews, degenerates, the unfit, and the "feeble minded." Francis Galton, a respected British scientist, first speculated about this area, but his ideas were taken far beyond anything he intended. They were adopted by science-minded Americans, as well as those who had no interest in science but who were worried about the immigration of inferior races early in the twentieth century --- "dangerous human pests" who represented "the rising tide of imbeciles" and who were polluting the best of the human race.

The eugenicists and the immigrationists joined forces to put a stop to this. The plan was to identify individuals who were feeble-minded --- Jews were agreed to be largely feeble-minded, but so were many foreigners, as well as blacks --- and stop them from breeding by isolation in institutions or by sterilization.

As Margaret Sanger said, "Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty … there is not greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles." She spoke of the burden of caring for "this dead weight of human waste."

Such views were widely shared. H.G. Wells spoke against "ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens." Theodore Roosevelt said that "Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind." Luther Burbank" "Stop permitting criminals and weaklings to reproduce." George Bernard Shaw said that only eugenics could save mankind.

There was overt racism in this movement, exemplified by texts such as "The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy" by American author Lothrop Stoddard. But, at the time, racism was considered an unremarkable aspect of the effort to attain a marvelous goal --- the improvement of humankind in the future. It was this avant-garde notion that attracted the most liberal and progressive minds of a generation. California was one of twenty-nine American states to pass laws allowing sterilization, but it proved the most-forward-looking and enthusiastic --- more sterilizations were carried out in California than anywhere else in America.

Eugenics research was funded by the Carnegie Foundation, and later by the Rockefeller Foundation. The latter was so enthusiastic that even after the center of the eugenics effort moved to Germany, and involved the gassing of individuals from mental institutions, the Rockefeller Foundation continued to finance German researchers at a very high level. (The foundation was quiet about it, but they were still funding research in 1939, only months before the onset of World War II.)

Since the 1920s, American eugenicists had been jealous because the Germans had taken leadership of the movement away from them. The Germans were admirably progressive. They set up ordinary-looking houses where "mental defectives" were brought and interviewed one at a time, before being led into a back room, which was, in fact, a gas chamber. There, they were gassed with carbon monoxide, and their bodies disposed of in a crematorium located on the property.

Eventually, this program was expanded into a vast network of concentration camps located near railroad lines, enabling the efficient transport and of killing ten million undesirables.

After World War II, nobody was a eugenicist, and nobody had ever been a eugenicist. Biographers of the celebrated and the powerful did not dwell on the attractions of this philosophy to their subjects, and sometimes did not mention it at all. Eugenics ceased to be a subject for college classrooms, although some argue that its ideas continue to have currency in disguised form.

But in retrospect, three points stand out. First, despite the construction of Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory, despite the efforts of universities and the pleadings of lawyers, there was no scientific basis for eugenics. In fact, nobody at that time knew what a gene really was. The movement was able to proceed because it employed vague terms never rigorously defined. "Feeble-mindedness" could mean anything from poverty to illiteracy to epilepsy. Similarly, there was no clear definition of "degenerate" or "unfit."

Second, the eugenics movement was really a social program masquerading as a scientific one. What drove it was concern about immigration and racism and undesirable people moving into one's neighborhood or country. Once again, vague terminology helped conceal what was really going on.

Third, and most distressing, the scientific establishment in both the United States and Germany did not mount any sustained protest. Quite the contrary. In Germany scientists quickly fell into line with the program. Modern German researchers have gone back to review Nazi documents from the 1930s. They expected to find directives telling scientists what research should be done. But none were necessary. In the words of Ute Deichman, "Scientists, including those who were not members of the [Nazi] party, helped to get funding for their work through their modified behavior and direct cooperation with the state." Deichman speaks of the "active role of scientists themselves in regard to Nazi race policy … where [research] was aimed at confirming the racial doctrine … no external pressure can be documented." German scientists adjusted their research interests to the new policies. And those few who did not adjust disappeared.

A second example of politicized science is quite different in character, but it exemplifies the hazard of government ideology controlling the work of science, and of uncritical media promoting false concepts. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a self-promoting peasant who, it was said, "solved the problem of fertilizing the fields without fertilizers and minerals." In 1928 he claimed to have invented a procedure called vernalization, by which seeds were moistened and chilled to enhance the later growth of crops.

Lysenko's methods never faced a rigorous test, but his claim that his treated seeds passed on their characteristics to the next generation represented a revival of Lamarckian ideas at a time when the rest of the world was embracing Mendelian genetics. Josef Stalin was drawn to Lamarckian ideas, which implied a future unbounded by hereditary constraints; he also wanted improved agricultural production. Lysenko promised both, and became the darling of a Soviet media that was on the lookout for stories about clever peasants who had developed revolutionary procedures.

Lysenko was portrayed as a genius, and he milked his celebrity for all it was worth. He was especially skillful at denouncing this opponents. He used questionnaires from farmers to prove that vernalization increased crop yields, and thus avoided any direct tests. Carried on a wave of state-sponsored enthusiasm, his rise was rapid. By 1937, he was a member of the Supreme Soviet.

By then, Lysenko and his theories dominated Russian biology. The result was famines that killed millions, and purges that sent hundreds of dissenting Soviet scientists to the gulags or the firing squads. Lysenko was aggressive in attacking genetics, which was finally banned as "bourgeois pseudoscience" in 1948. There was never any basis for Lysenko's ideas, yet he controlled Soviet research for thirty years. Lysenkoism ended in the 1960s, but Russian biology still has not entirely recovered from that era.

Now we are engaged in a great new theory that once again has drawn the support of politicians, scientists, and celebrities around the world. Once again, the theory is promoted by major foundations. Once again, the research is carried out at prestigious universities. Once again, legislation is passed and social programs are urged in its name. Once again, critics are few and harshly dealt with.

Once again, the measures being urged have little basis in fact or science. Once again, groups with other agendas are hiding behind a movement that appears high-minded. Once again, claims of moral superiority are used to justify extreme actions. Once again, the fact that some people are hurt is shrugged off because an abstract cause is said to be greater than any human consequences. Once again, vague terms like sustainability and generational justice --- terms that have no agreed definition --- are employed in the service of a new crisis.

I am not arguing that global warming is the same as eugenics. But the similarities are not superficial. And I do claim that open and frank discussion of the data, and of the issues, is being suppressed. Leading scientific journals have taken strong editorial positions of the side of global warming, which, I argue, they have no business doing. Under the circumstances, any scientist who has doubts understands clearly that they will be wise to mute their expression.

One proof of this suppression is the fact that so many of the outspoken critics of global warming are retired professors. These individuals are not longer seeking grants, and no longer have to face colleagues whose grant applications and career advancement may be jeopardized by their criticisms.

In science, the old men are usually wrong. But in politics, the old men are wise, counsel caution, and in the end are often right.

The past history of human belief is a cautionary tale. We have killed thousands of our fellow human beings because we believed they had signed a contract with the devil, and had become witches. We still kill more than a thousand people each year for witchcraft. In my view, there is only one hope for humankind to emerge from what Carl Sagan called "the demon-haunted world" of our past. That hope is science.

But as Alston Chase put it, "when the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power."

That is the danger we now face. And this is why the intermixing of science and politics is a bad combination, with a bad history. We must remember the history, and be certain that what we present to the world as knowledge is disinterested and honest.

from the Associates Press via ap.google.com, 2007-Oct-25, by Malcolm Ritter:

Controversial DNA Scientist Retires

NEW YORK — James Watson, famous for DNA research but widely condemned for recent comments about intelligence levels among blacks, retired Thursday from his post at a prestigious research institution.

Watson, 79, and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York announced his departure a week after the lab suspended him. He was chancellor of the institution, and his retirement took effect immediately.

Watson shared a Nobel Prize with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins in 1962 for co-discovering the structure of the DNA molecule. He is one of America's most prominent scientists.

In his statement Thursday, Watson said that because of his age, his retirement was "more than overdue. The circumstances in which this transfer is occurring, however, are not those which I could ever have anticipated or desired."

Watson, who has a long history of making provocative statements, ran into trouble last week for remarks he made in the Sunday Times Magazine of London. A profile quoted him as saying that he's "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really."

He said that while he hopes everyone is equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true." He also said people should not be discriminated against because of their color, adding that "there are many people of color who are very talented."

Watson later apologized. But by then, London's Science Museum had canceled a sold-out lecture Watson was to give there, and London's mayor had branded the comments "racist propaganda."

In the United States, the Federation of American Scientists said Watson was promoting "personal prejudices that are racist, vicious and unsupported by science." And the Cold Spring Harbor lab said its board and administration "vehemently disagree with these statements and are bewildered and saddened if he indeed made such comments."

The lab suspended Watson's administrative duties last Thursday.

Watson had served at the lab for nearly 40 years, having been named director in 1968. He was its president from 1994 to 2003.

from http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2005/12/academic-freedom-in-denmark.php, by Helmuth Nyborg:

Dear Colleague. December 3rd 2005

At the 2001 meeting of the International Society for Intelligence Research (ISIR), I reported a 4 IQ point advantage for males in intelligence. Upon my return to Denmark I was interviewed by a journalist, and a veritable media storm ensued. The director of my institute publicly stated that he would personally look into the situation. He also said that I made a fool of myself and my institute. Consequently, a "Committee for Proper Research" reprimanded me for what they saw as "premature publication" - i.e. reporting in the media before a full publication in a peer-reviewed journal was at hand. I was called to several meetings with the Dean and the President of the University. The paper was eventually published (See Nyborg, H. (2005) Sex-related differences in general intelligence g, brain size, and social status. Personality and Individual Differences, 39, 497-509; available online at www. sciencedirect.com.)

In 2004 the director wrote to the dean, saying that he could not evaluate my research contribution in his yearly report. In April 2005 he halted my ongoing 30 year longitudinal reseach project by confiscating the research protocols and informing the Dean he would setup a committee to re-examine my calculations and the method (hierarchical factor analysis) used. As of december 3rd. 2005, I have not been notified who is on the committee.

I am asking if you will write me a letter of support. If so, please address it "To Whom it may Concern," use official paper with you professional affiliation stated, and send it to me at [helmuthnyborg @ msn.com -R] or to my private address: Adslev Skovvej 2, DK-8362, Hoerning, Denmark. Please feel free to comment on any aspect of the academic freedom and scholarship issues raised that you find relevant.

I will then assemble the letters and use them in a defence of my academic freedom.

from the Evolutionary Psychology list:

Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 21:47:27 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
From: Irwin Silverman <isilv@yorku.ca>
Subject: Re: Academic Persecution in Denmark

This should help resolve the recent debate on this list as to whether pressures for political correctness in academe were specific to North America (albeit sadly).

Helmuth Nyborg's contributions in the area of hormones and sex-related differences in spatial cognition are legend. He is an inspired theoretician and a meticulous researcher. I will certainly send a letter.

Irwin Silverman, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Psychology
York University
4700 Keele Street
Toronto ON M3J 1P3
Canada

The following article could fit any number of places — the racism chapter, for example — but I'm including it here because it dovetails so neatly with the above items. Obviously it is an example of ideology trumping promotion of the legitimate interests of science. Also note the conspicuous omission of Asians from the writer's pseudo-analysis. Asians are a minority that is immensely overrepresented (relative to demographic proportion in the population at large) in science. There is also, of course, no mention of the Jews, who are a much smaller minority, and much more overrepresented than are Asians. This article betrays science.

from Nature Medicine, 2007-May (V13N5), p.513:

Minority report

If American science is to meet the needs of all of its citizens, its scientists must reflect the diversity of the country's population.

The typical American lab is peopled almost entirely with white scientists. That's not reflective of society at large. A shake-up of the way minorities are recruited, trained and promoted could give minority representation in science the boost it so badly needs.

In 2000, the US population was 75% white, 12% black and 12% Hispanic. But the proportion of minorities that completed biology PhDs between 1993 and 2002 did not match these numbers: only 2.6% of new PhDs were black and only 3.7% were Hispanic. The proportion of tenure-track biology faculty in 2002 was even more disparate: 89% white, 1% black and 2% Hispanic.

These disturbing statistics tell only part of the story. According to first-person accounts, because minorities are often the only one of their ethnicity in their lab or department—perhaps even in their institution—they often feel isolated from their co-workers. Because they lack colleagues from their own ethnic group, they may feel unable to effect institutional changes to address the unique challenges they face.

It is clear that change is necessary. According to the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology, in 2005 salaries for minority biology researchers were as low as 80% of the salaries of their non-minority counterparts. Only when there is full disclosure of all academic salaries will this inequality begin to disappear.

Correcting salary disparities is only the first step. Funding agencies, professional societies and universities must work harder to attract and retain minority scientists. They must ensure that minorities have committed mentors to help them through the intricacies of grant applications, job interviews and salary negotiations. Professional societies should make every effort to enhance the participation of minority professors so that their visibility motivates the next generation of scientists.

Minorities can also find inspiration in the changing status of women scientists, whose presence in academia has risen steadily over the last 20 years. Programs that are intended to assist female scientists, such as the ADVANCE fellowship from the US National Science Foundation (NSF), have helped retain women who otherwise might have left science. Programs tailored for minorities may be similarly effective in attracting and retaining them.

Minority-targeted funding is available at all levels of the academic ladder. Some universities provide internal funding for minority student research. The US National Institutes of Health award minority fellowships: for example, the National Institute on Aging plans to award $250,000–300,000 per year for up to 8 minority doctoral fellowships. The NSF has committed $3 million for 36 minority postdoctoral fellowships and 6 'starter' grants to initiate minority-led independent research programs. But this funding will only be in place if the money remains available in the NSF budget. Scientists must lobby Congress so that funding for these programs is not just maintained, but increased.

Are these fellowships enough? Have minority-targeted recruitment efforts been effective at attracting underrepresented groups? According to a study by the US National Academies' Research Council, the outcome of these programs is unclear because they lack a built-in method for assessing their effectiveness.

However, anecdotal evidence from the study warns that these programs are falling short of their goal. For example, minority postdoctoral trainees are more likely to embark on another postdoctoral position, while non-minorities are more likely to apply for independent academic professorships. And many more undergraduate minorities in scientific training programs reported negative experiences with their mentor, with some being given administrative tasks instead of lab work. Universities must correct these inequalities so that underrepresented groups are treated more fairly during their training.

Many resources can empower underrepresented groups, and universities should ensure their trainees utilize these resources. For example, professional societies such as the NIH Black Scientists Association give minorities a voice and provide mentoring to scientists of all levels. If minority scientists do not have role models at their local institution, Internet communities such as justgarciahill.org, which serves all underrepresented groups, can provide inspiration and guidance.

Minority representation in science will not increase overnight. But the need for diversity at the bench and in the highest echelons of science cannot wait another generation. Investments must be made now to recruit and retain minority scientists so that their representation increases to reflect the importance of diverse voices in scientific research.

from Scientific American, 2004-Oct, by Michael Shermer:

The Myth Is the Message
Yet another discovery of the lost continent of Atlantis shows why science and myth make uneasy bedfellows

Myths are stories that express meaning, morality or motivation. Whether they are true or not is irrelevant. But because we live in an age of science, we have a preoccupation with corroborating our myths.

Consider the so-called Lost Continent of Atlantis, a mythic place that has been "found" in so many places around the planet that one wouldn't think there was anywhere left to look. Think again. On June 6 the BBC released a story about satellite images locating Atlantis in, of all places, the south of Spain (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3766863.stm). The story quoted Rainer Kühne of the University of Dortmund in Germany as saying, "Plato wrote of an island of five stades (925 m) diameter that was surrounded by several circular structures--concentric rings--some consisting of Earth and the others of water. We have in the photos concentric rings just as Plato described."

Kühne reported his findings in the online edition of the journal Antiquity, claiming to have identified two rectangular structures surrounded by concentric rings near the city of Cádiz, Spain. He suggests that the structures match the description in Plato's dialogue Critias of the silver and golden temples devoted to the Greek god Poseidon and his mortal lover Cleito and that the high mountains of Atlantis are actually those of the Sierra Morena and Sierra Nevada. "Plato also wrote that Atlantis is rich in copper and other metals," he adds. "Copper is found in abundance in the mines of the Sierra Morena."

Atlantis also has been "found" in the Mediterranean, the Canaries, the Azores, the Caribbean, Tunisia, West Africa, Sweden, Iceland and even South America. But what if there is nothing to find? What if Plato made up the story for mythic purposes? He did. Atlantis is a tale about what happens to a civilization when it becomes combative and corrupt. Plato's purpose was to warn his fellow Athenians to pull back from the precipice created by war and wealth.

In a second Plato dialogue, Timaeus, Critias explains that Egyptian priests told the Greek wise man Solon that his ancestors once defeated a mighty empire located just beyond the "Pillars of Hercules" (usually identified by Atlantologists as the Strait of Gibraltar), after which "there were violent earthquakes and in a single day and night all sank into the earth and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared into the depths of the sea." Critias describes the city as a series of circular canals lined with colorful palaces adorned in gold. Poseidon resided in a silver temple with an ivory roof, and a racecourse was built between the canals. Atlantean wealth afforded a military industrial complex of 10,000 chariots, 24,000 ships, 60,000 officers, 120,000 hoplites, 240,000 cavalry, and 600,000 archers and javelin throwers. (Your myth-detection alarm should be going off about now.) Corrupted by excessive belligerence and avarice, Zeus called forth the other gods to his home, "and when he had gathered them there he said...." The sentence ends there. Plato had made his point.

The fodder for Plato's imagination came from his experiences growing up at the terminus of Greece's golden age, brought about, in part, by the costly wars against the Spartans and Carthaginians. He visited cities such as Syracuse, which featured numerous Atlantean-like temples, and Carthage, whose circular harbor was controlled from a central island. Earthquakes were common: when he was 55, one leveled the city of Helice, only 40 miles from Athens, and, most tellingly, the year before he was born an earthquake flattened a military outpost on the small island of Atalantë

Plato wove historical fact into literary myth. As he wrote of his parables: "We may liken the false to the true for the purpose of moral instruction." The myth is the message.

Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic (www.skeptic.com) and author of The Science of Good and Evil.

from the Wall Street Journal via OpinionJournal.com, 2006-Apr-21, by Kevin Shapiro:

Misplaced Sympathies
Darwin isn't the enemy. Conservatives do no service to their cause by treating him as one.

Two weeks ago, a team of paleontologists announced the discovery of an extinct animal on an island in arctic Canada. The island is now a frozen waste, but in the Paleozoic Era it was literally crawling with life. The fossil find, dubbed Tiktaalik roseae, has been hailed as the evolutionary missing link between bony fish and land-dwelling vertebrates.

Culture-war observers might note that Tiktaalik bears a weird resemblance to the Darwin fish--the pictogram of a two-legged creature that parodies the ichthus symbol used by devout Christians. The coincidence is particularly poignant, given that Tiktaalik has re-emerged at a dismal moment for Christian fundamentalists and other opponents of evolutionary biology.

After years of unsuccessful attempts to have creationism recognized in public schools as a "scientific" alternative to the theory of evolution by natural selection, anti-Darwinists pinned their hopes on intelligent-design theory (ID), which tries to argue that living things are too complex to be products of random mutations. But this movement lost much steam in December, after a judge in Pennsylvania ruled that, contrary to the Dover, Pa., school board, ID was not science.

---

Since then, even erstwhile backers of ID have scrambled to distance themselves from it. Sen. Rick Santorum, who had never been shy about his support for the Dover board, announced that he was "not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom." The Ohio Board of Education voted in February to eliminate lesson plans calling for a critique of evolution; in the last few months, bills to introduce ID into schools in Indiana, Mississippi and Utah have failed.

If the collapse of ID represents a defeat for the Religious Right, it has been something of a relief for many nonreligious conservatives, who have wanted nothing more than for the issue to go away. Charles Krauthammer, for instance, complained that the Dover episode was "anachronistic," "retrograde" and "a national embarrassment."

But the relationship of the conservative movement to evolution has never been simple. Religious conservatives have opposed the entrenchment of Darwinism in biology curricula; other conservatives, including mainline Christians, have embraced it. Curiously, the neoconservatives--a term that refers to the rightward shift of former leftists, many of them Jewish--have often felt discomfort with Darwinism, although not on religious grounds.

Their skepticism is epitomized by Gertrude Himmelfarb and her husband, Irving Kristol, who have tilted at natural selection for decades. Ms. Himmelfarb's 1959 book "Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution" dwelt on the intellectual failings of the theory's initial incarnation in the 1860s. Mr. Kristol, for his part, seems to believe that little progress has been made since then, having declared in 1990 that natural selection "tells us nothing credible about the origin of species." In 1996 Commentary published "The Deniable Darwin," the first of several attacks on natural selection by the mathematician David Berlinski.

For Christian fundamentalists, the sympathy of this group of thinkers has been a boon, lending credence to the idea that critiques of natural selection are more than just a strategy to promote creationism. Perhaps so, but how reliable are the critiques? Proponents of intelligent design, like the mathematician William Dembski, argue that we don't understand the origins of various biological systems and never will, because they can't be broken down into smaller parts that could be explained by natural selection. Therefore, we should give up on Darwin and accept the existence of a designer. Alas, this kind of argumentum ad ignorantium flies in the face of an ever-increasing amount of evidence from molecular biology, and hardly measures up to the neoconseratives' rigorous intellectual standards.

But part of the neoconservative position has to do less with particular intellectual claims than with the special sensitivities of a broadly conservative coalition. The writer David Frum has said that, though he himself believes in evolution, he doesn't "believe that public schools should embark on teaching anything that offends Christian principle." And indeed, Christian principle helps to arm the traditionalist side of the culture war, a side that nonreligious and non-Christian conservatives very much support. The bioethicist Leon Kass has echoed the worry that "Western moral teaching, so closely tied to Scripture, is also in peril if any major part of Scripture can be shown to be false."

The idea has antecedents stretching back to the Victorian era. Benjamin Disraeli summed up the problem memorably: Given the choice between viewing man as an ape or an angel, he was "on the side of the angels." Today, neoconservatives see the side of religious conservatives as the side of the angels. The two groups share a profound distaste for materialism, a philosophy of knowledge that leaves no room for phenomena--like God, the human soul and transcendent morality--that can't be explained by an appeal to physical principles.

The distaste is understandable. Materialism in science is one thing; the scientific method is by definition materialistic, admirably so. But materialism can also be a worldview, one that has lately not been content to co-exist with other belief systems. The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, for example, has compared faith to a "virus" that enfeebles the mind. This kind of notion is no longer science--it's scientism, and from the neoconservative perspective it lies at the root of various evils based on similarly totalizing systems of thought, like communism.

It was a preoccupation with defeating materialism that inspired many of Darwin's contemporary detractors. Richard Owen, a 19th-century English anatomist, privately conceded that "The Origin of Species" was the best explanation "ever published of the manner of formation of species"--but because he thought that natural selection denied the possibility of human uniqueness, he savaged the book in public. Ms. Himmelfarb made a related argument in a recent review of two new editions of Darwin's works, decrying the "mechanistic and reductivist interpretation of all human life, including its emotional and intellectual dimensions, in the name of Darwinism."

---

But there is a problem here. At a time when the life sciences are advancing at an astonishing pace, it is simply too late to be taking up Owen's mantle. There is no longer any serious dispute about the evidence for natural selection; it seems that every gap in our current explanatory model has a Tiktaalik waiting to fill it, whether it comes from the Canadian tundra or a DNA microarray. The logic of Darwin's theory has also undeniably shed light on some of the puzzles of human psychology. Of course this doesn't mean that natural selection explains everything about the human condition, or that we shouldn't be wary of attempts to use it as a cudgel against religion.

The late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould proposed that science and religion be considered "non-overlapping magisteria," each profiting from dialogue with the other. Many scientists have rejected this notion, arguing that science has nothing to gain from accommodating religion. Likewise, religious fundamentalists insist that divine truth supersedes empirical discovery.

Within the confines of the laboratory and the sanctuary, both attitudes might be reasonable. For society as a whole, though, they're not constructive. If Gould's idea were to be taken more seriously, the fear of Darwin and natural selection might go the way of Tiktaalik, without harming society thereby.

Mr. Shapiro is a researcher in neuroscience at Harvard.

from CBS News, 2005-Oct-23:

Poll: Majority Reject Evolution

NEW YORK -- Most Americans do not accept the theory of evolution. Instead, 51 percent of Americans say God created humans in their present form, and another three in 10 say that while humans evolved, God guided the process. Just 15 percent say humans evolved, and that God was not involved.

These views are similar to what they were in November 2004 shortly after the presidential election.

Views on Evolution/Creationism

Now
God created humans in present form

51%

Humans evolved, God guided the process

30%

Humans evolved, God did not guide process

15%

Nov. 2004
God created humans in present form

55%

Humans evolved, God guided the process

27%

Humans evolved, God did not guide process

13%

This question on the origin of human beings, asked both this month and in November 2004, offered the public three alternatives: 1. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process; 2. Human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, but God guided this process; or 3. God created human beings in their present form.

The results were not much different between the answers to that question and those given when a specific timeline was included in the final alternative: God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years.

Americans most likely to believe in only evolution are liberals (36 percent), those who rarely or never attend religious services (25 percent), and those with a college degree or higher (24 percent).

White evangelicals (77 percent), weekly churchgoers (74 percent) and conservatives (64 percent), are mostly likely to say God created humans in their present form.

Still, most Americans think it is possible to believe in both God and evolution. Sixty-seven percent say this is possible, while 29 percent disagree. Most demographic groups say it is possible to believe in both God and evolution, but just over half of white evangelical Christians say it is not possible.

Is it Possible to Believe in Both God and Evolution?

Yes

67%

No

29%

Opinions on this question are tied to one's views on the origin of human beings. Those who believe in evolution, whether guided by God or not, overwhelmingly think it is possible to believe in both God and evolution ? 90 percent say this. However, people who believe God created humans in their present form are more divided: 48 percent think it possible to believe in both God and evolution, but the same number disagrees.

Possible to Believe in Both God and Evolution?

Believe in evolution
Yes

90%

No

8%

Believe God created humans
Yes

48%

No

48%

For detailed information on how CBS News conducts public opinion surveys, click here.

This poll was conducted among a nationwide random sample of 808 adults, interviewed by telephone October 3-5, 2005. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus four percentage points.

from the Telegraph of London, 2005-Nov-20, by Nicholas Wapshott:

The Darwin exhibition frightening off corporate sponsors

New York -- An exhibition celebrating the life of Charles Darwin has failed to find a corporate sponsor because American companies are anxious not to take sides in the heated debate between scientists and fundamentalist Christians over the theory of evolution.

The entire $3 million (£1.7 million) cost of Darwin, which opened at the American Museum of Natural History in New York yesterday, is instead being borne by wealthy individuals and private charitable donations.

The failure of American companies to back what until recently would have been considered a mainstream educational exhibition reflects the growing influence of fundamentalist Christians, who are among President George W Bush's most vocal supporters, over all walks of life in the United States.

While the Darwin exhibition has been unable to find a business backer - unlike previous exhibitions at the museum - the Creationist Museum near Cincinatti, Ohio, which takes literally the Bible's account of creation, has recently raised $7 million in donations.

The outbreak of corporate cold feet has shocked New York's intellectuals. "It is a disgrace that large companies should shy away from such an important scientific exhibition," said a trustee of another prominent museum in the city, who was told of the exhibition's funding problem by a trustee of the AMNH.

"They tried to find corporate sponsors, but everyone backed off."

Creationism is increasingly widely backed in America. A CBS News poll last month found that 51 per cent of Americans reject the theory of evolution, believing instead that God created humans in their present form. Another poll in August found that 38 per cent of Americans think that creationism should be taught in schools, instead of evolution.

In Dover, Pennsylvania, last week, a jury began considering a case brought by parents against a school board that insisted that "intelligent design," which argues that a supernatural force populated the earth, be taught alongside evolution in science classes.

The AMNH is coy about its failure to find corporate money to mount the exhibition, which will tour the US before moving to London's Natural History Museum in 2009 to mark the bicentenary of Darwin's birth.

Asked which companies had refused to give money, Gary Zarr, the museum's marketing director, said he would have to ask those concerned before he could identify them.

Steve Reichl, a press officer for the AMNH, said a list of forthcoming exhibitions was sent to potential sponsors and none wanted to back the Darwin exhibition. He declined to reveal which companies, or how many, had been approached.

The Bank of America previously sponsored a similar exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci and the financial services provider TIAA-CREF funded an Albert Einstein show.

A prominent Metropolitan Museum donor said: "You can understand why the Museum of Natural History might not want to admit such a thing.

"They are concerned about finding corporate funding for exhibitions in the future."

The museum will have to depend more heavily upon the profits of its Darwin-related merchandise to finance the cost of staging the exhibition, including a 12-inch Darwin doll, Darwin finger puppets and, for a $950, a replica of the vessel Beagle, made in China and assembled in Vietnam.

Niles Eldredge, the exhibition's curator, confirmed that the exhibition was intended to redress the balance in the battle between scientists and creationist Christians being fought across the country.

"This is for the schoolchildren of America," he said. "This is the evidence of evolution."

from Time Magazine, 2005-Aug-1, by Charles Krauthammer:

Let's Have No More Monkey Trials
To teach faith as science is to undermine both

The half-century campaign to eradicate any vestige of religion from public life has run its course. The backlash from a nation fed up with the A.C.L.U. kicking crèches out of municipal Christmas displays has created a new balance. State-supported universities may subsidize the activities of student religious groups. Monuments inscribed with the Ten Commandments are permitted on government grounds. The Federal Government is engaged in a major antipoverty initiative that gives money to churches. Religion is back out of the closet.

But nothing could do more to undermine this most salutary restoration than the new and gratuitous attempts to invade science, and most particularly evolution, with religion. Have we learned nothing? In Kansas, conservative school-board members are attempting to rewrite statewide standards for teaching evolution to make sure that creationism's modern stepchild, intelligent design, infiltrates the curriculum. Similar anti-Darwinian mandates are already in place in Ohio and are being fought over in 20 states. And then, as if to second the evangelical push for this tarted-up version of creationism, out of the blue appears a declaration from Christoph Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna, a man very close to the Pope, asserting that the supposed acceptance of evolution by John Paul II is mistaken. In fact, he says, the Roman Catholic Church rejects "neo-Darwinism" with the declaration that an "unguided evolutionary process--one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence--simply cannot exist."

Cannot? On what scientific evidence? Evolution is one of the most powerful and elegant theories in all of human science and the bedrock of all modern biology. Schönborn's proclamation that it cannot exist unguided--that it is driven by an intelligent designer pushing and pulling and planning and shaping the process along the way--is a perfectly legitimate statement of faith. If he and the Evangelicals just stopped there and asked that intelligent design be included in a religion curriculum, I would support them. The scandal is to teach this as science--to pretend, as does Schönborn, that his statement of faith is a defense of science. "The Catholic Church," he says, "will again defend human reason" against "scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of 'chance and necessity,'" which "are not scientific at all." Well, if you believe that science is reason and that reason begins with recognizing the existence of an immanent providence, then this is science. But, of course, it is not. This is faith disguised as science. Science begins not with first principles but with observation and experimentation.

In this slippery slide from "reason" to science, Schönborn is a direct descendant of the early 17th century Dutch clergyman and astronomer David Fabricius, who could not accept Johannes Kepler's discovery of elliptical planetary orbits. Why? Because the circle is so pure and perfect that reason must reject anything less. "With your ellipse," Fabricius wrote Kepler, "you abolish the circularity and uniformity of the motions, which appears to me increasingly absurd the more profoundly I think about it." No matter that, using Tycho Brahe's most exhaustive astronomical observations in history, Kepler had empirically demonstrated that the planets orbit elliptically.

This conflict between faith and science had mercifully abated over the past four centuries as each grew to permit the other its own independent sphere. What we are witnessing now is a frontier violation by the forces of religion. This new attack claims that because there are gaps in evolution, they therefore must be filled by a divine intelligent designer.

How many times do we have to rerun the Scopes "monkey trial"? There are gaps in science everywhere. Are we to fill them all with divinity? There were gaps in Newton's universe. They were ultimately filled by Einstein's revisions. There are gaps in Einstein's universe, great chasms between it and quantum theory. Perhaps they are filled by God. Perhaps not. But it is certainly not science to merely declare it so.

To teach faith as science is to undermine the very idea of science, which is the acquisition of new knowledge through hypothesis, experimentation and evidence. To teach it as science is to encourage the supercilious caricature of America as a nation in the thrall of religious authority. To teach it as science is to discredit the welcome recent advances in permitting the public expression of religion. Faith can and should be proclaimed from every mountaintop and city square. But it has no place in science class. To impose it on the teaching of evolution is not just to invite ridicule but to earn it.

from San Jose Mercury News, 2005-Dec-22, by an anonymous editorial writer:

A forceful rejection of `intelligent design'
Evolution Consensus Prevails in Ruling to Keep Religion Out of Science Class

From his Pennsylvania courtroom, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III did a great service to the nation.

Not only did Jones rule that it's unconstitutional for the Dover, Pa., public schools to present ``intelligent design'' as an alternative to evolution in biology classes because it merely advances a ``particular version of Christianity.'' But in a painstakingly supported and often scathing 139-page opinion Tuesday, he also debunked many of the myths surrounding the so-called debate over evolution.

In addition to legal analysis, the opinion is part tutorial on what constitutes science, part lesson on the creationism-as-science movement. Any other school district interested in why intelligent design is an inappropriate topic for science classes will find Jones' opinion to be a treasure trove of plain-spoken, largely undisputed and compelling facts.

Lest anyone believe Jones is an activist judge with a liberal bent, consider this: He was appointed by George W. Bush.

Based on evidence gathered at trial -- much of it provided by proponents of intelligent design -- Jones showed that intelligent design ``is a religious view, a mere relabeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory.'' That's true starting with the origins of the movement down to the ``Of Pandas and People'' textbook that Dover school officials promoted as an alternative to evolution texts. The textbook's authors, it turns out, removed the word ``creationism'' from an early draft and replaced it with ``intelligent design'' after the U.S. Supreme Court barred the teaching of creationism in public schools in 1987.

Among the teachable nuggets you'll find in the decision is the fact that science is based on observable natural phenomena; intelligent design requires belief in supernatural causes -- that's the realm of religion, not science. You'll also find that while there are some holes in Darwin's theory of evolution, there is no real debate in the scientific community about its validity. If intelligent design has any place in public schools, it is in comparative-religion or social-studies classes.

It may be naive to hope Jones' ruling will settle the matter. After all, those who have fanned the flames of this debate have already caused plenty of damage. According to a recent poll, 44.2 percent of Americans believe that intelligent design is supported by an overwhelming body of scientific evidence; only a slightly larger percentage believe the same about evolution.

We can thank President Bush, who said both intelligent design and evolution should be taught in schools, for further helping to delude the public. The mainstream media, by bending over backward to be fair to both sides of the ``debate,'' deserve a share of the blame. The debate exists in the public sphere. In the scientific community, there is no debate.

For America to succeed in an increasingly competitive world, it must have the world's best-educated workforce and the best scientists. Those seeking to hijack the education of our children to impose their religious views under the guise of teaching science are putting those children at a disadvantage and the success of the nation at risk.

from the Boston Globe, 2005-Oct-23, by Peter Dizikes:

Missing links

Proponents of Intelligent Design have exploited a vexing question at the heart of Darwin's theory. Now, say two leading biologists, scientists can - and must - answer back.

IN A FEDERAL courtroom last week in Harrisburg, Pa., site of the ongoing trial to decide whether ninth-grade biology students in Dover should be required to hear about Intelligent Design, Michael Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, took the stand. Behe is the originator and main proponent of the term ''irreducible complexity," a pillar of Intelligent Design, which refers to the notion that certain organic structures are too intricate to have evolved on their own.

Outlining his ideas for the court, Behe asserted that the flagellum of bacteria-the tail they use to swim, which Behe compares to an outboard motor-are just such inexplicable structures. ''The parts are ordered for a purpose and therefore speak to design," said Behe.

Virtually all biologists dismiss Behe's claims-indeed, most see Intelligent Design as a claim that research on complex structures is not possible, a position they reject. This is one reason biologists, to the dismay of some of evolution's most vocal supporters, have often ignored the Intelligent Design movement altogether.

There are clear signs, however, that the looming presence of Intelligent Design has started having a discernible impact on evolutionary scientists. While it may not be driving their research, or dampening their sometimes boisterous internal debates, the public controversy may be forcing biologists of all kinds-and not just evolutionary biologists-to take a wide-angled view of their field, to examine how their current research contributes to evolutionary theory, and to consider how best to present evolution in the public sphere.

''We shouldn't dismiss questions, even if some are ill-intentioned," says Marc Kirschner, founding chair of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. ''But at the same time, we need to realize that science has real answers to these questions."

Far from being restricted to the fossil record, as creationists often imply, research in the last 25 years from molecular biology, genetics, cell biology, and embryology has added greatly to the existing evidence for evolution. ''There are all sorts of demonstrations of evolution going on all the time," notes John Gerhart, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Even so, Kirschner and Gerhart believe, some biologists and many science-literate general readers-not to mention a larger slice of the public-are unaware of the advances in the field. If Behe, for one, can question evolution, Kirschner and Gerhart contend, biologists have an increasing responsibility not only to explain evolution to the public, but to be fully aware of the evolutionary implications of their own work.

...

As it happens, Kirschner and Gerhart give several of these advances in evolutionary biology a broad public airing as coauthors of a new book, ''The Plausibility of Life," published this week by Yale University Press. In it, they discuss the origins of complicated biological features-from the bat's wing to the human eye-and present their theory of ''facilitated variation," which they believe addresses a major question in evolution: How can small genetic changes develop into complex, useful body parts? In a sign of the times, they also rebut claims of irreducible complexity made by Intelligent Design advocates.

In so doing, Kirschner and Gerhart say, they are tackling an issue evolutionists have often left unexamined. ''The question of how variation could be produced has been there from the beginning," says Gerhart, referring to the publication of Charles Darwin's ''On the Origin of Species" in 1859. By the 1940s, the so-called ''Modern Synthesis" of evolutionary theory powerfully buttressed Darwin's insights on natural selection with the post-Darwinian discoveries about the mechanisms of heredity. But, the authors write, the Modern Synthesis was ''silent" about the way organisms generated variation. It is not coincidental, they add, that because ''variation is the least understood of the theoretical underpinnings of evolutionary theory," it thus ''is currently the favorite target" of creationists.

Kirschner and Gerhart say this situation has now changed. Organisms, they assert, have a far greater capacity to generate rapid and complex variations than even biologists had previously supposed. Moreover, from the genetic level up to our visible features, organisms have a modular structure. In this sense, complex features are less like singularly intricate structures than a collection of building blocks.

Significantly, Kirschner and Gerhart write, while random genetic mutations in our DNA code cause variations, these mutations do not create random effects (a traditional working assumption of many evolutionists). Instead, all organisms have maintained an essentially intact set of vital mechanisms-metabolism, reproduction of DNA, growth mechanisms, and more-for at least 2 billion years. These elements, along with a long-conserved body plan common to many animals, serve as the platform for subsequent, often more visible variations.

Consider the elephant's trunk, the elk's antlers, and the narwhal's tusk, which all appear to be distinct, complex innovations. But as Kirschner and Gerhart point out, the same type of cell guided their growth in each animal. Moreover, the modular structure of life means these body parts could develop without affecting the rest of the organism. (A corollary is that it only takes limited genetic changes to bring about large bodily changes.) So the trunk, antlers, and tusk are really just different expressions of the same type of genetic activity-funneled through the process of natural selection, in which variations useful to a particular environment tend to survive over time.

Kirschner and Gerhart also suggest Behe does not consider modularity in his claim that only ''staggeringly complex biochemical processes" lie behind the composition of, say, an eye. As they note, the eyes of insects and mammals, each of which appear to be singularly complex, share important biochemical building blocks and connections among their components.

''People should be asking about the nature of complexity, not just how complex it is," amplifies Kirschner, in conversation. ''You look at a clock, and you see that every part is purposely made. That's what you would do if you were an Intelligent Designer. But instead, when you look at biology, you find that there are very few types of parts, and they are being co-opted from one place to another. We have a Lego-like capacity to very easily generate new structures."

...

So far, ''The Plausibility of Life" is receiving a warm welcome from biologists. ''This is a great contribution for scientists, and I hope the general public can get a lot out of it," says Bruce Alberts, a biochemist at the University of California, San Francisco, and a former president of the National Academy of Sciences. But the authors are realistic about its immediate impact on the evolution-creation battles. ''I'm not so vain as to think this book will stem the tide of the whole culture war that's going on," says Kirschner.

Some observers are even more blunt about whether progress in biology deters evolution's opponents. ''It makes virtually no difference," says Ronald Numbers, a historian of science at the University of Wisconsin, and author of ''The Creationists," a history of the subject. ''Creationist arguments have changed a lot, but rarely as science has gone forward."

Nevertheless, scientists themselves insist that the kinds of insights Kirschner and Gerhart present need to be more effectively communicated. ''We have failed to prepare our public to deal with challenges to the nature of science, from people who don't like our findings," says Alberts. As president of the National Academy of Sciences-his term ended in July-Alberts says he ''has tried to use this, with the [Intelligent Design] movement now outraging scientists, as a teaching moment for faculty to re-think their courses....We want people to understand what science is and why [Intelligent Design] isn't science."

Among other things, that means tackling the creationists' mantra that evolution is ''only a theory," and explaining that it is based on natural principles, which can be studied and tested in labs like any other science. Granted, evolutionists must toe a fine line between emphasizing the certainties of the discipline and acknowledging areas that need more work. ''Science has got to be an open process," argues Alberts, adding that if events like the Dover trial limited biologists' impulse to debate one another, it would ''harm science more than the [Intelligent Design] movement itself."

If anything, Kirschner and Gerhart hope their book will have an impact at least as substantial on their colleagues in biology. For too long, they say, researchers in its different domains-from evolutionists in the field to cell biologists in the lab-have remained isolated. ''I wouldn't call it an antagonism as much as one not knowing anything about the other," Gerhart offers.

Kirschner likes to invoke the much-quoted declaration of famed 20th-century biologist Theodesius Dobzhansky that ''nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" (the title of a 1973 essay). ''In fact, over the last 100 years, almost all of biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself," Kirschner declares. ''Molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology, have not taken evolution into account at all."

As a result, scientists working on genetics, cells, and molecules-a background Kirschner and Gerhart share-have not always considered how components of an organism reveal both its physiological properties and evolutionary properties and provide a window into the history of the organism. Evolutionary science, argue Kirschner and Gerhart, will advance as more biologists place their lab research within this evolutionary framework.

Nonetheless, many scientists think a convergence of biology's disciplines is now at hand. Whereas evolutionary biologists have famously debated whether the gene, organism, or even species is the proper unit of natural selection, current research increasingly integrates these things. ''This is where it's happening," says Daniel Hartl, an evolutionary geneticist at Harvard. ''Evolutionists and others in the field are not arguing about reductionism any more. What's exciting is putting it all together, from the genetic level to the organism."

. . .

Kirschner's present domain, systems biology, is one such burgeoning research area. In it, scientists do not intensively study one part of the body at its lowest level of complexity, as in molecular biology, but rather look at the interactions of parts or functions. Even for science enthusiasts, this can seem arcane. But Kirschner is hopeful the current interdisciplinarity of biology will help the long-term public understanding of evolution.

''I think it will affect the teaching of biology," suggests Kirschner. Comprehending the genetic basis of evolution, he thinks, will reduce the number of ''just-so" stories often used in the classroom to explain adaptations, and can provide a broad set of organizing principles by which we understand animals even more diverse than the elephant, elk, and narwhal.

''If you take all the genes of a human and look at them, most of them look just like genes in other organisms, and many of them look like genes in bacteria," explains Gerhart. Closely related species have closely matching genetic codes. But even bacteria and humans, distant relatives, share identical stretches of DNA relating to the metabolism. Such data provides powerful evidence for evolution by common descent.

None of which, Kirschner reminds us, is to suggest that biologists have finished their work. ''Scientists are in a bit of a dilemma here," Kirschner acknowledges, when it comes to making their case in the public sphere. ''How do you argue that we should still study evolution if the subject is complete? I think we need to portray evolution as a tremendous and active area of investigation, where the basic principles can be well-supported. But nothing in science is ever totally complete."

One question science cannot currently answer, Kirschner agrees, concerns the origins of life-although, unlike the Intelligent Design supporters, he considers it within the realm of scientific inquiry. This summer, Harvard announced it would fund a large-scale project on the subject, linking an interdisciplinary roster of researchers in an investigation of questions situated at the very beginning of evolution-like the development of the first cells.

''From the single-cell bacterium to the human being, we understand evolution extraordinarily well, in many parts of it," Kirschner says. ''But there are still specific issues where we have fragments of information. That's OK. We don't know everything."

Peter Dizikes is a journalist living in Arlington. He frequently writes about science and technology.

from Scientific American, 2005-Mar, by Michael Shermer:

The Fossil Fallacy
Creationists' demand for fossils that represent "missing links" reveals a deep misunderstanding of science

Nineteenth-century English social scientist Herbert Spencer made this prescient observation: "Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all." Well over a century later nothing has changed. When I debate creationists, they present not one fact in favor of creation and instead demand "just one transitional fossil" that proves evolution. When I do offer evidence (for example, Ambulocetus natans, a transitional fossil between ancient land mammals and modern whales), they respond that there are now two gaps in the fossil record.

This is a clever debate retort, but it reveals a profound error that I call the Fossil Fallacy: the belief that a "single fossil"--one bit of data--constitutes proof of a multifarious process or historical sequence. In fact, proof is derived through a convergence of evidence from numerous lines of inquiry--multiple, independent inductions, all of which point to an unmistakable conclusion.

We know evolution happened not because of transitional fossils such as A. natans but because of the convergence of evidence from such diverse fields as geology, paleontology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, molecular biology, genetics, and many more. No single discovery from any of these fields denotes proof of evolution, but together they reveal that life evolved in a certain sequence by a particular process.

One of the finest compilations of evolutionary data and theory since Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species is Richard Dawkins's magnum opus, The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (Houghton Mifflin, 2004)--688 pages of convergent science recounted with literary elegance. Dawkins traces numerous transitional fossils (what he calls "concestors," the last common ancestor shared by a set of species) from Homo sapiens back four billion years to the origin of heredity and the emergence of evolution. No single concestor proves that evolution happened, but together they reveal a majestic story of process over time.

Consider the tale of the dog. With so many breeds of dogs popular for so many thousands of years, one would think there would be an abundance of transitional fossils providing paleontologists with copious data from which to reconstruct their evolutionary ancestry. In fact, according to Jennifer A. Leonard, an evolutionary biologist then at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, "the fossil record from wolves to dogs is pretty sparse." Then how do we know whence dogs evolved? In the November 22, 2002, Science, Leonard and her colleagues report that mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) data from early dog remains "strongly support the hypothesis that ancient American and Eurasian domestic dogs share a common origin from Old World gray wolves."

In the same issue, molecular biologist Peter Savolainen of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and his colleagues note that even though the fossil record is problematic, their study of mtDNA sequence variation among 654 domestic dogs from around the world "points to an origin of the domestic dog in East Asia" about 15,000 years before the present from a single gene pool of wolves.

Finally, anthropologist Brian Hare of Harvard University and his colleagues describe in this same issue the results of a study showing that domestic dogs are more skillful than wolves at using human signals to indicate the location of hidden food. Yet "dogs and wolves do not perform differently in a nonsocial memory task, ruling out the possibility that dogs outperform wolves in all human-guided tasks," they write. Therefore, "dogs' social-communicative skills with humans were acquired during the process of domestication."

No single fossil proves that dogs came from wolves, but archaeological, morphological, genetic and behavioral "fossils" converge to reveal the concestor of all dogs to be the East Asian wolf. The tale of human evolution is divulged in a similar manner (although here we do have an abundance of fossils), as it is for all concestors in the history of life. We know evolution happened because innumerable bits of data from myriad fields of science conjoin to paint a rich portrait of life's pilgrimage.

Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic (www.skeptic.com) and author of The Science of Good and Evil.

from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2005-Sep-28, by Bill Toland:

Intelligent design tied to creationism in Dover trial

HARRISBURG -- Board members who succeeded in introducing "intelligent design" to students in Dover Area School District were wary of evolutionary theory and explicit in their desire to balance the teaching of evolution with a more Christian-friendly philosophy, three plaintiffs testified yesterday during the second day of a landmark federal trial.

Two board members in particular -- William Buckingham and Alan Bonsell -- were mentioned frequently. Bonsell wanted students to hear about creationism, the Biblical account of the earth's origins, testified Aralene Callahan, a parent and also a former school board member in Dover, York County.

"If evolution was part of the biology curriculum, creationism should be shared 50-50," Callahan quoted Bonsell as saying.

Buckingham, according to the testimony, expressed fears that the biology textbooks he'd reviewed were "laced with Darwinism," and too one-sided in their deference to evolution. At a board meeting, Buckingham criticized a college student who studied evolution, saying the man had been "brainwashed."

Buckingham said somebody needed to take a stand for Jesus, witnesses said. His wife, Charlotte, quoted Old Testament verses during public board meetings, one plaintiff testified.

Throughout the second day, attorneys for the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area tried to show that the school board, over a two-year period, had discussed God, religion and creationism and shown a general antipathy toward evolutionary theory, before ultimately voting to inform ninth-grade biology students that evolutionary theory has inexplicable gaps, and that intelligent design "is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view."

The theme of the discussions will be crucial as U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III considers whether the Dover board violated the Constitution's church-state separation clause, as the plaintiffs claim in their lawsuit, filed last year. The school's policy took effect in January, when the statement was first read to students.

The subtext is crucial because the judge will apply two tests -- first, he'll consider whether the statement that's read to students has the effect of bringing religion into the public school setting. If he can't find that effect, he will look for the intent behind the action.

That intent seemed boldly clear to the three plaintiffs who testified yesterday.

The plaintiffs specifically seek to knock down the four-paragraph statement, but more broadly, the case is about more than permanent injunctions. It is America's first court test of whether the term "intelligent design" can be taught, or at least mentioned, to students taking a science course.

And the world is watching this case -- educators and scientists, conservatives and liberals, clergy and politicians, not to mention dozens in the media, including a radio station from New Zealand.

Bryan Rehm -- a parent, a plaintiff, and a former Dover Area science teacher -- said that the science faculty had been forced to watch a video explaining why Charles Darwin's theories on evolution were being improperly taught to school students.

Board members seemed especially concerned with the idea that modern man had evolved from an earlier relative, even though that subject wasn't directly addressed at Dover. "We don't teach monkey-to-man," he said yesterday.

The plaintiffs' testimony has been largely corroborated by local newspaper accounts of the school board meetings. But Buckingham and Bonsell have denied making some of the statements attributed to them or have suggested those comments were taken out of context by newspaper reporters.

That's why the legal team representing the 11 parents who sued has subpoenaed two freelance reporters, Heidi Bernhard-Bubb of the York Dispatch, and Joe Maldonado of the York Daily Record. "The reporters are needed to validate the historical record," said Witold Walczak, attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.

The reporters were deposed yesterday, but Walczak said he was uncertain whether they would testify today, when the non-jury trial resumes.

Before the plaintiffs took the stand, Dover's defense team, a firm that litigates for free on behalf of "Christians and time-honored family values," completed their cross-examination of expert witness Kenneth Miller, a biology professor at Brown University and co-author of a popular biology textbook.

On Monday, he testified that "intelligent design is not science," and aimed to refute several core claims made in the book "Of Pandas and People," which is the beginner's manual to intelligent design, and is mentioned in the four-paragraph statement read to students.

Yesterday, the defense team danced through a list of renowned biologists -- Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould and Francis Crick included -- and offered quotes and book snippets from these biologists, showing that they can talk about religion and God without compromising their standing as scientists.

Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning DNA researcher, suggested in a book that life could have been put on Earth by space aliens. That fits neatly into the intelligent design concept, whose supporters try not to identify the designer whom they believe is behind nature's complex machinery.

One "need not be a fundamentalist Christian to believe in intelligent design," said defense attorney Robert Muise. He also noted that Miller describes himself as a "creationist," in that Miller, a Roman Catholic, believes that "God is the author of nature." Later, Miller said that "just because a scientist makes a statement, doesn't make it scientific."

from NewScientist.com, 2005-Oct-19, by Celeste Biever:

Astrology is scientific theory, courtroom told

Astrology would be considered a scientific theory if judged by the same criteria used by a well-known advocate of Intelligent Design to justify his claim that ID is science, a landmark US trial heard on Tuesday.

Under cross examination, ID proponent Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, admitted his definition of “theory” was so broad it would also include astrology.

The trial is pitting 11 parents from the small town of Dover, Pennsylvania, against their local school board. The board voted to read a statement during a biology class that casts doubt on Darwinian evolution and suggests ID as an alternative.

The parents claim this was an attempt to introduce creationism into the curriculum and that the school board members were motivated by their evangelical Christian beliefs. It is illegal to teach anything with a primarily religious purpose or effect on pupils in government-funded US schools.

Supporters of ID believe that some things in nature are simply too complex to have evolved by natural selection, and therefore must be the work of an intelligent designer. Peer review

Behe was called to the stand on Monday by the defence, and testified that ID was a scientific theory, and was not “committed” to religion. His cross examination by the plaintiffs' attorney, Eric Rothschild of the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton, began on Tuesday afternoon.

Rothschild told the court that the US National Academy of Sciences supplies a definition for what constitutes a scientific theory: “Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.”

Because ID has been rejected by virtually every scientist and science organisation, and has never once passed the muster of a peer-reviewed journal paper, Behe admitted that the controversial theory would not be included in the NAS definition. “I can't point to an external community that would agree that this was well substantiated,” he said.

Behe said he had come up with his own “broader” definition of a theory, claiming that this more accurately describes the way theories are actually used by scientists. “The word is used a lot more loosely than the NAS defined it,” he says.

Hypothesis or theory?

Rothschild suggested that Behe's definition was so loose that astrology would come under this definition as well. He also pointed out that Behe's definition of theory was almost identical to the NAS's definition of a hypothesis. Behe agreed with both assertions.

The exchange prompted laughter from the court, which was packed with local members of the public and the school board.

Behe maintains that ID is science: “Under my definition, scientific theory is a proposed explanation which points to physical data and logical inferences.”

“You've got to admire the guy. It's Daniel in the lion's den,” says Robert Slade, a local retiree who has been attending the trial because he is interested in science. "But I can't believe he teaches a college biology class."

The cross examination will continue Wednesday, with the trial expected to finish on 4 November.

from the York Daily Record (Pennsylvania), 2005-Oct-25, by Lauri Lebo and Michelle Starr:

Witness: intelligent design needs boost
He said the science community is closed to the idea, so it needs to be in schools.

HARRISBURG — Because the scientific community is a monolith, impenetrable and often hostile to new theories, intelligent design proponents have to turn to the public schools to recruit support, a witness said Monday.

Testifying on behalf of the Dover Area School District in U.S. Middle District Court, philosophy of science expert Steve Fuller said intelligent design "can't spontaneously generate a following" because the scientific community shuts the door on radical views.

A sociology professor from the University of Warwick in England, Fuller said, "How do you expect any minority view to get a toe hold in science? You basically get new recruits."

As Dover's attorney Patrick Gillen questioned him, Fuller talked of intelligent design as being a possible scientific-revolution in waiting in which it challenges the "dominant paradigm" of evolutionary theory.

While he stopped short of calling for such a revolution, Fuller spoke of science's broad acceptance of "neo-Darwinian synthesis" — the unifying concepts of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection and Gregor Mendel's theory of genetics — being a problem for competing ideas.

In the First Amendment trial, Fuller is the second expert witness to take the stand on behalf of the defense. At issue is a statement read to Dover high school biology students in which they are told that intelligent design is an alternative to evolutionary theory.

In often rapid-fire delivery that at times taxed the court reporter's stenographic skills, Fuller said intelligent design is a scientific theory that should be taught in school.

But during cross-examination, he said intelligent design — the idea that the complexity of life requires a designer — is "too young" to have developed rigorous testable formulas and sits on the fringe of science.

He suggested that perhaps scientists should have an "affirmative action" plan to help emerging ideas compete against the "dominant paradigms" of mainstream science.

The pool of peer reviewers is smaller than it has been because, as scientific research gets more and more specialized, there are fewer people in that specialty and even fewer of them are willing to peer review pieces, Fuller said. Consequently, grant money also goes to fewer researchers, he said.

"People don't want to judge the validity of a scientific theory based on who is talking about it and promoting it."

Later, outside the courthouse, Fuller said that public school science class is an appropriate setting for intelligent design in order to keep it from being "marginalized in cult status."

"I don't know where you think future scientists come from," he said.

But Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, disagreed, saying the purpose of public school education is to educate students, "not feed some theoretical pipeline."

And Nick Matzke, a spokesman for the pro-evolutionary science organization, said students need to learn established theories first before they can begin to question them.

"If a scientist was to overturn evolution they would first have to learn about it," he said. "It would have to be a revolution from within."

As a philosopher, Fuller testified he remains open to all new views, even though he maintains that at the moment, evolutionary theory is a better explanation of the biological world.

"I want to see where intelligent design is going to go," Fuller said.

Fuller also said that while intelligent design's roots are religious, so are the roots of most scientific ideas, pointing to Isaac Newton's desire to understand the natural world through God's eyes.

But there remains prejudice against intelligent design, he said.

Fuller told the court that one of the problems of science is with the very definition of "scientific theory," which is the idea of well substantiated explanations that unify a broad range of observations. He said by requiring a theory to be "well substantiated," it makes it almost impossible for an idea to be accepted scientifically. But Fuller was actually proposing the definition for hypothesis — an untested idea that is the first step toward a theory.

"Does a theory have to be well established to be scientific?" he said. "That means the dominant theory would always be."

from Reuters via CNN.com, 2005-Nov-10:

Robertson warns Pennsylvania voters of God's wrath
Eight 'intelligent design' school board members lost election

WASHINGTON -- Conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting "intelligent design" and warned them Thursday not to be surprised if disaster struck.

Robertson, a former Republican presidential candidate and founder of the influential Christian Broadcasting Network and Christian Coalition, has made similar apocalyptic warnings and provocative statements before.

Last summer, he hit the headlines by calling for the assassination of leftist Venezuelan Present [sic] Hugo Chavez, one of President George W. Bush's most vocal international critics.

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city," Robertson said on his daily television show broadcast from Virginia, "The 700 Club."

"And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because he might not be there," he said.

The 700 Club claims a daily audience of around one million. It is also broadcast around the world translated into more than 70 languages.

In voting on Tuesday, eight Dover, Pennsylvania, school board members up for re-election lost their seats after trying to introduce a statement on "intelligent design" to high school biology students.

Adherents of intelligent design argue that certain forms in nature are too complex to have evolved through natural selection and must have been created by a "designer." Opponents say it is the latest attempt by conservatives to introduce religion into the school science curriculum.

The Dover case sparked a trial in federal court that gained nationwide attention after the school board was sued by parents backed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The board ordered schools to read students a short statement in biology classes informing them that the theory of evolution is not established fact and that gaps exist in it.

The statement mentioned intelligent design as an alternate theory and recommended students read a book that explained the theory further. A decision in the case is expected before the end of the year.

In 1998, Robertson warned the city of Orlando, Florida that it risked hurricanes, earthquakes and terrorist bombs after it allowed homosexual organizations to put up rainbow flags in support of sexual diversity.

from the New York Times, 2005-Aug-19, by David Stout:

Frist Backs Bush on Teaching 'Intelligent Design' in Schools

WASHINGTON - The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, aligned himself with President Bush today when he said that the theory of "intelligent design" should be taught along with evolution in public schools.

Teaching intelligent design as well as evolution "doesn't force any particular theory on anyone," Senator Frist, Republican of Tennessee, said in Nashville, according to The Associated Press. "I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future."

A Washington spokesman for the senator, Nick Smith, said afterward that The A.P. had reported Mr. Frist's comments accurately.

The theory of intelligent design holds that life is too complicated to have developed randomly through evolution, and that a higher power must be involved. Critics say that intelligent design theorists are trying to supplant science with religious beliefs.

The senator's view, expressed today after a speech at a Rotary Club meeting, echoed President Bush's remarks on Aug. 2, when he told a group of Texas newspaper reporters that he favored teaching both evolution and intelligent design "so people can understand what the debate is about."

Mr. Frist's agreement with President Bush on one of the more contentious educational, social and political issues of the time comes just a few weeks after he broke with the president and with Christian conservatives on another hot topic, embryonic stem cell research.

The senator said on July 29 that he had decided to support a bill to expand federal financing for stem cell research, and that President Bush's four-year-old policy of strictly limiting taxpayer financing "should be modified." The bill has been approved by the House but has been stalled in the Senate, where Mr. Frist's status as a heart-lung transplant surgeon could sway some of his undecided colleagues.

Senator Frist is widely assumed to be contemplating a run for the presidency in 2008, so his statements on issues that touch on moral as well as political questions are sure to be scrutinized, by Christian conservatives essential to a Republican candidacy and by people looking for signals that Mr. Frist is willing to move toward the center.

Human embryonic stem cells can be grown into any type of body tissue, so scientists and doctors see a potential use in treating a wide range of diseases and injuries. But the cells cannot be obtained without destroying the embryos, which some people think is tantamount to murder.

President Bush said on Aug. 9, 2001, that he supported government financing for research on only those stem cell colonies that had already been created, and for which "the life or death decision" involving the embryos had thus been made. The House-passed bill would also allow research on stem cells extracted from frozen embryos, left over from fertility treatments, that would otherwise be discarded.

Mr. Frist said today there was no conflict between his stances on stem cells and intelligent design. "I see no disconnect," he told The A.P. "I base my beliefs on stem cell research both on science and my faith."

from Slate, 2005-Oct-10, by Christopher Hitchens:

Miers and Brimstone
Let's stop pretending there's no religious test for nominees.

What in God's name—you should forgive the expression—is all this about there being "no religious test" for appointments to high public office? Most particularly in the case of the U.S. Supreme Court, there is the most blatant religious test imaginable. You may not even be considered for the bench unless you have a religion of some kind. Surely no adherent of any version of "originalism" can possibly argue that the Framers of the Constitution intended a spoils system to be awarded among competing clerical sects.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the man who is now our chief justice. I pointed to unrebutted evidence that, in answer to a direct question from a fellow Catholic (Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill.), Roberts had replied that in the case of a conflict between the law and the teaching of the Vatican, he would recuse himself. Since obviously it is impossible to nominate, let alone confirm, anyone who does not answer that the law and the Constitution should control in all cases, I proposed that Roberts ought to be asked the question again and in public. For this, I got exactly what I expected: allegations of anti-Catholic bigotry from the fideists at National Review and then (not just for my benefit) a full-page ad or two in the press, saying that anyone who dared raise such a question would be accused of applying … "a religious test." Roberts got suavely through his hearings without the inconvenience of the question, had a large Bible with illuminated crucifix in the family photo-op with the president, and now joins his three fellow Catholics on the court.

Of the nomination of Harriet Miers, by contrast, it can be said that only her religion has been considered by her conservative fans to be worth mentioning. What else is there to say, in any case, about a middling bureaucrat and yes-woman than that she attends some mediocre place of worship? One could happily make a case that more random civilians, and fewer lawyers, should be on the court. But the only other thing to say about Miers is that she is a lawyer. Her own opinion of herself is somewhat higher: She does not attribute her presence among us to the laws of biology but chooses to regard herself as having a personal and unmediated relationship with the alleged Jesus of Nazareth, who is further alleged to be the son of God. Such modesty! On this basis, the president and his people have felt able to issue assurances of her OK-ness. So, as far as I can determine, she was set, and has passed, a religious test: that of being an "Evangelical" Christian.

The cowardice of the Democrats in this respect is absolutely breathtaking. Having determined that they, too, must move to faith-based high ground (and having chosen a Mormon as their Senate leader), they have refused to make the smallest squeak about this overt theocratic blackmail. Having swallowed Roberts by agreeing that religion should have nothing to do with it, they will swallow Miers even though it now seems that religion has everything to do with it. The worst they will say is that she might be unsound on Roe v. Wade and that she might be insufficiently qualified. Even the incensed right wing has been more principled than that (though the line of the week award must go to Terry Eastland in the Weekly Standard, who solemnly says that "Several friends of Miers told me, on background, that she is pro-life and defines marriage in traditional terms." On background …)

In the very near future, the court is certain to hear arguments about whether the state or the states should determine who decides who carries a baby to full term and about whether the state or the states should take a position on evolution versus the argument from design. (I am sorry, but I flatly refuse to play the silly current game of prefixing the word "design" with the word "intelligent.") There is simply no point in asking an active member of the Valley View Christian Church of North Dallas what she "thinks" about abortion or creationism, because, although the Bible often recommends actual infanticide—and is thus open to "interpretation"—this congregation's view of Roe v. Wade is well-known and also because the Valley View Christian Church of North Dallas has allowed itself the discovery that the Bible is "the only infallible, inspired, authoritative Word of God." (You have to love that broad-minded "only." As if there were some rival claimant for that distinction that had been weighed in the balance in North Dallas and found wanting.)

Either Miers takes her faith seriously, in which case it must be her life's mission to redeem those who have not accepted Jesus as their savior, or she does not, in which case she is a vapid and posturing hypocrite. And either she is nominated in order to gratify a political constituency, whose leaders such as James Dobson of Focus on the Family seem to have had advance notice, or she is not, in which case the president could see no further than his own kitchen Cabinet in searching for merit. So, the whole exercise is a disgusting insult.

And here is what you could not say and hope to receive the sacrament of nomination:

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine, first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then, as you would Livy or Tacitus. … Those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. … I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well as of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-Evangelists, as those they named Evangelists.

That was Thomas Jefferson writing to his nephew Peter Carr on Aug. 10, 1787. But what is honest skepticism—and a regard for evidence and logic—when set against the profession of a mere "faith" that neither demands nor offers any evidence of any kind? And this latter "qualification" is now urged upon us with special fervor in the selection of—a judge.

from the American Prospect online, 2005-Jan-31, by Chris Mooney:

Discovery Phase

Now, at long last, we're getting acquainted with the new anti-evolutionists. And they seem very familiar.

It's official. With recent news of lawsuits over the teaching of evolution in both Georgia and Pennsylvania, even Time magazine now considers the fight over Charles Darwin's theory a live issue again. The New York Times and The Washington Post have both come out against the new anti-evolutionism, while on FOX News, a braying Bill O'Reilly recently announced that "there are a lot of very brilliant scholars who believe the reason we have incomplete science on evolution is that there is a higher power involved in this." O'Reilly then proceeded to call the American Civil Liberties Union "the Taliban" for opposing the teaching of anti-evolutionist perspectives in public-school science classes.

President Bush's re-election and the growing political strength of religious conservatives have done a lot to put evolution back on the radar. But in fact, this battle never ended -- and The American Prospect covered it back in 2002. Today's journalists, however, are on a steep learning curve, laboring to understand a struggle that groups like the National Center for Science Education, in Oakland, California, have monitored ceaselessly for years with or without major media attention.

There are few issues where a knowledge of history matters more than the debate over the teaching of evolution. In a few breathless sentences, the story goes like this: Some religious believers have always had moral and theological problems with evolution, Protestant fundamentalists in America especially. And they haven't wanted their kids to hear about it. But these anti-evolutionists have themselves evolved over the years in response to a series of unfavorable court decisions. Because of the nature of the First Amendment, these dicta have increasingly forced Darwin's enemies into the awkward position of claiming that rather than being driven by religion, they have science on their side.

It's a tough act for anti-evolutionists to pull off, especially because they can count on the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and huge lists of Nobel laureates to shoot them down. But if you'd been slammed by the Supreme Court in 1968 (Epperson v. Arkansas) and then again in 1987 (Edwards v. Aguillard), you might try such a strategy, too. And, in fact, anti-evolutionists have gotten better at claiming to be scientific over the years. They've perfected a losing approach.

There were always creationists who claimed to be scientific, of course. James Gilbert, a historian at the University of Maryland, opens his book Redeeming Culture: Religion in an Age of Science, with a second chapter titled "William Jennings Bryan, Scientist," explaining how the great Scopes “monkey trial” crusader himself joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1924. In some odd way, Bryan actually thought he was engaged in a scientific activity.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, we saw the official emergence of "creation science" or "scientific creationism," which centered on the attempt to show that geological studies proved the reality of Noah's flood. But few were fooled, and the Supreme Court nixed this supposed alternative to evolution in public-school science classes in 1987.

The anti-evolutionists, however, saw a loophole: They still might be able to teach "scientific" criticisms of evolution, even if they couldn't positively advance their own views, which were clearly theological. Enter the "Intelligent Design" (ID) movement.

ID is an idea with a respectable philosophical pedigree, though no credibility in modern science. The basic notion hinges on the organizational complexity of living organisms, and especially anatomical marvels such as the eye. How could evolution have done that, ask ID proponents?

The answer, provided by Darwin and repeatedly supported by scientific investigations since then, is that given enough time and selection pressures, evolution tends to find a way. Moreover, its solutions, while certainly workable, are not always ideal. As anyone with any experience of aging knows, the human body isn't a paragon of perfection. Its flaws and rudiments -- the appendix, male nipples, and so forth -- seem far more characteristic of the mindless tinkering activities of natural selection than of an intelligent craftsman.

The ID movement has its home base at a Seattle think tank called the Discovery Institute. Mindful of legal precedents, Discovery does not officially advocate bringing up ID in classrooms (as has happened in Dover, Pennsylvania, to Discovery's chagrin). Rather, the institute wants students to learn about the "controversy" over evolution -- a controversy that is supposedly scientific in nature. And in fact, just like adherents of "creation science," ID proponents have been able to cobble together a few Ph.D.s who support their cause, providing "scientific" critiques of evolutionary theory.

But the Discovery Institute made a key tactical error. Somehow, a document that seems to bare the true soul of the institute leaked onto the Web. You can read it here, with Discovery's gloss on it. Unfortunately, not even the most consummate rhetorician could explain away lines like, "Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." Once it lets its guard down, anti-evolutionism hasn't changed a bit.

Time gets an F: its latest coverage failed to uncover the really juicy stuff about the ID movement, like the passage cited above. But the press will catch on eventually, as will the courts. And unless they're radically reshaped by President Bush, it seems likely that they will reject ID just as they once rejected "creation science."

In the meantime, however, a lot of people are going to be confused about the theory of evolution. But in America, even that is nothing new.

Chris Mooney is a Prospect senior correspondent whose weekly column appears each Monday. His book on the politicization of science will be published later this year by Basic Books. His daily blog and other writings can be found at www.chriscmooney.com.

from the Wichita Eagle, 2005-May-8, by Josh Funk:

Anti-evolution hearings end

Topeka - The State Board of Education's three days of hearings challenging evolution ended Saturday as they began: with testimony from leaders in the national intelligent design movement and a good deal of acrimony against them.

All said they don't want teaching intelligent design to be required.

"We're not asking for it to be taught, only permitted," retired attorney John Calvert said in his closing testimony. "If you outlaw it, you're endorsing an ideology."

Calvert, who runs the Intelligent Design Network out of Lenexa, Kan., has helped spread the arguments for intelligent design nationwide, and he presented the case challenging Kansas' proposed standards. Proponents of the intelligent design theory say the universe is so complex it must have been created by a higher power.

Current standards call for Kansas students to know and understand evolution.

Most of the 23 witnesses that Calvert led through scripted questions favor intelligent design over evolution. Only four of those witnesses were Kansans.

Pedro Irigonegaray, a Topeka lawyer, represented pro-evolution scientists in the hearings by questioning witnesses to expose their motives and inconsistent testimony.

"We should not allow the minority, in essence, to hijack education and send it back to the 16th century," he said.

On Thursday, Irigonegaray will present a response to defend evolution and "counter all of the ridiculous ideas we've heard in the last three days."

Mainstream scientists refused to participate but still attended the hearings to criticize the attacks on evolutionary theory.

The minority group wants the state board to endorse a more critical approach to evolution and expect teachers to explain some of the holes in the central theory of biology. They also want to change the way science is defined as a search for "natural explanations," because they say that represents an endorsement of naturalism and atheism.

A committee of three state board members - Steve Abrams, Connie Morris and Kathy Martin - heard all the testimony this week. On Saturday, the three other conservative Republican board members who help control the board also attended.

Many of the pro-intelligent design witnesses are affiliated with the Discovery Institute think tank in Seattle that was created in 1996 to promote intelligent design, and they have testified in other states. Two of Discovery's senior fellows, Stephen Meyer and Michael Behe, testified here Saturday.

One of the other witnesses was a Turkish newspaper columnist with no science background but a nearly 10-year-old interest in intelligent design. Mustafa Akyol testified that the naturalistic bias in Kansas' science standards contributes to the ill will between the Muslim world and the United States.

He urged the board to adopt the critical approach to help alleviate that ill will.

"This is not the only reason for anti-Westernism, but it is an important one," he said.

After the hearings, Irigonegaray dismissed Akyol's testimony.

"I think he has very little relevancy to what we do in Kansas," Irigonegaray said.

Throughout the hearings and again Saturday, witnesses repeated the objection that the proposed standards are biased against intelligent design and against religion because they describe science as a search for natural explanations.

Philosophy professor Angus Menuge said that bias in favor of naturalism would rule out any scientific evidence that would support a theistic religion, making the standards like a religion.

When Irigonegaray asked him about the thousands of scientists who accept evolution and are religious, the Concordia University professor angered many of the mainstream scientists in the room.

"It might be that some of these people are confused," he said.

Rachel Robson, a doctoral student studying pathology at the University of Kansas, mocked Menuge's statement.

"I understand how it would be good for their case if believing in evolution meant you were an atheist," Robson said. "If that were true, I'd be on their side. But it's not."

Later, some of the religious evolution supporters in the crowd started wearing name tags with the word "confused" on them.

After the hearings ended, Calvert said he was ecstatic with the testimony and felt certain the intelligent-design proponents had made it point.

"There is a clear and undeniable controversy over the origin of life," Calvert said.

The mainstream scientists, like Jack Krebs, weren't convinced.

"These folks are trying to redefine science as an atheistic philosophy, so they can advance their theological goal," said Krebs, vice president of the pro-evolution Kansas Citizens For Science.

State board members will vote on a new set of science standards later this summer.

Some changes in the way evolution is treated in the science standards are expected because conservative Republicans control six of the 10 seats on the state board.

When conservatives last controlled the Kansas board in 1999, they voted to de-emphasize evolution in the standards, leaving the decision whether to teach it up to local school boards.

That decision earned the state ridicule nationwide and prompted voters to elect a moderate majority to the board. Moderates restored evolution to the standards in the spring of 2001.

from the Kansas City Star, 2005-May-5, by Alan Bavley:

Many scientists find evolution debate irrelevant

As the Kansas Board of Education starts hearing testimony today about scientific controversies over evolution, Edward Wiley wonders what the fuss is about.

Whatever criticisms of evolution the board hears, Wiley, a University of Kansas biologist, plans to go on with his research — all based on evolution.

There's nothing in his work, says Wiley, that the theory can't explain. “In fact, I don't think anything in biology makes sense outside of evolution.”

The same holds true for biologists Leonard Dobens and Gerald Wyckoff at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. It's also the case for thousands of other scientists who consider evolution the foundation of their work.

“It's frankly not a controversy. In the scientific community, evolution is considered to be an accepted theory,” said Alan Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an organization of scientists with about 130,000 members.

The Kansas board is considering whether to revise its science teaching standards to include classroom discussion of the disputes among scientists over how some of their discoveries fit into evolutionary theory.

Witnesses who question the adequacy of evolution to explain the development of life have lined up to testify at the Topeka hearings. But the scientific community is expected to boycott the event, saying the hearings are rigged against mainstream scientific thought.

“What anti-evolutionists are fond of doing is to take the disputes that exist in any living science and blow them out of proportion. These are brandished as evidence that evolution is a theory in crisis,” said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, a group supporting the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Wyckoff considers the reality of evolution a long-settled question: “When biologists argue about evolution, we're arguing nuances, we're not arguing about fundamentals,” he said.

Some gaps remain in scientists' understanding of the way evolution has occurred, Dobens said. “But the gaps in knowledge are the exciting thing. That's where as a scientist you want to go.”

Wiley, Dobens and Wyckoff all say their research is grounded in evolution. In fact, their work wouldn't be possible, they say, without its concepts.

• Wiley is studying the northern snakehead, a carnivorous fish from Asia that has invaded the United States, gobbling up aquatic life in Maryland and popping up in waters as far west as Wisconsin.

By figuring out where these hungry “Frankenfish” thrive in Asia, Wiley can plot the places in the United States where they may turn up.

He can say with some confidence that most of the country from Maryland to Manhattan, Kan., has hospitable habitats.

Why was evolution so important to Wiley's prediction?

To make such a claim, Wiley had to be sure that the ecological niches — habitats the fish prefer to occupy — are stable over time.

By studying the evolution of North American fish, he has determined that their niches remain stable for hundreds of thousands, even millions of years.

“This gives us some confidence that these are not pie-in-the sky predictions,” he said.

• In large incubators lining the wall of his UMKC lab, Dobens raises 500 kinds of fruit flies.

The low-maintenance insects are ideal experimental subjects.

“You can do studies you couldn't dream of in higher animals, and fast too,” Dobens said.

More important, he said, is that his flies could yield insights into human diseases.

Dobens makes this insect-human connection because research shows fruit flies and people share a common genetic heritage. “The notion is that (single-cell) organisms learned once how to build a multicellular organism and, with tweaking, that applies to all organisms,” he said.

That's not all the flies share with people: Almost every major cancer-causing gene in humans is found in fruit flies. They even carry a gene that produces a protein implicated in Alzheimer's disease.

Dobens is studying genes regulating the growth of fruit fly eggs.

Analogous genes in humans play other roles. One gene suppresses the growth of tumors, keeping cancer cells from migrating to new places in the body. Learning how to manipulate this gene in flies may lead to ways to control cancer in people.

The other gene may be involved in the weakening of bones experienced by people who take steroid drugs such as cortisone long-term.

If that turns out to be the case, knowing how the gene works in fruit flies could lead to drugs that would let people use cortisone more safely, Dobens said.

• Wyckoff has little need for lab animals, test tubes or microscopes — he does most of his research at his computer in a cramped lab at UMKC.

Wyckoff, an evolutionary biologist, runs computer programs to study subtle genetic differences between people and other primates. He relies on the massive amounts of data scientists have assembled to map their genomes.

A genome is the complete set of all the DNA, the genes and other genetic material, that hold the chemical instructions for creating a particular organism and keeping it alive and reproducing.

Each genome fills Wyckoff's computer screen with long lines of tiny letters — A, G, C, T — representing the four chemicals that encode information in DNA. At any one time he may be working with hundreds of thousands of sequences of genetic code involving millions of these molecules.

Wyckoff is studying the hemopexin gene which is responsible for keeping iron in the body from becoming involved in cell-damaging chemical reactions. The gene also appears to be associated with Alzheimer's disease.

By running the computer data, Wyckoff has found that the gene has evolved rapidly. That suggests it has adapted to rapid changes in the environment.

But genetic changes that were adaptive to our natural environment may cause problems when society makes changes of its own. For example, our ability to store fat was useful in times of famine, but now contributes to obesity.

By studying how the hemopexin gene evolved in different primates, Wyckoff hopes to better understand what environmental factors played a role in how the gene evolved in people.

“The long-term payoff in understanding natural selection in humans and primates is that we'll have a better understanding of diseases,” he said. “And we'll have a better understanding of who we are, why we are human.”

from OpinionJournal.com, 2004-Feb-11, by Bret Stephens:

Murderous Fantasies
Suicide bombers come from a neighborhood of make-believe.

In Israel, where I live and work, suicide bombings are commonly understood by the foreign press as acts of desperation by a people who have lost all hope for a better future. Ease the economic hardships of Palestinians and end the occupation, so the thinking goes, and terrorism will be deprived of its motive.

It's a convenient notion, which more or less excuses mass murder as the deeds of men who have been robbed of their property, pride and patrimony. But is it right? What if suicide bombings aren't an act of despair at all but something approaching the opposite: a supreme demonstration of contempt for everything Westerners hold dear, not least life itself? What if, too, suicide bombers are no poor-man's F-16 but a robust expression of confidence that the Palestinians are infinitely more ruthless than Israelis in what amounts to a zero-sum game?

Lee Harris believes that these are exactly the sorts of questions that we should be asking today, and not only about the war in the Mideast. In "Civilization and Its Enemies," he argues, brilliantly at times, that if you want to understand your enemy, you must understand him on his terms, not yours.

Take 9/11. Everyone from George W. Bush to Noam Chomsky agreed that the attacks were acts of war, even if they disagreed about exactly which political aims the acts were meant to further. But Mr. Harris takes a different view: 9/11, he says, was "a spectacular piece of theater."

"The targets were chosen by al-Qaeda not for their military value--in contrast, for example, to the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor--but entirely because they stood as symbols of American power universally recognized on the Arab street. They were gigantic props in a grandiose spectacle in which the collective fantasy of radical Islam was brought vividly to life."

In other words, 9/11 was "a pageant designed to convey a message not to the American people but to the Arab world." This insight helps to explain why the U.S. wasn't afterward beset by a series of small-scale attacks. Such attacks, Mr. Harris observes, would have been easier to carry out and had a more destabilizing effect on the American economy. But they would have lacked the glamour and stylishness that was Osama bin Laden's trademark; indeed, they would have put him on a par with lesser terrorists.

So it was with bin Laden's predecessors, Mussolini and Hitler, also in the grip of what Mr. Harris calls "fantasy ideology." The essence of such ideologies isn't just a particular kind of make-believe--e.g., fascist Italy as the reincarnation of ancient Rome--but a conviction that the very act of making believe is enough to bring about the make-believe world itself, if enough people can be persuaded to play their part in the drama.

Such fantasy ideologists are the "enemies" of Mr. Harris's title. They are unlike the more common types of enemy known to man, who vie for land, prestige or plunder as ends in themselves. The fantasists, by contrast, have only a loose connection to the world as it really is. They may conquer land in the fulfillment of their fantasy, but the land is uninteresting to them except for the role it plays on the stage of their imaginations.

Yet paradoxically, says Mr. Harris, it is the very absence of a "sense of the realistic" that makes the fantasists so dangerous, because they are willing to take fantastic risks. So it was with Hitler's march into Rhineland in 1936, a foolish gamble by rational standards that succeeded because the French high command was unwilling to prick the Führer's fantasy of invincibility--thereby, of course, driving the fantasy to catastrophic proportions.

There are lessons here for us today. If, for example, you think the Palestinian national movement headed by Yasser Arafat seeks only to form a state within the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, then the answer to the problem is to get the Israelis to make way. If, however, you think Palestinians are in the grip of a fantasy ideology, acting as the vanguard for a Muslim counterattack against a latter-day Crusader state, then granting a Palestinian state becomes a bit like allowing Hitler to march into the Rhineland: It perpetuates a fantasy that deserves to die.

This is something the world needs to hear, and Mr. Harris makes his case well in the first 60-odd pages of his book. Alas, the reader still has 160 pages to go, and these are far less lucid or valuable. When will the American publishing industry rediscover the virtues of the pamphlet?

Mr. Stephens is editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post. You can buy "Civilization and Its Enemies" from the OpinionJournal bookstore.

from the Hoover Institution's Policy Review, 2002-Aug-13, by Lee Harris:

Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology
To understand Sept. 11, think of it is theater, not politics.

"Know your enemy" is a well-known maxim, but one that is difficult to observe in practice. Nor is the reason for this hard to fathom: If you are my enemy, it is unlikely that I will go very much out of my way to learn to see things from your point of view. And if this is true even in those cases in which the conflict is between groups that share a common culture, how much more true will it be when there is a profound cultural and psychological chasm between the antagonists?

Yet, paradoxically, this failure to understand the enemy can arise not only from a lack of sympathy with his position, but also from a kind of misplaced sympathy: When confronted by a culturally exotic enemy, our first instinct is to understand such conduct in terms that are familiar to us--terms that make sense to us in light of our own fund of experience. We assume that if our enemy is doing X, it must be for reasons that are comprehensible in terms of our universe.

Just how unfortunate--indeed, fatal--this approach can be was demonstrated during the Spanish conquest of Mexico. When Montezuma learned of Cortés's arrival, he was at a loss to know what to make of the event. Who were these white-skinned alien beings? What had they come for? What were their intentions?

These were clearly not questions that Montezuma was in a position to answer. Nothing in his world could possibly provide him with a key to deciphering correctly the motives of a man as cunning, resourceful and determined as Cortés. And this meant that Montezuma, who, after all, had to do something, was forced to deploy categories drawn from the fund of experience that was ready-to-hand in the Aztec world.

By a fatal coincidence, this fund of experience chanced to contain a remarkable prefiguring of Cortés--the myth of the white-skinned god, Quetzalcoatl. And indeed, the parallels were uncanny. But of course, as Montezuma eventually learned, Cortés was not Quetzalcoatl, and he had not appeared on the coast of Mexico in order to bring blessings.

We should not be too harsh on Montezuma. He was, after all, acting exactly as we all act under similar circumstances. We all want to make sense of our world, and at no time more urgently than when our world is suddenly behaving strangely. But in order to make sense of such strangeness, we must be able to reduce it to something that is not strange--something that is already known to us, something we know our way around.

Yet this entirely human response, as Montezuma learned to his regret, can sometimes be very dangerous.

---

On Sept. 11, 2001, Americans were confronted by an enigma similar to that presented to the Aztecs--an enigma so baffling that even elementary questions of nomenclature posed a problem: What words or phrase should we use merely to refer to the events of that day? Was it a disaster? Or perhaps a tragedy? Was it a criminal act, or was it an act of war? Indeed, one awkward TV anchorman, in groping for the proper handle, fecklessly called it an accident. But eventually the collective and unconscious wisdom that governs such matters prevailed. Words failed, then fell away completely, and all that was left behind was the bleak but monumentally poignant set of numbers, 9-11.

But this did not answer the great question: What did it all mean? In the early days, there were many who were convinced that they knew the answer to this question. A few held that we had got what we had coming: It was just deserts for President Bush's refusal to sign the Kyoto treaty or the predictable product of the U.S. decision to snub the Durban conference on racism. Others held, with perhaps a greater semblance of plausibility, that the explanation of 9-11 was to be sought in what was called, through an invariable horticultural metaphor, the "root cause" of terrorism. Eliminate poverty, or economic imperialism [Ah, how entertaining - eliminating poverty absolutely requires economic imperilialism! -AMPP Ed.], or global warming, and such acts of terrorism would cease.

Opposed to this kind of analysis were those who saw 9-11 as an unprovoked act of war, and the standard comparison here was with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. To this school of thought--ably represented by, among others, the distinguished classicist Victor Davis Hanson--it is irrelevant what grievances our enemy may believe it has against us; what matters is that we have been viciously attacked and that, for the sake of our survival, we must fight back.

Those who hold this view are in the overwhelming majority among Americans. And yet there is one point on which this position does not differ from the position adopted by those, such as Noam Chomsky, who place the blame for the attack on American policy: Both points of view agree in interpreting 9-11 as an act of war, disagreeing only on the question of whether or not it was justifiable.

This common identification of 9-11 as an act of war arises from a deeper unquestioned assumption--an assumption made both by Mr. Chomsky and his followers on one hand and Mr. Hanson and National Review on the other--and, indeed, by almost everyone in between. The assumption is this: An act of violence on the magnitude of 9-11 can have been intended only to further some kind of political objective. What this political objective might be, or whether it is worthwhile--these are all secondary considerations; but surely people do not commit such acts unless they are trying to achieve some kind of recognizably political purpose.

Behind this shared assumption stands the figure of Clausewitz and his famous definition of war as politics carried out by other means. The whole point of war, on this reading, is to get other people to do what we want them to do: It is an effort to make others adopt our policies or to further our interests. Clausewitzian war, in short, is rational and instrumental. It is the attempt to bring about a new state of affairs through the artful combination of violence and the promise to cease violence if certain political objectives are met.

Of course, this does not mean that wars may not backfire on those who undertake them, or that a particular application of military force may not prove to be counterproductive to one's particular political purpose. But this does not change the fact that the final criterion of military success is always pragmatic: Does it work? Does it in fact bring us closer to realizing our political objectives?

But is this the right model for understanding 9-11? Or have we, like Montezuma, imposed our own inadequate categories on an event that simply does not fit them? Yet, if 9-11 was not an act of war, then what was it? In what follows, I would like to pursue a line suggested by a remark by the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen in reference to 9-11: his much-quoted comment that it was "the greatest work of art of all time."

Despite the repellent nihilism that is at the base of Mr. Stockhausen's ghoulish aesthetic judgment, it contains an important insight and comes closer to a genuine assessment of 9-11 than the competing interpretation of it in terms of Clausewitzian war. For Mr. Stockhausen did grasp one big truth: 9-11 was the enactment of a fantasy--not an artistic fantasy, to be sure, but a fantasy nonetheless.

---

My first encounter with this particular kind of fantasy occurred when I was in college in the late 1960s. A friend of mine and I got into a heated argument. Although we were both opposed to the Vietnam War, we discovered that we differed considerably on what counted as permissible forms of antiwar protest. To me the point of such protest was simple--to turn people against the war. Hence anything that was counterproductive to this purpose was politically irresponsible and should be severely censured. My friend thought otherwise; in fact, he was planning to join what by all accounts was to be a massively disruptive demonstration in Washington, which in fact became one.

My friend did not disagree with me as to the likely counterproductive effects of such a demonstration. Instead, he argued that this simply did not matter. His answer was that even if it was counterproductive, even if it turned people against war protesters, indeed even if it made them more likely to support the continuation of the war, he would still participate in the demonstration and he would do so for one simple reason--because it was, in his words, good for his soul.

What I saw as a political act was not, for my friend, any such thing. It was not aimed at altering the minds of other people or persuading them to act differently. Its whole point was what it did for him.

And what it did for him was to provide him with a fantasy--a fantasy, namely, of taking part in the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. By participating in a violent antiwar demonstration, he was in no sense aiming at coercing conformity with his view--for that would still have been a political objective. Instead, he took his part in order to confirm his ideological fantasy of marching on the right side of history, of feeling himself among the elect few who stood with the angels of historical inevitability. Thus, when he lay down in front of hapless commuters on the bridges over the Potomac, he had no interest in changing the minds of these commuters, no concern over whether they became angry at the protesters or not. They were there merely as props, as so many supernumeraries in his private psychodrama. The protest for him was not politics but theater; and the significance of his role lay not in the political ends his actions might achieve, but rather in their symbolic value as ritual. In short, he was acting out a fantasy.

It was not your garden-variety fantasy of life as a sexual athlete or a racecar driver, but in it, he nonetheless made himself out as a hero--a hero of the revolutionary struggle. The components of his fantasy--and that of many young intellectuals at that time--were compounded purely of ideological ingredients, smatterings of Marx and Mao, a little Fanon and perhaps a dash of Herbert Marcuse.

For want of a better term, call the phenomenon in question a fantasy ideology--by which I mean political and ideological symbols and tropes used not for political purposes, but entirely for the benefit of furthering a specific personal or collective fantasy. It is, to be frank, something like the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons carried out not with the trappings of medieval romances--old castles and maidens in distress--but entirely in terms of ideological symbols and emblems. The difference between them is that one is an innocent pastime while the other has proved to be one of the most terrible scourges to afflict the human race.

But before tackling this subject outright, let us approach it through a few observations about the normal role of fantasy in human conduct.

---

It is a common human weakness to wish to make more of our contribution to the world than the world is prepared to acknowledge, and it is our fantasy world that allows us to fill this gap. But normally, for most of us at least, this fantasy world stays relatively hidden. Indeed, a common criterion of our mental health is the extent to which we are able to keep our fantasies firmly under our watchful control.

Yet clearly there are individuals for whom this control is, at best, intermittent, resulting in behavior that ranges from the merely obnoxious to the clinically psychotic. The man who insists on being taken more seriously than his advantages warrant falls into the former category; the maniac who murders an utter stranger because God--or his neighbor's dog--commanded him to do so belongs to the latter.

What is common in such interactions is that the fantasist inevitably treats other people merely as props--there is no interest in, or even awareness of, others as having wills or minds of their own. The man who bores us with stories designed to impress us with his importance, or his intellect, or his bank account, cares nothing for us as individuals--for he has already cast us in the role that he wishes us to play: We are there to be impressed by him. Indeed, it is an error even to suggest that he is trying to impress us, for this would assume that he is willing to learn enough about us to discover how best we might be impressed. But nothing of the kind occurs. And why should it? After all, the fantasist has already projected onto us the role that we are to play in his fantasy; no matter what we may be thinking of his recital, it never crosses his mind that we may be utterly failing to play the part expected of us--indeed, it is sometimes astonishing to see how much exertion is required of us in order to bring our profound lack of interest to the fantasist's attention.

To an outside observer, the fantasist is clearly attempting to compensate by means of his fantasy for the shortcomings of his own present reality--and thus it is tempting to think of the fantasist as a kind of Don Quixote impotently tilting at windmills. But this is an illusion. Make no mistake about it: The fantasist often exercises great and terrible power precisely by virtue of his fantasy. The father who demands his son grow up and become a professional football player will clearly exercise much more control over his son's life than a father who is content to permit his child to pursue his own goals in life.

This power of the fantasist is entirely traceable to the fact that, for him, the other is always an object and never a subject. A subject, after all, has a will of his own, his own desires and his own agenda; he might rather play the flute instead of football. And anyone who is aware of this fact is automatically put at a disadvantage in comparison with the fantasist--the disadvantage of knowing that other people have minds of their own and are not merely props to be pushed around.

For the moment I stop thinking about you as a prop in my fantasy, you become problematic. If you aren't what I have cast you to be, then who are you, and what do you want? And in order to answer these questions, I find that I must step out of the fantasy realm and enter the real world. If I am your father, I may still wish you to play football, but I can no longer blithely assume that this is obviously what you have always wanted; hence, I will need to start paying attention to you as a genuine other, and no longer merely as a ready-made prop. Your role will change from "born football player" to--X, the unknown. The very immensity of the required mental adjustment goes a long way toward explaining why it is so seldom made and why it is so often tragically impossible to wean a fantasist even from the most destructive fantasy.

Fortunately, the fantasizing individual is normally surrounded by other individuals who are not fantasizing or, at the very least, who are not fantasizing in the same way, and this fact puts some limit on how far most of us allow our fantasy world to intrude on the precinct of reality.

But what happens when it is not an individual who is caught up in his fantasy world, but an entire group--a sect, or a people, or even a nation? That such a thing can happen is obvious from a glance at history. The various chiliastic movements, such as those studied in Norman Cohn's "The Pursuit of the Millennium" (Harper & Row, 1961), are splendid examples of collective fantasy; and there is no doubt that for most of history such large-scale collective fantasies appear on the world stage under the guise of religion.

But this changed with the French Revolution. From this event onward, there would be eruptions of a new kind of collective fantasy, one in which political ideology replaced religious mythology as the source of fantasy's symbols and rituals. In this way it provided a new, and quite dangerous, outlet for the fantasy needs of large groups of men and women--a full-fledged fantasy ideology. For such a fantasy makes no sense outside of the ideological corpus in terms of which the fantasy has been constructed. It is from the ideology that the roles, the setting, the props are drawn, just as for the earlier pursuers of millennium, the relevant roles, setting and props arose out of the biblical corpus of symbolism.

But the symbols by themselves do not create the fantasy. There must first be a pre-existing collective need for this fantasy; this need comes from a conflict between a set of collective aspirations and desires on one hand, and the stern dictates of brutal reality on the other--a conflict in which a lack of realism is gradually transformed into a penchant for fantasy. History is replete with groups that seem to lack the capability of seeing themselves as others see them, differing in this respect much as individuals do.

A fantasy ideology is one that seizes the opportunity offered by such a lack of realism in a political group and makes the most of it. This it is able to do through symbols and rituals, all of which are designed to permit the members of the political group to indulge in a kind of fantasy role-playing. Classic examples of this are easy to find: the Jacobin fantasy of reviving the Roman Republic, Mussolini's fantasy of reviving the Roman Empire, Hitler's fantasy of reviving German paganism in the thousand-year Reich.

This theme of reviving ancient glory is an important key to understanding fantasy ideologies, for it suggests that fantasy ideologies tend to be the domain of those groups that history has passed by or rejected--groups that feel that they are under attack from forces that, while perhaps more powerful than they are, are nonetheless inferior in terms of true virtue. Such a fantasy ideology was current in the South before the Civil War and explained much of the conduct of the Confederacy. Instead of seeing themselves as an anachronism attempting to prolong the existence of a doomed institution, Southerners chose to see themselves as the bearer of true civilization. Imperial Germany had similar fantasies before and during the Great War. They are well expressed in Thomas Mann's "Notes of an Unpolitical Man": Germans possess true inwardness and culture, unlike the French and English--let alone those barbarous Americans. Indeed, Hitler's even more extravagant fantasy ideology is incomprehensible unless one puts it in the context of this pre-existing fantasy ideology.

In reviewing these fantasy ideologies, especially those associated with Nazism and Italian fascism, there is always the temptation for an outside observer to regard their promulgation as the cynical manipulation by a power-hungry leader of his gullible followers. This is a serious error, for the leader himself must be as much steeped in the fantasy as his followers: He can only make others believe because he believes so intensely himself.

But the concept of belief, as it is used in this context, must be carefully understood in order to avoid ambiguity. For us, belief is a purely passive response to evidence presented to us--I form my beliefs about the world for the purpose of understanding the world as it is. But this is radically different from what might be called transformative belief--the secret of fantasy ideology. For here the belief is not passive but intensely active, and its purpose is not to describe the world but to change it. It is, in a sense, a deliberate form of make-believe, but one in which the make-believe is not an end in itself, but rather the means of making the make-believe become real. In this sense it is akin to such innocently jejune phenomena as "The Power of Positive Thinking," or even "The Little Engine That Could." To say that Mussolini, for example, believed that fascist Italy would revive the Roman Empire does not mean that he made a careful examination of the evidence and then arrived at this conclusion. Rather, what is meant by this is that Mussolini had the will to believe that fascist Italy would revive the Roman Empire.

The allusion to William James's famous essay "The Will to Believe" is not an accident, for James exercised a profound influence on the two thinkers essential to understanding both Italian fascism in particular and fantasy ideology in general--Vilfredo Pareto and Georges Sorel. All three men begin with the same assumption: If human beings are limited to acting only on those beliefs that can be logically and scientifically demonstrated, they could not survive, simply because this degree of certainty is restricted only to mathematics and the hard sciences--which, by themselves, are not remotely sufficient to guide us through the world as it exists. Hence, human beings must have a large set of beliefs that cannot be demonstrated logically and scientifically--beliefs that are therefore irrational as judged by the hard sciences.

Yet the fact that such beliefs cannot be justified by science does not mean that they may not be useful or beneficial to the individual or to the society that holds them. For James, this meant primarily the religious beliefs of individuals: Did a man's religious beliefs improve the quality of his personal life? For Pareto, however, the same argument was extended to all beliefs: religious, cultural and political.

Both James and Pareto viewed nonrational belief from the perspective of an outside observer: They took up the beliefs that they found already circulating in the societies in which they lived and examined them in light of whether they were beneficial or detrimental to the individuals and the societies that entertained them. As a botanist examines the flora of a particular region--he is not interested in creating new flowers, but simply in cataloguing those that already exist--so, too, James and Pareto were exclusively interested in already existing beliefs, and certainly not in producing new ones.

But this was not enough for Sorel. Combining Nietzsche with William James, Sorel discovered the secret of Nietzsche's will to power in James's will to believe. James, like Pareto, had shown that certain spontaneously occurring beliefs enabled those who held these beliefs to thrive and to prosper, both as individuals and as societies. But if this was true of spontaneously occurring beliefs, could it not also be true of beliefs that were deliberately and consciously manufactured?

This was a radical innovation. For just as naturally existing beliefs could be judged properly only in terms of the benefits such beliefs brought about in the lives of those who believed in them, the same standard could now be applied to beliefs that were deliberately created in order to have a desired effect on those who came to believe in them. What would be important about such "artificially inseminated" beliefs--which Sorel calls myths--was the transformative effect such myths would have on those who placed their faith in them and the extent to which such ideological make-believe altered the character and conduct of those who held them--and certainly not whether they were true.

Sorel's candidate for such a myth--the general strike--never quite caught on. But his underlying insight was taken up by Mussolini and Italian fascism, and with vastly greater sensitivity to what is involved in creating such galvanizing and transformative myths in the minds of large numbers of men and women. After all, it is obvious that not just any belief will do and that, furthermore, each particular group of people will have a disposition, based on history and character, to entertain one set of beliefs more readily than another. Mussolini assembled his Sorelian myth out of elements clearly designed to catch the imagination of his time and place--a strange blend of Imperial Roman themes and futurist images.

Yet even the most sensitively crafted myth requires something more in order to take root in the imagination of large populations--and this was where Mussolini made his great innovation. For the Sorelian myth to achieve its effect it had to be presented as theater. It had to grab the spectators and make them feel a part of the spectacle. The Sorelian myth, in short, had to be embodied in a fantasy--a fantasy with which the "audience" could easily and instantly identify. The willing suspension of disbelief, which Coleridge had observed in the psychology of the normal theatergoer, would be enlisted in the service of the Sorelian myth; and in the process, it would permit the myth-induced fantasy to override the obvious objections based on mundane considerations of reality. Thus 20th-century Italians became convinced that they were the successors of the Roman Empire in the same way that a member of a theater audience is convinced that Hamlet is really talking to his deceased father's ghost.

Once again, it is a mistake to see in all of this merely a ploy--a cynical device to delude the masses. In all fantasy ideologies, there is a point at which the make-believe becomes an end in itself. This fact is nowhere more clearly exhibited than in the Italian conquest of Ethiopia.

Any attempt to see this adventure in Clausewitzian terms is doomed to fail: There was no political or economic advantage whatsoever to be gained from the invasion of Ethiopia. Indeed, the diplomatic disadvantages to Italy in consequence of this action were tremendous, and they were in no way to be compensated for by anything that Italy could hope to gain from possessing Ethiopia as a colony.

Why invade, then? The answer is quite simple. Ethiopia was a prop--a prop in the fantasy pageant of the new Italian Empire--that and nothing else. And the war waged in order to win Ethiopia as a colony was not a war in the Clausewitzian sense--that is to say, it was not an instrument of political policy designed to induce concessions from Ethiopia, or to get Ethiopia to alter its policies, or even to get Ethiopia to surrender. Ethiopia had to be conquered not because it was worth conquering, but because the fascist fantasy ideology required Italy to conquer something--and Ethiopia fit the bill. The conquest was not the means to an end, as in Clausewitzian war; it was an end in itself. Or, more correctly, its true purpose was to bolster the fascist collective fantasy that insisted on casting the Italians as a conquering race, the heirs of Imperial Rome.

---

To be a prop in someone else's fantasy is not a pleasant experience, especially when this someone else is trying to kill you, but that was the position of Ethiopia in the fantasy ideology of Italian fascism. And it is the position Americans have been placed in by the quite different fantasy ideology of radical Islam.

The terror attack of 9-11 was not designed to make us alter our policy, but was crafted for its effect on the terrorists themselves: It was a spectacular piece of theater. The targets were chosen by al Qaeda not through military calculation--in contrast, for example, to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor--but entirely because they stood as symbols of American power universally recognized by the Arab street. They were gigantic props in a grandiose spectacle in which the collective fantasy of radical Islam was brought vividly to life: A mere handful of Muslims, men whose will was absolutely pure, as proven by their martyrdom, brought down the haughty towers erected by the Great Satan. What better proof could there possibly be that God was on the side of radical Islam and that the end of the reign of the Great Satan was at hand?

As the purpose of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia was to prove to the Italians themselves that they were conquerors, so the purpose of 9-11 was not to create terror in the minds of the American people but to prove to the Arabs that Islamic purity, as interpreted by radical Islam, could triumph. The terror, which to us seems the central fact, is in the eyes of al Qaeda a byproduct. Likewise, what al Qaeda and its followers see as central to the holy pageant of 9-11--namely, the heroic martyrdom of the 19 hijackers--is interpreted by us quite differently. For us the hijackings, like the Palestinian "suicide" bombings, are viewed merely as a modus operandi, a technique that is incidental to a larger strategic purpose, a makeshift device, a low-tech stopgap. In short, Clausewitzian war carried out by other means--in this case by suicide.

But in the fantasy ideology of radical Islam, suicide is not a means to an end but an end in itself. Seen through the distorting prism of radical Islam, the act of suicide is transformed into that of martyrdom--martyrdom in all its transcendent glory and accompanied by the panoply of magical powers that religious tradition has always assigned to martyrdom.

In short, it is a mistake to try to fit such behavior into the mold created by our own categories and expectations. Nowhere is this more tellingly illustrated than on the videotape of Osama bin Laden discussing the attack. The tape makes clear that the final collapse of the World Trade Center was not part of the original terrorist scheme, which apparently assumed that the twin towers would not lose their structural integrity. But this fact gave to the event--in terms of al Qaeda's fantasy ideology--an even greater poignancy: Precisely because it had not been part of the original calculation, it was therefore to be understood as a manifestation of divine intervention. The 19 hijackers did not bring down the towers--God did.

---

Most of our misunderstandings of al Qaeda's goals have come about for one fundamental reason: In the first weeks after 9-11, it was impossible to determine whether or not al Qaeda had embarked on a systematic and calculated Clausewitzian strategy of terror simply because at that date we did not know, and could not know, what was coming next.

In the days and weeks following 9-11 there was a universal sense that it would happen again at any moment--something shocking and terrifying, something that would again rivet us to our TV screen. And indeed, the anthrax scare seemed at first to be designed precisely to fit this bill. It even had something that 9-11 lacked, namely the ability to frighten people who sat quietly in their living rooms in little towns across America, to make ordinary people feel alarmed undertaking ordinary daily activities, such as opening the mail. But, leaving aside the question of whether al Qaeda was in fact directly or indirectly responsible for the anthrax letters, what was most striking about this episode was that it showed dramatically that if al Qaeda had elected to launch a Clausewitzian war of terror against the United States, even acts of terror on a vastly smaller scale than 9-11 would still be assured of receiving enormous media coverage 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Indeed, even if another agent was behind the scare, it is still hard to understand how al Qaeda could fail to profit by the lesson the scare taught--that the American media, by nature, could be trusted to amplify even the least act of terrorism into a continuing saga of national nightmare.

But leaving aside the anthrax episode, there was in fact no such act committed by al Qaeda in the months following 9-11. Nor does the possibility that one might still occur change the fact that during this critical initial period, one did not. This in itself is a remarkably telling fact.

Acts of terror, as noted earlier, can be used to pursue genuine Clausewitzian objectives in precisely the same way that normal military operations are used, as was demonstrated during the Algerian war of independence. But this requires that the acts of terror be deployed with the same kind of strategic logic that applies to normal military operations. If you attack your enemy with an act of terror--especially one on the scale of 9-11--you must be prepared to follow up on it immediately. The analogy here to time-honored military strategy is obvious: If you have vanquished your enemy on the field of battle, you must vigorously pursue him while he is in retreat, i.e., while he is still in a state of panic and confusion. You must not let him regroup psychologically, but must continue to pummel him while he is still reeling from the first blow.

This al Qaeda failed to do. And the question is: Why?

Of course, given our limited knowledge, it is possible that al Qaeda did plan follow-up acts of terror but was simply unable to carry them out due to our heightened state of awareness as well as our military efforts to cripple al Qaeda in its base of operations in Afghanistan. But it is hard to believe that these factors could have precluded smaller-scale acts of terror--of the kind employed in Algeria and, more recently, by the Palestinian suicide bombers. What was to keep al Qaeda operatives from blowing themselves up at a Wal-Mart in Arkansas or a McDonald's in New Hampshire? Very little. And while it is true that such acts would lack the grandiose effect of 9-11, they would have brought terrorism home to the average American in a way that even 9-11 had not done and, as evidenced by the anthrax episode, would have multiplied enormously the already enormous impact on the American psyche of al Qaeda's original act of terror.

This was the reason why I, like millions of other Americans, spent the first few weeks after 9-11 either watching television constantly or turning it on every 15 minutes: We were prepared to be devastated again. Our nerves were in a state of such anxious expectation that a carefully concerted and orchestrated campaign of smaller-scale, guerrilla-style terror, undertaken in out-of-the-way locales, could well have had a catastrophically destabilizing effect on the American economy and even on our political system.

But such Clausewitzian terror is quite remote from the symbolic drama enacted by al Qaeda on 9-11--a great ritual demonstrating the power of Allah, a pageant designed to convey a message not to the American people, but to the Arab world. A campaign of smaller-scale acts of terror would have no glamour in it, and it was glamour--and grandiosity--that al Qaeda was seeking in its targets. The pure Islamic David required a Goliath. After all, if David had merely killed someone his own size, where would be the evidence of God's favor toward him?

---

If this interpretation is correct, then it is time that we reconsider some of our basic policy in the war on terror. First of all, it should be obvious that if our enemy is motivated purely by a fantasy ideology, it is absurd for us to look for the so-called root causes of terrorism in poverty, lack of education, a lack of democracy, etc. Such factors play absolutely no role in the creation of a fantasy ideology. On the contrary, fantasy ideologies have historically been the product of members of the intelligentsia, middle-class at the very least and vastly better educated than average. Furthermore, to hope that democratic reform would discourage radical Islam ignores the fact that previous fantasy ideologies have historically arisen in a democratic context; as the student of European fascism, Ernst Nolte, has observed, parliamentary democracy was an essential precondition for the rise of both Mussolini and Hitler.

Equally absurd, on this interpretation, is the notion that we must review our own policies toward the Arab world--or the state of Israel--in order to find ways to make our enemies hate us less. If the Ethiopians had tried to make themselves more likable to the Italians in the hope that this would make Mussolini rethink his plans of conquest, it would have had the same effect. There is no political policy we could take that would change the attitude of our enemies--short, perhaps, of a massive nationwide conversion to fundamentalist Islam.

The second consequence to follow from the adoption of this model for understanding our enemy is that we need to reconsider the term "war" as it is currently deployed in this case. When the Japanese started the Pacific war by bombing Pearl Harbor, it was not because Pearl Harbor was a symbol of American power; it was because it was a large naval base and the Japanese had the quite rational strategic goal of crippling the American Pacific fleet in the first hours of the war. Furthermore, the act itself would not have taken place if the Japanese had believed themselves otherwise capable of securing their political goals--i.e., American acceptance of Japanese hegemony in Asia and the Pacific. And the war would have immediately ceased if the United States, in the days following the attack, had promptly asked for a negotiated settlement of the conflict on terms acceptable to the Japanese.

In the case of the war begun at Pearl Harbor, all the parties knew exactly what was at issue, and there was no need for media experts to argue over the "real" objective behind the attack. Everyone knew that the Japanese attack was the result of a strategic decision to go to war with America rather than accept the American ultimatum to evacuate Manchuria. In each of these cases, both sides entered into war even though a political solution was available to the various contending parties. The decision to go to war, therefore, was made in a purely Clausewitzian manner: The employment of military force was selected in preference to what all sides saw as an unacceptable political settlement.

This was not remotely the case in the aftermath of 9-11. The issue facing the U.S. was not whether to accept or to reject al Qaeda's political demands, which were nebulous in the extreme. Indeed, al Qaeda did not even claim to have made the attack in the first place! The U.S. and its allies were placed in the bizarre position of first having to prove who their enemy was--a difficulty that, by definition, does not occur in Clausewitzian war, where it is essential that the identity of the conflicting parties be known to each other, since otherwise the conflict would be pointless.

That we are involved with an enemy who is not engaged in Clausewitzian warfare has serious repercussions on our policy. For we are fighting an enemy who has no strategic purpose in anything he does--whose actions have significance only in terms of his own fantasy ideology. It means, in a strange sense, that while we are at war with them, they are not at war with us--and, indeed, it would be an enormous improvement if they were. If they were at war with us, they would be compelled to start thinking realistically, in terms of objective factors such as overall strategic goals, war aims and so forth. They would have to make a realistic, and not a fantasy-induced, assessment of the relative strength of us vs. them. But because they are operating in terms of their fantasy ideology, such a realistic assessment is impossible for them. It matters not how much stronger or more powerful we are than they--what matters is that God will bring them victory.

This must be emphasized, for if the fantasy ideology of Italian fascism was a form of political make-believe, the fantasy ideology of radical Islam goes even one step further: It is, in a sense, more akin to a form of magical thinking. While the Sorelian myth does aim, finally, at transforming the real world, it is almost as if the "real" world no longer matters in terms of the fantasy ideology of radical Islam. Our "real" world, after all, is utterly secular, a concatenation of an endless series of cause and effect, with all events occurring on a single ontological plane. But the "real" world of radical Islam is different--its fantasy ideology reflects the same philosophical occasionalism that pervades so much of Islamic theology. That is to say, event B does not happen because it is caused by a previous event A. Instead, event A is simply the occasion for God to cause event B, so that the genuine cause of all events occurring on our ontological plane of existence is nothing else but God. But if this is so, then the "real" world that we take for granted simply vanishes, and all becomes determined by the will of God; and in this manner the line between realist and magical thinking dissolves. This is why the mere fact that there is no "realistic" hope of al Qaeda destroying the United States--and indeed the West as a whole--is not of the slightest consequence. After all, if God is willing, the United States and the West could collapse at any moment.

This element of magical thinking does not make al Qaeda any less dangerous, however. For it is likely that in al Qaeda's collective fantasy there may exist the notion of an ultimate terror act, a magic bullet capable of bringing down the United States at a single stroke--and, paradoxically, nothing comes closer to fulfilling this magical role than the detonation of a very unmagical nuclear device. That this would not destroy our society in one fell swoop is obvious to us; but it is not to our enemies, in whose eyes an act of this nature assumes a fantasy significance in addition to its sufficiently terrifying reality--the fantasy significance of providing al Qaeda with a vision of ultimate and decisive victory over the West.

---

In the initial aftermath of 9-11, President Bush continually spoke of al Qaeda not as terrorists, but as "evildoers"--a term for which he was widely derided by those who found it offensively simple-minded and childish. Evildoers, after all, are characters out of fairytales, not real life. Who really sets out for the deliberate purpose of doing evil, except the wicked dwarfs and trolls of our childhood fantasies?

Mr. Bush's critics--who seem unfortunately to have won the semantic battle--were both right and wrong. They were right in observing the fairytale provenance of the word "evildoer," but they were wrong in denouncing Mr. Bush's use of it. For, whether by instinct or by cunning, Mr. Bush struck exactly the right note. The evildoer of the fairytale, after all, is not motivated in his conduct by his wish to change the way other people act; his objectives are not to persuade or cajole or threaten others into doing as he wishes them to do. Instead, other people exist in his eyes only as an opportunity to do evil. He doesn't want to manipulate them for his selfish purpose; rather, his one and only purpose is to inflict evil on them--evil and nothing more.

Rather than interpreting 9-11 as if it were a Clausewitzian act of war, Mr. Bush instinctively saw it for what it was: the acting out of demented fantasy. When confronted with the enigma of 9-11, he was able to avoid the temptation of trying to interpret it in terms of our own familiar categories and traditions. Instead of looking for an utterly mythical root cause for 9-11, or seeing it as a purposeful political act on the Clausewitzian model, he grasped its essential nature in one powerful metaphor, offering, in a sense, a kind of counterfantasy to the American people, one that allowed them to grasp the horror of 9-11 without being misled by false analogies and misplaced metaphors. How much wiser Montezuma would have been if he had said, "I do not know who these white-skinned strangers may be, or where they come from, or what they want. But that they are here to do evil I have no doubt. So let us act accordingly."

But, Mr. Bush's critics argued, the term "evildoers" dehumanizes our enemy. And again, the critics are both right and wrong. Yes, the term does dehumanize our enemy. But this is only because our enemy has already dehumanized himself. A characteristic of fantasy ideology is that those in the throes of it begin by dehumanizing their enemies by seeing in them only objects to act upon. It is impossible to treat others in this way without dehumanizing oneself in the process. The demands of the fantasy ideology are such that it transforms all parties into mere symbols. The victims of the fantasy ideology inevitably end by including both those who are enacting the fantasy and those upon whom the fantasy is enacted--both those who perished in the World Trade Center and those who caused them to perish; and, afterwards, both those who wept for the dead and those who rejoiced over the martyrs.

There is one decisive advantage to the "evildoer" metaphor, and it is this: Combat with evildoers is not Clausewitzian war. You do not make treaties with evildoers or try to adjust your conduct to make them like you. You do not try to see the world from the evildoers' point of view. You do not try to appease them, or persuade them, or reason with them. You try, on the contrary, to outwit them, to vanquish them, to kill them. You behave with them in the same manner that you would deal with a fatal epidemic--you try to wipe it out.

So perhaps it is time to retire the war metaphor and to deploy one that is more fitting: the struggle to eradicate disease. The fantasy ideologies of the 20th century, after all, spread like a virus in susceptible populations: Their propagation was not that suggested by John Stuart Mill's marketplace of ideas--fantasy ideologies were not debated and examined, weighed and measured, evaluated and compared. They grew and spread like a cancer in the body politic. For the people who accepted them did not accept them as tentative or provisional. They were unalterable and absolute. And finally, after driving out all other competing ideas and ideologies, they literally turned their host organism into the instrument of their own poisonous and deadly will.

The same thing is happening today--and that is our true enemy. The poison of the radical Islamic fantasy ideology is being spread all over the Muslim world through schools and through the media, through mosques and through the demagoguery of the Arab street. In fact, there is no better way to grasp the full horror of the poison than to listen as a Palestinian mother offers her four-year-old son up to be yet another victim of this ghastly fantasy.

Once we understand this, many of our current perplexities will find themselves resolved. Pseudoissues such as debates over the legitimacy of "racial profiling" would disappear: Does anyone in his right mind object to screening someone entering his country for signs of plague? Or quarantining those who have contracted it? Or closely monitoring precisely those populations within his country that are most at risk?

Let there be no doubt about it. The fantasy ideologies of the 20th century were plagues, killing millions and millions of innocent men, women and children. The only difference was that the victims and targets of such fantasy ideologies so frequently refused to see them for what they were, interpreting them as something quite different--as normal politics, as reasonable aspirations, as merely variations on the well-known theme of realpolitik, behaving--tragically enough--no differently from Montezuma when he attempted to decipher the inexplicable enigma posed by the appearance of the Spanish conquistadors. Nor did the fact that his response was entirely human make his fate any less terrible.

Mr. Harris is an Atlanta writer. This article appears in the August/September issue of Policy Review, published by the Hoover Institution.

from http://www.concentric.net/~tycho4/RelCrime.htm

Is Corrupt Religion Part of the Problem?

Countless studies show higher rates of religious affiliation among criminals and juvenile delinquents than among the rest of the population. In addition, the three countries with the highest religious attendance in the world (U.S.A., Ireland, and South Africa) have an extremely high violence rate, whereas the three countries with the lowest religious attendance (Denmark, Sweden, and Japan) have an unusually low rate of violence (Sex and Reason, Richard Posner).

Alfie Kohn of Psychology Today has written, "What... can we surmise about the likelihood of someone's being caring and generous, loving and helpful, just from knowing that he or she is a believer? Virtually nothing, say psychologists, sociologists, and others who have studied that question for decades."

"[Most] studies show that conventional religion is not an effective force for moral behavior or against criminal activity." Studies show higher rates of religious affiliation among criminals and juvenile delinquents than among the rest of the population (The Psychology of Religion, Bernard Spilka, Ralph W. Hood Jr. and Richard Gorsuch).

In research by Lee Ellis at the University of North Dakota at Minot, Jews were found to be the least criminal, by far, and Catholics the most. But the group with a crime rate equal to or lower than Jews was of people claiming no religious affiliation. So religion is not only bad for the individual; it is bad for society.

In another study, researchers asked students about their willingness to cheat on a test. The majority of only one "religious" group resisted cheating -- atheists.

If you don't like abortion, you should recommend against religion. Surveys (Janus Report) show that only 22% of non-religious people have had abortions, compared to 32% for Protestants and 29% for Catholics.

A recent study commissioned by the National Catholic Educational Association covering 16,000 high school seniors show that Catholic school seniors consistently have a worse record than public school seniors in use of alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, and shoplifting (overall, 40% of Catholics, only 29% of non-Catholics).

Why is this?

Because people will not follow "rules" without explanation, which seems to be beneath or beyond our religious leaders. Believers are taught rules; nonbelievers know why they should not do things.

Because religious leaders have proven corrupt and not credible.

Because they can see religious people around them being bigoted and hypocritical. (Example and Hypocrisy are the greatest teachers.)

Because God doesn't seem to help people, even innocent infants, who are abused, starved, sick, or accident victims.

Because religion is often a con by control-obsessed people who want power and influence over our bodies and minds.

Because religion is a distraction from important things like being good, earning a living, finding love, gaining esteem, learning, being honest, and is the enemy of what we innately know is right -- getting along with others.

There is a better way.

The ideological pedigree described above is little help in understanding the current architecture of power. The Vatican has less control over the Republican Party than do General Motors, the NRA, or the Christian Coalition. And the Christian Coalition, of course, doesn't care a rat's ass what today's Vatican says. Similarly, the government of mainland China pays no heed to what the Grand Lodge of Scotland has to say. The current nuclei of power are defined by the international banking clique - which, it is good to note, includes the Vatican bank. Still, the power of the Vatican is second-tier today, and the power of Freemasonry is second-tier at most. The synthesis (and hence obsolescence) of their respective dialectic monopoles - of unadorned authoritarian hierarchicalism and unadorned unionism - is inherent in the "New World Order" (the first major example of which was the Nazis - much more on this in the next chapter, The New Age).

Consider this passage:

"Republicans can be strange. So desperate are they to beat Al Gore in 2000 that they want to hand their party's nomination to George W. Bush even before he proves he can beat other Republicans. I know they crave order and hierarchy, but this is ridiculous."
-Paul Gigot, Wall Street Journal, 1999-Mar-4

from the Associated Press via the New York Times, 2003-Aug-22:

Finding References to God Easy in America

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans pledge allegiance to ``one nation under God.'' U.S. currency says ``In God We Trust.'' Congress opens each day's work with a prayer, including this recent exaltation: ``Blessed is the nation whose God is Lord.''

Even the high court that decides how much God can be in public lives starts off each session with, ``God save the United States and this honorable court,'' and displays a frieze that includes a depiction of Moses as the lawgiver, holding tablets with the Ten Commandments.

Whatever the outcome of the battle over the Ten Commandments monument in the Alabama state Judicial Building, religious symbols and words will continue to be embedded in the government, the courts and other public places.

God is in the details -- even the grand designs -- of the republic. Some of the expressions of religion are widely accepted as part of American traditions -- a kind of cultural deity -- like a president taking office with the oath, ``So help me God.''

Others -- school prayer, Christian icons in town squares, President Bush's turn to religious charities for social services -- bring on pitched legal battles or at least a feisty debate over the separation of church and state.

Members of Congress who engage in that debate do so after a prayerful beginning to their day. A recent prayer in the Senate asked, ``Fill our God-shaped void with Your presence and bid our striving to cease.''

On the same day in the House, members bowed their heads to the plea that ``You, Lord, will lead, guide and direct them in their affairs.''

Around the country, state courthouses are decorated with religious art -- although nothing quite like the 5,300-pound granite monument which made its debut in Alabama about two years ago and reignited the debate over when God is welcome in public places.

Alabama's associate Supreme Court justices ordered the Ten Commandments monument removed from the rotunda of the state judicial building Thursday, despite Chief Justice Roy Moore's fiery defense of the granite marker. The U.S. Supreme Court has said it would not stay the removal, and Moore has promised he would appeal.

There has been some allowance for references to God in older symbols of the nation.

``Over the last 200 years, our conception of what's appropriate separation has changed,'' says David Campbell, who teaches political science at the University of Notre Dame. These are mere ``vestiges'' of a past when religion and government were more entangled.

While God is in many places, in courtrooms it's a very delicate matter, says John Langan, professor of ethics at Georgetown University.

``People feel very vulnerable there,'' he said. ``They need reassurance they won't be discriminated against and that their values will be taken seriously.''

But Langan says, people don't consider religious words or signs on currency a real threat.

``You buy the same things with the money whether it has the same message or not,'' Langan says. ``You don't have to worry about it. No one is going to ask you if you're Protestant, Catholic, Jewish or Muslim. They'll just take the money.''

Even so, religious references on money are rare outside of fundamentalist Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia which says on one of its bills: ``There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet.''

America's Declaration of Independence in 1776 presupposed that people believed in a divinity. ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights ...''

But the Constitution which followed says nothing about religion except to guarantee its free exercise and its only reference to a higher power was a much used expression. ``Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven.

from the New York Times, 2003-Aug-15, by Nicholas D. Kristof:

Believe It, or Not

Today marks the Roman Catholics' Feast of the Assumption, honoring the moment that they believe God brought the Virgin Mary into Heaven. So here's a fact appropriate for the day: Americans are three times as likely to believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus (83 percent) as in evolution (28 percent).

So this day is an opportunity to look at perhaps the most fundamental divide between America and the rest of the industrialized world: faith. Religion remains central to American life, and is getting more so, in a way that is true of no other industrialized country, with the possible exception of South Korea.

Americans believe, 58 percent to 40 percent, that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. In contrast, other developed countries overwhelmingly believe that it is not necessary. In France, only 13 percent agree with the U.S. view. (For details on the polls cited in this column, go to www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds [immediately below -AMPP Ed.].)

The faith in the Virgin Birth reflects the way American Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time. The percentage of Americans who believe in the Virgin Birth actually rose five points in the latest poll.

My grandfather was fairly typical of his generation: A devout and active Presbyterian elder, he nonetheless believed firmly in evolution and regarded the Virgin Birth as a pious legend. Those kinds of mainline Christians are vanishing, replaced by evangelicals. Since 1960, the number of Pentecostalists has increased fourfold, while the number of Episcopalians has dropped almost in half.

The result is a gulf not only between America and the rest of the industrialized world, but a growing split at home as well. One of the most poisonous divides is the one between intellectual and religious America.

Some liberals wear T-shirts declaring, "So Many Right-Wing Christians . . . So Few Lions." On the other side, there are attitudes like those on a Web site, dutyisours.com/gwbush.htm, explaining the 2000 election this way:

"God defeated armies of Philistines and others with confusion. Dimpled and hanging chads may also be because of God's intervention on those who were voting incorrectly. Why is GW Bush our president? It was God's choice."

The Virgin Mary is an interesting prism through which to examine America's emphasis on faith because most Biblical scholars regard the evidence for the Virgin Birth, and for Mary's assumption into Heaven (which was proclaimed as Catholic dogma only in 1950), as so shaky that it pretty much has to be a leap of faith. As the Catholic theologian Hans Küng puts it in "On Being a Christian," the Virgin Birth is a "collection of largely uncertain, mutually contradictory, strongly legendary" narratives, an echo of virgin birth myths that were widespread in many parts of the ancient world.

Jaroslav Pelikan, the great Yale historian and theologian, says in his book "Mary Through the Centuries" that the earliest references to Mary (like Mark's gospel, the first to be written, or Paul's letter to the Galatians) don't mention anything unusual about the conception of Jesus. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke do say Mary was a virgin, but internal evidence suggests that that part of Luke, in particular, may have been added later by someone else (it is written, for example, in a different kind of Greek than the rest of that gospel).

Yet despite the lack of scientific or historical evidence, and despite the doubts of Biblical scholars, America is so pious that not only do 91 percent of Christians say they believe in the Virgin Birth, but so do an astonishing 47 percent of U.S. non-Christians.

I'm not denigrating anyone's beliefs. And I don't pretend to know why America is so much more infused with religious faith than the rest of the world. But I do think that we're in the middle of another religious Great Awakening, and that while this may bring spiritual comfort to many, it will also mean a growing polarization within our society.

But mostly, I'm troubled by the way the great intellectual traditions of Catholic and Protestant churches alike are withering, leaving the scholarly and religious worlds increasingly antagonistic. I worry partly because of the time I've spent with self-satisfied and unquestioning mullahs and imams, for the Islamic world is in crisis today in large part because of a similar drift away from a rich intellectual tradition and toward the mystical. The heart is a wonderful organ, but so is the brain.

from the New York Times Kristof bboard, 2003-Aug-14 20:49, by Nicholas Kristof:

The most stunning religion survey I found is the one in which 47 percent even of American non-Christians say they believe in the virgin birth. The source of that data is a Harris Poll from Aug. 12, 1998, with a sample of 1,011 adults. That survey found that 94 percent of adults believe in God, 86 percent believe in miracles, 89 percent believe in Heaven, and 73 percent believe in the Devil and in Hell.

The comparisons with other countries come from a different source: ``Views of a Changing World, June 2003,'' a multi-nation poll conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, www.people-press.org. Incidentally, the Pew survey finds that the American emphasis on the need to believe in God to be moral, while rare in the industrialized world, is common in developing countries like Nigeria and Pakistan.

The figure for belief in evolution comes from a separate Gallup poll.

There's been a huge amount of Biblical scholarship on Mary, and I particularly recommend the two books I mention in the column: Professor Jaroslav Pelikan's ``Mary Through the Centuries'' and Hans Kung's ``On Being a Christian.'' There are many other points that I didn't have space to mention in the column, of course, including the fact that some early Christians may have felt pressure to have Jesus' birth reflect what they thought was a prophesy in Isaiah of a birth to a virgin. In fact, that was a mistranslation into Greek of a word more properly rendered as ``young woman.''

A related issue is the question of whether the Virgin Mary, even if she was a virgin at the time of conception, remained one through her life. There is no scriptural support for that idea, and some contradiction in the form of repeated references to Jesus' brothers. It is true that the word can also mean cousin, but the linguists say that in this context it's a stretch.

I want to emphasize that my point isn't to mock anyone's beliefs. As Kant noted, matters of faith cannot be proved or disproved; they belong in a separate realm. I'm simply trying to explore this gulf between the U.S. and the rest of the industrialized world, and also caution about the growing antagonism between the religious and intellectual realms.

I'm going to be on vacation for the next week, and then I'll be traveling in obscure places, so I'm probably not going to be able to go through emails and comment on this blog for a couple of weeks. Thus I'd suggest that you direct comments and criticisms to the nytimes.com forum related to my column.

Here, from Pat Sonnek and Mark Gilbert, are collections of statements by famous people who were also atheists. These will be real eye-openers for many.

It is imperative to summarily dispel two pervasive fallacies: determinism and holism. These are really just two faces of the same fallacy. Determinism is the fallacy that an individual and his actions are nothing more than the predictable product of genetics and environment. Restated, the fallacy is that the individual (the ego) is powerless and imaginary, and his environment and circumstance (the non-ego) are real and dominate him completely. This is hogwash.

Dispelling the fallacy is a simple three step process. The first step is to dismiss as lunatics, those who assert that all existence is imaginary. The second step is to observe that when a determinist asserts the reality, authenticity, and potency of the non-ego, he cannot but imply the reality, authenticity, and potency of the ego, since the ego and non-ego are composed of similar matter subject to identical physical principles. His protests to the contrary are properly dismissed as irrational. The third step is to recognize that the randomness endemic to the neural substrate is a source of information internal to the ego, and because of this information, there are aspects of the ego that are not a consequence of the influence of the non-ego (genetics and circumstance) on the ego. Quod erat demonstrandum, the individual and his actions are products of more than his environmental circumstance - the ego is first-class.

Holism is the fallacy that humanity, or the global ecosystem, or the universe, is a single organism, and that humans are organs within this organism. Restated, the fallacy is that no particular human (ego) is an individual, but the set of humans (the set of all egos) is. The proponents of this fallacy often hold, accurately, that it is the individual that has autonomous willful consciousness, but diverge from reality in what they consider to be an individual. Their fundamental error is in their conception of a non-conscious organization (the set of humans) as an individual. They are capable of sustaining this fallacy only because, in their understanding of the nature of consciousness, they lack rigor and resort to mysticism.

Consciousness, the sole prerequisite to individuality, is a characteristic of individual mammals (most notably, humans), and there is no consciousness in a group of humans aside from the many and separate consciousnesses of the individual humans in the group. As noted above, the fallacies of determinism and holism are really different facets of the same root fallacy. The root fallacy is the non-existence of autonomous consciousness in individual humans. The anatomy of this autonomous consciousness is detailed in a paper I have written, entitled The Symphonic Architecture of Mind: Consciousness as Circulating Wavetrain. The myth of soul (mind, consciousness) separate from body is related to the root fallacy of non-existence of autonomous consciousness in individual humans, and is a bilge load dispatched by this paper.

Now, I will endeavor to dispel the fallacy of theism - the myth of an omnipotent supernatural being. A first crucial realization is that a cosmic omnipotence cannot coexist with any other "potences." That is, if one embraces the fallacy of an omnipotent god, one must abandon any hope of human potency - either individual or collective. According to the theistic paradigm, humans behave not by their will, constrained and directed by their sense of the right and just, but by the permission ("by the grace") of an omnipotent god. The gullible are made to feel impotent, and hence are made less disruptive, more predictable, and more manipulable. And since this god does not actually exist, religion allows for a definition of rightness that is of benefit to the inventors and propagators of the religion.

The opposite of theism is deism. Deism is the watchmaker theory of creation: the universe is created according to a design, but whatever created it has no connection to the universe aside from the creator relationship, and interaction with the creator and design is indirect, unreciprocated, and implicit in interacting with the creation. If you fearlessly plunge onward trying to logically account for existence itself, you encounter a seamless, infinite, perfectly smooth, perfectly impenetrable wall you cannot think past. This wall is what one encounters when one asks how and why the universe is here. Logic is not equal to the task, since logic is a methodology colloquial to the universe and inapplicable in the context in which the universe ``is'' created. I say ``is'' simply because it is the least committed tense, so to speak - time itself is a colloquialism applicable only inside this universe. One has to resign one's self to the perfect impossibility of understanding anything not in the universe. By the logic of this universe, this universe had to somehow be made to be, but - well, I'm back to the wall again.

An episode of J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5 dramatizes the theistic trap. G'kar, a central character, is lecturing some fawning students. He describes the determined search of men for the living god, repeated through the ages. He describes the zealous pursuit of the searcher's mind as a hunt by flashlight, with which he intends to illuminate the god he seeks. In the long twilight search he gradually increases the intensity of his flashlight, until, straining for any hint of his goal, he raises the luminosity to maximum. And when he comes upon the wall, and sees upon it the flowering glare of his flashlight, he sees the living god and proclaims as much, and condemns those who doubt him. Nonetheless, it is only his own mind, projected upon the seamless, infinite, impenetrable wall that bounds the knowable.

When an injury deprives a neuron of input, the neuron gradually raises its gain, in an effort to compensate for the injury. If the injury is total, the neuron will increase its gain until it fires in the absence of input. This is the cause of phantom limb syndrome. An amputee's sensation of an itching toe is not evidence that he has his leg back. Similarly, if you convince yourself you are missing something, and don't relent until a sensation fills the perceived void, that void will be filled - not by reason, not by the real, but by the contrived and the false - by faith. (See item "Mind Phantoms", below.)

Revisiting the myth of holism: Liberals and New Agers espouse the myth that we are all, in some sense, one. It is extremely important that this mystical garbage be recognized as such. We are not one in any natural sense at all, and the false precept has historically been wielded as a weapon by collectivists of every ilk, including various flavors of Marxists (including the USSR and present-day mainland China), and by the Nazis. Collectivism - the idea that the advertised interests of a supposed whole take priority over the actual interests of real individuals - is a powerful meme which enables almost limitless cruelty and destruction.

Another version of holism is the popular myth of the collective consciousness or subconscious, in which the minds of humanity somehow sympathize in an extrasensory fashion. An example is ``Indra's Net.'' Of course, we are all connected, but our preeminent manners of connection are verbal (and other symbolic) communication, economic interaction (material commerce), sexual interaction, and warfare. My understanding of neurodynamics is consistent with - in fact, insists on - the conclusion that the activities of brain organs involve synchronized, rhythmic signals, with amplitude, frequency, phase, and spatial relationships, all being centrally involved in mentation (see my wavetrain paper). Decades ago, Norbert Wiener reported his discovery of zones of rhythmic entrainment detectable as electromagnetic potentials (early electroencephalographic measurements). However, the course of history which some explain with theories of diffuse telepathic links among the members of ancient civilizations are almost surely fully explained by communication through vision, audition, and olfaction, often in the context of diffuse acquired mental illness. Note carefully that I do not discount the possibility of real telepathy as some sort of subtle and esoteric phenomenon, nor do I expect with any great confidence that its substantiality will be demonstrated. What I confidently dispute is the theory that such phenomena played any significant role in shaping ancient civilizations and cultures.

Now, to the myth of salvation by annihilation. The civilizations and belief systems of the Egyptians, Aztecs, Mayans, Hindus, and Buddhists, all centered on death worship. Other ancient cultures and belief systems - Sumerian, Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim - are fundamentally mystic, and exhibit an undercurrent of death worship (sometimes very obvious, e.g. the ubiquitous crucified Jesus and the ritual of symbolically drinking his blood and eating his flesh - advertised as a denial of death, but in fact an embrace of supposed life after death). The mythology of Christianity, in fact, is derived almost wholly from Egyptian, Zoroastrian, and Indian (Hindu) mythology, and shares with them the exaltation of self-annihilation.

There is in fact a word for the above morbidity: Thanatos, or in Sanskrit, adhvanit, meaning ``instinctual desire for death.'' Mystic faith and Thanatos are perhaps the two most important ``super-memes'' (broadly enabling memes) that have poisoned human civilization since its dawn. The effect of this morbidity is to erode human rights and autonomy, and the human inventive potential, wherever it spreads. Very few people are naturally immune to, or develop an immunity to, the contagion. Those who do are outcasts, at least in mind, and often in social circumstance, and live in fear of bodily destruction at the hands of the diseased masses. Consider the words of the papal legate (emissary) Arnald Amalric of Citeaux, on the occasion of the sacking of the city of Beziers in 1209 AD. Soldiers asked him how they could distinguish the infidel from the faithful among the captives. His response: ``Kill them all. God will know his own.'' Thousands of innocents died horrible tortured deaths.

The Apocalypse or Armageddon myth is related to Thanatos, replacing the morbid desire of Thanatos with a morbid resignation or expectation. The fundamental objective is to destroy a person's attachment to the present, to physical reality, and to the people to whom he has heretofore had loyalty, thereby making him extremely manipulable. Inherent in Armageddon myths is the premise that this world and its inhabitants are wicked, and hence judged worthy of divine destruction. Most Armageddon myths promise vast rewards to those who adhere to orthodoxy, and horrible damnation to those who do not, with the day of doom being the actual day the promise is delivered. Though the thermonuclear arsenals of the latter half of the twentieth century certainly introduce a modicum of confusion, the idea of a divine Armageddon is nonetheless manifestly absurd, and suffers from the cardinal red herring that it is intrinsically unprovable and inconsequential until after the event has transpired. There is certainly no empirical evidence that is even remotely suggestive of the possibility of a doomsday-like event, though of course several billion years from now the sun will go nova and incinerate the surface of the earth.

Liberals in general, and New Agers in particular, promote the premise that ancient civilizations have something to teach us. But we modern westerners - at least the few among us who are serious thinkers - are much closer to understanding the universe and how to be happy living in it, than were the members of any of these ancient civilizations. In place of the Hindu's Shiva and cosmic egg, we have quantum theory and the big bang - not myths, but science. Progress in this area concerns the reconciliation of quantum and general relativity, and most emphatically does not involve a return to the mysticism and Thanatos of ancient mythology and methodology. In place of the ancients' muddled, mystical mythology of eternal or immaterial soul, we modern westerners have neuroscience and the science of complex system dynamics. The soul is not a mystery to us, but a profound physical reality. Beyond science, some espouse the view that ancient, prehistoric, stone age people knew better how to coexist with each other and with nature. But the ``noble savage'' is as unfounded a myth as is the wisdom of the ancient mystics. Ancient peoples menaced each other and laid waste to great territories, just as modern people do. Those who deny the horrors of stone age man, in a ploy to reduce us to stone age men, are no different from those who deny the horrors of the Holocaust, in order to bring about its repetition.

Buddhism teaches happiness through ``nirvana'' (from the Sanskrit for ``act of extinguishing''). Consider its dictionary definition: ``the final beatitude [state of utmost bliss] that transcends suffering, karma, and samsara and is sought esp. in Buddhism through the extinction of desire and individual consciousness.'' But this is adhvanit! This is a methodology of abnegation, of spiritual self-immolation. In the Hindu mythology, nirvana and karma (from the Sanskrit for ``work'') are myths that subserve the myth of samsara (from the Sanskrit for ``passing through''). Samsara is the myth of ``the indefinitely repeated cycles of birth, misery, and death caused by karma'' and intrinsic to it is the idea that life on earth is fundamentally miserable - no hints here on worldly happiness! Karma is the myth of the spiritual bookkeeper: ``the force generated by a person's actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine his destiny in his next existence.''

Rationally, one could never arrive at a belief in the myths of nirvana, karma, and samsara. In fact, rationally, one can see that they are morbid and destructive. These are memes that conflict with physical reality. Any belief system with these principles at its core is inevitably bad for those who adhere to it. The route to happiness is the conscious pursuit and attainment of one's desires.

It is fascinating to observe that the Trimurti maps directly to the three prerequisites for evolution: Brahma as creator of information, Vishnu as preserver of information, and Siva as filterer of information (destroying information according to a set of rules). The conceptual power of the Trimurti may serve as a vehicle for samsara as a hitchhiker feature.

Religious eschatology - mythical, fallacious prophecies of an end to the world - is poison, in that it convinces the gullible of the fallacy that reality is fleeting, fragile, and inconsequential. The purpose of eschatological myths is to produce manipulability among believers. The myth of life beyond death has similar motivations and results. The various versions of this myth - whether Egyptian heaven, Brahman samsara and nirvana, the diverse eternal fates of the Zoroastrian Book of Arda Viraf, Germanic Valhalla, Greco-Roman Elysium, Christian heaven and hell, or Muslim Falak al aflak - are poisons by which the gullible are robbed of their sense of the first-classness of their one and only life on earth. The indiscriminately murderous directive of Arnald Amalric of Citeaux, mentioned above, was based on this principle. Indeed, a key purpose of the afterlife ruse is to lead people to surrender to murder without resistance, having been convinced that eternal bliss awaits them (as a reward for their obedience, fundamentally).

Religions rely on the myth of life beyond death to explain why in reality deeds defined as pious go unrewarded and deeds defined as impious go unpunished. The gods described by religions do not actually exist, and the principles that constitute religious canon are often violently at odds with the dictates of universal physical principles. The myth of life beyond death is the necessary explanatory foil for why religious virtue is not, apparently, appropriately punished and rewarded, but that punishment and reward are nonetheless forthcoming. Life beyond death logically relies on the fallacy of soul separate from body, dispatched above.

Another tenet of Liberals and New Agers is the view of society as a network of need. This is an exceedingly dangerous conceptualization of society. A healthy view is that society is a network of individuals connected by bonds of desire and coincident interest. The supposed primacy of the network of need is precisely the false precept which serves to ``justify'' communism, in which an individual is entitled to that which he needs, and is obligated to provide to individuals in need that which he is capable of providing. This is an intrinsically bankrupt model, since there is no rational manner in which need can be ascertained, or indeed defined, and since the precept that an individual can rightly be involuntarily obligated to provide for other individuals is repugnant. Communism and its network of need can be summarily dismissed as manifest evil.

An oft-heard refrain is that morality can only exist within a theistic framework, since morality emanates from the commandments of a personified deity. Many believe that those who reject the premise that such a deity exists will embrace rampant criminality and dissipation. I have received email from an individual who wanted to be convinced of the verity of atheism in order that he might freely embrace such corruption. But the premise that a personified deity exists, and the premise that corruption is necessarily rampant in the absence of such a deity, are both false. The Innovism primer enumerates the morality of natural law - a morality which is decisive and universal, and emphatically (definitionally) intolerant of corruption, including criminality and dissipation.

Another refrain is that charity, compassion, and love, can exist only by the grace of a personified deity. This is no less absurd than the premise that morality can exist only by the commandment of a personified deity. Love and compassion are phylogenetic emotional and behavioral phenomena. They exist "by the grace of god" in the same way that anger, fear, and cruelty do - which is to say, they are wholly the products of biological evolution. Charity is a more complicated social phenomenon, which is often simply a play for social control. When it is not, it is either a behavioral extension of compassion and love, or an action of more direct self-interest whereby a social ill potentially injurious to the benefactor is alleviated, or a social or material good beneficial to the benefactor is fostered. In these latter two forms, and particularly when fostering a good, the act of charity is more akin to purchase or investment than to a gift. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, though it is preferable to view such acts explicitly as purchases or investments.

from The Guardian, 2001-Sep-15, by Richard Dawkins:

Religion's misguided missiles
Promise a young man that death is not the end and he will willingly cause disaster

A guided missile corrects its trajectory as it flies, homing in, say, on the heat of a jet plane's exhaust. A great improvement on a simple ballistic shell, it still cannot discriminate particular targets. It could not zero in on a designated New York skyscraper if launched from as far away as Boston.

That is precisely what a modern "smart missile" can do. Computer miniaturisation has advanced to the point where one of today's smart missiles could be programmed with an image of the Manhattan skyline together with instructions to home in on the north tower of the World Trade Centre. Smart missiles of this sophistication are possessed by the United States, as we learned in the Gulf war, but they are economically beyond ordinary terrorists and scientifically beyond theocratic governments. Might there be a cheaper and easier alternative?

In the second world war, before electronics became cheap and miniature, the psychologist BF Skinner did some research on pigeon-guided missiles. The pigeon was to sit in a tiny cockpit, having previously been trained to peck keys in such a way as to keep a designated target in the centre of a screen. In the missile, the target would be for real.

The principle worked, although it was never put into practice by the US authorities. Even factoring in the costs of training them, pigeons are cheaper and lighter than computers of comparable effectiveness. Their feats in Skinner's boxes suggest that a pigeon, after a regimen of training with colour slides, really could guide a missile to a distinctive landmark at the southern end of Manhattan island. The pigeon has no idea that it is guiding a missile. It just keeps on pecking at those two tall rectangles on the screen, from time to time a food reward drops out of the dispenser, and this goes on until... oblivion.

Pigeons may be cheap and disposable as on-board guidance systems, but there's no escaping the cost of the missile itself. And no such missile large enough to do much damage could penetrate US air space without being intercepted. What is needed is a missile that is not recognised for what it is until too late. Something like a large civilian airliner, carrying the innocuous markings of a well-known carrier and a great deal of fuel. That's the easy part. But how do you smuggle on board the necessary guidance system? You can hardly expect the pilots to surrender the left-hand seat to a pigeon or a computer.

How about using humans as on-board guidance systems, instead of pigeons? Humans are at least as numerous as pigeons, their brains are not significantly costlier than pigeon brains, and for many tasks they are actually superior. Humans have a proven track record in taking over planes by the use of threats, which work because the legitimate pilots value their own lives and those of their passengers.

The natural assumption that the hijacker ultimately values his own life too, and will act rationally to preserve it, leads air crews and ground staff to make calculated decisions that would not work with guidance modules lacking a sense of self-preservation. If your plane is being hijacked by an armed man who, though prepared to take risks, presumably wants to go on living, there is room for bargaining. A rational pilot complies with the hijacker's wishes, gets the plane down on the ground, has hot food sent in for the passengers and leaves the negotiations to people trained to negotiate.

The problem with the human guidance system is precisely this. Unlike the pigeon version, it knows that a successful mission culminates in its own destruction. Could we develop a biological guidance system with the compliance and dispensability of a pigeon but with a man's resourcefulness and ability to infiltrate plausibly? What we need, in a nutshell, is a human who doesn't mind being blown up. He'd make the perfect on-board guidance system. But suicide enthusiasts are hard to find. Even terminal cancer patients might lose their nerve when the crash was actually looming.

Could we get some otherwise normal humans and somehow persuade them that they are not going to die as a consequence of flying a plane smack into a skyscraper? If only! Nobody is that stupid, but how about this - it's a long shot, but it just might work. Given that they are certainly going to die, couldn't we sucker them into believing that they are going to come to life again afterwards? Don't be daft! No, listen, it might work. Offer them a fast track to a Great Oasis in the Sky, cooled by everlasting fountains. Harps and wings wouldn't appeal to the sort of young men we need, so tell them there's a special martyr's reward of 72 virgin brides, guaranteed eager and exclusive.

Would they fall for it? Yes, testosterone-sodden young men too unattractive to get a woman in this world might be desperate enough to go for 72 private virgins in the next.

It's a tall story, but worth a try. You'd have to get them young, though. Feed them a complete and self-consistent background mythology to make the big lie sound plausible when it comes. Give them a holy book and make them learn it by heart. Do you know, I really think it might work. As luck would have it, we have just the thing to hand: a ready-made system of mind-control which has been honed over centuries, handed down through generations. Millions of people have been brought up in it. It is called religion and, for reasons which one day we may understand, most people fall for it (nowhere more so than America itself, though the irony passes unnoticed). Now all we need is to round up a few of these faith-heads and give them flying lessons.

Facetious? Trivialising an unspeakable evil? That is the exact opposite of my intention, which is deadly serious and prompted by deep grief and fierce anger. I am trying to call attention to the elephant in the room that everybody is too polite - or too devout - to notice: religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that religion has on human life. I don't mean devaluing the life of others (though it can do that too), but devaluing one's own life. Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

If death is final, a rational agent can be expected to value his life highly and be reluctant to risk it. This makes the world a safer place, just as a plane is safer if its hijacker wants to survive. At the other extreme, if a significant number of people convince themselves, or are convinced by their priests, that a martyr's death is equivalent to pressing the hyperspace button and zooming through a wormhole to another universe, it can make the world a very dangerous place. Especially if they also believe that that other universe is a paradisical escape from the tribulations of the real world. Top it off with sincerely believed, if ludicrous and degrading to women, sexual promises, and is it any wonder that naive and frustrated young men are clamouring to be selected for suicide missions?

There is no doubt that the afterlife-obsessed suicidal brain really is a weapon of immense power and danger. It is comparable to a smart missile, and its guidance system is in many respects superior to the most sophisticated electronic brain that money can buy. Yet to a cynical government, organisation, or priesthood, it is very very cheap.

Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: mindless cowardice. "Mindless" may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from.

It came from religion. Religion is also, of course, the underlying source of the divisiveness in the Middle East which motivated the use of this deadly weapon in the first place. But that is another story and not my concern here. My concern here is with the weapon itself. To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used. [Just one little nit: if airline passengers routinely carried loaded guns, the hijackers would have failed in their mission - in fact, all such missions would fail. -AMPP Ed.]

Richard Dawkins is professor of the public understanding of science, University of Oxford, and author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and Unweaving the Rainbow.

from the Boston Globe, 2001-May-3, by Gareth Cook:

Plumbing the mystery of prayer with the instruments of science

In a quiet laboratory, Andrew Newberg takes photographs of what believers call the presence of God.

The young neurologist invites Buddhists and Franciscan nuns to meditate and pray in a secluded room. Then, at the peak of their devotions, he injects a tracer that travels to the brain and can reveal its activity at the moment of transcendence.

A pattern has emerged from Newberg's experiments. There is a small region near the back of the brain that constantly calculates a person's spatial orientation, the sense of where one's body ends and the world begins. During intense prayer or meditation, and for reasons that remain utterly mysterious, this region becomes a quiet oasis of inactivity - a fact that could explain the borderless spiritual communion felt by the faithful for millenia.

''It creates a blurring of the self-other relationship,'' said Newberg, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania whose work appears in the April 10 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging. ''If they go far enough, they have a complete dissolving of the self, a sense of union, a sense of infinite spacelessness.''

Newberg and other scientists are finding that man's diverse array of devotional traditions has a powerful biological reality. During intense meditation and prayer, the brain and body both experience signature changes, as yet poorly understood, that could yield insights into the religious experience and, one day, even provide clues to living more healthy, more fulfilling lives.

Already, scientists say, the young field has provided evidence that these meditative states - which rely on shutting down the senses and repeating words, phrases, or movements - are a natural part of the brain; that humans are, in some sense, inherently spiritual beings.

''Prayer is the modern brain's means by which we can connect to more powerful ancestral states of consciousness,'' said Gregg Jacobs, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who has published several studies of the way brain waves change during meditation.

With meditative states, people seem to turn off what Gregg called ''the internal chatter'' of the higher, conscious brain.

During meditation, increases have been observed in the activity of the ''theta'' brain wave, a type that moves slowly and is known to inhibit other activity in the brain. Based on a preliminary analysis of recent data, Gregg said, he has observed inhibitory theta activity coming from the same region of the brain, called the parietal lobe, that unveils the becalmed oasis during prayer. Eventually, researchers hope that they can identify a common biological core in the world's many varieties of worship.

As scientists increasingly bring sophisticated technologies to the study of religion, though, many caution that these first glimpses of mysterious territory should not be over-interpreted.

''Whatever we can learn about these states is going to be a great advantage to us,'' said Lawrence E. Sullivan, the director of the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions. But there is the danger ''that our technologies and our conclusions won't be equal to the richness and complexity of religion.''

Even prayer itself is spectacular in its diversity, said Sullivan, citing the Taoist tradition of deep meditation in which the practitioners re-imagine their own birth, and the chanting, dancing ritual of a people who live near Venezuela's Orinoco River in which teenagers achieve an ecstatic trance-like state and then metaphorically die.

In the last century, researchers have been rediscovering the power of the brain to affect the body. By the 1970s, some scientists had begun to look seriously for therapeutic value in religion. Herbert Benson, president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute, affiliated with Harvard University, coined the term ''relaxation response'' to describe the healthful physiological changes in those who followed Eastern meditative practices.

Recently, scientists have begun to consider similarly intense Western prayer practices as well. And last year, the National Institutes of Health said it was sponsoring a clinical trial at Johns Hopkins University to study the effects of lengthy group prayer sessions among African-American women with breast cancer - the first such study ever.

One of the most striking findings came in 1997, when a team of researchers from the University of California at San Diego found what they called the ''God module'' in the brain. They studied patients who suffer from a form of epilepsy that affects the brain's temporal lobe. These patients experience deep religious feelings during the attacks and remain fascinated by mystical questions after the attacks.

The researchers, headed by Vilayanur Ramachandran, said the seizures were strengthening a portion of the brain that responds to religious words, implying that religious feeling is a part of the brain's architecture.

Pennsylvania's Newberg, who is the author of a book out this month called ''Why God Won't Go Away,'' said the mystery of religious experience was inherently difficult to solve in the lab, especially with a noisy brain scanner clanging away. His strategy has been to use a technique called SPECT, which relies on a tracer that fixes on the brain's pattern of activity when it is injected, but can be observed later, under a scanner.

Nobody yet knows why the brain has this ability to reach other kinds of conscious states merely by turning inward, quieting down, focusing on a shimmering image, or repeating a sacred phrase.

Some will interpret the research as evidence that God is a product of the brain, while others will say it is evidence that the brain is a product of some higher power's hand - that, as Benson put it, ''perhaps God gave us the mechanism to understand and experience God in a certain way.''

Gareth Cook can be reached by e-mail at cook@globe.com

from New Scientist magazine, 2000-Jul-8, by Helen Phillips:

Mind phantoms

There's nothing supernatural about ghosts, doppelgängers and out-of-body experiences, says a Swiss neuroscientist. They are simply phantom sensations like a phantom limb, he says, but spread to the whole body.

People experience phantom limbs--the sense that an amputated limb is still present--when the part of the brain that normally senses the limb loses those signals (New Scientist, 17 June, p 27). Peter Brugger of the University Hospital in Zurich says that doppelgängers, in which people are aware of phantom "doubles" of themselves, have a similar origin.

Some people actually see their double, often as a mirror image. This may be the result of damage to visual areas of the brain that affect the way we sense our body, says Brugger. Others merely feel the presence of a double without actually seeing one. He believes that these doubles are generated when the parietal lobes, the regions responsible for the distinction between body and surrounding space, are damaged.

Out-of-body experiences, where a person "sees" their body from the outside, may be caused by temporary overactivity of certain brain regions. "Excitability of the temporal lobes seems to be a plausible explanation," says Brugger. These regions are connected to the parietal lobes and are sensitive to visual signals, low levels of oxygen and emotional arousal.

Brugger believes the brain could account for other paranormal experiences: "Ghosts are probably nothing more but also nothing less than phantoms of the body."

from the American Journal of Psychiatry (an organ of The American Psychiatric Association), 2000-Aug (157:1279-1284), by Stephen M. Kosslyn, Ph.D., William L. Thompson, B.A., Maria F. Costantini-Ferrando, Ph.D., Nathaniel M. Alpert, Ph.D., and David Spiegel, M.D.:

Hypnotic Visual Illusion Alters Color Processing in the Brain

[abstract]

OBJECTIVE: This study was designed to determine whether hypnosis can modulate color perception. Such evidence would provide insight into the nature of hypnosis and its underlying mechanisms. METHOD: Eight highly hypnotizable subjects were asked to see a color pattern in color, a similar gray-scale pattern in color, the color pattern as gray scale, and the gray-scale pattern as gray scale during positron emission tomography scanning by means of [15O]CO2. The classic color area in the fusiform or lingual region of the brain was first identified by analyzing the results when subjects were asked to perceive color as color versus when they were asked to perceive gray scale as gray scale. RESULTS: When subjects were hypnotized, color areas of the left and right hemispheres were activated when they were asked to perceive color, whether they were actually shown the color or the gray-scale stimulus. These brain regions had decreased activation when subjects were told to see gray scale, whether they were actually shown the color or gray-scale stimuli. These results were obtained only during hypnosis in the left hemisphere, whereas blood flow changes reflected instructions to perceive color versus gray scale in the right hemisphere, whether or not subjects had been hypnotized. CONCLUSIONS: Among highly hypnotizable subjects, observed changes in subjective experience achieved during hypnosis were reflected by changes in brain function similar to those that occur in perception. These findings support the claim that hypnosis is a psychological state with distinct neural correlates and is not just the result of adopting a role.

from the American Academy of Neurology, 2000-Aug-7:

Rare hallucinations make music in the mind

ST. PAUL, MN -- Some hear choruses singing folk songs, others hear Mozart or even the Glenn Miller Orchestra -- but there is no music; they are hallucinating.

New research in the August 8 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology, confirms the region of the brain and condition that causes this rare and bizarre disorder.

Researchers have connected lesions on the dorsal pons, a part of the brain stem, with multiple cases of musical hallucinations. Lesions such as these are most often caused by stroke but can also be the result of tumors, encephalitis, or abscesses.

The case study outlined in this issue of Neurology involves a 57-year-old with symptoms including dizziness and right-sided numbness of his body. An MRI showed a lesion, or abnormal growth, in the dorsal pons which turned out to be an abscess with bacterial meningitis. Antibiotics were administered and the patient improved rapidly.

However, during his recovery, the patient developed continuous auditory hallucinations in his right ear, consisting of men's and children's choruses singing folk songs.

"He only became aware of the hallucinations several hours after they began -- he had expected to find a carnival or celebration in the schoolyard next to the hospital," said study author Eva Schielke, MD, a neurologist at University Hospital Charit=E9 in Berlin, Germany. Even though the patient was fully alert and aware he was imagining the sounds, the hallucinations persisted for five weeks. A prolonged antibiotic treatment was eventually successful and the man was released after 11 weeks having almost completely recovered.

Only 10 other cases of musical hallucinations with dorsal pons lesions have ever been reported. In all but one of the cases, patients were alert and aware that they were hallucinating. All patients suffered from severe disorders such as stroke, brain hemorrhage or encephalitis within two weeks of the onset of the lesion.

"A French patient heard popular French chansons, another heard Mozart, and a Canadian patient heard Glenn Miller big band music," said Schielke. "In most cases, the music is familiar to the patient. Our patient, for example, heard folk songs which he liked to listen to before."

Musical hallucinations in non-psychiatric patients are most common in elderly people suffering from chronic and extensive hearing loss. In those cases, it is theorized that sensory deprivation causes the disorder.

This study describes a quick onset of hallucinations with no long-term hearing loss. Researchers have theorized that these types of hallucinations may be triggered by a disruption in communication pathways between the sensory centers in the neocortex of the brain and a bundle of nerve cells and fibers in the brain stem called the reticular formation. The disruption may cause auditory hallucinations by limiting the function of neurons that stop the brain from hallucinating.

from the Guardian of London, 2007-Aug-24, by Alok Jha:

Scientists develop technique to induce out-of-body experiences

• Breakthrough could be used in remote surgery
• Virtual reality games may also be improved

Scientists have induced the age-old phenomenon of out-of-body experiences in healthy volunteers for the first time.

The technique, which uses a virtual-reality-style set up of cameras linked to a head-mounted video display, will help researchers understand how the brain assimilates sensory information to determine the position of its body.

The technique could also improve virtual reality games and remote surgery by creating the illusion that a person is somewhere other than in their own body.

Out-of-body experiences are defined as those where a person who is awake sees their own body from somewhere outside themselves. The experiences have been reported in situations where brain function has been damaged through a stroke, epilepsy or drug abuse. The most common cases occur in traumatic situations such as car accidents or on operating tables.

"Out-of body-experiences have fascinated mankind for millennia - their existence has raised fundamental questions about the relationship between human consciousness and the body, and has been much discussed in theology, philosophy and psychology," said Henrik Ehrsson, who carried out his experiments at University College London and is now based at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

"Although out-of-body experiences have been reported in a number of clinical conditions, the neuro-scientific basis of this phenomenon remains unclear."

One idea is that these experiences could be explained by errors in how the brain assimilates the visual, tactile and other sensory information coming in from the body. Normally the brain uses the information to construct an idea of the body's position in space. By mixing up the sensory inputs Dr Ehrsson wanted to see if the brain could be tricked into believing its body was somewhere else.

In his experiment participants wore goggles containing a video screen for each eye. Each screen was fed images from a separate camera behind the participant and, because the two images were combined by the brain into a single image, they saw a 3D image of their own back.

Dr Ehrsson then moved a plastic rod towards a location just below the cameras while the participant's real chest was simultaneously touched in the corresponding position. The participants reported feeling that they were located back where the cameras had been placed, watching a body that belonged to someone else.

Olaf Blanke of Ecole Polytechique Fédérale de Lausanne carried out a similar experiment but added another exercise after the virtual reality section, blindfolding the volunteers and guiding them a few steps backwards. When the volunteers were asked to return to their original position, he found they were confused, always overshooting their actual start position in the direction of their virtual body.

"This is a part of what people with spontaneous out of body experiences have, the self is not within the bodily borders," said Professor Blanke. "This is some aspect of an out-of-body experience we have reproduced in a mechanistic way."

Volunteers did not overshoot their original position if they just saw a black screen or a plain box in their goggles.

Both research groups, who published their results today in Science, concluded that confusion between the senses was a key mechanism in the explanation of out- of-body experiences.

As well as providing scientists with a way to examine out-of-body experiences further in a lab setting, the experiments could have industrial applications. "This is essentially a means of projecting yourself, a form of teleportation," said Dr Ehrsson. "If we can project people into a virtual character, so they feel and respond as if they were really in a virtual version of themselves, just imagine the implications.

"The experience of playing video games could reach a whole new level, but it could go much beyond that. A surgeon could perform remote surgery, by controlling their virtual self from a different location."

I include the following article to show examples of dreadful muddled thinking on this subject in the current establishment media. Mysticism is definitionally irrational, and is often a symptom and companion of mental illness.

from the New York Times magazine, 2000-Dec-17, by Lorenzo Alcabete:

A Very Fine Line

Will we ever be able to distinguish between mystical visions and mental illness? Should we even try?

A young intern in a psychiatric hospital recently told me she was thinking of abandoning the field. She had studied psychiatry to find out how the human mind works, she said, but all she learned was which drug would control which socially incorrect behavior. And who's to say what's incorrect? "If he showed up here tonight," she said, "I would drug Vincent van Gogh so that he would never paint again."

Not only van Gogh, I thought. What about religious visionaries and mystics, whose words and behavior cannot but seem to us quite strange, in some cases even ethically questionable? It is very difficult, she acknowledged, to tell the difference between symptoms of extraordinary creativity and those of mental illness.

A theologian I know has written about a 17th-century mystic who, in the course of answering God's call, abandoned her young son. Unlike the sacrifice of Isaac, this time there was no voice from heaven that told her at the last minute to spare her child. When I asked the theologian how she could admire such neglectful behavior, she replied bluntly, "If she had been a great painter, poet or even movie star, you would have more understanding of her behavior as compatible with a great artistic creativity." To her, religious visionaries, like great artists, are people whose extraordinary experiences the rest of us can never fully grasp. It was not everyday reason, after all, that drove Francis of Assisi to kiss a leper's wounds, or that drives Indian sadhus to tie heavy weights to their genitals. But at this moment of great popular interest in both spiritual discovery and brain science, it is worth asking: What is it that these people have experienced? Is it a reality outside the self, or is it the manifestation of something within?

In the old days, psychiatric orthodoxy took the latter view, describing religion as a function of unresolved interior conflict. It was simply a useful illusion, the theory went, a narrative crutch with which we hobbled around the roughest of life's realities. And the more sensational a person's religious experience (voices, visions, claims of superior powers or extraordinary missions), the more pathological the underlying conflict. That position has recently been softened. In 1994, the American Psychiatric Association officially recognized the "religious or spiritual" as a normal dimension of human life, and many practitioners are seeking new ways to acknowledge the legitimate role of spirituality in their patients' experiences.

As a believer and as a priest, as well as a former scientist, I find myself somewhat nervous about this blurring. If the religious experience is an authentic contact with a transcendent Mystery, it not only will but should exceed the grasp of science. Otherwise, what about it would be transcendent? It's only right, then, that mystics and visionaries look, to psychiatrists and neurologists, like people suffering mental disturbances. Nor should science seek to incorporate the transcendent into its founding methodology. The psychiatrist Simona Argentieri writes, in the current issue of the Italian journal Micromega, that this cross-pollination will merely help us "elude the burdens of choice and coherence." (You can bet I'd rather be in a plane flown by an atheist than by a true believer with a sure sense of God's providence and an eye on the hereafter.) Most important, clothing religion in the guise of the "scientific" is the formula by which we created those "scientific ideologies" responsible for such destruction last century.

But though science and religion will never speak the same language, they both speak loudly, and we are left to try to translate from one to the other. In the recent book "The Faith of Biology and the Biology of Faith," Robert Pollack allows that religious experience is irrational, but argues that irrational experiences are not necessarily unreal -- and can indeed be just as real, just as much a part of being human, as that which is known through reason. For my part, I prefer the terminology of Luigi Giussani in "The Religious Sense," who sees nothing unreasonable at all about religious experience. Scientific rationalism, he says, is only one category of reason, and choosing to view it as the only judge of truth is a freely chosen prejudice.

I remember what Monika Grygiel, a psychiatrist and a person of faith, told me about her own observations: all human sensations, including the religious, are mediated by an emotional and biological organism. Mental illness doesn't preclude a genuine religious experience, but it may make it impossible to distinguish between the two. "As a psychiatrist, I experience my great poverty before the Mystery perceived in the religious experience," she confessed. "My hope is that I will not destroy the patient's extraordinary experience, but help him or her integrate it into the rest of life as harmoniously as possible."

This sense of poverty before Mystery is called humility, and to me this is the most important sign of an authentic religious experience. In the end, that humility is the best response to the view that religion is just a psychological phenomenon, the projection of infantile feelings of omnipotence. Humility shuns all power, respects the demands of justice and shares with all mortals the challenge of death.

Lorenzo Albacete, a Roman Catholic priest, is a professor of theology at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers.

Of course, Albacete is actually encouraging confusion on what reason is. More of the same crap, slightly revised, slightly sophisticated.

from the Globe and Mail of Toronto, 2000-Jul-1, by Richard Lubbock:

Bad science takes a kicking

VOODOO SCIENCE: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud
By Robert Park
Oxford University Press
240 pages, $37.25

Certainly you have a perfect right to believe anything you please. Unfortunately, if you choose to believe something nature doesn't agree with, she can rise up and clobber you severely. We would be prudent not to embark promiscuously on outlandish beliefs which may produce untoward results.

Dr. Johnson, when he improvised his kick-the-stone reality test, understood that nature kicks back. We all know what happened when Boswell challenged Johnson to refute Bishop Berkeley's idealist doctrine that everything exists only in the mind. As Boswell wrote: ``I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- `I refute it thus.' ''

The whole of modern science is an elaborate form of the kick-the-stone reality test. In his book Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud,Robert L. Park, professor of physics at the University of Maryland, presents entertaining examples of expensive and despicable nonsense lately emitted by people who should have known better. Nonetheless, some supposedly well informed personages have endorsed their claims enthusiastically.

The most egregious example of voodoo, or just plain incompetent, science was the cold-fusion affair, which began in 1989 in Salt Lake City, Utah. This involved the alleged fusion of deuterium atoms in palladium electrodes at room temperature, along with the production of excess energy. To many people, including this reviewer, at first it sounded plausible. After all, who knows what goes on in the hearts of palladium electrodes?

It was taken up with glee by the TV and print media, and Park comments, ``The story wasn't news, and it certainly wasn't science. It was entertainment.'' Many scientists tried to perform the trick themselves, but it didn't work. After much prevarication and delay by the deluded professors, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, almost everyone else decided cold fusion was bunkum. Exactly one year later, The Globe and Mail ran the story headlined News Report May Put Disputed Theory of So-Called `Cold Fusion' on Ice, by Stephen Strauss.

The misguided professors have now vanished from the scene. But a simple Web search shows that cold fusion lingers on even today in the minds of true believers. Good fairy tales never die, for the temptation to defeat the Law of Conservation of Energy is almost irresistible. Park devotes much of his book to the sad stories of inventors, often confidence tricksters, who hope their perpetual-motion gizmos will evade the energy conservation rule.

Another exponent of questionable physics, Deepak Chopra, MD, published a widely read book, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind,in which he tells us that a proper understanding of quantum mechanics, as applied in the Maharishi's ayurvedic medicine, will help us delay or even banish disease processes and aging. Park says of the learned doctor: ``We cannot help but notice, however, that the author of Ageless Body shows unmistakable signs of growing old along with the rest of us.''

Park takes a dim view of many other voodoo procedures, including astrology, homeopathy, extra-sensory perception and economically viable space travel; but still they do not go away. You are free to believe in them, but don't forget to call a real doctor when you fall ill. According to Park, all these are examples of what chemist Irving Langmuir called ``pathological science -- the science of things that aren't so.''

One of the signs of pathological science, according to Langmuir, is that the alleged effect, such as telepathy, always appears at the very limit of detectability. What's more, the effect never seems to increase or decrease in power, whether the source is nearby or far away. Langmuir also notes that voodoo scientists rely on the so-called Texas sharpshooter's effect. ``The sharpshooter empties his revolver into the side of a barn -- and then walks over and draws a bullseye.'' Langmuir listed another symptom of pathological science: ``The evidence never gets any stronger. Decades pass, and there is never a clear photograph of the Loch Ness Monster.'' Nor, may I add, is there any reliable confirmation of cold fusion.

To those of us who wish to exercise our undoubted right to believe whatever we please, Park decries some supposed sciences as mere entertainment, and pathological entertainment at that. However, entertainment and displays of make-believe are also a legitimate, and even a necessary, pleasure in life. Where do we draw the line? Surely we should not deprive ourselves of all the benefits of fairy tales on account of the puritanical and gleefully sadistic truths so clearly provided for our pleasure by Park.
Richard Lubbock is a Toronto science writer who often hesitates to kick the stone.

RELATED READING

The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery of Twentieth-Century Physicists, by Abraham Pais, Oxford University Press, 356 pages, $48

Portraits of 16 physicists who have changed our view of the cosmos, from the famous (Niels Bohr, Einstein) to the lesser-known (Res Jost, Eugene Wigner), with many others making appearances. Pais, himself an eminent U.S. theoretical physicist, has written important biographies of Einstein and Bohr, and knew many of the people he writes about. The non-scientist should not be daunted by this highly anecdotal and very engaging book about the lives and labs of scientists.

Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition, by Stuart A. Vyse, Oxford University Press, 257 pages, $19.95

Vyse is vunderfully entertaining in this smart and patient look at the psychology of superstition: how it works in the individual, its provenance, what we can do to avoid it (train in critical thinking, for one thing). The book by the U.S. psychology professor, originally published in 1997, won the William James Award for psychological writing.

CRACKPOTTERY

THEN

Perpetual-motion machines: In 1618, London physician Robert Fludd suggested that water wheels could drive a pump as well as grind flour. The water that had turned the wheel would be pumped back up into a reservoir that fed the millrace. The reservoir could run the mill indefinitely.

NOW

Health racket: Robert Park attacked media attention given to mysterious Vitamin O -- ``oxygen-enhanced bottled water'' -- which turned out to be salt water. Park has also spent time debunking possible health hazards caused by electromagnetic radiation from power lines.

OTHER SKEPTICS

In his 1957 book, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, dedicated debunker Martin Gardner reported on mid-20th-century cranks with a straight face: ``Alfred William Lawson, Supreme Head and First Knowlegian of the University of Lawsonomy, at Des Moines, Iowa, is in his own opinion the greatest scientific genius living today. He was, after all, the mastermind of Zig-Zag-and-Swirl, a theory whose exact details need not detain us here.''

Victor Stenger, physics professor at the University of Hawaii, criticized mystical interpretations of modern physics in 1995's The Unconscious Quantum.

from Wired.com, 2004-Nov-20, by Rowan Hooper:

Clear Pictures of How We Think

We've all had recourse to say: "My head tells me to do one thing, but my heart says do the other." Sometimes we are forced to make a decision but we feel ourselves to be pulled in opposite directions by reason and emotion.

Thanks to an innovation that has transformed the study of the mind, scientists are now able to see precisely what happens in the brain in situations like this. For the first time in history we are getting close to answering the question of whether the heart rules the head.

The progress is due to functional magnetic-resonance imaging, or fMRI.

This technique allows the measurement of the level of oxygen in the blood, and tells scientists which parts of the brain are most active. It can show, for example, the parts of the brain that operate when we fall in love and when we have food cravings. It has even recently revealed the differences in the brains of Democrats and Republicans.

But the technique also holds out the promise of answering deep questions about our most cherished human characteristics. For example, do we have an inbuilt moral sense, or do we learn what is right and wrong as we grow up? And which is stronger: emotions or logic?

Before fMRI, information about the parts of the brain involved in different tasks could only be gathered by studying people who had suffered brain damage from trauma or stroke, and seeing how their brain function changed. Now, the brains of healthy people can be scanned as they are given different tasks.

"fMRI has provided striking evidence in favor of some theories and against others," said Joshua Greene, of Princeton University's Department of Psychology. "But I don't think the real payoff has hit yet. That will come when we have successful computational theories of complex decision-making, ones that describe decision-making at the level of neural circuits."

Greene, together with Jonathan Cohen, professor of psychology at Princeton, is using fMRI to look at the factors that influence moral judgment.

To do so, the researchers scan the brains of volunteers while posing them fiendishly tricky dilemmas. For example, imagine you and your neighbors are hiding in a cellar from marauding enemy soldiers. Your baby starts to cry. If he continues, the soldiers will discover your hiding place and kill you all. The only way to save yourself and the others is to silence your baby -- by smothering him to death. What do you do?

Clearly, you would feel intense emotions, and this shows on the brain scan. But you would also be forced to make a logical assessment of the situation, and this shows up on the brain scan too. Areas involved in abstract reasoning and those that process emotions light up.

In other words, when processing a difficult and personal moral dilemma, we really are of two minds. Greene found that if the dilemma is not so personal, the reasoning part of the brain is dominant.

When a dispute exists between two sides, say in a court of law or in a territorial land claim, there is often a mediator. So too, it seems, the brain has one too. Researchers found a region called the anterior cingulate cortex, believed to be involved in mediating conflict, was highly active in brains struggling with the crying baby scenario.

Greene and colleagues showed a neurological basis for the phrase "of two minds," and that both compete for dominance. So does the heart rule the head? Answer: Sometimes. But the head doesn't give in without a fight.

And we can use fMRI to go further, and examine how we got to be the way we are. Belgian professor Guy Orban, head of the division of neurophysiology at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, uses fMRI to tackle evolutionary questions about the brain. His experimental subjects look at rotating 3-D images while their brains are being scanned -- but unlike Greene, Orban's subjects include monkeys as well as humans.

Orban's research shows pronounced differences in the way the two species process 3-D images. Humans show activity in regions of the brain (in the visual and intraparietal cortex) that have no clear counterpart in monkeys.

"The results suggest that, as humans evolved, some portions of their brains adapted to produce specific abilities, such as controlling fine motor skills," said Orban.

So if we have evidence that human brains have evolved spatial processing abilities from monkey brains -- and it seems that we do -- could we have evolved moral abilities from our primate ancestors too?

Sarah Brosnan, of Emory University, Atlanta, has shown that the idea is plausible. She found that trained monkeys have a sense of fairness: They refuse to work if a fellow monkey doing the same job is seen to receive tastier food items as payment.

"Everything that evolves is a modified version of something else that already evolved," said Greene. "If you can trace the evolutionary history of the structures involved in a certain kind of thinking then perhaps you can make the case that the thinking in question is shaped by the creature's evolutionary history."

This kind of thinking is what led Dr. Andreas Bartels, now at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tubingen, Germany, to propose (on the basis of fMRI work) that romantic love evolved from maternal love.

Similarly, Dr. Val Curtis of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine published work earlier this year showing that our sense of disgust has evolved to protect us from disease. That sense of hygiene, said Greene, might be the basis for so-called higher senses, such as moral feelings.

Greene is currently working on this idea. "For example," he said, "we might describe the behavior of someone who takes bribes as disgusting. I think that's more than a simple, learned metaphor."

Greene believes that although cultural influences on morals are strong, an important genetic element is also present. "Much of what we think of as culturally learned or individually reasoned in moral judgment," he said, "may turn out to be driven primarily by evolutionary forces."

Everyone has heard kids in the schoolyard call each other "animals" in response to some childish comment or behavior. What the work using fMRI is doing is reminding us that we are all animals. And even our human senses and morals come from them.

from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 2005-Feb-2:

How the Brain Creates False Memories

Lawyers are often suspicious of so-called "eye-witness accounts" and rightly so. Hundreds of scientific studies in the past few decades have shown that the memories of people who observe complex events are notoriously susceptible to alteration if they receive misleading information about the event after it has taken place. In this month's issue of the journal Learning & Memory, scientists from Johns Hopkins University report new insights into how such "false memories" are formed. This is the first study to use neuroimaging to investigate how the brain encodes misinformation during the creation of a false memory.

Using advanced, non-invasive imaging techniques, Yoko Akado and Craig Stark compared the areas of the brain that were active when a subject was encoding a complex event and afterwards, during exposure to misleading information. For example, subjects were asked to watch a vignette comprised of 50 photographic slides showing a man stealing a woman's wallet, then hiding behind a door. A little later, the subjects were shown what they thought was the same sequence of slides but unbeknownst to them the second set of slides contained a misleading item and differed in small ways from the original--the man hid behind a tree, for example, not a door.

Two days later, the subjects took a memory test, which asked them to recall details such as where the man hid, and which presentation--the first, second, or both--contained that information. Memory for a misinformation item was scored as a false memory only if the subject attributed the item to either the original presentation or to both the original and second slide presentations.

Stark and Akado found clear evidence that the subjects' brain activity predicted if their memories of the theft would be accurate or false. Consistent with findings from numerous previous studies that have reported that areas such as the hippocampus are highly active during memory formation, Okado and Stark found activity in the left hippocampus tail as well as perirhinal cortex was correlated with successful encoding of an item in memory, even when the memory that was formed was for a false item. But in subjects who had formed false memories, it was noticeable that activity in other brain areas such as the prefrontal cortex was weak during exposure to the second sequence of slides compared to during the original viewing.

Okada and Stark suggest that activity in the prefrontal cortex is correlated to encoding the source, or context, of the memory. Thus, weak prefrontal cortex activity during the misinformation phase indicaates that the details of the second experience were poorly placed in a learning context, and as a result more easily embedded in the context of the first event, creating false memories.

The following article contains various apologetics for religion. One accusation of the pro-religion camp is clearly legitimate: researchers like Persinger are not exploring the full spectrum of religious psychology, but only a small (but vital) portion of it. However, such an accusation cannot be lodged against this chapter of the AMPP compilation, which sufficiently addresses all the prominent psychological dimensions of religion.

from the Washington Post, 2001-Jun-17, p.A1, by Shankar Vedantam:

Tracing the Synapses of Our Spirituality
Researchers Examine Relationship Between Brain and Religion

In Philadelphia, a researcher discovers areas of the brain that are activated during meditation. At two other universities in San Diego and North Carolina, doctors study how epilepsy and certain hallucinogenic drugs can produce religious epiphanies. And in Canada, a neuroscientist fits people with magnetized helmets that produce "spiritual" experiences for the secular.

The work is part of a broad effort by scientists around the world to better understand religious experiences, measure them, and even reproduce them. Using powerful brain imaging technology, researchers are exploring what mystics call nirvana, and what Christians describe as a state of grace. Scientists are asking whether spirituality can be explained in terms of neural networks, neurotransmitters and brain chemistry.

What creates that transcendental feeling of being one with the universe? It could be the decreased activity in the brain's parietal lobe, which helps regulate the sense of self and physical orientation, research suggests. How does religion prompt divine feelings of love and compassion? Possibly because of changes in the frontal lobe, caused by heightened concentration during meditation. Why do many people have a profound sense that religion has changed their lives? Perhaps because spiritual practices activate the temporal lobe, which weights experiences with personal significance.

"The brain is set up in such a way as to have spiritual experiences and religious experiences," said Andrew Newberg, a Philadelphia scientist who wrote the book "Why God Won't Go Away." "Unless there is a fundamental change in the brain, religion and spirituality will be here for a very long time. The brain is predisposed to having those experiences and that is why so many people believe in God."

The research may represent the bravest frontier of brain research. But depending on your religious beliefs, it may also be the last straw. For while Newberg and other scientists say they are trying to bridge the gap between science and religion, many believers are offended by the notion that God is a creation of the human brain, rather than the other way around.

"It reinforces atheistic assumptions and makes religion appear useless," said Nancey Murphy, a professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. "If you can explain religious experience purely as a brain phenomenon, you don't need the assumption of the existence of God."

Some scientists readily say the research proves there is no such thing as God. But many others argue that they are religious themselves, and that they are simply trying to understand how our minds produce a sense of spirituality.

Newberg, who was catapulted to center stage of the neuroscience-religion debate by his book and some recent experiments he conducted at the University of Pennsylvania with co-researcher Eugene D'Aquili, says he has a sense of his own spirituality, though he declined to say whether he believes in God, because any answer would prompt people to question his agenda. "I'm really not trying to use science to prove that God exists or disprove God exists," he said.

Newberg's experiment consisted of taking brain scans of Tibetan Buddhist meditators as they sat immersed in contemplation. After giving them time to sink into a deep meditative trance, he injected them with a radioactive dye. Patterns of the dye's residues in the brain were later converted into images.

Newberg found that certain areas of the brain were altered during deep meditation. Predictably, these included areas in the front of the brain that are involved in concentration. But Newberg also found decreased activity in the parietal lobe, one of the parts of the brain that helps orient a person in three-dimensional space.

"When people have spiritual experiences they feel they become one with the universe and lose their sense of self," he said. "We think that may be because of what is happening in that area -- if you block that area you lose that boundary between the self and the rest of the world. In doing so you ultimately wind up in a universal state."

Across the country, at the University of California in San Diego, other neuroscientists are studying why religious experiences seem to accompany epileptic seizures in some patients. At Duke University, psychiatrist Roy Mathew is studying hallucinogenic drugs that can produce mystical experiences and have long been used in certain religious traditions.

Could the flash of wisdom that came over Siddhartha Gautama -- the Buddha -- have been nothing more than his parietal lobe quieting down? Could the voices that Moses and Mohammed heard on remote mountaintops have been just a bunch of firing neurons -- an illusion? Could Jesus's conversations with God have been a mental delusion?

Newberg won't go so far, but other proponents of the new brain science do. Michael Persinger, a professor of neuroscience at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, has been conducting experiments that fit a set of magnets to a helmet-like device. Persinger runs what amounts to a weak electromagnetic signal around the skulls of volunteers.

Four in five people, he said, report a "mystical experience, the feeling that there is a sentient being or entity standing behind or near" them. Some weep, some feel God has touched them, others become frightened and talk of demons and evil spirits.

"That's in the laboratory," Persinger said. "They know they are in the laboratory. Can you imagine what would happen if that happened late at night in a pew or mosque or synagogue?"

His research, Persinger said, showed that "religion is a property of the brain, only the brain and has little to do with what's out there."

Those who believe the new science disproves the existence of God say they are holding up a mirror to society about the destructive power of religion. They say that religious wars, fanaticism and intolerance spring from dogmatic beliefs that particular gods and faiths are unique, rather than facets of universal brain chemistry.

"It's irrational and dangerous when you see how religiosity affects us," said Matthew Alper, author of "The God Part of the Brain," a book about the neuroscience of belief. "During times of prosperity, we are contented. During times of depression, we go to war. When there isn't enough food to go around, we break into our spiritual tribes and use our gods as justification to kill one another."

While Persinger and Alper count themselves as atheists, many scientists studying the neurology of belief consider themselves deeply spiritual.

James Austin, a neurologist, began practicing Zen meditation during a visit to Japan. After years of practice, he found himself having to reevaluate what his professional background had taught him.

"It was decided for me by the experiences I had while meditating," said Austin, author of the book "Zen and the Brain" and now a philosophy scholar at the University of Idaho. "Some of them were quickenings, one was a major internal absorption -- an intense hyper-awareness, empty endless space that was blacker than black and soundless and vacant of any sense of my physical bodily self. I felt deep bliss. I realized that nothing in my training or experience had prepared me to help me understand what was going on in my brain. It was a wake-up call for a neurologist."

Austin's spirituality doesn't involve a belief in God -- it is more in line with practices associated with some streams of Hinduism and Buddhism. Both emphasize the importance of meditation and its power to make an individual loving and compassionate -- most Buddhists are uninterested in whether God exists.

But theologians say such practices don't describe most people's religiousness in either eastern or western traditions.

"When these people talk of religious experience, they are talking of a meditative experience," said John Haught, a professor of theology at Georgetown University. "But religion is more than that. It involves commitments and suffering and struggle -- it's not all meditative bliss. It also involves moments when you feel abandoned by God.

"Religion is visiting widows and orphans," he said. "It is symbolism and myth and story and much richer things. They have isolated one small aspect of religious experience and they are identifying that with the whole of religion."

Belief and faith, believers argue, are larger than the sum of their brain parts: "The brain is the hardware through which religion is experienced," said Daniel Batson, a University of Kansas psychologist who studies the effect of religion on people. "To say the brain produces religion is like saying a piano produces music."

At the Fuller Theological Seminary's school of psychology, Warren Brown, a cognitive neuropsychologist, said, "Sitting where I'm sitting and dealing with experts in theology and Christian religious practice, I just look at what these people know about religiousness and think they are not very sophisticated. They are sophisticated neuroscientists, but they are not scholars in the area of what is involved in various forms of religiousness."

At the heart of the critique of the new brain research is what one theologian at St. Louis University called the "nothing-butism" of some scientists -- the notion that all phenomena could be understood by reducing them to basic units that could be measured.

"A kiss," said Michael McClymond, "is more than a mutually agreed-upon exchange of saliva, breath and germs."

And finally, believers say, if God existed and created the universe, wouldn't it make sense that he would install machinery in our brains that would make it possible to have mystical experiences?

"Neuroscientists are taking the viewpoints of physicists of the last century that everything is matter," said Mathew, the Duke psychiatrist. "I am open to the possibility that there is more to this than what meets the eye. I don't believe in the omnipotence of science or that we have a foolproof explanation."

from the Washington Post, 2007-Feb-22, by Rick Weiss:

Chimps Observed Making Their Own Weapons

Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the hand-crafted tools to hunt small mammals -- the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans.

The multi-step spear-making practice, documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees' trust, adds credence to the idea that human forebears fashioned similar tools millions of years ago.

The landmark observation also supports the long-debated proposition that females -- the main makers and users of spears among the Senegalese chimps -- tend to be the innovators and creative problem solvers in primate culture.

Using their hands and teeth, the chimpanzees were repeatedly seen tearing the side branches off long straight sticks, peeling back the bark and sharpening one end, the researchers report in today's on-line issue of the journal Current Biology. Then, grasping the weapon in a "power grip," they jabbed into tree-branch hollows where bush babies -- small monkey-like mammals -- sleep during the day.

After stabbing their prey repeatedly, they removed the injured or dead animal and ate it.

"It was really alarming how forceful it was," said lead researcher Jill D. Pruetz of Iowa State University in Ames, adding that it reminded her of the murderous shower scene in the Alfred Hitchcock movie "Psycho." "It was kind of scary."

The new observations are "stunning," said Craig Stanford, a primatologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California. "Really fashioning a weapon to get food -- I'd say that's a first for any non-human animal."

Scientists have documented tool use among chimpanzees for several decades, but the tools have been simple and used to extract food rather than to kill it.

Some chimpanzees slide thin sticks or leaf blades into termite mounds, for example, to fish for the tasty, crawling morsels. Others crumple leaves and use them like sponges to sop drinking water from tree hollows.

But while a few chimpanzees have been observed throwing rocks -- perhaps with the goal of knocking prey unconscious, but perhaps simply as expressions of excitement -- and a few others have been known to swing simple clubs, only people have been known to craft tools expressly to hunt prey.

Pruetz and coworker Paco Bertolani of the University of Cambridge made the observations near Kedougou in southeastern Senegal. Unlike other chimpanzee sites currently under study, which are forested, this site is mostly open savannah. That environment is very much like the one in which early humans evolved and is different enough from other sites to expect differences in chimpanzee behaviors.

Pruetz recalled the first time she saw a member of the 35-member troop trimming leaves and side-branches off a branch it had broken off a tree.

"I just knew right away that she was making a tool," Pruetz said, adding that she suspected -- with some horror -- what it was for, as well. But in that instance she was not able to follow the chimpanzee to see what she did with it.

Eventually the research duo documented 22 instances of spear-making and use, two-thirds of them involving females.

In a typical sequence, the animal first discovered a deep hollow suitable for bush babies, which are nocturnal and weigh about half a pound. Then the chimp would break off a nearby branch -- on average about two feet long, but up to twice that length -- trim it, sharpen it with its teeth, and poke it repeatedly into the hollow at a rate of about one or two jabs per second.

After every few jabs, the chimpanzee would sniff or lick the tip, as though testing to see if it had "caught" anything.

In only one of 22 observations did a chimp get a bush baby. But that is reasonably efficient, Pruetz said, compared to standard chimpanzee hunting practice, which involves chasing a monkey or other prey, grabbing it by the tail and then slamming its head against the ground.

In the successful bush baby case, the chimpanzee eventually jumped on the larger branch until it broke, exposing the limp bushbaby, which the chimp then extracted. Whether the animal was dead or alive at that point was unclear, but it did not move or make any sound.

Chimpanzee behavior is widely believed to offer a window on early human behavior, and many researchers have hoped that the animals -- which are humans' closest genetic cousins -- might reveal something about the earliest use of wooden tools.

Many suspect that wooden tools far predate the use of stone tools -- remnants of which have been found going back two-and-a-half million years. But because wood does not preserve well, the most ancient wooden spears ever found are only about 400,000 years old, leaving open the question of when they first came into use.

The discovery that some chimps today make wooden weapons supports the idea that early humans did too -- perhaps as much as 5 million years ago -- Stanford said.

Adrienne Zihlman, an anthropologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said the work supports other evidence that female chimps are more likely to use tools than males, are more proficient tool users, and are crucial to passing that cultural knowledge to others.

"Females are the teachers," Zihlman said, noting that juvenile chimps in Senegal were repeatedly seen watching their mothers make and hunt with spears.

"They are efficient and innovative, they are problem solvers, they are curious," Zihlman said of females. And that makes sense, she said.

"They are pregnant or lactating or carrying a kid for most of their life," she said. "And they're supposed to be running around in the trees chasing prey?"

Frans B. M. de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, said aggressive tool use is but the latest "uniquely human" behavior to be found to be less than unique.

"Such claims are getting old," he said. "With the present pace of discovery, they last a few decades at most."

from the Associated Press, 1999-Oct-29, by Sari Bashi:

Questions Raised in Bible's Accuracy

JERUSALEM -- There was no exodus from Egypt, Joshua didn't bring down the walls of Jericho, and Solomon's kingdom was a small, tribal dynasty, an Israeli archaeologist says in a new article.

Colleagues and critics accepted some of Zeev Herzog's evidence, and questioned some of it - but warned that by targeting the accuracy of the Bible the research undermines the national myths that are the basis of Jewish claims to the land of Israel.

Archaeological findings do not support and in many cases directly contradict Biblical stories describing the birth of the Jewish people, Herzog of Tel Aviv University wrote in Thursday's Haaretz daily.

He reviewed evidence now commonly accepted by most archaeologists showing that there was no exodus from Egypt at the time the Bible says Jews left Egypt en masse, and that Jericho fell in stages over an extended period - and not in a single raid led by Joshua.

More controversially, Herzog argues that the seeds of the Jewish state are to be found in the 9th century B.C. when groups of shepherds who had settled in hilltops established two rival states, Judah and Israel.

Excavations of cities from the supposedly majestic time of Kings David and Solomon a century earlier, he said, revealed that the "cities" consisted of scattered buildings and the kingdoms were small, provincial dynasties that exercised no real claim over the land.

Herzog said Jerusalem, the majestic capital built by King David to rule over an empire that spanned much of the Middle East, was at best a small fiefdom.

Fellow archaeologist Amnon Ben-Tor of the rival Hebrew University, a top critic of Herzog and his post-modernist school of thought, said Herzog uses archaeology to satisfy a political agenda, namely debunking the legends upon which the Jewish state was founded.

Ben-Tor agreed that "there is a large measure of glorification in the Bible," but said that inscriptions and excavations from the 10th century B.C. show the ancient Hebrews had established a state ruled by David and Solomon, that was substantial if not magnificent.

Lawmaker Tommy Lapid, a secular rights champion who believes human authors wrote the Bible, accused Herzog of trying to undermine the educational and ideological basis of the state.

Herzog is "feeding propaganda to Israel's enemies who want to negate our right to be here," Lapid said.

He said the Bible contained many myths, but that its basic historical facts document Jewish claims on Israel and form the basis for Jewish history, culture, language and literature.

Herzog's article addressed archaeological discoveries from the last few decades, when archaeologists in Israel broke away from seeking out physical evidence for Biblical events.

Their findings have not entered the public consciousness, said archaeologist Moshe Kochavi of Tel Aviv University, because Israelis are not ready to abandon their national myths.

Kochavi said books publishing these findings have met with particularly vehement opposition from the 30 percent of Israeli Jews who define themselves as in some way religious, many of whom believe the Bible is the word of God.

"The religious scream out when books like these, saying there was no conquest and that David's period was not majestic, are written," he said.

Israeli adults and schoolchildren regularly tour archaeological sites that guides say prove the Bible was right, and the state devotes substantial resources to excavations thought likely to reveal evidence of Biblical footsteps.

Liberal Education Minister Yossi Sarid, who recently stirred controversy by expunging from textbooks what he says are myths of modern Israeli history, said Herzog's work deserved consideration.

"If it's interesting and well-founded, I don't see why it shouldn't be presented in schools as an option," he told Haaretz.

from the Washington Post, 1999-Sep-20 p.A1, by Pamela Constable:

In India, Killing in the Name of Religion

LABEDEPUR, India - The young Roman Catholic priest died with eight arrows piercing his stomach, lungs and right eye. He had been asleep in a mud hut used for prayer services in Jamubani, a village about 12 miles from here, when a group of men wearing loincloths burst in, brandishing torches and heavy sticks called lathis.

"I heard someone shouting, 'Where is that sala [cursed] priest!' " and then they started beating us," recounted Kate Singh Khuntia, 27, a catechism teacher who was sleeping in the same hut. "Father got up and ran out. I heard him screaming, 'Ama,' for his mother. Then someone hit me from behind. As I passed out, all I could hear was the sound of lathis."

The grisly killing of the Rev. Arul Doss, a 35-year-old diocesan priest from southern India, on the night of Sept. 1, was neither an isolated nor inexplicable incident. On the contrary, it fit into a pattern of threats, arson and murder that has stalked this remote tribal region of Orissa state since January, when an Australian Baptist missionary and his two young sons were burned to death in a village not far from here.

The identity of Doss's killers remains a mystery, but there is little doubt they were fanatical Hindus angered by the spread of Christian conversions among impoverished tribal peoples, known as adivasis. Christians in Orissa are convinced that, like the mob that attacked missionary Graham Staines and his children, the priest's killers were encouraged and possibly organized by a national fundamentalist Hindu youth group called the Bajrang Dal.

The Doss killing has brought ill-timed embarrassment to the Indian government, which is proud of presiding over a mammoth secular democracy and is currently involved in nationwide elections. Two weeks ago, the State Department issued a report on religious freedom worldwide that criticized India's failure to prevent and prosecute such crimes. The Clinton administration announced it would send a special envoy on religious issues to India, but officials in New Delhi replied that they would not receive him.

The Indian government recently released a report on the Staines slayings, but it has been widely condemned as a whitewash. The report, based on a lengthy investigation by a special commission, concluded that one man -- a renegade Hindu vigilante named Dara Singh -- orchestrated the attack and that no larger group or movement was behind it.

In the days since Doss's death, Orissa police have launched a highly publicized manhunt for Dara Singh, sealing off large tribal areas and combing the jungles where Singh, a mystical hero to many local people, is said to be hiding. But the killing has also highlighted cultural, economic and political conflicts in rural areas inhabited by adivasis, conflicts that have been exacerbated by the competition between Hinduism and Christianity.

"This has nothing to do with religion. It is a matter of self-interest," said the Rev. Thomas Chellan, a Catholic priest in Orissa's capital, Bhubaneshwar. "Christians bring education, economic opportunity and new social status to the adivasis. I have heard that some upper caste Hindus say, 'The foreigners come and ruin them. . . . Who will be left to plow the fields?' "

Christians are not the only victims of recent attacks by Hindu zealots in Orissa. Several Muslim cattle traders have been assaulted, and their animals have been freed. In late August, a cattle trader named Sheik Rehman was mutilated and burned to death in a village only a few miles from where Doss was killed. Hindus view cows as sacred and their slaughter for meat as an abomination.

But while tensions between Muslims and Hindus have flared repeatedly for decades, attacks on Christians are a new and perplexing phenomenon. Christian missionaries have been present in India at least since the sixth century, and major missions were established in a number of states during British rule. Generations of status-conscious Indians have sent their children to Christian-run schools. But only 2 percent of the population is Christian, and Hinduism has dominated society so thoroughly that Christianity was never considered a threat.

In the past few years, however, a surge in Hindu fundamentalism has coincided with new efforts by Christian groups to reach out to ever more remote and neglected areas. In dozens of Orissa villages -- villages like Labedepur, where Doss worked for four years among members of a local ethnic strain called the Ho people -- thousands of inhabitants have converted to Christianity.

Tensions have inevitably resulted, especially when the converts refuse to participate in Hindu festivals or insist on plowing during an annual three-day ritual of Earth-mother worship, when most peasants avoid touching their fields. Even more controversial are what Hindu activists call fraudulent conversions, the alleged practice of luring poor, unsophisticated adivasis to Christianity by promising health and wealth.

"These people are insecure and vulnerable," asserted Patrap Kumar Sarengi, a Hindu who heads the Bajrang Dal in Orissa. "They may have TB, and they are told if they pray to Jesus Christ, he will cure them. This is conversion by fraud and allurement, and it is dangerous and illegal." He said he condemned Doss's killing but added that the government and the church are partly to blame. "They should put a stop to illegal conversions, because they are the root cause of these murders," he said.

There are political overtones to the conflict as well, because pro-Hindu parties are afraid of losing votes as Christianity spreads, according to some observers. Ironically, though, it is only since the killings of the Staines family and Doss that church officials here and in New Delhi have begun calling openly on their followers to vote for secular candidates. This should largely benefit the Congress party, which opposes the ruling pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party.

Several priests and pastors in Orissa, including those who worked with Doss, insist they never deceive adivasis or press them to convert but merely offer free medicine, literacy classes and home visits. Some villagers eventually feel called to convert out of gratitude or inspiration, they said; others do not. The clergymen said they had worked in villages where some families were Hindus, some were Christians, and others worshiped nature spirits.

"We would only go to homes where we were invited. We would tell them the story of Jesus and pray with them," said Singh Khuntia, the catechism teacher. "We would tell them they did not have to sacrifice goats and hens any more to be cured of diseases. We never forced anyone."

Singh Khuntia said there had been some tensions in Jamubani, largely spurred by a local Hindu priest who resented the Catholics' inroads and threatened both him and Doss several times. Since the killings, Singh Khuntia said, he has received two telephone threats and has been afraid to return to the village area.

But here in Labedepur, a hamlet of thatched huts where people farm small plots of rice and make dishes to sell from the round, rubbery leaves of sal trees, everyone remembered Doss as a simple, outgoing man who owned few clothes, learned their native dialect and walked miles to inquire about their children and health.

In one compound of six Christian and six non-Christian families, all said they respected each other's customs and beliefs. The Christians said they took a break from plowing during the annual Earth festival, and the other Ho people said they picked up free medicine at the Catholic dispensary while continuing to sacrifice hens or meditate under a sal tree when they fell sick. All spoke well of Doss.

"He was a good man; I cannot understand why anyone would kill him," said Singhray Melgandi, 40, a Ho farmer who rushed to Jamubani on foot when he heard of the killing and helped carry the mortally wounded Doss for miles to the nearest hospital.

Melgandi's wife Veronica, 35, shook her head angrily when asked if anyone had pressured the family to become Christian. "The reason why we liked Father Doss," she said, "was that he gave us so much love."

from the Associated Press via azcentral.com, 2007-Feb-14, by Gavin Rabinowitz:

Some in India threaten to beat hand-holding couples

NEW DELHI - It was hardly a Hallmark moment. As a Valentine's Day card smoldered, more than 100 members of the Hindu extremist group Shiv Sena chanted "Death to Valentine's Day" and "People who celebrate Valentine's Day should be pelted with shoes!"

Valentine's Day has in the past two decades made strong inroads in India as the country has slowly opened itself up to the outside world - its economic boom bringing in not just foreign investment but also aspects of Western culture virtually unknown here a quarter century ago.

Across the country, stores stock heart-shaped balloons and chocolates, restaurants offer Valentine's Day specials and young lovers find refuge from prying eyes in the parks.

It's a state of affairs that enrages Hindu and Muslim hard-liners, who on Wednesday vented just as they do every Valentine's Day - burning cards, holding rallies and even threatening to beat couples caught canoodling in public, a strict no-no for those who claim to defend traditional Indian values.

"This is a conspiracy to misguide the young people of our country," said Jai Bhagwan Goel, chief of the Shiv Sena's north India branch.

In his hand, a card with an image of a Victorian couple pictured in a tepid peck under a parasol went up in flames.

"We have come to know that in America, even unmarried girls as young as 11 or 12 years have become mothers ... and every second man there is divorced," Goel told reporters after reducing several greeting cards to a small pile of ash. "This is their culture- it cannot be accepted here."

Goel and his indignant followers left soon after when about 60 riot police stopped them from advancing on nearby restaurants offering Valentine's Day specials.

For the day, the Hindu hard-liners found themselves, unusually, on the same side as Islamic separatist groups in Indian-controlled Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim region in the Himalayas.

About 40 protesters, calling themselves the Forum Against Social Evil, marched on a popular restaurant area in Srinagar, the region's main city, calling on shop owners to refuse to serve couples and refrain from un-Islamic practices on Wednesday.

"The government is promoting such obscenities," said Asiya Andrabi, the leader of Kashmir's only women's separatist group, Dukhtaran-e-Millat, before police ordered them away too.

Kashmir's separatists want independence from predominantly Hindu India or a union with Muslim Pakistan, which controls the other part of the divided region.

Weather intervened to stop Hindu extremists in the northern city of Lucknow from carrying out their threats to beat couples found kissing, hugging or even holding hands in public. With torrential rains pouring down, young lovers stayed out of the parks where they usually seek privacy.

Still, even if some lovers stayed out of sight, they made their desires known, placing ads on special Valentine's Day pages in newspapers.

"My heart is like a cabbage," declared a man named Manoj to some lucky lady. "Divided into two; the leaves are for others and the heart for you."

from Free Inquiry magazine, 1996-Autumn (V16N4), by Matt Cherry:

Christopher Hitchens On Mother Theresa
(Interview)

Below, Matt Cherry, executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, interviews Christopher Hitchens about his book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (Verso, 1995) and his television program, which strongly criticized Mother Teresa. The interview recapitulates the most devastating critiques of Mother Teresa ever made. It also gives a very telling account by a leading journalist into the U.S. media's great reluctance to criticize religion and religious leaders.

As Free Inquiry was going to press, we heard that Mother Teresa was suffering from heart trouble and malaria and there was concern about her chances of survival. It was, therefore, suggested to the editors that it would be inappropriate to print an interview that contains criticism of Mother Teresa's work and influence. However, in view of the media's general failure to investigate the work of Mother Teresa or to publish critical comments about her, the editors felt it important to proceed with the publication of this revealing interview.

Christopher Hitchens is "Critic at Large" for Vanity Fair, writes the Minority Report column for The Nation, and is a frequent guest on current affairs and commentary television programs. He has written numerous books on international current affairs, including Blood, Class and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies.

- EDS.

---

Free Inquiry: According to polls, Mother Teresa is the most respected woman in the world. Her name is a by-word for selfless dedication in the service of humanity. So why are you picking on this sainted old woman?

Christopher Hitchens: Partly because that impression is so widespread. But also because the sheer fact that this is considered unquestionable is a sign of what we are up against, namely the problem of credulity. One of the most salient examples of people's willingness to believe anything if it is garbed in the appearance of holiness is the uncritical acceptance of the idea of Mother Teresa as a saint by people who would normally be thinking - however lazily - in a secular or rational manner. In other words, in every sense it is an unexamined claim.

It's unexamined journalistically - no one really takes a look at what she does. And it is unexamined as to why it should be she who is spotlighted as opposed to many very selfless people who devote their lives to the relief of suffering in what we used to call the "Third World." Why is it never mentioned that her stated motive for the work is that of proselytization for religious fundamentalism, for the most extreme interpretation of Catholic doctrine? If you ask most people if they agree with the pope's views on population, for example, they say they think they are rather extreme. Well here's someone whose life's work is the propagation of the most extreme version of that.

That's the first motive. The second was a sort of journalistic curiosity as to why it was that no one had asked any serious questions about Mother Teresa's theory or practice. Regarding her practice, I couldn't help but notice that she had rallied to the side of the Duvalier family in Haiti, for instance, that she had taken money - over a million dollars - from Charles Keating, the Lincoln Savings and Loans swindler, even though it had been shown to her that the money was stolen; that she has been an ally of the most reactionary forces in India and in many other countries; that she has campaigned recently to prevent Ireland from ceasing to be the only country in Europe with a constitutional ban on divorce, that her interventions are always timed to assist the most conservative and obscurantist forces.

FI: Do you think this is because she is a shrewd political operator or that she is just naïve and used as a tool by others?

HITCHENS: I've often been asked that. And I couldn't say from real acquaintance with her which view is correct, because I've only met her once. But from observing her I don't think that she's naïve. I don't think she is particularly intelligent or that she has a complex mind, but I think she has a certain cunning.

Her instincts are very good: she seems to know when and where she might be needed and to turn up, still looking very simple. But it's a long way from Calcutta to Port au Prince airport in Haiti, and it's a long way from the airport to the presidential palace. And one can't just, in your humble way and dressed in a simple sari, turn up there. Quite a lot of things have to be arranged and thought about and allowed for in advance. You don't end up suddenly out of sheer simple naïveté giving a speech saying that the Duvalier family love the poor. All of that involves quite a high level of planning and calculation. But I think the genius of it is to make it look simple.

One of Mother Teresa's biographers - almost all the books written about her are by completely uncritical devotees - says, with a sense of absolute wonderment, that when Mother Teresa first met the pope in the Vatican, she arrived by bus dressed only in a sari that cost one rupee. Now that would be my definition of behaving ostentatiously. A normal person would put on at least her best scarf and take a taxi. To do it in the way that she did is the reverse of the simple path. It's obviously theatrical and calculated. And yet it is immediately written down as a sign of her utter holiness and devotion. Well, one doesn't have to be too cynical to see through that.

FI: You point out that, although she is very open about promoting Catholicism, Mother Teresa has this reputation of holiness amongst many non-Catholics and even secular people. And her reputation is based upon her charitable work for the sick and dying in Calcutta. What does she actually do there? What are her care facilities like?

HITCHENS: The care facilities are grotesquely simple: rudimentary, unscientific, miles behind any modern conception of what medical science is supposed to do. There have been a number of articles - I've collected some more since my book came out - about the failure and primitivism of her treatment of lepers and the dying, of her attitude towards medication and prophylaxis. Very rightly is it said that she tends to the dying, because if you were doing anything but dying she hasn't really got much to offer.

This is interesting because, first, she only proclaims to be providing people with a Catholic death, and, second, because of the enormous amounts of money mainly donated to rather than raised by her Order. We've been unable to audit this - no one has ever demanded an accounting of how much money has flowed in her direction. With that money she could have built at least one absolutely spanking new, modern teaching hospital in Calcutta without noticing the cost.

The facilities she runs are as primitive now as when she first became a celebrity. So that's obviously not where the money goes.

FI: How much money do you reckon she receives?

HITCHENS: Well, I have the testimony of a former very active member of her Order who worked for her for many years and ended up in the office Mother Teresa maintains in New York City. She was in charge of taking the money to the bank. She estimates that there must be $50 million in that bank account alone. She said that one of the things that began to raise doubts in her mind was that the Sisters always had to go around pretending that they were very poor and they couldn't use the money for anything in the neighborhood that required alleviation. Under the cloak of avowed poverty they were still soliciting donations, labor, food, and so on from local merchants. This she found as a matter of conscience to be offensive.

Now if that is the case for one place in New York, and since we know what huge sums she has been given by institutions like the Nobel Peace committee, other religious institutions, secular prize-giving organizations, and so on, we can speculate that if this money was being used for the relief of suffering we would be able to see the effect.

FI: So the $50 million is a very small portion of her wealth?

HITCHENS: I think it's a very small portion, and we should call for an audit of her organization. She carefully doesn't keep the money in India because the Indian government requires disclosure of foreign missionary organizations funds.

I think the answer to questions about her wealth was given by her in an interview where she said she had opened convents and nunneries in 120 countries. The money has simply been used for the greater glory of her order and the building of dogmatic, religious institutions.

FI: So she is spending the money on her own order of nuns? And that order will be named after her?

HITCHENS: Both of those suggestions are speculation, but they are good speculation. I think the order will be named after her when she becomes a saint, which is also a certainty: she is on the fast track to canonization and would be even if we didn't have a pope who was manufacturing saints by the bushel. He has canonized and beatified more people than eight of his predecessors combined.

FI: Hence the title of your book: The Missionary Position.

HITCHENS: That has got some people worked up. Of the very, very few people who have reviewed this book in the United States, one or two have objected to that title on the grounds that it's "sophomoric." Well, I think that a triple entendre requires a bit of sophistication.

FI: And your television program in the United Kingdom was called "Hell's Angel."

HITCHENS: Yes, very much over my objection, because I thought that that name had not even a single entendre to it. I wanted to call it "Sacred Cow." The book is the television program expanded by about a third. The program was limited by what we could find of Mother Teresa's activities recorded on film. In fact, I was delighted by how much of her activity was available on film: for example, her praising the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. There is also film of her groveling to the Duvaliers: licking the feet of the rich instead of washing the feet of the poor. But "60 Minutes" demanded a price that was greater than the whole cost of the rest of the production. So we had to use stills.

FI: How did Mother Teresa become such a great symbol of charity and saintliness?

HITCHENS: Her break into stardom came when Malcolm Muggeridge - a very pious British political and social pundit - adopted her for his pet cause. In 1969, he made a very famous film about her life - and later a book called Something Beautiful for God. Both the book and the film deserve the label hagiography.

Muggeridge was so credulous that he actually claimed that a miracle had occurred on camera while he was making the film. He claimed that a mysterious "kindly light" had appeared around Mother Teresa. This claim could easily be exploded by the testimony of the cameraman himself: he had some new film stock produced by Kodak for dark or difficult light conditions. The new stock was used for the interview with Mother Teresa. The light in the film looked rather odd, and the cameraman was just about to say so when Muggeridge broke in and said, "It's a miracle, it's divine light."

FI: Are we all victims of the Catholic public relations machine? Or has the West seized upon Mother Teresa as salve for its conscience?

HITCHENS: Well, you are giving me my answer in your question. For a long time the church was not quite sure what to do about her. For example, when there was the Second Vatican Council, in the 1960s, there was an equivalent meeting for the Catholics of the Indian subcontinent in Bombay. Mother Teresa turned up and said she was absolutely against any reconsideration of doctrine. She said we don't need any new thinking or reflection, what we need is more work and more faith. So she has been recognized as a difficult and dogmatic woman by the Catholics in India for a long time.

I think there were others in the church who suspected she was too ambitious, that she wouldn't accept discipline, that she wanted an order of her own. She was always petitioning to be able to go off and start her own show. Traditionally, the church has tended to suspect that kind of excessive zeal. I think it was an entirely secular breakthrough sponsored by Muggeridge, who wasn't then a Catholic.

So it wasn't the result of the propaganda of the Holy Office. But when the Catholic church realized it had a winner on its hands, it was quick to adopt her. She is a very great favorite of the faithful and a very good advertisement to attract non-believers or non-Catholics. And she's very useful for the current pope as a weapon against reformists and challengers within the church.

As to why those who would normally consider themselves rationalists or skeptics have fallen for the Mother Teresa myth, I think there is an element of post-colonial condescension involved, in that most people have a slightly bad conscience about "the wretched of the Earth" and they are glad to feel that there are those who will take action. Then also there is the general problem of credulity, of people being willing - once a reputation has been established - to judge people's actions by that reputation instead of the reputation by that action.

FI: Why do you think no other major media before you had exposed Mother Teresa?

HITCHENS: I'm really surprised by it. And also I'm surprised that no one in our community - that of humanists, rationalists, and atheists - had ever thought of doing it either.

There's a laziness in my profession, of tending to make the mistake I just identified of judging people by their reputation. In other words, if you call Saudi Arabia a "moderate Arab state" that's what it becomes for reportorial purposes. It doesn't matter what it does, it's a "moderate state." Similarly for Mother Teresa: she became a symbol for virtue, so even in cartoons, jokes, movies, and television shows, if you want a synonym for selflessness and holiness she is always mentioned.

It's inconvenient if someone robs you of a handy metaphor. If you finally printed the truth it would mean admitting that you missed it the first, second, and third time around. I've noticed a strong tendency in my profession for journalists not to like to admit that they ever missed anything or got anything wrong.

I think this is partly the reason, although in England my book got quite well reviewed because of the film, in the United States there seems to be the view that this book isn't worth reviewing. And it can't be for the usual reasons that the subject is too arcane and only of minority interest, or that there's not enough name recognition.

I believe there's also a version of multi-culturalism involved in this. That is to say, to be a Catholic in America is to be a member of two kinds of community: the communion of believers and the Catholic community, which is understood in a different sense, in other words, large numbers of Irish, Italian, Croatian, and other ethnic groups, who claim to be offended if any of the tenets of their religion are publicly questioned. Thus you are in a row with a community if you choose to question the religion. Under one interpretation of the rules of multi-culturalism that is not kosher: you can't do that because you can't offend people in their dearest identity. There are some secular people who are vulnerable to that very mistake.

I'll give you an interesting example, Walter Goodman, the New York Times television critic, saw my film and then wrote that he could not understand why it was not being shown on American television. He laid down a challenge to television to show this film. There was then a long silence until I got a call from Connie Chung's people in New York. They flew me up and said they would like to do a long item about the program, using excerpts from it, interviewing me and talking about the row that had resulted. They obviously wanted to put responsibility for the criticism of Mother Teresa onto me rather than adopt it themselves - they were already planning the damage control.

But they didn't make any program. And the reason they gave me was that they thought that if they did they would be accused of being Jewish and attacked in the same way as the distributors of The Last Temptation of Christ had been. And that this would stir up Catholic-Jewish hostility in New York. It was very honest of them to put it that way. They had already imagined what might be said and the form it might take and they had persuaded themselves that it wasn't worth it.

FI: So your film has never been shown in the United States?

HITCHENS: No, and it certainly never will be. You can make that prediction with absolute certainty; and then you can brood on what that might suggest.

FI: What was the response in Britain to your exposé of Mother Teresa? Did you get a lot of criticism for it?

HITCHENS: When the film was shown, it prompted the largest number of phone calls that the channel had ever logged. That was expected. It was also expected that there would be a certain amount of similarity in the calls. I've read the log, and many of the people rang to say exactly the same thing, often in the same words. I think there was an element of organization to it.

But what was more surprising was that it was also the largest number of calls in favor that the station had ever had. That's rare because it's usually the people who want to complain who lift the phone; people who liked the program don't ring up. That's a phenomenon well known in the trade, and it's a reason why people aren't actually all that impressed when the switchboard is jammed with protest calls. They know it won't be people calling in to praise and they know it's quite easy to organize.

A really remarkable number of people rung in to say it's high time there was a program like this. The logs scrupulously record the calls verbatim, and I noticed that the standard of English and of reasoning in the pro calls was just so much higher as to make one feel that perhaps all was not lost.

In addition to the initial viewer response, there was also a row in the press. But on the whole both sides of the case were put. Nonetheless, it was depressing to see how many people objected not to what was said but to its being said at all. Even among secular people there was an astonishment, as if I really had done something iconoclastic. People would say "Christopher Hitchens alleges that Mother Teresa keeps company with dictators" and so on, as though it hadn't been proven. But none of the critics have ever said, even the most hostile ones, that anything I say about her is untrue. No one has ever disproved any of that.

Probably the most intelligent review appeared in the Tablet, a English monthly Catholic paper. There was a long, serious and quite sympathetic review by someone who had obviously worked with the church in India and knew Mother Teresa. The reviewer said Mother Teresa's work and ideology do present some problems for the faith.

FI: But in America the idea that Mother Teresa is a sacred cow who must not be criticized won out and your book and your critique of Mother Teresa never got an airing?

HITCHENS: Yes, pretty much. Everything in American reviews depends on the New York Times Book Review. My book was only mentioned in the batch of short notices at the end. Considering that Mother Teresa had a book out at the same time, I thought this was very strange. Any book review editor with any red corpuscles at all would put both books together, look up a reviewer with an interest in religion and ask him or her to write an essay comparing and contrasting them. I have been a reviewer and worked in a newspaper office, and that is what I would have expected to happen. That it didn't is suggestive and rather depressing.

FI: The Mother Teresa myth requires the Indians to play the role of the hapless victims. What do the Indians think of Mother Teresa and of the image she gives of India?

HITCHENS: I've got an enormous pile of coverage from India, where my book was published. And the reviews seem to be overwhelmingly favorable. Of course it comes at a time when there is a big crisis in India about fundamentalism and secularism.

There are many Indians who object to the image of their society and its people that is projected. From Mother Teresa and from her fans you would receive the impression that in Calcutta there is nothing but torpor, squalor, and misery, and people barely have the energy to brush the flies from their eyes while extending a begging bowl. Really and truly that is a slander on a fantastically interesting, brave, highly evolved, and cultured city, which has universities, film schools, theaters, book shops, literary cafes, and very vibrant politics. There is indeed a terrible problem of poverty and overcrowding, but despite that there isn't all that much mendicancy. People do not tug at your sleeve and beg. They are proud of the fact that they don't.

The sources of Calcutta's woes and miseries are the very overpopulation that the church says is no problem, and the mass influx of refugees from neighboring regions that have been devastated by religious and sectarian warfare in the name of God. So those who are believers owe Calcutta big time, they should indeed be working to alleviate what they are responsible for. But the pretense that they are doing so is a big fraud.

FI: You mention in your book that Mother Teresa is used by the Religious Right and fundamentalist Protestants who traditionally are very anti-Catholic as a symbol of religious holiness with which to beat secular humanists.

HITCHENS: Yes, she's a poster girl for the right-to-life wing in America. She was used as the example of Christian idealism and family values, of all things, by Ralph Reed - the front man of the Pat Robertson forces. That's a symptom of a wider problem that I call "reverse ecumenicism," an opportunist alliance between extreme Catholics and extreme Protestants who used to exclude and anathematize one another.

In private Pat Robertson has nothing but contempt for other Christian denominations, including many other extreme Protestant ones. But in public the Christian Coalition stresses that it is very, very keen to make an alliance with Catholics. There is a shallow, opportunist ecumenicism among religious extremists, and Mother Teresa is quite willingly and happily in its service. She knows exactly who she is working for and with. But I think she is happiest when doing things like going to Ireland and intervening in the Divorce Referendum, as she did recently.

By the way, there is an interesting angle to that which has not yet appeared in print. During the Divorce Referendum the Irish Catholic church threatened to deny the sacrament to women who wanted to be remarried. There were no exceptions to be allowed: it didn't matter if you had been married to an alcoholic who beat you and sexually assaulted your children, you were not going to get a second chance in this world or the next. And that is the position that Mother Teresa intervened in Ireland to support.

Now shift the scene: Mother Teresa is a sort of confessor to Princess Diana. They have met many times. You can see the mutual interest; I'm not sure which of them needs the other the most. But Mother Teresa was interviewed by Ladies Home Journal, a magazine read by millions of American women, and in the course of it she says that she heard that Princess Diana was getting divorced and she really hopes so because she will be so much happier that way.

So there is forgiveness after all, but guess for whom. You couldn't have it more plain than that. I was slightly stunned myself because, although I think there are many fraudulent things about Mother Teresa, I also think there are many authentic things about her. Anyway, she was forced to issue a statement saying that marriage is God's work and can't be undone and all the usual tripe. But when she was speaking from the heart, she was more forgiving of divorce.

FI: A footnote in your book criticizes Mother Teresa for forgiving you for your film about her.

HITCHENS: I said that I didn't ask for forgiveness and I wasn't aware that she could bestow it in any case. Of all the things in the book, that is the one that has attracted most hostile comment - even from friends and people who agree with me. They ask why I object to that, what's wrong with forgiveness? My explanation is that it would be O.K. if she was going to forgive everyone. When she went to Bhopal after the Union Carbide industrial accident killed thousands, she kept saying "Forgive, forgive, forgive." It's O.K. to forgive Union Carbide for its negligence, but for a woman married to an alcoholic child abuser in Ireland who has ten children and no one to look after her, there is no forgiveness in this life or the next one. But there is forgiveness for Princess Diana.

FI: There is a Roman Catholic doctrine about the redemption of the soul through suffering. This can be seen in Mother Teresa's work: she thinks suffering is good, and she doesn't use pain relievers in her clinics and so forth. Does she take the same attitude towards her own health? Does she live in accordance with what she preaches?

HITCHENS: I hesitated to cover this in my book, but I decided I had to publish that she has said that the suffering of the poor is something very beautiful and the world is being very much helped by the nobility of this example of misery and suffering.

FI: A horrible thing to say.

HITCHENS: Yes, evil in fact. To say it was unChristian unfortunately would not be true, although many people don't realize that is what Christians believe. It is a positively immoral remark in my opinion, and it should be more widely known than it is.

She is old, she has had various episodes with her own health, and she checks into some of the costliest and finest clinics in the West herself. I hesitated to put that in the book because it seemed as though it would be ad hominem (or ad feminam) and I try never to do that. I think that the doctrine of hating the sin and loving the sinner is obviously a stupid one, because its a false antithesis, but a version of it is morally defensible. Certainly in arguments one is only supposed to attack the arguments and not the person presenting them. But the contrast seemed so huge in this case.

It wasn't so much that it showed that her facilities weren't any good, but it showed that they weren't medical facilities at all. There wasn't any place she runs that she could go; as far as I know, their point isn't treatment. And in fairness to her, she has never really claimed that treatment is the point. Although she does accept donations from people who have fooled themselves into thinking so, I haven't found any occasion where she has given a false impression of her work. The only way she could be said to be responsible for spreading it is that she knowingly accepts what comes due to that false impression.

FI: But if people go to her clinics for the dying and they need medical care, does she send them on to the proper places?

HITCHENS: Not according to the testimony of a number of witnesses. I printed the accounts of several witnesses whose testimony I could verify and I've had many other communications from former volunteers in Calcutta and in other missions. All of them were very shocked to find when they got there that they had missed some very crucial point and that very often people who come under the false impression that they would receive medical care are either neglected or given no advice. In other words, anyone going in the hope of alleviation of a serious medical condition has made a huge mistake.

I've got so much testimony from former workers who contacted me after I wrote the book, that I almost have enough material to do a sequel.

FI: I have a question as one Englishman in America to another. You are a secular humanist Englishman who is a leading commentator on American culture and politics. Tell me, what is it about Americans and religion? Why is it that religion, often very primitive forms of religion, is so powerful in perhaps the richest, most advanced, most consumerist nation on Earth?

HITCHENS: I'm an atheist. I'm not neutral about religion, I'm hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion, but religious belief itself.

Why is the United States so prone to any kind of superstition, not just organized religion, but cultism, astrology, millennial beliefs, UFOs, any form of superstition? I've thought a lot about it. I read Harold Bloom's book The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (1992) about the evolution of what he thinks of as a specifically American form of religion. There was a book by Will Herberg in the 1950s called Protestant, Catholic, Jew where he speculated that what was really evolving was the American way of life as a religion. And that this was a way of life that wasn't at all spiritual or intellectual but in a sense believed that all religion was valid as long as it underpinned this way of life. Somehow religion was a necessary ingredient. In other words, religion was functional. I think that's true but it's not the whole story.

Maybe - and this is a conclusion that I am reluctant to come to - it is because there is no established church here. A claim that is made for established churches is that in a way they domesticate and canalize and give a form and order to superstitious impulses. That's why they usually succeed in annexing all local cults and making them their own, etc. Part of their job is to soak up all the savagery around the place. I think from an anthropological point of view, that's partly true.

In a country that very honorably and uniquely founded itself on repudiating that idea and saying the church and the government would always be separate, and also a country that many people came to in the hope of practicing their own religion, you have both free competition and a sense of manifest destiny. I think it's out of that sort of stew that you have all these bubbles.

Chesterton used to say that, if people didn't have a belief in God, they wouldn't believe in nothing, they would believe in anything. The objection to that of course is that belief in God is believing in anything. But there's still a ghost of a point in there: if people are licensed to believe anything and call it spirituality, then they will.

FI: I think maybe it's not so much not having an established church as not having a dominant church. In France you have strict separation, but the Catholic church is dominant. Yet France has very high levels of nonbelief, like countries with an established church. But in America you have free competition of churches, and lots of competing cults, and much more energy as a result.

HITCHENS: I'm not sure that people in the United States are as devout as the statistics suggest. The statistics are extraordinary if you believe them: something like 88 percent of Americans regularly attend church, and 90 percent of them believe in the devil. I would like to have a look at how the questions are formulated in these polls.

FI: We have done our own polls - scientifically selected samples - in which we framed the questions ourselves, and we got very similar results to the other polls we had read. It may be that the question is not, Why do people believe this? - because perhaps they don't - but, Why do people say they believe this? There's obviously a social conditioning.

HITCHENS: Yes, that's right. People obviously feel they owe the pollsters that kind of answer.

I wonder whether the onset of the millennium is going to be as awful as I sometimes fear. There will be uneasiness among the feeble-minded and the emotionally insecure.

FI: Especially in America.

HITCHENS: American fundamentalism has one huge problem which is that the United States is nowhere pre-figured in the Bible. It worries them a lot, they keep trying to find it there, they try to interpret prophecies to refer to the United States, but they can't succeed - even to their own satisfaction - in getting it to come out right.

FI: You have to go to the Book of Mormon?

HITCHENS: Yes, and the Seventh-Day Adventists, who descended from the Millerites. I can see that Scientology now enjoys charitable status as a religion, which I think is a real triumph. I can't get over that. You can set some idea of what it would have been like to live in third-century Nicea when Christianity was being hammered together - an experience I am very glad I did not have. Religious diversity is confused with pluralism. Because of multi-culturalism and what is called "political correctness," religion has a certain protection that it couldn't expect to have if it was a state-sponsored racket like the Church of England.

FI: A lot of people who aren't religious think religion should still be beyond criticism.

HITCHENS: Certainly, because it's people's deepest and dearest beliefs, and because they are communities as well as congregations. And I suppose that in the minds of some people the feeling is "Well, you never know, it may be true and then I will go to Hell." A lot of people every now and then are visited by fear. It seems that as animals we are so constituted. At least we can know that about ourselves, but it is such a waste of the knowledge to interpret in any other way. On the other hand, I'm also impressed by the number of people who manage to get by - often without any help or support - not believing.

FI: The great thing about humanism is that so many people reach the position independently, because it is not about teachers and doctrines. You just end up a humanist by following your own questions.

HITCHENS: That's true. And it doesn't have any element of wishful-thinking in it, which is another advantage. Though it's the reason why I think it will always be hated but never eradicated.

FI: Look at the situation in Western Europe: in Holland about 55 percent say they are humanist or non-religious; and in Britain it's up to about 30 percent and among teenagers it's 50 percent. So there's an enormous movement in Western Europe towards secularism and humanism. Yet in America it seems to be getting just more and more religious. Which, considering the convergence of culture in other areas, seems quite anomalous. Sociologists are just beginning to address this issue but haven't done so properly yet.

from TPDL 2001-May-7, from the Associated Press:

Unpopular religious groups could get federal money

WASHINGTON - Sending taxpayer dollars to the neighborhood church or synagogue sounds like a great idea to many Americans. But what about government money for the Nation of Islam, Scientologists, Hare Krishnas or Wiccans? The question is asked repeatedly in the debate over President Bush's plan to open federal programs to religious groups. Both sides agree there can be only one answer: Yes, all religions are eligible to apply for government contracts because to bar certain faiths from competing would amount to an unconstitutional government establishment of religion.

"It's a settled issue of constitutional law," said John DiIulio, director of the White House Office of Community and Faith-Based Initiatives.

"The Constitution requires equal treatment," said Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. "If you fund the Methodists, then you've got to fund the Muslims and the Mormons, too."

Still, the issue will not go away, partly because opponents like Lynn are doing what they can to highlight the unpopular aspects of Bush's plan and partly because supporters sometimes obfuscate when asked about the matter.

Testifying before Congress last month, DiIulio was asked whether Wiccans, people who practice witchcraft, could get money. He responded that he could not understand why anyone would focus on Wiccans. "It just baffled me," he said.

DiIulio went on to explain at length how government contracting works, but he never said in clear terms that Wiccans would be eligible just like any other religious group.

His questioner, Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., appeared a little baffled by the response. "The bottom line is you agree with me," he said. "It's a red herring - this (talk) about witchcraft."

Listeners could have come away from the exchange believing that neither man would give Wiccans the chance to participate in the program.

The confusion has its roots in last year's presidential campaign, when Bush was asked whether the Nation of Islam, led by Louis Farrakhan, would be eligible for government contracts.

"I do not believe that any government funding should go to organizations like the Nation of Islam that spread hatred," Bush wrote in a letter to the Anti-Defamation League.

The question arose again in February when Bush launched his initiative. This time, officials said it would be impossible for government to pick and choose.

"Any organization that met the performance standards of the government contract would have the chance to compete," Bush adviser Steven Goldsmith told reporters. Asked if that meant a group's beliefs were irrelevant, he said, "To go down the other route, you're on very dangerous grounds."

Later, the Rev. Pat Robertson caused a stir when he expressed concern about giving money to groups like the Church of Scientology, Hare Krishnas and the Unification Church.

Government's traditional refusal to fund religious groups may not be right, he suggested, but it has had the positive effect of sometimes keeping non-mainstream religious groups out of the loop.

The public, too, appears jittery. A recent poll found that seven in 10 Americans believe "charitable religious organizations" should be eligible for government funds. But support dropped when people were asked about non-mainstream religions.

Asked if Muslim mosques or Buddhist temples should be eligible for money, only 38% said yes. For the Nation of Islam, it was 29%; for the Church of Scientology, 26%.

The survey, by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, did not ask people whether their concerns about such groups were significant enough to scuttle support for the general idea.

These objections are enough to convince Marvin Olasky, an early Bush adviser on the matter, to drop the idea of government money for religious groups. Instead, he would like to give Americans tax credits for contributing to the charities of their choice - an expensive proposition that Olasky would pay for by cutting social spending.

Under the current plan, he said, everyone must be given a chance to compete.

"As long as the group can produce the results, carefully measured, whether they do it by worshipping Christ or Allah or Mickey Mouse is up to them."

from MSNBC.com, by NBC's Pete Williams, MSNBC.com's Mike Brunker, Tom Curry and Alex Johnson, The Associated Press and Reuters:

Judge stays own ruling on pledge
Action will allow full appeals court to review decision

June 27 - A day after he shocked the nation by declaring the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, a federal appeals court judge put his ruling on hold Thursday.

CIRCUIT JUDGE ALFRED T. GOODWIN, who wrote the 2-1 opinion that said the phrase ``under God'' violates the separation of church and state, stayed his ruling until other members of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decide whether to change course.

The appeals court can rehear the case with the same three judges or with the full 11 judges on the court. Later Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department announced it would request a hearing by the full court.

Goodwin's action Thursday has no immediate impact, since the ruling already was on hold by court rules for 45 days to allow for any challenges.

Vikram Amar, a Hastings College of the Law scholar who closely follows the appeals court, said the latest ruling means that, for now, Wednesday's opinion finding the pledge unconstitutional ``has no legal force or effect.''

``They're acknowledging the likelihood that the whole 9th Circuit may take a look at this,'' Amar said.

In Washington, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said in a statement, ``The Justice Department will defend the ability of our nation's children to pledge allegiance to the American flag, by requesting a rehearing en banc by the full Ninth Circuit. At this time when citizens from all backgrounds have come together to express their solidarity as Americans, this Justice Department will spare no effort to preserve the rights of all Americans. These efforts include ensuring that the youngest among us can express their patriotism through the time-honored tradition of voluntarily reciting the pledge.''

OUTRAGE CONTINUES

The panel's ruling continued to draw outrage from across the political spectrum on Thursday.

Officials of the Elk Grove School District in Sacramento, Calif., on Thursday indicated they intend to appeal Wednesday's ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. But they said they had not yet decided whether to file for review by the the full appeals court or the Supreme Court.

``We are proud to defend the Pledge of Allegiance, and we will do whatever it takes to get this decision reversed,'' said Elk Grove Superintendent Dave Gordon, adding that the state of California and the Justice Department have indicated an interest in participating in the appeal.

Many legal experts are confident that the ruling, which said that the words ``under God'' amounted to an endorsement of religion, will be overturned by one of the courts.

``I would bet an awful lot on that,'' said Harvard University scholar Laurence Tribe.

And Christopher Landau, an appellate lawyer in Washington and a former clerk for Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, told The New York Times that he was certain the Supreme Court would reverse the decision.

`PRIMARILY CEREMONIAL'?

``In their heart of hearts, I don't think the justices would ever think that this kind of a practice is unconstitutional,'' Landau told the newspaper. ``And I think that they'll probably say that this is a tradition and that it is primarily ceremonial.''

But others say that the appeals court decision squares with the Constitution's strict separation of church and state.

``I believe the government can't act to advance religion,'' said University of Southern California School of Law professor Erwin Chemerinsky. ``That's what Congress did by putting `under God' in the pledge.''

And Arthur Hayes, a law professor at Quinnipiac University, told the Times that the decision is a ``well-reasoned opinion that is certain to enrage the Christian right.''

The 9th Circuit covers Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state, and only those states are directly affected by the ruling.

The Supreme Court has flip-flopped on the pledge, first ruling in 1940 that public school students could be forced to salute the American flag and say the pledge. Three years later the court said an individual who doesn't want to salute the flag or say the pledge may refuse.

But the appeals court panel's decision - by Goodwin, a Nixon appointee, and Judge Stephen Reinhardt, appointed by President Carter - went a step further. The Constitution, the judges said, protects students who don't believe in a monotheistic deity from even having to make an ``unacceptable choice between participating and protesting.''

In a dissent, Judge Ferdinand Fernandez said the phrase ``under God'' had no tendency to establish religion or suppress anyone's ability to exercise the religion of his or her choice, ``except in the fevered eye of persons who most fervently would like to drive all tincture of religion out of public life.''

He said the ruling, if it stood, would preclude the singing of ``God Bless America'' and ``America the Beautiful'' in schools.

POLITICAL FALLOUT

While legal experts were divided on the constitutional questions raised by the ruling, politicians were unanimous in denouncing it.

President Bush on Thursday said the ruling was ``out of step with the traditions and history of America'' and promised to appoint judges who affirm God's role in the public square.

``America is a nation ... that values our relationship with an Almighty,'' Bush told reporters as he began a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit of world industrial powers.

``The declaration of God in the Pledge of Allegiance doesn't violate rights. As a matter of fact, it's a confirmation of the fact that we received our rights from God, as proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence.''

SENATORS PRAY EN MASSE

In an extraordinary show of solidarity, virtually the entire Senate showed up for a morning prayer Thursday, heads bowed behind their desks, to affirm that the United States is ``one nation under God,'' after the court declared the pledge unconstitutional.

Moments later, a nearly full House gathered to recite the pledge, with some shouting ``under God.''

They followed with a sustained standing ovation, and a few House members joined hands to sing the first line of ``God Bless America.''

Both houses of Congress start each working day with the pledge, but typically only a few lawmakers are in the chambers to recite it.

DASCHLE CALLS RULING `JUST NUTS'

Some lawmakers moved quickly to try to overturn a decision Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., called ``just nuts.''

``What's next?'' asked Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. ``Will our courts, in their zeal to abolish all religious faith from public arenas, outlaw `God Bless America,' too?''

The Senate, by a 99-0 vote, passed a resolution instructing the Senate's legal counsel to seek to intervene in the case to defend the constitutionality of the pledge. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., who is recuperating at home after heart surgery, was the only senator to miss the vote.

``A judge who believes the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional doesn't belong on the bench,'' said Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas. ``I hope the court returns all the taxpayer money they have been paid in currency marked `In God We Trust.'''

THREATENING PHONE CALLS

The anger extended to the public sector.

Michael Newdow, a Sacramento physician and atheist who filed the lawsuit on behalf of his daughter, said he had received a barrage of threatening phone calls after the panel's ruling.

But Newdow did have his supporters.

``We believe the court's finding was correct and is consistent with recent Supreme Court rulings invalidating prayer at school events,'' the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement. ``... Schools can and should teach tolerance and good citizenship but must not favor one religion over another or belief over non-belief.''

The appeals court panel's ruling hinged on the First Amendment's Establishment Clause: ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.''

Some scholars have argued that the phrase ``establishment of religion'' refers to ``established'' churches - official churches supported by taxpayer dollars, which some states had at the time the Constitution was adopted in 1789. Connecticut and Massachusetts maintained their tax-supported Congregational churches until the 1820s.

According to this view, the Establishment Clause was simply intended to prevent Congress from setting up a national, taxpayer-supported church.

from http://www.selectsmart.com/RELIGION/description.htm (also see the online religion questionnaire there - fun! I get a 100% rating as an "Atheist" of course - because I reject the definition of improvement implicit in the questionnaire, it rated my alignment with humanism as lower than that for atheism. The questionnaire cannot measure alignment specifically with Innovism, and detects it simply (and misleadingly) as atheism.):

BELIEF SYSTEM DESCRIPTIONS & LINKS

Atheists/Agnostics Atheists' beliefs are similar to those of the Humanists (see), but do not necessarily include the emphasis on humanity's ability to improve the human condition. Views on contemporary issues vary widely. Agnostics are inclined to question the existence of supernatural being(s) or a force, e.g. the answer to whether or not God (or Deity) exists would be: "We do not and/or cannot know."

Liberal Christian/Protestant -- Bible as witness of God rather than word of God, to be interpreted in its historical context through critical analysis. Examples include Anglicans, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Unitarians, United Church of Christ

Belief in Deity: Trinity of the Father (God), the Son (Christ), and the Holy Spirit that comprises one God Almighty. Many believe God is incorporeal.

Incarnations: Beliefs vary from the literal to the symbolic belief in Jesus Christ as God's incarnation. Some believe we are all sons and daughters of God and that Christ was exemplary, but not God.

Origin of universe and life: The Bible's account is symbolic. God created and controls the processes that account for the universe and life (e.g. evolution), as continually revealed by modern science.

After death: Goodness will somehow be rewarded and evil punished after death, but what is most important is how you show your faith and conduct your life on earth.

Why evil? Most do not believe that humanity inherited original sin from Adam and Eve or that Satan actually exists. Most believe that God is good and made people inherently good, but also with free will and imperfect nature which leads some to immoral behavior.

Salvation: Various beliefs: Some believe all will go to heaven as God is loving and forgiving. Others believe salvation lies in doing good works and no harm to others, regardless of faith. Some believe baptism is important. Some believe the concept of salvation after death is symbolic, or nonexistent.

Undeserving Suffering: Most Liberal Christians do not believe that Satan causes suffering. Some believe suffering is part of God's plan, will, or design even if we don't immediately understand it. Some don't believe in any spiritual reasons for suffering, and most take a humanistic approach to helping those in need.

Contemporary Issues: Most churches teach that abortion is morally wrong, but many ultimately support a woman's right to choose, usually accompanied by policies to provide counseling on alternatives. Many are accepting of homosexuality and gay rights.

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Recommended Website: Dirty Hippy Liberal Christian Home Journal

Recommended Website: Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Recommended Websites: More

Conservative Christian/Protestant -- This is an umbrella term for Protestant denominations, or churches within denominations, that are Bible-centered. Examples include Pentecostal, Southern Baptist, Fundamentalist, Evangelical, some Lutheran, etc.. The Holy Bible is the final and only authority, the inerrant Word of God, interpreted literally as law.

Belief in Deity: Some, particularly Evangelical and Pentecostal, believe God has a perfect human body. Most Conservative Protestants believe God is incorporeal, omnipresent spirit -- a Trinity of the Father (God), the Son (Christ), and the Holy Spirit that comprises one God Almighty.

Incarnations: Jesus Christ is God's only Incarnation. He is the Son of God and God, both fully divine and fully human, part of the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that comprises on God Almighty.

Origin of universe and life: The biblical Book of Genesis is inerrant. God created the universe and all life forms from nothing in less than 7 days, less than 10,000 years ago -- not as revealed by modern science. Many resolve the conflict between scientific evidence and the Book of Genesis with the contention that God created the appearance of evolution (perhaps as a test of faith), or that scientific evidence is faulty.

After death: Saved souls experience the bliss of heaven and unsaved souls the torture of hell. On Judgment Day, Jesus Christ will resurrect the dead, reunite body and soul, and judge each for eternity in heaven or on a restored, paradisiacal earth, or in hell. Some believe the souls of the dead will remain "asleep" until the resurrection and final judgment.

Why evil? The original sin of Adam and Eve caused all to inherit sinfulness. Some Conservative Protestants believe that only relatively few people will be saved. The work and influence of Satan prevail among the unsaved and/or those who lack complete faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

Salvation: Salvation is granted by the grace of God alone, through faith in Jesus Christ alone as Lord and Savior -- not through "works" such as moral behavior, good deeds, and generally not through sacraments. Some believe that once saved, or born again, always saved. When performed, baptism is regarded by many Conservative Protestants as a practice for adult believers, rather than infants/children, as it is not considered a sacrament for salvation, but an act of commitment to the fellowship. However, some churches do regard certain sacraments as very important components on the path to salvation (e.g. Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church) including infant baptism, regarding baptism as a miracle from God that creates faith in the heart. Some Protestants regard baptism as a washing away of sin, which may be repeated. Among most, confession/repentance is considered personal, between the individual and God, unless a public sin is involved, and confession to a pastor, when offered, is optional. Some use exorcism to remove indwelling evil spirits. Pentacostals believe that speaking in tongues is a gift from God as evidence of having been saved, and some regard it as the only evidence of having been saved. Preaching the gospel, the Word of God, is often regarded as a means for building faith in Christ.

Undeserved Suffering: Some suffering is caused by the inheritance of mortality originating from Adam and Eve's disobedience to God, which includes vulnerability to illness and disease. Also, Satan rules the earth, causing pain and suffering. Many believe that suffering is God's design to test, teach, or strengthen belief in Him; the greater the suffering of innocent believers, the greater will be their reward after life.

Contemporary Issues: Abortion is considered murder. Positions among denominations on divorce vary from unacceptability of divorce and remarriage to acceptance of divorce in certain situations and remarriage.

Books on Religion & Spirituality from Amazon.com

Recommended Website: Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Recommended Website: The Victorious Network

Recommended Websites: More

Roman Catholic

Belief in Deity: Trinity of the Father (God), the Son (Christ), and the Holy Spirit that comprises one God Almighty -- incorporeal spirit.

Incarnations: Jesus Christ is God's only incarnation, Son of God and God.

Origin of universe and life: A literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis is held by some, but the Church maintains that God gave humankind both supernatural revelation in the Bible and natural revelation through the rational human mind. One may harmonize science with the Book of Genesis in that a "day" in the Bible is not defined as a 24 hour day. It is infallible that God created the universe from nothing, thus if the "Big Bang" theory is true, then God created this event. If evolution did occur, it only occured under the choice and control of God, and only with the understanding that God breathed the first soul into the first man and all souls are immediately created by God

After death: God immediately judges who will go directly to heaven or hell; most will go to purgatory for punishment and purification. Reward and punishment are relative to one's deeds. Hell is traditionally considered a literal place of eternal torture, but the Pope has described hell as the condition of pain that results from alienation from God, a thing of one's own doing, not an actual place. Christ will return to judge all for eternity in heaven on earth or hell.

Why evil? Original sin. All are sinners and prone to the influence of Satan unless they find salvation in God and the Church.

Salvation: All are already saved (through Christ's death and resurrection), are still being saved (through the Church), and will be saved in the future (second coming of Christ). Demands faith in and prayer to God and Jesus Christ, good works, and sacraments, including one (infant) baptism. One's salvation must be restored after commission of a mortal sin by repeating the sacraments of communion and repentance/confession.

Undeserved Suffering: Some suffering is caused by the inheritance of mortality originating from Adam and Eve's disobedience to God, which includes vulnerability to illness and disease. Also, Satan rules the earth, causing pain and suffering. Suffering is God's design to test, teach, or strengthen belief in Him; the greater the suffering of innocent believers, the greater will be their reward after life.

Contemporary Issues: Abortion is considered to be a form of murder, an act worthy of excommunication. Homosexuality is a sin. Divorce is a sin. Women are afforded the highest regard as mothers and wives. Marriage is considered a sacrament and permanent; divorce and remarriage are not acceptable unless the first marriage is annulled. Remarriage after divorce results in inability to receive sacraments.

Books on Religion & Spirituality from Amazon.com

Recommended Website: Catholic Answers - Apologetics & Evangelization

Recommended Website: Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Recommended Websites: More

Eastern Orthodox -- Includes the Church of Greece, the Church of Cyprus, and the Russian Orthodox Church

Belief in Deity: Trinity of the Father (God), the Son (Christ), and the Holy Spirit that comprises one God Almighty - incorporeal spirit.

Incarnations: Jesus Christ is God's only incarnation, Son of God and God.

Origin of universe and life: God created the universe and life. The Bible is not intended to be a scientific revelation, and science is not infallible. There is no desire to create conflict between science and Christian faith.

After death: God immediately judges who will experience happiness or unhappiness or temporary punishment. Those who kept faith in Christ, didn't sin after baptised or repented before death, and did good works will find happiness after death. Those whose faith in Christ was lacking or corrupt, or sinned after baptism without repentance before death, or didn't do good deeds will find unhappiness after death. Those whose only transgression was not performing good deeds may be punished temporarily. Christ will return to resurrect and judge all for eternity in either heaven or hell. Level of reward is relative to one's deeds in life.

Why evil? God made humans righteous by nature, but the original sin of Adam and Evan damaged that nature. All have been saved through Christ's death, but those not "in Christ," born to God, are vulnerable to being with the devil, born to the devil. Satan and his countless evil spirits work to lie and tempt those who are not filled with the Holy Spirit to commit wrongs.

Salvation: All are already saved (Christ's death and resurrection), are still being saved (through the church), and will be saved in the future (second coming of Christ). Demands faith in and prayers to God and Jesus Christ, and good works. Required sacraments include one baptism at infancy and the Holy Eucharist with confession and repentance. Adherence to moral laws is essential.

Undeserved Suffering: Some suffering is caused by the inheritance of mortality originating from Adam and Eve's disobedience to God, which includes vulnerability to illness and disease. Also, Satan rules the earth, causing pain and suffering. Suffering is God's design to test, teach, or strengthen belief in Him; the greater the suffering of innocent believers, the greater will be their reward after life.

Contemporary Issues: Abortion is a sin. Homosexuality is a sin. While marriage is considered a sacrament, divorce and remarriage are not condemned if reconciliation attempts are exhausted; however, a remarriage wedding ceremony must include prayer and repentance for the sin of divorce.

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Recommended Website: Orthodox Church in America

Recommended Website: The Arimathea page for Eastern and Ancient Christianity.

Recommended Websites: More

Jehovah's Witness ("Watchtower Bible and Tract Society")

Belief in Deity: There is one God Almighty - a Spirit Being with a body but not a human body. There is one God and no Trinity.

Incarnations: Incarnations: Christ is Lord and Savior, but not God (Jehovah) incarnate, not a God-man but inferior to God, not part of a Godhead. He was a created spirit being, God's only begotten son, sent to Earth as a perfect human. His sacrifice became the "ransom" price to redeem mankind from sin and death. God created all in heaven and on Earth through Christ, the "master worker," God's servant. After Christ's resurrection by God, he was "exalted" to a level higher than angel.

Origin of universe and life: God created the heavens and earth in six days but each "day" is equal to thousands of years. God created and controls all processes and events.

After death: No soul remains after death. Soon, Jesus Christ will return to resurrect just the righteous dead, restoring soul and body, and judge who will reign in heaven and who will spend eternity on a restored, paradisiacal earth.

Why evil? The original sin caused humans to inherit death and sin. Satan and his demons pervade the earth as spirits tempting all to sin, which God allows as a test of faith in Him.

Salvation: You must show faith in God and in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Adhere to the practices, requirements, commandments, laws, and sacraments of the faith. "Witnessing" and active sharing of their faith with others is fundamental. Avoid behaviors that God dislikes, including celebration of birthdays and holidays originating from false religions.

Undeserved suffering: Much suffering is caused by the inheritance of mortality from Adam and Eve, which includes vulnerability to illness and disease. Also, those who choose to succumb to Satan's temptations may suffer self-inflicted damage to their health. Satan and his demons cause great misery. God has allowed the situation to continue so that mankind can discover that God's rule is better than independent human-rule. He has allowed Satan to cause suffering to challenge Satan's claim that God's creation, humans, would turn from and curse God under pressure.

Contemporary issues: Abortion is wrong. Homosexuality is a serious sin. Gender roles are defined -- men are the head of the household and women are loving caretakers who assist the husband in teaching the children. Divorce is permitted under certain circumstances, but Jehovah hates remarriage unless the divorce occured as a result of adultery. Service occurredarmed forces or any form of allegiance to government is prohibited; one must only show allegiance to the Kingdom of Christ. Blood transfusions, along with ingesting blood, are considered wrong, as God said the soul is in the blood. Bone marrow transplants are left to the individual conscience. (Note: all other forms of medical treatment are acceptable.)

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Recommended Website: Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Recommended Website: Official Web Site of Jehovah's Witnesses

Recommended Websites: More

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons)

Belief in Deity: A "Godhead" of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as three separate entities united in purpose. God the Father resides in heaven with His wife the Heavenly Mother, Christ their only begotten Son, and "exalted" Mormons who become God-like in heaven. God has a perfect body, which looks like ours.

Incarnations: Jesus Christ is God's firstborn son. Jesus is Lord and Savior; God of this earth; creator of all in heaven and earth as directed by God the Father; one in purpose with the Father and the Holy Spirit -- a Godhead of three separate members.

Origin of universe and life: God created the heavens and earth in six time periods -- the word "day" is not of a specified number of years.

After death: One's spirit immediately joins the spirit world and will be assigned to either paradise or spirit prison. Based on one's record of thoughts, words, and actions, righteous believers will live in a state of paradisiacal happiness. Unbelievers and sinners in spirit prison will live in misery, but they are provided the opportunity to repent, accept the gospel, receive ordinances performed for them by the living, and thus move to the lowest level of heaven. At the Final Judgment and Resurrection, most will be assigned to a one of three kingdoms of heaven where spiritual growth continues. Only a few, the most wicked sinners, will suffer eternal torture in the outer darkness as most will have accepted the gospel and suffered for their sins enough by the end of the Millenium.

Why evil? Why evil? Humans did not inherit guilt or a sinful nature from Adam and Eve's original sin. The Fall was a planned blessing from God, enabling people to experience human bodies, procreate, experience the joy of redemption, and to do good (the complement of evil). Satan and his demons pervade the earth as spirits tempting all to sin. God gave people free will, and Satan's temptations are a blessing from God so that people can show their faith by resisting.

Salvation: Show faith in and obedience to God and Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Adhere to the practices, requirements, commandments, laws, and sacraments of the faith as exemplified by Jesus Christ. Good works are integral to the faith through monthly fasts and fast offerings to the needy, to show your obedience and love for God.

Undeserved suffering: Adam and Eve disobeyed God, thus the first humans and their descendants lost their immortality and connection to God, gaining physical bodies that suffer disease and deterioration. Also, Satan rules the earth and causes misery to mankind. This was God's design - to bless humans with the ability to enjoy their physical bodies, have free will to choose good over evil, be able to experience pleasure which complements suffering, and to experience the joy of redemption and eternal life through Christ. God allows Satan to cause misery to mankind as an opportunity to strengthen character and faith.

Contemporary Issues: Abortion is wrong. Homosexuality is wrong and homosexual rights vehemently opposed. The divine role of woman is mother and wife, helper to the husband. Men are regarded as the head of the family, provider, leader, and teacher. Marriage is regarded as eternal, but divorce is permitted if necessary. In keeping with the belief that doing good works is essential for salvation and is Christian, Mormons established a "welfare" program. Mormons practice monthly fasts and give fast offerings to assist the needy.

Books on Religion & Spirituality from Amazon.com

Recommended Website: Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Recommended Website: The Official Internet site of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Recommended Websites: More

Seventh Day Adventist

Belief in Deity: There is a Trinity of the Father (God), the Son (Christ), and the Holy Spirit that comprises one God Almighty.

Incarnations: Jesus Christ is God's only incarnation and is God.

Origin of universe and life: The biblical Book of Genesis is inerrant. God created the universe and all life forms from nothing in less than 7 days, less than 10,000 years ago -- not as revealed by modern science.

After death: Death results in unconsciousness. At any time now, Jesus Christ will return to raise to heaven all the righteous dead and living, resurrect and destroy the wicked and Satan here on earth, and then return the righteous to a paradisiacal earth for eternity with God.

Why evil? Original sin -- all people are inherently sinners, prone to evil and subject to Satan's influence.

Salvation: Salvation is by the grace of God and Jesus Christ and not by works. Disobedience to the 10 Commandments results in death (annihilation) rather than eternal life. Obey God's commandments, acknowledge and repent your sins, observe the Sabbath on Saturday, adhere to church moral laws, restrictions, and sacraments, including baptism and communion, care for your body as a temple of the Holy Spirit.

Undeserved Suffering: Some suffering is caused by the inheritance of mortality originating from Adam and Eve's disobedience to God, which includes vulnerability to illness and disease. Also, Satan rules the earth, causing pain and suffering. Many believe that suffering is God's design to test, teach, or strengthen belief in Him; the greater the suffering of innocent believers, the greater will be their reward after life.

Contemporary Issues: Abortion has moral consequences, but the church accepts compelling reasons for a woman to choose abortion -- after counseling, the final decision is regarded as her own. Homosexuality is forbidden. Gender equality and womens rights are promoted, but women are not permitted at the highest levels of the church hierarchy and are generally regarded as subordinate to men. Marriage is permanent and divorce only permitted on grounds of adultery. Working for peace is encouraged by the SDA church as a Christian value. Many SDAs refuse combat status in the armed forces, and the church urges strict control of semi- and automatic assault weapons. The church supports community activities for equal rights and justice, antipoverty, education, and the direct provision of health care facilities.

Books on Religion & Spirituality from Amazon.com

Recommended Website: Adventist World Church Official Website

Recommended Website: Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Recommended Websites: More

Orthodox Quaker -- A Christocentric branch (Note other Quaker branches: Wilburites are traditional; Gurneyites are progressive, evangelical, and bible-centered; Hicksites and Beanites are liberal, primarily in eastern USA.)

Belief in Deities and Incarnations: There is a Trinity of the Father (God), the Son (Christ), and the Holy Spirit that comprises one God Almighty. God is personal and incorporeal.

Incarnations: Jesus Christ is God's only incarnation. God is manifest within all as the light. Jesus possessed the light to the highest degree and is "the Light" within.

Origins of universe/life: The most orthodox Quakers hold to authority of the Bible, and the Book of Genesis - that God created all in less than seven days and less that 10,000 years ago. But many would maintain that a Biblical "day" is not a literal 24 hours.

After death: Most orthodox Quakers believe in direct reward and punishment, heaven and hell, the second coming of Christ and resurrection of the dead (similar to conservative Christian).

Why evil? Some Orthodox Quakers adhere to similar beliefs as conservative Christians - belief in original sin and Satan. Many believe that lack of awareness of God's divine light within, or rebellion against it, is the cause of wrongdoing, and that alienation from God leaves one vulnerable to temptation, or Satan.

Salvation: Some Friends churches include rites of baptism and communion, but sacraments to God are most often considered to arise from inward experiences, a personal encounter with God, rather than church ritual. Salvation is found internally through union with Christ, the divine Light within all. Many Quaker churches, e.g. Evangelical, believe similarly to Conservative Protestant, that salvation is a free gift from God, with faith, independent of good works. Yet, moral behavior and good works are viewed as essential to showing faith and obedience to God. Good works, such as humanitarian service, social justice, and peace efforts are an expression of Christian love. Simplicity and humility are viewed as essential to living a Christian life.

Undeserved suffering: The most orthodox Quakers maintain that Satan causes suffering. Suffering is allowed by God as part of His divine will and plan. Quakers focus on reducing human suffering, especially that caused by social injustice or violence.

Contemporary Issues: Contemporary Issues: Social betterment programs and nonviolence are fundamental to Quakerism. Some Orthodox Quaker churches are very accepting of homosexuality and others condemn it as contrary to God's will.

Books on Religion & Spirituality from Amazon.com

Recommended Website: The Religious Society of Friends

Recommended Website: Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Recommended Website: George Amoss' Quaker Electronic Archive & Meeting Place

Recommended Websites: More

Liberal Quaker -- Hicksites; similar to Beanite Quaker. (Note other Quaker groups: Wilburites are traditional; Gurneyites are progressive, evangelical, and bible-centered; Orthodox are Christocentric churches)

Belief in Deity: Diverse beliefs, from belief in a personal God as an incorporeal spirit to questioning belief in a personal God.

Incarnations: Beliefs vary from the literal to the symbolic belief in Jesus Christ as God's incarnation. Most believe we are all sons and daughters of God with the main focus on experiencing and listening to God, the Light within, accessible to all.

Origin of universe and life: Emphasis is placed on spiritual truths as revealed to each individual. Many believe that God created/controls all events/process that modern scientists are uncovering about origins. Many believe in scientific accounts alone, or don't profess to know.

After death: Few liberal Quakers believe in direct reward and punishment, heaven and hell, or second coming of Christ. The primary focus is non-dogmatic -- God is love, love is eternal, and our actions in life should reflect love for all of humanity.

Why evil? Beliefs vary, as the focus is not on why, but how to eliminate wrongs, especially violence. Many believe that violence against another human is violence against God. Many Quakers believe that lack of awareness of God's divine light within all may result in wrongdoing. Many believe that evil is simply an unfortunate part of human nature that we all must work to eliminate.

Salvation: Diverse beliefs as there is a de-emphasis on dogma. Most believe that all will be saved as God is good and forgiving, and the divine light of God is available to all. Good works, especially social work and peace efforts, are viewed as integral to the salvation of humanity, regardless of belief or non-belief in an afterlife.

Undeserved Suffering: Liberal Quakers do not believe that Satan causes suffering. Some believe suffering is part of God's plan, will, or design even if we don't immediately understand it. Some don't believe in any spiritual reasons for suffering. Quakers focus on reducing human suffering, especially that caused by social injustice or violence.

Contemporary Issues: Views vary, some maintaining that abortion violates Quaker commitment to nonviolence, but some view the right to choose abortion as an aspect of equal rights for women, and/or as a personal matter between the woman and God. The American Friends Service Committee (an independent Quaker organization with participants of many faiths that provides international programs for economic and social justice, peace, humanitarian aid) supports the woman's right to choose abortion per her own conscience.

Books on Religion & Spirituality from Amazon.com

Recommended Website: The Religious Society of Friends

Recommended Website: Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Recommended Website: George Amoss' Quaker Electronic Archive & Meeting Place

Recommended Website: soc.religion.quaker Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

Recommended Websites: More

Christian Science ("Church of Christ, Scientist")

Belief in Deities: God is incorporeal Spirit -- creative Principle, supreme, omnipotent Father-Mother, omnipresent, omniscient -- the only intelligence and all that actually exists. God is Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love. "God is All-in-all."

Incarnations: We are all incarnations of God. Jesus was a divine Exemplar, and Christ is the divine idea of ``sonship -- the Master. Jesus showed the way (the ``wayshower'') for all to realize Truth, which is God. We are all sons/daughters of God.

Origin of universe and life: The universe and humans are reflections of God's likeness and image, which is Spirit -- without beginning or end. Illusions, or delusions, of a material world and material body result from error in thought and ignorance of the true and only nature of reality, which is spiritual. God is all that truly exists.

After death: Death is the belief in death. There is no death as humans are immortal spirit. After that which we call "death," spiritual development toward Truth continues until all evil, or ``error,'' destroys itself. Heaven and hell are not places, but states of consciousness that continue after death. ''Heaven'' is the self-made eternal bliss of realizing oneness with God. ``Hell'' is the self-made anguish of believing in pain and death.

Why evil? Evil is the belief in evil. God is all that is real and God is completely good; therefore, good is real and evil is an illusion/delusion. The only power evil has is to destroy itself; attempts to destroy good naturally result in punishment for the evildoer. Sin creates its own hell. Not realizing one's true nature as spirit results in selfishness, which can lead to error and disharmony.

Salvation: Salvation lies in bringing oneself into harmony with one's true nature as God's reflection, through good works, patience, meekness, love, watchfulness, prayerful gratitude, devout obedience in following Christ's example. There are two basic commandments: that one turn only to God, perfect Mind, for guidance -- the Mind that was also in Christ; and that one "love thy neighbor as thyself." Healing and immortality are realized with the guidance of Christian Science Practitioners -- by becoming conscious that the only true reality is God, which is Love, and that one's true and only nature is in God's likeness. As one realizes the error of belief in the reality of suffering and evil, these images of thought impressed upon the mortal mind can be altered, thus banishing sickness, death, and sin -- testimony to the power of faith in God, of Mind over matter.

Why suffering: Suffering is the belief in suffering, an illusion/delusion (or error) of mortal thought.

Contemporary Issues: Contemporary Issues: The church claims no position on abortion. Reliance on conventional medicine is considered a sin. Physicians cause illness. Homosexuality is often regarded negatively, a belief that requires healing through Christian Science practices -- the Mother Church has not announced opposition to this view.

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Recommended Website: The Mary Baker Eddy Institute

Recommended Website: Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Recommended Website: The official home page of the Church of Christ, Scientist

Recommended Websites: More

Humanism

Belief in Deity: Not considered important. Most Humanists are atheists or agnostics.

Incarnations: Same as above.

Origins of universe/life: The scientific method is most respected as the means for revealing the mysteries of the origins of the universe and life.

After death: An afterlife or spiritual existence after death is not recognized.

Why evil? No concept of ``evil.'' Reasons for wrongdoing are explored through scientific methods, e.g. through study of sociology, psychology, criminology, etc.

Salvation: No concept of afterlife or spiritual liberation or salvation. Realizing ones personal potential and working for the betterment of humanity through ethical consciousness and social works are considered paramount, but from a naturalistic rather than supernatural standpoint.

Undeserved suffering: No spiritual reasons, but rather a matter of human vulnerability to misfortune, illness, and victimization.

Contemporary Issues: The American Humanist Association endorses elective abortion. Other contemporary views include working for equality for homosexuals, gender equality, a secular approach to divorce and remarriage, working to end poverty, promoting peace and non-violence, and environmental protection.

Books on Religion & Spirituality from Amazon.com

Recommended Website: Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Recommended Website: The American Humanist Association

Recommended Websites: More

Unitarian Universalist -- A liberal and diverse religious organization comprised of mostly atheists (or non-theists), agnostics, Humanists, liberal Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Neopagans, etc.

Belief in Deity: Very diverse beliefs - Unitarian/Universalists welcome all deity beliefs as well as nontheistic beliefs. Some congregations are formed for those who share a common belief, e.g. Christianity.

Incarnations: Very diverse beliefs, including belief in no incarnations, or that all are the embodiment of God. Some believe Christ is God's Son, or not Son but "Wayshower."

Origins of universe/life: Diverse beliefs, but most believe in the Bible as symbolic and that natural processes account for origins.

After death: Diverse beliefs, but most believe that heaven and hell are not places, but are symbolic. Some believe heaven and hell are states of consciousness either in life or continuing after death; some believe in reincarnation; some believe that afterlife is nonexistent or not known or not important, as actions in life are all that matter.

Why evil? Diverse beliefs. Some believe wrong is committed when people distance themselves from God. Some believe in ``karma,'' that what goes around comes around. Some believe wrongdoing is a matter of human nature, psychology, sociology, etc.

Salvation: Some believe in salvation through faith in God and Jesus Christ, along with doing good works and doing no harm to others. Many believe all will be saved, as God is good and forgiving. Some believe in reincarnation and the necessity to eliminate personal greed or to learn all of life's lessons before achieving enlightenment or salvation. For some, the concepts of salvation or enlightenment are irrelevant or disbelieved.

Undeserved suffering: Diverse beliefs. Most Unitarians do not believe that Satan causes suffering. Some believe suffering is part of God's plan, will, or design even if we don't immediately understand it. Some don't believe in any spiritual reasons for suffering, and most take a humanistic approach to helping those in need.

Contemporary Issues: The Unitarian Universalist Association's stance is to protect the personal right to choose abortion. Other contemporary views include working for equality for homosexuals, gender equality, a secular approach to divorce and remarriage, working to end poverty, promoting peace and non-violence, and environmental protection.

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Theravada Buddhism

Belief in Deity: The concept of a supreme, Creator God is rejected or at least considered irrelevant to Theravada Buddhism. Buddha, "the Awakened One," is revered above all -- not as "God" but as supreme sage, model of a fully Enlightened person. Many Buddhists hold that there is a spirit world with gods in the heavens, but gods are not supreme and are subject to rebirth, while only humans have the potential to attain Enlightenment and reach Nirvana (eternal bliss).

Incarnations: Buddha was a human, a fully Enlightened spiritual teacher and inspiration. As there no belief in or relevance to God, there are no incarnations of God worshipped.

Origins of universe/life: Buddhists consider it the job of scientists to explain origins of the universe and life. There is no contradiction with scientific discovery, however many maintain that the world creates and recreates itself millions of times every fraction of a second. Questions of origins are considered irrelevant to the goal of enlightenment.

After death: There is no transmigration of individual souls, but through the law of karma, one's wholesome or unwholesome intentions become imprinted in the mind. Negative mental states persist through continual rebirth until one's intentions become wholesome. Once fully enlightened, one is liberated from rebirths, reaching a state of absolute selflessness resulting in ultimate bliss called Nirvana--the "Deathless State". One becomes Buddha (or one with Buddha). Some Buddhists, especially modern Western, don't emphasize or believe in literal rebirth.

Why evil? People have free will to commit wrongs or rights. Evil doings may result when egoism, cravings, attachments and ignorance are expressed as greed, hatred, violence which, if unmitigated, is perpetuated through rebirth.

Salvation: Enlightenment is an individual journey to Nirvana (complete bliss), liberation from suffering and cycles of rebirth, by following the Four Noble Truths and Eight-fold path. To eliminate karma, which causes rebirth, one must extinguish self: all cravings, desires, and attachments. The path to enlightenment includes loving kindness and compassion, moral conduct, charity, wisdom, and meditation. Attaining unnecessary worldly possessions and over-indulgence causes karma to accumulate.

Undeserved Suffering: Life is suffering, and the cessation of this suffering is the primary goal of Buddhism - to reach Nirvana, to end cycles of rebirth. Suffering is a result of past-life greed, hatred, and ignorance which returns as suffering (karma), while compassion toward others who suffer reduces the effects of karma.

Contemporary Issues: Abortion is considered murder, and all violent acts cause horrific karmic consequence. Homosexuality in itself is not specifically condemned by scripture, but opinions vary, especially among various Buddhist cultures -- e.g. USA Buddhists are generally very accepting while Asian Buddhists are generally strongly opposed to homosexuality. It is believed that divorce wouldn't occur if one follows Buddhist precepts, but a couple is not condemned if they separate due to vast personal differences. Gender roles are generally traditional (e.g. woman as child caretakers and men as providers), but less rigid as contemporary demands are made on women (e.g. working women).

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Recommended Website: Tricycle.com -- The Buddhist Review

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Mahayana Buddhism -- includes diverse beliefs, various sects, schools, and trends. Main Mahayana sects include Pure Land, Zen, and Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism. We focus here on some of the traditional elements of Mahayana Buddhism.

Belief in Deity: Both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism posit no Creator or ruler God. However, deity belief is present in the Mahayana doctrine of The Three Bodies (forms) of Buddha: (1) Body of Essence -- the indescribable, impersonal Absolute Reality, or Ultimate Truth which is Nirvana (Infinite Bliss); (2)Body of Bliss or Enjoyment -- Buddha as divine, deity, formless, celestial spirit with saving power of grace, omnipotence, omniscience; and (3) Body of Transformation or Emanation -- an illusion or emanation in human form provided by the divine Buddha to guide humans to Enlightenment. Any person can potentially achieve Buddhahood, transcending personality and becoming one with the impersonal Ultimate Reality, which is Infinite Bliss (Nirvana). There are countless Buddhas presiding over countless universes. Bodhisattvas, humans and celestial spirits who sacrifice their imminent liberation (Buddhahood) to help all others to become liberated, are revered or worshipped as Gods or saints by some.

Incarnations: The historic Buddha, the person Siddartha Gautama, is considered by many as an emanation or illusion of the highest power (which is also called Buddha). Many believe there have been countless Buddhas on earth.

Origins of universe/life: No Creator God. All matter is illusion or manifestation of the Ultimate Reality. Generally Mahayana Buddhist beliefs don't find modern scientific discoveries contradictory to Buddhist thought.

After death: After death: There is no transmigration of individual souls, but through the law of karma, one's wholesome or unwholesome intentions become imprinted in the mind. Negative mental states persist through continual rebirth until one's intentions become wholesome. Once fully enlightened, one is liberated from rebirths, reaching a state of absolute selflessness resulting in ultimate bliss called Nirvana--the "Deathless State". One becomes Buddha (or one with Buddha). Some Buddhists, especially modern Western, don't emphasize or believe in literal rebirth.

Why evil? People have freewill to commit wrongs. Evil results as cravings, attachments and ignorance accumulate through perpetual rebirths, thus perpetuating greed, hatred, violence.

Salvation: The goal is Enlightenment, leading to Nirvana, liberation from cycles of rebirth and suffering, which is life. All are already endowed with Buddha nature, but need to come to fully realize that only the Ultimate Reality (the great "void" or "emptiness") is real (or nonconditional) and permanent. The Four Noble Truths and Eight-fold path show the way, along with worship of the essential Buddha. One must work to extinguish self: all worldly cravings, desires, and attachments, through loving kindness, compassion, charity, moral conduct, wisdom and meditation. Renouncing worldly possessions and goals is not necessary for the laity, if balanced. Buddha taught the middle path, moderation. Human and spirit world Bodhisattvas are sought for help in gaining enlightenment. Pure Land Mahayana Buddhists aim to find a place of eternal Nirvana in a paradisical Pure Land, attainable by calling out the name of the Buddha ruler of the Pure Land.

Undeserved Suffering: Life is suffering. Suffering results from this and past life greed, hatred, and ignorance, which, unless mitigated, returns as suffering (Karma). Intense suffering may be viewed as the release of karma, hastening one's liberation. Suffering is illusion or ignorance of one's true nature as Buddha.

Contemporary Issues: Abortion is considered murder, and all violent acts cause horrific karmic consequence. Homosexuality in itself is not specifically condemned by scripture, but opinions vary, especially among various Buddhist cultures -- e.g. USA Buddhists are generally very accepting while Asian Buddhists are generally strongly opposed to homosexuality. It is believed that divorce wouldn't occur if one follows Buddhist precepts, but a couple is not condemned if they separate due to vast personal differences. Gender roles are generally traditional (e.g. woman as child caretakers and men as providers), but less rigid as contemporary demands are made on women (e.g. working women).

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Recommended Website: Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Recommended Website: Tricycle.com -- The Buddhist Review

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Hinduism

Belief in Deity: Diverse beliefs. Many Hindus believe in Brahman (God) as the impersonal ultimate reality/world soul. Many believe God is both impersonal force and personal savior. There are many, or countless, gods and goddesses (devas) representative of various aspects of the One supreme God. The Hindu trinity of Brahman is: the creator (Brahma), the preserver (Vishnu) and destroyer (Shiva) of the universe.

Incarnations: There are many if not countless incarnations and manifestations (avatars) of God also worshipped as Gods.

Origin of universe/life: Diverse beliefs. Many believe the universe recreates itself cyclically after karma is extinguished from all individuals. Many believe in a Creator God, but not per the Book of Genesis.

After death: Through laws of karma, one's soul is reborn until enlightened and liberated from rebirth at which time you enter a state of ultimate bliss (moksha) and become one with the ultimate truth and reality, God, Brahman. One may be reborn into a number of heavens and hells, or as lower life forms, depending on one's karma.

Why evil? Diverse beliefs. Some believe in gods who have powers to do some evil, a small price to pay to have the gods on our side with their powers to provide great benefits. Many believe evil, sin, and death are illusions, as only the Ultimate Reality (or God) truly exists. Most believe people have free will to commit wrongs, and evil results as cravings, attachments and ignorance accumulate through perpetual rebirths, resulting in greed, hatred, violence. The illusion of evil is extinguished with egoism through enlightenment.

Salvation: To become liberated from cycles of rebirth and merge with the Universal Spirit, Brahman, one must worship God or gods, do good works, and live correctly according to the Dharma (based on one's caste and phase of life), go on pilgrimages to the holy places in India, and learn through meditation, yoga, and, with the help of a master, the truth of one's true nature as one with the Universal Spirit. An ascetic lifestyle is recommended in the last phase of life. Some Hindus believe salvation is granted by the grace of a forgiving God.

Undeserved suffering: Many believe that suffering is a result of past life greed, hatred, and spiritual ignorance, which returns as suffering (karma). Coping with suffering is sometimes viewed as valuable in furthering spiritual growth. Suffering is also seen as illusory in that it results from attachment to bodily pleasure and pain, and only the Absolute, or God, truly exists.

Contemporary Issues: Abortion is considered an abominable, as the fetus deserves protection. Views on homosexuality range from neutral to strong opposition, in part because sexual activity itself is generally regarded as contrary to enlightenment and, as such, is only acceptable within marriage for procreation. Divorce and remarriage is traditionally and culturally unacceptable, although not prohibited by the scriptures. Divorce and remarriage of widows is becoming more common, however, among Hindus.

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Recommended Website: Hinduism, the World's Oldest Religion -- A Simple Introduction to a Complex Religion

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Jainism

Belief in Deity: Humans who have destroyed their karmas achieve Infinite Knowledge, Infinite Preception, Infinite Power and Infinite Bliss. They become Gods, or Jina, and as such will never suffer rebirth again. There is no Creator God, and Jinas do not manage the universe or humankind, which operate under their own laws (cosmic and karmic). The souls of Jinas retain their individual identities. Twenty-four Jinas are worshipped as inspirational bridges for others to achieve liberation, the latest being the founder of the religion. Any living being may become a God once enlightened. As more people become enlightened, the number of Gods becomes innumerable.

Incarnations: No incarnations. Gods are humans who attain enlightment and are liberated from rebirth.

Origins of Universe/Life: There is no creator; the universe is eternal and infinite and operates under its own cosmic law -- consists of three sections: earth, heaven, and hell.

After death: Through laws of karma, one's soul is reborn until enlightened and liberated. One may be reborn into hell or heaven or as a lower life form, depending on one's karma. Once fully liberated, you become a God with omniscience and omnipotence.

Why evil? People have free will to commit wrongs. Evil results as cravings, attachments and ignorance accumulate through perpetual rebirths, resulting in greed, hatred, violence.

Salvation: Ridding oneself of all karmas (good or bad) and extinguishing all attachments enables one to become enlightened/liberated from cycles of rebirth and become a God with limitless perception, knowledge, power, and happiness. One must follow the ``Three Jewels'' of right faith, right knowledge, and right conduct. This includes no violence to any life form, even vegetables (eaten if the plant is not killed by doing so). To hasten liberation, one must confess/repent regularly and often and live ascetically, especially in the fourth and final stage of life.

Undeserved Suffering: Suffering is a result of past life greed, hatred, and ignorance, which returns as suffering (karma). Suffering is also seen as illusory in that it results from attachment to bodily pleasure and pain, while only the Absolute truly exists. Suffering is one way of actively ridding oneself of bad karma.

Contemporary Issues: Homosexuality would result in negative karma as sexuality is only to occur between a husband and wife; celibacy is required on the path to spiritual liberation.

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Recommended Website: Jainism: Jain Principles, Tradition and Practices

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Recommended Website: JainNet

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Sikhism

Belief in Deities: God Almighty is impersonal, formless ultimate reality and He is the Creator, personal savior, inner teacher, omniscient, omnipotent - incorporeal.

Incarnations: God reveals and manifests Himself through all in the universe, but no finite form can be worshipped as God, who is infinite. God chose to embody the Divine Light in the Guru Nanak and in 9 gurus successively and finally to the scriptures themselves, but none are not to be worshipped as God(s).

Origin of the universe/life: God existed in deep meditation of the void for countless ages until deciding to create the universe and life. Only God knows how and when the universe and life and the first karma were created.

After death: One's soul is continually reborn until liberated by the Grace of God, at which time the soul merges with God (Guru).

Why evil? No original sin, no Satan. We are currently in the age of sin when evil is likely to flourish. Humans are inherently prone to succumb to temptations. God created all, and gave people free will. Evil is permitted as a test of the character of humanity and the faithfulness of evil's victims. Godless evildoers are to be avoided.

Salvation: Salvation is enlightenment, granted by God's grace only, resulting in liberation from cycles of rebirth and the soul's merger with God (the Supreme Soul or Guru) after death. Frequent prayer, mediation, and song in praise of God, adult baptism into the Khalsa brotherhood, good works (alms and free food kitchen), morality, and obeying God's laws (divine words conveyed through 10 human Gurus) demonstrate devotion and purify the soul of impurities accumulated over many prior lifetimes and of human vices: lust, anger, greed, attachment and pride (or ego).

Undeserved suffering: Rebirth occurs, but one is not destined to suffer under the law of karma. Suffering is not inflicted directly by God, but is permitted by God as a test of courage and faith. Suffering is appreciated for the good that it often brings out in humanity, e.g. compassion. The faithful are most vulnerable to suffering at the hand of evildoers who challenge their faith. Suffering is seen as the remedy and pleasure the disease.

Contemporary Issues: Abortion is a sin. Homosexuality is not addressed in scripture, but one source indicated that it is considered as part of one's karma, and subjects the person to psychic imbalance between female and male energies, which could lead to self-destructive behaviors. Gender equality is a stated position and is emphasized in practice. Remarriage of widows is permitted.

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Bahá'í Faith

Belief in Deity: One personal God Almighty - Creator, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent - incorporeal spirit.

Incarnations: The prophets of many religions, e.g. Jesus Christ, Moses, Muhammad, Buddha, are revered as Manifestations and Messengers of God, preexistent spirits (with individual souls) sent to reveal God's message. Each of the Manifestations are considered equal in stature as the perfect reflection, the infallible word, and the divine spirit of God. Bahá'u'lláh was the latest but not final Messenger, bringing God's revelations to the modern world, and is considered to be the fulfillment of the promised return of Christ. The Messengers are not worshipped as equal or identical to God, but are considered an intermediate level of existence between human and God.

Origin of universe and life: God created all from nothing and controls all phenomena that modern science reveals about the origins of the universe and life. They support scientific study and education as they believe science serves to reveal rather than dispute God's awesome creative powers.

After death: Literal interpretations of resurrection, heaven, and hell are regarded as figments of imagination. Resurrection is the spiritual awakening that occurs upon the appearance of a new Manifestation. Heaven is the indescribable bliss of closeness to God, harmony with God's will as revealed by the Manifestations -- eternal spiritual life. The closer one is to knowing and loving God, the greater the joy of paradise. ``Hell'' is the self-made torture of isolation from God -- spiritual death. Unlimited spiritual growth toward perfection continues after death.

Why evil? No original sin or Satan. The human nature that God created is all good, including both animal and spiritual aspects. God also gave people freewill, and some will choose to express their inherently good nature in imperfect ways. The concept of Satan in the scriptures is symbolic for human choice to express the lower or animal side of their nature in ways that separate them from God. Those farthest from God are most prone to wrongdoing.

Salvation: Salvation lies in the search for truth as revealed by the Manifestations of God -- the achievement of spiritual perfection and closeness to God, deliverance from one's imperfection or base nature This is achieved by faith in God and strict obedience to the commands of God; turning to the latest Manifestation of God, Bahá'u'lláh, for spiritual guidance; study of the scriptures of the Manifestations; required daily private prayer; meditation; active participation in service work (tantamount to worship). No sacraments, e.g. baptism.

Undeserved suffering: All suffering, including that caused by natural disasters, are God's will as a punitive, educational, or remedial response to individual or to humanity's denial of God and disobedience to the Divine Commands. All of humanity suffer when one commits wrong and all benefit when one does good. The best often suffer the most for humanity's misdeeds. Non-punitive suffering is part of God's plan to challenge the soul with adversity. Suffering educates the sufferer and aids spiritual growth toward perfection. Suffering helps people to remember God in their grief. The suffering of innocents will be greatly rewarded in the world to come.

Contemporary Issues: Devoted to world unity - one world government and religion, peaceful conflict resolution (but opposes disobedience to one's government), gender equality and women's rights (which does not include promotion of abortion rights), anti-poverty and anti-discrimination. Service to others is considered a form of worship. Discourages divorce but doesn't punish or condemn; disapproves of homosexuality.

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Recommended Website: The Bahá'í World

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Islam

Belief in Deities: There exists only one personal God Almighty - Creator, all-powerful, ever-present, and all knowing -- formless, incorporeal spirit.

Incarnations: None, as only God is worshipped. Muhammad is revered as the last and greatest of about 124 Prophets/Messengers. Jesus Christ was a Prophet/Messenger of miraculous birth who performed miracles, ascended to heaven before crucifixion, and will return as a Muslim -- but he was not an incarnation of God.

Origin of the universe/life: God created the heavens and earth in six days but the Qur'an refers to a ``day'' as equal to thousands or tens of thousands (or any large number) of years. In the West, some Muslims allow for the belief in evolution but only as controlled by God.

After death: Saved souls will experience the bliss of heaven and unsaved souls the torture of hell. On Judgment Day, God will resurrect the dead, unite body and soul, and judge all for eternity in heaven or hell. There are 7 layers of heaven.

Why evil? People are not inherently sinners but are, by God's design, free to choose right or wrong, including belief or non-belief in God. Satan and his spirits inhabit the planet and rule the non-believers while Satan cannot touch believers.

Salvation: Obey God's law and Muhammad's doctrine. The path to heaven includes confessing faith in one God, Allah, and that Muhammad is His Messenger; recitation of five prayers daily; giving alms; fasting throughout Ramadaan, pilgrimage to Mecca. Confessing and repenting one's sins is between the person and God, made only to Allah and for Allah. Strict obedience to God's laws (conveyed in the Qur'an) and His prophet's doctrine is required.

Undeserved suffering:Suffering is desired by Allah to erase one's sins. Some suffering is Satan's doing or is the work of his spirit world cohorts ("Jinn"), and is allowed by Allah as a test of humility and faith; suffering/adversity strengthen one's faith, as pain often leads to repentance and prayer.

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Orthodox Judaism (Shares some views with Conservative Judaism) -- Jewish law is unchangeable and binding upon Jews.

Belief in Deity: There exists only one personal God Almighty - Creator, all-powerful, ever-present, and all knowing -- formless, incorporeal spirit.

Incarnations: None, as only God is worshipped. Moses was the greatest of all prophets.

Origins of universe/life: They hold to the book of Genesis literally, that God created the universe/life from nothing, in less than 7 days, less than 10,000 years ago; Adam and Eve were the first humans. But, some hold that a ``day'' in the bible is not defined as 24 hours, and some believe that scientific discoveries don't contradict but they attest to God's awesome power.

After death: Traditional Judaism believes in the World to Come, the coming of the messianic age heralded by the messiah, and a resurrection of the dead, but beliefs vary on the details. Some believe souls of the righteous go to heaven, or are reincarnated, while the wicked suffer from a hell of their own making or remain dead. Some believe God will resurrect the righteous to live on earth after the Messiah comes to purify the world. Judaism generally focuses on strictly following God's commandments rather than on details of afterlife or rewards after death.

Why evil? No original sin. Most believe God created Satan as evil inclination, a tendency that lies within everyone. People also have awareness of and inclination toward goodness. Thus, God provides free will as a test of obedience and faith.

Salvation: Salvation is achieved through faith and continual prayer to God, strict adherence to 613 divine commandments (Jewish Law), including dietary restrictions, to give to the poor, ``love your neighbor as yourself,'' bring God's message to humanity by example (a responsibility of God's ``Chosen People''). Confessions and repentances are expressed through Yom Kippur when one fasts, asks forgiveness from others and from themselves, and commits to do good deeds in the future.

Undeserved suffering: Sometimes it is believed that suffering is caused by a weakness in one's devotion to God. Generally, it is believed that God gave humans freewill to feel pleasure and pain, and His purpose in allowing deep suffering of the innocent must be good even if mysterious. God suffers along with the sufferer. Some Jews (e.g. Chasidic) believe that suffering is punishment for past life sins. Knowing why God allows suffering is not as important as knowing that God will punish the perpetrators.

Contemporary Issues: Judaism holds that human life begins upon first breath, and Jewish law requires abortion if necessary to save the mother's life prior to birth. Most believe that potential human life should never be terminated casually, but abortion is generally regarded as a personal decision, especially within the first 40 days of pregnancy.

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Collected Judaism resources: 4Judaism

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Recommended Website: Judaism 101

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Reform Judaism (Shares some views with Reconstruction and Renewal Judaism.) -- Jewish law is changeable and symbolic

Belief in Deity: Beliefs vary among adherents, including that of non-belief or questioning belief, and all are welcome and considered personal, but the official stance is that there is one God Almighty - Creator, all-powerful, ever-present, and all knowing -- formless, incorporeal spirit.

Incarnations: None, as only God is worshipped. Moses was the greatest of all prophets.

Origin of universe and life: Most believe that Genesis is to be understood symbolically. God created and controls all phenomena revealed by modern science.

After death: Reform Jews believe in the world to come and a messianic age (but no individual Messiah). Personal beliefs in the details of afterlife are diverse as there is no official position. Some believe in heaven and hell but only as states of consciousness, some believe in reincarnation, some believe God is all forgiving, and some may not believe in an actual afterlife. Regardless, Judaism generally focuses on living a virtuous life, rather than working toward reward after death.

Why evil? No original sin. Most often, Satan is interpreted symbolically to represent selfish desires that are inherent within all. God gave people free will, and people are responsible for their actions.

Salvation: The main emphasis is on living the kind of life that God commands which will surely be rewarded if there is an afterlife. Most believe God is forgiving of all; there is no hell to which some are condemned. Salvation is achieved through faith and prayer to God, good works, concern for the earth and humanity, and behavior that does no harm to others. The extent to which one follows Jewish Law is an individual decision.

Undeserved suffering: God gave humans freewill to feel pleasure and pain, and His purpose in allowing deep suffering of the innocent must be good even if mysterious. It is generally believed that God suffers along with the sufferer. More important than knowing why God allows suffering is to work to help those in need.

Contemporary Issues: Judaism holds that human life begins upon first breath, and Jewish law requires abortion if necessary to save the mother's life prior to birth. Most believe potential human life should never be terminated casually, but it is generally regarded as a personal decision especially within the first 40 days of pregnancy. Homosexuality: Homosexuals are God's creation, and Jewish instruction is to love our neighbor as ourselves. Reform (and Conservative) Judaism have a long history of support for homosexual rights.

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Collected Judaism resources: 4Judaism

Recommended Website: Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Recommended Website: soc.culture.jewish FAQ: Reform Judaism

Recommended Website: The Synagogue Arm of Reform Judaism

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New Age -- An umbrella term for a wide range of personal and individual beliefs and practices influenced primarily by eastern religions, paganism, spiritism.

Belief in Deity: God is the impersonal life force, consciousness, ultimate truth and reality, the incorporeal, formless cosmic order personified within all people and matter - God is all and all are God.

Incarnations: Most believe there are no particular incarnations to worship as all in the universe are embodiments of God. Many of the world's prophets, including Jesus, are viewed as reincarnations of the Christ.

Origins of universe/life: The universe, life, and matter were not created by God but ``are'' God. The universe and life emerged out of the creative power of the eternal universal life force.

After death: Some believe in continual rebirth - no death, as life is spirit. Some believe that our souls rest for a time before deciding on a new body (or bodies). Heaven and hell are states of consciousness, self-imposed, due to ignorance of God as all.

Why evil? No original sin and no Satan and no evil. Most believe people make ``mistakes'' when they are ignorant of the power of goodness, which is God, within themselves and others. Some believe evil is perpetuated through accumulation of past-life wrongs and spiritual ignorance.

Salvation: Salvation lies in the realization of oneness with the impersonal life force, thus unlocking one's healing potential. Awareness can be heightened through methods that induce altered states of consciousness, e.g. hypnosis, meditation, music, drugs; and through intercession, e.g. crystals, tarot cards, amulets, fortunetellers and psychics, channeling. Some believe the salvation of humanity will occur when critical mass is reached as more and more people converge in celebrating their oneness with God and with each other, which will bring a New World Order or new Planetary Order, resulting in oneness of civilization and one world government, peace and harmony.

Undeserved suffering: Suffering is the result of greed, hatred, and spiritual ignorance in a person's, or humanity's, past lifetimes, which returns as suffering (karma). Suffering is sometimes viewed as occurring for a specific purpose, to further spiritual growth and learn a life lesson, e.g. the death of a young child may occur because the parents need to learn not to take life for granted. Suffering is also seen as illusory in that it results from attachment to bodily pleasure and pain, and only the universal life force within, God, truly exists.

Contemporary Issues: Abortion is not condemned, as there is no official doctrine. Generally adherents are supportive of a woman's right to choose abortion.

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Collected New Age resources: 4NewAge

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Recommended Website: New Age Web Works

Recommended Website: SpiritWeb

Recommended Website: About.com New Age

New Thought -- An umbrella term for diverse beliefs that emphasize experiencing God's presence for practical purposes, such as healing and success. Examples include Unity, Religious Science, and Divine Science

Belief in Deity: There exists one God -- Universal Mind, creative intelligence, omnipresent --- principle (not a being), impersonal force which manifests itself personally, perfectly, and equally within all.

Incarnations: No particular incarnations, as God is within all equally. Some believe Jesus was exemplary of someone who fully realized his divine nature, and therefore is the ``wayshower'' (shows the way).

Origins of universe/life: The universe and all within it are expressions of God - the creative intelligence - with no beginning and no end.

After death: Some believe in continual rebirth as a gift from God so that all may become immortal, as was Jesus Christ, with each lifetime a preparation for the next. Others believe the individual soul merges with the universal spirit after death.

Why evil? No original sin and no Satan and no evil. People make ``mistakes'' due to ignorance of one's true nature as Perfect Mind and Love, which is God.

Salvation: Salvation lies in the realization of oneness with the impersonal life force, thus unlocking one's healing potential. Licensed practitioners counsel on spiritual healing for problems of the mind, body, and life. Some believe Jesus is the ``wayshower'' to salvation. Some believe that all, regardless of actions, will be saved by the grace of a loving and forgiving God. Most believe that spiritual awareness of God's omnipresence, that God is all and all are God, leads to personal and humanity's salvation. Many believe that repeated reincarnations are God's gift, each lifetime a preparation for the next, until ``perfection'' is reached, which is God.

Undeserved suffering: Suffering results from ignorance of one's true nature as Perfect Mind and ceases with complete realization that we all are one with God, the Universal Mind. One can heal personal suffering through New Thought practices, often with the assistance of New Thought practitioners.

Contemporary Issues: There is no official doctrine on abortion; therefore, abortion is not condemned.

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Scientology

Belief in Deity: Belief in Deity: Scientology considers the belief in a God or gods as something personal and therefore offers no specific dogma. The nature of the Supreme Being is revealed personally through each individual as s/he becomes more conscious and spiritually aware. There exists a life energy or force (Theta) beyond and within all.

Incarnations: There are no particular human incarnations of God as the universal life force (Theta) is inherent in all. All humans are immortal spiritual beings (thetans) capable of realizing a nearly godlike state through Scientology practices.

Origin of universe/life: All is manifestation of the universal spirit, which is all that actually exists.

After death: Rebirths continue until one consciously confronts all pre-birth, current life, and previous life traumas and realizes one's true nature as a "thetan," immortal spirit -- transcending matter, energy, space, and time. Achieving this state enables the spirit to escape the cycle of birth and death, to operate independently of the physical universe, and become one with God.

Why evil? Painful experiences and harmful acts in one's pre-birth, current, and past lives become imprinted in the reactive mind and lead to irrational behavior. Departures from rational thought and untrue ideas ("aberrations") can result in wrongdoing.

Salvation: Salvation is achieved through the practices and techniques of Scientology, the ultimate goal of which is to realize one's true nature as an immortal spirit, a thetan. The path to salvation, or enlightenment, includes achieving states of increasingly greater mental awareness -- Pre-Clear, Clear, and ultimately Operating Thetan. An Operating Thetan is a spirit who can control matter, energy, space, time, thought and life. Practitioners ("Auditors") are regarded as ministers and counselors who assist others to achieve self-enlightenment. Auditors help others to identify their pre-birth, current, and past life disturbances, which are obstacles to happiness and spiritual enlightenment.

Undeserved suffering: Suffering occurs as part of the spirit's entrapment here in the physical universe. Only when the individual is aware of his spiritual nature can he identify his barriers within the universe and overcome them, rising out of a lower state and into a higher state of happiness and freedom.

Contemporary Issues: Scientology regards homosexuality as an illness. Based on the belief that you cannot free yourself spiritually without working to free others, Scientology has founded and supports many organizations for social betterment, particularly in the areas of drug abuse, crime, psychiatric abuse, government abuse of law, human rights, religious freedom, education, and morality. Scientology strongly favors the use of their methodology for spiritual/mental healing over the use of conventional treatment.

Books on Religion & Spirituality from Amazon.com

Recommended Website: Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Recommended Website: What is Scientology?

Recommended Website: Theology and Practice of a Contemporary Religion -- Scientology

Recommended Website: The Church of Scientology--The Religious Movements Homepage @ The University of Virginia

Recommended Websites: More

Neo-Pagan -- A community of faiths bringing ancient pagan and magickal traditions to the modern age -- including mostly Wicca but also Druidism, Asatru, Shamanism, neo-Native American, etc. Neo-pagan is an umbrella term for various and diverse beliefs with many elements in common. (See Pagan Path Selector below) Some Neo-pagans find no incongruence practicing Neo-paganism along with adherence to another faith, such as Christianity or Judaism.

Belief in Deity: Some believe in a Supreme Being. Many believe in God and Goddess - a duality. Many believe there are countless spirit beings, gods and goddesses, in the cosmos and within all of nature - God is all and within all; all are one God. The Great Mother Earth, or Mother Nature, is highly worshipped. Divinity is immanent and may become manifest within anyone at any time through various methods.

Incarnations: No human incarnations are worshipped in particular, as all of nature and the universe are considered embodiments of God and Goddess, or of gods and goddesses, worthy of respect, reverence or worship.

Origin of universe/life: Generally there is no conflict between observations revealed through science and neo-pagan beliefs on origins of the physical universe and of man. Many believe in a supreme intelligence that created a duality of God/Goddess who then created a spirit world of gods and goddesses as well as all of the universe and nature.

After death: Many believe in reincarnation, after some rest and recovery in the ``Otherworld.'' There is generally no concept of hell as a place of punishment, but some believe wrongdoing can trap the soul in state of suffering after death. Some (Wicca) believe the soul joins their dead ancestors who watch over and protect their family. Some believe that life energy continues in some, if unknown, form. Some believe in various spiritual resting places. Many say we don't or can't know what happens after death.

Why evil? ``Evil'' is imbalance. Most believe there is no evil but rather that people sometimes make mistakes. Wrongdoing results when we forget we are one with the universal spirit.

Salvation: The concept of ``salvation'' is essentially irrelevant; rather the belief that people can attain spiritual balance and harmony with each other and Nature. The path includes group ceremonies, dances, songs/chants, prayers, meditation, trance, altered states of consciousness, the metaphysical, magic, invoking or evoking deities or spirits, Tantric practices. Intercessors are commonly used: psychics, seers, shamans, tarot, Oui-Ja Board. Ethical choices are influenced by belief in rebirth and karma - that one is rewarded or punished within this or after this lifetime for one's choices, and an ethical code to do no harm.

Undeserved suffering: Most do not believe in Satan or any spirit Being as the cause of suffering. Some believe in karma, that choosing to live a life of wrongdoing and pain will naturally result in suffering in this or later lifetimes. Many view suffering as a result of spiritual imbalance in one's life or on the planet or in the universe. The focus is generally on healing suffering rather than answering definitively why it exists.

Contemporary Issues: Contemporary Issues: Abortion is not condemned, as there is no official doctrine. Beliefs about abortion range from ``pro-life'' to ``pro-choice.'' Views on divorce, homosexuality, and gender equality are generally very supportive of human differences, equality, and personal choice. Many believe that involvement in community action, especially regarding environmental concerns, is integral to the belief in human interdependence and worship of the Earth Mother.

Books on Religion & Spirituality from Amazon.com

Recommended Website: Pagan Path Selector

Recommended Website: Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

Recommended Website: neopagan.net -- Isaac Bonewits' Homepage

Recommended Website: LunaSea's Neo-Pagan Pages

Recommended Websites: More

---

Recommended Websites on World Religions.
Collected all faith resources: 4Religion
Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Adherents.com
Religious Movements Homepage @ The University of Virginia
Quakers in Britain
Religion Religions Religious Studies
Religion Magazines

excerpt from "Aborigines," from http://users.orac.net.au/~mhumphry/aborigin.html:

In Aboriginal society, like every other society, there were problems; droughts, shortages of food, people became sick or injured, and they died. Supernatural forces were blamed for almost every event, and magic and ritual used to correct the situation. The "medicine man" or "doctor" was a powerful man, and tried to cure many physical ills, sometimes by massage or sucking, to remove the "evil" causing the pain, or by the application of natural medicines made from plants or roots. The emphasis on healing was on the spirit, rather than the body. It was the belief that the spirit was the primary resource of illness - evil thoughts act first on the spirit, and the physical symptoms came later - that led to "evil thinking" someone, as in the well-known custom of "bone pointing". The person who was a victim of a spell would usually sicken and die, because he believed that this would happen.

These wordbites about shamanism are provided as historic examples of radical application of the religious operating system (the spectrum of methods used in sociocognitive warfare - "operating system" is a technical term used in military literature). Of course, shamanistic visions and ideations are entirely the consequence of cultivated hallucination and delusion, and represent nothing more than the inventions of the minds of the entranced.

by Richard Shand, 1995-Sep-26, from http://home.fireplug.net/~rshand/streams/scripts/shamanism.html:

Shamanism

A Master of Ecstasy

"The word shaman comes to English from the Tungus language via Russian. Among the Tungus of Siberia it is both a noun and a verb. While the Tungus have no word for shamanism, it has come into usage by anthropologists, historians of religion and others in contemporary society to designate the experience and the practices of the shaman. Its usage has grown to include similar experiences and practices in cultures outside of the original Ural-Altaic cultures from which the term shaman originated. Thus shamanism is not the name of a religion or group of religions."

"Shamanism is classified by anthropologists as an archaic magico-religious phenomenon in which the shaman is the great master of ecstasy. Shamanism itself, was defined by the late Mircea Eliade as a technique of ecstasy. A shaman may exhibit a particular magical specialty (such as control over fire, wind or magical flight). When a specialization is present the most common is as a healer. The distinguishing characteristic of shamanism is its focus on an ecstatic trance state in which the soul of the shaman is believed to leave the body and ascend to the sky (heavens) or descend into the earth (underworld). The shaman makes use of spirit helpers, which he or she communicates with, all the while retaining control over his or her own consciousness. (Examples of possession occur, but are the exception, rather than the rule.) It is also important to note that while most shamans in traditional societies are men, either women or men may and have become shamans."
      - Dean Edwards, "Shamanism-General Overview" (FAQ)

"These myths refer to a time when communication between heaven and earth was possible; in consequence of a certain event or a ritual fault, the communication was broken off, but heroes and medicine men are nevertheless able to reestablish it."
     - Mircea Elliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

"By entering an ecstatic state, induced by ritual dancing and the invocation of spirits, the shaman is believed able to return to that time, visiting heaven and hell to talk with gods, spirits of the dead, and animals."
     - Cosmic Duality

"Shamans reach the state that gives them access to the supernatural world in a variety of ways. A very common way is by ingesting mind-altering drugs of various types."
     - James Davila, "Enoch as a Divine Mediator"

"It is the Siberian and Latin American shamans who have most often employed psychedelics as booster rockets to launch their cosmic travels. In Siberia the preferred substance has been the mushroom known as Amanita muscaria or agaric. This is perhaps the much-praised soma of early Indian religion as well as one of the drugs referred to in European legends."
     - Roger N.Walsh, The Spirit of Shamanism

"Another common method is to listen to the protracted pounding of a drum. Less direct methods are also widely practiced. These include various forms of isolation and self-denial, such as fasting, solitary confinement, celibacy, dietary and purity restrictions, and protracted prayer. Igjugarjuk, a Caribou Inuit shaman, claims to have been isolated by his mentor in a small snow hut where he fasted and meditated in the cold, drinking only a little water twice, for thirty days. After his initiatory vision (see below) he continued a rigorous regime involving a special diet and celibacy. Leonard Crow Dog, a Native American Sioux shaman, describes in detail the process of his first vision quest. He participated in a sweat lodge ceremony for spiritual cleansing, then was taken to a fasting place of his family's, where he was wrapped naked in a blanket and left in a hole to fast and pray alone for two days (an adult shaman will fast four or more days). Wallace Black Elk also frequently describes both the sweat lodge ('stone-people-lodge') ceremony and the vision quest. Ascetic practices by Japanese shamans are especially prevalent among those who actively seek shamanhood rather than being called by a deity. These practices include fasting and dietary restrictions of various kinds, seclusion in a dark place, walking pilgrimages between sacred places, and rigorous regimes of immersion and bathing in ice-cold water. These disciplines, especially the endurance of cold, eventually fill the shaman with heat and spiritual might."
     - James Davila, "Enoch as a Divine Mediator"

"Let him who would join himself to the prince of Torah wash his garments and his clothes and let him immerse (in) a strict immersion as a safeguard in case of pollution. And let him dwell for twelve days in a room or in an upper chamber. Let him not go out or come in, and he must neither eat nor drink. But from evening to evening see that he eats his bread, clean bread of his own hands, and he drinks pure water, and that he does not taste any kind of vegetable. And let him insert this midrash of the prince of Torah into the prayer three times in every single day; it is after the prayer that he should pray it from its beginning to its end. And afterward, let him sit and recite during the twelve days, the days of his fasting, from morning until evening, and let him not be silent. And in every hour that he finishes it let him stand on his feet and adjure by the servants (and?) by their king, twelve times by every single prince. Afterward let him adjure every single one of them by the seal."
     - Sar Torah, paras. 299-300

The shaman is said to 'make a journey,' during which he is spoken to by the spirits, who give him curing instructions and make their wishes known for certain kinds of propitiatory sacrifices; they may also appear to him in the form of visions or apparitions. Motifs of death and rebirth, often involving bodily dismemberment and reassimilation, are common in shamanism..."
     - McKenna and McKenna, The Invisible Landscape

"...It appears that shamans are able to draw on a range of psychologically skillful diagnostic and therapeutic techniques accumulated by their predecessors over centuries. Some of these techniques clearly foreshadow ones widely used today and thereby confirm the reputation of shamans as humankind's first psychotherapists."
     - Roger N.Walsh, The Spirit of Shamanism

"We know today that the medicine man derives his power from a circular feedback involving his personal myth and the hopes and expectations of those who share it with him. The ensuing 'mutual exaltation' was studied by McDougal and by Gustave LeBon many years ago. It is still regarded as one of the key factors in the psychology of masses. It has subsequently been reinterpreted in Freudian terms as the individual's willing surrender to an all-powerful father figure capable of meeting the childish dependency needs still lingering in members of the group."
     - Ehrewald, The ESP Experience

"Shamanism often exists alongside and even in cooperation with the religious or healing practices of the community....Knowledge of other realms of being and consciousness and the cosmology of those regions is the basis of the shamanic perspective and power. With this knowledge, the shaman is able to serve as a bridge between the mundane and the higher and lower states. The shaman lives at the edge of reality as most people would recognize it and most commonly at the edge of society itself."
     - Dean Edwards, "Shamanism-General Overview" (FAQ)

---

Initiation Rituals

"A common experience of the call to shamanism is a psychic or spiritual crisis, which often accompanies a physical or even a medical crisis, and is cured by the shaman him or herself....The shaman is often marked by eccentric behavior such as periods of melancholy, solitude, visions, singing in his or her sleep, etc. The inability of the traditional remedies to cure the condition of the shamanic candidate and the eventual self cure by the new shaman is a significant episode in development of the shaman. The underlying significant aspect of this experience, when it is present, is the ability of the shaman to manage and resolve periods of distress."
     - Dean Edwards, "Shamanism-General Overview" (FAQ)

"Frequently a candidate will gain shamanic powers during a visionary experience in which he or she undergoes some form of death or personal destruction and disintegration at the hands of divine beings, followed by a corresponding resurrection or reintegration that purges and gives a qualitatively different life to the initiate. For example, the Siberian (Tagvi Samoyed) Sereptie, in his long and arduous initiatory vision (on which see below), was at one point reduced to a skeleton and then was 'forged' with a hammer and anvil. Autdaruta, an Inuit initiate, had a vision in which he was eaten by a bear and then was vomited up, having gained power over the spirits."
     - James R. Davila, "Hekhalot Literature and Mysticism"

"I saw that I was painted red all over, and my joints were painted black, with white stripes between the joints. My bay had lightning stripes all over him and his mane was cloud. And when I breathed, my breath was lightning."
     - Nick Black Elk, in the narrative of his Great Vision

"...The important moments of a shamanic initiation are these five; first, torture and violent dismemberment of the body; second, scraping away of the flesh until the body is reduced to a skeleton; third, substitution of viscera and reveal of the blood; fourth, a period spent in Hell, during which the future shaman is taught by the souls of dead shamans and by 'demons'; fifth, an ascent to Heaven to obtain consecration from the God of Heaven"
     - Mircea Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation

"They are cut up by demons or by their ancestral spirits; their bones are cleaned, the flesh scraped off, the body fluids thrown away, and their eyes torn from their sockets...His bones are then covered with new flesh and in some cases he is also given new blood."
     - Fabrega and Silver in Behavioral Science 15

"The ecstatic experience of the shaman goes beyond a feeling or perception of the sacred, the demonic or of natural spirits. It involves them shaman directly and actively in transcendent realities or lower realms of being."
"The shaman is not recognized as legitimate without having undergone two types of training:
1) Ecstatic (dreams, trances, etc.)
2) Traditional ('shamanic techniques, names and functions of spirits,mythology and genealogy of the clan, secret language, etc.)
The two-fold course of instruction, given by the spirits and the old master shamans is equivalent to an initiation.' [Mircea Eliade, The Encyclopedia of Religion, v. 13 , p. 202; Mcmillian, N.Y., 1987.] It is also possible for the entire process to take place in the dream state or in ecstatic experience."
     - Dean Edwards, "Shamanism-General Overview" (FAQ)

"The novice's task of learning to see the spirits involves two stages. The first is simply to catch an initial glimpse of them. The second is to deepen and stabilize this glimpse into a permanent visionary capacity in which the spirits can be summoned and seen at will."
     - Roger N. Walsh, The Spirit of Shamanism

"All this long and tiring ceremony has as its object transforming the apprentice magician's initial and momentary and ecstatic experience...into a permanent condition - that in which it is possible to see the spirits."
     - Mircea Elliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

"The next thing an old shaman has to do for his pupil is to procure him anak ua by which is meant his 'angakoq', i.e., the altogether special and particular element which makes this man an angakoq (shaman). It is also called his quamenEg his 'lightning' or 'enlightenment', for anak ua consists of a mysterious light which the shaman suddenly feels in his body, inside his head, within the brain, an inexplicable searchlight, a luminous fire, which enables him to see in the dark both literally and metaphorically speaking, for he can now, even with closed eyes see through darkness and perceive things and coming events which are hidden from others; thus they look into the future and into the secrets of others.
"The first time a young shaman experiences this light...it is as if the house in which he is suddenly rises; he sees far ahead of him, through mountains, exactly as if the earth were on a great plain, and his eyes could reach to the end of the earth. Nothing is hidden from him any longer; not only can he see things far, far away, but he can also discover souls, stolen souls, which are either kept concealed in far, strange lands or have been taken up or down to the Land of the dead."
     - K. Rasmussen, Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos

---

A Second Real World

"The pre-eminently shamanic technique is the passage from one cosmic region to another - from earth to the sky or from earth to the underworld. The shaman knows the mystery of the breakthrough in plane. This communication among the cosmic zones is made possible by the very structure of the universe."
     - Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

"The main feature of the shamans' universe is...the cosmic center, a bond or axis connecting earth, heaven and hell. It is often pictured as a tree or a pole holding up the sky. In a trance state, a shaman can travel disembodied from one region to another, climbing the tree into the heavens or following its downward extension. By doing so he can meet and consult the gods. There is always a numerical factor. He climbs through a fixed number of celestial stages, or descends through a fixed number of infernal ones. His key number may be expressed in his costume - for example, in a set of bells which he attaches to it. The key number varies from shaman to shaman and from tribe to tribe."
     - Geoffrey Ashe, The Ancient Wisdom

"He commands the techniques of ecstasy - that is, because his soul can safely abandon his body and roam at vast distances, can penetrate the underworld and rise to the sky. Through his own ecstatic experience he knows the roads of the extraterrestrial regions. He can go below and above because he has already been there. The danger of losing his way in these forbidden regions is still great; but sanctified by his initiation and furnished with his guardian spirit, a shaman is the only human being able to challenge the danger and venture into a mystical geography."
     - Mircea Elliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

"In the ages of the rude beginnings of culture, man believed that he was discovering a second real world in dream, and here is the origin of metaphysics. Without dream, mankind would never have had occasion to invent such a division of the world. The parting of soul and body goes also with this way of interpreting dream; likewise, the idea of a soul's apparitional body: whence, all belief in ghosts, and apparently, too, in gods."
     - Neitzsche, Human, All-Too-Human

"We must recognize ourselves as beings of four dimensions. Do we not in sleep live in a fantastic fairy kingdom where everything is capable of transformation, where there is no stability belonging to the physical world, where one man can become another or two men at the same time, where the most improbable things look simple and natural, where events often occur in inverse order, from end to beginning, where we see the symbolical images of ideas and moods, where we talk with the dead, fly in the air, pass through walls, are drowned or burnt, die and remain alive?"
     - P. D. Ouspensky

---

Perception in Trance States

The ceremonies of the Cult of the Horned god were first found in the Paleolithic cave paintings of Ariege which depicted a dancing figure in the skin of a horned animal.

Cave paintings from the Upper Paleolithic (20-30,000 years ago) depicts zig zags and dots combined with realistic images of animals against grid forms. Similar abstract geometric are also found in the ritual art of the South African bushman where the trance dance of the shaman is a central unifying force of the community. In the dance the shaman perceives his body as stretching and becoming elongated. His spirit soars out of the top of his head and is transformed into an animal. In the century old depictions of the trance dance, the bushman shaman absorb the energy of a dying eland and take on many of the magic animal's physical characteristics. He perceives his transformed state as similar to being under water; he has difficulty breathing and feels weightless. When he returns from his spirit journey he is able to perform healing and even his sweat supposedly posses curative powers. A few days later the shaman would be able to reflect upon his experience and paint it in natural rock shelters found in the surrounding cliffs. There was no esoteric stream of wisdom and everyone in the village would share in knowledge of the spirit world.

Psychologists differentiate two stages in trance states induced by drugs, fasting and/or sensory deprivation.
1.) Antopic forms - abstract geometric forms such as grids, dots and spirals
2.) Realistic images from memory combined in surreal ways against a geometric background.
The Paleolithic paintings depicts similar hallucinatory images to the modern bushman's but differ in one respect; they were not done out in the open but in the deep, dark recesses of caves. Was the sensory deprivation of being immersed in the dark a means of inducing a trance state in the Cro-Magnon shaman?
     - "Images of Another World"
     An episode of Ancient Mysteries broadcast by the A&E Network

"Among the Eskimo shaman's clairvoyance is the result of qaumenaq, which means 'lightning' or 'illumination'. It is a mysterious light which the shaman suddenly feels in his body, inside his head, within the brain, enabling him to see in the dark, both literally and metaphorically speaking, for he can now even with closed eyes, see through darkness and perceive things and coming events which are hidden from others. With the experience of the light goes a feeling of ascension, distant vision, clairvoyance, the perception of invisible entities and foreknowledge of the future. There is an interesting parallel, despite differences, in the initiation of Australian medicine-men, who go through a ritual death, and are filled with solidified light in the form of rock-crystals; on returning to life they have similar powers of clairvoyance and extra-sensory perception."
     - John Ferguson, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Mysticism and the Mystery Religions

Hypnogogic images
"Hypnogogic images are the germinal stuff of dreams, and they usually begin with flashes of light. Often, an illuminated circle, lozenge, or other generally round form appears to come nearer and nearer, swelling to gigantic size. This particular image is known as the Isakower phenomenon, named after an Austrian psychoanalyst who first identified it. Isakower claimed the image was rooted in the memory of the mother's breast as it approached the infant's mouth."
"Hypnagogic images can be interpreted in many different ways. Literally and figuratively, it's all in the eye of the beholder. The drowsy person in the hypnagogic state is just as open to suggestions as subjects in the hypnotized state."
"When people start floating n the hypnagogic state, the amplitude and frequency of brainwaves decrease. The alpha rhythms of wakefulness are progressively replaced by slower theta activity. This translates to a loss of volitional control, a sense of paralysis. As the person descends further into sleep itself, the outside physical world retreats to the fringe of consciousness and the new reality becomes the internal dream world."

The final stage of hypnagogic images is, "polyopia, the multiplication of the image, usually seen in one eye....These specks of light...are produced by electrical activity in the visual system and brain. One can almost imagine the specks representing electric sparks flying along the neural pathways of the brain." They may look like hundred of stars "but they can also take the form of spots, circles, swirls, grids, checkerboards, or other figures composed of curves or lines. They are easy to see in the dark, but, in the light, they are on the borderline of perception."
"Even when the hypnagogic forms are not consciously noticed, they can still register as subliminal stimuli and influence subsequent image formation and fantasy."
     - Ronald K.Siegel, Fire in the Brain

from A Guide to the Philosophy of Objectivism by David King, Chapter 1 "Ayn Rand and Objectivism - Philosophy and Science," from www.geocities.com/athens/olympus/7695/chaptr01.htm:

[...]

Scientists are very devoted to the scientific method, and they find that the scientific method is to be applied most successfully in the world that can be observed. That is not the world of moral values or the world of philosophical thought, but in the laboratory where ideas can be tested. They regard science as the only really genuine form of knowledge. This leaves them with an empty spot in their lives. They're not practiced in applying logic and reason to questions of value or philosophy, so they move this area of thought over to the realm of faith. Their very devotion to the world of fact leaves them hungry for some sort of clear guidance as to their conduct for the remainder of their lives. Scientists stay so long in the educational process, become so involved in their chosen, often quite narrow, specialties, that they come to the realities of everyday life much later than other people. Indeed, many scientists never come to grips with those realities at all.

On the other hand, philosophers spend their entire lives dealing with a world of imaginings, conjectures, and fantasies, NOT with the physical facts of reality - at least not beyond the faucet in the sink and the switch on the wall. They look with disdain upon the world of the physicist and the engineer as being one of "crass materialism" - beneath the dignity of their lofty intellectual position and not worthy of any serious consideration. The result is that their ideas are usually entirely separated from reality and produce a distortion when applied to the real physical world.

Consider Immanuel Kant, for example. He went to school, then he was a tutor, then he was a professor at university for the rest of his life. As far as I know he never even did so much real-world engineering as to draw a bucket of water up out of a well. Thus whereas Thales (who was a bridge- builder) gave us Aristotle, John Locke, and the United States of America - Kant (who was a pure philosopher) gave us Fichte and Nazi Germany, Karl Marx and the Soviet Union.

[...]

But this process by which Rand is rejected is merely part of a technique that has been used for centuries to advocate philosophical ideas that have no relation to reality. It works like this:

The conclusion must be brazenly clear, but the proof must be shrouded in unintelligibility (this is the "scholarly fashion" of presentation mentioned above). The proof must be so tangled a mess that it will paralyze a reader's critical faculty. To provide a veneer of sophistication, the author may include many pages of abstruse technical notes, which generate an almost impenetrable aura of erudition. The students will believe that the professors know the proof, the professors will believe that the commentators know it, the commentators will believe that the author knows it - but the author is self-blinded to the fact that no proof exists and none was ever offered. Within a few generations, the number of commentaries will have grown to such proportions that the original work will be considered a subject of philosophical specialization requiring a lifetime of study - and any refutation of the author's theory will be ignored or rejected if unaccompanied by a full discussion of the theories of all the commentators, a task which no one will be able to undertake. This is the process by which Kant and Hegel acquired their dominance. Many professors of philosophy today have no idea of what Kant actually said. And no one has ever read Hegel, even though many have looked at every word on his every page. (As J.S. Mill remarked: "Conversancy with Hegel tends to deprave one's intellect.")

This process is not necessarily a deliberate attempt to defraud people. It may be merely the inevitable consequence of how a certain kind of people handle ideas. As Branden observed, genuine self-esteem results from comparing oneself not with other people (or their opinions) but with the facts of reality. A person who lacks genuine self-esteem builds a pseudo self-esteem by comparing himself with other people. The most obvious example is the braggart who does NOT say "I can do it well," but says "I can do it better than YOU can!" When the braggart becomes a philosopher, his main intellectual focus is not on understanding, developing and expanding ideas which are the expressions of TRUTH - his main focus is on interacting, either positively or negatively, with statements made by OTHER PEOPLE (his own personal "significant others").

[...]

Philosophy is a "scholarly" subject, rather than scientific. There are competing schools of thought - Aristotelian, Plationist, Kantian, Positivist, etc. - and there is an implicit but inescapable relativism: at any given time, although one particular school of thought may be in the ascendant, the idea is never considered that one view could be permanently accepted as being absolutely correct and unchallengeable. As one philosopher put it, "OF COURSE philosophical problems are unsolvable." If you look into the typical philosophy textbook, you'll find it stated as a truism that philosophy can never, never achieve the kind of certainty that science has.

[...]

What follows is a set of biographical vignettes by Peter Landry, an attorney who heads a law firm in Dartmouth, near Halifax Nova Scotia. All views and interjections are his own, and may or may not reflect my own.

Each of these philosophers has at least one view which is vitally errant. I have rendered these views in blood red.

from http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Philosophy/Spinoza.htm:

Benedict de Spinoza (1632-77) and
"Pantheistic Monism."

Spinoza is the Dutch philosopher who is the founder of the Spinozistic or Naturalistic School of philosophy. He is, as Bertrand Russell described him, "the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers."

Spinoza was born in Holland of Jewish parents. He was to receive from his parents a "fine education," with a thorough grounding in such subjects as Latin and physics; further, he studied the philosophies of Descartes and Bruno. As a young man, Spinoza renounced his allegiance to his Jewish ancestry. Spinoza supported himself by grinding and polishing lenses, an occupation which eventually led to his early demise (glass dust in his lungs).

As a pantheistic monist, Spinoza was of the belief that there is no dualism between God and the world; we need not go beyond the immediate present experience to seek for a being outside of it. God moves and lives in nature; the whole of it, the entire universe is God. Nature, or God is Its own cause and is self-sufficient. (Because of his view of God, Spinoza, during his lifetime and for a century after his death, was known as a man of appalling wickedness.) Man, in his egotistical way has imagined God to be like him; to be anthropomorphic in character; and, further, man imagines that this God (created in the imagine of man) has a special interest in, and concern for man. The Spinozistic God does not love or hate. The totality of existence, Nature, God, is far above us, and is indifferent to our desires and aspirations, - gone is the notion of a personal God. As for the notions of good and evil, they exist, but only to the extent that they fit our own personal inclinations. "Such things as please us, we denominate good, those which displease us, evil."

Spinoza's most important work was entitled Ethics, published about a year after his death. To Spinoza, the guiding goal of man is self-preservation, it is an instinct which we feel in the emotion of desire. To satisfy desire is conducive to self-preservation, it brings joy or pleasure; anything to the contrary brings sorrow or pain. All of this, however, is overlaid with reason which we might use to override our passions, it is what distinguishes us from the "lower" brutes. (Virtue may, thus, be defined as acting according to reason.)

The mental capacity to reason is naturally available to all. Reason is a powerful instrument by which one is able to guide one's life. Each of us has a capacity to reason, and, so, therefore, Spinoza was of the belief that each of us might, on our own, conclude that life in a governed community, - the state - might be helpful to curb anti-social passions: Spinoza picked up on Hobbes' contract theory, though he was not as sure as Hobbes was that it was unnatural for man to put himself under the control of a government; on this point he seem to side with Plato and Aristotle, in that it was natural for man to do so.

While Descartes had declared earlier that man possessed "freewill," a necessary position for any religionist to take, Spinoza "ridiculed" this notion1 and declared that the notion of freewill "is due to the fact that people are conscious of their actions, but not of the causes of their actions." In this regard Spinoza was a determinist.

As we have seen, it was not Spinoza's view that there existed outside forces known as "good" and "evil." Like Socrates, Spinoza claimed that the act of a person might be labeled by another, or by society as good or as evil, but when a person acts outside the accepted norm, does an "evil" thing, he does it because he knew no better and "that the only remedy for that is to teach him or to punish him."

_______________________________

NOTES:

¹ Henry Alphern, An Outline History of Philosophy (Forum House, 1969) p. 54.

from http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Philosophy/Rousseau.htm:

Rousseau: "The Insensitive Sensitive"
(1712-88).

Jean Jacques Rousseau, born at Geneva, was deserted by his family at age 10. As a young man he ran away from his caretakers and was to be referred, by a charitable agency, to the care of Madame de Warens a person with connections who saw to Rousseau's conversion to Catholicism. During his years, it would seem, Rousseau had no problem launching and maintaining love affairs, and had no qualms in bedding married women with absent or distracted husbands. In time, Rousseau was to return to Madame de Warens and was to become her general factotum and lover. After deserting her he took up with a maid at the hostelry in which he was staying; Thérèse Le Vasser and Rousseau were to continue to have a life time relationship which brought into the world five children; whom, Rousseau -- this man who wrote of man's natural goodness and the corrupting forces of institutions -- assigned to a foundling hospital. In time, Rousseau had the good fortunate to meet Voltaire and Diderot. The Parisian crowd were soon to place Rousseau among Le Siècle des Lumières, and, like the rest, was lionized. Rousseau was the author of Discours (1755), and, of course, his masterpiece, Contrat social (1762).

"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains." And man must "be forced to be free." These were the notions of Rousseau and those who followed him. And with the cry of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" they drove the French mobs to hit the bloody barricades. The French Revolution, in addition to the immediate blood and damage, left a long train of tattered notions in its long comet like tail in which we still exist. First there was Napoleon and years of war; power hungry men continued to rein in the mob to their advantage; through, it would appear, right into the 21st century; yet, violent actions and reactions to Rousseauian propositions continue to hit in waves throughout the world.

Rousseau's concept of a social contract (via., that there existed unstated reciprocal obligations between the people and government) is not near as upsetting as his view that the existing social conventions should be immediately upset like a barrow of apples at the Saturday morning market: every apple, all at once, to be bruised and kicked. What Rousseau failed to observe or appreciate is that the state is an "organic organ" which has evolved over a very long time and runs (and can only run) on culture and custom: on tradition. It would take a lot more than long years of repeated war to change the fundamental beliefs of a people; its going to take a lot of time, and, at least, several generations will have had to pass, with wise men in power applying gentle non-hurting pressure, simple and steady pressure -- like so many orthodontists at work. However, let me say that my principle conclusion as to Rousseau, is that: he judged all men in reference to himself. And while there is little doubt that Rousseau had "a pure and overwhelming desire for knowledge," the question is: Can that be said of mankind in general?

Here are some classic criticisms of Rousseauian theory, first Burke:

"We have had the great professor and founder of the philosophy of Vanity in England. As I had good opportunities of knowing his proceedings almost from day to day, he left no doubt in my mind that he entertained no principle either to influence his heart or to guide his understanding but vanity; with this vice he was possessed to a degree little short of madness. Benevolence to the whole species, and want of feeling for every individual with whom the professors come in contact, form the character of the new philosophy. Setting up for an unsocial independence, this their hero of vanity refuses the just price of common labor, as well as the tribute which opulence owes to genius, and which, when paid, honors the giver and the receiver, and then pleads his beggary as an excuse for his crimes. He melts with tenderness for those only who touch him by the remotest relation, and then, without one natural pang, casts away, gustful amours, and sends his children to the hospital of foundlings. The bear loves, licks, and forms her young; but bears are not philosophers." (As quoted by James Russell Lowell in his work, Among My Books, p. 349.)

Gosse:

"In so many of his writings, and particularly, of course, in the Discours of 1750, Rousseau undertook the defence of social nudity. He called upon his world, which prided itself so much upon its elegance, to divest the body politic of all its robes. He declared that while Nature has made man happy and virtuous, society it is that renders him miserable and depraved, therefore let him get rid of social conventions and roll naked in the grass under the elm-trees. The invitation, as I have said, is one which never lacks acceptance, and Rousseau was followed into the forest by a multitude. ... [That it was human nature that] the more we are muffled up in social conventions the more we occasionally long for a whimsical return to nudity. If a writer is strong enough, from one cause or another, to strip the clothing off from civilisation, that writer is sure of a welcome from thousands of over-civilised readers." [Sir Edmund Gosse (1849-1928) in writing of Walt Whitman in Selected Modern English Essays (Oxford University Press, 1927, p. 89).]

Hayek:

"... conflict between an individual's emotions and what is expected of him in an extended order is virtually inevitable: innate responses tend to break through the network of learnt rules that maintain civilization. [It was Rousseau in his nostalgia for the simple and the primitive that the conviction spread] that one ought to satisfy his or her desires, rather than to obey shackles allegedly invented and imposed by selfish interests." (Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, Appendix D, page 152.)

from http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Philosophy/Kant.htm:

Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804)

Kant was born in Königsberg; he spent his life there; he died there. At the age of forty-six, Kant received an appointment as a professor of logic and metaphysics at his alma mater the University of Königsberg. His famous claim: "Though our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises out of experience." A philosophical classic is his work Critique of Pure Reason [link] wherein he asserts that our perceptual apparatus is capable of ordering sense-impressions into intelligible unities, which, while in themselves cannot be proven, we are led to conclude through "pure reason," that intelligible unities, such as God, freedom, and immortality, do exist; and that the formation of such intelligible unities are practical necessities for one's life. An admirer of Rousseau, Kant's work gave rise to the Idealist school (Fichte, Hegel and Schopenhauer).

Kant was of the view that while the existence of God could not be proven, we ought to come to a belief in God's existence by way a "logical understanding." Kant concluded that this world was not sufficient in itself, that an external power, which he identified with God, was a regulative necessity; and that God was a requisite for morality, it gives meaning to our life here on earth. The existence of God was, for Kant, but one of three postulates of morality, the other two being freedom of the will, and immortality of the soul. These moral axioms, unprovable as they are, existed for Kant simply because they were the sine qua non of the moral life. (So much for the notion that morality is something that arises from our own character, from our own intelligence: - I would argue that the acceptance of an external, all powerful, being reduces us to mere servants; and, thus, there is no need for morals, there is but only the need to obey.)

Kant would not categorize himself as a "dualist," such as was Plato (one who believes that there is a world beyond the material world that we perceive, one that places the soul or mind of a human in this other world, that the soul or mind is non-material entity), he took a more extreme step; none of reality exists; reality and all that is in it, including human beings are part of this other world, all part of a dream world (see Schopenhauer).

To those who cannot accept such a speculative and theoretical philosophy as Kant's, might, however, through his writings, nonetheless, obtain a tremendous insight into the workings of the real universe in which we live. I quote from Paul Johnson's book, The Birth of the Modern:

"The 18th century had failed to solve the problem of how heat, light, magnetism and electrical power fitted into the laws of motion and attraction Isaac Newton had set out in his Principia (1687). But Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and still more in his Metaphisical Foundations of Natural Science (1786), had produced an inspirational insight. He was concerned not so much with science as with God. Was there a duality, of spirit and matter? Newton had been concerned only with matter -- and with the advance of science, this pointed to a materialistic world and led to atheism. Kant wanted to bridge the gulf between spirit and matter and harmonize the physical and moral laws. As he saw it, space and time were purely mental intuitions which made our grasp of external reality possible. The substance of thing-in-itself, Ding an sich, was hidden from human reason -- reality was perceived, rather than led an independent existence. We perceive reality only through the forces, of attraction and repulsion, which work in space. Hence Kant dismissed the dualism of spirit and matter, replacing it by forces. The universe consisted, then, not of matter but of forces. Electricity, magnetism or any other observable effects were governed by laws of attraction and repulsion within a unified theory of forces, all of which were convertible into one another.
"It is doubtful if the physical scientists could have proceeded as fast as they did in the early 19th century without this essentially metaphysical intuition.
"...
"Coleridge explored the Kantian insight: 'The universe was a cosmic web', as he put it, 'woven by God and held together by the crossed strands of attractive and repulsive forces.' All forms of energy must be convertible; they were also indestructible. 'What,' he wrote to Tom Poole, ' what if the vital force which I sent from my arm into the stone as I flung it in the air and skimmed it upon the water - what if even that did not perish?' Coleridge had thus stumbled upon what was to become the Principle of Conservation of Energy.
"...
"Volta's discovery that the source of electric power was contact between two metals in a solution enabled him to build his pile [battery] in 1800.
"...
"The next stage was to put to the practical test the quasi-metaphysical concept of Kant and Coleridge that the world was governed by forces which were fundamentally indivisible and indestructible, based upon the principle of attraction and repulsion, of which electricity and magnetism were expressions. The Danish scientist Hans-Christian Orsted had been working on Kant's notions for 20 years, and by winter 1819-20, he was able to describe the workings of electromagnetism, or the magnetic field." (Johnson, pp. 551-3.)

Excerpt from The Mind's Past, by Michael S. Gazzaniga (Berkeley, CA, Univ of Calif Press. 1998. pp. 118 - 121):

A few months back a young French doctor who had just completed his thesis and was now visiting at Yale walked into my office. He was attending a meeting on biology and ethics at Dartmouth and wanted to talk about Immanuel Kant's brain lesion. His what?? Dr. Jean-Cristophe Marchand had been reading about Kant's life and medical history. Until Kant reached the age of forty-seven or so, his writings are straightforward and, believe it or not, clear. After this age Kant began to write his great philosophical works, which emphasize the idea that innate cognitive structures exist independent of emotions. Nearly impossible to read, his works make Jean Piaget's "writing" seem lucid. But Marchand's points are tantalizing. Kant began to complain of headaches and other maladies and gradually lost vision in his left eye. Dr. Marchand deduced that Kant had a left prefrontal lobe tumor---growing slowly, but there. Damage to this area affects language ability and the ability of our emotional system to cue us toward good cognitive strategies. Is it possible that all those Kantians have saluted a man who was writing nonsense-- a philosophy for those who do not have a normal cognitive and emotional system?

from http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/f/fichtejg.htm:

[...]

Fichte derives all philosophical knowledge from the one principle of the consciousness of the indivisible Ego, which posits its own being in distinction from a divisible non-Ego. His ethics is based on the absolute freedom of this Ego as an intelligent being. Religion is by him reduced to faith in the moral order of the universe, and this leads to the positive assertion of immortality on the around that no ego which by the act of consciousness has become real can ever perish. While Fichte's subjectivism was soon superseded by other metaphysical views, his influence as a moral reformer was more lasting.

from http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Philosophy/BiosPhil.htm#Fichte:

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762-1814):

A disciple of Kant, Fichte has been categorised as the founder of the Idealist school. Members of this school, much impressed with Kant's primacy of Practical Reason, are dedicated servants to the notion of state power. To Fichte there is Self, Ego; and there is the rest of the world, nonEgo. One changes the world through the Ego, and Ego is developed by the Moral Will. This line of thought, while pure subjectivism, will lead men to great heights, and end in the baking of other men in ovens. (See Paul Johnson's book, The Birth of the Modern, pp. 810-22.)

[...]

Schelling, Wilhelm Joseph (1775-1854):

Schelling was another of the disciples of Kant, whose thinking led to the Idealist school. Though Schelling is not one whose thoughts I have studied in any detail (nor, for that matter, any of these Germans of the Idealist school); it would seem Schelling differed from Fichte, in that, where Fichte placed almost a sole emphasis on Ego, Schelling put equal emphasis on both the self and the world outside of self,- the Ego and the nonEgo. I am not at all sure where that leaves Schelling on the philosophical scale of things.

from http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Philosophy/Hegel.htm:

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
(1770-1831)

Hegel was another disciple of Kant; he was of the Idealist school.

Born in Stuttgart; he died in Berlin. Teaching his way through Tübingen, Jena, and Heidelberg; Hegel eventually ended up, in 1815, at the University of Berlin. In 1818, Hegel took Immanuel Herman von Fichte's job at Berlin and to his death was "virtually dictator of German philosophical thinking." (Chambers.)

To come to Hegel's philosophy one starts with Kant and proceeds through Fichte and Schelling. Hegal departed from the Fichte-Schelling "Ego-nonEgo" analysis by stating that it was reason that should take over, not your reason or not my reason, but the World Reason, Universal Consciousness; an Absolute. This Absolute while it governs the individual (the Ego) and all the world around the individual (the nonEgo), it is, nonetheless part of, or synonymous with, Reason (Ego) and Reality (nonEgo) [dialectic crap: the ego is part of reality, and reality is reasonable -Ed.]. This, in my short study, is the best I can make of Hegel, and if these statements are confusing to you, - you have company: "Hegelian terminology is cumbersome and defies analysis, except on its own terms."

The dialectic is a branch of logic in the art of reasoning and\or disputing. It is a classic approach, one at which Socrates was a master. Through the use of it Socrates (and, in my experience, many a good cross-examining lawyer) would lead his adversary to make clear his position on the subject, then, often with the introduction of an absolutely contrary theory, the discussion would end with an admission, on the other side, of an inaccuracy. Now, the German philosophers of the idealist school were partial to the dialectic method. It was employed, as often it was, beginning with Plato, to set one theory in opposition with another, and thus to develop a subject in a comprehensive manner. First an idea (a Thesis) was thrown up against another theory (an Antithesis); from this, it was thought, one would advance to a third stage, and the truth would emerge. Often, - though not necessarily - there would come about a combination of both the ideas (a synthesis). From this process, it is thought, one would arrive at the truth of a proposition; this is not to be confused with a negotiation process whereby, usually, a compromise is wrought out. It must be remembered that while the truth may lie between one proposition or another, it may (I suggest more likely that not) lie fully with one thesis or the other (either the Thesis or the Antithesis). It is my impression that the German idealist school (for that matter, most any school of thought) through the dialectic, always came away with a synthesis, "a combo" of the the two ideas under review, "a remix" of ideas that likely have been mixed by the same process, over and over. The overall result is a hopeless maze of probabilities, which some souls would assert is exactly what reality is all about.

"We must analyze everything into what it now is, then analysis will show that it contains its opposite, which in turn will have to be harmonized into something that includes them both. But the resultant synthesis will itself be subject again to a negative element, this then, will be resolved into a still more comprehensive synthesis, which will be subjected once more to the principle of contradiction. The final solution, the ultimate harmony, the last synthesis, the step when it will no longer be necessary to go higher, will constitute the Absolute. The Universe as a whole harmonizes all contradictions, it is the perfect whole, it is the synthesis which we are seeking as our final solution. It, therefore, constitutes the true, the rational, the goal of the dialectic method. The conclusion is that only the whole of reality is rational, because that furnishes a complete view of all things; it is the Absolute, the World, Reason, God." (See Henry Alphern's An Outline History of Philosophy (Forum House, 1969), p. 162-3)

The Hegelian view, arrived at by the dialectic method, was that there were fundamental laws which drove the development of a culture or a country; that a culture or a country has a kind of a personality of its own, and its development is to be explained in terms of its own character. Hegel also supported the idea that men are dissatisfied or so alienated in their practical life that they need to believe in illusory ideas such as religion or nationalism. These notions of historical development and of alienation were to play a crucial role in the thoughts of Marx. Marx followed Hegel, who had a deterministic view and that all events (economic stages) come about as a result of the inevitable progress of history.

"... Hegel surveys four world-historic kingdoms: (1) The Oriental Empire, the absolute monarchy. Its chief characteristic consists in the utter suppression of individuality. The State so dominates the individual that it almost annihilates him. (2) The Greek Empire. The monarchy is replaced by republics. The individual here comes into his own, and the States becomes aware of the importance of its component members, through whose co-operation it triumphs. (3) The Roman Empire. The individual, who ran riot in the Greek Empire, is now reduced to obedience. All diverse nations are thrown into a confused heap. Here the World Spirit retreats into itself. (4) The Germanic Empire. Here the individual and State are harmonized.
"...
"Its [the state] self-aggrandizement, its desire for survival, conflicts, as may be expected, with another State, whose sole ambition is similar to that of the first. War ensues out of this conflict ... Since a political unit must act through the wills of individuals, the hero represents the Spirit in its march through history, no matter now unconscious he may be of his mission, or how unappreciated his deeds are by his fellow men." (See Alphern, p. 169 & then pp. 171-170.)

In later years, a fellow German, Adolf Hitler, rose to this Hegelian bait. If one needs an example of a philosophy which can lead millions of people into ruin, then one need look no further than the philosophy of Hegel; it has been "the justification of extremist authoritarian creeds from Fascism to Communism." (Chambers.) (Also, see Paul Johnson's book, Birth of the Modern, pp. 810-22.)

from http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Philosophy/Schopenhauer.htm:

Arthur Schopenhauer:
(1788-1860).

Schopenhauer was, as a philosopher, a pessimist; he was a follower of Kant's Idealist school.

Born in Danzig, Schopenhauer, because of a large inheritance from his father, was able to retire early, and, as a private scholar, was able to devote his life to the study of philosophy. By the age of thirty his major work, The World as Will and Idea, was published. The work, though sales were very disappointing, was, at least to Schopenhauer, a very important work. Bertrand Russell reports that Schopenhauer told people that certain of the paragraphs were written by the "Holy Ghost."

Schopenhauer's system of philosophy, as previously mentioned, was based on that of Kant's. Schopenhauer did not believe that people had individual wills but were rather simply part of a vast and single will that pervades the universe: that the feeling of separateness that each of has is but an illusion. So far this sounds much like the Spinozistic view or the Naturalistic School of philosophy. The problem with Schopenhauer, and certainly unlike Spinoza, is that, in his view, "the cosmic will is wicked ... and the source of all endless suffering."1

Schopenhauer saw the worst in life and as a result he was dour and glum. Believing that he had no individual will, man was therefore at the complete mercy of all that which is about him. Now, whether his pessimism turned him into an ugly person, or whether its just a case of an ugly person adopting the philosophy of pessimism; -- I have no idea. But what I do know is that Schopenhauer had nobody he could call family. "His pessimism so affected his mother's social guests, who would disperse after his lengthy discourse on the uselessness of everything, that she finally forbade him her home. He parted from her, never to see her again." He never married, mainly because, I suppose, because any self-respecting woman would withdraw in horror, upon finding out Schopenhauer's view of women: they "are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted; in a word, they are big children all their life long." They are an "undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short legged race ... they have no proper knowledge of any; and they have no genius." As great a problem as Schopenhauer was to himself, he was a brilliant conversationalist; "his audience, consisting of a small circle of friends, would often listen to him until midnight. He never seemed to tire of talking, even during his last days."2

To Schopenhauer life was a painful process, relief for which, might to achieved through art or through denial. "The good man will practise complete chastity, voluntary poverty, fasting, and self-torture." (Russell.) It was Schopenhauer's view that through the contemplation of art one "might lose contact with the turbulent stream of detailed existence around us"; and that permanent relief came through "the denial of the will to live, by the eradication of our desires, of our instincts, by the renunciation of all we consider worth while in practical life."3 Presumably any little bits of happiness we might snatch would only make us that more miserable, such real and full happiness was not possible, "a Utopian Ideal which we must not entertain even in our dreams." It is not difficult to understand that this "ascetic mysticism" of Schopenhauer's is one that appeals to the starving artist.

Schopenhauer was "a lonely, violent and unbefriended man, who shared his bachelor's existence with a poodle. ... [He was of the view that the world was simply an idea in his head] a mere phantasmagoria of my brain, that therefore in itself is nothing."4

_______________________________

NOTES:

¹ See Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy.

² See Henry Alphern's An Outline History of Philosophy; and see Russell's work on Schopenhauer; and see Durant's work on Schopenhauer.

³ Alphern.

⁴ Chambers. This view that "I alone exist" is known as "solipsism."

from http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Philosophy/Marx.htm:

Karl Marx
(1818-83)

Marx was the German founder of communism. He followed Hegel's deterministic view that all events come about as a result of the inevitable progress of history, "progress" in that the state passes through different stages. "A nation is assigned the accomplishment of one of these stages, it flourishes for a while and then gives way to another. It then disappears and another, superior State emerges."
With Engels, Marx brought out the Communistic Manifesto.
Marx' prescription was to increase the power of the State. In the process the bourgeois family will vanish along with its complement, capital. Specifically, in his Communist Manifesto Marx proposed:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport...
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State...
8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country...
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of child factory labor ...

The fundamental difference in the beliefs between socialism and Marxism is that Marxists believe that we are powerless to shape the course of history, whereas the Utopian belief is that it is within our power to make a perfect society.

from http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Philosophy/BiosPol.htm#Engels:

Engels, Friedrich (1820-1895):

Engels was the writer of The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844). But his fame principally rests as one of the co-founders (with Marx) of "scientific socialism." Though not English, Engels lived most of his life in England, being, it seems to me, about the only country, at that time, which would permit publication and distribution of such freethinking material as is represented by the Communistic Manifesto, the joint work of Engels and Marx. Engels was the more practical of the pair, and its doubtful that the work of Marx would have ever been put through the press if it had not been for the work of Engels, an untiring believer in the works of Marx.

In the New Age chapter is an overview of Kip McKean's International Churches of Christ, which revisits the Christian and Roman Catholic methodoligies with new fangs.

from The Economist, 2003-Dec-18:

Christianity's Jewish roots
A Mary for all
New evidence on links between Judaism, Christianity and Islam

IMAGINE what you would think if you had grown up with little knowledge of Christianity, and you arrived in mid-winter in a country whose culture and spirituality had been shaped by that faith in one of its more traditional varieties. In other words, if you found yourself observing the celebration of Christ's Nativity in a country dominated by Roman Catholics, or by the Greek or Russian Orthodox church, or in an ancient outpost of Christendom like Ethiopia or Armenia.

You might have questions about the sex of the worshippers, and of the divinity being worshipped. As you walked into church, you would notice some impressively robed people singing, speaking and gesturing at the far end, either in view of the congregation or else in a partially enclosed space from which they periodically emerged. Both these robed celebrants and, almost certainly, their assistants would all be male; and no female would be allowed to enter the semi-enclosed space. Yet most of the worshippers might well be female.

Then you might begin to wonder about who or what was being addressed in the ceremonies you were watching, and your confusion would be even greater. As you studied both the seasonal decorations--the greetings-cards, the cribs and Nativity scenes, and also more permanent fixtures like statues, icons and mosaics, you might well conclude that the main person being celebrated and adored was not a new-born boy, but his mother.

The impression of a maternally-oriented religion would be especially powerful if you entered one of the many eastern Christian churches where a fresco or mosaic of a giant figure of Mary, with a relatively small figure of Christ superimposed, filled the concave space above the altar, seeming to tower over the worshippers. The sense of a religion dedicated to womanhood, with or without the attribute of maternity, would be stronger still in bastions of Roman Catholic piety such as Mexico, where simple believers often pour out their hopes and fears to an image or statue of Mary alone, without her child.

And your curiosity about the divine force being invoked might grow even greater if you could follow the words being prayed and chanted all around you. Some of these words would be celebrations of a new-born boy, destined to save mankind, but much of the language would be about his mother: the miraculous circumstances of her pregnancy, and the great tragedy that awaited her as her son was to meet a cruel death.

Whatever you made of this story, you would find yourself appreciating one of the great cultural achievements of the Christian era: thousands of lines of subtle and expressive religious poetry addressed to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Some of this was composed for the mid-winter celebration of Christ's birth. Equally beautiful language was inspired by the four other feasts that the early church dedicated to Mary, each with its complex liturgical forms. From the relative handful of direct references to Mary in the Christian gospels, a vast web of ritual and praise has been woven.

Of course, if you then asked a well-instructed Roman Catholic or eastern Christian believer about the meaning of these rituals, you would be told rather firmly about the limits of Mary's veneration. Mary is not a goddess, you would be informed, but a human being with a unique relationship to God, and therefore a unique role in praying for and protecting the human race. She is not worshipped, but rather venerated.

A Roman Catholic might tell you that Mary was the co-redeemer, with Christ, of the human race--though this is not dogma--and that she was conceived without the ``original sin'' that every other human being inherits. An eastern Christian would not use quite that language. But he would acknowledge a special sort of intimacy with the mother of God, and in particular with icons of Mary with her son, which no other manifestation of the divine can inspire.

Islam's most honoured woman

All this would be rather puzzling if your background was entirely secular, but it would be very familiar indeed if you adhered to another monotheistic world religion, Islam. In some respects, Muslim beliefs about Mary--the most honoured woman in Islam, and the only one to have an entire chapter named after her in the Koran--seem to be quite close to those of the Roman Catholics. The Islamic tradition holds that Jesus and his mother are the only two human souls who were not touched by Satan at birth.

In other respects, the Muslim understanding of Mary seems close to that of the eastern Christians. Both cherish the story of Mary's childhood in a place of supreme holiness that had hitherto been a bastion of male priests. Both name Mary's guardian as the priest Zechariah or Zakariya. In Islam the story is told of Zakariya bringing food to the child Mary and finding that she had already been given nourishment by God; this is cited as a sign of her extreme receptivity to God. In Orthodox Christianity it is stressed that Mary was born an ordinary human, burdened like others with the capacity to sin.

So much for the theology, you might say. But, as an outsider, you would still wonder at the power and intensity of the metaphors that early Christian hymnographers ascribed to Mary. Among the dozens of heart-stopping turns of phrase, she is described as the dawning of a mystical day, a bridal chamber bathed in light, a lily whose perfumes scent the faithful, the vessel of God's wisdom, who showed up the unwisdom of the philosophers and reduced the scholars to speechlessness.

In the eastern church, some of the finest language is prescribed for a feast in late November or early December that is based not on the New Testament, but on a lesser-known Christian text called the Gospel of James. This feast celebrates the presentation of Mary, as a three-year-old child, to the Temple in Jerusalem, where she is described as entering the most holy place--which was normally reserved for male priests--and spending the remainder of her childhood absorbing the Temple's sanctity and scholarship.

Where do all these images come from? A psychotherapist in the school of Carl Jung might say that motherhood, as a force that feeds and protects all humans, is the most important of all the ``archetypes'' that lurk in humanity's collective unconscious; so any religious practice that fails to answer this need will fail to satisfy its followers. For feminist critics of traditional Christianity, the attention paid to Christ's mother is a feeble counterpoint to the male domination of every other aspect of the faith. Secular historians would link the veneration of Mary to the pre-Christian cult of female divinities, such as the Egyptians' Isis--who was conceived by her followers as a Madonna figure nursing a holy child--or the Romans' Diana.

A somewhat different answer is offered by Margaret Barker, a Hebrew scholar and prolific writer on religious history. Her latest book, ``The Great High Priest'', is a collection of densely woven arguments about the continuity between Judaism and early Christian practices. It touches on at least two interlocking themes: the sex of divinity, and the locus of holiness.

From Judaism to Christianity

As she (and many others) have observed, much of the poetry dedicated to Mary comes from what is called the ``wisdom tradition'' of the Jewish religion. This takes the form of passages in which wisdom is perceived as a form of feminine divinity. One of the most explicit references to wisdom as a sort of female agency or power is in the Book of Proverbs: ``Wisdom hath builded her house...She hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine and furnished her table.'' Mrs Barker believes that there are scores of other places in the Jewish scriptures where ``wisdom language'' is lurking just below the surface. Some of this language was transferred, in Christianity, to Christ or the Holy Spirit, but most of it was applied to Mary.

Mrs Barker believes the worship of a deity in feminine form was more explicit before the catastrophe of 586BC when the first Temple, built by Solomon, was destroyed and the Jews went into exile in Babylon. As evidence, she cites a passage in the book of Jeremiah where Jewish exiles in Egypt are scolded for continuing to offer cakes, libations and incense to the ``queen of heaven''.

They reply defiantly that everything had been going well in Jerusalem's Temple, and among the Jews generally, so long as the heavenly monarch was given her due. Only when that practice ceased had disaster befallen. Other scholars have noticed references in the Old Testament to ``groves'' and ``high places'' where forbidden religious rites were going on, and have assumed, perhaps reasonably, that these too were rites associated with a feminine deity.

To back her interpretation of this passage, Mrs Barker draws on a version of the Book of Enoch found among the Dead Sea Scrolls--manuscripts whose discovery 50 years ago transformed Christian and Jewish scholarship. This document asserts even more clearly that the cult of a female force called wisdom had been a feature of the first Temple, but was then abandoned, disastrously.

As an exercise in textual analysis, Mrs Barker's case is almost unanswerable, albeit not entirely original. The idea of wisdom as a female agency or person also existed among the Greeks, for whom Athene was the goddess of wisdom, just as Minerva was for the Romans. More recently, in the 1930s, the idea caused furious disputes in the White Russian diaspora in Paris, with bitter allegations of heresy being traded.

No wonder. As Jamie Moran, a lecturer on religion and psychology, puts it, ``The Christian church does have an understanding of wisdom as a feminine gift of God, but it is so subtle that almost any statement you make about it becomes heretical.'' The best way to understand the Judeo-Christian wisdom tradition, in Mr Moran's view, is to think of wisdom as a creature who is not part of God but has a unique role in mixing God and creation together. If so, it is easy to see how ``wisdom language'' was transferred to Mary.

But whatever the insights offered by comparing texts and metaphors, it can be hard for 21st-century observers to understand the sheer passion of the language that was addressed to Christ's mother in late antiquity. ``The all-golden vessel, the most delectable sweetener of our souls, she who bears the Manna which is Christ: land uncultivated, field unploughed, vine streaming with fecundity, vessel most delightful, spring that gushes forth, the treasure of innocence and ornament of modesty.'' Those are the words of an eighth-century Byzantine sermon, describing Mary's entry into the Temple.

The holy of holies

To understand the preacher's passion, it helps to look at the other part of Mrs Barker's argument which has to do with the locus of holiness on earth. Like several other religions, the Jewish tradition was torn between its emphasis on the unbridgeable gap between God and human beings and its belief that, in certain circumstances, it is possible for man and the divine to come face to face.

For the Jews, the unique place of encounter between man and God was the temple. Before that, it was the Tabernacle, or tent, constructed by Moses. Mrs Barker's point is that only in the light of the temple or tabernacle tradition can many features of early Christianity be understood. She also believes that the reverse applies: in the light of early Christian practices and ritual, it becomes easier to reenter the world of the Jewish temple. As an example of this, she takes the central Christian rite of the Eucharist, in which bread and wine are offered to God, consecrated and then consumed by worshippers who believe the sanctified gifts enable them, in some mysterious but primordially important sense, to take part in the divine life of Christ.

As many a religious historian has noted, there are two temple practices that foreshadow the Eucharist. One was the weekly ceremony in which 12 loaves of bread were brought into the temple, consecrated and then consumed by the high priests. The other was the annual rite that marks the high-point of the Jewish calendar: the Day of Atonement, the only time when the priest entered the holy of holies, the most sacred part of the temple.

Before doing so, the priest would select two almost identical goats. One would be slaughtered, and its blood was taken into the holy of holies before being sprinkled in various parts of the temple. The other was sent out into the desert, a ``scapegoat'' bearing the sins of the people.

As one standard translation puts it, the priest would sacrifice one goat for the Lord, the other to a demonic force called Azazel. But Mrs Barker, drawing in part on Christian sources, argues for a different reading of the Hebrew: one goat was sacrificed as, rather than for, Azazel, whereas the other was sacrificed asthe Lord. If she is right, then the paradoxical Christian teaching that God the Son, being crucified, is both ``victim and priest'' in an act of supreme sacrifice becomes easier to understand. And it is clear that the links between the Eucharist and the Atonement rite are closer than previously realised.

Mrs Barker's broader case is that posterity has underestimated the importance of temple worship in the spiritual universe, not only of the Jews, but also of the early Christians, some of whom were temple priests. Her argument is reinforced by the recent findings of John Wilkinson, a former director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem.

Mr Wilkinson has studied the architectural designs of hundreds of synagogues and Christian churches from the early Christian era of Georgia and Armenia to Salisbury Cathedral in England, which was begun in 1220AD. His conclusion is that all these buildings reproduce, with some precision, certain proportions of the ideal Jewish temple as described by Ezekiel. Because the architects set out to copy ratios, rather than exact dimensions, the temple influence is not immediately obvious. But it can be discerned, says Mr Wilkinson, in apparently dissimilar churches.

Transcending sex

As evidence that Christians self-consciously followed the Jerusalem design, he cites a papal adviser of the 13th century, William Durandus, who said, ``Our physical church has taken its form from...two buildings, the Temple and the Tabernacle.'' But most of the time, the ``temple proportions'' of church design, Mr Wilkinson believes, were part of a secret body of orally transmitted knowledge, influenced by the Greek belief that numbers had mystical properties.

Whatever the channels through which the temple influenced Christians, the essential point, for both Mrs Barker and Mr Wilkinson, is that Christianity inherited and built on the Jewish belief that it is possible for the human being to have a direct encounter with God, and in some sense to become part of divine reality.

For the Jews, the temple, specifically the holy of holies, was the unique locus for that encounter. For Christians, the equivalent place was the sacred space around the altar of their church, where bread and wine were consecrated, and believers were enabled to take part in Christ's life.

So how does that argument tie in with Mrs Barker's earlier observations about the worship of the feminine in early Jewish religion, and the transfer of this tradition--or at least its language and metaphors--to Mary? Very closely, she would argue.

First, the Christian (and Muslim) story of the young Mary going into the heart of the Temple indicates, in Mrs Barker's view, that sex is transcended in the divine reality that Jewish high priests entered when they made their annual procession into the holy of holies. There is thus, she argues, a sense in which the priest entering the holy of holies ceases to be male. Mrs Barker, a Methodist preacher herself, concludes that this journey to a ``place beyond gender'' can be made by a person of either sex, and there is no reason why women cannot be Christian priests. Conservatives may regard this as feminist claptrap but, whatever they believe about that thorny topic, many Christians may be sympathetic to the stress that Mrs Barker lays on the traditional story of Mary's early life among the temple priests, in a place of pure holiness where nobody except an elite caste of males had ever been.

Muslims, like eastern Christians, believe that Mary's mother was expecting a child who would perform unique services to God, and was therefore surprised when her baby turned out to be a girl. Christians and Muslims will never agree on the nature of Mary's child: was he God incarnate, who experienced death and rose again, or a uniquely inspired prophet who did not die but ascended to heaven? Yet Christians and Muslims alike can see in Mary an affirmation that there is no limit to the holiness, or proximity to God, that any human, whether male or female, can attain. Surely that is reason enough, for people of any faith, to feel reverence for history's foremost Jewish mother.

from Newsweek, 2004-Dec-13, by Jon Meacham:

The Birth of Jesus
From Mary to the manger, how the Gospels mix faith and history to tell the Christmas story and make the case for Christ

The news was unwelcome, baffling, frightening; nothing about it was expected or explicable. Roughly 2,000 years ago, according to the Gospel of Luke, in Nazareth of Galilee, a young woman found herself in the presence of Gabriel, the angelic messenger of the Lord whose name was known to Jews of the day as the mysterious figure who had granted Daniel his prophetic visions. The woman, Luke writes, was "a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David," and her name was Mary, Luke's Greek form of the Hebrew Miriam, the sister of Moses and the first great prophetess of Israel. "Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee," Gabriel said, "blessed art thou amongst women"—terrifying Mary, who "was troubled at his saying." Stunned and confused, Mary made no reply, her face apparently betraying anxiety and awe. Sensing her confusion and fear, Gabriel was reassuring: "Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God."

Then the angel said: "And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest ... and of his kingdom there shall be no end." In other words, Mary was to bear the Messiah, the fabled and long-promised figure who, in the words of the prophet Jeremiah, would "reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land." Mary was silent, then finally found her voice: "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?"

Gabriel's reply—that "the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee"—raised more questions than it answered, not only for Mary but for Joseph, for the early Christians and, two millennia later, for us. In Luke's account, Mary absorbed the tidings of her child's miraculous origin and mission and "pondered them in her heart," still puzzled, still overwhelmed. In the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph, knowing nothing about Gabriel's appearance, is humiliated by the news that his future wife is pregnant, and "was minded to put her away privily." In later years Christians had to contend with charges that their Lord was illegitimate, perhaps the illicit offspring of Mary and a Roman soldier. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, some scholars treat the Christmas narratives as first-century inventions designed to strengthen the seemingly tenuous claim that Jesus was the Messiah.

And so the story of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth is, fittingly, as riven with complexity and controversy as Christianity itself. This month more than a billion Christians will commemorate their Lord's Nativity. Amid candlelight, carols and the commingled smells of cedar and incense, the old tale will unfold again: Gabriel's visitation, the journey to Bethlehem, the arrival of the baby in a stable, the glorious announcement to the shepherds in the night, the star in the East, the mission of the Magi.

Yet, as with so many other elements of faith, the Nativity narratives are the subject of ongoing scholarly debate over their historical accuracy, their theological meaning and whether some of the central images and words of the Christian religion owe as much to the pagan culture of the Roman Empire as they do to apostolic revelation.

The clash between literalism and a more historical view of faith is also playing out in theaters and bookstores. This year Mel Gibson's hugely successful movie "The Passion of the Christ" provoked a national conversation about Jesus' last days. With 9 million hardcover copies in print, Dan Brown's thriller "The Da Vinci Code," one of the most widely read books of our time, is partly built around the assertion that the early church covered up important facts about Jesus in order to manufacture Christian creeds. (A Ron Howard movie starring Tom Hanks is in the works.)

Like the Victorians, we live in an age of great belief and great doubt, and sometimes it seems as though we must choose between two extremes, the evangelical and the secular. "I don't want to be too simplistic, but our faith is somewhat childlike," says the Rev. H. B. London, a vice president of James Dobson's conservative Focus on the Family organization in Colorado Springs. "Though other people may question the historical validity of the virgin birth, and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we don't." London's view has vast public support. A NEWSWEEK Poll found that 84 percent of American adults consider themselves Christians, and 82 percent see Jesus as God or the son of God. Seventy-nine percent say they believe in the virgin birth, and 67 percent think the Christmas story—from the angels' appearance to the Star of Bethlehem—is historically accurate.

The Jesus Seminar

Others, though perhaps fewer in number, are equally passionate about their critical understanding of the faith. The Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars devoted to recovering the Jesus of history, is a battalion in this long-running culture war. One of its members, Robert J. Miller, a professor of religion at Juniata College, wrote "Born Divine: Jesus and Other Sons of God," a 2003 book which argues that the Nativity narratives can be seen as Christian responses to the birth stories of pagan heroes like Alexander the Great and Caesar Augustus—literary efforts depicting Jesus as a divine figure in a way Greco-Roman listeners and readers would understand and appreciate.

To many minds conditioned by the Enlightenment, shaped by science and all too aware of the Crusades and corruptions of the church, Christmas is a fairy tale. But faith and reason need not be constantly at war; they are, John Paul II once wrote, "like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth"—and the spirit cannot take flight without both. This is why modern, grounded, discerning people do make leaps of faith, accepting that, as the Gospel of John put it, "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."

Just how he became flesh is the business of Christmas. If we dissect the stories with care, we can see that the Nativity saga is neither fully fanciful nor fully factual but a layered narrative of early tradition and enduring theology, one whose meaning was captured in the words of the fourth-century Nicene Creed: that "for us men and for our salvation," Jesus "came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary and was made man."

For Jesus' contemporaries, the explosive story of his life and its cosmic significance did not begin with his birth but with his Passion and resurrection. Jesus of Nazareth was executed by Pontius Pilate at Passover in about A.D. 30 for the crime of sedition. After dying a terrible, humiliating death on Golgotha, Jesus, his followers believed, had risen from the dead, turning the world upside down. Working backward from the Easter miracle, the early Christians—almost all of whom were Jews and thought of themselves as such—told stories of their Lord's last days, of his ministry and, eventually, it seems, of his birth.

The first followers, we should always remember, believed that the Risen Lord was going to return and usher in a new apocalyptic age at any moment. "Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power," Jesus tells his disciples in Mark, and in the Epistle to the Romans—a very early writing—Paul says: "The night is far spent, the day is at hand."

As the years rolled by and the world endured, however, the Apostles and the first generations of church fathers realized they were not witnesses about to be swept up into heaven but earthly stewards of a message that had to be written down, explained and defended. The construction of Christianity, the early believers gradually discovered, required preserving the stories and sayings of Jesus, shaping that gospel ("good news" in Greek) and spreading it to fellow Jews and to Gentiles.

The evangelists believed the salvation of the world was in the balance. They strove to convince other Jews, to convert pagans and to control rival Christian factions whose views of Jesus differed from their own. To lose on any of these fronts would set back the cause, so when we read and hear the story now, we are reading and hearing some of the original Christian attempts to ensure the survival and success of a religion that began as little more than one sect within first-century Judaism, a milieu of great religious ferment.

To make their case in this congested theological universe, the Gospel writers collected traditions in circulation and told Jesus' story—not in a clinical way but, as John put it, so "that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name." The origins of the Nativity stories are much murkier than the accounts of Jesus' adulthood. Where did the details—of miraculous conception, of birth in Bethlehem, of stars in the sky, shepherds in the night and wise men on a journey—come from? Apparently not from Jesus. John P. Meier, a Roman Catholic priest and professor at Notre Dame, the author of a monumental series, "A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus," points out that there is no convincing evidence Jesus himself ever spoke of his birth, and neither Mary nor Joseph (who is not a figure in the years of Jesus' public life) appears to have been a direct source. "The traditions behind the Infancy Narratives," Meier writes, "differ essentially from those of the public ministry and the passion," which were the result of firsthand testimony.

Little to Work With

The Gospel authors were thus confronted with a literary problem that had to be solved. They wanted to tell the story of Jesus' birth, but apparently had little to work with. Here, then, is where tradition and theology came in. In 1965, the Second Vatican Council held that while the Scriptures are ultimately "true," they are not necessarily to be taken as accurate in the sense we might take an Associated Press wire report about what happened at a school-board meeting as accurate [Though obviously true, this is also hilarious, since the author of the article is telling us that the Associated Press is the gospel and the Gospel is suspect! -AMPP Ed.]. The council focused on the importance of paying attention to "literary forms" in Scripture. The Gospels are such a "literary form," and the accounts of Jesus in the canon are not history or biography in the way we use the terms. Classical biography, however, was a different genre. Writers like Plutarch invented details or embellished traditions when they were reconstructing the lives of the famous, and the Christmas saga features miraculous births, supernatural signs and harbingers of ultimate greatness similar to those found in pagan works. If we examine the Nativity narratives as classical biography, then the evangelists' means and mission—to convey theological truths about salvation, not to record just-the-facts history—become much clearer.

The earliest and sparest Gospel, Mark's (circa A.D. 60), begins at Jesus' baptism by John as an adult, skipping the Nativity altogether. The latest and most philosophical, John's (circa 90), links Jesus with God at the very birth of the universe ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and Word was God") with a grandeur and force that renders the details of Jesus' earthly arrival irrelevant. Though Paul writes that Jesus was "born of a woman, born under the Law," the rest of the New Testament is silent about the Nativity. So we are left with Matthew and Luke, Gospels composed between A.D. 60 and 90. The central events in both Nativity accounts are Mary's virginal conception, which renders her child a truly unique figure, and Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, which makes him the long-expected Davidic Messiah.

Miraculous conceptions have deep roots in Jewish tradition: the aged Sarah bearing Isaac, the barren wife of Manoah bearing Samson, the barren Hannah bearing Samuel (and, according to Luke, Mary's kinswoman Elizabeth, both aged and barren, bearing John the Baptist just before Mary conceived Jesus). What is distinctive about Mary is the Gospels' emphasis on her sexual virtue. The other Biblical examples of God's granting children to the aged or the barren do not involve virgins but ordinary married women living with their husbands.

This is no small difference. By asserting Mary's virginity, Matthew and Luke are taking the device of the miraculous conception farther than any other Jewish writer had before. Why? The simplest explanation is that it happened. As uncongenial as that opinion may be to modern audiences, Shakespeare was right when he had Hamlet say, "There are more things in heaven and earth ... than are dreamt of in your philosophy." The miraculous may strike some as fantastical, but countless people have believed, and believe now, that God intervened in the temporal world in just this way. If the virginal conception were a historical fact, however, it is somewhat odd that there is no memory of it recorded in the Gospel accounts of Jesus' ministry or in the Acts of the Apostles or in the rest of the New Testament. It is also striking that in parts of the Gospels Mary herself appears unaware of her son's provenance and destiny. (In Mark, when Jesus is casting out devils at the beginning of his ministry, "his friends"—the sense of the Greek is "family," or "household," which would presumably include his mother—thought he was mentally disturbed and tried to stop him, saying, "He is beside himself." If Mary had received Gabriel's message, then she should have known her son was not mad, but the Messiah. And even if she were not around in this story in Mark, had Jesus been born in such extraordinary circumstances, it is logical to assume that those closest to him would have known at least something of it—enough, anyway, to see Jesus as someone with a special role or destiny of which the exorcisms were a likely part.)

If we assume, for the sake of argument, that the virginal conception is not a fact but an article of faith, there are other explanations for Matthew's and Luke's Nativity accounts. Theology (that Jesus was not merely another prophet-king figure like Moses or David, but something more) and narrative symmetry both argued for a unique birth. "The early church insisted on the virginal conception as the logical beginning to a story that climaxed with the physical resurrection," says Deirdre Good, a professor of New Testament at the General Theological Seminary in New York. "The two separate miracles form a theologically perfect whole. It simply would not have been enough for Jesus to have been 'chosen' by God in his lifetime. Through divine intervention, Jesus was seen to be both divine and human from the start."

An Outlandish Message

The virginity detail did not particularly help the cause early on. To non-Christian Jews and pagans, the first Christians were superstitious and backward, a group of marginal people on the fringes of empire preaching an outlandish message. According to the Yale historian Jaroslav Pelikan, Celsus, a fierce Platonic critic of Christianity who wrote between A.D. 175 and 180, attacked the idea that God had come into the world in "some corner of Judea somewhere," and one Roman emperor, Pelikan writes, dismissed the Jewish and Christian God as "essentially the deity of a primitive and uncivilized folk."

Defensive about such charges, educated Christians fought back. The apologist Origen of Alexandria answered Celsus, arguing that "we tell no incredible tales when we explain the doctrines about Jesus." The last thing the Christians wanted was to appear to be yet another mythological cult, worshiping some kind of demi-god; their deep Jewish faith in the commandment to have "no other gods before me" foreclosed that possibility. "Incredible tales" were for the idolatrous.

And there were scandalous tales in circulation, too: was the story of the virginal conception told to hide Jesus' illegitimacy? As startling as the allegation is for many, it dates from at least the second century, and maybe as early as Jesus' lifetime. "It was Jesus himself who fabricated the story that he had been born of a virgin," Celsus wrote in A.D. 180. "In fact, however, his mother was a poor country woman who earned her living by spinning. She had been driven out by her carpenter-husband when she was convicted of adultery with a soldier named Panthera. She then wandered about and secretly gave birth to Jesus. Later, because he was poor, he hired himself out in Egypt where he became adept in magical powers. Puffed up by these, he claimed for himself the title of God." Second- and third-century Christian writers alleged that some Jews also suggested Jesus' birth was illicit.

Perhaps the most intriguing possible hint of illegitimacy in the New Testament comes in the Gospel of John, in an exchange between Jesus and the Temple priests. The back-and-forth is sharp, even brutal, with Jesus accusing the priests of failing to live up to the example of their common father, Abraham. Their reply: "We be not born of fornication; we have but one Father, God Himself." In his exploration of this passage, the late Raymond E. Brown, a distinguished scholar and Roman Catholic priest who taught at Union Theological Seminary, wrote: "The Jews may be saying, 'We were not born illegitimate, but you were.' The emphatic use of the Greek pronoun 'We' allows that interpretation."

If Jesus had been conceived by a human father before Joseph and Mary had begun their lives together as husband and wife (either by Joseph himself, a soldier or someone else), then the Holy Ghost would have provided a convenient cover story for the early church. Such speculation can be only that: speculation, and even contemplating it is interesting chiefly for the window it opens on the ferocity of early debates over Jesus. To the first believers the virginal conception was not a fiction to hide an embarrassing truth but a way of understanding their Lord's uniqueness. He was not a prophet or a god but the son of God who, in the words of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, came to "share our human nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all."

Jesus was such a revolutionary force that both Matthew and Luke sought to make him comprehensible in the context of established Jewish imagery and prophecy. In Luke, Mary's indelible 138-word reaction to the incarnation ("My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour") is a powerful echo of Hannah's 264-word prayer of thanksgiving in I Samuel when she learns she is pregnant ("My heart rejoiceth in the Lord... I rejoice in thy salvation"). Jews hearing Mary's story were thus able to associate Jesus with past figures of deliverance.

Matthew makes an even more explicit connection with the Jewish past, stating outright that Jesus is answering ancient expectations. Citing Isaiah 7:14—"Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us"—the evangelist writes: "Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet."

Elegant But Misinterpreted?

A problem with this elegant passage from Isaiah is that it may have long been mistranslated and misinterpreted. In his magisterial work "The Birth of the Messiah," Raymond Brown calls the conflict over this single, consequential verse one of "the most famous debates" in the history of Biblical interpretation. He notes that the original Hebrew used by the prophet is more properly translated as "the young girl," not "the virgin," and the overall context of the Hebraic Isaiah passage "does not refer to a virginal conception in the distant future. The sign offered by the prophet was the imminent birth of a child, probably Davidic, but naturally conceived, who would illustrate God's providential care for his people." The Greek sense of the term—and Matthew was likely working from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible—suggests that "the virgin" will conceive, Brown writes, "by natural means, once she is united with her husband." It is one Biblical war without apparent end: in the early 1950s, when the translators of the Revised Standard Version rendered the King James "virgin" as "young woman"—a defensible textual decision—some literalist believers burned the new Bibles.

Geography, as Napoleon is said to have remarked, is destiny, hence the Gospels' emphasis on Jesus' birthplace. The expectation was that the Messiah—understood in the early first century as a David-like king who would end Roman occupation and rule over a new golden age for Israel and for the whole world—would come from Bethlehem, the village in which David had been born.

In the Gospels, some objected to the messianic claims made for Jesus by pointing out that he was a Nazarene. Matthew attacks that skepticism head-on, writing simply that Jesus was born "in Bethlehem of Judea" and that wise men from the East, guided by a star, went there in search of the baby who inspired this celestial sign. Could there have been such a star? Halley's comet is estimated to have made an appearance in 12 B.C., and Matthew may have appropriated the detail long afterward. He could also have been thinking of a line from the Book of Numbers: "There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel."

What is clearer is that the visit of the Magi came to be seen as a fulfillment of Psalm 72. "The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts," reads the Scripture. "Yea, all kings shall fall down before him: all nations shall serve him." There is no historical evidence of such a visit, but the symbolic significance is obvious: even as a baby, Jesus is inverting the very order of things, with earthly potentates bowing before a child. Matthew's detail about the specific gifts comes from Isaiah: "... all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall shew forth the praises of the Lord."

To resolve the problem of Jesus' connection with both Bethlehem and Nazareth, Matthew portrays Mary and Joseph as residents of Bethlehem who were later forced to move north to Nazareth. With a keen dramatic sense, he also adds two stories evoking the memory of God's deliverance of his people from slavery in Egypt. The King of Judea, Herod, learns of the birth of this alleged messiah from the wise men, whom he asks to go find the child and return to him with the particulars. In a dream, God tells the Magi not to make their report, and then appears to Joseph. "Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt ... for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him." Enraged and jealous, Herod orders a massacre of all the male children in Bethlehem—thus connecting Jesus' birth with the first Passover, when God spared Israel's sons from the same bloody decree by Pharaoh. (History records no such Herodian slaughter, though Herod was an undeniably cruel ruler.)

Luke does not mention a journey to Egypt, nor is there any other New Testament allusion to such an important event in the life of the young Jesus. Once Matthew has started this story, though, he makes the most of it, writing that Joseph's mission was undertaken "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son." (The prophet was Hosea.) The Nazareth question is then resolved rather neatly, for Matthew has Joseph and Mary move to Galilee on their return from Egypt.

'Dubious on Almost Every Score'

Luke's conundrum is just the opposite of Matthew's: how to get Mary and Joseph, who in his Gospel were living in Nazareth in the north, down to Bethlehem in the south. Summoning the weapons of history, apparently pinpointing time, place and circumstance with epic eloquence, Luke writes: "And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph went up also from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child."

Yet almost nothing in Luke's story stands up to close historical scrutiny; Brown finds it "dubious on almost every score." Augustus conducted no global census, and no more local one makes sense in Luke's time frame. Setting Jesus' birth at a moment when the princes of this world are exerting temporal power over the people is a deft device, though, for the theological point of Jesus' arrival is that anyone who chooses to believe in him will ultimately be subject only to God. Evoking the prophet Joel in the Book of Acts, Peter says that "it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved," and there is nothing any mortal emperor or governor can do to foreclose the promise of the kingdom Jesus said he was offering.

The power of the Nativity message—that a helpless child is in fact a heavenly king—lies in its consistent pattern of reversal, of making the weak strong, the humble mighty. The stable, the manger and the swaddling of Jesus are such theological touches. Since Matthew seems to assume that Mary and Joseph lived at Bethlehem, he is silent on these familiar details; it is Luke, the writer who put them on the road to answer the census, who adds the inn, the manger and the swaddling. The creche scene strikes three Old Testament notes. The inn could be traced to Jeremiah, who asks of the Savior: "Why are you like an alien in the land, like a traveler who stays in lodgings?" The manger's roots may lie in the very beginning of Isaiah, when he writes: "The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider." And Mary's tender care of the baby is similar to a remark of Solomon's in the Book of Wisdom: "I was carefully swaddled and nursed, for no king has any other way to begin at birth."

There is, of course, no way to know whether Luke's story of the heavenly host announcing Jesus' arrival to the shepherds really happened; one has to believe in angels, and explain away the fact that the Gospels fail to note any ensuing communal or individual recollection of this spectacular birth, one witnessed by the rustics (in Luke) and the Magi (in Matthew), in the years of Jesus' public life. Yet the language never fails to captivate. "For unto us a child is born," wrote Isaiah, "unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." So it was that when Luke came to herald the birth of his hero to the shepherds, he struck the same notes: "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord."

Such monotheistic theology—a Christian obedience to the Jewish commandment to "have no other gods before me"—was, however, automatically appealing to only a slice of the evangelists' ultimate audience. Christianity was to be preached, as Paul put it in his Epistle to the Romans, "to the Jew first, also to the Greek."

The basic features of the Nativity story were familiar to pagan ears. In Suetonius' second-century biography of Augustus, who ruled as emperor from 27 B.C. to A.D. 14, omens in the natural world had heralded Augustus' birth, which was itself the result of divine intervention. Atia, Augustus' mother, was said to have fallen asleep when Apollo, taking the form of a serpent, impregnated her. That there was physical contact is suggested by Suetonius' assertion that afterward Atia "purified herself, as usual after the embraces of her husband." The baby, Suetonius writes, "was thought to be the son of Apollo"; on the day of his birth a senator in Rome "declared that the world had got a master," and Atia's husband, Octavius, "dreamt that he saw his son under more than human appearance, with thunder and sceptre, and the other insignia of Jupiter ... having on his head a radiant crown, mounted upon a chariot decked with laurel."

A Religion of Perplexing Contradictions

The parallels to the Jesus story are clear: a deity chooses to send a son from the divine to the temporal world through a woman, the glorious news of the coming of a king is made known to others, and the woman's loyal husband, rather than recoiling, is included in the revelation. But Augustus was not the product of a Christ-like conception as portrayed in the Gospels: the evangelists hewed to the conviction that Mary had no sexual contact of any kind, and scholars of antiquity have yet to find another example that precisely mirrors the Annunciation.

Still, as the Christian Gospels spread through the early centuries of the first millennium, audiences familiar with Virgil would have been receptive to the rhythms and ideas of Matthew's and Luke's stories. In his "Fourth Eclogue," written in 40 B.C., the poet evokes an age of peace presided over by a baby in a cradle of flowers. "Upon the Child now to be born, under whom the race of iron will cease and a golden race will spring up over the whole world, do you, O chaste Lucina [the goddess of childbirth], smile favorably, for your own Apollo is now king." The baby's coming is then hailed with these words: "Behold the world trembles in homage ... the expanse of earth and sea, and the reaches of the sky!" Virgil and the evangelists were working in essentially the same literary tradition, and the "Fourth Eclogue" is a sign of how pervasive such birth imagery was before, during and after Jesus' lifetime.

The collision of different factions and different traditions in the world of Christianity's first years was mirrored by civil wars between Jesus' followers. Then as now, Christians tended to disagree sharply with one another, but the essential creed is so familiar to modern ears that it is difficult to recall how many different views of Jesus were circulating among Christian groups during the first two centuries or so. A complex movement popularly known as Gnosticism (from the Greek "gnosis," meaning knowledge) offered an apparently compelling and appealing version of Christianity in which believers sought, in addition to received teaching, "inner knowledge" of God. "Insight, or gnosis, was the experience of searching for the divine, the source of our creation, within oneself," says Elaine Pagels, professor of religion at Princeton and the best-selling author of "The Gnostic Gospels" and, most recently, "Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas." "Such Christians claimed to go beyond the views of Jesus expressed in the New Testament to seek, in addition, personal perception and transformation."

In the eyes of competing (and ultimately victorious) Christians, this religious path put too much emphasis on the personal and not enough on Jesus as the incarnate son of God who was crucified for the sins of the world. It was, in other words, "heresy" (interestingly, in Greek "heresy" means "choice"), and the virginal conception was one of the battlefields on which the internecine conflict took place. In the gnostic "Gospel of Philip," Pagels points out, the Gospel author reinterprets Jesus' birth, suggesting that while Jesus was born biologically to Mary and Joseph, he was reborn spiritually as the son of God, his heavenly Father, through the Holy Ghost, who was functioning as a sort of heavenly Mother. To Philip, Jesus was a paradigmatic figure whose rebirth was available to others in the rite of baptism.

Such a view prompted a fierce counterattack from Irenaeus, a late-second-century church father who believed that Jesus was utterly unique—that he had been born in a unique way and had been raised from the dead in a unique way. Writing about the virginal conception, Irenaeus said: "In the last times, not by the will of the flesh, nor by the will of man, but by the good pleasure of the Father, his hands formed a living man, in order that Adam might be created [again] after the image and likeness of God." By Nicea, this interpretation of the tradition of the Nativity had largely carried the day—for believers Jesus was in fact, in the reinterpretation of Isaiah by Matthew, Emmanuel, or "God with us."

A man with no human father, a king who died a criminal's death, a God who assures us of everlasting life in a world to come while the world he made is consumed by war and strife: Christianity is a religion of perplexing contradictions. To live an examined faith believers have to acknowledge those complexities and engage them, however frustrating it may be. "We are in a world of mystery, with one bright Light before us, sufficient for our proceeding forward through all difficulties," wrote John Henry Newman, the great Victorian cleric whose intellectual journey led him from the Anglican priesthood to the Roman Curia. "Take away this Light and we are utterly wretched—we know not where we are, how we are sustained, what will become of us, and of all that is dear to us, what we are to believe, and why we are in being." The Christmas star is just one such light; there are others. Whatever our backgrounds, whatever our creeds, many of us are in search of the kind of faith that will lead us through the darkness, toward home. In Luke, the angelic host hails the Lord and then says: "on earth peace, good will toward men"—a promise whose fulfillment is worth our prayers not only in this season, but always.

from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2006-Oct-4, by Caitlin Cleary:

Forgiveness at core of Amish beliefs

The idea of forgiveness is at the heart of the Amish culture and belief system. It is also the lens through which many in the Amish community are viewing the tragedy that unfolded Monday morning inside a one-room schoolhouse in Lancaster County.

Like everyone else, Amish people are struggling to come to grips with the shootings of 10 Amish schoolgirls by milk truck driver Charles Carl Roberts IV. But if their deep faith in God and strict adherence to biblical principles of pacificism set them apart from the mainstream American culture, they also help the Amish make sense of an act that defies reason.

"It is terrible that somebody did this, and my heart aches for anyone involved, for the children," said Andrew Troyer, who lives in an Amish settlement near Conneautville, Crawford County, and runs a family rope-making business. "But I feel the most sorry for the person who did it, and I'll tell you the reason why -- because he can't get forgiveness no more, what's done is done. After death, there is no more change."

Mr. Troyer quoted a verse from the Book of Matthew, Chapter 6, which says if a man does not forgive another's trespasses against him, his own trespasses will not be forgiven by God.

"Our blood-red sins He will wash white as snow," said Mr. Troyer. "Forgiveness is a choice, but it is not an option if we want to be saved."

Turn-the-other-cheek, love-your-enemies pacificism is inextricably linked to nearly every aspect of Amish daily life. Some Amish people use guns to hunt, and most agree with the bumper-sticker sentiment "Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People." But Amish do not believe in using guns against humans, not in self-defense -- not even pretending to have a gun, said Mr. Troyer.

"If I'd have seen this guy [Roberts] walking into the schoolhouse, mind you, I'd have tried to stop him," he said. "It wouldn't be a sin to hold him down and take his weapon. We would not shoot him, though. Thou shalt not kill. I'd want to talk to him and tell him about the word and the savior; then he could make his confession to the Lord and live a righteous life."

The Amish are Anabaptists, a Christian theological movement that grew out of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. One of its central tenets is adult baptism -- the belief that baptism should be a conscious choice undertaken by adults, a public confession that one is "born again" in their faith.

But that doesn't mean that the un-baptized schoolgirls who died at Mr. Roberts' hands are not saved, said Mr. Troyer. Baptism is only the outward ceremony that displays someone's inner conversion.

"The baptism itself doesn't save someone, Jesus Christ saves us," he said. "A sinner can't be baptized and think he gets a ride to heaven."

According to Amish belief, said Mr. Troyer, young children are innocents, not "accountable" until they reach a certain age. They follow the direction of their mother and father, come to learn right from wrong, and then, by age 10 or 11, make the choice to live for God or for Satan. But as long as they are believers, they will be saved.

"They read the scripture, they knew of God, their parents had devotionals every day -- they were taught and trained to know God," he said. "The children who died in this, God has them in his hands; the word of God says so. They're in heaven."

Mr. Troyer's community of 50 to 60 households has been labeled New Order Amish; they embrace certain technologies, such as the telephone, as long as they function to hold families together. They rely on horses and buggies and ride bicycles, using taxi service for long distances. Following the slow extinction of small farms, they have adapted well to cottage industries.

In keeping with the principle of separation of church and state, most Amish people do not vote. They will pray for leaders to make the right decision, said Mr. Troyer, which they believe is more effective than voting.

"We consider ourselves pilgrims and strangers going through this life on Earth," he said. "Our citizenship is not here on Earth."

If Amish communities view themselves as separate from the worldly kingdom, some outsiders have come to share this view and see Amish people as easy targets, taking advantage of their non-resistance. But here again the Amish faith comes into play.

Mr. Troyer said he has at times felt vulnerable to the violence of mainstream society, but relies on an all-seeing God that is in control over Satan.

"He can control the other side far more than I can; he can guide bullets that miss by 1/16 of an inch," said Mr. Troyer. "I'm far more concerned that I'm right with God, that's far more protection than 1,000 guns loaded in self-defense."

Each Amish community has its own cemetery, and funerals happen wherever there is available space, said Mr. Troyer. Sometimes they clear out a large workshop and set up portable benches, sometimes they use a schoolhouse -- although he doubts that after the schoolhouse massacre in Paradise, the community there will choose such a venue.

After the service, a procession of horses and buggies will make its way out to the cemetery, where community members will pay their last respects. Husbands and wives are always buried side by side. At many Amish cemeteries, there is a separate row for small children.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Nov-6, p.W13, by Lauren Winner:

Burnt Offerings

There is an old, snooty church joke that goes something like this: Miss Smith approaches her pastor, incensed that he has replaced the King James Bible with the New International Version. "Pastor, bring back the King James," she says. "If it was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me."

Last week the joke was ignited—literally, at the Halloween book burning sponsored by Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, N.C. The church's Web site declared the burning to be "a great success." Works thrown into the flames included those by supposed heretics Billy Graham, Mother Teresa and emergent church guru Brian McLaren. "It was a success because God's Word was glorified and uplifted," according to the Web site. Claiming scriptural warrant for the burning, the site quoted Acts: "And many that believed, came and confessed and shewed their deeds. Many of them also which used curious arts, brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed."

Most disturbing, Scripture itself was burned—onto the pyre flew modern translations of the Bible like those that the woman in the joke deplored. Amazing Grace is a self-proclaimed King James Only church: "We believe that the King James Bible is the Word of God," says the church's Web site. "We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the verbally and plenary inspired Word of God. We believe that the KJV is inspired of God."

In this, the church in Canton is part of a larger movement that claims the Authorized, or King James Version, of the Bible is the only reliable translation. Indeed, some have even claimed that it is inerrant—because it is based on a superior Greek text. The concerns that animate the King James Only movement have their source in late 19th- and early 20th-century anxieties about German higher criticism of Scripture: Does a text have to be inerrant in order to be reliable? (And within these conversations about which Bible to read are also whispers of another debate: Some fundamentalist co-religionists argue against reading the KJV, on the grounds that King James himself was supposedly gay.)

"Book burning" may call to mind the conflagrations in Nazi Germany or the Cultural Revolution. But fiery libricide has a long history in the church. As scholars including critic Haig Bosmajian have made clear, Christians have been burning books for centuries. (Perhaps the church learned this from early persecutions in which their own "inspired and sacred scriptures" were, as Eusebius recounts, "committed to the flames in the midst of the marketplace.") Over and over, the church burned Jewish books: Christian crusaders and Spanish Inquisitors burned Jewish sacred books; in one instance, a Dominican priest took fire from a one of his monastery's candlesticks and set a copy of Maimonides' "Guide to the Perplexed" aflame. And Christian books deemed heretical were destroyed, too. In the fourth century, Constantine ordered the heretical writings of Arius burned.

After the 1526 printing of the Tyndale Bible, the bishop of London ordered copies burned at St. Paul's cathedral. (This prefigured the 1536 burning of Tyndale himself.) Across the Atlantic, Puritan authorities burned books belonging to Quaker women in Boston in 1656. More recently, in December 1948, Catholic students in Binghamton, N.Y., led a comic-book burning. As the books burned, they sang a rousing tune: "An Army of Youth flying the standard of truth. / We are fighting for Christ the Lord. / Heads lifted high, Catholic Action our cry, / And the cross our only sword."

And remember in 2003, when a father-son pastor team in Michigan burned a Harry Potter novel outside church? Ironic, that burning: The very ritual of burning a book smacked of the supernaturalism and even magic that the pastors were ostensibly protesting. Spectators caught the spirit and started burning other books, as well, including, yes, a non-King James Bible. That's what they call fanning the flames.

Ms. Winner is an assistant professor at Duke University's divinity school.

from YellowTimes.org via www.rense.com, 2002-Mar-6, by John Chuckman, YellowTimes.org Columnist (Canada):

Ashcroft, American History, And Speaking In Tongues

John Ashcroft, Attorney General of the United States, recently repeated an old chestnut about America being a Christian nation whose founders were Christian gentlemen.

The claim is common among the country's fundamentalist Christians, but it is so ignorant of actual history one wonders whether it should not be taken as another serious indictment of American public education. Some readers may not be aware that Mr. Ashcroft's background includes familiarity with such arcane subjects as speaking in tongues. As for Mr. Bush, who touched the same theme in China, perhaps no comment on his grasp of history is required. The late eighteenth century, following on the Enlightenment and waves of reaction to the violent excesses of the Reformation and counter-Reformation over the previous two centuries, was perhaps the lowest point for Christian influence ever. Virtually all educated people in Europe were deists and many were open skeptics.

America was not free of this influence despite its many Puritan immigrants. Indeed, many of the best educated citizens at this time were educated in Europe, and the small number of good libraries owned by educated people often contained the works of Enlightenment authors. Virtually all the ideas in the Declaration of Independence and even some of the words of the Constitution derive from these European sources. It is due precisely to the unique qualities of the period that we owe America's early embrace of religious tolerance. The immigrant Puritans had displayed no religious tolerance, and in fact were some of the worst fanatics from Europe.

George Washington was a deist. He was a member of the Masons, a then comparatively-new, secretive fraternal organization widely regarded as unfriendly to traditional Christianity and reflecting European secular attitudes. He did attend church regularly, but this was done with the aristocratic notion that it set an example for the lower classes, Washington being very much a planter-aristocrat (he used to refer to the independent-minded Yankee recruits in the revolution, who had had the practice of electing their officers before he was appointed as commander, as "a dirty and nasty people."). This was a time when there was an established church in Virginia, and it functioned as an important quasi-political organization.

Washington always used deistic terms like Great Providence. His writings, other than one brief note as a very young man, do not speak of Jesus, and he died, knowing he was dying, without ever calling for prayer, Bible, or minister. There is a story given by some of his best biographers shedding light on his church-going. He apparently never kneeled for prayer nor would he take communion. When one parson brought this to his attention after the service, Washington gave him the icy stare for which this aloof, emotionally-cold man was famous and never returned to that church.

Thomas Jefferson was accused publicly of being an atheist. More than any other founder, Jefferson was under the spell of European (and particularly French) thought. His writings, and references to him by friends, certainly make him sound like a private skeptic. He belonged to no church. He explicitly denied the divinity of Jesus, viewing him as a great teacher of human values. At best he was a deist referring in his private writings to God as "our god."

Jefferson who, despite high-sounding words, was something of a hypocrite on many aspects of civil liberties and particularly on slavery, was at his best on the need for religious liberty. Despite his free-thinking reputation, he formed alliances with groups like the Baptists, who deeply resented paying taxes to the established church in Virginia and won a long battle for a statute of religious liberty.

Thomas Paine, whose stirring words in Common Sense contributed greatly to the revolution, was often accused of atheism because of his religious writing, but deism is closer to the truth. His later writing done in Europe, "The Age of Reason," was regarded as scandalous by establishment-types. France, during the terror under Robespierre, turned to a new kind of state religion. This, the very brave Paine, living in Paris, also rejected, writing,

"I do not believe in the creed professedby the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the protestant church, nor any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church."

The great Dr. Franklin, who incidentally lived about a quarter of his life on diplomatic missions in Europe and who as a very young man had run away from a home where rigid religious principles were imposed, was a typical deist of the period. He was an active member of the first Masonic temple in America. His attitudes were so amicable to French intellectuals and society, he was embraced, as no other American has ever been, as a national figure in that country.

Alexander Hamilton, undoubtedly the most intellectually gifted of the founders other than Franklin, paid lip service to religion, but he was known during the Revolution as a rake. Later, his distinguished career in Washington's cabinet was marred by a great sexual scandal. Generally, Hamilton used religion to promote his political aims, ignoring it whenever it was convenient. In this respect, perhaps he qualifies as a thoroughly modern American version of a Christian.

Gouveneur Morris, who wrote the draft of the Constitution we all recognize >from the notes of others, was an extremely worldly and aristocratic man. He was also one of Washington's most trusted confidants. He was perhaps the most rakish, womanizing diplomat America ever sent to Europe, sharing at one point a mistress with Talleyrand, the most amoral ex-cleric who ever practiced statecraft. In general, Europeans were astonished that a man so worldly and so arrogantly patrician in temperament represented the young republic for a period in France.

Abraham Lincoln, while not a founder, is the most beloved of American presidents. Lincoln's closest friend and most interesting biographer, Herndon, said flatly that Lincoln was a religious skeptic. This has always so upset America's establishment historians that Herndon has been accused of writing a distorted book, a rather ridiculous charge in view of a close friendship with his subject and twenty years spent collecting materials.

Lincoln never attended church and when he refers to God in speeches during the Civil War, it is always with words acceptable to secular, educated people who regarded the King James Bible as an important cultural and literary document apart from any claims for its sacredness.

There is reason to believe that as the bloody war continued, Lincoln, who suffered from severe depressions, turned to the Bible for consolation, especially to the story of the struggle of the Hebrews.

Lincoln was also an extremely astute politician who used every means at his command in the great battle with secession, and his references to the Almighty may well have been part of his psychological artillery. He certainly did not invoke the name of Jesus.

Patrick Henry, who incidentally opposed ratification of the Constitution, was a Christian, but he was once described by Jefferson as "an emotional volcano with little guiding intelligence."

Just a little brush up on history

___

John Chuckman encourages your comments: jchuckman@YellowTimes.org

YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be reproduced , reprinted, or broadcast provided that any such reproduction must identify the original source.

from Atheists United, by Steven Morris, Ph.D., Los Angeles Harbor College, Wilmington, CA, from http://www.atheistsunited.org/Antiwoman.html:

The Christian Hatred Of Women

Civilization has slowly advanced towards the equal treatment of women, but it is the nature of all religions to look backwards to an earlier time, when their gods (who can't be bothered to make an appearance nowadays) allegedly walked the Earth, and told the men that they were better than women.

For the fundamentalist, reality is whatever the Bible says it is, and the Bible was written by primitive tribesmen of the ancient Middle East, whose culture included misogyny (the hatred and fear of women). Fundamentalists, despite their claim that every word of the Bible is the unchangeable word of God, are more than willing to ignore the commands they find inconvenient (Deut. 14:8, Luke 18:22). Sadly, the commands that include misogyny are enthusiastically obeyed. A girl's inferiority begins at birth; "If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days ... But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks" (Lev. 12:2,5). Why is she twice as unclean for producing a daughter instead of a son? And why should a woman be unclean in the third book of the Bible for obeying the command to be fruitful and multiply, given in the first book of the Bible (Gen. 1:28)?

In marriage, women are certainly second-class; "thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee" (Gen. 3:16). Detailed instructions are given on how a man should sell his daughter into slavery (Ex. 21:7). Human sacrifice, which Christians abhor when it is committed by others, is found in their "Good" Book as well. Jephtha killed his daughter as a burnt offering, and not a word of condemnation is given. Indeed, he was then made a judge of Israel (Judg. 11:30-39, 12:7).

The New Testament is just as bad; "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence" (1 Tim. 2:11, 12). "Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience" (1 Cor. 14:34). The submission of women to men is all-inclusive; "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife ... Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing" (Eph. 5:22-24). Influential churchmen continued this shameful attitude. In the 4th century, St. Augustine wrote, "Nothing so much casts down the mind of man from its citadel as do the blandishments of women, and that physical contact without which a wife cannot be possessed." (1)

The Protestants were no better. According to Martin Luther, "It is evident therefore that woman is a different animal to man, not only having different members, but also being far weaker in intellect ... For as the sun is more splendid than the moon ... so also woman ... does not equal the dignity and glory of the male." (2) "Men have ... more understanding than women, who have but small and narrow breasts and broad hips to the end that they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children". "We can hardly speak of her without a feeling of shame, and we surely cannot make use of her without shame." (3) John Calvin, whose writings helped define the Protestant position, similarly wrote, "let woman be satisfied with the state of subjection and not take it amiss that she is made inferior to the more distinguished sex." (3) The Christian hatred of women was most clearly expressed during the Middle Ages. It was then, when the Church held the reins of power, that an estimated 100,000 to 2 million women were tortured to death for the imaginary crime of witchcraft. Fingernails were pulled out. Red-hot tongs were applied to breasts. The women's sex organs provided special attraction for the male torturer. Bodies were stretched on racks and wheels. Virtually every mangled and broken victim confessed - and was executed on the basis of her confession.(4)

Efforts to humanize Christianity were crushed. The Albigensians taught that by her baptism and by her study, a woman could become the equal of male believers, achieve the ultimate purity, and be called a "perfecta". In 1208, Lotario (Pope Innocent III) declared a major crusade to destroy the Albigensians. When the last fortress was taken, the 200 Albigensians inside who had surrendered were burned to death. Years before, when the besieged city of Beziers fell, soldiers asked papal legate Arnald Amalric how they could distinguish the infidel from the faithful among the captives. He commanded; "Kill them all. God will know his own." Thousands were slaughtered - many first blinded, mutilated, dragged behind horses or used for target practice.(2,4) Renaissance humanism and modern science have helped to civilize Christianity and wean it away from its worst excesses, but the process is incomplete. Women were first allowed to compete in Olympic track and field events in 1928, the same year that Ambrogio Ratti (Pope Pius XI) was publicly objecting to female participation in any public athletic competitions. "The bishop of Rome cannot but deplore that ... the delicate regard due to young women and girls should be weaker than in pagan Rome, which, though it descended to such debasement of habits when it adopted from conquered Greece public games and gymnastic and athletic competitions, excluded women therefrom for reasons of physical and moral good sense ... If a woman's hand must be raised, we hope and pray it may be raised only in prayer or in acts of charity." An editorial in the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano added, "Girls should think first of being good mothers of worthy sons." (5) What a pity the pope didn't concentrate his efforts on criticizing Mussolini and the Fascists!

The Catholic Church continues to demand that their priests be celibate, and refuses to ordain women. It is not clear if women are forbidden to be priests due to their spiritual inferiority, or if it is purely a matter of their unsuitable genitalia. When Pat Robertson, the leader of the powerful Christian Coalition, claimed that a proposed equal-rights amendment for women was "about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians", (6) he wasn't kidding. In a poll taken in 1982, the Equal Rights Amendment of 1972 was favored by 83% of those who never went to church; only 47% of those who attended church several times a week favored it. Neither the media, the American public, nor most legislators were aware that most of the women who demonstrated against the ERA at state capitols around the country in the last years of the ERA struggle, were Fundamentalists brought there by their pastors. The amendment was never ratified.(7)

Women will be equal [It's unclear what the author means by ``equal'' - in its plain meaning, women will never be equal, any more than any individual is equal to any other. Law now favors women, so he's probably not talking simply about equal treatment before the law. The sentiment is probably spurious. -AMPP Ed.], someday. When that day comes, it will arrive in spite of religion, not because of it.

References-
1) The World Treasury of Religious Quotations edited by R. Woods, p.1059,1060 (1966, Hawthorn Books, New York NY), quoting
Soliloquies by St. Augustine
2) A History of Their Own, v.1 by B. Anderson & J. Zinsser, p.138,227,254 (1988, Harper & Row, New York NY)
3) Male and Female edited by R. Barnhouse & U. Holmes III, p.48 (1976, Seabury Press, New York NY)
4) Holy Horrors by J. Haught, p.54,56,73,76 (1990, Prometheus Books,
Buffalo NY)
5) New York Times, p.7 (May 4, 1928) & p.20 (May 5, 1928)
6)Newsweek, p.15 (Sept. 7, 1992)
7) Why We Lost the ERA by J. Mansbridge, p.175, 213 (1986, U. of Chicago Press, Chicago IL)

from the Boston Globe, 2003-Aug-17, by Christopher Shea (column "Critical Faculties"):

The Christian Nazis?

RECENT DECADES HAVE seen endless interpretive battles over the Nazis. The Holocaust was an evil genius's long-prepared scheme, or an improvised response to developments during World War IIone of several possible ``Final Solutions.'' German soldiers were only willing to commit genocide after participating in brutal warfare on the Eastern front, or they were eager killers from the start. Churches resisted the Third Reich, or they legitimated it.

Until now, though, one piece of conventional wisdom has gone unchallenged: that the Nazis disliked Christianity. The standard view has been that while Hitler and his deputies may have feigned respect for religion during their ascent to power, they essentially believed, with Nietzsche, in the ``death of God.'' They were as anti-Christian as the Soviets, but with a pagan twist: Some of them hoped to turn mutant versions of dormant Germanic and Norse legends into a state religion. In the place of the cross, think Wagner and Wotan, swords and horned helmets.

Richard Steigmann-Gall, an assistant professor of history at Kent State in Ohio, thinks otherwise. In his new book, The Holy Reich (Cambridge), he argues that many Nazis and their followers were sincere Christian believers. Nazism was the opposite of atheistic: It was a ``singularly horrific attempt to preserve God against secular society.'' Indeed, ``the battles waged against Germany's enemies constituted a war in the name of Christianity.'' The modern tendency to paint Hitler and his allies as anti-Christian ``kooks,'' he explains in an interview, is just another way to put an artificial distance between them and us and thereby to avoid the toughest questions about our own susceptibility to evil.

There were a handful of self-styled pagans in the Nazi regime, notably Heinrich Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg. But ``many other Nazis thought their religious views were ridiculous,'' Steigmann-Gall says. ``Hitler didn't hesitate to mock their ideas behind their back.'' Additionally, the 1939 book ``Hitler Speaks,'' in which the Führer was quoted as saying that his future plans included ``stamping out Christianity in Germany, root and branch,'' is now widely viewed as a fraud.

Though Hitler did view Roman Catholicism as a threat to German nationalism, Steigmann-Gall points out, his hope until the late 1930s was to unite Protestants under one state church. Plenty were willing to go along, but dissenters, including Martin Niemüller and his ``Pastors' Emergency League,'' fended off the plan. Imprisoned for his efforts, Niemüller was lauded as a hero after the war.

Steigmann-Gall emphasizes that Niemüller and his peers were far more concerned with preserving their churches' autonomy than with opposing the regime's ideology. In fact, Niemüller voiced vicious anti-Semitic sentiments of his own. Moreover, Steigmann-Gall argues, historians have failed to come to grips with the tight interweaving of Protestantism and German identity. In the 1920s, one of Hitler's intellectual mentors, Dietrich Eckart, talked up parallels between Christianity and muscular nationalism: ``In Christ, the embodiment of all manliness, we find all that we need.'' In 1933, after the Nazis assumed power, ministers argued from the pulpit that it was fitting that this social revolution had come on the 450th anniversary of Martin Luther's birth.

Is Steigmann-Gall's argument fair? Several critics have pointed out that the conception of Christianity held by most National Socialists was far from a conventional one. As Jack Fischel, a historian at Millersville University, argued in The Weekly Standard last month, ``By eliminating the Old Testament from the biblical canon, reinventing Jesus as an Aryan, and depicting the struggles of Christ as the archetype of the eternal battle between the Aryan and the Semite . . . the Nazis altered fundamental Christian doctrine.''

John S. Conway, author of ``The Nazi Persecution of the Churches'' (1968), agrees: ``The kind of Christianity they thought they believed in was so diluted of orthodoxy that it was just a mishmash which even the most liberal Protestant would find difficult to swallow.''

Yet many did swallow it, Steigmann-Gall counters. To say Nazis weren't Christians because their views were a mishmash ``is too convenient,'' he says. ``It doesn't explain Nazi conceptions of Christianity. It explains away Nazi conceptions of Christianity.''

Christopher Shea's column appears in Ideas biweekly. E-mail: critical.faculties@verizon.net.

from Reuters, 2003-Dec-16, by Philip Pullella:

Cardinal Says U.S. Treated Saddam 'Like a Cow'

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A top Vatican official said Tuesday he felt pity and compassion for Saddam Hussein and criticized the U.S. military for showing video footage of him being treated "like a cow."

Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Justice and Peace department and a former papal envoy to the United Nations, told a news conference it would be "illusory" to think the arrest of the former Iraqi president would heal all the damage caused by a war which the Holy See opposed.

"I felt pity to see this man destroyed, (the military) looking at his teeth as if he were a cow. They could have spared us these pictures," he said.

"Seeing him like this, a man in his tragedy, despite all the heavy blame he bears, I had a sense of compassion for him," he said in answer to questions about Saddam's arrest.

Martino was referring to the videotape released by the U.S. military which showed a grubby, bearded and disheveled Saddam receiving a medical examination by a military doctor after his capture in an underground hole Saturday.

Martino was one of the Vatican officials most strongly opposed to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

"It's true that we should be happy that this (arrest) has come about because it is the watershed that was necessary... we hope that this will not have worse and other serious consequences," Martino said.

"But it is not the total solution to the problems of the Middle East," he said.

Martino said the Vatican hoped the arrest of Saddam "can contribute to promoting peace and the democratization of Iraq."

He added: "But is seems to me to be illusory to hope that this will repair the dramas and the damage of the defeat for humanity that a war always brings about."

The Vatican did not consider the war in Iraq "a just war" because it was not backed by the United Nations and because the Vatican believed more negotiations were necessary to avoid it.

Martino said the Vatican wanted an "appropriate institution" to put Saddam on trial but he did not elaborate.

U.S. forces were keeping the ousted 66-year-old dictator at a secret location for interrogation before he is put on trial in the months ahead. He could face the death penalty.

The news conference was called for Martino to present the World Day of Peace message, in which Pope John Paul took a swipe at the United States for invading Iraq without the backing of the United Nations.

There are so many falsehoods in the following article that I'm not going to bother identifying and correcting them individually. I include the article to exemplify the Christian fundamentalist hatred for the United States.

from WorldNetDaily, 2001-Sep-13, by Anthony C. LoBaido:

Judgment Day in Mystery Babylon?

NEW YORK - Is it possible that America and the world will miss the real significance behind the recent terror attacks?

Having spent most of last year traveling through the Muslim world, I can say this: America has killed over 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of 5 years old with our anti-Saddam sanctions. When asked about this death toll, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright said, "Well it was worth it." Yet last night Albright was being toasted by Dan Rather on CBS for her spin on the recent attacks. Where are our tears for the half-million Iraqi children? Or don't they count? A Clinton adviser was quoted in Stephanopolous' book (himself a Clintonite as well) describing the "Clinton Doctrine" as "kill their civilians until their military can't take any more."

Remember the bombings in Serbia and all the civilian casualties? "Oh, it's just collateral damage - those dead civilians," we were told by Clinton and company. Keep shopping at the mall. How is your mutual fund doing? Hey, look at Dennis Rodman's new wedding dress! Wow, look at Sharon Stone's crotch! Look, children are eating human waste on South Park - how funny and wonderful! Hey, Hillary Clinton just flew to a former Soviet Republic to open up a new abortion clinic - I am sure the Muslims are happy about that!

After taking a break from reality in the 1990s, the harsh reality had dawned across America. Massive third-world immigration, over 30 million new faces inside America since 1993, has destroyed the Christian and Western fabric of this nation. The new world order has failed. The Western nations have erred greatly in allowing fundamentalist Islam to enter our borders with massive immigration.

In the West, we most often see Islamic people as crazed and irrational. But have we considered that the Muslims might not be irrational when they consider America to be akin to Satan? Let's look at the Satanic Bible. What are the values of Satan? Lust, greed, gluttony, revenge. Hmm. Sounds like American society.

Is New York the head of the "Great Satan"? All that is evil in the world can be found in New York: MTV, the United Nations, the U.N. abortion programs, the Council on Foreign Relations, New Age Church of St. John the Divine, Wall Street greed, Madison Avenue manipulation and of course more confirmed AIDS cases than the rest of America combined. Let's remember the filthy sodomite gay parade last summer in New York. Let's remember all the New York politicians falling all over themselves to praise this sick spectacle.

And let's not forget that New Yorkers elected - by a landslide - the openly Marxist, treasonous and abortion-mongering, occultic Hillary to a Senate seat. All while fully knowing what she was all about.

So are we all innocent here in New York? Are we innocent with our porno, drugs, filthy Jay Leno monologues, our idolatry, materialism and consumerism? Innocent when Republican Gov. George Pataki stands next to the blood-stained dictator of Communist China as he rings the opening bell for the stock market on Wall Street?

For God's sake, we are a nation that murders babies at nine months and then sell the body parts for pharmaceutical research. We are a nation that wants to hand over the Boy Scouts to the North American Man Boy Love Association. We buy our Christmas toys from Communist China - many of them made by political dissidents and Christians laboring in slave-labor gulags.

Can the remnant in America help but honestly ask themselves: Is this the fulfillment of Revelation chapters 17 and 18 (Mystery Babylon) or has God raised up Shiite Islam as a sword against America?

Other questions must be asked as well. Where is our amazing Echelon network with its listening posts spread to the four corners of the Earth, filtering every e-mail, fax, cell-phone call, telex and whatever else for terrorist plots? In reality, Echelon is about stealing economic data. So much for the National Security Agency and its budget which is eight times larger than the CIA's.

How did highjackers take over four planes using only box cutters that the supermarket check boy uses to unpack groceries from their boxes? Where were the rugged protectors of women and babies?

We don't need Nostradamus to tell us what went wrong with the terror attacks. There is no one thing wrong. Everything is wrong. People in America live in a dream world. We act like children, believing that if we close our eyes and engage in fantasy that we can somehow change reality.

As one Navy fighter pilot RIO, or Radar Intercept Officer - a young woman named Aimee - told this writer recently, "As tragic as this was, I'm glad it happened. The U.S. needed a wake-up call showing that our intelligence, military forces and CIA are not up to standards. Our security stinks!"

There is the possibility that the attacks yesterday are merely just the beginning of a long and bitter pill. Using the "if" and "when" scenario, if and when the biological and nuclear weapons start going off, America will no longer be able to deny judgment for its idolatry, wickedness, abandonment of the God of the Bible, embrace of abortion, stem-cell research, the sodomite agenda, materialism, the occult and many other sins.

For the suicide bombers who carried out these attacks, they won't be going to paradise with 50 virgins. They will be burning forever in Hell for their evil and wickedness.

For those of us "left behind," let's pray that God still knows how to guide and preserve His remnant, because the talking heads we see on television these days - Bush Jr., Powell, Albright, Paula Zahn and Sens. Schumer and Clinton will certainly - through their blindness, total lack of leadership and defense of Western and Christian civilization - lead us into such destruction that the World Trade Center attack will look like a mere firecracker.

More on the same sort of blecherosity:

from the Washington Post, 2001-Sep-14, p.C3, by John F. Harris:

God Gave U.S. 'What We Deserve,' Falwell Says

Television evangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, two of the most prominent voices of the religious right, said liberal civil liberties groups, feminists, homosexuals and abortion rights supporters bear partial responsibility for Tuesday's terrorist attacks because their actions have turned God's anger against America.

"God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve," said Falwell, appearing yesterday on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club," hosted by Robertson.

"Jerry, that's my feeling," Robertson responded. "I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population."

Falwell said the American Civil Liberties Union has "got to take a lot of blame for this," again winning Robertson's agreement: "Well, yes."

Then Falwell broadened his blast to include the federal courts and others who he said were "throwing God out of the public square." He added: "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "

People for the American Way transcribed the broadcast and denounced the comments as running directly counter to President Bush's call for national unity. Ralph G. Neas, the liberal group's president, called the remarks "absolutely inappropriate and irresponsible."

Robertson and others on the religious right gave critical backing to Bush last year when he was battling for the GOP presidential nomination. A White House official called the remarks "inappropriate" and added, "The president does not share those views."

Falwell was unrepentant, saying in an interview that he was "making a theological statement, not a legal statement."

"I put all the blame legally and morally on the actions of the terrorist," he said. But he said America's "secular and anti-Christian environment left us open to our Lord's [decision] not to protect. When a nation deserts God and expels God from the culture . . . the result is not good."

Robertson was not available for comment, a spokeswoman said. But she released a statement echoing the remarks he made on his show. An ACLU spokeswoman said the group "will not dignify the Falwell-Robertson remarks with a comment."

from Fox News, 2001-Nov-5, by Jim Angle:

Faith Guides Bush Through Era of Terror

WASHINGTON - The United States president must handle the weight of the world even in the best of times. But in times of crisis, the Oval Office can seem like a lonely place, a responsibility bigger than any one person can manage.

No truth seemed more self-evident than that after the attack on Sept. 11, the worst in U.S. history. It is one of the greatest challenges ever to confront a president.

After the attack, President Bush said he will face that challenge without relent. But even before then, he made it clear that he is not doing the job on his own.

"I start with being on bended knee every morning. Seriously," the president said in the beginning days of his administration.

American presidents have often turned to God, and President Bush has never been shy about his faith.

"That's where he gets his comfort. That's where he gets his balance. That's where he gets his perspective," said Bush friend and Commerce Secretary Don Evans.

Bush is among the more devout occupants of the presidency, though the weight of the office has driven even doubters to their knees.

"Even Abraham Lincoln, who was a religious skeptic and was criticized for being a religious skeptic, came to draw great strength from his faith as the civil war crisis deepened," said Allan Lichtman, professor of history at American University.

But Bush has no such doubts. He told Fox News he prays in the Oval Office and reads the Bible every day.

Perhaps that's why he sees the war on terror in biblical terms of good versus evil. Bush often refers to Usama bin Laden, the suspected terrorist blamed for the attacks, as the "evil one" and his Al Qaeda network as "evildoers."

And Evans said the president sees fighting terrorism as the purpose of his presidency and perhaps even a calling from God.

"He understands what his calling in life is. He understands that he's been called at this moment," Evans said.

The president is known for being decisive, even on controversial matters, and doesn't second-guess himself. The reason, one aide said, is that he thinks someone else is helping to guide him.

from Acharya S, 1999-Mar-21:

A Review of The X-Rated Bible: An Irreverent Survey of Sex in the Scriptures by Ben Akerley (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0922915555/truthbeknownfounA/002-4265943-2391053)

The X-Rated Bible, a survey of sex in the Holy Bible, is simple one of the best books on the market. It should be mandatory reading, particularly in consideration of the fact that the "Good Book" is pushed worldwide as "God's Word." As its author, Ben Akerley, points out in detail, the Old Testament is full of sexual perversion, not only on the part of "infidels" but also on that of the "chosen people," whom most people have been led to believe were godly, pious individuals who never did anything remotely "bad." Au contraire! The "great patriarchs" and "heroes" of the Old Testament would be considered perverts and criminals by today's social and moral standards.

When The X-Rated Bible first came out in 1985, even though it was published by a small company it received some serious attention, and Akerley was forced into debates on radio and TV programs. His critics were unable to point out any serious flaws in his work and research - because he was merely quoting the "Holy Scriptures," not making anything up! For freethinkers and believers alike, Akerley has done a great service, because the Bible is a manual designed to manipulate the masses. The fact that very few believers actually read the "Good Book" and know little about its endless chronicling of perversion and genocide, constitutes proof that it serves as mind-control, as does the fact that those selfsame believers mindlessly believe the Bible is some great, spiritual work because their priests and pastors have selectively fed them "feel-good" passages. In reality, a close examination of the Bible will nauseate all but the most insensate. As the great statesman Thomas Paine said, quoted by Akerley:

"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel."

And the imminent freethinker Robert Ingersolls stated:

"Nobody holds with greater contempt than I the writers, publishers, or dealers in obscene literature. One of my objections to the Bible is that it contains hundreds of grossly obscene passages not fit to be read by any decent man; thousands of passages, in my judgment, calculated to corrupt the minds of youth."

Ben Akerley has compiled these various obscene passages in one easy-to-read book that loosens the bonds of erroneous beliefs which have caused inconceivable carnage and turmoil upon this planet. And his wonderful work has now been re-published in a beautifully done layout by the experts at Feral House. The back cover blurb runs, "That's right, friends. We're talking about the Holy Bible, a book filled with incest, rape, adultery, exhibitionism, debauchery, abortion, prostitution, drugs, bestiality, castration, scatology - all the nasty stuff!" In exposing the Bible's "dirty little secrets," Akerley cites scripture, chapter and verse, and explains sexual euphemisms and innuendoes designed to go over the heads of the common folk, which they obviously have. The X-rated Bible is truly a unique book that should be read by all who are interested in what the Bible really says.

Here is an example of someone promulgating the Hegelian dialectic of nihilism/relativism vs. mystic faith:

from TPDL 2000-Apr-6, from the Washington Times, by Sanford Pinsker:

It's OK to be judgmental

I am a judgmental man - partly meaning that, as an English professor, I think that some novels or poems are better than others. Nor does it stop there. I regard some student papers as deserving an A while others warrant only a C. Making such judgments comes with the academic territory, however much some students might wish it otherwise. Regarded this way, most reasonable people would agree that it's OK to be judgmental.

The rub comes when I explain the second part of what makes me a judgmental man, and that's where the sneer marks surrounding the word "judgmental" start to come in. I regard some behaviors as better than others, and, worse, feel that some people are better than others. This attitude is not likely to make you wildly popular in a culture that is morally relativistic to its core. Indeed, that's what the sneer quotes mean to imply, and why it is that being called judgmental is, on far too many campuses, seen as the ultimate put-down.

Small wonder, then, that I took a measure of solace from Gertrude Himmelfarb's recent book, "One Nation, Two Cultures." As an intellectual historian of the first water, Mrs. Himmelfarb marshals an impressive amount of historical evidence to explain how we got to our present moral pickle, and why it is that I am hardly alone in feeling that the condition once known as moral gravitas has been replaced by a culture that seemingly permits anything - anything, that is, except smoking and eating red meat. Asked to write about slavery in the antebellum South or about genocide in Nazi Germany, some students would rather waffle than use the judgmental word, evil. And this tendency, I fear, is much more pronounced in the life students live outside the classroom. There, I am told, nothing is worse than being called "judgmental" because judgmental folks strike our dominant culture as arrogant, pinch-faced, and all too much like the Puritans who brought such grief to New England.

The good news that Mrs. Himmelfarb brings to our ongoing culture war is that there is now an increasing band of citizens, including many students, who are no longer ashamed to profess their faith-based beliefs and to feel that there is something fundamentally amiss with a culture that has largely abandoned such older concepts as hard work and individual responsibility. In an age that overvalues the therapeutic we are awash in projects out to bolster one's sagging self-esteem or to provide spirituality on the cheap. Those in what Mrs. Himmelfarb calls the culture of dissent know better: High school students tell pollsters that they feel good about their math ability, but still score miserably on standard math tests; New Agers put their trust in the trendy (whether it be crystals or channeling) rather than in the more demanding business of what I call religion on the hard.

As Mrs. Himmelfarb argues, fears about the Christian Right - some of them well-founded - have blinded us to the fact that our nation is currently undergoing a Fourth Awakening, one reflected in the sharp rise of children attending religious day schools and the ways in which outmoded notions such as the work ethic and personal responsibility seem to be making a comeback.

Even more impressive, the renewed interest in virtue cuts across the usual dividing lines of race, class, gender, or religious affiliation. What binds serious Catholics, Jews, Protestants and Muslims is a sense that the word of God matters, whether one finds it in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament or the Koran. Others, not especially prone to religious identifications, have their own ways of finding a place at the table, usually on a case-by-case basis. By contrast, what interests politicians who shamelessly blather on about "family values" is, of course, votes.

People who take the soul's condition seriously represent a danger to our dominant, largely amoral culture. They are likely to be judgmental in ways that call too many unquestioned beliefs into question. But this, along with the pursuit of truth, is what liberal learning should be about. When Socrates ruminated about how a good person should live (and not live), he set into motion a discussion - and a method - that has attracted the best minds human history has produced. [AMPP ed. note: Socrates is the father of the dialectic method. Prof. Pinsker here explicitly admits his affinity with the school of Hegel.]

Indeed, that is why liberal learning should pay a proper respect to the past even as it remains curious, and open-minded, about the present. And that is also why our ongoing debate can no longer marginalize, much less demonize, those who have the temerity to announce themselves as social conservatives - whether they be pro-lifers or people sickened by everything that coarsens the general culture and socially engineers the individual. For better or worse, classrooms are likely to be more candid and more intellectually contentious than they have been for decades. I take this (largely) as a good thing. Who knows, the time may yet come when being a judgmental person will be seen as a badge of honor instead of a sign of shame.

Sanford Pinsker is professor of English at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.

Here is an example of the elaborate frauds Christians, and ``science'' and the media, will go to maintain their grip on fools (this has all the credibility of Scientology's E Meters and Thetans):

from the Ottawa Citizen, 1999-Mar-14, by Bob Harvey:

Shroud 'holds DNA of God'
Scientists errred in Turin relic tests, author says

A book to be released in Canada this coming week suggests the Shroud of Turin contains the DNA of God, as well as microscopic splinters from the cross used in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

The shroud has been labelled by scientists and theologians as everything from a brilliant hoax to proof positive of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Dr. Leoncio Garza-Valdes, a devout Catholic, is the latest in a long string of authors who claim to have found new evidence that suggests the shroud really is the burial cloth of Jesus.

In his book The DNA of God?, he argues that scientists in Britain, the United States and Switzerland erred when they carried out carbon-dating tests on the shroud in 1988 and concluded the four-metre-long cloth actually dates from the 13th or 14th century instead of from 30 A.D.

Dr. Garza-Valdes, a microbiologist, amateur archeologist and physician, says that what earlier scientists have neglected is what he calls a bioplastic coating, much like plaque on teeth, that has been formed over the centuries by bacteria on the shroud.

He says tests he carried out on Egyptian mummies and Mayan jade artifacts, as well as samples from the shroud, show this barely perceptible coating distorts the carbon-dating of ancient artifacts that have been left undisturbed for long periods.

Dr. Garza-Valdes says he has put a question mark on the title of his book -- The DNA of God? -- because there is no way to be certain the crucified man whose photographic-like image appears on the shroud is actually Jesus.

"But at this moment, I have not found any reason he cannot be Jesus. And if it is Jesus -- and if you are a Christian -- the DNA I found is that of God the Son," he said in an interview.

Dr. Garza-Valdes says, however, there is no fear Jesus can be cloned. The DNA samples he found, taken from the shroud, are not complete enough to be replicated, he said.

He says along with the DNA, he also found traces of microscopic splinters of oak and what might have been the vinegar offered to Jesus on a sponge at the Cross.

The Shroud of Turin has been venerated by Catholics as the burial cloth of Christ since at least 1357, and attracted about two million visitors, including Pope John Paul II, when it was displayed last year at the Turin Cathedral in Italy. Officially, however, the Catholic church says only that the cloth is an important relic symbolizing the suffering of Jesus.

The image on the cloth was fully revealed only in 1898, when a photographer took the first photo of the indistinct markings. In the darkroom, the photographic negative revealed the long, thin face of a man with long hair, a mustache and a beard.

No one has come up with a definitive explanation for the full-length image of a man who has been scourged, beaten and crucified. Some have suggested the image was flashed onto the cloth in a burst of radiant energy, while others say it was produced by a primitive form of photography or a clever artist.

Art experts say this is unlikely because photographic techniques were almost certainly unknown in the 14th century, and no artist of the time had the skills to paint a human figure that would show up only 500 or more years later on a photographic negative.

Dr. Garza-Valdes says his tests show the image is that of a first-century Jew with type AB blood, a blood type relatively rare in the general population but common among Jews.

Pathologists and others have examined the image and report puncture wounds on the back of the head consistent with a crown of thorns, as well as scourge marks inflicted by two men using whips with pieces of metal or bone on the end of the thongs.

Other marks indicate the man was nailed to the cross by his wrists and feet and stabbed in the side after death.

Dr. Garza-Valdes says although many Jews were crucified in Palestine in the first century, there could not have been many who bore the marks of all the wounds the New Testament suggests were inflicted on Christ.

from Education Week, 1999-Sep-8, by Bess Keller and Adrienne Coles:

Kansas Evolution Controversy Gives Rise To National Debate

Science teacher Betty Holderread does not have a single good thing to say about the Kansas board of education's decision last month to drop evolution from its list of what students should know. But one word does leap to her mind: "injustice."

In a recent workshop Ms. Holderread led for science teachers in the rural Kaw Valley district, she recalled, "we talked about the board and how they did an injustice to the science teachers and the children of Kansas."

Some 60 miles west on Interstate 70, chemistry and physics teacher Jay Nicholson had an entirely different view of the new curriculum standards. In his eyes, they are a victory for open-mindedness.

The Evolving Kansas Science Standards

Old

Academic standards adopted in 1995--and replaced by the Kansas board of education last month--mentioned evolution twice, both times as part of the high school curriculum. Students should understand "mechanisms and consequences of biological evolution processes," the standards said, and the "evolutionary aspects of species development and adaptations."

Recommended But Rejected

In adopting its new standards, the board rejected the recommendations of a committee of state science teachers on the teaching of evolution. The following is an excerpt from the section of the draft standards that was deleted by the board:

Benchmark: Students will understand* major concepts of biological evolution.

Indicators: The students will understand: That the theory of evolution is both the descent with modification of different lineages of organisms from common ancestors and the ongoing adaptation of organisms to environmental challenges and changes. That biologists recognize that the primary mechanisms of evolution are natural selection and random genetic drift. The sources and value of variation. That evolution by natural selection is a broad, unifying theoretical framework in biology. *Understand: "Understand" does not mandate "belief." While students may be required to understand some concepts that researchers use to conduct research and solve practical problems, they may accept or reject the scientific concepts presented. This applies particularly where students' and/or parents' religion is at odds with science.

New

The new standards, which are optional for local school districts, omit any mention of evolution from the high school standards. For 8th graders, the board changed the recommendations of the standards-writing panel to authorize only the teaching of "microevolution." The board used that term to refer to changes over time within a species, rather than changes resulting in the evolution of one species into another.

SOURCE: Kansas Department of Education.

"The document does a very good job of encouraging critical thinking and the examination of data," said Mr. Nicholson, who holds a doctorate in entomology, because it leaves teachers free to question the theory of evolution in their classrooms.

The disagreement is a small-scale version of a rift that has opened across the state following the board's approval of the standards, which are optional for districts. The decision has inflamed the debate between pro- and anti-evolution forces, exacerbated hard feelings between Christian conservatives and moderate Republicans in the state, and fueled calls to change the structure of Kansas' elected school board. And in districts statewide, teachers and school officials have begun the school year amid new uncertainty.

Move Strikes Chord

On the national level, the board's move has also struck a resounding chord, in part because anti-evolutionists in Kansas have succeeded where those in more than a half-dozen other states have failed.

In response, well-known champions of science--among them, Stephen Jay Gould, the Harvard and New York University geology professor, and Bill Nye, public television's "Science Guy"--have lambasted the Kansas action. So have groups as varied as the American Jewish Congress and the American Chemical Society.

Together, they are joining national education groups in decrying what they see as a mounting threat to science education posed by those with views grounded in the biblical account of creation.

"Creationists have realized if evolution is not in the standards, it is less likely to be taught," said Eugenie C. Scott, the executive director of the National Center for Science Education in El Cerrito, Calif. "It is an approach that we'll see more and more of."

By its 6-4 vote on Aug. 11, the Kansas board yanked most references to Charles Darwin's explanation of biological diversity from the state's standards, as well as accounts of the origin of the universe and the development of the Earth that conflict with the biblical version of creation.

They did preserve, however, a few references to evolutionary change, but only as it applies to variations within individual species and not to the transformation of one species into another.

Kansas districts are free to set their own curriculum standards, and the board's move was not a ban on teaching evolution.

But it does ensure that Kansas students will not be questioned on the topic on new statewide science tests, set to be given in 2001. That in turn gives local boards the leeway to exclude or downplay the topic. Under the previous state standards, high school graduates were expected to know about evolution.

Control Issue Cited

Conservative members of the board say they don't want or expect evolution to disappear from Kansas classrooms. Instead, they say, they have simply given local boards more control over a sensitive area of the curriculum.

"Nobody's out to sabotage education," said Linda Holloway, the president of the state board. In the first draft of the new standards, she added, "the heavy emphasis implied that evolution was beyond examination."

But critics worry that the change will lead to more than closer examination of the topic. "It empowers local people to say, 'Don't teach evolution,' " said Brad Williamson, a biology teacher from Olathe who was part of a 27-member committee charged with drafting new science standards for the state. The work of the panel, which also included Ms. Holderread and Mr. Nicholson, was largely rejected by the board.

For now, many Kansas districts are sitting tight--or even advancing the cause of evolution. When Ms. Holderread met last month with teachers in the 1,100-student Kaw Valley district to rewrite the local science curriculum, the group used the science standards devised by the National Research Council and the Kansas standards-writing committee's original draft--both of which describe evolution as a unifying framework in biology.

"There wasn't a discussion on the evolution; the thinking was, 'Of course it will be there,'" Ms. Holderread said. "It was business as usual."

Officials of Kansas' largest district also say they have no intention of altering their science curriculum, which reflects national standards. "We are knee-deep in student improvement, have a bond issue looming ahead of us, and we don't see this as one of our major priorities," said Mark A. Evans, an associate superintendent in the 49,000-student Wichita schools. He added that not one parent had called to talk to a district official about evolution.

Cindy Duckett, a supporter of the state board's action who runs a loosely organized school reform group in Wichita called Project Educate, said she doesn't expect change in the big districts. It is in smaller communities, she predicted, that the move "will encourage local people to take on local school boards."

In the small town of Pratt, west of Wichita, she noted, the school board of the 1,400-student district is considering a book popular among some critics of the theory of evolution as a supplement to its science curriculum. The book, Of Pandas and People, by Percival Davis and Dean Kenyon, puts forward a partial picture of what is known as the "intelligent design" theory: that life is too complex to have evolved except under the direction of a master designer.

That view, which questions the assumptions and evidence of evolution theory rather than advancing a literal reading of the Book of Genesis, is characteristic of many of the current attacks on evolution. ("Eminent Science Group Reiterates Importance of Teaching Evolution," April 28, 1999.)

Even now, some biology teachers who are uncomfortable with evolution skip it for all but advanced students, said Mr. Nicholson, the teacher and entomologist. At most, he added, the change in the standards will let students and teachers question evolution and discuss competing explanations for the diversity of life forms.

"I'm sure there will be people who will go to the local school board and ask for less evolution or more creation," Mr. Nicholson said. Yet, he predicted, teachers of typical first-year biology classes "probably won't see any change from what they've been used to in the last five years."

Grassroots Action Urged

If districts want to add creationist views to the curriculum, they have to move carefully. In a 1987 decision in a Louisiana case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not compel the teaching of creationism because it is essentially a religious doctrine.

Still, efforts to strip evolution from the curriculum--or at least make sure it is taught as only one unproved theory among many--have cropped up in other states in recent years.

But the action by the Kansas board is the clearest victory in years for those who reject Darwin's theory. Consequently, scientists and science educators active nationally have cast an anxious eye on the events there.

In Ms. Scott's view, Kansas is a microcosm of what's happening elsewhere, with those who oppose teaching about evolution using grassroots politics to make themselves heard. Her center helps local activists mount counterattacks on efforts to minimize the importance of evolution.

Ms. Scott said she worries that just at a time when more publishers are including evolution in their textbooks, the Kansas decision may discourage them. It is a prediction that has proved true in at least one case so far, when a small California publisher recently pulled a chapter on Kansas prehistory from a new text for middle schoolers in reaction to the board's action.

Victory Downplayed

Creation scientists, meanwhile, have tended to downplay the significance of the new standards.

"This is not nearly as big a victory as [our opponents] think," said Tom Willis, the president of the Creation Science Association for Mid-America, based in Cleveland, Mo. "I don't think a little victory is much, but it has potential if it gives an opportunity for a hearing on a larger scale."

Paul Atkinson, a psychology professor at Wichita State University who has carried the creationist banner in many debates, said that the standards as originally written threatened to "marginalize the creationist opposition rather than include them in the fray. Biblical theists have the right to be included rather than marginalized."

Creationists certainly have the right to be heard, but not in the science classroom, countered Kansas state Rep. David Adkins, the chairman of the House appropriations committee and an outspoken critic of the board's decision.

"It's not an issue of discussing it, it's an issue of context," he said. "Would people with these concerns really feel comfortable with a public school teacher talking about these kinds of things? Wouldn't they be more comfortable with a faith leader?"

The Republican said the new standards might not lead to many changes in the short term, but over time local school boards will feel pressure from what he called "a very small, focused group" of staunch conservatives.

"This has been a very shrewd attempt to exploit a base of public opinion" following the trouncing that the most conservative wing of the state GOP received in last fall's elections, he charged, noting that polls show that a substantial majority of Americans believe that God created the universe and its life forms. That belief is not incompatible with "testing a basic principle of life science," he added.

And even if the decision ultimately affects few Kansas classrooms, it has already made the state a laughingstock, Mr. Adkins said. "Kansans everywhere are going around with bags over their heads," he complained.

Mr. Adkins said he was considering legislation to require students entering state universities to have studied evolution. The idea would be bolster local boards that might otherwise be pressured into dropping the topic.

The lawmaker also said he planned to introduce legislation that would add a gubernatorially appointed 11th member to the elected state board, a bill he expects to draw far more attention this year than when he introduced it last year. The board has deadlocked 5-5 along ideological lines in many votes over the past several years.

Board Under Scrutiny

Gov. Bill Graves, who has no power over the board but urged it not to drop evolution from the standards, said through a spokesman that he was considering several options for altering the board, including Mr. Adkins' plan.

"Clearly, the majority [of the board] has a political philosophy that they want to promote, and it has no place in education," said Mike Matson, a spokesman for the GOP governor. "This only encourages legislators and others to change the [board's] structure."

One sign of the minefield that the issue presents to national leaders came late last month. Vice President Al Gore, who has built a reputation as a leading voice on science-related issues, declined to criticize the Kansas board. Through a spokesman, the presidential hopeful endorsed local control over the issue, including the freedom to teach creationism. But Mr. Gore's spokesman later offered a clarification, saying the vice president favors teaching creationism only in some contexts, such as in a class on religion.

Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, who is seen as Mr. Gore's most likely GOP opponent should the vice president win the Democratic nomination next year, said he favored teaching creationism in addition to evolution because children should be exposed to different theories about how the world began.

from Nando Times, 2000-Jul-3, from the Associated Press, by Justin Pope:

Scientists aim for more effective teaching of evolution

BOSTON - In the 140 years since it was first proposed by naturalist Charles Darwin, scientists have made enormous progress building upon the theory of evolution.

But some are particularly puzzled by one unsolved mystery: Why do so many people continue to have their doubts?

A Gallup Poll conducted last year found that 47 percent of Americans believe God created human beings, while 49 percent accepted the theory of evolution - that mankind developed over millions of years from more primitive species.

"I think all that shows is that most Americans are woefully badly educated in science, which is our fault, not theirs," said Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould.

Scientists, who almost universally accept evolution, believe all the evidence is on their side. Facing activists who want creationism taught alongside evolution in public schools, they say they'll have to make a stronger case to the public.

Gould is one of several prominent scientists involved in a new Evolution Education Research Centre, based at Harvard and McGill University in Montreal. The premise is that Americans and Canadians - about half of whom also have their doubts about evolution - aren't being convincingly taught the science that supports the theory.

"If students understand well evolution, but for religious reasons say, 'I still cannot accept that because of my religious beliefs,' then we in the educational community say we respect that," said Brian Alters, a McGill science-education professor who is leading the center. "But that is not the case, we usually find."

Linda Holloway, who was chairwoman of the Kansas Board of Education when it voted last year to remove most references to evolution from the state's curriculum, said she welcomed efforts to teach evolution more effectively.

"I think that's great. I think this whole discussion is great," she said. "Evolutionists are putting out their information and people who have different viewpoints are putting out theirs. I think that's healthy."

The center plans to disseminate its research through teachers' conventions and seminars, and on a Web site. But the main target is university-level science education professors, who will train the next generation of high school teachers.

In a study of 1,200 college freshmen, Alters found 45 percent of those who doubted evolution had specific misunderstandings about some of the science that has been used to confirm the theory - for instance carbon dating techniques that determine the age of fossils.

"We need to find out why people don't understand evolution," Alters said. "Then we need to craft lessons, activities, curricula to specifically address that."

The debate over teaching origin theories dates back to 1925, when John T. Scopes was charged with violating Tennessee law for teaching evolution in high school. Scopes' conviction was later were overturned.

In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court barred states from requiring the teaching of creationism in public schools where evolution is taught.

The Kansas school board's decision last year rekindled the debate.

Alters and Gould both say Americans' attitudes toward the teaching of evolution are more complex than they first appear.

The Gallup Poll conducted last year also found 68 percent of Americans favored teaching both creationism and evolution in the public schools. By a margin of 55 percent to 40 percent, they opposed replacing evolution with creationism.

Those results were based on telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of 1,016 adults, 18 years and older, conducted June 25-27, 1999. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

from The Scotsman, 2001-May-5, by the Foreign Staff:

Darwin was the original racist, Louisiana claims

Charles Darwin's theory on how humans evolved are racist and are the direct cause of race problems in Louisiana, the state's house education committee has decided.

Ignoring pleas from scholars, the committee approved a resolution branding Darwin as "the originator for a scientific basis for racism".

According to the Baton Rouge Advocate, the legislation contends that Darwin's books The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man promote the idea of superior and inferior races. It says the legislature rejects those theories "and does hereby condemn the extent to which these philosophies have been used to justify and approve racist practices".

If approved by the full House, the resolution, sponsored by Democratic representative Rep Sharon Broome, would be distributed to state colleges and universities, public schools and local school superintendents.

"If evolution has provided the main rationale for racism, and we are teaching our children evolution in schools, then correspondingly we are teaching them racist principles," Ms Broome told the commission this week. "If you are going to teach it in our schools, you have to make children aware of the weaknesses in the theory."

Ms Broome said Darwin's books are responsible for some of today's racism in Louisiana. "I think this greatly worsened racist practices in our society," she said, adding that the Ku Klux Klan used Darwin-style thinking to justify acts of racism, including the 1963 bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four black girls.

The Baton Rouge Advocate said Ms Broome claims Darwin teaches that some humans have evolved further than others, that he holds that coloured people are `savages', and that in doing so he "provided the main rationale for modern racism".

One critic of Ms Broome's argument said that if legislators even debated the issue, it would bring "well-deserved ridicule" on the state. But Ms Broome said: "This will not bring any ridicule on us. We will be making a statement that we deplore ideology racism."

Some saw the resolution as a veiled attempt by creationists to resurrect the debate over whether man evolved over time or was created by God. Ms Broome, however, stressed that the resolution was about race, not religion. "That is another debate," she said.

Don Weinell, an environmental scientist, pointed out that Darwin's theory was among the most important scientific advances of the last 500 years. Terms that appear to be racist in The Origin of Species were products of 19th century thinking, he said.

In 1987 the US supreme court rejected a 1981 Louisiana "creationism" law, which required that the Bible's version of man's origins be taught whenever evolution was taught in schools. The supreme court ruled that the law violated the constitutional mandate for separation of church and state.

Darwin's theories still spark controversy in other US states, but Louisiana is the first state where his theory has been labelled racist. Kansas recently ordered the theory of evolution out of its state standards, but later backed down over the controversy it generated across the country.

from E-SKEPTIC, 2001-Apr-30, by Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society:

Was Darwin a Racist? Is Evolution a Racist Theory?

By now most of you will have read or heard about the Louisiana leptons who on May 4 voted 9-5 (in the House Education Committee) that Darwin's evil doctrine of evolution has led to racist ideologies. To wit, Louisiana state Rep. Sharon Broome, D-Baton Rouge, who sponsored the resolution said it would "shine a light on the history of racism." "Be it resolved that the Legislature of Louisiana does hereby deplore all instances and ideologies of racism, and does hereby reject the core concepts of Darwinist ideology that certain races and classes of humans are inherently superior to others." Broome told the Baton Rouge Advocate that Darwin "teaches that some humans have evolved further than others" and that Darwin "holds that people of color are 'savages'" and in so doing he has "provided the main rationale for modern racism." It will soon go before the full House.

I will write a more formal response for Scientific American and Skeptic, but let me make a few quick off-the-cuff observations and demonstrate how it is creationism that is the basis of racist ideology, not the theory of evolution:

1. Darwin as a person was light-years ahead of most of his colleagues in his anti-racist and anti-slavery sentiments, particularly hardened in his travels in South America where he witness many abuses that sickened him. (Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of Natural Selection, was also ahead of his time in championing women's suffrage and the rights of the poor and marginalized in society). Darwin deplored the mistreatment of other groups, made all the more remarkable considering his privileged status as a landed aristocrat. So it is ironic that the theory is being labeled as racist when the two founders of the theory were exceptional for their anti-racist stances.

2. Even if the theory of evolution could be directly linked to racist ideologies, we could not tag Darwin with the label, since the creator of a theory and the theory itself are two different entities.

3. Blaming Darwin and the theory of evolution for racism and racist ideologies is a little like blaming Gutenberg for creating the machine that would eventually print Mein Kampf. The creator of something cannot be held responsible for how others use that creation. Of course, social Darwinism was used to justify all sorts of political ideologies, ranging from pure free-market capitalism to socialism and even communism. So clearly the theory itself is value-neutral.

4. More specifically, did the Nazis use Darwinian evolution to justify their ideologies? Yes and no. This is a very complex story. I wrote a paper in graduate school on this (never published) in which I tried to make a solid connection between 19th-century social Darwinism and Hitler, but, frankly, it's a bit of a reach even when you try mightly to find one (as graduate students are wont to do when trying to impress their professors). Actually Darwin isn't even in the story. You have to begin with Ernst Haeckle and follow his philosophy of monism and its various mutations in the early 20th century, some strands of which were picked up by some Nazis, where a tiny bit might have trickled down to AH himself, but more strongly to Himmler and his cronies in the SS. In my book Denying History I have a whole chapter on this (where I finally found a home for some of the research in my originally unpublished paper) in connection to the Wannsee Conference protocols in which one finds the following passages:

"Under appropriate direction the Jews are to be utilized for work in the East in an expedient manner in the course of the final solution. In large (labor) columns, with the sexes spearated, Jews capable of work will be moved into these areas as they build roads, during which a large proportion will no doubt drop out through natural reduction. The remnant that eventually remains will require suitable treatment; because it will without doubt represent the most resistant part, it consists of a natural selection [naturliche Auslese] that could, on its release, become the germ-cell of a new Jewish revival. (Witness the experience of history.)"

What's going on here is that the Nazis were making every use they could of their slave labor, and having them die out due to overwork, starvation, and disease was fine, but it was not enough to achieve a final solution. By January 20, 1942, when 15 high-ranking Nazi leaders met at a beautiful home owned by Reinhard Heydrich overlooking a lake in the suburbs of Berlin (located at 56-58 Am Grossen Wannsee--you can still go there and take a tour of the place, which is now a museum), it was clear that the final solution could not be achieved through these means and that "another solution" had to be implemented. Why? Because if even a small "remnant" remains there could be a "natural selection" that would lead to a "Jewish revival." In other words, every last one had to be exterminated.

Now, this is not a direct link to Darwin or the theory of evolution, but it is a clear use of the concepts of selection and extinction. But as I pointed out, you can read equally potent misuses of evolutionary theory among capitalists and socialists of the early 20th century (and even still today).

5. Most importantly, and ironically, the theory of evolution is ANTI-racist, and the creationist doctrine that it replaced is a far superior system for creating an intellectual basis for racism. The creationist model is based on the Platonic essentialism that said all things are created as particular "kinds" that cannot be changed. Of course, all pre-Darwinian naturalists recognized that species varied, and they even recognized that there were mechanisms in nature that curbed varieties and kept them from varying too far from their original "essence." It was Darwin's and Wallace's particular genius to stand this system on its head and show that this mechanism, instead of winnowing away the extreme edges of a species' varieties, gradually changed these varieties into new species. (Thus, when one reads so-called Darwinian precursors, such as Lyell, who described this mechanism, one is really reading about this system that kept all essences pure.)

This Platonic essentialism, when wedded to the great chain of being (see Owen Lovejoy's classic book of that title), allowed intellectuals to rank essences from lowly stones to lofted angels, with humans between the apes and angels, and within the human essences, blacks closest to apes, European white males closest to the angels. This is creationism pure and simple, and it is racist to the core. The theory of evolution, in replacing the creationist doctrine, also replaced the racist ideology embedded within it.

In other words, the Louisiana leptons have got the story precisely bass akwards.

---

Michael Shermer is the Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Director of the Skeptics Society, host of the Skeptics Science Lecture Series at Caltech, columnist for Scientific American, and author of Why People Believe Weird Things, How We Believe, and The Borderlands of Science.

from The Evening Standard of London, 2000-Mar-7, by Geoffrey Miller:

Taking a pop at psychology

Alas, poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology
Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, Cape, £18.99

Tiresome, predictable and badly researched, this 15-essay collection offers no coherent arguments against evolutionary psychology, but reveals instead the collective intellectual bankruptcy of its editors and contributors. The "evolutionary psychology" castigated here is not the modern science of human nature as it is actually developing, but a simplified, out-dated, third-hand version that focuses too much on the writings of the field's best-known popularisers such as Steven Pinker, David Buss, Matt Ridley, and Dan Dennett. The essays attack the views of a few high-status, over-40 males, while discounting the excellent work being done by dozens of other researchers, including younger women such as Jennifer Davis, Linda Mealey and Nancy Segal. This sexist, élitist focus on the pop-science brand names allows the contributors to portray evolutionary psychology as a homogenous cult, without acknowledging the unusually balanced sex ratio of researchers, the great diversity of research topics, and the intensity of critical debate within the field.

Most of the essays offer vague rebuttals to some of the early evolutionary psychology manifestos, challenging their emphasis on selfish gene theory, adaptationism, the modularity of the human mind, and the Pleistocene African environment of human evolution. These challenges are often wildly off-target. For example, Gabriel Dover's critique of selfish-gene theory humbly suggests that the entirety of evolutionary genetics is misconceived and should be rejected in favour of his "molecular drive" theory. Patrick Bateson points out that the word "instinct" has too many meanings to be scientifically useful, without mentioning that this is precisely why most evolutionary psychologists avoid the term. On the other hand, the three most sensible essays offer little that is new. Mary Midgeley argues that meme theory is a poor model of human culture, Anne Fausto-Sterling finds a feminist viewpoint scientifically useful, and Barbara Herrnstein Smith suggests the mind is more than a computer for "processing information". They seem unaware that many evolutionary psychologists, including me, have already made these points.

The contributors are largely sociologists of the 1960s New Left generation, whose critiques of 1970s socio-biology are recycled here with more political self-righteousness than scientific integrity. They characterise evolutionary psychology as pernicious conservatism, but fail to explain why it has attracted the support of so many socially conscious thinkers, ranging from the Leftist animal rights philosopher Peter Singer to the arch-critic of runaway consumerism, economist Robert Frank. Their goal is not to improve evolutionary psychology, but to stop it because they think it has a hidden ideological agenda contrary to their personal views. In practice, they just want the social sciences to be left alone, empirically unaccountable to the biological sciences, and fiscally unaccountable to tax-payers who are demanding more evidence-based social policies. Their anxieties stem from a distinctly intellectual kind of paranoia, a belief that science has far more power to shape political beliefs than it really does. Especially silly is the claim by the editors that evolutionary psychology's "Right-wing libertarian attack on collectivity" drove the dismantling of the welfare state - as if a few dozen psychologists could have more influence on government fiscal policy than the international bond market and other forces of economic globalisation.

Many of the contributors work on the sociology of science, but it is unclear what sociological research methods they have used to understand the social dynamics of evolutionary psychology. They have not interviewed many researchers, or attended our conferences, or worked in our labs as participant-observers, or even surveyed our web sites. The result is that they simply don't know what is going on in contemporary evolutionary psychology. The book doesn't even mention the Human Behaviour and Evolution Society (evolutionary psychology's main research association), or our annual conference that has been running since 1988, or our official journal Evolution and Human Behaviour. Evolutionary psychology's most successful research programmes are equally ignored, such as the wonderful confluence between developmental psychology research on "Theory of Mind", primate research on "Machiavellian intelligence", evolutionary social psychology research, and evolutionary game-theory models of reciprocity and bargaining. Steven Rose even makes a bizarre claim that evolutionary psychology obsesses about cognition and ignores emotions. He seems to have missed the work of Paul Ekman on the facial expression of emotions, David Buss on jealousy, Randy Nesse on anxiety, Paul Rozin on disgust, and Sarah Hrdy on maternal affection, among many others.

Instead of making specific criticisms of particular research programmes such as these, the book relies on the school playground technique of argument by name-calling. The "so-called science" of evolutionary psychology is characterised as "intellectual myth", "culturally pernicious", "biological fatalism", "bad theory", and "premature triumphalism" - all by the end of chapter one. Any idea that the contributors dislike is labelled a "fal-lacy". This humourless rhetoric wears thin very quickly, rendering the book no more fun to read than a prosecutor's edited transcript from a Stalin-era show trial.

Unfortunately, none of the contributors offers a viable alternative to evolutionary psychology as a way of integrating the biological, psychological, and social sciences. Typically, the essays end with meaningless appeals to go "beyond nature versus nurture". Their frequent use of words like "irre-dcible", " inextricable" and "unresearchable" reveals an anti-scientific mind-set. Instead of good, useful models of human nature, these writers want an "appreciation" of human experience in all its "irreducible" complexity - like the useless map in the Borges story that, by leaving out no detail, was as large as the country it represented.

Constructive criticism serves a crucial role in science, but poorly-informed carping and grumbling from the sidelines does not. There isn't a single criticism in the book that has not already been raised and discussed with greater sophistication within evolutionary psychology meetings and journals. Any critic who knows enough about the current research to make intelligent suggestions for improving it might as well just join the scientific endeavour, and publish peer-reviewed science papers showing that their alternative leads to better theories and more discoveries. Instead, these writers have taken half-baked criticisms straight to the media, hoping that public hostility would lock away the scientific study of human nature in a tomb labelled "taboo".

Geoffrey Miller is an evolutionary psychologist at University College London, and author of The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (Heinemann).

from the Times of London, 2000-Aug-16, by Noreen Taylor:

Spiritual guides for the me generation

We now live, so we are led to believe, in a secular world. Only a small minority attend church regularly and it is assumed that Mammon has finally triumphed over God.

Praise be the Porsche! Hallelujah to the house with three en suites and double garage! Hosanna to the sun-kissed holidays.

The only time that most Britons refer to Christians nowadays is when they speak of Dior. And yet, despite wardrobes of designer clothes, the fashionable dining experiences, the guarantee that money will never be tight, many people are far from contented.

Dissatisfied with lives that appear superficially wonderful, they begin to ask themselves the age-old questions: what is the point? Why am I here? Is this all there is?

Once upon a time, of course, going to church helped to take care of such philosophical queries, and there are those who argue that a return to organised religion is the only answer. The Archbishop of Canterbury, for instance, recently urged people to come back to church after telling an international conference that "Western culture today is obsessed with three alternative saviours - therapy, education and wealth - none of which can provide lasting healing for our broken world".

But many people in a modern service-oriented market economy think that "church" is so 19th-century. It involves being somewhere at the same time every Sunday, sticking to a schedule. It takes up time. It means meeting people you would rather not see. It's also so unspecific, universalising rather than personalising the experience. Church is high street chain-store religion.

Surely there must be something just for the individual. After all, one has a personal trainer to deal with physical fitness and one visits a therapist for one-on-one psychological encounters. Why not an exclusive relationship with a religious guru?

Lo and behold, enter the new holy phenomenon: the personal spiritual guide. Instead of going to church, the church now comes to you in the form of an itinerant "spiritual director", visiting your home to deal with your particular dark-night-of-the-soul problems.

The idea is catching on. President Bill Clinton has not one but three - the Reverends Tony Campolo, Philip J. Wagaman and Gordon MacDonald - and numerous Hollywood icons have followed suit. There are a number operating in Britain too, and they have plenty of clients.

"I get a lot of calls from high achievers, people who lead successful materialist lives, especially men," says Paddi Lane, one of the leading practitioners. "They ask me: 'So what now? I should be happy, fulfilled. I've got everything I've worked for, but I know there is something missing in my life. How can I make sense of why I am here?'

"Some were teenagers in the Sixties, former flower children who once sat around debating the meaning of life, who now find themselves retracing the same metaphysical journey. People brought up as Jews, Catholics, Protestants, all of whom left the formal worship of church behind in their teens, now miss having those structures in their lives. But they don't necessarily want to return because the Church doesn't seem to be offering the nurture they need. They might find church language too jargonistic and the idea of a priest or vicar off-putting.

"What they want is someone who will walk alongside them, metaphorically, who will help with doubts and questions to do with their spirituality."

Another of this country's foremost spiritual directors, the Rev Phillip Roderick, agrees: "Our Western culture has become bankrupt. Modern men and women live beset by deadlines, schedules and a relentless competitiveness, which is inevitably followed by exhaustion and, of course, depression.

"There has been, I have noticed, an increase in the number of people who want to talk to me about spiritual matters. It's almost as though there is a hunger, and they suspect that it's to do with the lack of spirituality in their lives." Roderick offers help through the Quiet Garden Trust, which he directs from his Oxford parish.

Lane runs her Retreat Association - retreats being an integral part of the whole spiritual deal - from Bermondsey, South London. After a series of meetings to discuss a person's needs, she matches them with a soul partner who, hopefully, will help them to make sense of the two great imponderables - life and death.

The roots of spiritual directorship are as ancient as Christianity itself, although the term has now been reborn and updated to meet the needs of those who wish to contemplate more than their navel. She stresses that a spiritual guide is not supposed to resolve personal crises or to act as a therapist, but aims "to help those who want to discuss God".

She explains: "We help people who want to be part of something wider, who want to connect with like-minded people. Years ago they might have gone to their vicar. Now they prefer to pull up a chair at the kitchen table, to share confidences and air their misgivings over a cup of coffee. I run training courses for guides, though I find the most successful tend to be instinctual people, the sort you can trust to unburden yourself with. They can be churchmen or women, though I see spiritual guides as a growing ministry for lay people. In the past ten years the movement has spread worldwide, especially in America. Modern life is filled with therapists, counsellors, gurus, yoga teachers offering alternatives that people hope will provide answers. But, invariably, I find that those answers cannot be provided by an obsession with the self."

Lane argues that finding a spiritual guide should take time. "Hopefully," she says, "the relationship will be a long one, so you must ask yourself a series of questions. Are age and gender important? Would you prefer a formal person to an informal one? Does that person have to be someone from an established church, or are you happier with an eclectic approach? How often do you wish to meet? At your house or theirs? Or even at one of the houses run by our organisation?" Lane, like many devout Christians, has an aura of contentment, wisdom and goodness about her, redolent of a nun. She is in her fifties, with a grown-up family and is divorced from her husband, a policeman.

She says she found Christ when she was in her mid-twenties. "My second child was baptised during a church service," she recalls, "and it was then that I met these lovely people who, for no reason at all, showed me care. They were there when I needed spiritual guidance."

After her marriage broke down, Lane worked as a secretary in a hospital casualty department. "That was a real smack-in-the-face experience where I learnt to listen, to empathise with people during some of the most traumatic periods of their lives."

Who then has benefited from having a spiritual director? Emma Johnstone Hicks is an example. At 34, she is a banker with Coutts, where she is responsible for looking after the accounts of some of the world's wealthiest people. Hicks, who is single, is one of a handful of staff who deal directly with the billionaires' billions.

"Very rich people can be deeply demanding. They want instant answers, instant results. The pressure, therefore, can be nerve-busting. I get calls from clients who think nothing of screaming down the phone at me. In turn, I used to find myself screaming at some junior clerk." But Hicks doesn't scream at the junior any longer. Instead she pauses, turns to the small stone lying next to her computer, and thinks of God and how He would want her to behave. The stone was a gift from her spiritual director.

"She's a vicar's wife who I began visiting about four years ago. She lives in the country and I visit her every couple of months. We go for long walks and talk about spiritual matters. We discuss God, my relationship with Him, the journey I'm on, the life I'm leading.

"One day, when I had been describing the constant juggling that seems to dominate my life, and makes me lose my rag, she gave me the stone and asked me to keep it within sight always. If I found myself in danger of erupting in the office I was to gaze at the stone and remember our talk. As a device, it works, grounding me, freezing my temper and stopping me from losing my cool and hurting someone."

Having a spiritual guide has not changed Emma's life too radically because, like her close-knit family, she has always been a Christian. Apart from cooling her temper it has also stopped her from telling lies, even white ones.

"Once I might have helped a colleague to get rid of someone on the phone by saying that they were out. Now I have to tell colleagues that I can no longer do that. I'll make excuses, but I can no longer lie, not even to save myself.

"Earlier today I had an irate woman yelling down the phone about some papers that had not been forwarded. I should have checked that they were sent, but the never-ending pressure of work meant that I forgot. My fault. So I took a deep breath and told her so.

"No, there is not a happy ending. She didn't congratulate me for my honesty. She became angrier, threatening to contact my superiors and have me sacked. I could have lied and got myself off the hook, but that would make a mockery of all my efforts to be a better person.

"For a banker, I'm a passionate person, passionate about my clients and involved in many aspects of their lives quite apart from their money, such as their babies and weddings. One client sent me a huge bunch of flowers after I'd spent time listening and counselling him about his marital problems. He claimed I helped to save his marriage. You see, I don't wish to be the sort of Christian who leaves God behind in church. I want to carry good through my life if I can.

"My spiritual guide has inadvertently also been a help in my career. I had worked out a philanthropic project for Coutts, but felt a little nervous as to how I would present it. Talking things through with her I found the confidence I needed, and now I can see my future at the bank being one in which I can concentrate on the philanthropic side of banking."

Another who has enjoyed having a spiritual guide is herself a counsellor, Valerie Vreede, 56, from Epsom, Surrey. Though she helps families, she found it difficult to apply the same objectivity when she had problems at home. "I needed to stare outwards, through different eyes, so I went along to my local vicar and he agreed to be my spiritual guide," she says.

The crisis began when Vreede's husband became ill. "I was just generally fed up and thought I needed hope and support," she says. "Ordinary counselling wasn't giving it to me. Now, every few months, I meet the vicar in his study and talk. Through those discussions he has shown me not only that I have valuable skills and attributes, but has reminded me of the golden thread that runs through life connecting us all.

"After my first visit I remember coming away feeling so much happier, relieved almost that I could see a light at the end of the tunnel. My husband has recovered now, and there is a sense in me that everything has been sorted out."

The Retreat Association: 020-7357 7736
The Quiet Garden Trust: 01753 643050

from Scripps Howard News Service, 1999-Aug-30, by Joan Lowy:

Gore Stuns Civil Libertarians
Surprised by Vice President's Embrace of Charitable Choice

W A S H I N G T O N, May 31 - Civil libertarians suffered a major setback last week when Vice President Al Gore embraced a legal concept called ``charitable choice'' which permits government to aid religious groups that perform social services while allowing them to retain an overtly religious flavor.

Groups concerned about maintaining a separation between church and state - from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Joint Baptist Committee to the Religious Action Center of Reform Judiasm - have been fighting charitable choice since it was included in sweeping welfare reform legislation enacted in 1996.

Not only did Gore embrace the concept by name in a speech to the Salvation Army in Atlanta, but he also echoed conservative proponents of the measure by suggesting that dispensing a little religion along with a hot meal or job training is a good idea and government should support it.

The speech has been widely interpreted as a signal from Gore that he will not cede the issue of morality and values to the GOP.

Until the speech, civil libertarians had looked on Gore as their best hope in the presidential race. Former Sen. Bill Bradley, Gore's only rival for the Democratic nomination, already has expressed support for closer cooperation between government and groups with religious affiliation. All the GOP candidates, including front-runner George W. Bush, back the concept, and some would go even further.

``We were stunned,'' Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the religious action center, said of the response to Gore's speech.

`Cut Off at the Knees'

Julie Segal, a lobbyist for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said she ``felt like I had been cut off at the knees.''

The charitable choice provision in the welfare law allows churches and organizations with religious affiliations to contract with the government to provide job training, food pantries, maternity homes for pregnant teens, and other welfare services.

The government has a long history of contracting with Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services, and Jewish social service agencies to provide services, but in the past those groups have been willing to provide government subsidized services in a secular manner, and usually through a separate legal entity.

The charitable choice provision was authored by Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo. It permits churches and religious groups to directly dispense service while openly expressing their religious views. They can hire and fire employees based on religion.

The law says welfare beneficiaries cannot be compelled to partake in religious services and benefits cannot be conditioned on accepting a particular faith. And the government is supposed to provide a secular alternative for beneficiaries who want one. But critics charge those are weak protections that are difficult to enforce, especially for people who already are extremely vulnerable - the hungry, the homeless, the unemployed.

Do-Gooding and Good-Talking

``We've got a whole lot of people who are going to take the money and try to win people to Jesus with it,'' said Rev. James Dunn, executive director of the Joint Baptist Committee . ``They are going to take it and use it to undergird their overall mission. It's who we are today as Christian people. We don't distinguish between our do-gooding and our good-talking.

``We can't separate them because we sincerely believe when you are feeding someone who is hungry, you should be telling them about Jesus, too,'' Dunn said. ``There is nothing evil about that. That's the way the contemporary Christian understands the gospel. But we had better not take tax dollars to do it because those tax dollars were not paid to help my church win converts or to proselytize.''

Proponents of charitable choice, however, say it is their religious character that makes faith-based groups better able than government or secular organizations to administer to the needy.

``What these groups recognize is that crime, poverty and other social ills are, at their root, moral and spiritual problems,'' said Joe Loconte, a scholar on religion and culture at the Heritage Foundation. ``By emphasizing faith commitment, they are emphasizing that people are more than physical beings, they are spiritual beings, meaning that the most important issue for them is to be in a right relationship with God.''

Loconte is concerned not so much that the government may permit proselytizing under charitable choice, but that it will prevent or dilute expressions of faith, thus eroding the religious character of the organizations.

``The groups that are willing to engage in a contracting relationship with the government are walking a tightrope,'' Loconte said. ``The more their religious outlook is embedded in their social assistance, the more difficult it is for them to separate the sacred from the secular. It's not clear whether charitable choice will protect them'' from government interference.

Toward Diverting Government Aid

Loconte advocates giving welfare beneficiaries government vouchers to exchange for services instead of the government contracting with churches and other groups to provide services. That way it's up to the beneficiary to choose between a religious-oriented service provider and a secular one.

Civil libertarians already see charitable choice provisions as a step toward diverting government aid away from public education and toward school voucher programs favored by conservatives.

``Charitable choice would move us significantly down the road toward school vouchers,'' Dunn said.

The charitable choice concept has been extended beyond welfare programs to federal aid for more general programs to combat urban ills. A bill that would apply charitable choice to federal juvenile crime prevention programs, including drug and alcohol treatment, has been approved by the Senate.

Professional drug and alcohol counselors have expressed concern that charitable choice may allow religiously-affiliated counseling programs to evade state and local regulations that conflict with the religious character of the program.

``We're concerned that this will create a two-tier situation where secular organizations would be required to be licensed or certified by the state, but religious or sectarian organizations would be able to avoid those regulations,'' said William McColl, executive director of the National Association of Alcohol and Drug Counselors.

Licensure or certification requirements are important because they ensure a degree of professionalism in the counseling, McColl said.

Some drug and alcohol counseling programs offered by religiously-affiliated groups focus primarily on prayer. While these programs often claim phenomenal success rates, the U.S. General Accounting Office has concluded that there haven't been enough independent studies to determine if the claims are true.

Gore has been deluged with complaints from civil libertarians since the speech. His spokesman Roger Salazar, said Gore remains committed to ``the separation of church and state,'' but he could provide no specifics on how religious liberties would be protected under charitable choice.

from TPDL 2000-Aug-11, from the Washington Times, by Joseph Curl:

Liberals concede, defend, double standard

Liberal advocacy groups Thursday conceded a double standard on religion in the presidential campaign, but argue that it's legitimate because Republicans preach an exclusionary faith and the doctrine of Democrats is "all-inclusive".

Texas Gov. George W. Bush was lashed by several groups last year for naming Jesus Christ as the most important philosopher to him. Few have criticized Al Gore and running mate Joseph I. Lieberman, the first Jewish vice-presidential candidate, for the stream of passionate religious rhetoric that has enveloped their fledgling campaign.

"American Jews would have a knee-jerk reaction to Republicans' expression of faith, but not to the other side," says David Harris, deputy executive director for the National Jewish Democratic Council.

The Republican presidential candidate has crossed the line, Mr. Harris said, by giving the government imprimatur to his faith by his recent proclamation declaring June 10 as "Jesus Day" in Texas and his support for school prayer and the posting of the Old Testament's Ten Commandments, among other things.

"Bush's declarations have an air of exclusivity," Mr. Harris said. "But Gore and Lieberman appear all inclusive on faith, that all must be made to feel welcome."

Says Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State: "There's a bit of a double standard, but Republicans have a long history of seeking votes on a religious basis."

People are more fearful when Mr. Bush talks religion because "he has a history of kowtowing to the religious right," he says.

"Lieberman doesn't have a history of talking about his faith. Republicans have tended to do more God-talking, embracing Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson."

Mark Pelavin, associate director for the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, says the double standard exists because Republicans also have a history of using religion for partisan and issue purposes.

When Republicans speak about adherence to biblical tenets, that is code for supporting school prayer and opposing abortion and homosexual rights, he says.

"When Republicans talk about their faith, most know what that talk means," Mr. Pelavin says. "That's not as true for Democrats. The Christian right and the Christian Coalition have a policy agenda to change the Republican Party.

"Lieberman's comments were a legitimate expression of who he is that did not exclude others, as Bush's did. One is an individual speaking and the other is an act of government."

Mr. Pelavin, as well as several others, say Mr. Bush's statement that Jesus Christ is the most influential political philosopher to him was followed by an egregious statement.

Asked to expand for viewers his answer in the September 1999 debate in Iowa that Jesus Christ "has changed my heart," Mr. Bush said, "Well, if they don't know, it's going to be hard to explain. When you turn your heart and your life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as a savior, it changes your heart and changes your life, and that's what happened to me."

Most point to that as evidence that his religious views are exclusionary, whereas Mr. Gore's and Mr. Lieberman's professions of faith are generic and inclusive.

"He ought to be able to explain why he picked Jesus," says Eliot Mincberg, vice president of People for the American Way. "We did not object to the fact that Bush mentioned Jesus, but the fact that that was the only person Bush referred to and he said he just couldn't explain it."

Mr. Mincberg said the double standard - the argument that Republicans talking religion is dangerous but Democrats espousing faith is healthy and inclusive - is "not a stereotype without justification."

"Many Republicans have supported the right to life and school prayer in the name of religion," he said. "When Republicans talk, people tend to hear that in an exclusionary way, and when Democrats talk, people tend to hear it in an inclusionary way."

Criticism was swift when Mr. Bush made his comment about Jesus Christ during the debate with other Republican candidates.

"It makes me uncomfortable," Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said then. "It will make a lot of us uncomfortable."

The ADL director says that he respected Mr. Bush's right to espouse the religious beliefs of his choosing but that Mr. Bush's choice left out "Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus."

"I felt left out, and I think a lot of Americans felt left out," Mr. Foxman said. "It was a disconcerting inclusion of religion into politics."

Mr. Gore has played up the religion of his running mate. During a preconvention tour that began Wednesday in the vice president's hometown of Carthage, Tenn., both unabashedly invoked God and Scripture with a frequency and fervor not seen before.

It was the second day in a row that Mr. Lieberman spoke extensively about his faith. On Tuesday, during his first joint appearance with Mr. Gore since being selected, Mr. Lieberman opened his speech with a public prayer.

Thursday, Ken Jacobson, assistant national director for the ADL, would not criticize Mr. Lieberman for wrapping the Democratic campaign in religion, and there was no criticism that they were being exclusionary.

"There is a lot of interest in who he is," Mr. Jacobson said. "We're hoping this begins to fade."

After Mr. Bush's comment, Mr. Harris criticized his injection of religion into the presidential campaign, saying the governor's response "speaks volumes about the depths - or lack of depths - of his political philosophy."

Thursday, he said, "George W. Bush and Joe Lieberman are totally different. The problem is [Mr. Bush] deemed Jesus Christ his 'political' philosopher, which will be guiding his political policy."

from Feed Magazine, 2000-Mar-16, by Jason Sokol:

God on the Gridiron

Religion is the year's biggest sports story. Why is it getting so little play? Jason Sokol investigates.

FOR ALL THE FUROR over John Rocker's ill-considered pronouncements on race and sexuality, the debate they engendered has failed to dredge up the tirade delivered by Green Bay Packer Reggie White less than two years earlier. In a speech before Wisconsin's State Assembly, the defensive end (and ordained minister) denounced Hispanics, Native Americans, and homosexuals. But, unlike Rocker, White was neither penalized nor forced to apologize. One would like to chalk this leniency up to a deep respect for First Amendment rights among the good people over in the NFL offices. More likely, however, is that White's superstardom gained him favor, and that it's more difficult to suspend a black man for invective than it is to censure someone like Rocker. But the strangest circumstances surrounding White's case were his repeated attempts to justify his remarks by appealing to a power higher than that of the Confederate States. "I heard God speak to me," White said, and the NFL listened. God speaks to NFL players with some frequency it seems, and faith, after all, has been good for business.

White -- who is football's all-time leader in quarterback sacks, and is known as the "Minister of Defense" -- claims God led him to sign a free-agent contract with Green Bay and, in 1997, helped the storied franchise win its first Super Bowl since 1968. "Neon" Deion Sanders, known more widely as "Prime Time," who once embodied the glitz and glamour of professional sports, now points skyward before each punt return. But while religion may be most manifest in football, it is not limited to the gridiron. Heavyweight boxer Evander Holyfield is zealous about his faith and, from a reporter's perspective, only too willing to talk about it. (After his defeats of Mike Tyson, the "Real Deal" evaded almost every question on boxing itself, and attributed all of his strength and strategy to the Lord.) After the Yankees won the 1996 World Series, MVP John Wetteland praised his "point man" -- Jesus Christ. David Robinson is basketball's most notable born again, but more intriguing are the Knicks' Charlie Ward and Allan Houston, two guards whose lifestyles have led teammates Latrell Sprewell and Marcus Camby to dub them the "Christian Coalition."

But more often than not, and despite the players' best efforts, an athletes' faith goes largely unnoticed. Lynn Stiles, the Rams' vice president of Football Operations, told me that "One of the things most of the writers missed... is what a strong Christian team this is." To most journalists, an athlete praising the Lord taints the interview and mars the story, and, while the player on the field may not draw a distinction between physical performance and belief, religion is often dismissed as irrelevant in the pressbox. But if religion is significant to athletes, why ignore it? Why not explore its beneficial facets alongside those that may be fatuous? What, ultimately, does the dynamic between athletic success and religious faith consist of? In the wake of the Rams' Super Bowl victory and Florida State's college title, there's some compelling evidence that God's presence -- if only in the player's hearts and minds -- can significantly affect a game's outcome.

FITTINGLY, it was the St. Louis Rams -- a team bent on making its religious beliefs known -- that captured this year's Super Bowl. All season long, supermarket stock boy turned quarterback and NFL MVP Kurt Warner had transformed doubters into believers by silencing critics on the field while evangelizing off of it. He continued in the Super Bowl trends he began in September -- leading his team to victory, shattering long-standing records, collecting the Super Bowl's MVP award, and praising Jesus at the top of his lungs. ESPN's Mike Tirico asked Warner a pointed question about the game-winning touchdown pass. But Warner evaded the journalist's ploy with the dexterity of a star slipping through a swarming defense. "First things first," he replied. "Thank you, Jesus!"

The entire month leading up to the game happened to be a great one for God on the field, and Jesus doesn't slight the college boys in favor of the big men. The Rams' victory was neatly foreshadowed by Florida State's taking the college championship. The two teams have much in common, and both wear their religion on their shoulder pads. Florida State coach Bobby Bowden demands that each of his players lead a Christian life. An estimated half of the Rams' team is involved in weekly Bible study (most of it at Warner's house each Wednesday night). The entire FSU team was present at a pre-Sugar Bowl prayer breakfast held by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Both teams tout star wide receivers who have graced the cover of Sports Illustrated while hailing the grace of God. After winning the Sugar Bowl, FSU's Peter Warrick revealed that he'd "asked God to let me have my best game, and he did that for me." Isaac Bruce, the target of Warner's game-winning pass, claims there's more to his game than meets the eye. "That wasn't me," he said. "That was all God. I knew I had to make an adjustment on the ball, and God did the rest." "Reverend Ike," as he is commonly known, recently told a reporter, "Y'all are afraid to write the word Jesus."

To the consummate athlete, however, fear doesn't enter into it. For a 190-pound running back to reconcile colliding full speed into 300-pound linemen over and over, a love for the game and the allure of a lucrative paycheck may not be enough; an athlete without supreme confidence is doomed. In sports, where the mental component is often overlooked, faith in one's abilities is of paramount importance. And in football, where paralysis is occasional and career-ending injuries are not infrequent, faith is all but necessary. It may be a sort of secular faith, the kind of force William James wrote about. Confronted with an admittedly meaningless world, James found that the only way to have a life worth living is to take a "leap of faith," to believe that one's existence matters, to hurl oneself into the world and all its absurdity as blitzing linebackers hurl themselves into quarterbacks. "It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all," James wrote.

But a player might also have a much more comforting faith in some other power, a higher force that will watch over and protect him. An athlete of inordinate strength and speed is all the more dangerous when convinced of the righteousness of his cause. Given how violent football can be, is it any wonder that so many players seek refuge in the Lord? "It is a tough, physical game," says Dal Shealy, the president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. "But to me, football is the ultimate team sport...You have to totally depend upon each other in order to succeed." Stiles, a former coach with the 49ers and Eagles, echoed this sentiment: "You need something that goes beyond winning and losing to bind people together.... There's a genuine love for one another." The idea is that shared beliefs among teammates puts them on the same page on the field, and makes them all the more willing to sacrifice individual glory for that of the team -- and of the Lord. Shealy points to the NFL's semifinalists as cases in point. All of them -- St. Louis, Tennessee, Jacksonville, and Tampa Bay -- have many Christian coaches and players. "The team game is what I saw in those four teams," Shealy said. "As far as we were concerned, the Lord couldn't lose."

And while all athletes pray for victory, most are far more acquainted with defeat. Shealy believes that a main function of faith is to help players face losing. The Lord "helps you to understand defeat," he says. "We are consistent in how we walk and talk...whether we handle success or defeat." Sportswriter Grantland Rice put the sentiment nicely into a couplet nearly seventy-five years ago: "When the one great scorer comes to write against your name/He marks -- not that you won or lost -- but how you played the game." At times, the players' attitude towards God seems to vascillate between that of the Mafia Don's and the foxhole atheists; it's not uncommon to see players on their knees praying for the other guy to mess up. The Lord doesn't seem to mind much. In the 1991 Super Bowl, Giants' players prayed that Scott Norwood of the Bills would miss a mid-range field goal to preserve their victory. Apparently, the Lord complied, and blew Norwood's kick wide with a phantom gust; the final score was 20-19, in the Giants' favor.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTOR isn't the only one that explains religion's dominance over the sporting world. Another is the blossoming of religious-based organizations dedicated to using stadiums as pulpits and athletes as ministers. The Fellowship of Christian Athletes -- which "has chosen the powerful medium of athletics as its avenue to impact the world for christ," and "specifically targets the athlete and coach" -- reaches 300,000 students from junior high through college, and claims 7,700 "huddles." The organization, which counts Bill Bradley among its former members, was incorporated in 1954. The same Branch Rickey who signed Jackie Robinson with the Dodgers was a cofounder. FCA's goal is to make its presence felt in all fifty states, and goes about its business with a missionary's zeal. Four years ago, FCA opened its first chapter in Hawaii. There are now two adult chapters and forty-three youth "huddles" on the islands.

The FCA's most influential professional counterpart is called Athletes in Action. It employs more than four hundred full-time chaplains worldwide, many of whom work closely with players on various professional teams. Founded in 1966, the organization's mission is "to resource the world for Jesus Christ through the influence of sports" and "to develop...Christ-centered leaders." Judging by the omnipresence of athletes who champion the Lord (almost forty percent of those in the NFL are evangelical Christians), AIA has enjoyed enormous success.

Its task seems not to be particularly difficult, as athletes -- and football players, in particular -- represent one of America's most religious demographics. About half of the NFL's players come from the South, and any attempt to understand the origins of Christianity's sway on the field must start with the fact that many players were raised in the Church. Another twenty percent of football players hail from the heartland -- the country's other stronghold of Christianity. Unlike basketball, which thrives in urban settings, football remains largely a small-town sport, populated by small-town sorts. Often enough, footballers don't need much prodding to take the Lord into their hearts.

WHY MIGHT ALL OF THIS sit so poorly with the large percentage of secular sports fans? Maybe, as the Reverend says, the writers they trust are simply afraid to write "Jesus." Or perhaps they get entangled in the logical inconsistencies of evangelical Christianity. Isaac Bruce, who once walked unscathed out of a car wreck, was asked about recent tragedies in which linebacker Derrick Thomas and golfer Payne Stewart were killed in car and plane crashes. If they too had invoked Jesus, he said, they could have avoided injury. "Are you saying if Payne Stewart had invoked the name of Jesus Christ, he'd be alive today?" Bruce was asked. "Oh, definitely," he said.

Religion is also given short shrift because it seems awkward, even frivolous, to inject into an analytical broadcast. Faith is notoriously hard to quantify; it isn't to be found among total yards, points scored, or runs, ands stacked next to statistics, often seems ridiculous -- after all, it takes more than prayer to tackle Barry Sanders in the open field. But in crude terms, games like football are themselves ridiculous spectacles, full of huge men in tight pants crashing into one another. And yet, to many Americans, they take on great importance. Ultimately, the root problem with egregious on-field exhibitions of Bible-thumping is that they distort something fundamental about sports, and about humanity. "Sports may be among the most powerful human expressions in all history," Gerald Early wrote. They are, at their best, a vessel for us to infuse with meaning and vitality, express our individuality through, and use to effect some sort of communion with one another. Sports, like religion, are where mere mortals flirt with transcendent forces, and to ignore the believing athlete's explanation for why this is so is to miss a good part of the story.

Jason Sokol  has written for The Nation,  and covered sports for the Springfield Union-News.  He played college basketball and high school football.

The dialectical relationship of Roman Catholocism to Marxist communism is elucidated in the following. The author's sentiments regarding Marxism are mostly right, though of course his sentiments regarding theism in general and Catholicism in particular, though not detailed, are wrong (Christianity and the other theistic religions are, of course, blatant frauds).

from the Mindszenty Report, 1998-Aug, from http://www.mindszenty.org/report/1998/aug98/aug98.html:

Marxism's Influence in the U.S. Today

As the New York Times and its west-coast sister the Los Angeles Times have duly noted-with prominent feature stories-this year is the 150th anniversary of publication of Marx and Engels' The Communist Manifesto. Both newspapers celebrated the event by pointing out the brilliance of its authors saying their work today "emerges ever more distinctly as an unsurpassed dramatic representation, diagnosis and prophetic array of visionary judgments on the modern world." Neither, however, noted the millions of deaths, the prison gulags or the appalling suffering inflicted as true believers of Marxism attempted to impose the teachings of the manifesto on mankind.

Jesuit theologian Father John A. Hardon, author of the popular Modern Catholic Dictionary, has taught graduate courses on Marxism and lectured on the subject widely-on several occasions in Moscow. Following is an abridged version of one such lecture delivered in Chicago, April 4th at the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation regional conference where, on a personal note, he revealed that members of his own family had died under Communism in the profession of their Catholic faith.

As we come to the close of the twentieth century, we are seeing the gravest crisis in the history of Christianity. In my judgment, at the center of this crisis is the deep penetration of Marxism into our beloved country. I believe we can say even more. Our country is a Marxist nation. Dare I say still more? The United States of America is the most powerful Marxist country in the world.

This thesis deserves not just another lecture or even just a class semester. It should be the bedrock of our understanding of what the Vicar of Christ is telling us. In order to do justice to the subject, however, we have to answer the question "What is Marxism?" And to do that we must identify what I consider the fifteen principle marks of Marxism which might compare with the four marks of the Church founded by Christ. Marxism is a godless religion in which its leaders believe, shall I say, with a faith comparable to that of believing Christians.

The best single source to understand Marxism is The Communist Manifesto. The best single analysis of Marxism is the encyclical On Atheistic Communism by Pope Pius XI in which he identifies Marxism as a "Utopian Messianism." From these two sources we can examine the fifteen principle marks of Marxism:

1. Messianic Ideal. According to Karl Marx, mankind should look forward to the attainment of a Messianic society in this world, which is the highest ideal toward which the human race can tend. The attainment of such a society presumes man's perfectibility, and is based on the belief that the human desire for happiness will be fulfilled on earth in some future period of history.

2. Equality and Fraternity. This idyllic society will be distinguished by the practice of perfect equality and fraternity among its members, the last stage in a series of five stages of human development, reflecting the original state of man in a tribal and communitarian society, namely slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism and communism. In the first three of these stages, men exploit one another, in the fourth (socialism) they are passing through an interval of adjustment; and in the fifth (communism) the classless society is achieved.

3. Economic Progress Through Marxism. It is no longer a merely speculative position but an established fact that a Marxist philosophy succeed where others have failed.

4. Dialectical and Historical Materialism. Marxism is founded on two kinds of materialism which claims there exists only one reality: matter. It is dialectical because through the interaction of opposing material forces all apparently higher forms of being evolve-first life, then sentient beings and finally man. It is historical because now that man exists, human history follows the same evolving pattern towards higher perfection, but uniquely through the interaction of material (economic) forces of society.

5. Accelerating Progress Through Conflict. Consistent with its stress on dialectics, Marxism holds that the progress of humanity towards its predicted goal is accelerated by human conflict. Hence the role of revolution is a necessary means of fostering social development and the importance of sharpening existing antagonisms can be stimulated between various classes of society.

6. Marxist Deviation. There is only one "grave sin" in Marxist morality and it is committed by those who deviate from the ideal of relentless revolution.

7. Primacy of Groups. The individual in a Marxian society surrenders his personal rights in favor of the group after long indoctrination, convinced that part of the contribution toward a classless commonwealth is complete sacrifice of his own personality.

8. Equality Among People. Marxism holds that only absolute equality is legitimate. It rejects all civil and ecclesiastical authority and denies any innate authority of parents over their children.

9. Denial of All Property Rights. The Communist Manifesto states that "The theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property." In Marxian ethics no individual should be granted any rights over material goods or the means of production because history has shown private property is the universal source of further wealth. Personal possession gives one man power over another, the origin of every economic enslavement.

10. The Artificial Institutions of Marriage and the Family. Marxism denies any sacred or spiritual character to human life beyond the merely economic. Thus, there are no moral bonds of marriage, only such privileges as the collectivity may see fit to grant persons to mate and procreate. An indissoluble marriage bond may be humored by the state, but has no inherent rights before the civil law.

11. Economics, the Basis of Society. In a Marxist scheme of society economics is the fundamental law of human existence, not freedom, or human rights, or a divinely established moral order. Greater production of material goods, more efficiently and in a collectivized manner, must be given precedence over everything else.

12. The Collectivity Controls the Individual. Six of the ten principle "measures" of The Communist Manifesto affirm how completely Marxism sees the individual as a tool in the hands of the state: abolition of property in land, all rights of inheritance, centralized credit in the hands of the State; centralization of the means of transport, establishment of industrial armies, especially in agriculture. State totalitarianism could not be more complete.

13. Disappearance of the State. According to Marxist predictions, this tyrannical enslavement to the State is the necessary radical surgery which must be performed on society in order to give birth to a new society. By means of the Marxist revolution, the proletariat will be abolished. in place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonism, we shall have an association in which all conflicts are gone.

Women's Rights and Education
in the Marxist Scheme

Each of these marks of a Marxist society as they apply to the United States today could be developed into a separate lecture or even a class semester for study. But, to do some justice to such a gigantic subject, let me choose the last two of my fifteen hallmarks of Marxism to see how deeply they have penetrated American society.

14. Emancipation of Women. Marxism is especially characterized by its rejection of any link that binds woman to the family and the home. Women's emancipation is proclaimed as a cardinal principle of the socialist interim that will usher in the classless society of the future. Women are to be first encouraged and then, if need be, compelled to withdraw from the family and the care of children. These are regularly stigmatized "bourgeois" activities. Liberated from household chores and the rearing of a family through thousands of childcare centers, women are to be thrust instead into public life and collective production under the same conditions as men.

Also known as women's liberation, the emancipation of women has become a major revolution in the United States. Its avowed purpose is to free women from the discrimination to which they have been subject in civil society and in political legislation. It argues from a massive discrimination of women by men, and urges women to revolt against men. The best known proponent of this ideology was Nikolai Lenin, a disciple of Karl Marx, who urged that "The success of a revolution depends upon the degree of participation by women." On these terms, women's liberation is simply part of the larger struggle for the eventual creation of a classless society.

The range of women's liberation in our country is as broad as American geography and as deep as our present-day American culture. Perhaps the best way to see how widely feminism has penetrated our society is to quote some typical statements of feminists who call themselves Catholic but have been seduced by Marxism.

-Bearing and raising one's children have very little to do with shaping the future and still less with finding one's own identity. On the contrary, as the same range of potential ability exists for women as for men, the problem of finding their identity is precisely the same-it lies in their work outside the home ... to find herself, to know herself as a person is creative work of her own outside the home.

-Women are not to find ways to use their full capacities and work creatively within the structure set by marriage and motherhood. It is marriage and motherhood which must be adapted to the structure of one's work life.

-Although the new wave of feminist theology is only twenty years old, it has already developed a broad base of critical scriptural studies, revisionist church history, historical systematic theology, as well as work in ethics and pastoral psychology, upon which to base a comprehensive rethinking of tradition.

-of particular importance is the patriarchal bias of Scripture. It is one thing to critique the tradition as flawed, but on what basis can one speak of Scripture as distorted by sexist bias and still regarded as an authoritative source of revelation?

-Women have opted to seek an egalitarian society that existed before the rise of patriarchy and that ancient religions centered in the Goddess reflect this pre-patriarchal society... They believe, in the groups of persecuted Christianity, such as medieval witches, which Christian inquisitors falsely described as "devil worshipper " Thus these women see themselves as reviving an ancient feminist religion.

Thus the litany of feminist quotations could go on for literally hundreds of volumes that are currently in print. What has been the result in the United States? Inclusive language in the liturgy is only a minor effect of Marxist feminism which has penetrated the Catholic Church. In one diocese after another, women-I dare say-are in charge. One of the most devastating effects of this radical feminism has been the breakdown of literally tens of thousands of once dedicated women who decide they were sick and tired of being dominated by a male hierarchy, especially by a male Bishop of Rome.

It is no wonder that Pope John Paul II urged American bishops to combat what he termed a "bitter, ideological" feminism among some American Catholic women, which he said has led to "forms of nature worship and the celebration of myths and symbols" usurping the practice and celebration of the Christian faith. The ordination of women to the priesthood is infallibly excluded by the Catholic faith. Yet it is being widely promoted in some high, professedly Catholic circles, evidence of the Marxist mentality in our country.

15. Denial of Parental Rights in Education. Correlative with the function of women as robots (Russian for "work"), the Marxist collectivity assumes total responsibility for the education and training of children. The euphemistic statement in The Communist Manifesto, "Free education for all children in public schools." has been implemented to mean that the state alone has the right to educate. In practice, this has further meant that the State, and not the parents, has the exclusive prerogative to determine who shall teach, under what curriculum, with what textbooks, and how the matter is communicated.

Some years ago, I had the privilege of publishing a thirty-page Statement of Principles and Policy on Atheistic Education in Soviet Russia. The opening paragraph of this document stated:

The Soviet school, as an instrument for the Communist education of the rising generation can, as a matter of principle, take up no other attitude towards religion than one of irreconcilable opposition, for Communist education has as its philosophical basis Marxism, and Marxism is irreconcilably hostile to religion. "Marxism is materialism, " says V.I. Lenin, "as such, it is as relentlessly hostile to religion as the materialism of the Encyclopaedists of the eighteenth century or the materialism of Feuerbach."

How has this philosophy penetrated the United States? So deeply that most Americans have only the faintest idea of what is going on in our schools.

William Foster, former American chairman of the Communist Party, wrote in Toward a Soviet America that he wanted the "cultural revolution" to be advanced under the aegis of a national department of education. That is exactly what the National Education Association lobbied for during the 1976 presidential campaign, and a Department of Education is exactly what the American president gave the union in gratitude for its support.

Foster wrote that the Department of Education should be "revolutionized, cleansed of religious, patriotic and other features of the bourgeois ideology. The students will be taught on the basis of Marxian dialectical materialism, internationalism, and the general ethics of the new Socialist society."

What happened to parents' rights to educate their children? In less than a quarter century these rights have been lost by most parents in the United States. Most of the once Catholic schools in America have been closed or secularized. Parents who courageously teach their children at home are being subjected to inhuman pressures, not only by the State but by Church authorities.

Some time ago, I was asked by Rome to write a series of articles on John Dewey, the atheistic genius who is commonly regarded as the father of American education. According to Dewey, the idea of "God" represents a unification of ideal values that are essentially imaginative. In other words, God does not exist, except as a projection of our imagination.

That is why religion, which believes in the existence of a personal God, is excluded by American law from public schools. That is also why Catholic schools in our country have been deprived of any support from taxpayer dollars. According to Dewey, it is a mistake to think that in the United States we have a separation of Church and State. No, says Dewey, in America we have the subordination of Church to State. On these premises, what is left of parents' rights in the education of their children? Nothing, except what a Marxist government allows the parents to teach.

A Reminder to Professed Christians

In light of what we have examined here, can anyone doubt that the United States has been deeply infected by Marxism, so clever that most citizens do not even realize it? I would like to offer some hope, however, by paraphrasing what Pope Pius XI told us in his classic encyclical on Communism, Divini Redemptoris:

He was speaking to professed Christians, specifically, he was addressing "those of our children who are more or less tainted with the Communist plague. We earnestly exhort them to hear the voice of their loving Father. We pray the Lord to enlighten them that they may abandon the slippery path which will precipitate one and all to ruin and catastrophe. We pray that they may recognize that Jesus Christ our Lord is their only Savior, for there is no other name in heaven given to man whereby we must be saved."'

I join my prayer with that of the Bishop of Rome, that Jesus save our beloved country, which has become so deeply infected by the plague of Marxism.

-John A. Hardon, S.J.
Inter Mirifica
Detroit, Michigan

Read the Shakir translation of the The Koran at your leisure.

Read Frank Gaffney's exposé of Grover Norquist's intransigent complicity with militant Islamists, a treatment that includes a careful dissection of the history of Norquist-facilitated penetration of the Bush Administration by militant Islamists.

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Oct-8, by Soner Cagaptay:

Islamists and Ottomans
Reactionary nostalgia for the caliphate is completely misplaced.

The reaction in Turkey to the recent death of Ertugrul Osman, heir to the Ottoman throne and successor to the last Caliph, could not be more shocking. Islamists in kaftans and long beards gathered in Istanbul two weeks ago to bury the titular head of the world Muslim community. He was a scotch-drinking, classical music-listening Western Turk who until recently lived on New York City's Upper East Side.

The Islamists' embrace of Osman, a descendant of the Westernized Ottoman sultans, provides a window into the Islamist mind. Islamism is not about religion or reality. Rather it is a utopian ideology. Osman, raised by a line of Western-leaning caliphs and sultans, loved Atatürk's Turkey, yet the Islamists abused his funeral and the memory of the caliphate, changing him into a symbol for their anti-Western, anti-secular and anti-liberal agenda.

Despite what the Islamists want the world to believe, the Ottoman caliphate was not anti-Western. The Ottoman Empire always interacted with the West—an interaction that goes all the way back to 16th-century Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, who envisioned himself as the Holy Roman emperor.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ottoman sultans and caliphs embarked on a program of reforms to remake the Ottoman Empire in the Western image to match up with European powers. To this end, the caliphs launched institutions of secular education, and paved the way for women's emancipation by enrolling women in those schools.

By the beginning of the 19th century, the sultans and caliphs of the Ottoman Empire embodied Western life and Western values. The last caliph, Abdulmecid Efendi, considered the Ottoman state a Western power with a Western destiny. An enlightened man and avid artist, the caliph's sought-after paintings, including nudes, are on exhibition at various museums, including Istanbul's new museum of Modern Art.

It is therefore wrong to represent the Ottoman Empire as the antithesis of the secular republic founded by Atatürk. When Atatürk turned Turkey into a secular republic in 1923 by abolishing the Ottoman state and the caliphate, he fulfilled the Ottomans' dream of making Turkey a full-fledged Western society. Atatürk's reforms are a continuation of the late Ottoman Empire.

Atatürk was raised in Salonika, the hub of cosmopolitanism and Western culture in the reforming empire. He studied in secular Ottoman schools, and he was trained in the Westernized Ottoman military.

The debate over the Ottoman caliphate's legacy has ramifications not only for Turkey, but also for contemporary Muslims and the Western world's desire to counter radical Islamists.

Years before the emergence of al Qaeda, the caliphs produced an antidote against radical jihadists—a progressive vision for a Western-oriented Muslim society. The sultan-caliphs built the institutional foundations of this society, including the first Ottoman parliament and constitution of 1876, and planted in it seeds of Western values, such as secular education and women's emancipation. Modern Turkey owes its existence not just to Atatürk but to the sultan-caliphs who were among the first to promote liberal and Western values in a Muslim society.

Now, the Islamists want to usurp the caliphate and its legacy. The fundamentalists first distort the caliphate's politics, re-imagining it as an anti-Western institution. Then, they portray the revival of this invented caliphate as the ultimate political dream in an anti-Western ideology.

Eighty years ago, the Ottoman caliph-sultans imagined a Turkey that is more akin to modern Turkey than to the Islamist society envisioned by al Qaeda or others who dismiss Atatürk's dream of a Western Turkey and liberal values as anomalies. Ertugrul Osman himself told Turkish journalist Asli Aydintasbas shortly before his death that "the republic has been devastating for our family, but very good for Turkey."

Caliph Osman was Turkish by birth, Muslim by religion, and a Westerner by upbringing. I want my caliph back, and so should all Muslims who want deliverance from the distorted and illiberal world envisioned by the Islamists.

Mr. Cagaptay is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of "Islam Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who is a Turk?" (Routledge, 2006).

from der Spiegel, 2009-Dec-3, by Yassin Musharbash:

Surprising Study On Terrorism
Al-Qaida Kills Eight Times More Muslims Than Non-Muslims

Few would deny that Muslims too are victims of Islamist terror. But a new study by the Combating Terrorism Center in the US has shown that an overwhelming majority of al-Qaida victims are, in fact, co-religionists.

In the battle against unbelievers, can one also kill Muslims? Even the terror network al-Qaida is troubled by this question.

A leading al-Qaida ideologue for the terror network, Abu Yahya al-Libi, has developed his own theologically-based theory of collateral damage that allows militants to kill Muslims when it is unavoidable.

Even the Iraqi affiliates of Osama bin Laden's terror group, who are known to be particularly bloodthirsty, claim that they too consider this question. For instance, in a message claiming responsibility for an August attack in Baghdad, the group wished those Sunnis injured in the "operation" a speedy recovery and expressed their hope that those killed would be accepted by God as "martyrs."

But even as such apologetic communiqués from al-Qaida show the terror network stylizing itself as a defender of the true faith wrestling with religious concepts, they also make it look as though any dead Muslims are regretful but isolated cases. The facts, though, tell a different story.

Between 2004 and 2008, for example, al-Qaida claimed responsibility for 313 attacks, resulting in the deaths of 3,010 people. And even though these attacks include terrorist incidents in the West -- in Madrid in 2004 and in London in 2005 -- only 12 percent of those killed (371 deaths) were Westerners.

New Report Shows Many More Muslims Killed Than Non-Muslims

It is, of course, no surprise that al-Qaida kills more Muslims than non-Muslims -- particularly for people in the Islamic world. But a new report by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at the United States' Military Academy at West Point in New York -- which has gathered together these and other relevant figures in one report ("Deadly Vanguards: A Study Of al-Qaida's Violence Against Muslims "), spells out the discrepancy in black and white.

The authors of the study admit that their report likely omits a number of Muslim victims. But that was the price of their rigorous methodology, used in an effort to avoid accusations of partisanship.

The researchers only counted the attacks for which al-Qaida claimed responsibility, thus preventing accusations that they were seeking to make al-Qaida look even worse than it is. Still, it is well known that al-Qaida does not claim responsibility for every attack perpetrated, meaning that many victims are likely left out of the report. Furthermore, the researchers only included attacks reported on by the Arab media and relied on the numbers they reported -- out of a conviction that the Arab media is more highly regarded in the Muslim world than the Western media. That, though, is not always the case.

Blurred Figures And Inexact Categories Are Problematic

The greatest potential for inaccuracy in the report, however, is the placing of victims into only one of two categories: Western or non-Western. The assumption being that Western would also mean non-Muslim and vice versa. The problems with such a system of categorization are myriad. Not all those living in the Muslim world are Muslim: In Iraq, al-Qaida has launched attacks against Kurds, Yazidi and Christians. Secondly, a lot of the Muslim victims are actually -- and deliberately -- Shiites. A Sunni group, al-Qaida considers the Shiites to be unbelievers.

Unfortunately news reports don't tend to differentiate between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, explains Scott Helfstein, one of the writers of the report. This is also the reason for the non-Western and Western categories. "It is easy for journalists to count nationality but they rarely, if ever, identify religion," Helfstein writes in reply to e-mailed questions from SPIEGEL ONLINE. The report's writers were well aware of the problem. "But we were not able to find a way around it," Helfstein notes.

Indeed, the report's authors confront the shortcomings of their methodology head on. In one passage, they remove attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan from their calculations altogether, resulting in the share of Westerners killed in al-Qaida attacks rising to a much more significant 39 percent. If one removes the Madrid and London attacks from the statistics, though, the share of murdered Westerners drops back down to 13 percent.

Perhaps more significantly, if one only examines attacks in 2007 and disregards those having been perpetrated in Iraq and Afghanistan, the share of non-Westerners killed by al-Qaida rises to 99 percent. In 2008, it was 96 percent.

Non-Westerners 38 Times More Likely To Be Killed

Put another way, between 2006 and 2008, non-Westerners were 38 times more likely to be killed by an al-Qaida attack than Westerners.

"Since al-Qaida has limited capability to strike against its Western enemies, the group maintains its relevance by attacking countries with Muslim majorities," the study concludes.

The conclusions reached by Helfstein and his co-authors are hardly world changing. They are valuable nonetheless, in that they provide a numerical foundation to the relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim al-Qaida victims.

Still, critics will no doubt point out that the study comes from the CTC, an organization that is part of an American military school. In recent years, the CTC has released a number of excellent studies on terrorism. But because it is actually supplying arguments, backed by scientific research, for the fight against terrorism to decision makers, politicians and military personnel in the US, it cannot be considered strictly neutral. That also applies to this case, especially since a number of American officials have recently begun stressing the point that al-Qaida is particularly violent toward Muslims and can now rely on solid data to back up their argument.

This perceived lack of neutrality doesn't change the fact that the fundamental findings of the report are correct and meaningful. The authors conclude that if they compare statistics for the years from 1995 to 2003 (excluding the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the US as a solitary event), they find that al-Qaida is becoming more violent and "increasingly indiscriminate" in its attacks.

Just how big a problem this discrepancy between Muslim and non-Muslim victims will become for al-Qaida remains to be seen. Even prior to the report's release, however, it had become a subject of intense debate within the Jihadist seen -- with more and more ideologues coming to the conclusion that al-Qaida's fight on behalf of the downtrodden Muslims isn't worth it.

from the Wall Street Journal Europe, 2010-Jan-11, by Shiraz Maher:

Saudi CARE for Jihadis
The Saudis don't seem ideologically best equipped to resocialize Islamist terrorists.

It is now clear that the failed terrorist attack by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on Christmas Day was directed by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The reasons for the sudden resurgence of this previously almost extinct chapter of the global jihad network lie not in Yemen, though—where AQAP is based—but across the border in Saudi Arabia.

For three years the Saudi Kingdom has been experimenting with a deradicalization program for captured Islamist terrorists in the CARE Rehabilitation Center. Rather than turning the jihadists into productive members of society, however, the center has replenished the terrorists' troops by releasing some extremists who immediately rejoined al Qaeda. Unwilling to challenge their own brand of radical Islam, Wahhabism, the Saudis don't seem ideologically best equipped to resocialize Islamist terrorists.

Located on the outskirts of Riyadh, it is not how you would imagine a typical Saudi prison, and indeed no one at the facility refers to it as such. Instead, the preferred term is "resort" and the inmates are called "beneficiaries." In this laid-back atmosphere where inmates can take swimming lessons, play table-tennis, or enjoy video games, it is easy to forget the seriousness of their crimes.

However this initiative is packaged, though, it is still a prison housing al-Qaeda fighters. Every Saudi detainee released from Guantanamo Bay passes through the Center before being released, alongside scores of domestic radicals.

Since its inauguration in 2007, the Center has attracted such a carousel of foreign visitors that it now has a purpose-built reception and exhibition tract. It has been of particular interest to intelligence officials from the United States, Britain, France and Germany. Some Western officials were so impressed with the facility that it helped accelerate the repatriation of Saudi detainees from Guantanamo Bay on the condition that they first passed through the CARE de-radicalization program on their return.

The triumphalism surrounding the center, however, came to an abrupt end last year when two of its graduates, Said Ali al-Shihri and Abu Hareth Muhammad al-Awfi, appeared in an al-Qaeda video.

"By Allah, imprisonment only increased our persistence in our principles for which we went out, did jihad for, and were imprisoned for," Said al-Shihri declared. Statements from al Qaeda now identify him as the terror group's deputy leader in the Arabian Peninsula. The Saudi government concedes that a total of 11 graduates from the Care Center have now returned to al Qaeda. That much was inevitable.

After visiting the deradicalization center in 2008, a retired senior official from Saudi intelligence told me that not everyone at the Center was a hardened jihadist. It also houses Arab nationalists whose sentiments boiled over during the allied invasion of Iraq.

Herein lies the problem. It was mainly these nationalist fighters who passed through the Care Center when it first opened. Yes, these men may have gone to Iraq motivated by a loathing of America and the West, but realizing al Qaeda's worldview was not their primary motivation. Having never truly embraced jihadist aims, they represented an easy and early success for the architects of the Saudi initiative. These sort of nationalists were easily won over by the generous financial assistance offered by the government to repentant jihadists, including money for home refurbishments, new cars, wedding expenses and a monthly stipend of $700.

This sort of bakshish does not work with true believers, though, and identifying them was not difficult when I visited the facility in July 2008. During my trip I met Ahmad al-Shayea, who travelled to Iraq in 2003, then aged 19, and drove a truck-bomb to the Mansour district of Baghdad, which killed nine people and injured 60 outside the Jordanian embassy. The blast catapulted Ahmad al-Shayea from the vehicle, leaving him alive but with horrific burn injuries.

Sitting on the trimmed lawns of the Care Center's gardens, he was one of the few who quoted from the Quran and explained why he felt obliged to fight what he regarded as the occupation of Muslim soil by infidels. He also seemed among the least repentant of the inmates I met there.

Aside from Saudi nationalists, many of those who initially passed through the Care Center appeared to have been al Qaeda foot soldiers, not leaders. The latter, who are usually hardened ideologues, are particularly resistant to change.

Of course, the Saudis accept they must challenge the jihadist worldview if rehabilitations are to succeed. To do so, they have created the rather Orwellian sounding "Ideological Security Unit."

"You cannot defeat an ideology by force. You have to fight ideas with ideas," its director, Abdul-Rahman Hadlaq told me.

The problem is that the Saudi program does not go far enough. It can't. To do so would mean challenging the dangerous literalism of Wahhabism itself—the austere and regressive form of Islam that is the official state-sanctioned version of Islam in the Saudi Kingdom. Yet, it is that very doctrine that first inspired radical movements such as the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Instead, the Saudi authorities rely heavily on kindred approaches based on the tribal and patriarchal structure of Saudi society to reform detainees. The main emphasis is on keeping detainees busy. The government finds them jobs, spouses and encourages their families to keep them in line. That much was true for Juma al-Dossari, whose marriage was facilitated by the government after he returned from six years of incarceration in Guantanamo Bay.

"I have a great wife. She tells me to forget Guantanamo. She says: 'Just forget it.' She says: 'You're a new man. You have a new life. You have your family. Focus on that.' That makes me feel much better," he tells me.

Omar Ashour, an expert on deradicalization programs at Exeter University, thinks this approach will ultimately result in more recidivism. "The Egyptians tried something similar in the 1970s and failed," he says. "The Saudi program is not comprehensive because it doesn't address the wider issue of religious and ideological reformation. While it doesn't do that, it can only offer a temporary panacea."

It appears that as long as the Saudis fail to address the regressive literalism and intolerance of their own state religion—which fuels radical Islam around the world—they will also fail to rehabilitate true jihadis.

Mr. Maher is an associate fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization, King's College, London.

from the New York Times, 2009-Apr-22, by Nicholas D. Kristof:

Islam, Virgins and Grapes

In Afghanistan, 300 brave women marched to demand a measure of equal rights, defying a furious mob of about 1,000 people who spat, threw stones and called the women “whores.” The marchers asserted that a woman should not need her husband's consent to go to school or work outside the home.

In Pakistan, the Taliban flogged a teenage girl in front of a crowd, as two men held her face down in the dirt. A video shows the girl, whose “crime” may have been to go out of her house alone, crying piteously that she will never break the rules again.

Muslim fundamentalists damage Islam far more than any number of Danish cartoonists ever could, for it's inevitably the extremists who capture the world's attention. But there is the beginning of an intellectual reform movement in the Islamic world, and one window into this awakening was an international conference this week at the University of Notre Dame on the latest scholarship about the Koran.

“We're experiencing right now in Koranic studies a rise of interest analogous to the rise of critical Bible studies in the 19th century,” said Gabriel Said Reynolds, a Notre Dame professor and organizer of the conference.

The Notre Dame conference probably could not have occurred in a Muslim country, for the rigorous application of historical analysis to the Koran is as controversial today in the Muslim world as its application to the Bible was in the 1800s. For some literal-minded Christians, it was traumatic to discover that the ending of the Gospel of Mark, describing encounters with the resurrected Jesus, is stylistically different from the rest of Mark and is widely regarded by scholars as a later addition.

Likewise, Biblical scholars distressed the faithful by focusing on inconsistencies among the gospels. The Gospel of Matthew says that Judas hanged himself, while Acts describes him falling down in a field and dying; the Gospel of John disagrees with other gospels about whether the crucifixion occurred on Passover or the day before. For those who considered every word of the Bible literally God's word, this kind of scholarship felt sacrilegious.

Now those same discomfiting analytical tools are being applied to the Koran. At Notre Dame, scholars analyzed ancient texts of the Koran that show signs of writing that was erased and rewritten. Other scholars challenged traditional interpretations of the Koran such as the notion that some other person (perhaps Judas or Peter) was transformed to look like Jesus and crucified in his place, while Jesus himself escaped to heaven.

One scholar at the Notre Dame conference, who uses the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg for safety, has raised eyebrows and hackles by suggesting that the “houri” promised to martyrs when they reach Heaven doesn't actually mean “virgin” after all. He argues that instead it means “grapes,” and since conceptions of paradise involved bounteous fruit, that might make sense. But suicide bombers presumably would be in for a disappointment if they reached the pearly gates and were presented 72 grapes.

One of the scholars at the Notre Dame conference whom I particularly admire is Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, an Egyptian Muslim who argues eloquently that if the Koran is interpreted sensibly in context then it carries a strong message of social justice and women's rights.

Dr. Abu Zayd's own career underscores the challenges that scholars face in the Muslim world. When he declared that keeping slave girls and taxing non-Muslims were contrary to Islam, he infuriated conservative judges. An Egyptian court declared that he couldn't be a real Muslim and thus divorced him from his wife (who, as a Muslim woman, was not eligible to be married to a non-Muslim). The couple fled to Europe, and Dr. Abu Zayd is helping the LibForAll Foundation, which promotes moderate interpretations throughout the Islamic world.

“The Islamic reformation started as early as the 19th century,” notes Dr. Abu Zayd, and, of course, it has even earlier roots as well. One important school of Koranic scholarship, Mutazilism, held 1,000 years ago that the Koran need not be interpreted literally, and even today Iranian scholars are surprisingly open to critical scholarship and interpretations.

If the Islamic world is going to enjoy a revival, if fundamentalists are to be tamed, if women are to be employed more productively, then moderate interpretations of the Koran will have to gain ascendancy. There are signs of that, including a brand of “feminist Islam” that cites verses and traditions suggesting that the Prophet Muhammad favored women's rights.

Professor Reynolds says that Muslim scholars have asked that conference papers be translated into Arabic so that they can get a broader hearing. If the great intellectual fires are reawakening within Islam, after centuries of torpor, then that will be the best weapon yet against extremism.

from the New York Times, 2010-Jan-17, by Adam Nossiter, with reporting contributed by Ravi Somaiya, Alan Cowell and John F. Burns from London; Steven Erlanger from Sana, Yemen; Michael Slackman from Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Senan Murray from Abuja, Nigeria:

Lonely Trek to Radicalism for Terror Suspect

KADUNA, Nigeria — Well before Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab disappeared into the rugged mountains of Yemen with an ominous goodbye to his father — warning him that “this is the last time you are going to hear from me,” according to top Nigerian officials — the tensions between the two pious men had already begun to show.

Though his father's career in banking had brought great wealth, enough to finance a neighborhood mosque in the family name and hire a private imam at home, his cousins said the young Mr. Abdulmutallab openly condemned the profession as immoral for charging interest and lectured his father to quit.

“Anytime he came back on vacation” from studying abroad, a cousin said on the condition of anonymity because the family has forbidden contact with the press, “he would tell his father he needed to quit banking because it was un-Islamic.”

Behind Mr. Abdulmutallab's journey from gifted student to terrorism suspect, accused of trying to bring down a plane headed to Detroit on Dec. 25 with explosives sewn into his underwear, is the struggle between father and son, between piety and radicalism, between an investment in this life and a disconnected young man's apparent longing for the next.

It is a struggle within Islam itself, not just in the Middle East or in centers of jihadist ideology like London, but also here in Kaduna, the northern Nigerian city where Mr. Abdulmutallab grew up and returned to on vacation.

This is a place where the dividing line between devotion and extremism is often blurred, where Islamic police ensure that moral codes are obeyed, where scores were killed in religious violence incited by the Miss World contest in 2002, and where even a family as Westernized as Mr. Abdulmutallab's has had contact with clerics espousing anti-Western and anti-Israeli ideals.

“Kaduna city has a long history of religious extremism and intolerance,” said a neighbor, Shehu Sani. “For 30 years, there has been violence here. People like Farouk grew up in this atmosphere. I don't think all his radical ideas came from Yemen.”

While it may be rare for a child of privilege like Mr. Abdulmutallab to embrace extremism, it is far from unprecedented, analysts say, bringing to mind some infamous cases.

John Walker Lindh, the American captured as a fighter for the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, was the son of a lawyer and grew up in the gentle, moneyed suburbs of Marin County, Calif. Osama bin Laden's father was a staggeringly wealthy contractor in Saudi Arabia, while his second in command in Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, is a doctor who comes from a highly prestigious family in Egypt.

And like Mr. Zawahri, some analysts say, Mr. Abdulmutallab shared another trait of some notable jihadists.

“He is alone and isolated,” said Hani Nesira, a director at Al Mesbar Studies and Research Center who specializes in Islamic movements. “These kind of individuals are usually different from their social surrounding and are unable to find themselves.”

Moreover, they often come from families that may monitor educational performance but are removed from “their moods and their psychological and intellectual inclinations,” Mr. Nesira added, enabling the lonely or depressed to seek belonging in “a religious utopia,” sometimes a very radical one.

`The Real Islam'

That kind of detachment from others and singular focus on Islam was a common thread in Mr. Abdulmutallab's life, according to family members, friends and classmates. It was evident long before he sent the kind of strident text messages to his father — saying that he had found “the real Islam” and that his family “should just forget about him,” the cousin said — which alarmed his father enough to warn American officials this November that Mr. Abdulmutallab was a security threat.

“He is a total teetotaler,” said Mr. Abdulmutallab's uncle by marriage, Mahmoon Baba-Ahmed, who runs a television station in Kaduna. “He doesn't do what his peers used to do. He is always indoors reading his Koran.”

While other rich children were going to parties, Mr. Abdulmutallab spent his visits home across the street, at the mosque financed by his father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, and bearing his grandfather's name, always in the front row. His piety was so pronounced that the young people around here mocked him for it, his neighbor said.

It also set the stage for conflict within his own family, devout though it was. Along Ahman Pategi Road, an oasis of palms and mango trees in this dusty city, the security guards of the affluent Unguwan Sarki neighborhood know the story well. One evening the young Mr. Abdulmutallab brought out a plate with leftovers from the family dinner table — his father's plate — to give to one of the guards. His mother's rebuke over this breach of etiquette was voluble enough to reach the domestic workers; the young man's calm response was to cite a verse from the Koran on duties toward the less fortunate.

“He wasn't close to his father,” said Aminu Baba-Ahmed, a cousin by marriage. Ill will had simmered after the lonely young man, at 21, had expressed a desire to marry, the cousin said, but his parents blocked it, saying he did not yet have a master's degree.

Increasingly, Mr. Abdulmutallab was close to nobody, according to those who know him here in Kaduna. The young man who as a teenager who had happily played basketball and PlayStation with his cousin had retreated into his faith.

In Internet postings in 2005, when he was a student at a British boarding school in neighboring Togo, he pondered his sense of isolation. “I feel depressed and lonely,” he wrote. “I do not know what to do. and then I think this loneliness leads me to other problems.”

By 2007, as he studied mechanical engineering at University College London, the transformation was deep.

“He had changed; he was saying `Islam, Islam, Islam;' he was saying we should all try to change, and be more Islamic,” Aminu Baba-Ahmed recalled. Even in recent months, he said, the fun-loving boy he had known was chiding him about going to parties. “I was really surprised,” Mr. Baba-Ahmed said.

Radicalism Takes Root

Radical politics had also firmly taken root. While in London, Mr. Abdulmutallab lived alone, according to a friend there, in a family property at 2 Mansfield Street, an imposing white-pillared building in an upscale neighborhood near Regent's Park where Mercedes-Benzes and Bentleys abound. Newspapers, neighbors and even some family members in Nigeria now blame this lack of supervision, a symptom of what they call the neglect among the Nigerian elite, for facilitating Mr. Abdulmutallab's slide toward extremism.

His family may have assumed that Mr. Abdulmutallab's piety would stave off any profligacy, and it did, at least in the conventional sense. Instead, he took quite a different turn, attending prayers at London mosques under watch by British security services because of their radical links. Still, while he was seen to be “reaching out” to known extremists and appearing on “the periphery of other investigations” into radical suspects there, he was not considered a terrorist threat himself, according to a British counterintelligence official.

For the inaugural lecture of the “War on Terror Week” that Mr. Abdulmutallab helped organize as president of the college's Islamic society from 2006 to 2007, the group booked a large lecture hall. It was a full house, said Fabian De Fabiani, a student at the time who attended, with about 150 other people. Some members of the society dressed in the orange jumpsuits of the Guantánamo Bay detainees; they stood at the doors and handed out leaflets.

Mr. Abdulmutallab was seated “where the lecturer would usually sit,” Mr. De Fabiani said, “very close” to Moazzam Begg, a former Guantánamo detainee then in contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical preacher whom officials say Mr. Abdulmutallab probably met in Yemen before setting off on his failed bombing attempt. In an interview, Mr. Begg acknowledged attending the event but said he did not recall meeting Mr. Abdulmutallab.

“When we sat down they played a video that opened with shots of the twin towers after they'd been hit, then moved on to images of mujahedeen fighting, firing rockets in Afghanistan,” Mr. De Fabiani said. “It was quite tense in the theater, because I think lots of people were shocked by how extreme it was. It seemed to me like it was brainwashing, like they were trying to indoctrinate people.”

There is a very big difference, of course, between religious devotion or radical politics and violence, and while “many, many people start the journey” toward extremist Islam, only a “small number” of people are committed to bloodshed, the British counterintelligence official said. Since the bombing attempt, newspaper editorials, psychologists and officials in Nigeria have suggested that Mr. Abdulmutallab was hardly Nigerian at all, that his ideas came from his time studying overseas.

No Shield From Islamic Fervor

But as rich and shielded as Mr. Abdulmutallab's family was, it was not quarantined from the Islamic fervor that has led to outbreaks of violence in Kaduna.

In 2002, Muslim youths rioted and clashed with Christians after a newspaper article suggested that the Prophet Muhammad might have been happy to choose his wife from among the Miss World contestants, who were set to compete in the capital, Abuja. About 220 people were killed, and mobs burned 16 churches, 9 mosques, 11 hotels and 189 houses, according to a local civil rights groups led by Mr. Sani, Mr. Abdulmutallab's neighbor.

Though the violence did not touch the serene family compound, the radical views permeating society might well have. Mr. Abdulmutallab's family attends one of Kaduna's largest mosques, the Sultan Bello mosque, for Friday Prayer and sermons, said the imam there. Anti-Western and anti-Israeli sermons are staples within its walls, said Nasir Abbas, a local human rights advocate who attends the mosque. “You would hear about what Israel has been doing to Palestine, you would hear that, and also America's contributions to the Israelis,” Mr. Abbas said. In fact, at “all of the mosques” in Kaduna it is possible to hear anti-Western preaching, he said.

Mr. Abdulmutallab's father evidently did not share those views, since he was the first to blow the whistle on his son. Yet even Mr. Mutallab encounters people here like Imam Ibrahim Adam, who said he had been in the family home and had met with the father at “religious gatherings” and meetings for a proposed Islamic bank, of which Mr. Mutallab is chairman of the board, according to the bank's Web site. “Yemeni Muslims should have been the ones to attack America, not a Nigerian,” said the imam, carefully adding that he did not personally support the attack.

Exactly what drove Mr. Abdulmutallab's father to report his son is still a source of debate within the family. In telling the Americans, he “acted on the dictates of his religion,” said the uncle, Mr. Baba-Ahmed. The father later viewed his son's arrest in much the same way. “He summed it up with a verse from the Koran,” Mr. Baba-Ahmed recounted. “ `This is a trial: your offspring can be a source of happiness and sadness.' ”

But the cousin who asked to remain anonymous had a more nuanced explanation for Mr. Mutallab's whistle-blowing. “This is somebody who has investments in the Western world since before the boy was born,” he. “He's got a £4 million house in London. Now the boy is jeopardizing everything.”

While studying last year in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Mr. Abdulmutallab did not appear overly restless, doing better than average in his classes and quietly reading the Koran on the shuttle bus from student housing to campus each day, according to a classmate and the school director. But inwardly, he was apparently chafing against the secularism around him, and he argued with his father over the graduate business program in which he was enrolled before abruptly dropping out. “His father wanted him to continue his studies,” said an Arab official with ties to Persian Gulf intelligence services. “He didn't want to. It wasn't the Arab world for him. It wasn't the Muslim world.” That, the official said, is when Mr. Abdulmutallab became angry “and went to Yemen without his dad's permission.”

He entered Yemen on Aug. 4, with a visa to resume his studies at the Sana Institute for the Arabic Language, where he had studied the language in 2004 and 2005. But this time his mind was elsewhere, and he offered excuses about why he was seldom in class. He said he had a throat infection and “and was thinking of going to Dubai to check it out, and we said that there are hospitals here,” said an American classmate of his, adding, “He'd even leave class in the middle to go to pray at the mosque.”

Investigators are now trying to piece together his movements, examining how he managed to slip out of sight after being driven to the airport on Sept. 21 with an exit visa. Yemeni officials have said he went to the remote, rugged mountains of Shabwa Province, where he met with “Al Qaeda elements” before leaving Dec. 4, a few weeks before his fateful journey to Detroit.

After the disappearance, Mr. Abdulmutallab's father tried desperately to get him back. He enlisted one of his powerful friends, a retired national security adviser, to track his son down using the National Intelligence Agency, Nigeria's version of the C.I.A. But the new director of the agency did not go along with it, officials here said.

“The impression he had was, they were using the service to locate the prodigal son of a rich man, who was off enjoying himself somewhere,” said a top Nigerian security official. “I don't think he did anything. He didn't have any idea about terrorism.”

Since his son's arrest, Mr. Mutallab has remained out of public view. The father “is extremely worried,” Mr. Baba-Ahmed said. “Everybody is worried.”

from the Wall Street Journal, 2009-Aug-27, by Salil Tripathi:

From Assimilation To Radicalization
The 'Black Album' examines the roots of British Muslims' disaffection.

When terrorists bombed London on July 7, 2005, killing 52 commuters, much of the country was aghast. The stoic British endured the Blitz during World War II and learned to take the IRA attacks in their stride. But the killings in 2005 were different. These terrorists were British-born or British-bred and seemed well-integrated. In the videos released after their death, though, they articulated their hatred for British foreign policy and society in a language straight out of the Middle East, albeit in an accent wholly British. As Princeton historian Bernard Lewis asked after 9/11: What went wrong?

This question is at the heart of Hanif Kureishi's 1995 novel, "The Black Album," now a stirring play at the National Theatre in London, where it runs until October of this year, to be followed by a national tour in the U.K. The plot centers on the Rushdie affair. This year is the 20th anniversary of the fatwa that Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini declared on Salman Rushdie for his novel "The Satanic Verses." In that book, Mr. Rushdie had a prescient chapter about "a city visible but unseen," describing the undercurrent of Muslim restiveness, which the white, British middle-class failed to see, enchanted as it was by London's growing multiculturalism.

"The Black Album" reflects that tumultuous time, when British Muslims burned copies of the "The Satanic Verses" because Khomeini deemed the novel offensive to Islam. That burning—and Islamic radicalization—is where it all first went wrong. Some critics have wondered: why now? Hasn't the story been told before? Isn't it known now? In a conversation at his home in West London, Mr. Kureishi says: "My children didn't know why a book was burned in Britain, and there are many like them, who don't know what had happened. There is snobbery in suggesting that people know about the issues already."

As in his later work "My Son the Fanatic," which was adapted into a film of the same title, "The Black Album" shows how young Muslims were being radicalized, adopting a hate-filled ideology critical of the west and dismissive of women. His look at that time reminds us where—and how—it all started. It also sharpens issues of our day, including the Left's fascination with radical Islam.

"I was fascinated by the idea of young Muslims in the West, and the issues of identity they faced," he told me. "If you remember, earlier, the Asian in Britain was comfortable being part of the larger 'black' community, or the 'left.' But something was changing in the minds of Muslims in the West, who were adopting a hard-core religious identity, and I wanted to understand that."

Mr. Kureishi's laboratory was Hammersmith College, where, in the late 1980s, he saw young Muslims taking a deep interest in Islam. He invited them over, and had long conversations with them, particularly after the fatwa. He went to mosques where he was stunned by the image of fiery imams delivering frenzied sermons, railing against, as he puts it, "gays, Israel, and lipstick." He captured that restlessness in the "The Black Album."

The play's main character is Shahid, who arrives in London to study. He loves modernity and sees the departure from his parent's house as his ticket to freedom. He dances to the music of the artist who was at that time still known as Prince, and wants to explore the post-modern literary world. Deedee Osgood is his professor, with whom he shares a passion for music, wine, and more. But other students around him are drawn to radical Islam under the influence of an older student. Osgood's anxious husband, Brownlow, is facing his own identity crisis. He is part of Europe's fashionable left, confused and rootless after the fall of the Berlin Wall, desperate for a new meaning in life. He is enchanted by Islam.

"The Left is always looking for Utopia, and radical Islam seemed to be just that," Mr. Kureishi says. The alliance between Islam and the left, which Nick Cohen dissects so skillfully in his recent book "What's Left," has been on display in anti-American and anti-Israeli rallies since 9/11. But Mr. Kureishi shows how deep those roots lie. In one chilling scene, we see Brownlow utterly enchanted by his new Islamist friends, standing behind a burning copy of "The Satanic Verses" with a grin on his face, thrilled by the smell of burning paper.

Shahid tries to find meaning within his faith, but in the end his questioning individualism leads him to reject the Islamists and the fanatics continue without him. In the last scene a backpack is seen on the stage, then there is an explosion, confusion and death. The backpack—which once stood for the innocent quest of young Westerners exploring the world— has become the symbol of the young Islamist's quest for martyrdom.

Mr. Kureishi's play shows what happens when regressive ideologies clutter a cultural landscape under the guise of multiculturalism.

"When you end up burning a book in the name of a revolution, you think you are on the road to freedom, but in reality you are locking yourself inside a prison's gates. The revolution devours itself, its children." Mr. Kureishi wants a younger generation to learn from that past and choose freedom, not fanaticism. It is a message as relevant today as when he wrote the novel some 14 years ago.

Mr. Tripathi is a freelance writer based in London.

from the Washington Post, 2009-Nov-6, by Mary Pat Flaherty, William Wan, Derek Kravitz and Christian Davenport:

Suspect, devout Muslim from Va., wanted Army discharge, aunt said

He prayed every day at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, a devout Muslim who, despite asking to be discharged from the U.S. Army, was on the eve of his first deployment to war. Yesterday, authorities said Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, a 39-year-old Arlington-born psychiatrist, shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex.

Today, he remains in a Texas hospital listed in stable condition, breathing with the aid of a ventilator.

As authorities scrambled to figure out what happened at Fort Hood, a hazy and contradictory picture emerged of this son of Palestinian immigrants, a man who received his medical training from the military and spent his career in the Army, yet allegedly turned so violently against his uniformed colleagues. Family, friends, acquaintances and co-workers said Hasan was devoted to his faith, gave generously to those in need, but had few friends and odd, sometimes off-putting work habits. Some were aware of his desire to leave the military, but none suspected he could be capable of violence.

In an interview, his aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, said he had endured name-calling and harassment about his Muslim faith for years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"I know what that is like," she said. "Some people can take it, and some cannot. He had listened to all of that, and he wanted out of the military, and they would not let him leave even after he offered to repay" for his medical training.

An Army spokesman, Lt. Col. George Wright, said he could not confirm that Hasan (pronounced Hass-in) requested a discharge.

Hasan's neighbors in Texas where he had lived since July, described him as cordial but reclusive. The only thing about which he was outgoing was his faith. "Sometimes he would have the white Muslim outfit with the beanie on," and had given copies of the Koran to some of his neighbors.

Over the past few days, Hassan started handing out more Korans, as well as most of his possessions, presumably in preparation for his deployment, the neighbors said.

He gave Patricia Villa folding chairs, a shelf , an air mattress, microwave, clothes racks, shirts and suits -- all practically new.

"He was nice to me," said Villa, 47, who moved to Killeen from Fresno, Calif., last month. "He wanted to leave it to persons who really needed it."

Hasan was born in Arlington and grew up in the Roanoke Valley of southwestern Virginia. He was a bookish young man whose father hoped he would go on to significant professional achievement. He spent nearly all of his Army medical career at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District, caring for the victims of trauma, yet spoke openly of his deep opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hasan was shot during a rampage in which he used his own personal handguns. Investigators have not been able to question him.

The Associated Press reported that Hasan attracted the attention of law enforcement authorities in recent months after an Internet posting under the screen name "NidalHasan" compared Islamic suicide bombers to Japanese kamikaze pilots. "To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate," the posting read. "It's more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause."

In a statement issued late Thursday, Hasan's family said they were "shocked and saddened by the terrible events at Fort Hood" and "filled with grief for the families" of victims.

"Our family loves America," said the statement. Noting that Nidal Hasan was an American citizen, the family said: "We are proud of our country, and saddened by today's tragedy. Because this situation is still unfolding, we have nothing else that we are able to share with you at this time.

This morning, TV news trucks and reporters swarmed the Muslim Community Center, where Hasan had attended for many years before transferring to Texas. The mosque's leaders spoke throughout the day, trying to explain the mosque's stance for peace and distancing themselves from the shooter.

"He was a face in the crowd, one of literally a thousand people who came here for prayers," said Arshad Qureshi, chairman of the board of trustees.

While Hasan could be reserved, those who were close to him said he often reached out in unexpected ways, offering one man a ride to the airport and donating money.

Mosque member Juliana Roberson, 46, said he helped buy food for the youth program's weekly meetings, Roberson said.

"This is devastating because they know him personally," she said. "The kids looked up to him."

Hasan stood out at the Center because he would sometimes show up in Army fatigues, said Faizul Khan, the former imam there. He remembered that Hasan was eager to settle down but wanted to marry a woman who was very devout. In his search of a partner in marriage, Hasan wrote in an application filed with a local Muslim matching service that "I am quiet and reserved until more familiar with person. Funny, caring and personable."

"He talked about being 39-years of age, and how much he wanted to have a family, a wife soon," Khan said. "He came to mosque one or two times to see if there were any suitable girls to marry," Khan said. "I don't think he ever had a match, because he had too many conditions. He wanted a girl who was very religious, prays five times a day."

Ezeddine Benyedder, 51, of Silver Spring was one of the few people at Muslim Community Center who considered himself a friend of Hasan's. They first met about eight years ago and saw each other during daily prayers.

"He was a good friend," he said. "Believe me, he was my role model when it came to the Islam life. He was so devout."

Benyedder said there was no signs of anger or frustration from Hasan during his years at the mosque, but recalled that Hasan sought the advice of a few Muslim brothers regarding a presentation he had been preparing to give to his superiors in the Army. Part of the presentation included the argument that the Army should release a soldier from duty if his religion prevented him from actions and orders by the army, Benyedder recalled.

Co-workers saw another side of Hasan.

A longtime Walter Reed colleague who referred patients to psychiatrists said co-workers avoided sending service members to Hasan because of his unusual manner and solitary work habits.

But 1st Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside, who was treated by the psychiatrist at Walter Reed while recovering from a gunshot wound suffered in Iraq, said Hasan was polite and respectful.

One Walter Reed co-worker said Hasan would not allow his photo to be taken with female co-workers, which became an issue during Christmas season when employees often took group photos. Co-workers would find a solo photo of Hasan and post it on the bulletin board without his permission.

However, the deputy commander for clinical services at Fort Hood and Hasan's boss said that Hasan went through a peer review in which his fellow doctors found no fault with the care he was providing.

"He was a dedicated hard-working provider who did really care his patients," said Col. Kimberly Kesling, the deputy commander. "Sometimes people have demons we don't know about and make bad choices . . . People who take care of people with problems can develop problems of their own. " Hasan graduated from Virginia Tech in 1995 and earned a medical degree from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda. From 2003 through last summer, he was an intern, resident and then fellow at Walter Reed, where he worked as a liaison between wounded soldiers and the hospital's psychiatry staff. He was also a fellow at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the Bethesda military medical school.

His aunt said he had been affected by the physical and mental injuries he saw while working as a psychiatrist at Walter Reed for nearly eight years.

"He must have snapped," Noel Hasan said. "They ignored him. It was not hard to know when he was upset. He was not a fighter, even as a child and young man. But when he became upset, his face turns red." She said Hasan had consulted with a lawyer about getting out of the service.

On the rare occasions when he spoke of his work in any detail, the aunt said, Hasan told her of soldiers wracked by what they had seen. One patient had suffered burns to his face so intense "that his face had nearly melted," she said. "He told us how upsetting that was to him."

Hasan "did not make many friends" and "did not make friends fast," his aunt said. "He would tell us the military was his life."

Hasan's father, Malik, immigrated to the United States at age 16 from a Palestinian village in the West Bank, an area controlled by Jordan until 1967 but occupied by Israel since then. There, the family tended to an olive grove, neighbors said.

Malik Hasan spent most of his life in Virginia, moving to the Roanoke area in the mid-1980s. He became a successful restaurateur in Vinton, a small railroad town of about 7,800 just east of Roanoke. His businesses included the Capitol, a well-known, blue-collar beer hall on Market Street, the Mount Olive Grill and Bar and the Community Grocery on Elm Avenue. The Hasans lived in a quiet neighborhood of brick ramblers on Ramada Road. Many in the Roanoke Valley who knew Nidal Hasan said their lasting impression was that he was highly intelligent, and somewhat introverted. Thomas O. Sitz, an associate professor of biochemistry at Virginia Tech, where Hasan graduated in 1995, said he was "one of our better students," if not a memorable one.

Mark Owczarski, a spokesman for the university, confirmed the FBI has contacted campus officials and they are cooperating.

Charles Garlick, who lived across the street from the Hasan family in Vinton, described Nidal Hasan as quiet and reserved. "Every time I'd see him, he'd have a book bag over his shoulder," Garlick said. Nidal Hasan's younger brother Eyad -- nicknamed "Eddie" -- played football with Garlick's son, Zachary. Nidal attended Arlington's Wakefield High School but later transferred to William Fleming High School after his family's move to Roanoke. He graduated in 1988. Hasan's mother, Hanan, who went by "Nora," was known as the "keeper of the peace" at the Hasan family's restaurants. She suffered from kidney problems and died in 2001 at age 49, neighbors said. Malik Hasan died in 1998, at age 52, after suffering a heart attack at his home. The couple is buried in Falls Church.

The Hasan family was large and had deep roots in Roanoke Valley, said Amer Azibidi, minister and imam of the KUFA Center of Islamic Knowledge. At Mount Olive, Malik worked with his brother, Jose. The pair cooked many of the dishes, including lamb kebabs and stuffed grape leaves. But the premature deaths of Malik and Nora Hasan had left the family scattered.

Nidal Hasan enlisted in the Army after high school over his parents' objections, Noel Hasan said. He was a student at Barstow Community College in California and Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke before enrolling at Virginia Tech, Tech officials said. He began his studies at Tech in the summer of 1992, eventually majoring in biochemistry with minors in biology and chemistry. He graduated with honors, officials at the university said, but was not a member of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets or any ROTC program at Tech.

Hasan was "like my sons," his aunt said, spending holidays and free time at her house.

When Army officials called Eyad Hasan to relay the news from Fort Hood on Thursday, Noel Hasan said, the brother "fainted when he heard it." Initially, she said, Eyad was told his brother was injured and in surgery and later was erroneously told he had died.

Hasan is an avid Redskins fan. "That was his main entertainment," his aunt said.

Noel Hasan was unaware of her nephew's pending deployment. "He didn't call or send an e-mail saying anything like that," she said.

His last e-mail to her, she said, was a little more than a week ago "and it was just, "Hi, Aunt Noel. How are you doing?' " On Thursday evening as he was getting into bed, Benyedder received a phone call telling him that his friend had been involved in something. He turned on the television to see Hasan's face on every channel.

"I just cried," Benyedder said. "I was in tears. I couldn't understand. I don't know the words. This is not the person I knew."

Kravitz reported from Roanoke.

from the Houston Chronicle, 2009-Nov-6, by Scott Huddleston and Sig Christenson:

Military falls silent for victims of Fort Hood shootings
13 die, 28 in stable condition; gunman still hospitalized

FORT HOOD — U.S. military forces worldwide observed a moment of silence this afternoon to mark the moment 24 hours earlier, at 1:34 p.m., that a gunman killed 13 people — including 12 soldiers — and wounded at least 28 others at Fort Hood.

Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, about to be deployed to a combat zone overseas, shouted a religious slogan in Arabic before going on the rampage at the Central Texas base Thursday, the base commander said.

Lt. Gen. Robert Cone said that witnesses heard Hasan exclaim "Allahu Akbar!" before opening fire. The phrase means "God is great!" in Arabic.

Today, Col. John Rossi said all the wounded were in stable condition, including the 39-year-old suspect — who is on a ventilator — and the policewoman who shot him, Sgt. Kimberly Munley, 34.

“It was an amazing and an aggressive performance by this police officer,” said Cone, praising her for stopping the gunman despite already being wounded herself.

Identities of the dead and other wounded were not released this morning as notification of family members continued, Rossi said.

Hasan is accused of attacking his fellow soldiers at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, where troops waited to see doctors as they prepared to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan — or return from combat. Armed with two pistols, he shot more than 40 people before military police and civilian police officers responded, officials said. He was wounded by a civilian policewoman, who was injured in the exchange, police said.

Rossi said Hasan, whose assault lasted about 10 minutes, was armed with weapons that were not issued by the military.

“We're looking into whether (the guns) were registered on the post, which was required,” Rossi said.

Col. Steven Braverman, a hospital commander at Fort Hood, said Hasan worked under him at the Carl N. Darnall Army Medical Center.

“He took care of soldiers with behavioral health problems and evaluated people with disabilities,” Braverman said.

One of Hasan's bosses said he didn't show any trouble signs on the job, praising his work ethic.

“Up to this point I would consider him an asset,” said Col. Kimberly Kesling, deputy commander of clinical services at Darnall.

She described Hasan as “a quiet man who wouldn't seek the limelight.”

John Thompson, a neighbor at the Casa del Norte Apartments, said Hasan was a loner who was insistent that no one enter to do repairs while he wasn't there. One time, someone did enter without his knowledge, and when he found out later, "he wasn't too happy," he said.

Thompson said he didn't know if Hasan was worried about someone interrupting his Muslim prayers, or about finding something "that he didn't want anyone to know about."

Hasan had been notified before the shooting that he was going to deploy to Afghanistan, Braverman added. Hasan was supposed to help soldiers there deal with combat stress.

Early Thursday, Hasan showed no signs of worry or stress when he stopped at 7-Eleven for his daily breakfast of hash browns, said Jeannie Strickland, the store's manager.

“He came in (Thursday) morning just like normal,” she said.

However, surveillance video showed he was wearing religious attire rather than typical civilian or medical clothing. Strickland said that was unusual and she asked him about it, but he replied that he did that sometimes.

A few hours later, officials said, the Virginia native began his rampage on the post. Fort Hood, near Killeen, is the largest active duty post in the United States, with 340 square miles of facilities and homes. More than 50,000 military personnel and about 27,000 family members and civilian support personnel live and work there.

Cone did not speculate on a motive, but the Army released a statement saying the shootings didn't appear to be an act of political terrorism. Two others were questioned and later released.

Hasan's family said in a statement today that his alleged actions were “despicable and deplorable” and don't reflect how the family was raised.

Postings drew attention

Federal law enforcement officials told the Associated Press that Hasan had come to their attention at least six months ago because of Internet postings that discussed suicide bombings and other threats.

One of the Web posts that authorities reviewed is a blog that equates suicide bombers with a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save the lives of his comrades.

“To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause,” said the Internet posting. “Scholars have paralled (sic) this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers.”

The officials say Hasan appeared to have made the postings, but they are still trying to confirm that he was the author. They say an official investigation was not opened.

Killeen police officials late Thursday said their officers were at Hasan's apartment on the outskirts of Fort Hood.

“We do have officers up there assisting the federal agents,” said Killeen police spokeswoman Carroll Smith. Smith also said that the department's SWAT officers were sent to the apartment.

In Fort Hood, Maria Treviño, who works on the post at Darnall, said she was on the phone with a woman who was at the readiness center when the shots erupted. Treviño said she heard screaming and gunshots before she hung up to get help.

“They just started screaming, `Don't let him in, don't let him in, they're shooting at us,' ” she said. “I pray they didn't get hurt. It was horrible. We're still scared over here.”

Treviño said that soon after the call, bloodied victims began arriving at the hospital, which was on lockdown.

Base doctors converged

Lt. Col. Larry Masullo, acting chief of the post's emergency hospital, said that within minutes of the first shooting report, his staff began calling every physician, nurse and medic available.

About 100 medical personnel converged at Darnall as teams were assembled into trauma bays, he said.

Maj. Stephen Beckwith, a doctor and the post's EMS director, said shots were still being fired when paramedics arrived on the scene

One paramedic, who began treating people as officials said Hasan continued to fire, later suffered an “acute stress response,” he said.

Sgt. Andrew Hagerman, a military police officer, had been patrolling a housing area when he heard reports of a shooting. He said he first suspected kids with firecrackers but raced toward the scene when he realized what was happening.

"You don't hesitate at all," said Hagerman, who has deployed to Iraq. "And your main goal is to take the shooter down."

Hagerman saw Hasan, unconscious shirtless and in combat pants, on the ground as paramedics treated him.

Beckwith said 16 trauma beds were available in the hospital, and medics and doctors treated patients quickly enough that they never ran out of beds.

More than half of the patients had suffered multiple gunshot wounds, he said. Most of the injured soldiers were young.

When you're in Iraq, you're prepared for these things to happen, he said.

But he added: “It's tragic and frustrating to see this happen on the post.”

Staff writers Peggy Fikac in Austin, Vianna Davila and Valentino Lucio in San Antonio, R.G. Ratcliffe at Fort Hood, Gary Scharrer in Killeen, Mike Glenn in Houston and Gary Martin in Washington, the Associated Press and Chronicle news partner KHOU-TV contributed to this report.

from the Jerusalem Post, 2009-Jul-19, by Sabina Amidi:

'I wed Iranian girls before execution'

In a shocking and unprecedented interview, directly exposing the inhumanity of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's religious regime in Iran, a serving member of the paramilitary Basiji militia has told this reporter of his role in suppressing opposition street protests in recent weeks.

He has also detailed aspects of his earlier service in the force, including his enforced participation in the rape of young Iranian girls prior to their execution.

The interview took place by telephone, and on condition of anonymity. It was arranged by a reliable source whose identity can also not be revealed.

Founded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 as a "people's militia," the volunteer Basiji force is subordinate to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and intensely loyal to Khomeini's successor, Khamenei.

The Basiji member, who is married with children, spoke soon after his release by the Iranian authorities from detention. He had been held for the "crime" of having set free two Iranian teenagers - a 13-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl - who had been arrested during the disturbances that have followed the disputed June presidential elections.

"There have been many other police and members of the security forces arrested because they have shown leniency toward the protesters out on the streets, or released them from custody without consulting our superiors," he said.

He pinned the blame for much of the most ruthless violence employed by the Iranian security apparatus against opposition protesters on what he called "imported security forces" - recruits, as young as 14 and 15, he said, who have been brought from small villages into the bigger cities where the protests have been centered.

"Fourteen and 15-year old boys are given so much power, which I am sorry to say they have abused," he said. "These kids do anything they please - forcing people to empty out their wallets, taking whatever they want from stores without paying, and touching young women inappropriately. The girls are so frightened that they remain quiet and let them do what they want."

These youngsters, and other "plainclothes vigilantes," were committing most of the crimes in the names of the regime, he said.

Asked about his own role in the brutal crackdowns on the protesters, whether he had been beaten demonstrators and whether he regretted his actions, he answered evasively.

"I did not attack any of the rioters - and even if I had, it is my duty to follow orders," he began. "I don't have any regrets," he went on, "except for when I worked as a prison guard during my adolescence."

Explaining how he had come to join the volunteer Basiji forces, he said his mother had taken him to them.

When he was 16, "my mother took me to a Basiji station and begged them to take me under their wing because I had no one and nothing foreseeable in my future. My father was martyred during the war in Iraq and she did not want me to get hooked on drugs and become a street thug. I had no choice," he said.

He said he had been a highly regarded member of the force, and had so "impressed my superiors" that, at 18, "I was given the 'honor' to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death."

In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her "husband."

"I regret that, even though the marriages were legal," he said.

Why the regret, if the marriages were "legal?"

"Because," he went on, "I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their 'wedding' night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die.

"I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over," he said. "I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her."

Returning to the events of the last few weeks, and his decision to set free the two teenage detainees, he said he "honestly" did not know why he had released them, a decision that led to his own arrest, "but I think it was because they were so young. They looked like children and I knew what would happen to them if they weren't released."

He said that while a man is deemed "responsible for his own actions at 13, for a woman it is 9," and that it was freeing the 15-year-old girl that "really got me in trouble.

"I was not mistreated or really interrogated while being detained," he said. "I was put in a tiny room and left alone. It was hard being isolated, so I spent most of my time praying and thinking about my wife and kids."

from FrontPageMag.com, 2009-Sep-14, by David Horowitz:

Ramadan as a Festival of Hate
Ramadan Turning into Month of Jew-Hatred in the Muslim World

Islamic anti-semitism. What's old is new again. Actually, it has never taken a holiday in the Muslim world. What's galling is Obama's demand that we respect it.

Muslim governments are taking advantage of the Ramadan TV season to broadcast anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda, some of it reminiscent of the Nazi propaganda that preceded the Holocaust.

With Muslims across the world fasting during the daylight hours and gathering at home for their daily "break of the fast" meal, Arab propaganda ministries take advantage of the large potential audiences for TV shows by broadcasting their top programs, with many shows produced specifically for Ramadan TV watchers. Programs about Israel and the Jewish people are considered top rating draws among Arab media, and each year government-controlled TV stations across the Middle East broadcast programs themed around the supposed treachery committed by Israel or the Jewish people against the Muslims and the world in general.

According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which monitors media broadcasts in the Arab world, Iran has this year been broadcasting a Syrian-produced series called "Al-Shatat," which purports to show how Jewish bankers – particularly the Rothschilds – came to dominate international banking, and thereby the world. With Jewish characters uttering lines like "all the nations that have accepted non-Jewish faiths should be destroyed and annihilated," and "we have been granted an unparalleled honor -- to dominate the world, by means of capital, knowledge, politics, by means of killing, or any other ploy," the 30-episode series has been shown in Arab countries throughout the Middle East, including Jordan.

Five anti-Israel shows in Egypt

No fewer than five new series being broadcast on Egyptian TV this year revolve around Israel and the Jews. One called "The Spy Wars" tells the story of Samia Fahmy, an Egyptian who was allegedly recruited by the Mossad, but instead "tricked" the Israelis who tried to recruit her and led them to be arrested by Egypt. Another series, called "My Heart is my Proof," tells the story of Jewish-born Egyptian singer Layla Murad, her rise to stardom, the accusations that she secretly supported Israel, and her subsequent fall from grace in much of the Arab world. Another program, "The Second Gate," tells of a mother whose son is kidnapped and taken to Israel.

Not all Egyptians were happy with the selection of programs. Speaking to Agence France-Presse, a student at Cairo University said that the shows about Israel and Jews were just smokescreens, shown "just to keep us occupied, so we don't have to think about the real problems of unemployment and poverty." Another student said "We can't find an enemy? Let's talk about Israel. We should be focusing on people's problems, poverty... and stop talking about Israel and spies. We need to focus on the real domestic issues."

In an interview, Mahmud Zaki, a media professor who stars in one of the series, said that the programs were designed to keep the Egyptian people's attention on Israel. "In recent times, interest in the Palestinian question has been dwindling on the Arab street. Everything seems like old news on satellite channels and in the papers. There was a move to revive interest in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and re-ignite patriotic feelings," he said.

David Horowitz is the founder of The David Horowitz Freedom Center and author of the new book, One Party Classroom.