On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I will be attending the American Humanist Association annual conference at the Hilton Hotel in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey (very close to New York, also being sponsored by the American Ethical Union.
On Friday morning, June 2, I will be presenting a lecture on Holocaust Denial based on my latest book, DENYING HISTORY (to be released in a couple of weeks by the University of California Press). I've just put together a 140-slide show that is very visually powerful and not only debunks the deniers, but shows how we prove that the Holocaust happened, or how any historical event happened.
On Saturday morning, June 3, I will be presenting a lecture on Why People Believe in God based on my last book, HOW WE BELIEVE, as well as showing some episodes from my television series Exploring the Unknown.
Saturday evening, June 3, I will be presented with the first annual Carl Sagan Award (by Ann Druyan, Carl's widow, no less), following by a short lecture I developed for a CSPAN show on the life of Sagan, in which I do a quantitative analysis of his life like a social scientist would analyze a subject. That was the subject of my last essay in Skeptic, "The Measure of a Life: Carl Sagan and the Science of Biography."
On Sunday evening, June 4, 7pm I will be speaking at the Buffalo, NY headquHY PEOPLE BELIEVE IN GOD. For directions to or further information call 716/636-1425 or e-mail Barry Karr at skeptinq@aol.com or go to their web page at http://www.csicop.org. We will also be discussing ways for our organizations to cooperate in our mutual fight against pseudoscience.
I know there are many of you on the east coast whom I have not had a chance to meet so if you can make it next week I'll see you there.
I thought you would all enjoy this beautifully written statement on the value of science by Richard Dawkins to Prince Charles, in response to a speech he gave (web connections below) that was less than rational.
Reith Lectures 2000: RESPECT FOR THE EARTH - Can Sustainable Development be made to work in the real world?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/reith_2000/
Lecture by Prince Charles followed by a discussion
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/reith_2000/lecture6.stm
An open letter from Richard Dawkins to Prince Charles
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4020558,00.html
Prince courts controversy as he places the nature of God above the god of science by James Meek
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4019026,00.html
Angry Charles warns scientists of disaster
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4019033,00.html
Guardian Unlimited Special reports: GM debate
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/gmdebate/
Your Royal Highness,
Your Reith lecture saddened me. I have deep sympathy for your aims, and admiration for your sincerity. But your hostility to science will not serve those aims; and your embracing of an ill-assorted jumble of mutually contradictory alternatives will lose you the respect that I think you deserve. I forget who it was who remarked: 'Of course we must be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.'
Let's look at some of the alternative philosophies which you seem to prefer over scientific reason. First, intuition, the heart's wisdom 'rustling like a breeze through the leaves'. Unfortunately, it depends whose intuition you choose. Where aims (if not methods) are concerned, your own intuitions coincide with mine. I wholeheartedly share your aim of long-term stewardship of our planet, with its diverse and complex biosphere.
But what about the instinctive wisdom in Saddam Hussein's black heart? What price the Wagnerian wind that rustled Hitler's twisted leaves? The Yorkshire Ripper heard religious voices in his head urging him to kill. How do we decide which intuitive inner voices to heed?
This, it is important to say, is not a dilemma that science can solve. My own passionate concern for world stewardship is as emotional as yours. But where I allow feelings to influence my aims, when it comes to deciding the best method of achieving them I'd rather think than feel. And thinking, here, means scientific thinking. No more effective method exists. If it did, science would incorporate it.
Next, Sir, I think you may have an exaggerated idea of the naturalness of 'traditional' or 'organic' agriculture. Agriculture has always been unnatural. Our species began to depart from our natural hunter-gatherer lifestyle as recently as 10,000 years ago - too short to measure on the evolutionary timescale.
Wheat, be it ever so wholemeal and stoneground, is not a natural food for Homo sapiens. Nor is milk, except for children. Almost every morsel of our food is genetically modified - admittedly by artificial selection not artificial mutation, but the end result is the same. A wheat grain is a genetically modified grass seed, just as a pekinese is a genetically modified wolf. Playing God? We've been playing God for centuries!
The large, anonymous crowds in which we now teem began with the agricultural revolution, and without agriculture we could survive in only a tiny fraction of our current numbers. Our high population is an agricultural (and technological and medical) artifact. It is far more unnatural than the population-limiting methods condemned as unnatural by the Pope. Like it or not, we are stuck with agriculture, and agriculture - all agriculture - is unnatural. We sold that pass 10,000 years ago.
Does that mean there's nothing to choose between different kinds of agriculture when it comes to sustainable planetary welfare? Certainly not. Some are much more damaging than others, but it's no use appealing to 'nature', or to 'instinct' in order to decide which ones. You have to study the evidence, soberly and reasonably - scientifically. Slashing and burning (incidentally, no agricultural system is closer to being 'traditional') destroys our ancient forests. Overgrazing (again, widely practised by 'traditional' cultures) causes soil erosion and turns fertile pasture into desert. Moving to our own modern tribe, monoculture, fed by powdered fertilisers and poisons, is bad for the future; indiscriminate use of antibiotics to promote livestock growth is worse.
Incidentally, one worrying aspect of the hysterical opposition to the possible risks from GM crops is that it diverts attention from definite dangers which are already well understood but largely ignored. The evolution of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria is something that a Darwinian might have foreseen from the day antibiotics were discovered. Unfortunately the warning voices have been rather quiet, and now they are drowned by the baying cacophony: 'GM GM GM GM GM GM!'
Moreover if, as I expect, the dire prophecies of GM doom fail to materialise, the feeling of let-down may spill over into complacency about real risks. Has it occurred to you that our present GM brouhaha may be a terrible case of crying wolf?
Even if agriculture could be natural, and even if we could develop some sort of instinctive rapport with the ways of nature, would nature be a good role model? Here, we must think carefully. There really is a sense in which ecosystems are balanced and harmonious, with some of their constituent species becoming mutually dependent. This is one reason the corporate thuggery that is destroying the rainforests is so criminal.
On the other hand, we must beware of a very common misunderstanding of Darwinism. Tennyson was writing before Darwin but he got it right. Nature really is red in tooth and claw. Much as we might like to believe otherwise, natural selection, working within each species, does not favour long-term stewardship. It favours short-term gain. Loggers, whalers, and other profiteers who squander the future for present greed, are only doing what all wild creatures have done for three billion years.
No wonder T.H. Huxley, Darwin's bulldog, founded his ethics on a repudiation of Darwinism. Not a repudiation of Darwinism as science, of course, for you cannot repudiate truth. But the very fact that Darwinism is true makes it even more important for us to fight against the naturally selfish and exploitative tendencies of nature. We can do it. Probably no other species of animal or plant can. We can do it because our brains (admittedly given to us by natural selection for reasons of short-term Darwinian gain) are big enough to see into the future and plot long-term consequences. Natural selection is like a robot that can only climb uphill, even if this leaves it stuck on top of a measly hillock. There is no mechanism for going downhill, for crossing the valley to the lower slopes of the high mountain on the other side. There is no natural foresight, no mechanism for warning that present selfish gains are leading to species extinction - and indeed, 99 per cent of all species that have ever lived are extinct.
The human brain, probably uniquely in the whole of evolutionary history, can see across the valley and can plot a course away from extinction and towards distant uplands. Long-term planning - and hence the very possibility of stewardship - is something utterly new on the planet, even alien. It exists only in human brains. The future is a new invention in evolution. It is precious. And fragile. We must use all our scientific artifice to protect it.
It may sound paradoxical, but if we want to sustain the planet into the future, the first thing we must do is stop taking advice from nature. Nature is a short-term Darwinian profiteer. Darwin himself said it: 'What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horridly cruel works of nature.'
Of course that's bleak, but there's no law saying the truth has to be cheerful; no point shooting the messenger - science - and no sense in preferring an alternative world view just because it feels more comfortable. In any case, science isn't all bleak. Nor, by the way, is science an arrogant know-all. Any scientist worthy of the name will warm to your quotation from Socrates: 'Wisdom is knowing that you don't know.' What else drives us to find out?
What saddens me most, Sir, is how much you will be missing if you turn your back on science. I have tried to write about the poetic wonder of science myself, but may I take the liberty of presenting you with a book by another author? It is The Demon-Haunted World by the lamented Carl Sagan. I'd call your attention especially to the subtitle: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His latest book is 'Unweaving the Rainbow' .
It's baaack....
Monday May 22 11:46 AM ET
Catholic Church Could Allow New Tests on Turin Shroud
By Jude Webber
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Church could allow new tests to be carried out on the Turin Shroud to try to solve the riddle of one of Christianity's most enduring enigmas, the archbishop of Turin said Monday.
"We know it has to be science, and not faith, that has the last word on this mysterious image," Archbishop Severino Poletto told a news conference at the Vatican.
"We can't exclude new tests, in particular on some strands of the cloth where the image is found."
Controversial carbon dating tests carried out by scientists in Oxford, Zurich and Tucson, Arizona, concluded in 1988 that the Shroud dated from between 1260 and 1390.
The results caused a sensation -- suggesting one of the Church's most revered relics was a clever medieval fake, rather than confirmation that it was the burial cloth that wrapped Christ's body after his crucifixion.
But no-one has been able to get to the bottom of how the three-dimensional, heat-resistant and apparently indelible image of a man with long hair and wounds consistent with Gospel descriptions came to be imprinted on the ancient linen cloth.
The sheet also bears traces of ancient male type AB blood, which some scientists say is consistent with traumatic injuries.
Archbishop Poletto said he had noted divisions over the carbon dating results among the 39 scientists who attended a Shroud symposium in March. The Shroud goes on display in Turin from August 12 to October 22 as part of the Vatican's Holy Year celebrations.
"On the dating, I talked to four of them. Two were in favor and two, one from Hong Kong and one from Russia, radically criticized the method that was used," Poletto said.
"So everything has to be done again. On this subject, the last word has not been said. There is need for more research."
The Shroud, which is kept in Turin, belongs to the Vatican, and it would have to give its permission for any new testing.
But Poletto's suggestion that new tests could take place was a major about-turn: His predecessor as Turin archbishop, Cardinal Giovanni Saldarini, flatly ruled out allowing more tests when the Shroud last went on public display in 1998.
"Any future new tests to date the Shroud will be authorized only when the method has been clarified further," Monsignor Giuseppe Ghiberti, one of the Church's top Shroud officials, said.
"Otherwise, the concerns expressed by one part of the scientific world over that dating, which could be affected by the trials and tribulations of the Shroud over the centuries and in particular the heat from fires, would affect any new tests."
The ancient, yellowing linen cloth, which measures 4.4 by 1.2 meters (14.5 by 3.9 feet) has had a rough life, damaged by water and more than once narrowly escaping destruction by fire.
The Vatican does not claim the Shroud is authentic but treasures and venerates it as a powerful reminder of Christ's passion.
Pope John Paul said in 1998 after travelling to Turin to pray before the Shroud that scientists should keep seeking answers to its mystery but should keep an open mind.
Poletto said the Pope and Russian Patriarch Alexiy II had both been invited when the Shroud goes on display this year. The two men, whose churches are undergoing a period of strained relations, have never met but the Pope dreams of visiting Moscow. He turned 80 last week.
"They've already told me it will be very hard for the Pope to come back to Turin because of his Holy Year commitments here in Rome, but the Pope has surprised us with unexpected gestures, before and I haven't lost hope," Poletto said.