Benton said that under provisions of the Science Education Act enacted last year by the Louisiana Legislature, schools can present what she termed “critical thinking and creationism” in science classes.

Board Member David Tate quickly responded: “We let them teach evolution to our children, but I think all of us sitting up here on this School Board believe in creationism. Why can’t we get someone with religious beliefs to teach creationism?”

Fellow board member Clint Mitchell responded, “I agree … you don’t have to be afraid to point out some of the fallacies with the theory of evolution. Teachers should have the freedom to look at creationism and find a way to get it into the classroom.”

Even though creationism in the minds of these school board members may not be the same thing as intelligent design, a Federal court already weighed in on this with a resounding verdict on the side of science, which in that instance fell on the side of evolution.

From The New York Times (Dec. 20, 2005):

A federal judge ruled today that a Pennsylvania school board’s policy of teaching intelligent design in high school biology class is unconstitutional because intelligent design is clearly a religious idea that advances “a particular version of Christianity.”

In the nation’s first case to test the legal merits of intelligent design, Judge John E. Jones III dealt a stinging rebuke to advocates of teaching intelligent design as a scientific alternative to evolution in public schools.

The judge found that intelligent design is not science, and that the only way its proponents can claim it is, is by changing the very definition of science to include supernatural explanations.

On p. 64 of the Court’s decision (pdf), the Court held that Intelligent Design (ID) was not science:

We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980′s; and (3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community. As we will discuss in more detail below, it is
additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the
subject of testing and research.

It also seem apparent that the Livingston School Board has not passed the “Lemon” test. (No. Not that kind of “Lemon Law”.) Quoting again from the Dover case:

As articulated by the Supreme Court, under the Lemon test, a government-sponsored message violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment if: (1) it does not have a secular purpose; (2) its principal or primary effect advances or inhibits religion; or (3) it creates an excessive entanglement of the government with religion. Lemon, 403 U.S. at 612-13. As the Lemon test is disjunctive, either an improper purpose or an improper effect renders the ID Policy invalid under the Establishment Clause.

The bigger catch here is that the there is something governmental that “inhibits” religion, namely, the First Amendment and the court cases that restrict religious education in public schools. But it’s not much of a snag. If the schools in question are parochial schools there’d be no issue at all. The smaller catch might be that if the school board does not encourage the teaching of other “scientific” views, they are harming their students. This is a clear secular purpose. But one would think the Dover case closed that avenue.

Doesn’t Louisiana have enough on its plate?

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How I believe in God by Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times

When I was in first or second grade and had just been introduced by the nuns to the concept of a limitless God, I lay awake at night driving myself nuts by repeating over and over, But how could God have no beginning? And how could he have no end? …

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The parable went like this. “Two people return to their long neglected garden and find, among the weeds, that a few of the old plants are surprisingly vigorous. One says to the other, ‘It must be that a gardener has been coming and doing something about these weeds.’ The other disagrees…They pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. The believer wonders if there is an invisible gardener, so they patrol with bloodhounds but the bloodhounds never give a cry. Yet the believer…insists that the gardener is invisible, has no scent and gives no sound. The sceptic doesn’t agree, and asks how a so-called invisible, intangible, elusive gardener differs from an imaginary gardener, or even no gardener at all.”

Gottleib does a smashing job surveying the battleground: we’ve got the “New Atheists”, e.g., Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, on one side and the “New Apologists” (my term, not his), e.g., Karen Armstrong, on the other. Where’s Wittgenstein’s philosopher of religion who relates what he sees but leaves things as they are? Or do we throw our hands up in the air and give up? Maybe Gottlieb takes up the latter as the last sentence below suggests to me anyway.

One trenchant critic of the New Atheists is Terry Eagleton, a leading literary critic (and Catholic), who defines God as “what sustains all things in being by his love, and…is the reason why there is something instead of nothing, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever.” Some find it comforting or inspiring to utter such statements. But unless they can explain what those ideas mean and how one might tell whether they are right (which Eagleton never does), this is a self-deluding comfort. A wiser response to the apparent inexpressibility of statements about God may be simply not to express them, and just get on with the gardening.

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… the internal wrestling never ends. The search for truth must always be first; and religion is nothing if it is not true. Which is why doubt can never be a danger. Banishing doubt is the danger.

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What caught my eye, of course, was the reference to Aristotle and Thomistic thought. (Disclaimer: When I first studied Aristotle it was in conjunction with Thomistic thought. I’m in no way an enemy of Thomist thought, per se.) But as I continued to read, I saw the challenge emerge: do we rest on reason and our intellect? Or do we depend on our moral inclinations? It’s my old “faith versus reason” thing.

This puts the question poorly, I admit. I can tell I’m sputtering here. Let’s just say that I mostly disagree with Justice Scalia’s decisions. But I really admire his method of reasoning. It’s the reason why I do love Thomistic thought. The brilliance of the logical arguments: clear (no really!), elegant, architectonic. One may acknowledge the validity of an argument without conceding that it is a sound argument.

If one were to argue from George’s first principles, everything seems to follow quite smoothly. But I uncomfortable with George’s conclusions. As some of you know, I’m an ardent defender of human dignity, yet I am pro-choice. I’ve acknowledged the mine field and I’m still struggling to reconcile my views with my arguments.

George draws a distinction between Aristotle and Hume: Aristotle, he says, has human reason that can see an objective moral order. For Hume, on the other hand, reason is the slave of the passions. That is, the universe has facts, not values.  (I think George misreads Aristotle here, but I understand what he’s trying to say. The Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics doesn’t strike me as an argument for the existence of an objective moral order in the way in which George proposes. But that’s for another blog.)

What follows from this divided is fascinating! George thinks if we follow the Aristotelian route we get the reason and free choice or free will. If we’re Humeans (which he thinks American liberals are), we have amorality and determinism!

Whoa! Dude!

The argument is that because there is no objective reason to do X or ~X, I’m under the command of some genetic, pre-determined causal force or inclination. I’m a slave to my passions, not my reason. My reason ought to provide me with a rational decision based not on a kind of cold, hard, unfeeling facts, but upon genuine moral principles. Those principles are rational principles. It’s very Platonic (as the article alludes): our rational minds can access the Form of the Good. We can know right from wrong. We can know the eternal Truth by properly using our minds.

But on the Humean side, since we can’t find any objective principles in nature, we’re left with whim and taste, on the one side, and a genetic predisposition or a bump on the head, on the other. It’s the latter that has me a bit stumped.

Aristotelians, like St. Thomas Aquinas, hold that there is an objective moral order. Human reason can see it. And we have the free will to follow or not. “In a well-ordered soul, reason’s got the whip hand over emotion,” George told the seminar, in a favorite formulation borrowed from Plato. Humeans — and in George’s view, modern liberals are usually Humeans — disagree. Against Aristotle, Hume argued that the universe includes facts but not values. You cannot derive moral conclusions from studying the world, an “ought” from an “is.” There is no built-in, objective reason for me to choose one goal over another — the goals of Mother Teresa over the goals of Adolf Hitler, in George’s hypothetical. Reason, then, is merely a tool of whatever desire strikes my fancy. “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions and may pretend to no office other than to serve and obey them,” George said, paraphrasing Hume, just as he does in seemingly every essay or lecture he writes.

In George’s view, if I have no rational basis for picking one goal over another, then I have no free choice, only predetermined “passions” — the result of genetics, a blow to the head, whatever made me prefer either curing the sick or killing the Jews. We have reason and free choice, he teaches, or we have amorality and determinism.

I can see how one might charge the moral or cultural relativist with being a Humean. You don’t have any real (Platonic) reason for being against female genital mutilation. There are no rationally obtainable principles or reasons that stand as premises for your argument against this practice. You would simply “feel in your gut” (I guess) or you’d have some other moral rules that help you reach your conclusion. But your “moral grounds” aren’t objectively rational. Since they are drawn from your likes and dislikes. And those likes and dislike have the source in our genes (?). Hence, these decisions derive from a kind of determinism.

Again, what struck me is this conflict between the moral standard of Clifford — “Give me reasons, or give me death!” sort of view, and what your personal moral conclusions are. Our options appear to be as follows: Can you be moral without God? Can you be moral without “reasons”? Can you be moral with a non-rational dependence on God? (I take it that being immoral or amoral really isn’t an option!)

George’s view seems to be that God (or religion) is intimately connected with reason. Basically, God and morality are completely compatible with and are accessible through human reason. What human reason achieves is God’s truth. A Gator may not realize this, but that’s just the way it is. I take it that George thinks that the atheists and non-theists don’t reach (or can’t reach) Truth because they don’t use reason. But where’s my third and fourth prong?  Can’t you be moral without being “religious”? Can’t you use reason and not reach what are in effect “religious first principles”, but just rational principles? George thinks the latter is nonsense. Conservative Catholic belief simple echoes those genuine first principles and is in perfect alignment with them. The truth, then, simply is “religious”. Or, the “religious” simply is the truth.

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In the interview last year, Funes told Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano that believing the universe may host aliens, even intelligent ones, does not contradict a faith in God.

“How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?” Funes said in that interview.

“Just as there is a multitude of creatures on Earth, there could be other beings, even intelligent ones, created by God. This does not contradict our faith, because we cannot put limits on God’s creative freedom.”

Funes maintained that if intelligent beings were discovered, they would also be considered “part of creation.”

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Most “everybody” knows that Jefferson (you can’t get more “founder-y” than Jefferson!) was a deist.

Well, it looks like deism is making a come back in American society. (Andrew Sullivan offers his views on this here.) It’s a fascinating development, really. Personally, I think it is evidence of two things. First, there’s a genuine lack of religious education among people who would consider themselves “religious” in the institutional sense that James avoids. Second, I think it speaks to an acceptance of the reasonableness of religious belief  among people who would not call themselves “institutional” believers. In other words, just a generic, non-religionist, “ordinary” (whatever that is!) American. [Sorry: a-MUR-can.] What this means is that a lot of folks who are not affiliated with any organized religion are not atheists. They’re actually deists.

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At the very beginning of your book, you describe yourself as a materialist. This raises an interesting question: Can a materialist really explain the history of religion?

I tend to explain things in terms of material causes. So when I see God changing moods, as he does a lot in the Bible and the Quran, I ask, what was going on politically or economically that might explain why the people who wrote this scripture were inclined to depict God as being in a bad mood or a good mood? Sometimes God is advocating horrific things, like annihilating nearby peoples, or sometimes he’s very compassionate and loving. So I wanted to figure out why the mood fluctuates. I do think the answers lie in the facts on the ground. And that’s what I mean by being a materialist.

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I agree with Wolin when he says that:

A genuine and fruitful dialogue between believers and nonbelievers is impossible unless one takes the standpoint of one’s interlocutor seriously.

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