Are religious scientists being scientific in their beliefs?

My astronomer friend Wladimir Lyra summoned me into a facebook debate in which Alexandre Correia, a friend of his that is a professor at the Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal, said:

"God is the definition for "Intelligent Universe". We were created by the Universe and we believe that we are intelligent, so, as an integrating part of the Universe, we have to admit that the Universe is also intelligent... So the question that remains is rather "Did the Universe want to create us, or was it just an accident?", which can be replaced by the question "Did we want to create ourselves?". This is too confuse..."

Fancy stuff. Correia added this after some humorous responses of others:

"Love and other feelings are also entities created in some human brains, so, are they more real than God? I am not trying to prove that God exists or not, but as a scientist I must keep my mind open. The disbelief in God is as dogmatic as its acceptance..."

Correia also pointed to a page dedicated to the Division of Perceptual Studies, School of Medicine, University of Virginia, a research group that seems to be dedicated to parapsychology. This is my answer after Lyra's invitation:

I'm duly summoned. I don't know why would Alexandre bring about a research group on "weird" phenomena, or why would we be astonished that they publish in journals with nonnegligible impact factors. Things like extant research groups or impact factors are poor substitutes for objective analyses of state-of-the-art evidence. Since Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos there is an increasing perception in philosophy of science that our theories evolve and our ability to judge how scientific they are must deal with this ever ongoing process. I cannot judge cosmology by taking one of Wlad's articles nor could anyone judge evolutionary biology by taking one of Svante Paabo's papers and reading it. 

So, if we can agree that parapsychology research groups have nothing to do with the evidence for the existence of a god or more gods, let's move on. [I must add here that, for those who still think parapsychology is a serious science, former parapsychologist Louie Savva does not agree, and he is not the first parapsychologist to recant his own research field, as Susan Blackmore is prepared to tell you.]

Well, there is serious research on how religious myths arise. I suggest as a starting point for study the works of Justin Barrett, Pascal Boyer and Scott Atran. Boyer has summarized much in his "Religion Explained". Grosso modo, religious concepts are made when violations are credited to entities that belong to basic ontological categories of the human mind. 'ANIMAL' is an ontological category, another one is 'PERSON'. These ontological categories work for us as a kind of catalyst for understanding. When you show a seal for a child on the TV, the child pretty much already makes assumptions about the seal - these assumptions (such as that the seal dies if split, gives birth to live pups, etc.) are inferences made from the ontological category, and must not be uttered explicitly for the child to know them.

Barrett and Boyer found out that myths are united by one single 'algorithm' (so to speak): introducing one violation on the expected properties of an entity, that is surprising according to the entity's ontological category. So the Aymara of the Andes believe in a mountain that feels hungry if not fed by them. The mountain belongs to the category of 'NATURAL OBJECT', and hunger is not one of the basic properties of a natural object. A god belongs to the category of 'PERSON', but has no body, has no birth nor death, and has counterontological mind properties such as omniscience.

Barrett's research shows that, regardless of your cultural cradle, regardless of you being an Atheist or devout Christian, stories that contain this kind of myth (built as described) will glue on your memory easier. This is a clue of one of the reasons why religion persists. But also, if their theory is correct, shows that, when the ontological category of 'PERSON' evolved in our minds because of selection pressures favoring social interaction, it served as a raw material for myth construction. The PERSON category must have evolved so that we could predict the behavior of our fellow human beings. It contains cognitive tools such as the theory of mind and empathy.

Long story short, let's review what kind of thing we're dealing with when we try to consider scientifically a concept such as 'God'. First, we must remember that the correct null hypothesis is that there is no God, so if we cannot provide any evidence of any God, we should be atheists as a default position. That is true for any scientific claim. Second, we must unveil what kind of hidden inferences are made when people talk about gods, and those include the assumption that so-called 'God' has a mind like our own, has cognitive abilities for creation like us, feels like we do. All those things have evolved in our lineage. Evolutionary genetics is on the verge of discovering how that happened - the studies with the gene FOXP2 were a great debut: first we discover this gene is different in humans and neanderthals [and causes speech impairment in some mutations], second we put its human form in mice and discover that these mice develop more connections between their neurons in some parts of the brain, and this accounts for cognitive phenotype. We are in an era that is indeed going from molecules to minds, with the care that this investigation demands.

So, in light of recent research we have no reason to accept any minds that do not come from molecules, such as the minds of gods. This is a reasonable metaphysical conclusion supported by evidence. On the other hand, people who love you touch you, pay attention, observe, help and usually give you as much evidence of their love as you would need to believe them.

Scientists that still consider the God hypothesis as probable are just being victims of our universal lust for 'counterontological' concepts like those described by Pascal Boyer and Justin Barrett. In other words, they are not thinking scientifically, their claims of pro-God probability are freudian rationalizations for the natural appeal of myths that easily glue not only on our memories, but on our emotional and cultural wishes as westerners.

The ambassador of science

By Jerônimo Teixeira, at Pirenópolis (Goiás state, Brazil).
Veja magazine, Brazil, July 8th 2009. Translated by Eli Vieira – eli@elivieira.com

The Englishman Richard Dawkins was brought to biology intrigued about great issues on the origin of life. He has become the greatest modern spokesman for Darwinism and a militant atheist. For the first time in Brazil, he made sure he could exercise his naturalist side.
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Richard Dawkins interrupts the interview and points his finger to the sky, where a flock of noisy birds are flying about. "Look there! Parrots". Sober, rigorous in his answers, Dawkins sometimes shows himself to be sarcastic – particularly when he attacks his favourite target, religion –, but he is not exactly an expansive person. His almost childish enthusiasm before parrots and toucans – a fauna he obviously cannot find at home in Oxford – may be credited to the fascination towards nature which the author so well conveys in books such as Climbing Mount Improbable and the recent The Ancestor's Tale, published in Brazil by Companhia das Letras. Dawkins, however, says he hasn't become a biologist because he liked animals or plants.

"I must confess I have never been a great naturalist. I have developed it through the years. My starting motivation for the study of biology was philosophical", he says. His curiosity was aimed at what he calls "great questions": Why life exists? How did it appear on Earth? And his answers come from a fundamental source: the thought of Charles Darwin (this one, by his turn, a born-to-be naturalist). Dawkins, 68 years old, is today the greatest spokesperson for Darwinism. But he did more than just "popularising" modern biology: since his spectacular debut with The Selfish Gene, in 1976, Dawkins is, and this is no exaggeration, consolidating a new worldview.

Dawkins spent two weeks in Brazil. He was honoured in the meeting of the Animal Behaviour Society, which gathered researchers from 23 countries in Pirenópolis between June 22^nd and 26^th. From there he went to a three-day trip to the Pantanal, together with other researchers who took part in the meeting. He came back marvelled by the diversity of life. "The variety of birds is spectacular. I was lucky I was accompanied by many ornithologists. I am no bird specialist", he says. Last Thursday , a day before he flied back to England, he was in Parati, to join a reading on The God Delusion, his anti-religion pamphlet.

At the inn where the ABS meeting took place, Dawkins was always seen in the lobby, bending over his Apple notebook. He attended the lectures assiduously and attentively – he was excited after he left University of California's Marlene Zuk's conference on the quick evolution of Hawaii crickets. "I studied these crickets myself in the 70's. But my research didn't yield great results", he says. The invitation for the animal behaviour meeting rendered Dawkins the chance to reconnect himself to the subject on which he initiated his studies in biology at Oxford, at the beginning of the 60's as a student with the Dutch ethologist Niko Tinbergen, the Nobel prize winner for medicine in 1973. In the last decades, however, he departed from direct research to dedicate himself to the popularisation of science. Now retired, Dawkins held, from 1995 to 2008, the first Charles Simonyi professorship for the public understanding of science, a Chair established in Oxford by donations from the Hungarian American Charles Simonyi, Microsoft's ex-executive and programmer. "I'm a sort of ambassador for science", Dawkins says.

Dawkins' books have always reserved criticism against religion (especially against creationists). But the crusade against faith has turned into the centre of his activities since the release of The God Delusion in 2006. The scientist has supported the campaign which displayed banners in the traditional red buses of London which read "there's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life". Always bellicose, the biologist does not accept any commitment solution which reserves distinct places for science and religion. "Unlike many people claim, the two fields do overlap. The religious view of the Universe, the idea that the Universe has a creator – it is, in its way, a scientific theory, though a wrong one", he says. In Dawkins' view, therefore, to promote atheism is also a way to continue his main mission: popularising science. But he is growing resentful about the polemic fame the attack against God renders him. He regrets, for instance, that the journalists in general ask him questions about this theme only.

Indeed, some people started perceiving him as a maverick for a negative programme – the man who says no to God and religion. It was in this role that he was satirised, three years ago, in the always acid cartoon South Park (his response was witty: he complained about the horrid imitation of the British accent made by the actor who dubbed his animated version). The positive message of Dawkins is only one: the theory of evolution, unravelled by Charles Darwin in his classic 1859 book The Origin of Species. In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins found a unique speech to convey the deep meaning of this process. He saw natural selection from the eye view of its basic unit, the gene. The living creatures, he argued, are nothing more than vehicles for the replication of genes by means of reproduction. This is, up to date, the basic perspective of evolutionary psychology, which seeks to explain animal behaviour (human included) on Darwinian grounds. "There has never been a science book like The Selfish Gene", wrote the writer Ian McEwan on the book's 30^th anniversary. "It triggered a gigantic change in the theory about evolution, and at the same time seduced the layman, without being condescending and with style."

Dawkins' revolutionary point of view wasn't immediately a consensus in the scientific arena. Steadfast readers have criticised the supposed "genetic determinism" of the author. The attack against Dawkins and other biologists who worked in similar lines – such as Edward O. Wilson, at Harvard – was more of an ideological rather than scientific nature. Left-wing critics like the geneticist Richard Lewontin, the neuroscientist Steven Rose and the palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould showed a programmatic aversion to any suggestion that the human behaviour could be influenced by genetics. "I have never understood why claiming that the environment influence surpasses that of genes was so important for Marxists. Maybe it has something to do with the belief that the human being can always be improved", Dawkins says. The Selfish Gene at last established itself as a fundamental reference for modern biology – and it has been followed by eight other elegant and enticing books in his explanation of evolution (a new title, The Greatest Show on Earth, is about to be published this year).

His description of life from the gene may suggest a hard and disenchanted materialism. The final lesson, however, is about a radical humanism: the human being is the only one capable or rebelling against the tyranny of the genes. "Whenever we use a contraceptive, we are contradicting the Darwinian imperative of reproduction. And we do it in many other serious issues", Dawkins says. Orthodox Darwinist, Dawkins could repeat in any of his books the famous statement with which Charles Darwin ended The Origin of Species: "There is a grandeur in this view of life".

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This article in PDF here.

Short testimonial by a young brazilian epicureanist

This text is an email sent to EPL (Epicurean Philosophy List).
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Regarding cities, I have an interesting (if you think) history from myself here in Brazil, and I would be pleased to share it with you guys, and to read yours also.

I lived the longest time of my early childhood in a little country town in Minas Gerais state, during that time the population grew from about 5 thousand to 8 thousand. There, I was indoctrinated as a Catholic, I learnt to appreciate books and nature (my dad owns a medium size farm there, with some cattle, a lake and many fruit trees), and I have fixed friendship ties with the few people who will accompany me (not necessarily in the places I will go but in my heart) to the rest of my days as Metrodorus had accompanied Epicurus.

I believe this small town (named Lagamar) was my Epicurean Garden in the sense of Ethics (the early infancy is quite important to the development of empathy, as Piaget would theorise - I regard empathy as the greater value of Epicurean Ethics).

When I was 10 we (the whole family: me, my parents and my three sisters) moved to a larger town, Patos de Minas (pop. about 120 thousand). There I continued to study nature, particularly Biology of which I was always fond. I continued what I was doing in the early infancy when I used to read encyclopedias for children - to found my personal Epicurean Garden of Materialism. I should not underestimate the impact of my earlier home in the small town, for there I was always in contact with trees, open field, and animals.

However, I was a moralist christian as a child. When I was 11/12 I had my first contact with Darwin's theory of Evolution. I was awed by its simplicity and clearness. Meanwhile, I was getting a higher leap of faith in my first communion (when Catholic children eat the host - the supposed 'body of Christ' - for the first time). I remember dimly that I used to have a 'dual mind' to reconcile science and religion, and I was a sincere believer as a Christian.

When I was 13, I returned to Lagamar (the small town) and there I started to breed a deeper skepticism. I started reading science maganizes for laymen. Then I reached the age of 14, when I was appointed to write a newspaper linked to a group of Catholic teenagers. It was soon after 9/11/2001 that I wrote the first edition. The World Trade Center in NY had crumbled, and in my editorial about it in the first edition of the teen newspaper I was just reluctant to talk about God, any God (in a Christian paper!). I converged to another doctrine of Epicurus': I didn't think the gods cared about us anymore (9/11 was not a cause but a confirmation). Even further than this, I became an atheist (I remember I did this just by exchanging dogmas - I just had faith no god existed - I verbally acknowledged this).

When I was close to 15 years old, I moved again to Patos de Minas, this time without my parents, to live with my sisters and continue my studies in the brazilian equivalent of Highschool.
Empathy and friends played an important role in my life again, as ever since my childhood.

Although an atheist, I had a short (less than 6 months long) flirtation with a meager kind of spiritualism after hearing about NDEs (near-death experiences).

I reached the age of 17 as a skeptic. I didn't believe in gods or in life after death. I had "received" Epicurus' letter to Menoeceus, even though I hadn't read it by the time. But the emotional acceptance of the latter has happened only after I was admitted to University of Brasília (in 2005) and read, in 2006, the Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (I was 19). The Antology of Epicurus has been also an enormous influence, not because I had read it with much attention, but because I met the earlier mind historically registered that shared at large my own views on ethics and knowledge.



In this process, from 2004 to this moment (october 2008) I can't tell exactly when I ceased to be a dogmatic atheist. I recognised I couldn't be a true freethinker while I was commited to any kind of dogma. So I thought it through and decided that in this question, as well as in many others, I should consider the proposition which I didn't share as extremely improbable.

If I consider the gods to be extremely improbable, I don't believe in them, and I call this atheism. I have coined the term Asymptotic Atheism to describe my case, but I could well be called Agnostic Atheist too. I have made a quick research in Philosophy about this sort of reasoning, which I now call Probabilistic Intuition - present in Epicurus, Locke, Hume, Clitomachus, Carneades, even in the stoic Sphaerus, and, most recently, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, among others, seem to share this view (though not all of the cited have applied probabilistic intuition to the existence of gods).

Now I'm 21, two months away from my graduation in Biology, here in Brasília city. What I owe to Epicurus is that I have never felt stronger and happier. It is thanks to him I have some Ataraxia in my mind, unity and honesty in my thought, and awareness of empathy in my trail.

He is not an idol, for I don't need any idols anymore. He is a friend, among others whom I cherish.

Aging and Immortality in Biology

Human beings (and other animals) age and die for these probable reasons:

1 – The inaccurate replication.

We carry in each of our cells the chromosomes, long strands of DNA wound up into proteins. The ends of these strands are made of short-sequence repeats, and their assembly is known as telomere.

When cells replicate in mitosis (the rate of replication differs from tissue to tissue - skin and gut cells renew every week or so, while neurons may last a lifetime), the DNA must be copied and inherited by daughter cells. Every cell carries in DNA the information which stands for the whole body.


But for molecular reasons, in each mitosis the telomeres shorten up. Imagine the telomeres are cushions protecting genes between one another. These cushions get thinner and thinner as replications go by, to the point that genes can be affected. If genes are affected, further replication and survival of the cells becomes jeopardized (what can be observed in elders, e. g., in scarceness of their defense cells).

If genes are deteriorated because they lack telomere protection, problems emerge. For instance, the cell may lose control over replication and it brakes loose. Maddened promiscuous replication of cells is famously known as cancer. This is one of the reasons why elderly people are more susceptible to cancer.

For a tumor to appear, it is not strictly necessary that replication-related genes are affected. The process may be triggered by mutation in specific receptor genes alone, those which allow the cell to perceive its neighbors. That is to say, a cell in solitude is a dangerous cell.

2 – The decay of biological structures

This second reason is intimately related to the first one.

The very phenomenon of breathing (and by obvious extension, eating, since breathing is connected to food energy intake) causes decay to the tissues. By decay I mean mutation.

Every woman who buys anti-wrinkle cosmetics has heard about free radicals – and these are produced due to bad reception of electrons at the end of respiratory chain in mitochondria. Free radicals are so damaging that natural selection favored cells owning peroxisomes, organelles capable of tackling them. These radicals interact with DNA and change it, causing mutations, spoiling genes

which control cells and tissues. Mutations can also be caused by many other circumstances.

As our body is always renewing itself, and needs energy (food and respiration) in order to do so, it has no means to avoid gradual gathering of mutations throughout the tissues in the course of decades. This means stem cells (which give birth to themselves and to tissue-function-specialized cells all over the body) diverge from the ancestral type, and this ancestral type is the fertilized egg from our mothers.

When diverging from their ancestor, these cells may start misproducing elastin and collagen, then wrinkles thrive and skin slackens. They may overproduce melanin and bring about dark spots on the skin. May damage the brain and provoke diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. And so cells keep up the noble art of aging.

Smart solutions

It is well known that our bodies are largely a result of natural selection, so there have been also genes selected during evolution because they diminish this biological decay in some ways. But they are not perfect, for evolution mainly privileges effective means to surviving until reproduction happens and offspring grants another chance to the lineage. Old age is not common in nature, so not many ways to restore genetic integrity to longer lasting have appeared.

Some genes "detect" virus infection and cancer conspiracy, and oblige the cell to cease its activity, brake its DNA and dissolve into vesicles later "eaten" by defense cells. This is called apoptosis.

Furthermore, defense cells can also detect carcinogenic activity in other cells and induce this programmed death to them.

There are ways to thicken telomeres (namely, reconstruction from telomerase activity), mastered by stem cells such as those that produce sperms and eggs (gametes).

Thus, although gametes are vulnerable to mutations, it is an evolutionary advantage that individuals are born from a single cell, for this grants at least in youth and reproductive age minimal resemblance among copies of genes in the various cells of the organism, so that they "agree" with each other, and work in harmony as a choir to be judged by natural selection, until the inexorable forces of aging hijack and shatter this agreement once again.


"Nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of evolution", said Dobzhansky in 1973, and now the statement has never been so truthful.

It may be concluded that cancer is a microevolutionary process, in which the selection unit is the cell.

As Homo sapiens descended from bacteria, and bacteria are "immortal" beings (for there is no senility among them), cancerous cells from people can return to this condition of perpetual replication. This may happen because the only "purpose" of living beings, if it may be called this way, is to copy themselves.

On immortality

In Biology researches there are well known cell lines named HeLa. They are immortal, and carry an altered human genome.

HeLa stands for Henrietta Lacks, a woman who died in 1951.

Scientists extracted tumor cells from Henrietta and bred them in culture medium. Nowadays, these cells sum up to tons, spread all over the world in laboratories. They caused Mrs. Lacks's death, in a genetic takeover.

Today, HeLa cells are not exactly human. Instead of 46 chromosomes, they can bear 82 chromosomes into their nuclei. Evolution and natural selection have acted upon them, so that they are particularly good at keeping their telomeres intact (if they don't do so, they die out).

If by any odds a HeLa cell produces a gamete, the different number of chromosomes prevents it from fertilizing with a human gamete.

Hence, HeLa are reproductively isolated from human species, that is to say, HeLa has turned into a new species, properly described as Helacyton gartleri.

If the world were made of culture medium, HeLa would spawn itself freely and independently from researchers's aid.

Currently, from studies with very few multicellular species which seem to be rid of senility (such as the hydrozoan Turritopsis nutricula), and from telomere research, we may have some perspective of future breakthroughs on how to elongate human life span.

If we manage to do to ourselves what has already been done to the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, humans will live up to about 200 years.

References

Hug, N., & Lingner, J. (2006). Telomere length homeostasis Chromosoma, 115 (6), 413-425 DOI: 10.1007/s00412-006-0067-3

VALKO, M., RHODES, C., MONCOL, J., IZAKOVIC, M., & MAZUR, M. (2006). Free radicals, metals and antioxidants in oxidative stress-induced cancer Chemico-Biological Interactions, 160 (1), 1-40 DOI: 10.1016/j.cbi.2005.12.009

Kenyon, C., Chang, J., Gensch, E., Rudner, A., & Tabtiang, R. (1993). A C. elegans mutant that lives twice as long as wild type Nature, 366 (6454), 461-464 DOI: 10.1038/366461a0

Lucey BP, Nelson-Rees WA, & Hutchins GM (2009). Henrietta Lacks, HeLa cells, and cell culture contamination. Archives of pathology & laboratory medicine, 133 (9), 1463-7 PMID: 19722756

(Christian) Religion: The Coherence Problem

For some time I have been saying that moderation in abrahamic religions can be described as a hen hatching Godzilla's eggs. The following arguments will explain.

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If moderate religious people claim the myth of creation is a metaphor, they will have no power to cease the acid digestion that this 'metaphorization' will cause to sacred historical reports (the contents of religious books).

Moderates will be just selecting what is convenient to judge as literal, like the Virgin Mary pregnancy (for Catholics), or the divine parenthood of Jesus. In short words, cherrypicking.

Concerning thoroughly these metaphors, would Yaweh be a metaphor for the laws of Physics? The story of Jonah and the 'whale' is a metaphor? The resurection of Lazarus is metaphoric? What about Jairus' daughter? And the bread loafs being multiplied, the turning of water into wine, the walking upon waters, the apparition to Thomas?

These stories have as much evidence and santity as the six-day creation myth, Eve coming from Adam's rib, and Noah's ark (the favorite metaphor spots nowadays).

Fundamentalists are "right" on saying that everything is to be taken literally in the Bible, for thus has happened and worked for centuries and the modern metaphorization would be seen as a heresy by most christian leaders that ever lived.
Of course, by doing so the fundamentalists need to attach to a pathetic ignorance (and reluctance) about nature and scientific discoveries.

Thus, even more coherent are the "Christian Science" believers who would rather wait for a miracle than take medicine to cure diseases like flu and cancer. They are being coherent with their religion, and so are the suicide bombers with Islam.
If the Koran spurs muslims to kill the infidels, on what grounds could a muslim moderate possibly retort otherwise?

I even suspect there are moderates because moderation is the response for those who do not endure the precariousness of their own holy books, those of little faith! If the Bible says that every single animal species has been embarked in an ark of some cubits in length and width, moderates must have faith in the holy book! If the Koran recommends infidels should "have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off", muslims ought to have faith in the holy word.

Certain things must be taken in absolute terms and do not fit into moderate hypocrisy. Moderates do not actually follow their religions, but claim themselves to be part of them notwithstanding their basic dogmas.

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If you allege you belong to a religion, but regard certain claims of it as mere metaphor, is your allegation truthful? If anyone is free to consider which point is metaphoric, and there is no reliable criterion as to how far goes the metaphor, so we can have within this religion an atheist who has taken the metaphor to the furthest conclusion.

If there is so much free thinking within the given religion, it has probably scattered and decomposed from inside, and is not properly a true religion (in the strict sense of religion as a collective phenomenon).

The 'problem' is not the so common habit of interpreting religion through a personal scope - this is a rather admirable strategy from the perspective of calming down the fuss. But could any philosophical coherence be derived from such a stance?

It is traditional to try and organize ideas, and this is a much important task to be done if coherence is wanted out of complete metaphor or complete literality (apparently the only means to imediate coherence) of christian claims. Metaphor seems to be attempted as the fine line between literality and litterality (from litter, complete rubbish).

Bart D. Ehrman says: "Texts do not simply reveal their own meanings to honest inquirers. Texts are interpreted and they are interpreted (just as they were written) by living, breathing human beings, who can make sense of texts only by explaining them in light of other knowledge, explicating their meaning, putting the words of the text “in other words”."(book Misquoting Jesus)

But wouldn't it be unlikely that an almighty omniscient being could not find any clear enough means to convey his message? Wouldn't God avoid such vulnerable obscure texts that allow opposite interpretations?

Such lack of clarity can be a clue to uncover this being as purely fictitious. The permissive attitude towards these texts is not to be expected from an ultra intelligent deity - on the contrary, minimal logic is to be expected, as well as avoidance of personal (not universal) interpretations on answers about whether he did or did not create the world, for instance.

If we are free to interpret the biblical myth as a metaphor, what could halt us when doing so about the creation of the universe, something that in this view did not happen literally?

The commonplace statement "God moves in mysterious ways", when applied as an answer to these questions, plunges religious thought into ridicule. Where are the mysterious ways when Religion claims he wants to be worshiped and receive prayers? These godly cravings are all too hard to understand for an entity with this weird taste for mystery.

If this deity allows so much freedom of interpretation on what he supposedly said, his behaviour is too lenient: does not scrutinize the vast number of interpretations about his own nature, most of them wrong and even outrageous, for obvious statistical reasons.

"All faithful, ye may underestimate me even as an anthropomorphic revenge-thirsty entity who builds primates out of clay, but the most important is to worship me and pay your tithes", God would say.

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SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Scientific models are not completely destroyed. They are usually enhanced, as happened to Newton's, to the atomic models, and even to the theory of evolution. Things such as spontaneous generation, for instance, have never reached per se this status, for they failed to exclude other alternatives.
But for religion, when it changes substantially, it happens by means of force or power, never on an evidence basis.

This historical process of change by force seems to be in a crossways with modern interpretation of holy texts. What else but evidence could spur such condescending attitude?

What could halt the acid corrosion caused by metaphors?
On what fantasyometer can religions rely upon to weigh whether something is too fantastic to be taken as literal in the Bible?

The birth of a messiah is more or less fantastic than a divine creation as described in Genesis?

Some more problems rise: there are serious biological limitations to virgin conception (as Catholics believe), and these may be as numerous as physical limitations to a creation six days long.

If it is too radical to demand extreme position, the sole reason for this demand is the abscence of a reliable method (never mind text exegesis and hermeneutics) among those proposed by believers fair enough to judge what is and is not a metaphor in the Bible.
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LIBERAL THEOLOGY

Three elements of Liberal Theology according to the Anglican Bishop Sumio Takatsu (only numbered paragraphs):

(1) "It is receptive to science, to arts and present human studies. Seeks truth wherever it is. For Liberalism, there is no disconnection between the human truth e and the Christianity truth, [no] disjunction between reason and revelation. The truth is to be found in experience driven more by reason than by tradition and authority, and [Liberal Theology] shows itself open to ecumenism."

This could be read this way: "dear Christian, if you reckon you can't believe in virgin conception and molecular Genetics at the same time, just do some sublimation to both concepts, keep it to yourself, and cease your complaints. You may flirt with other religions which say things different from those that I say, I don't really give a damn."

(2) "Simpathy has been shown towards the usage of the Historiography canons [sic] to interpret holy texts. The Bible is considered a human document, whose mean validity is in registering the experience of people open to God's presence. Its persistent task is to interpret the Bible, in the light of a modern cosmovision and of the best historical research and, at the same time, interpret society, in the light of the gospel narrative."

An alternative translation to Takatsu's words (not said by him literally - I'm just feeling free to put his ideas in other words): "dear Christian, remember, above all, that the Bible says cute things, therefore must be true about something. If you don't know why other human documets (like the letters you write to your girlfriend) are not considered as holy as the Bible, be aware that the Bible is old, it came first, so it deserves a special place in the altar. And please, interpet society based on the Sermon on the Mount, not in the Jericho massacre."

(3)"The liberals stress the ethical implications of Christianity. The Christianity is not a dogma to be believed, but a way of living and living together, a path of life."

In other words: "dear Christian, just say you are a Christian because we like to see that happening. Do what is right as we say, keep on taking the bread even thinking it is not Christ's body. About whether Chirst is really the Christ, forget about it, eat the bread and shut up."

The Liberal Theology's postulates do not solve the great elephant in the room of having an almighty and omniscient God who does not behave as such.

If God didn't mind that a book of men like the Bible had been used to justify so much nonsense in His name, so he cannot be good and interventionist at the same time. My line of reasoning takes me to the classical arguments by Epicurus:

"Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world? He cannot and doesn't want to? Then why call him God?"

In the manners of Liberal Theology, the concept of God as intelligent, powerful and creator of nature is as hollow as an unicorn with the same abilities.

If the Old Testament is to be metaphorized, and the priviledges of literality are to be given solely to the New Testament, we will face the problem of whether there is any meaningful link between both when the last one cites the first one.

There is an interpretation according to which Christ died to wash away the original sin perpretated by Adam and Eve. If Adam and Eve's story is a metaphor, Christ died on behalf of vagaries of his father's literary style - what certainly diminishes the deed.

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ADAPTING EPICURUS TO THE LITERALITY/METAPHOR PROBLEM

God wants to convey explanatory messages to Humanity about himself and about origins, but he is not able to do it through literal messages that would not allow mutually exclusive interpretations or evidence-based rebuttal? Then he is not omnipotent.

He is able, but does not want to? So nobody knows anything about his nature, not even if he is only one or an assembly of entities, not even if he did create the universe.

He can and wants to? Then why the holy texts ever produced by Humanity are so ethereal, lost in nonsense and excessive moralism, and almost never predict anything really mysterious in nature (thus revealing who actually conceived them)?

He is not able nor wants to? Then why call him God, and why even consider him a plausible possibility when the only reason to do so is our wish to have a cozy universe?

God could be only something mindless, without any intelligence, the basis of matter and energy, so it is unable to produce holy texts. Neither wants to, nor has the ability to want anything else. Something extremely simple that gave birth to all universe, but is far from being as smart as bacteria or mice.
This seems to me the proper and ultimate metaphor for God (means both Pantheism and Atheism).
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Could be judged as metaphoric only what is written in poetic language in the Bible?

No. This would be too subjective and dishonest a method. The Sermon on the Mount is in poetic language (a beautiful one). So, will the blessed that mourn be comforted or not? If it is metaphoric, then I may interpret that "they that mourn" will be comforted not because there is a comforting force that shall relieve them, but because time heals grief, or because death will be a consolation extinguishing all perception including grief.

Jesus walked on the water violating the laws of Physics and called the prophets men of little faith. If the excerpt seems poetic, therefore metaphoric, this means that faith spurs stronger attitude, not that faith can make of mockery of Newton's laws. But if the excerpt is not poetic, means that Jesus really did it.

No problem, after all he is the son of God and had the power to do it, right?
To be religious is to believe in things that would happen few times in the course of History. But what is being questioned here is: religious people are ready to be coherent in order to believe in miraculous events reported in the Bible and ignore their inconsistency before science?

Could a line of coherence be drawed when pointing one or another of these miraculous events a metaphor because it is embarassingly inconsistent?
Discarding literality begins among thorough logic reasonings, or sheer selection of explanations on an emotional appetite?

Stating that Christ's miracles are literal and Noah's ark is metaphor only denounces the primordial motivation of religion: to humanize the universe. To judge something as true because it is beautiful and comfortable.

This motivation, despite its absurd incoherence, is what lies behind the theological rhetoric, the rise and fall of dogmas, the mysteries of faith, the miracles, and all the fundamental pillars of Christianity.

Baptism

“In the 19th century some archaeologists discovered in Oenoanda (present Turkey) the remains of a great wall, with an inscription. It included teaching excerpts carved by Diogenes of Oenoanda, who intended to show to any wanderer, man, woman or child, from any nation, a summary of human wisdom in four statements, a medical prescription for the soul, a TETRAPHARMAKON [τετραφάρμακος] which read:

1 – There’s nothing to fear about the gods,

2 – It is unnecessary to fear death,

3 – Happiness is possible,

4 – Pain can be avoided.”

Although the tetrapharmakos is not completely feasible, this blog is an attempt to make it true and feasible.

As a biologist and an atheist, I would like to run this attempt in vivo: based on science and reason and taking on the complexity of life.

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The apparent paradox above demands further explanation.
When I say that it is not feasible, but even so I will persist on it, what I have in mind is that I am not directly endeavouring to convince anyone that gods should not be feared.

Many systems of belief have done precisely the opposite of what they proposed when trying avidly to change attitudes and thoughts. Much evil blossomed amid desperate attempts to establish touchstones of what should be judged as goodness.

My chief interests concern solely acquiring knowledge, questioning, and enunciating rational arguments. The outcomes of these, I believe, may sow upon us the principles of the Tetrapharmakos. In searching the scientific amorality and trying to bring it to Philosophy, our conclusions can get rid of contamination by our wishes and our model of the world can be disinfected from naïve hope or despair. Furthermore, we can possibly meet a wise resignation to the indifference of the universe, a lively beholding of nature not subservient but respectful to its strength.

Epicurus inspires healthy mental attitude, for he embodies a man who awakens and sees himself as a rational simulacrum; who sees Nature not as a benevolent mother, nor as an evil stepmother, but as an inert cradle at the same time comfortable and uncomfortable. And yet, a perceptive mind, that uses multiple hypotheses and probabilistic intuition to try and explain phenomena and impressions, who has a sympathetic attitude towards other minds, and that expurgates the daily triviality giving rise to a succession of spectacular events.

This philosophical attitude, a by-product of a way of thinking and not a holy grail worthy of thirsty craving, allows the relief from fears of death and gods, and a new way to endure pain and enjoy happiness - this one also a by-product, not a coveted jewel.