“As ever when we unweave a rainbow, it will not become less wonderful.”

As I kicked off a second reading of Richard Dawkins’ 2006 chart-buster, I was reminded of a secondhand conversation to which I was privy at a (now-obsolete) home electronics store. A slick-haired, middle-aged man stands a few paces away, clearly fixated by the latest inventory of high-definition televisions. As a store clerk approaches the shopper remarks, “You ever wonder how it all works? I mean this is just…wow.”

The clerk, as if being tested on his knowledge of the trade, seizes the moment with avidity, launching into a monologue on the mechanics of flat panel operation. (Paraphrasing): “Well, sir, you can direct a cold cathode light source, such as a fluorescent lamp, through a light shutter made up of pixels coated with tiny precision filters and get color images that way, as in the case of an LCD monitor, or you can discharge electricity through pixels filled with a rare gas mixture and watch as color phosphors are stimulated to produce visible light. We call the second type a plasma displ-.”

The glassy-eyed patron, with all the disinterest he can muster, interrupts, “Oh I’d rather not know. Takes some of the magic out of it.”

Mystery, of course, allows the imagination to run wild. Absent a mechanistic explanation for a video monitor, a shooting star, an earthquake or, say, the appearance and evolution of life on earth, our minds latch onto those ideas we find most intuitive or comfortable, be it magic, mysticism or other notions of our own imagining. Before we deduced better answers, we were quite content attributing weather, disaster, war, famine, constellations and star movements, migratory patterns and the rest to divine agency. For much of our early history “God” was the placeholder for human ignorance.

Fast forward to present day, and we see that the lineaments reaped by modern society (like the HDTV) were borne out of a firm unwillingness to accept stagnant, untested answers and an insatiate thirst for deeper understanding. It was this aggrandizing spirit of discovery through which science was born. As God has been pushed further and further into obscurity by the march of science, does that, by extension, make God a delusion? Has our wealth of knowledge elbowed God out of the cosmic arena? Richard Dawkins believes so.

To borrow his own phrase, Dawkins has been a “consciousness-raiser” for all things science, and is among the most distinguished practitioners living today. His work in gene-centric approaches to evolution and original ideas on memetic theory have spawned fresh avenues of research. Like many scientists, Dawkins’ quest to deconstruct reality has not diminished the grandeur of the cosmos, but has rushed in a deeper intimacy and awe. And in doing so, he believes science has drawn the curtain back far enough to declare God a giant fallacy wrapped in a cocoon of faith and religions mere vestiges of earlier ignorance.

Gods and Goddesses

In his 2006 meisterwerk The God Delusion, based on his earlier documentary The Root of All Evil?, Dawkins assumes a two-pronged approach: he seeks to demonstrate first the untruth of revealed religion as well as its detriment to society. In consonance with other atheist literature, his thesis is that a supernatural God almost certainly does not exist and that society would be better off without the religions these gods and goddesses have inspired.

Of all the “New” Atheists, Dawkins tends to attract the most flack, both from the theist camp as well as from some of his co-thinkers (Frans de Waal comes to mind). It may simply be because he is the most publicly visible, or it might be because his temperament is in need of a retooling. Whatever your opinion, his scientific prowess and nigh immortal ability to convey scientific ideas through rhythmic prose cannot be denied.

As it turns out, his public persona is quite removed from his literary gait. However cantankerous Dawkins may seem while perched on a stage, his writing reflects a more even-handed, sometimes even glancingly humorous scientist trying sincerely to get at the truth. Sure, some of the adjectives he throws around in reference to religion are a bit zealous and undiplomatic, but that is only to be expected given the spectrum of beliefs sighted in religion. Overall, I found his approach equitable and well thought out, as will be customary to anyone familiar with Dawkin’s craft.

He makes clear at the starting gate the conception of God he is challenging in this book: “a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us.” (p. 31) This subsumes not only theistic ideas of God but deistic versions as well. As the chapters unfold, he frequently narrows in on the Abrahamic triumvirate of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

While Dawkins may not be blind to the psychological utility of religion or its merit as a moral motivator, he is above all concerned with whether or not it is true. And it is in this vein that the first half of the book positions itself. Dawkins engages many of the popular arguments in favor of God’s existence (while satirizing a few of the spectacularly weak ones), laying each of them to rest or at least exposing their glaring flaws.

As a specialist in biology, he reserves the greatest expositional force to dismantle the argument from design. With characteristic lucidity he explains how Darwin’s bold idea completely upended the design argument once and for all. Exercising Daniel Dennett’s analogical idea of cranes and skyhooks, Dawkins remarks, “Natural selection is the champion crane of all time.” (p. 73) Unlike the top-down, skyhook hypothesis of a designer, evolution via natural selection is a gradated, bottom-up process where genetic configurations can only be understood post hoc. Dawkins stresses repeatedly that natural selection is not driven by chance but by fitness. He then concludes that while natural selection and design are alternatives, only the former is actually an explanation (since the latter merely regresses it) and more importantly, is the only one of the two buttressed by evidence. With descent by modification, one could hardly ask for an idea which more handily routs the chronic refrain of religious creation myths.

In response to the cosmological version of the design argument, that of a finely tuned universe, Dawkins brandishes the familiar one-two stroke of the anthropic principle and Rees’ multiverse hypothesis. Whether a non-natural agency existing outside of space and time or swarms of buzzing universes is a more satisfactory explanation of the facts is largely a subjective verdict, and both currently occupy the same threshold of evidence: zero. At any rate, given what once was ascribed to God that was later dislodged by science, Dawkins asks what possible reason could we have for thinking “God did it” will win out here?

Prayer and NOMA

Considering how many prayers are pitched to the skies each day as devotees inveigle their deity of choice to accomplish some change in the world, we might expect to find some observable results. To date there have been several well-controlled, double-blind studies on the efficacy of prayer. In each of these studies, the null hypothesis was confirmed (i.e., prayer was shown to have no effect on patient condition). As Dawkins points out, one of the largest and most significant of these studies was funded by the Templeton Foundation, which of course was trying to prove the opposite. Templeton solicited Christian petitioners across America and provided them with the first name and last initial of 1,802 patients to pray for. The whole unctuous affair lasted for months, and the results were published in the American Heart Journal in April 2006. No relationship observed.¹

Met with a vacuum of evidence, many religious apologists instead take a different approach. Rather than aimlessly looking for something concrete, they resort to the notion of NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria). Popularized by Gould and swiftly adopted by apologists as a pivotal bulwark of their faith, it is the idea that science and religion occupy entirely separate domains of reality. Essentially, “God” and its attendant effects are immune to the scientific method. But as Dawkins illustrates with the multi-million dollar Templeton study, religion is quick to embrace science when there is even a slight chance the evidence may fall in its favor. This should quickly tell us that “NOMA is only popular because there is no evidence to favour the God Hypothesis.” (p.59)

On several occasions he lends an ear to more “sophisticated” theologians, though he does not tread around them lightly. He gestures toward more rigorous ripostes to his arguments, but ultimately decries them as fantastical. According to Dawkins, the (Christian) theologian’s appetency to allegorize the more troublesome and contradictory bits of the Bible and insert dreamed up concepts in their stead amounts to nothing more than imaginative speculation. One could discern the zealous fans of Harry Potter and other fan fiction who dispute every minute detail of their revered lore as being not too distinct from the theologians of today, whose armchair musings fall on the deaf ears of the congregations of America. In the end, Dawkins says the constructions of modern theology are “just shamelessly invented.” (p. 35)

The Roots of Religion

Following his competent dismissal of the God hypothesis, he moves on to probing more ultimate questions: Where did religious beliefs come from; if patently false, why are they still around? I found this section of secondary interest and feel he devoted a bit too much space to what essentially was a lot of speculation. He attempts to weave his pet memetic theory into a quasi-evolutionary explanation for the survival of religion into modernity, with some success. I think the psychological and emotional utility of religious beliefs are sufficient to explain their lasting power on human culture. That’s not to say Dawkins’ exploration here isn’t worthwhile or interesting.

Do We Need God to Be Good?

Easily my favorite section of the book is “The Roots of Morality”, where Dawkins deciphers the riddle of ethics and morality. While he harbors no illusions that science can help us discern right from wrong, he argues that our capacity for doing so indeed has a scientific explanation. First, mutual empathy and kin altruism are traits readily observable in several other species. Moreover, this distinct sociality is most predominant in the higher primates, as we would predict. Under an evolutionary view of life, then, it is no stretch to say that such attributes were biologically and culturally selected for. If true, this means that human decency long anticipated religion.

Even if one doesn’t find a Darwinian ontology compelling, Dawkins argues that the religious alternatives have no merit whatsoever. A Celestial Watchman and binary afterlife are typically heralded as motivators for good and, inversely, demotivators for evil. In response, Dawkins has this to say, in what might be the single most poignant quote of the book:

A humanistic view, rather, is the view that people are fully capable of knowing right from wrong and do not need childish incentives to act ethically toward our brothers and sisters. Human solidarity and the lessons derived from social experience provide full enough justification for moral behavior. This Dawkins regards as a more adult moral psychology. In contrast, an ethic that even in implication is dependent upon eternal punishment as a demotivator for bad behavior seems to me to be the deficient one.

Of equal importance to our justification for goodness (why) is the epistemological (what is moral). Christians often wonder, ‘For people who don’t regard the Bible as the Word of God, from where do they get their morals?’ Dawkins showcases with great effectiveness the ethical flimsiness of the Abrahamic holy books, visiting a sampling of the Bible’s problematic narratives and itemizing the divine prescripts that not even the most ardent men and women of faith follow. We all separate the virtuous bits from the primitive barbarism. How do we do this, Dawkins asks? By filtering them through our own ethical intuitions. The very fact that each of us edits these texts, not to mention passes judgment on the moral actions of those around us, tells us that wherever our moral sense comes from, we are all tapping into the same source. And it’s most certainly not holy books.

For even better, book-length treatments of this topic, look out for de Waal’s recent exposé The Bonobo and the Atheist, Hinde’s Why Good is God, Buckman’s Can We Be Good Without God? and Hauser’s Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong.

Dawkins concludes with a more abstract section on how ethics have progressed across the ages. He calls this the shifting moral zeitgeist, and I found the insights here very compelling. As we catalog history, on issues like the abolition of slavery or emancipation of women we see a broad, cross-cultural convergence, perhaps reinforced by social feedback loops or “a complex interplay of disparate forces.” (p. 272) It seems to follow ineludably that morality is not something handed down from above, but is to be found within ourselves. It is not eternal, nor is it absolute, but is constantly being refined and improved.

The closing sections of the book Dawkins devotes to the dangers of dogmatic religious faith, which is really a dispraisal of fundamentalism in all its forms. While there is definitely great harm done under the banner of religion, the vast majority of Christians, Muslims, etc. worldwide do conform to the shifting moral zeitgeist, are persuaded by scientific evidence, and are dismissive of static, literal interpretations of ancient literature. The alarms he sounds, while attention-grabbing and unspeakable, describe more localized problems rather than endemic ones. I did, however, find his consciousness-raising on the doctrinal labeling of children very poignant.

“…Isn’t it always a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs they are too young to have thought about? I think we should all wince when we hear a small child being labelled as belonging to one particular religion or another. A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents.” (pp. 315, 338, 339)

Final Thoughts

Regardless of which side of the divide one falls, the arguments laid out in The God Delusion are thought-provoking and eloquently made. One cannot be said to have properly surveyed these conversations before having read and engaged both sides. And Dawkins’ treatise is a great place to start, especially considering its international penetration.

That said, this is not my go-to recommendation for the genre. I found some of his challenges less than airtight (his “who designed the designer” argument I found just as effete my first time through the book). I also think there were missed opportunities for delivering a truly comprehensive counterstroke to theism (for me, the problems of evil and (un)intelligent design carry more heft in undermining religion). But overall, Dawkins has penned a manifesto to sit alongside Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Bertrand Russell’s essay “Why I Am Not a Christian”, or Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Necessity of Atheism”. Irrespective of one’s persuasion, with The God Delusion Dawkins has shown, as several others before him, just how rational a position atheism is.

Note 1: This review is mirrored over at Goodreads and at Amazon.

Note 2: I encourage readers also to watch the follow-up debate between Dawkins and John Lennox, which is based on the core arguments made in Dawkins’ book. You can find it here.

Feature image courtesy of brandonmichaelblack.com

1. Interestingly, in the single blind study (where the patients were aware they were being prayed for), the patient’s condition actually worsened. It is believed that anxiety crept in because the patients thought they should be recovering since they were being prayed for, and when they didn’t, this stressed them out even more than the illness itself.

From Marcion to Richard Dawkins, many have found the Old Testament troubling, not least for its Pandora’s box of ethical difficulties as for the striking dissonance it generates when contrasting its patterns and ideas of morality with those of Jesus in the gospels. The Old Testament God is portrayed as exhaustively legalistic, sexist, provincial, bloodthirsty, even capriciously so, while the New Testament’s protagonist comes off rather as an ethical savant, whose preachments and parables fare more admirably up against modern criticism. And this inter-testament discord has created tensions which persist to this day. This “disturbing divine behavior”, as Old Testament studies professor Eric Seibert labels it in his 2009 book of the same name, is one of the major strains of polemic featured in the rhetoric of “New” Atheists like Dawkins and Sam Harris.

To illustrate the depth of the problem, consider the following observation by Raymund Schwager, prominent Catholic priest and theologian of the previous century:

“…found 600 passages of explicit violence in the Hebrew Bible, 1000 verses where God’s own violent actions of punishment are described, 100 passages where Yahweh expressly commands others to kill people, and several stories where God irrationally kills or tries to kill for no apparent reason. Violence…is easily the most often mentioned activity in the Hebrew Bible.”¹

Most Christians are at least aware of the multiplicity of sordidness lining their source texts, but few have either the desire or the resources to properly engage them. As a result, Christians often choose to ignore them completely, preferring to decamp to the New Testament where they can find refuge in the magnetic miracle-workings of Jesus. Or, rather, they assume their pastors and the theologians of higher academia have come up with tidy and impervious answers to all of their concerns. Yet the question echoes, if not throughout the halls of seminaries but in the minds of sincerely questioning believers: What are we to make of a book which depicts God as an ally to slavery, genocide, misogyny and prodigious violence?

A recent attempt to defuse these decidedly Christian concerns is David Lamb’s 2011 apologia, God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist? As Lamb iterates, Christianity is no stranger to these questions: “[The idea that] the Bible condones violent, sexist or racist behaviors are problems that Christians and the church have struggled with since the time of Christ.” (p. 178) Lamb invites his readers to wade with him into the dark, tempestuous waters of the Old Testament and explore these questions on a deeper, more contextual level. With clear and accessible prose Lamb shoulders the unenviable task of navigating this theological minefield and resolving the ostensible split personality of the Biblical God.

Unfortunately, Lamb too often seems shackled by theological (or perhaps professional) restraints in GBB. Lamb holds professorship at Biblical Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, a conservative evangelical institution. While GBB should be commended for not shying away from the most troublesome narratives in the texts, it stops well short of deviating from the orthodoxy of evangelical tradition. Unlike many of his colleagues, Lamb is firmly unwilling to allegorize and mythologize or to consult modern evidences, preferring instead to defend the actions and directives attributed to God by way of historical and cultural inquiry. That said, Lamb’s uneasiness with many of the passages is on full display, and he harbors no illusions that his case can completely vindicate the God of the Old Testament.

Lamb’s rudimentary approach is to first examine the contentious narrative from an ancient Near Eastern perspective, and next to point to examples of God behaving in a manner we would likely applaud. I will address a variety of his appeals below, but here I must point out that lining up the good acts of God next to the bad ones, as if to countervail the grotesque with the gregarious, doesn’t address the riddle of the book’s title. At bottom, this merely serves to establish that God, like us, is prone to mistake. We humans are not above committing error and are far from perfect. Yet fallibility stands counter to our expectation of God, who is allegedly all-loving, perfect, and above the commission of ethical lapses. The dispute is not whether there exist traces of divine benevolence but over the instances of divine faux pas littering the canon. I felt that these codas to each chapter were out of place, as they did little to minimize the anxiety brought about by the passages where God indeed “behaves badly”.

Divine Anger

In various sections Lamb takes up the issue of God’s sporadically stroppy nature in the Old Testament. From the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Onan, Judah’s son Er, and the firstborn of every Egyptian family, to engulfing Aaron’s sons with flames, and drowning all life with an earthwide flood, God smites and afflicts with such regularity in the Old Testament that he makes 20th century dictators appear fractionally pacifistic.²

Lamb zeroes in on the stories of Uzzah and the bear incident at Bethel. We’ll begin with Uzzah (II Sam 6:5-8, and recounted in I Chr. 13:9-10). In this multiply attested story God kills the porter Uzzah for steadying the ark of the covenant, a sacred vessel housing the tablet-inscribed Ten Commandments. This appears to be a classic example of the punishment not fitting the crime, especially given the justification in the text. Lamb deescalates by pointing out how important the transport of the ark was to God, evidenced by God’s detailed and repeated instruction for its handling in the previous chapters. “In Uzzah’s case, Yahweh was mad because his people weren’t following his instructions.” (p. 42) I’m not sure a failure to comply with instructions warrants a death sentence. You be the judge.

Lamb offers a second defense in that the smiting of Uzzah was necessary because the ark was symbolic of the Israelites’ relationship with God. Lamb asks us, “Would you want to follow a God that wasn’t passionate about his relationship with you?” (p. 33) Not necessarily, but one can show passion without committing murder. Apparently Lamb would have us believe the two go hand in hand. Of course, where there is no life, there is no relationship to be had. I’m not sure passion is due justification for murder. You decide.

Elisha and the Bears

The story of Elisha and the mauling of the 42 boys is undoubtedly one of the more bizarre passages in all of the Bible. It offends our moral sensibilities in ways that few passages can match. True to form, Lamb does not back down from his literalist bent, refusing to entertain the idea that such an event may be ahistorical and instead assesses the passage within the broader context of the prophetic commission of Elisha.

He marshals three defenses:

• He claims that Hebrew etymology indicates the tormentors were teenagers, not boys. “Thus, this was not harmless teasing by a group of pre-schoolers, but serious taunting by a pack of teens.” (p. 96)

• He claims such a response was culturally normative. “People would be severely punished for insulting leaders, rulers, kings, etc. While in our 21st-century Western mindset it might seem like Elisha was overreacting, within his cultural context his behavior was justified.” (p. 97)

• He claims intervention was necessary to fulfill Elisha’s commission. “Even though the story of the bears is troubling to us, we will give Elisha the benefit of the doubt given all of his other amazing acts of compassion.” (p. 97-98)

It must first be emphasized that it is not Elisha who is in need of defending in this scenario, but God. I’m not aware of anyone who is able to summon hungry, vicious bears upon command, leaving the blood of these 42 boys on God’s hands alone. Thus any pleadings for Elisha are red herrings which obscure the divine component of the passage.

Secondly, the difference between “pre-schoolers” and “teenagers” seems like mere temporizing by Lamb, as it fails to weigh in on the ethical justification for the action. The dilemma here is whether God’s malicious curse on 42 people (irrespective of age, gender, etc.) is defensible in light of the circumstances. Lamb contends that it was acceptable for Bronze Age Mediterranean cultures to react in this way and thus so it was for God. This principle simply does not hold up under closer investigation. For example, it is culturally normative in pro-Islamic countries to mutilate the genitals of female minors and kill apostates and unbelievers. Are we to infer that practices such as these are also uniformly acceptable?

Crucially, Lamb’s defense here and in other places portrays a God who operates according to the ethical codes of time and place and not according to an eternal, divine law. If Lamb’s hermeneutic is correct, one should then wonder how we are to determine whether any Biblical laws, practices, behaviors, etc. are relevant or authoritative today. For the Christian, these are questions worth considering.

Lastly, Lamb’s third defense elides the many other possibilities wherein Elisha could continue in his mission while also saving the 42 boys from harm. God could have silenced the boys; God could have cursed them with blindness, as he did at Elisha’s request just a few chapters later; God could have deterred the parties from meeting. The ease with which we are able to come up with pacifistic scenarios casts light on the utter illogic of this passage.

Lamb makes several moral arguments in GBB that are so so weak they left me in a catatonic state as I struggled to connect them to reality. One such example is his wrestling with whether the boys were killed or “merely” mauled. “The text, however, doesn’t suggest death was the result; it simply states they were “mauled” or “torn”.” (p. 98) If I were ever to stand trial, I’d want David Lamb on my jury. His overwhelming tendency to blur ethical lines is astounding.

On Egypt and Kim Jong-il

Lamb also touches on God’s treatment of Egypt, the central narrative of Exodus. To recast God in a just light, here Lamb must dwell not only on the deliverance of Israel but on the destruction of Egypt and her people. He must wrestle with why both were necessary. The heft of his argument is the following:

“While I understand why people advocate on behalf of the Egyptians in Exodus (Why did God harden Pharaoh’s heart? Why did God drown them in the Red Sea?), when asking these questions we need to remember the big picture. Egypt was the most powerful nation on the planet and at the top of the Egyptian power “pyramid” stood Pharaoh. He was worshiped as a god. The Egyptians were the ones enslaving and oppressing. Feeling sorry for Egypt is like feeling sorry for Moe, from Calvin and Hobbes, the six-year-old bully who tortures Calvin during gym, steals his lunch money and calls him “Twinky.” Modern-day equivalents to Moses’ Pharaoh would be despots like Robert Mugabe or Kim Jong-il, oppressive leaders that most of us would find it difficult to feel compassion toward.” (p. 40)

As with many other passages in the book, this papers over several larger problems. The first is the notion of collective punishment. If Pharaoh was ultimately culpable, then why rain down plagues and unleash suffering on the Egyptian people, who surely did not hold the Israelites’ freedom in their hands? Lamb does not even touch upon God’s murder of the firstborn child of all the families of Egypt, not to mention the animals that were also inexplicably massacred in the plague. Could God have not avoided all the bloodshed and simply willed the pharaoh to release the Israelites from captivity or changed the king’s mind? But in fact, Exodus tells us explicitly that God did the opposite: God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart”, on multiple occasions, prolonging Israel’s suffering.³

Lamb’s ill-considered parallel with Kim Jong-il demands further reflection. If God belatedly stepped in today, should the entirety of North Korea suffer for the late despot’s misdeeds? Put simply, are the wrongs of a tyrannical dictator to be imputed to the nation as a whole? I should think not.

Parenthetically, Lamb completely ignores the fact that the majority of Biblical scholarship regards the Exodus narrative – including the centuries-long captivity, the wandering, and the divinely aided escape – as fabrications. No archaeological evidence of an Israelite liberation has been found in Egypt, which presents an intriguing third option that Lamb chooses not to engage.

Divine Sexism

Lamb also spends ample time defending the charges of Biblical misogyny and sexism. Without reservation I found these sections to be the most poorly argued of the book, with the appeals ranging from elementary to intellectually insulting. We begin in Genesis, at the time of Eve’s creation.

“So Yahweh made the man first and then the woman. To use a writing analogy, the man was the first draft and the woman the second draft. Typically, the second draft of something is better than the first draft. Therefore, we could argue that the woman – the second draft – was an improvement on the man – the first draft.” (p. 51)

I hardly think this convincing for readers searching sincerely for a rigorous treatment of these issues, but even worse, does this not establish sexism in the reverse (i.e., man’s inferiority to woman)? Lamb anticipates this by saying he doesn’t think so, but he doesn’t think the passage in question can be used to argue for the supremacy of man, either. You can decide whether his argument holds any weight or if it is an example of reasoning gone wrong.

We then move to Genesis 3, where the curse of creation is detailed. The focus is verse 16 in which God proclaims that man will “rule over” the woman. Lamb pencils in a curious escape hatch for this one, claiming that this dictum only applied to Adam and Eve, not as a model for humanity writ large.

“Literally, the curses are applicable only to the first man and first woman. Each curse is addressed only to the one intended recipient and the second-person pronouns (you, your) are all singular. In other words, God doesn’t explicitly address women and men generally here, but only “Adam” and “Eve”.” (p. 56)

Not only does this not explain why in this specific instance the man is to “rule over” the woman, but this is not how tradition has interpreted the Genesis story throughout history. Christian tradition has generally held the Eden narrative, whether literally or allegorically, to be symbolic of man’s sinful nature, solving the riddle of profuse evil and suffering. If Lamb is right, and this one inconvenient passage is to be found culturally specific to a single Bronze Age couple, then is the rest of the surrounding narrative also? How much, if any of it, applies beyond the idyllic fantasyland of Eden?

Worse, when Lamb tries to sync up his argument with the Pauline doctrine in Ephesians he directly contradicts himself by claiming that this rule only applies to married women, not single women. “So, this curse applies only to married women and not to women in general as a gender.” (p. 56-57) So, which is it – Adam and Eve only or all married couples?

At certain points, Lamb’s engagement of these issues just teeters off the rails:

“His curse is also almost four times longer than the woman’s curse. In the Hebrew, her curse is thirteen words and his is forty-six words. Second, the man’s curse was more severe than the woman’s. She receives more pain in childbirth, but he receives death, returning to the dust.” (p. 57)

To make the leap that the curse of childbirth means God did not favor men over women can perhaps only be stated by someone who will never have the “pleasure” of such a “gift”. Lastly, both men and women die and “return to the dust” as it were, so he is wrong to say that the man’s punishment is more severe.

Throughout, the Genesis and other narratives are discussed in distinctly literal terms, intimating that something as established as evolution is completely off the table for Lamb. It never seems to occur to him that the deeply symbolic prose in the Old Testament might actually be taken symbolically. The rigidity of his approach again may be in line with his tradition, but for Christians who accommodate a scientific view of the world, GBB will likely hold little, if any, sway.

Lot and His Daughters

My repeated problem with this book is that the author consistently fails to engage the core ethical issues operating within the selected passages. This facile evasion of complexity reached a boiling point for me when juxtaposing his rebuttals to the story of Uzzah with the story of Lot’s daughters. Lamb lets God off the hook for striking down Uzzah because of the Israelites’ disobedience, yet sees no problem with God’s silence in the case of Lot offering his virgin daughters to be raped, claiming “an absence of condemnation does not constitute an affirmation.” (p. 61) The text never once condemns Lot for his barbaric proposal, and God’s nonattendance is also noted in a strikingly similar story in Judges, which sees quite a different and utterly heart-rending fate for the female.

In this narratival pairing we see that God’s concern for the proper handling of the ark of the covenant is so great that several chapters are dedicated to it, including the extermination of one of its porters, yet there is no commentary or denunciation of the imminent rape of two young girls. Lamb apparently sees no dissonance here.

On Forced Betrothal

Next up is the Deuteronomic laws which have rape victims marrying their transgressors, a prescription interspersed throughout but appearing most explicitly in Deut. 22, both in 22-26 and 28-29. Lamb asks us to clear the room of our 21st century sensibilities in order to make space for the context of Near Eastern culture. When a woman was raped three thousand years ago, it was Bronze Age custom to confer an “untouchable” status upon her, an indelible stain that barred her from future marriage. These “untouchables” were forever stigmatized as damaged goods and excluded from attaining their one hope to escape penury. It is seen, thusly, by betrothing victim with malefactor, God has supposedly corrected a problem concentric to Bronze Age culture.

“The marriage that the law commanded provided the necessary security for the victimized woman and reduced the tragic consequences of the rape.” (p. 62)

Lamb esteems these commands as progressive and goes on to applaud the later decree that forbids rape victims from ever divorcing from this arranged marriage, pointing out that these women now had “a guarantee of future security that most women would not have.”

Here again, Lamb’s assertion that such laws were progressive for their time represents a failure to reason honestly. Human ethics, as revealed in the progression of our legal systems, has ebbed and flowed with every era, and many of the observed cross-cultural differences could be labeled ‘progressive’ in retrospect. After all, if our ethics never progressed, we would still be marrying victims to their rapists. Would we, by analogy, be pacified by a school with segregated classrooms in the 1960s implementing racially integrated bathrooms and water fountains? Would we label these institutions and policies ‘progressive’?

The contention raised by skeptics and liberal readers is not that some of the laws in the Old Testament weren’t progressive at all, but that they were not progressive enough. Given the extraordinary claims made on its behalf, the Bible must demonstrate an ethical framework that transcends the level of cultural evolution observed across history. On the issues of slavery⁴, the status of women⁵, penalties for various innocuous (and even imaginary) crimes⁶, penalties for unbelievers⁷, and many others, the Old Testament is found to be, in a few cases minimally progressive, and in most cases par for the Bronze Age course, the combination of which call gravely into question the idea that they were inspired by anything worthy of the label ‘divine’. If these ancient texts are truly messages vouchsafed to humanity by a non-natural, all-loving agency, we should expect more than quasi-progress on ethical matters. We do not find this.

Divine Racism and Genocide

And now we come to the sine qua non of Biblical criticism: God siding with one race of peoples (the Israelites) at the often genocidal expense of others. The Old Testament takes readers on a geographical tour of ruin, mandated by God and carried out by the Israelite people. The Hittites, Amorites, Amalekites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites – all are targets of God’s bloodlust.

The most troubling passages are those like Deuteronomy and I Samuel. In I Samuel God commands Saul to enact genocide on the Amalekites. Here we see an image of God so uncompromising, so void of patience and mercy, that he calls for the complete annihilation of an entire lineage of people, including the “women, children, and infants”. Lamb mines the text and tells us that the catalyst for this deep and thorough hatred is that many of these peoples attacked first, upon the Israelites’ departure from Egypt.

“[The Israelites] were refugees who had experienced hundreds of years of oppression in a foreign land and needed a place to live. [They] initiated none of these initial engagements because they were a wandering band of unarmed political refugees. The nations that attacked them were taking advantage of Israel’s weak situation.” (p. 78-79)

Lamb’s rush to the defense of Israel does little to exonerate God, especially considering the prior mention of collective punishment, where even the innocent are condemned to death for the putative sins of others sharing the same territory. We see on multiple occasions the divine directive to kill infants and children. Was there no other way to resolve territorial disputes than by slaughtering babies?

Lamb also does not engage the most frequent justification for genocide given in the text itself: the worship of other gods, as we are repeatedly told⁸. These motivations are fully consistent with the penalties God prescribes for unbelievers throughout the Torah (but, amusingly, are diametrically inconsistent with the commandments codified at Mt. Sinai). Was it any more ethical to kill an Egyptian pagan in 2400 BCE than it is for a Christian to kill a Muslim today, solely for the belief in a different god or gods?

Lastly, Lamb defends the conquest and occupation narratives found in Joshua by applying a relativity sticker to them. He contrasts the Biblical accounts with those of Bronze Age Assyria and Moab.

“While the violent descriptions of the Joshua accounts are still problematic, relative to the conquests of Ashurnasirpal and Mesha, Joshua’s victory over the Canaanites was much less excessive…Instead of a glorification of brutality found in the Assyrian and Moabite versions, the book of Joshua emphasizes obedience to Yahweh.” (p. 77-78)

The passage above is a perverse conflation of two separate issues: the ethical nature of violent imperialism and the extent to which that nature changes under divine command. Lamb seems to be making the case that it’s OK if you take the lives of women and children (or anything else for that matter) so long as you are being obedient to God’s commands. Oh, and don’t spice up your written exploits with bloody details because that’s also wrong. Finally, simply read Joshua (here and here) and the other conquest narratives in the Bible for yourself and decide whether the accounts are bereft of brutality and indiscriminate violence. Spoiler: They aren’t. (Incidentally, most Old Testament scholars reject the historicity of the Joshua occupation narrative as well.)

When God Doesn’t Smite

As a kind of counterweight to the reprehensible dramas discussed in the book, Lamb peppers the text with examples of God’s apparent goodness. One in particular he finds commendable is God’s “slowness to anger”, evidenced by the 400 years of Israelite enslavement and the passage of time until God exacted his revenge on the various tribes. Lamb seems not to recognize that the temporal aspect of God’s actions and mandates is wholly extrinsic to their ethical nature. If a father batters and bruises his ten year-old son, is the act more moral if it was preceded by several years of kindness and patience? Likewise, does the moral adequacy of the murder of an infant hinge upon whether it occurred in 2600 BCE or 2300 BCE?

Lamb gives several other affectless examples of where God changes his mind and foregoes smiting his people, such as the golden calf incident in Exodus. Once again, this does nothing to relieve us of the image of God as a mercurial spouse prone to explosive fits of violence and anger. More directly, then, should the momentary hints of God’s kindness and goodwill embedded within the Old Testament alleviate our concerns for the litany of violence and moral destitution any more than they would in the case of a live-in spouse or father? Consider these questions.

Final Thoughts

While Old Testament ethics and violence is an interesting topic to explore, God Behaving Badly is a poorly argued and inconsistent contribution to the body of literature. At best it fails to offer defensible answers to thinking Christians and does nothing to defray the prosecutorial rhetoric of Dawkins and the New Atheist contingent. At worst it muddles the academic conversation on these topics.

The most glaring scar defacing the book is how the author glides over larger problems in an attempt to match up his theology with the text, rather than using the the text, basic reason and the broad tapestry of extra-Biblical material to inform theology. As a result, Lamb’s solutions are often appallingly superficial and cannot be consistently applied to modern times. Rather than engage the views of his colleagues and prominent skeptics, Lamb appears to follow too closely in the footsteps of his professional commitments. He refuses to bring scientific evidence into his analysis and altogether avoids alternative, non-literalist hermeneutics. For Christianity to remain relevant on the global stage, it must examine its theology as new evidence and cultural changes arise. It cannot continue to live in the 1st century and appeal to people living in the 21st. While there may be better appeals to the ethical affronts of the Old Testament, they aren’t to be found here.

Note: This review is mirrored over at Amazon.

Feature image courtesy of: MADMIKESAMERICA

1. Cited by Walter Wink, “The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium,” Galilee Doubleday, (1998), pp. 84, 85.

2. More disturbing behavior: Numbers 15:32-36; Numbers 14:35-37; Numbers 16:31-35; Numbers 21:4-6; I Samuel 6:19; I Samuel 25:38-39; II Samuel 12:14-18

3. Exodus 14:8-9; Exodus 9:11-12

4. Slavery in the Old Testament: Exodus 21:20-21; Leviticus 25:44-46; Exodus 21:1-7; Deuteronomy 20:10-11;

   Slavery in the New Testament: Matthew 24:45-51; Luke 12:42-48; I Corinthians 7:20-21; Colossians 3:18-24; Colossians 4:1; Ephesians 6:5; I Timothy 6:1-2; I Peter 2:18; Titus 2:9-10

5. Numbers 31:17-18; Leviticus 12:1-5; Judges 19:23-29; I Corinthians 14:34-35; I Peter 3:1-7; Ephesians 5:22

6. Deuteronomy 21:18-21; Exodus 35:2; Exodus 31:12-15; Deuteronomy 17:12; Leviticus 20:9; Leviticus 20:27; Exodus 22:18; Leviticus 11:9-12

7. Deuteronomy 13:6-18; Deuteronomy 17:2-5; II Chronicles 15:13

8. Exodus 23:32-33; Exodus 34:12-16; Numbers 31:17-18; Deuteronomy 7:1-4; Deuteronomy 20:16-18

When Google’s not algorithmically exploiting the web’s intelligence via search, they’re busy digitally cataloging the least trekked places on earth. In the latest update to Google Maps’ most prized feature, Mountain View has pointed their vast resources toward higher latitudes, making available in glorious zoomed detail the heights of Everest, Kilimanjaro and other formidable mountain peaks around the globe. The new Street View panoramas are navigable over the web, as well as on Android and iOS.

As detailed over at the Lat Long blog yesterday, the latest frontier to receive the Google treatment was part of a multi-year effort. The expedition broke ground in 2011 when Sara Pelosi, a People Programs Manager for Google, planned some time off with fellow Googlers to tackle Everest Base Camp, a ridge understandably absent from the Street View corpus. With little prodding, the team seized the opportunity to preserve glimpses of the experience while at the same time expanding the reaches of Google Maps. Capturing the necessary imagery would require little additional gear besides a digital camera and folding tripod.

The team encountered the usual travails as they ascended to an elevation of 18,192 feet (“higher than anywhere in the contiguous U.S.”), including an earthquake, mudslide, snow storm and the inevitable altitude sickness.

You can click around the Everest Base Camp South in full 360 degree detail below.

“[Viruses are] biology’s living matrix.”

We share little in common with our forebears’ understanding of the universe. In ancient times the earth was ensconced by a dome or firmament which held back rain and other effusions from above. Drought and wetness were tangible indicators of the pantheon’s impression of earthly behavior, with a blue sky betokening the rain that lay just beyond the earth’s protective shell. For many of our ancestors, the stars influenced the health of those on earth; for others, calamity and human hardship could be ascribed to nothing more than the shifting dispositions of the local deities. Maladies of the skin and throat and other physiological dysfunction were regarded as plagues, or instances of pestilential terror cast down as punishment. It was not until our discovery of the virus that these metaphysical affiliations were shorn in favor of the vanishingly tiny world thriving right under our noses.

Viruses have been invading other life forms for billions of years with nary an invitation, yet our knowledge of this relatively young science is still fairly limited. Helming this microcosmic thrill ride in A Planet of Viruses is Carl Zimmer, first-place recipient of the 2012 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism competition and one of the most illustrious science journalists of our time. Having previously written Microcosm and Parasite Rex, pathogen science has long been his forte. In his latest and most abbreviated work, Zimmer marshals his treasure of insights and provides us a sweeping introduction to this fascinating, if ineluctably unnerving world.

The book is organized as a compilation of well-connected short essays, and the format suits the material well. Each of the chapters spotlights a specific strain or type of virus which has wreaked considerable chaos on human welfare – from  rhinovirus, smallpox and influenza to HIV and West Nile – and Zimmer’s characteristic story-centric style makes each vignette as engaging as the last. As you progress, Zimmer slowly raises the curtain on virus ingenuity, weaving accessible tales and the latest research and statistics throughout.

The Infiltrator

Since viruses first breached the scientific periphery in the 19th century, over 5,000 separate strains have been identified. And while they can vary broadly in physical size, shape and number of genes, they all operate in a similar fashion. At the first, a virus requires a host to survive, unlike bacteria, and so its blinkered priority is to gain access to the DNA code of other life forms. Whether it’s animals and plants or bacteria and archaea, a virus does not discriminate.

I like to think of them as the world’s smallest stealth agent, as resourceful as they are deadly. In what makes Ethan Hunt look like an amateur, they have the ability to infiltrate a host’s cells in a variety of ways (termed vectors), a skill which is amplified as evolution takes its course. Once the virus descends upon the host’s genetic structure, it can really begin its work. With full access to the genetic database the virus begins installing its own DNA onto the cells of its host. At this point, the virus is replicated at a prodigious rate until many thousands of identical copies line the inside of the host’s cells. Depending on the genetic mixture, this assimilation can disrupt a host gene’s ability to make proteins, unleashing havoc on its unwitting custodian, or the virus presence can trigger the release of antibodies, which scramble to shut down the intruders, subjecting the host to nasty symptoms in the process.

While there is much debate over whether a virus constitutes “life” due to its lack of cellular architecture, Zimmer is quick to point out the virus’ indispensable role in shaping and sustaining it over the aeons. “We humans are an inextricable blend of mammal and virus. Remove our virus-derived genes, and we would be unable to reproduce.” (p. 93) Viruses were among the earliest life forms on earth, and the latest research suggests that it was RNA viruses which initiated the chain of life¹. The uninvited stowaways have been shuffling genes among different hosts and species ever since and have been a huge force in the evolution of life on this planet, comprising around 8% of the human genome.² Thus not only did life need viruses to get its start, they are essential to our survival.

Zimmer also discloses plainly just how near are viruses and other infectious agents. Each of our trillions of cells can contain hundreds of viruses and bacteria³. Human papillomavirus (HPV), most known for inflicting cervical cancer and killing over 270,000 women every year⁴, is actually quite common and can be found nestled in your skin cells. We constantly shed our outermost layer of skin cells (which are dead), depositing the virus-laden DNA all around us. That means that right now you likely have more than a few HPV viruses on the desk and laptop in front of you. Not the cheeriest thought, perhaps, but you will find solace in the fact that the majority of HPV strains are benign and pose no immediate risk.

Cat, Meet Mouse

It is true that the lion’s share of known viruses introduce no changes to infected cells. But it is also true that pathogens evolve more quickly than any other form of life. For this reason virus trajectories always lie one step ahead of us and are difficult, if not impossible, to predict. Zimmer relates this chilling reality by describing why scientists are urging against the over-use of antibiotics. Not only do antibacterials have a null effect on viruses, they incentivize bacteria to evolve countermeasures, potentially resulting in more noxious versions of the defunct strains.

Also included is a rousing essay on phage therapy, an area where precious little research has been conducted. Somewhat confusingly, a bacteriophage is a virus used to combat resilient bacteria. Essentially: pitting pathogen against pathogen. Zimmer tells of a lab-engineered phage (pictured below) developed by a team from Boston University and MIT that can wipe out 99.997% of E. coli strains. More impressively, “scientists at the Eliava Institute have developed a dressing for wounds that is impregnated with half a dozen different phages, capable of killing the six most common kinds of bacteria that infect skin wounds.” (p. 38) Among microbiologists, this approach to resistant bacteria is a heavily favored alternative to antibiotics. But until a wider body of research is explored, such precision warfare is confined to the lab.

A coliphage, courtesy of GrahamColm

The most uplifting narrative here is of course that of smallpox⁵, which Zimmer includes as a coda entitled, “The Long Goodbye”. The unflinching bravura of those who risked their lives in the global eradication effort is a testament to human possibility. The 1965 campaign led by the World Health Organization is perhaps the greatest success story in all of medicine and lends hope for the outcome of future travails.

Closing Thoughts

Thanks to one of the finest science communicators today, the remaining essays assembled in A Planet of Viruses are every bit as informative and accessible. As a stepladder to the scientific community, Zimmer has a knack for engaging readers of all stripes, from the lay reader to the armchair scientist to anyone who simply likes reading good stories. His way is precise, not overly simplified, choosing just the right level of linguistic precision to divulge the teeming underworld of microbiology to his readers. While certainly not as detailed as some of his earlier expositions, this brilliant anthology serves as a perfect overview of this bustling field. Clocking in at just under 100 pages, I highly recommend you target this one for your next free weekend, preferably before, and not after, having eaten.

Note: This review is mirrored over at Goodreads and at Amazon.

Feature image: a transmission electron micrograph of alcoholic hepatitis virus, courtesy of Countincr

1. “Virus self-assembly within host cells has implications for the study of the origin of life, as it lends further credence to the hypothesis that life could have started as self-assembling organic molecules.” See peer-reviewed study here.

2. “To put that figure in perspective, consider that the 20,000 protein-coding genes in the human genome make up only 1.2 percent of our DNA”. (p. 52) Zimmer offers that our identity is tied up more in ancient virus than in anything that we can call “us”.

3. Viruses are the most abundant form of microorganism on the planet. There are an estimated 10^31 virus particles (read: not distinct strains or species) currently flourishing within the cells of unwitting hosts. Written out, that number looks like:

   10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

   Parenthetically, there are also 10^30 bacteria microbes on earth, so, naturally, bacteria serve as the most abundant hosts for viruses. It could in fact be said that biology is 99% “micro”.

4. Cervical cancer is the third leading cause of death in women, just behind breast cancer and lung cancer.

5. Smallpox virus is estimated to have killed 500 million people every century between 1400 and 1800 in Europe alone. Outside these provisional estimates, the virus surely wiped out countless more since its first traces 3500 years ago. The 20th century eradication effort proved successful largely by isolating the infected from the non-infected and administering vaccines to quarantined communities.

In the year 1878, an Italian poultry farmer awoke to a pen of dead chickens. Speechless at what could have happened to his livestock, he gathered the attention of local scientist Edoardo Peroncito. At the time, viruses and other microorganisms were still unknown to natural science, and Edoardo anyway lacked the electron microscope by which to analyze infectious particles. He could only surmise that the chickens had been hit by some rare plague. Thanks to his detailed descriptions we can conclude that it was there, along the plains of northern Italy, that we stumbled upon the first identified case of bird flu. The contagion proved particularly bloodthirsty and swiftly fatal, with a near-100% mortality rate in fowl species.

Since that time, similar strains have been found in several other avian varieties all across the globe and are collectively known as influenza A. While the genetics of this family of viruses has shifted considerably over the past two centuries, their instruction manuals have not been rewritten to pass easily from birds to humans or other mammals. Where it has happened, the disease has proved extremely deadly, killing around 60% of infected humans.

Mutation rates what they are, however, more earnest dangers always lurk just beyond the evolutionary knoll. And researchers now believe that the avian subtype H5N1 has begun to master the ability to jump to humans. In 2011 the World Health Organization released a troubling report of the documented H5N1 cases since 2003. Of the 566 people infected across 15 different countries, 332 died. If H5N1 were to successfully assimilate within the human genome, then not only could the virus pass from bird to human, but from human to human as well.

Fouchier’s Micro-Monster

Fearing the virus would soon evolve better adaptation to human hosts and escalate to pandemic proportions, two teams of researchers began to study samples of the mutant strain in late 2011. Ron Fouchier of the Netherlands, together with Adolfo García-Sastre and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the U.S., took the reins. With an assignment of international importance, the collaborators repaired to their intensively air-secured facilities and kicked off what would soon become an international controversy.

Experts had known for some time that avian strains were trending toward the type that infect mammals. If Fouchier and his team could predict the next batch of mutations, they could beat the virus to the finish line and take preemptive measures to vaccinate against it. And that’s just what the teams set out to do. They first compared the genomes and mutation rates of similar strains to chart an anticipated course. The next step was to alter the biochemistry of H5N1 accordingly, shuffling the order of nucleotides and deactivating certain DNA segments as necessary. All of this genetic tinkering granted the virus new abilities and potency, the most disturbing of which was airborne transmission: it now had the capacity to move through airways and latch onto the host’s cells without any direct contact. The result was achieved with just four mutations.

Fouchier’s team used ferrets as their mammalian proxies, directly exposing them to the synthetic strain. Just as they had expected, the newly liberated microbe spread rapidly among the test subjects. As it turns out, virus behavior in ferrets parallels that of humans, raising the likelihood that Fouchier’s lab-engineered creation could be carried into a new human host by merely a cough or sneeze. Fouchier had created a living micro-monster.

Not Fit for Public Consumption

Eager to publish the results, the teams immediately filed for syndication in Nature and Science. The details of the research had hitherto passed largely under the radar of oversight agencies, and the reports quickly caught the attention of international security teams. The US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity declared the reports unfit for public consumption and asked the journals to redact the jeapordous bits prior to publication. If this data made it into the wrong hands, they reasoned, we could suffer a terrorist incident on par with man’s worst envisioning. The journals denied the request, objecting that the NSABB’s concerns over “dual-use” research were outpaced by the benefits that openness would bring to public health.

Yoshihiro Kawaoka tells The Guardian: “Research to understand how avian virus is adapted to mammals will lead to better surveillance and vaccines… We know that in nature H5N1 viruses in birds are becoming more like viruses that infect mammals. Therefore, the greater risk is not doing research that could help us be better equipped to deal with a pandemic. We want the world to be better prepared than we currently are when an H5N1 virus poses a pandemic.”

The impasse reached a crescendo last January, when all parties agreed to a moratorium on further research on lab-engineered H5N1. It became evident that the protocols for “dual-use” research were too ill-defined and needed to be addressed before further data of this magnitude were released into the wild.

The back-and-forths, which included painstaking risk assessments, lasted a full year. While the original teams were able to publish censored versions of their reports in the interim, all research stalled on H5N1. That freeze has been lifted this week. The WHO and its international counterparts have codified more transparent guidelines which aim to minimize the risks involved with these synthetic trials, and research teams can continue preparing for a human-adapted H5N1 pandemic. When the great leap to our species inevitably occurs, scientists hope to have a vaccine at the ready.

Creation and Destruction

Although harmful agents can be found in containment labs all across the world, the H5N1 controversy rehabilitates critical questions with regard to the sensitivity of certain research and its relationship with global connectedness. To what extent does a higher level of collaboration, in which data flows freely among more organizations, fast-track vaccines or accommodate security leaks? Moreover, scientists are now able to munition new hybrid viruses as well as obsolete viruses like polio and even the 1918 Spanish influenza. Do the benefits of preemptive pathogenic research outweigh the risks of infectious agents escaping the lab or falling into the wrong hands?

Such is the inescapable tension faced by today’s policymakers and microbiologists. With H5N1 we are facing a virus that has historically been confined to avian species but has since diverged down an evolutionary path that poses serious risks to us all. How best to approach this crisis, given the plenteous resources at our disposal, is a matter of staunch debate.

“There is probably not a scientific issue in recent times that has been so widely thrown out for public consultation as this one,” said Wendy Barclay, an influenza virologist at Imperial College London. “The information learned from the two publications that finally made it into Nature and Science last year has been processed by the influenza community and has been hugely informative, not only for understanding the risks from H5N1 but also for illuminating how other subtypes of flu might jump species and even for assessing the zoonotic risks from other pathogens. The lifting of the moratorium will undoubtedly lead to more scientific revelations that will have direct consequence for human and animal health.”

Had we been equipped with these tools back before HIV jumped the species barrier from chimpanzees to humans, we might have fared better against its onslaught. By successfully charting the genetic course of H5N1 and other pathogens, it just might be possible to balance the scorecard between virus and man.

External link: Bird flu researchers get green light to continue work on engineered virus

Feature image courtesy of MedicalRF.com/Getty Images via abcnews

As always, send corrections or contact me here.

An official resolution to commemorate the birth date of Charles Darwin has been proffered by Democratic Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) in concert with the American Humanists Association. Citing the British naturalist’s momentous contributions to human knowledge and the untold advances rushed in by his ideas, Rep. Holt has asked Congress to dedicate February 12, 2013 to the timeless icon.

Holt, only the second research physicist to hold Congressional office, commented in yesterday’s press release, “Only very rarely in human history has someone uncovered a fundamentally new way of thinking about the world – an insight so revolutionary that it has made possible further creative and explanatory thinking. Without Charles Darwin, our modern understandings of biology, ecology, genetics, and medicine would be utterly impossible, and our comprehension of the world around us would be vastly poorer. By recognizing Darwin Day, we can honor the importance of scientific thinking in our lives, and we can celebrate one of our greatest thinkers.”

Similar resolutions have appeared before Congress over the past decade, yet none has escaped the cutting room floor of the House. Pete Stark, another Democratic representative, lobbied for the same concession back in 2011, where it then lay dormant before a GOP-controlled House committee.

From a political vantage point, Holt’s overture might have more opportunistically been seized by the party beset with the graver image problem. The GOP have long regarded evolution science as their bête noire, and virtually all of this past election’s candidates held dissenting views on established science. A similar gesture originating from a member on the right could possibly have kickstarted a partisan-wide reformation, one focused on ensuring voters that it is more in touch with reality in contrast with the past election cycle.

For the moment, however, a GOP rebranding appears far from imminent, and Holt’s resolution, once again, seems dead on arrival. It now lies in the hands of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, occupied by Paul Broun (R-Ga.), who last October decried evolution and the big bang as “lies straight from the pit of Hell”. Moreover, the committee’s senior chair, Ralph Smith, rejects the scientific consensus on climate change, stating: “I’m really more fearful of freezing. And I don’t have any science to prove that. But we have a lot of science that tells us they’re not basing it on real scientific facts.” The views of the other GOP members on the committee are not well-advertised, which is itself a troubling sign.

One can scarcely hold back a chuckle, or perhaps a frightful shriek, upon making contact with the roller coaster of contradiction described here. To the outsider, such statements might seem to connote some warped version of reality or a rather low attempt at humor. Indeed, science denialists lining our science and intelligence committees sounds more like linguistic staccato than a faithful description of America’s leadership environment. Were Jefferson and his contemporaries alive at this moment, they might describe such a paradigm as symptomatic of collective psychosis.

And while all this political posturing and heel-digging prevails on Capitol Hill, America’s reputation continues to fall behind in the scientific arena. A greater percentage of its population rejects evolution compared with most other developed nations.

 Image via University of Illinois

Darwin Day may seem like a trivial measure, but it could be a first step in lifting the mephitic stain of antiscience and scientific illiteracy long-effused by America. If you’d like to get involved, contact your representatives and urge them to cast their support for this resolution.

External link: HR-41: Expressing support for designation of February 12, 2013, as Darwin Day and recognizing the importance of science in the betterment of humanity

Feature image courtesy of kT LindSAy, a hood mockingbird indigenous to the famed Galapagos Islands.

The cinema space is abuzz over The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, but not just over Bilbo Baggins and his ensuing adventures against the legions of Sauron. Orcs are slain and goblins lanced, yet discussion of the film has largely vectored around Peter Jackson’s unorthodox frame rate choice. While the New Zealand auteur is no stranger to innovation, his latest entry in Tolkien’s fantasy realm features one minor major technical departure: it is the first box office release both recorded and projected in 48 frames per second. Popular opinion seems to occupy one of two extremes, with its detractors the more outspoken of the bunch.

The backlash over the technical presentation did not come without warning. When Jackson debuted The Hobbit at last year’s CinemaCon in Las Vegas, the showing was met with splintered ambivalence. Some attendees cited its crisp motion compared with the legacy 24 fps format, while others dispraised its “non-cinematic” feel in concert with its rapid disintegration of the suspension of disbelief. Theater owners mostly expressed disdain over having to upgrade their 3D projection systems, a hardly trifling fee of $10,000 per screen.

In an industry which fosters innovation and traditionally greets bigger numbers with gusto, the recent friction over The Hobbit’s screening format may seem curious. After all, 48 is exactly twice the established standard, which means you are seeing double the information every second. So why is 24 fps broadly considered “cinematic” and 48 fps less so? And why are filmmakers like Jackson, Andy Serkis and James Cameron pushing for HFR (High Frame Rate) formats?

Silent Film and Beyond

With his penchant for particulars and visual flair, it’s fair to say that Jackson did not take the decision to deviate from the industry standard of more than 80 years lightly. As he details in a pre-release Facebook post, the early film era’s choice to commercialize 24 fps was one of compromise. Most people assume 24 is a magical number for film or holds some sort of psychophysical significance. Not so.

Prior to the late 1920s, there was no agreed-upon recording speed, film stock or projection speed. The first silent films were shot with variable frame rates, with some dipping as as low as 14 frame/s. Such a speed was barely enough to maintain the illusion of motion; viewers today would find the jerkiness nigh unwatchable. In the theater houses, projectionists even altered the rate of playback to match the musical accompaniment or on-the-fly to maximize profits.

When sound film arrived, this model was no longer sustainable. Fixed image timings became necessary in order to sync picture and sound and to escape the dissonance created by mismatches in audiovisual playback. Which timing to choose hinged sensitively on the type of film stock, which is enormously expensive to buy and to process. Prior to the digital era, a film’s primary costs were a function of the width of the film stock (known as the gauge) and capture speed. All else equal, a 14 fps film was roughly 70% cheaper to shoot than a 24 fps film. Likewise, a 35mm production is roughly half as expensive as the 70mm IMAX format used in Christopher Nolan’s previous two Batman films.

As the industry convened around 35mm stock, an economic ceiling was naturally placed on capture speed. In the end it was 24 frame/s which struck a delicate equilibrium between cost-effectiveness and motion continuity. It’s likely that every movie you’ve seen at the cinema or on DVD and Blu-ray was originally recorded progressively at a rate of 24 images per second. On most playback systems, each frame is then displayed multiples times to reduce flicker.¹

In a presentation on frame rate, videographer Mark Schubin tells us candidly, “There is absolutely nothing special about 24 frames per second. There is no particular psychological reason for it, no mathematical reason for it.”

The Allure of HFR

As HFR’s proponents have pointed out, none of the constraints around the 24 frame format applies to today’s world of digital ubiquity. Digital production costs do not scale dramatically with frame rate, and the latest in digital imaging allows for a variety of speeds, from 48 to 60 to 10,000 frame/s, and even speeds faster than the speed of light. Current technology is now able to capitalize on our visual system’s potential in ways that were not possible in the 1920s. While the human eye is unable to take in many thousands of unique images per second, 48 veers much closer to our biological limits than does 24.²

This boost in capture speed carries immediate visual improvements, namely an increase in motion resolution. If you’ve ever seen a fast-paced pan of the camera while watching a movie, you’ve likely noticed the jerkiness. This is because there are not enough frames in the source to maintain smooth motion. Filmmakers are reflexively cognizant of this (there are even tables which calculate the maximum speed of camera pans before strobing occurs) and ensure that their pans do not spill over a specified threshold. With 48 and higher frame rates, this problem goes away. With more frames to work with, camera movements are more stable, lending quick pans and the choreography of action scenes greater intelligibility.

Image via framewielders.com

Jackson is well aware of this, having employed over two dozen RED EPIC cameras in his 3D production of The Hobbit. While HFR can give 2D exhibitions a more lifelike edge, its benefits are most palpable in 3D presentations, where artifacts like flicker, blur and crosstalk tend to be exacerbated. In the traditional 3D cinema experience, each eye is alternately sent 24 unique frames each second. For theaters capable of HFR playback, each eye receives 48 unique frames, resulting in a smoother, less headache-inducing visual experience.³ Jackson chose to release the HFR format for 3D exhibition only; all 2D exhibitions will be shown in the traditional 24-frame format. (Check here for a current list of theaters upgraded to 48-frame projection systems.)

For commercial purposes, 48 fps has the added benefit of being fully backward-compatible with legacy 24-frame playback systems.

The (Dis)Comfort Zone

Ultimately, the disfavor surrounding The Hobbit‘s higher frame rates stems not from an unrefined use of props, lighting and CGI, as some have suggested, but from our stiffly conditioned sensorium. We’re simply not used to viewing movies this way. Our lifelong familiarity with 24-frame cinema has etched its signature into our collective subconscious.

Though it might seem like the jump from 24 to 48 is not significant, it is massive in terms of how our optical system responds and adjusts. The added smoothness unshackles our suspension of disbelief we so intimately associate with low-motion content, ejecting us from the fantasy world of Middle Earth and onto the set, where props are revealed for what they really are. In short, a closer approximation of reality is exchanged for the filmic, almost surreal quality we identify with the cinema experience.

High-motion content is abundant outside of movies. Since the destination of broadcast material, including sports and news coverage and low-budget programming, is in the living room rather than the theater, this content is typically recorded on video at 30 frame/s.⁴ The visual flavor of this type of content seems every bit as natural to us as the flavor of film-based content. Our years of conditioning means that we subliminally associate different species of programming with their capture rates.

Those who own newer high-definition TVs have likely already experienced HFR movies, albeit in exaggerated and simulated form. Most flat panels today, especially 120 Hz and 240 Hz LCDs, come equipped with MCFI (motion compensation via frame interpolation), which synthesizes new frames from existing ones to enhance motion resolution.⁵ When this effect is applied to movies captured at 24 fps, the cinematic feel is upgraded to the feel of the high-motion programming described above. Commonly called the “soap opera effect”, this not only boosts the level of realism to uncomfortably high levels but distorts director intent by creating new frames not present in the film source. The core difference between The Hobbit and motion processing at home, of course, is that the high-motion in The Hobbit is not simulated; the frames are present in the source material.

Adapt or Go Home

As with any new technology, HFR will need to survive an incubation period. Sound, color, widescreen, digital projection, 3D; all have had their share of doomsayers, yet cinema lives on. Jackson’s Hobbit format provides us more sensory information and is actually closer to reality than what we’re used to, the same promises accompanying every other industry revision since silent film. Even so, perhaps none has had as dramatic an impact on the “feel” of the film as HFR. While The Hobbit‘s juiced frame rates and hyper-realism may be initially unnerving, most agree that it is an effect that wears off after the first 20-30 minutes. After all, our sensorium is highly adaptable and, over time, we may come to associate 48 fps with cinema the way we associate 24 fps now.

For several in the industry, HFR is long overdue, and they have Peter Jackson to thank for being the first to break down commercial barriers. As Cameron and others prepare their own high frame rate presentations for the big screen, time will tell whether the tide of opinion flows toward the new medium or recedes back to the familiar embraces of the legacy format.

Footnotes:

1. When movies are shown at your local theater, each frame is flashed twice or three times to compensate for flicker arising from the inter-frame black period. Thus while the movie itself was recorded at 24p, the movie projector runs at a 48 or 72 Hz refresh rate. The same is true for digital projection and flat-panel televisions; each film frame is repeated according to the refresh rate of the display.
   
2. The human visual system’s response rate is highly dependent on the particular stimuli. For example, our sensitivity to light in dark environments is greater than our sensitivity to dark in light surrounds. Tests with Air force pilots have shown that the human eye can identify light that is flashed only for 1/220th of a second. We are capable of taking in hundreds of light emissions per second, though we vary in our ability to make distinct sense of those images as the frequencies climb higher and the stimuli change. At the end of the day, frame-based motion is merely a simulation of reality.
   
3. The figures given are for unique frames per eye. You’ll recall that for 2D theatrical presentations, each frame is flashed twice to reduce flicker. The situation is the same for 3D exhibitions. Given a 24-frame projection system, you are processing 48 total frames per eye. For 48-frame playback, this number doubles to 96 per eye.
   
4. This frame rate is easier to reproduce at home compared with 24 frame/s. Because the standard refresh cycle of televisions (in the U.S.) is 60 Hz, only a simple 2:2 pulldown is required to render 30 frame/s material. This avoids the judder which arises when 24 frame/s material is converted to 30 frame/s for proper playback on 60 Hz playback systems. This process, called telecining, is needed to make the 24-frame standard format of film compatible with video frame rates used in television and broadcast. Additionally, the economics of higher-cost film make video capture a more popular choice for low-budget programming like daytime soaps and the rest.
   
5. MCFI’s main function is to upgrade low-motion content to appear as fluid and continuous as high-motion content. The technology algorithmically creates new frames to insert between the source frames as if they were always there, thereby artificially inflating the frame rate. The quality of the results can vary broadly by manufacturer in accordance with the processor and software fitted to the display. Most HDTVs have this feature enabled by default. To annul the video-like “soap opera effect” it is the first processing feature I disable when calibrating or bringing home a new display.
   

If ever there were a lawn dart which should incapacitate global warming deniers, the image below would be that dart.

 Image via DeSmogBlog

In an effort that can be re-performed with ease, Jim Powell, former science advisor to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, shows us what a query in the Web of Science database reveals. The Web of Science is a public database indexed from 1900 – present. His basic search parameters were the keywords “global warming” or “global climate change” from 1991 – 2012. He found that there have been 13,950 peer-reviewed papers on global warming published in the last 21 years by 33,690 different authors from over 20 different countries. Out of that population, just 24 are papers of dissent. That’s 0.17%. If you drill down further, you find that of those 24, even fewer flat-out reject global warming, with the balance accepting that the earth is warming but rejecting that humans are the cause.

This follows from a similar survey in 2004 by Naomi Oreskes, who found that of all peer-reviewed abstracts published between 1993 and 2003, not a single paper rejected the consensus position that today’s global warming trend stems from unnatural causes. This latest survey pushes the radar out by another decade.

Regardless of how entrenched one’s views are within the denialist ecosystem, reality can only be eschewed for so long. With each passing year, more and more data is stacked in favor of global warming and its rock-solid connection to greenhouse gas emissions. I aim to update this pie chart annually. It should preface any discussion where disagreement exists over the reality of global warming, especially because it explicitly signifies that the contention exists only outside the scientific community.

Powell’s second graph shows the near-monotonic increase in research conducted on this issue since 1991. Not only is there strong consensus, but an ever-increasing number of studies by an ever-increasing number of climate scientists around the world are being funded to study what is most certainly not a “global conspiracy.”

Image via DeSmogBlog

Since this chart has gone viral, some have decried its use as a persuasion tool as being ad populum or an argument from authority. Of course, these ripostes demonstrate a critical misunderstanding of how science operates. There is no centralized authority in any scientific discipline. There’s no elected spokesman who speaks for all geologists, for example. There’s no emperor of biology who determines what is true for the rest in the field. Nor is there a clandestine “supergroup” of climate scientists who have the final word on global warming. These terms do not apply to science, as there are mechanisms built in precisely to prevent these types of influences. As Powell states, “If there is disagreement among scientists, based not on opinion but on hard evidence, it will be found in the peer-reviewed literature.” The unraveling of the climate denialist camp (or of science deniers in general) lies in the independently derived literature. As the many thousands of published papers attest, science is the most decentralized of disciplines.

If, instead of citing the overwhelming consensus found in peer-reviewed research someone were to appeal to the opinion of a single spokesperson, such as Neil deGrasse Tyson, then the argument from authority criticism would in fact be valid. As it stands, any objections to the established science will acquire credibility to the extent they acquire empirical support.

More ironically, it is the denialist community that falls prey to the fallacy of authority. From Michael Crichton to Donald Trump to ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond to virtually the entire 2012 GOP presidential race, deniers have persistently used their positions of power to sow disinformation in volume and to dissuade the public from accepting the scientific consensus, having neither the qualifications nor the data to prop up their claims. What deniers lack in credibility they attempt to reprovision with popularity and status.

As for ad populum, scientific pronouncements do not fluctuate under the guise of opinion and belief, but according to evidence. Pointing to conclusiveness here is no more ad populum than the connection between light alloys and flight aerodynamics is ad populum or the well-understood relationship between wire gauge and electrical signal fidelity is ad populum, or the conclusive evidence for bioevolution is ad populum. Fortunately, science does not operate under such pretenses of popular majority. On the contrary, science is the unapologetic antidote to conjecture and prejudgments, a plane of neutrality in an otherwise tendentious world. The data, and the sheer volume of it as of 2012, speaks for itself.

As expressed here and elsewhere ad nauseum, global warming merits our attention and resources, and it will require a global solution to mitigate its effects. We are right on the heels of the UN’s COP18 Climate Conference 2012 in Doha, Qatar, where international leaders hope to nail down some shared resolutions.

Source: Why Climate Deniers Have No Scientific Credibility – In One Pie Chart

Feature image via c2es.org

What do Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Francisco Pizarro have in common? Apart from their status as European countrymen, it was the fortuitous confluence of guns, microbes and steel technology which all but ensured their success at colonizing regions occupied by peoples who lacked such historical fulcrums. It should be unsurprising, given this lethal mixture of offense, why invading states comprised of so few have been able to conquer, kill or otherwise displace indigenous societies comprised of so many. These asymmetrical collisions suffuse human history, and it’s no secret that its retelling lends specific favor to Eurasian societies rather than those of other landmasses.

In Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond, author of The Third Chimpanzee, seeks to answer why history unfolded so differently among the various continents. Not contented with the proximate explanations listed above, Diamond forages deeper to uncover the ultimate explanations of why some societies procured that fateful triumvirate of factors and why others did not. Explicitly then, why does history record Francisco Pizarro and his confederates storming the Incan Empire and capturing Emperor Atahuallpa in that momentous 1532 collision at Cajamarca instead of Atahuallpa and his band of warriors sailing east, assaulting the Spanish Empire and seizing King Charles I? Which initial conditions facilitated the depopulation of so much of the New World by so few of the Old World?

Traditional solutions to these questions often involve genetic or innate differences in race and intelligence among disparate populations, and it is these traditional explanations which Diamond hopes to sweep away. With a starting point of the tail end of the last ice age circa 13,000 years ago, Diamond takes a holistic approach to deconstructing the broad patterns of history. This is no picnic of a task. As Diamond himself points out, compressing 13,000 years of nuanced history into roughly 400 pages works out to “an average of about one page per continent per 150 years, making brevity and simplification inevitable” (408).

To Diamond’s great credit, Guns, Germs, and Steel represents the metamorphosis of a topic of impenetrable scope into a cohesive, persuasive and not overly prolix piece of historical literature. He begins by surveying the natural differences among the continents, noting the variations in ecological and biological diversity as well as the orientations of the main axes of the continents, all of which had deep import for the evolution of complex human societies, namely the divergence of larger food-producing cultures from smaller bands of hunter-gatherers.

As it turns out, the last ice age played a significant role in the course of this progression. Compared with all other natural disasters, ice ages tend to have the most severe and lasting effects on the planet, dramatically disrupting not only climate but the chain of animal and plant life struggling to survive there. The Pleistocene ice age drove countless of the planet’s large mammals to extinction, especially those indigenous to North America and Australia. Europe and Asia, on the other hand, suffered fewer local extinction events of their large animal species. This outcome presented more options (a full thirteen of the major fourteen domestic mammals were confined to Eurasia) for animal domestication, defined as the regulation of an animal’s breeding and food supply.

Of equal importance is the inequality of wild plant species distributed across the global landscape. Here again, Eurasia is lopsidedly advantaged in terms of ecological and topographical diversity. Home to the greatest seasonal variation as well as the largest zones of temperate Mediterranean climate, Eurasia is saturated with the most diverse plant life.

Diamond discusses in detail the cultural shift from hunting and gathering to food-producing, emphasizing that it was a gradual process. In those environmentally amenable regions of the globe, crop farming and pastoralism offered several benefits over the hunter-gatherer lifestyle – primarily related to time, effort and payout – and precipitated an incremental transition from complete dependence on wild foods to a diet mainly supported by agriculture. Peoples inhabiting less fortunate regions of the globe either carried on as nomadic hunter-gatherers or were displaced by invading farmers. Australia is perhaps the best example: as the most infertile and biologically most impoverished of the continents, it contained the largest population of hunter-gatherers into the modern era.

For all of its benefits, the advent of agriculture around 8500 BC sponsored the most pestilential of side effects: increased human exposure to deadly microbes living inside domesticated animals and plants. Food-producing societies evolved resistances to these pathogens over time, or they were wiped out. First contact with foreign germs can upset the balance of a society more than any other contributing factor, and this is exactly what happened when colonizing agricultural societies encountered natives who did not share their immunities. This was, in fact, the most important factor for each of the major collisions throughout history, including the fall of the millions-strong Aztec Empire by Cortes and his mere 600 men, as well as the greatest population shift in all of human history: the initial 20 million North American Indian peoples being reduced by 95% in a matter of a century as a result of European conquest. In terms of their contribution to human depopulation, germs should clearly precede both guns and steel in the book’s title.

To illustrate the tangential benefits of food production, Diamond enlists the reader on a voyage of deductive reasoning to link the various positive feedback loops, as he calls them. In highly paraphrased form, it is laid out as follows. Whereas the hunter-gatherer existence was nomadic, food production gave rise to more sedentary societies. This, combined with the fact that farming created food surpluses, provided for denser human populations. With increases in human densities came greater variety of roles to be filled within the community, facilitating the appearance of social hierarchy and political structure. At the same time, a more sedentary existence meant more time could be devoted to innovation, and the denser populations meant more people who could potentially craft new metal tools, invent writing systems, and pioneer other technological leaps. This low-res snapshot can hardly do justice to the detail with which Diamond presents the material.

In this way, food production served as a springboard for human innovation, which then radiated out to surrounding populations. To Eurasia’s benefit again, it is the landmass with the most navigable terrain, easing the spread of agricultural and technological developments.

Diamond traces the patterns of history by connecting dominant cultures to the largest environmental palettes of domesticable biota and to the regions most congenial to technological diffusion. Thus while literacy, political organization, firearms, advanced ship technology, and infectious disease are the proximate causes of Pizarro’s overthrow of the Incan Empire, Vasco da Gama’s success in East Africa, and of countless other population shifts throughout history, Diamond insists it was their ancestors’ enduring success in cultivating the local flora and fauna which sits at the bedrock of history’s narrative.

As is the case with any work of this breadth, any implied monolithic pattern is fraught with qualification. Diamond is careful to mention caveats throughout, such as some of the exceptions involved with homogenizing Eurasia into a unified landmass. He notes that food production should not be synonymous with monotonic progress in any one category, referencing the Japanese injunction against firearms and China’s decommission of its maritime fleet in past centuries. The many nuances cited throughout are a testament to Diamond’s attention to detail and responsible professionalism.

Final Thoughts

One of the most fascinating gifts of history is found in the interactions among past peoples and the ripple effects of those interactions. Guns, Germs, and Steel sits above the vault of human history, providing first-stage explanations to account for its winners and losers. To a great extent, it furnishes a new hermeneutical lens by which to view history, or at the very least a soak test for assessing historical anecdotes. While Diamond was not the first to connect environmental factors to ruling states, Guns, Germs, and Steel is one of the greatest syntheses of the encompassing subject matter compiled to date. He debunks with crack empiricism the alternative, largely racist, hypotheses for history’s manifest imbalance of power, leaving a well-reasoned case in their stead.

I can only add to the avalanche of praise that has been directed toward this book. It is an academic read, to be sure, but I found it optimally dense so as not to turn away readers less interested in every detail. Some have dispraised Diamond’s repetition of common themes, but I personally found this helpful as it allowed the material to ossify more easily in my mind. The book also serves as a model of scientific rigor, as each chapter is fastidiously referenced in the ending bibliography. Guns, Germs, and Steel has forever changed the way I view history and even modern society. If I had my say, this would be standard high school reading across the country. This makes the short list of books which demand to be read at least once. Polymathic in scope, unwavering in its cogency, Diamond has penned a major contribution to our historical understanding which has stood the test of time. I only wished I had read it sooner.

Purchase on Amazon

Note: This review is mirrored at Goodreads and Amazon.

Feature image courtesy of franciscopizarro.org

Ernst Mayr, world-renowned biologist living in the 20th century, once stated, “It can hardly be doubted that biology has helped to undermine traditional beliefs and value systems.”

Does the evolution of life via natural selection pose a problem for traditional theism? Viewed historically, it is practically self-evident that it does, as resistance to the idea has been confined almost entirely to the religious community. The church and its laity have systematically deflected the idea since it first came on the scene. Its earliest proponents, Darwin and Huxley, suffered a glut of death threats, and even today the spurning of evolution is intimately related to accepting a religious-based alternative. It is an entanglement with no end in sight, and the enduring polarization stands as a testament to the schismatic nature of this most foundational of scientific ideas.

Intransigence toward evolution is particularly strong within Christian fundamentalism. For Christians with peremptory outlooks on the authority of the Bible, evolution poses the intractable task of assimilating its contra-Genesis “doctrine” into a parochial theology. But apart from its mutual exclusivity with inelegant interpretations of Bronze Age texts, is a modern understanding of evolution fundamentally at odds with the popular conceptions of God?

Beyond the debate over ancient tomes, evolution is corrosive to personal faith because it uniformly revokes any “special” status humanity formerly held. Any arguments contending that we are somehow privileged among nature, or among the cosmos, are now bankrupt. We are a half-chromosome away from chimpanzees living on a relatively ordinary planet orbiting a relatively ordinary star situated within a relatively ordinary galaxy. What we once considered exceptional we now understand to be mere vestiges of mediocrity. Moreover, thanks to discoveries made in the last century, we have now confirmed that humans are one relatively short-lived peg in an unfathomably vast chain of life extending back to unicellular organisms and the interstellar maelstroms out of which they arose. To be sure, to maintain faith coordinate to that of our benighted ancestors requires deeper reserves of theological provisions.

To further expose the problems evolution creates for theistic belief, we should turn to the late Stephen Jay Gould. A good starting point is found in his 1989 work, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History and subsequent essays. Highly regarded as one of the most iconic passages in all of science, it encapsulates precisely the dissonance created by a 10,000 foot understanding of evolution.

In Gould’s view, the staging of the cosmos, particularly man’s role within it, is not the realized vision of a designer, at least not of a competent one. Once again, the evidence instead intimates that humanity does not occupy the climax of the cosmic production but an accidental scene in an otherwise haphazardly produced drama. The privileged plank on which so many religions place humanity is deposed through the lens of evolution.

Zooming to a deeper level, the details of natural selection serve to illuminate the dissonance more fully. To the layperson, Gould’s words may seem to stand in contradiction when he says that the pathways which led to us are “improbable, unrepeatable and utterly unpredictable”, while in the next breath stating that “evolution is not random.” Let’s deconstruct this language.

My personal favorite definition of the evolutionary theory of natural selection is the following, by Dawkins:

When Gould speaks of “unpredictability”, he is referring to genetic mutations, the changes which arise in alleles or gene frequencies. Genetic mutations are entirely random, spontaneous and occur suddenly, often within a single generation. Thus, natural selection works much like winning the lottery. Mutations then rise and fall according to their relative fitness, a central tenet of evolutionary theory that refers to the capacity of a species to survive and reproduce. Selection pressures for DNA shuffling are many: swings in climate; cosmic and other radiation; viruses; predation; mutagenesis, to name a few. Mutations can also emerge simply from random errors arising from DNA replication. Those mutations which most increase fitness and best combat selection pressures are more likely to survive.

For example, the architecture of the human eye, the toxic acid produced by vultures, and the camouflage physiology of the squid, octopus, cuttlefish and chameleon were the result of random genetic mutations which survived in response to specific evolutionary pressures. Hence, the impetus behind genetic mutations are spontaneous and chance-derived, but the reasons for their staying power are anything but [random].

When Gould writes that “human evolution is not random”, he is referring to after the fact, given scientific hindsight. That is, given the set of mutations which occurred randomly, specie evolution can be explained quite readily. However, if you were to rewind the evolutionary tape, we would very likely see a vastly different set of mutations, resulting in very different evolutionary outcomes.

Thus the reason these biological realities have deep import for the “God hypothesis” should be apparent. Our presence here may be as improbable as a winning Powerball ticket. Furthermore, if the evolutionary pathways we observe today were all elements of a premeditated plan, then this reflects quite disadvantageously on that Architect’s competence. Nature is replete with examples of maladaptive characteristics (e.g., the female birth canal and reproductive system), traits in certain species that are useless to them but would be useful in other species (e.g., male nipples), and traits which are clearly sub-optimized but still get the job done (e.g., the panda’s thumb).

Much can be said about the biological inefficiency of our inverted retina, an element of our physiology which has baffled scientists for centuries. The inverted arrangement of our and most vertebrate’s retina, in which light has to pass through several inner layers of its neural apparatus before reaching the photoreceptors (i.e., rods and cones), seems overtly dysteleological from an optical engineering perspective, not merely for its wastefulness (it would be like adding adding a number of unnecessary substrates to an LCD panel, thereby reducing light transmission), but because it results in a blind spot. The rods and cones of cephalopods, on the other hand, are affixed to the front of the retina and the optic nerve to the rear, allowing for the unimpeded transmission of light and the lack of a visual blind spot.

Of course, evolution is able to account for each of these gaffes, as such phenomena are precisely what we would expect given its rubrics of randomness. Natural selection does not provide for perfection, only to augment fitness to the point of increased chance of survival for a species. It is not a top-down process indicative of an “intelligent designer” but a bottom-up process where genetic configurations can only be understood post hoc. The cephalopod’s camouflage and first-rate vision demonstrate how evolution selects those traits with adaptive edge, if you are lucky enough to mutate those traits in the first place. The more we study the physiology of other life, the more superior designs we find, each of which evolved along separate evolutionary turnpikes than our own.

If we wish to posit some conception of a metaphysical entity, the many examples of poor evolution throughout nature suggest one of three things: an absurdly incompetent designer, a malbeneficent designer or, rather unabstrusely, no designer at all. This is of course not to say evolution is by itself a definitive disproof of theism, though if one wants to stake belief in “God-guided” evolution, then one must come to terms with these evolutionary aberrations, as well as with the shoddily crafted theatrics of the overall cosmic story.

 (An ichneumon wasp, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)