THE TANDEM PROJECT
UNITED NATIONS, HUMAN RIGHTS,
FREEDOM OF RELIGION OR BELIEF
FAITH, EVOLUTION AND MORALITY
Issue: Faith, Evolution, Morality – Facing the thorny issues
of conflict between faith and science
For: United Nations, Governments, Religions or Beliefs,
Academia, NGOs, Media, Civil Society
Review: A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science
Clash, by Amy
Harmon, New York Times,
The question isn’t whether
Intelligent Design and Creationism should be taught in schools, but where they should be taught. Science teachers believe the
subjects are not appropriate in science classrooms as they are not comparable
or compatible with
Links to the articles follow these excerpts:
A Teacher on the Front Line as
Faith and Science Clash
“But in a nation where evangelical Protestantism and
other religious traditions stress a literal reading of the biblical description
of God’s individually creating species, students often arrive at school fearing
that evolution, and perhaps science itself, is hostile to their faith.
With a mandate to teach evolution but little guidance
as to how, science teachers are contriving their own ways to turn a culture war
into a lesson plan. How they fare may bear on whether a new generation of
Americans embraces scientific evidence alongside religious belief.”
Taking a Cue from Ants on
Evolution of Humans
“It is through multilevel or group-level selection –
favoring the survival of one group of organisms over another – that evolution
has in Dr. Wilson’s view brought into being the many essential genes that
benefit the group at the individual’s expense. In humans, these may include
genes that underlie generosity, moral constraints, even religious behavior.
“Though Dr. Wilson is a fighter when necessary, he is
also a conciliator. In his most recent book, The Creation,
he calls for scientists and religious leaders to make common cause in saving
the natural life of the planet. He has addressed major meetings of Mormons and
Southern Baptists to ask for their help in protecting biodiversity. Of the
differences between science and religion, he says: ‘Stop quibbling – I’m
willing to say ‘Under God’ and to hold my hand to my heart. That’s recognition
of how this country evolved, and that we are using strong language to strong
purpose, even if we may not agree on how the Earth was created.”
The Neural Buddhists
“David Brooks in saying the scientific revolution will
have a big effect on culture says this: Researchers now spend a lot of time
trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish,
it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy
and attachment…This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in
the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call
neural Buddhism.”
Believing Scripture but Playing
by Science’s Rules
“His subject was the abundance and spread of
mosasaurs, marine reptiles that, as he wrote, vanished at the end of the
Cretaceous era about 65 million years ago. The work is ‘impeccable,’ said David
E. Fastovsky, a paleontologist and professor of geosciences at the university
who was Dr. Ross’s dissertation adviser. ‘He was working within a strictly
scientific framework, a conventional scientific framework. But Dr. Ross is
hardly a conventional paleontologist. He is a ‘young earth creationist’ – he
believes that the Bible is a literally true account of the creation of the
universe, and that the earth is at most 10,000 years old.”
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Link: A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash, by
Amy Harmon, New York Times,
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Link to New York Science Times article: Taking a Cue from Ants on Evolution of Humans.
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Link to the full New York Times article: The Neural Buddhists – When brain research meets the Bible, by
David Brooks, New York Times. There is free access to this article if you join
NYT.com.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/index.html
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Link to full New York Times article: Believing Scripture but
Playing by Science’s Rules,
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Excerpts: Excerpts are presented under the Eight Articles of
the 1981 U.N. Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and of
Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. Examples of excerpts are presented
prior to an Issue Statement for each Review.
1. 3 Freedom to manifest one’s
religion or belief may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by
law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, morals or the
fundamental rights and freedoms of others.
4. 1 All States shall take
effective measures to prevent and eliminate discrimination on the grounds of
religion or belief in the recognition, exercise and enjoyment of human rights
and fundamental freedoms in all fields of civil, economic, political, social
and cultural life.
4.1.4 Social (science, religion and education)
A
TEACHER ON THE FRONT LINE AS FAITH AND SCIENCE CLASH
“If I do this wrong,” Mr. Campbell remembers
thinking on that humid spring morning, “I’ll lose him.”
In February, the Florida Department of Education
modified its standards to explicitly require, for the first time, the state’s
public schools teach evolution, calling it “the organizing principle of life
science.” Spurred in part by legal rulings against school districts seeking to
favor religious versions of natural history, over a dozen other states have
also given more emphasis in recent years to what has long been the scientific
consensus; that all of the diverse life forms on Earth descended from a common
ancestor, through a process of mutation and natural selection, over billions of
years.
But in a nation where evangelical Protestantism
and other religious traditions stress a literal reading of the biblical description
of God’s individually creating species, students often arrive at school fearing
that evolution, and perhaps science itself, is hostile to their faith.
With a mandate to teach evolution but little
guidance as to how, science teachers are contriving their own ways to turn a
culture war into a lesson plan. How they fare may bear on whether a new
generation of Americans embraces scientific evidence alongside religious
belief.
TAKING
A CUE FROM ANTS ON THE EVOLUTION OF HUMANS
Ants are Dr. Wilson’s first and enduring love. But
he has become one of the world’s best known biologists through two other
passions, his urge to create large syntheses of knowledge and his gift for
writing. An updated edition of “The Superorganism,” his encyclopedic work on ants
co-written with Bert Holldobler, will be published in November. He is preparing
a treatise on the forces of social evolution, which seems likely to apply to
people the lessons evident in ant colonies. And he is engaged in another fight.
The new fight is one Dr. Wilson has picked. It
concerns a central feature of evolution, one with considerable bearing on human
social behaviors. The issue is the level as which evolution operates. Many
evolutionary biologists have been persuaded, by works like “The Selfish Gene”
by Richard Dawkins, that the gene is the only level at which natural selection
acts. Dr. Wilson, changing his mind because of new data about the genetics of
ant colonies, now believes that natural selection operates at many levels,
including the level of a social group.
It is through multilevel or group-level selection
– favoring the survival of one group of organisms over another – that evolution
has in Dr. Wilson’s view brought into being the many essential genes that
benefit the group at the individual’s expense. In humans, these may include
genes that underlie generosity, moral constraints, even religious behavior.
Such traits are difficult to account for, though not impossible, on the view
that natural selection favors only behaviors that help the individual to
survive and leave more children. “I believe that deep in their heart everyone
working on social insects is aware that the selection that created them is
multilevel selection,” Dr. Wilson said.
“It is an astonishing circumstance that the study
of ethics has advanced so little since the nineteenth century,” he wrote,
dismissing a century of work by moral philosophers. His insight has been
supported by the recent emergence of a new school of psychologists who are
constructing an evolutionary explanation of morality.
Dr. Wilson’s treatise, on the shaping of social
behavior, seems likely to tread firmly into this vexed arena. Morality and
religion, he suspects, are traits based on group selection. “Groups with men of
quality – brace, strong, innovative, smart and altruistic – would tend to
prevail, as
“Now that, obviously, is a rather unpopular idea,
very politically incorrect if pushed, but nevertheless
Looking back at the “heavy mortar fire” that
rained done on him over “Sociobiology,” he said he had risked his academic
career and feared for a time that he had made a fatal error. His admiration for
the political courage of the Harvard faculty is not without limits; many
colleagues told him they supported him, but all did so privately. Academic
biologists are still so afraid of inciting similar attacks that they practice
sociobiology under other names, like evolutionary psychology.
Though Dr. Wilson is a fighter when necessary, he
is also a conciliator. In his most recent book, “The Creation,” he calls for
scientists and religious leaders to make common cause in saving the natural
life of the planet. He has addressed major meetings of Mormons and Southern Baptists
to ask for their help in protecting biodiversity. Of the differences between
science and religion, he says: “Stop quibbling – I’m willing to say ‘Under God’
and to hold my hand to my heart. That’s recognition of how this country
evolved, and that we are using strong language to strong purpose, even if we
may not agree on how the Earth was created.”
THE
NEURAL BUDDHISTS: WHEN BRAIN RESEARCH MEETS THE BIBLE
Lo and behold, over the past decade, a new group
of assertive atheists has done battle with defenders of the faith. The two
sides have argued about whether it is reasonable to conceive of a soul that
survives the death of the body and about whether understanding the brain
explains away or merely adds to our appreciation of the entity that created it.
The atheism debate is a textbook example of how a
scientific revolution can change public culture. Just as “The Origin of
Species” reshaped social thinking, just as Einstein’s theory of relativity
affected art, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how
people see the world…Any yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be
a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith
in God; it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.
Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to
understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it
appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and
attachment…This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the
form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural
Buddhism.
In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and
Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That
was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel
the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just
cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come
from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism…In unexpected ways,
science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s
bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little
stock in divine law or revelation.
Orthodox believers are going to have to defend
particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have
to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are
true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me.
I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the
middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.
BELIEVING
SCRIPTURE BUT PLAYING BY SCIENCE’S RULES
There is nothing much unusual about the 197-page dissertation
Marcus R. Ross submitted in December to complete his doctoral degree in
geosciences here at the University of Rhode Island. His subject was the
abundance and spread of mosasaurs, marine reptiles that, as he wrote, vanished
at the end of the Cretaceous era about 65 million years ago. The work is
‘impeccable,’ said David E. Fastovsky, a paleontologist and professor of
geosciences at the university who Dr. Ross’s dissertation adviser. ‘He was
working within a strictly scientific framework, a conventional scientific
framework.’
But Dr. Ross is hardly a conventional
paleontologist. He is a ‘young earth creationist’ – he believes that the Bible
is a literally true account of the creation of the universe, and that the earth
is at most 10,000 years old.
For him, Dr. Ross said, the methods and theories
of paleontology are one ‘paradigm’ for studying the past and Scripture is
another. In the paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his
dissertation are entirely appropriate. The fact that as a young earth
creationist he has a different view just means, he said, ‘that I am separating
the different paradigms.’
Dr. Ross, 30, grew up in
For Biblical literalists, Scripture is the final
authority. As a creationist raised in an evangelical household and a
paleontologist who said he was ‘just captivated’ as a child by dinosaurs and
fossils, Dr. Ross embodies conflicts between these two approaches. The
conflicts arise often these days, particularly as people debate the teaching of
evolution.
Perhaps the most famous creationist wearing the
secular mantle of science is Kurt P. Wise, who earned his doctorate at Harvard
in 1989 under the guidance of the paleontologist Stephan Jay Gould, a leading
theorist of evolution who died in 2002.
And for some, his case raises thorny philosophical
and practical questions. May a secular university deny otherwise qualified
students a degree because of their religion? Can a student produce
intellectually honest work that contradicts deeply held beliefs? Should it be
obligatory (or forbidden) for universities to consider how students will use
the degrees they earn?
Eugenie C. Scott, executive director of the
National Center for Science Education, a private group on the front line of the
battle for the teaching of evolution, said fundamentalists who capitalized on
secular credentials ‘to miseducate the public’ were doing a disservice.
Dr. Fastovsky said he had talked to Dr. Ross ‘lots
of times’ about his religious beliefs, but that depriving him of his doctorate
because of them would be nothing more than religious discrimination. ‘We are not here to certify his religious
beliefs,’ he said. ‘All I can tell you is that he came here and did science
that is completely defensible.’
But Dr. Scott, a former professor of physical
anthropology at the University of Colorado, said in an interview that graduate
admissions committees were entitled to
consider the difficulties that would arise from admitting a doctoral candidate
with views ‘so at variance with what we consider standard science.’ This is not religious discrimination, she
added, it is discrimination ‘on the basis of science.’
Asked whether it was intellectually honest to
write a dissertation so at odds with his religious views, he said: ‘I was
working within a particular paradigm of earth history. I accepted that
philosophy of science for the purpose of working with the people of
And for some, his case raises thorny philosophical
and practical questions. May a secular university deny otherwise qualified
students a degree because of their religion? Can a student produce
intellectually honest work that contradicts deeply held beliefs? Should it be
obligatory (or forbidden) for universities to consider how students will use
the degrees they earn?
Eugenie C. Scott, executive director of the
National Center for Science Education, a private group on the front line of the
battle for the teaching of evolution, said fundamentalists who capitalized on
secular credentials ‘to miseducate the public’ were doing a disservice
ISSUE STATEMENT: The article, Believing Scripture but
Playing by Science’s Rules, is on a PhD dissertation by a
International Human
Rights Standards on Freedom of Religion or Belief are international human rights
treaty law and universal codes of conduct for peaceful cooperation, respectful
competition and resolution of conflicts. The standards are a platform for
genuine dialogue on core principles and values within and among nations, all
religions and other beliefs.
The United Nations Human
Rights Committee: General Comment No. 22 (48); On Article 18, Adopted 20 July
1993, Paragraph 8: “The Committee observes that the concept of morals derives
from many social, philosophical and religious traditions; consequently,
limitations on the freedom to manifest a religion or belief for the purpose of
protecting morals must be based on principles not deriving exclusively from a
single tradition.
Surely one of the best hopes for the future of
humankind is to embrace a culture in which religions and other beliefs accept
one another, in which wars and violence are not tolerated in the name of an
exclusive right to truth, in which children are raised to solve conflicts with
mediation, compassion and understanding.
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Introduction: The Tandem Project is dedicated to support for
International Human Rights Standards on Freedom of Religion or Belief. The
focus is on fundamental values shared virtually universally by public, private,
religious and non-religious organizations to change how our cultures view
differences, how we often behave toward one another and to forestall the
reflexive hostility we see so vividly around the world.
As we are all painfully
aware, religious conflict continues to escalate worldwide whether in the
Surely one of the best hopes for the future of humankind
is to embrace a culture in which religions and other beliefs accept one
another, in which wars and violence are not tolerated in the name of an
exclusive right to truth, in which children are raised to solve conflicts with
mediation, compassion and understanding.
The Tandem Project: a non-governmental organization founded
in 1986 to build understanding, tolerance and respect for diversity, and to
prevent discrimination in matters relating to freedom of religion or belief.
The Tandem Project, a non-profit NGO, has sponsored multiple conferences,
curricula, reference materials and programs on Article 18 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – Everyone shall have the right to
freedom of thought, conscience and religion - and 1981 United Nations
Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination
Based on Religion or Belief.
The Tandem Project
initiative is the result of a co-founder representing the World Federation of
United Nations Associations at the United Nations Geneva Seminar, Encouragement of Understanding, Tolerance
and Respect in Matters Relating to Freedom of Religion or Belief,
called by the UN Secretariat in 1984 on ways to implement the 1981 UN
Declaration. In 1986, The Tandem Project organized the first NGO International
Conference on the 1981 UN Declaration.
The Tandem Project
Executive Director is: Michael M. Roan, mroan@tandemproject.com.
Documents Attached:
Professor - turned Pope - Leads Seminar on Evolution
Islamic Creationist and a Book Sent around the World
Believing Scripture but Playing by Science's Rules
The Tandem Project is a UN NGO in
Special Consultative Status with the
Economic and Social Council of
the United Nations
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