THE TANDEM PROJECT

UNITED NATIONS, HUMAN RIGHTS,

FREEDOM OF RELIGION OR BELIEF

Separation of Religion or Belief & State

SCIENCE IS IN THE DETAILS – EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL BELIEFS

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Issue: Article 18 protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief- General Comment 22 on Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

For: United Nations, Governments, Religions or Beliefs, Academia, NGOs, Media, Civil Society

Review: Science is in the Details, New York Times Op-Ed by Sam Harris, Monday July 27 2009.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/opinion/27harris.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print

President Barrack Obama on 8 July 2009 nominated Dr. Francis S. Collins to the position of Director, National Institutes of Health. Dr. Collins gave the key note address to the 55^th annual National Prayer Breakfast in 2007 as Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

His qualifications for the position are impeccable as a world renowned scientist, physical chemist and medical geneticist. There may be questions if Dr. Collins harbors a spiritual bias that cannot recognize atheistic worldviews as morally valid. Op Ed columns are not endorsed by The Tandem Project. They are the opinions of the writer, a reflection of the democratic process and everyone’s right to freedom of opinion and expression. Quotes: from the article by Sam Harris:

Slide 5: (Presentation by Dr. Collins): “If the moral law is just a side effect of evolution, then there is no such thing as good and evil. It’s all an illusion. We’ve been hoodwinked. Are any of us, especially the strong atheists, really prepared to live our lives with that worldview?”

“Dr. Collins has written that ‘science offers no answers to the most pressing questions of human existence’ and that ‘the claims of atheistic materialism must be steadfastly resisted.”

“One can only hope that these convictions will not affect his judgment at the institutes of health. After all, understanding human well being at the level of the brain might very well offer some ‘answers to the most pressing questions of human existence’ – questions like, why do we suffer? Or, indeed, is it possible to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. And wouldn’t any effort to explain morality without reference to a soul, and to God, necessarily constitute ‘atheistic materialism”?

“Francis Collins is an accomplished scientist and a man who is sincere in his beliefs. And that is precisely what makes me so uncomfortable about his nomination. Must we really entrust the future of biomedical research in the United States to a man who sincerely believes that a scientific understanding of human nature is impossible”?

Excerpts: Excerpts 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.

2. 1 No one shall be subject to discrimination by any State, institution, group of persons or person on the grounds of religion or other beliefs.

2. 2 For the purposes of the present Declaration, the expression ‘intolerance and discrimination based on religion or belief’ means any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on religion or belief and having as its purpose or as its effect nullification or impairment of the recognition, enjoyment or exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms on an equal basis.

General Comment 22, Article 18, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Human Rights Committee (CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.4) Available by clicking to open the following link:

http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(Symbol)/9a30112c27d1167cc12563ed004d8f15?Opendocument

Paragraph 8 General Comment 22 on Article 18 reads: “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 from a single tradition.”

Genuine dialogue on human rights and freedom of religion or belief calls for respectful discourse, discussion of taboos and clarity by persons of diverse beliefs. Inclusive dialogue includes people of theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief. The warning signs are clear, unless there is genuine dialogue ranging from religious fundamentalism to secular dogmatism; conflicts in the future will probably be even more deadly.

Dr. Collins gave the keynote address to the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C., in 2007 and President Barrack Obama delivered an address to the National Prayer Breakfast in 2009. The Tandem Project Recommendation is repeated here:

National Prayer Breakfast: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Prayer_Breakfast

The National Prayer Breakfast is a yearly event held in Washington D.C., on the first Thursday of February each year. The founder of this event was a Norwegian immigrant, Abraham Vereide. The event – which is actually a week long series of meetings, luncheons, and dinners, has taken place since 1953. The National Prayer Breakfast and meetings is attended by some 3,500 guests including international invitees from over 100 countries. The Breakfast is hosted by members of the United States Congress and organized on their behalf by The Fellowship Foundation, which supports a broad international movement that seeks to create common ground across religious, political and social divisions around the message of Jesus without affiliation to any one religious institution. It is designed to be a forum for political, social and business leaders of the world to assemble together and build relationships which might not otherwise be possible.

Recommendation: The National Prayer Breakfast is a unique spiritual week-long event where 3,500 guests from over 100 countries attend. They are hosted by U.S. Congressional leaders and organized by a Christian Fellowship. Diplomats and other guests attending hold diverse religious and other beliefs. If there is an opportunity at the February 2010 event, a forum should be held on the Universal Periodic Review process and support for Article 18 and the 1981 UN Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. Members of the U.S. Congress, U.S. State Department and White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships might host the forum with a panel of speakers from other countries on how their religious and secular beliefs view equal rights for all beliefs under Article 18 and 1981 UN Declaration.

Google: Dr. Francis S. Collins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins

Open this Google search and click on the option: (geneticist).

RELIGIOUS VIEWS

Excerpt: from Wikipedia Encyclopedia:

Collins has described his parents as "only nominally Christian" and by graduate school he considered himself an atheist. However, dealing with dying patients led him to question his religious views, and he investigated various faiths. He familiarized himself with the evidences for and against God in cosmology, and used Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis^[12] as a foundation to re-examine his religious view. He eventually came to a theistic conclusion, and finally became an evangelical Christian during a hike on a fall afternoon.

In his 2006 book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, Collins considers scientific discoveries an "opportunity to worship." In his book Collins examines and subsequently rejects creationism and intelligent design. His own belief system is theistic evolution which he prefers to term BioLogos.

In an interview with National Geographic published in February 2007, interviewer John Horgan, an agnostic journalist, criticized Collins' description of agnosticism as "a cop-out". In response, Collins clarified his position on agnosticism so as not to include "earnest agnostics who have considered the evidence and still don't find an answer. I was reacting to the agnosticism I see in the scientific community, which has not been arrived at by a careful examination of the evidence. I went through a phase when I was a casual agnostic, and I am perhaps too quick to assume that others have no more depth than I did."^[13]

During a debate with Richard Dawkins, Collins stated that God is the explanation of those features of the universe that science finds difficult to explain (such as the values of certain physical constants favoring life), and that God himself does not need an explanation since he is beyond the universe. Dawkins called this "the mother and father of all cop-outs" and "an incredible evasion of the responsibility to explain", to which Collins responded "I do object to the assumption that anything that might be outside of nature is ruled out of the conversation. That's an impoverished view of the kinds of questions we humans can ask, such as 'Why am I here?', 'What happens after we die?' If you refuse to acknowledge their appropriateness, you end up with a zero probability of God after examining the natural world because it doesn't convince you on a proof basis. But if your mind is open about whether God might exist, you can point to aspects of the universe that are consistent with that conclusion."^[14]

In reviewing The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine by Alister McGrath, Collins says "Addressing the conclusions of The God Delusion point by point with the devastating insight of a molecular biologist turned theologian, Alister McGrath dismantles the argument that science should lead to atheism, and demonstrates instead that Dawkins has abandoned his much-cherished rationality to embrace an embittered manifesto of dogmatic atheist fundamentalism."^[15]

Collins remains firm in his rejection of intelligent design, and for this reason was not asked to participate in the 2008 documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which tries, among other things, to draw a direct link between evolution and atheism. Walt Ruloff, a producer for the film, claimed that Collins was "toeing the party line" by rejecting intelligent design, which Collins called "just ludicrous." ^[16]

In 2009, Collins founded the BioLogos Foundation to "contribute to the public voice that represents the harmony of science and faith." He is currently serving as the foundation's president.^[17]

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July 27, 2009

Op-Ed Contributor

Science Is in the Details

By SAM HARRIS

PRESIDENT OBAMA has nominated Francis Collins to be the next director of the National Institutes of Health. It would seem a brilliant choice. Dr. Collins’s credentials are impeccable: he is a physical chemist, a medical geneticist and the former head of the Human Genome Project. He is also, by his own account, living proof that there is no conflict between science and religion. In 2006, he published “The Language of God,” in which he claimed to demonstrate “a consistent and profoundly satisfying harmony” between 21st-century science and evangelical Christianity.

Dr. Collins is regularly praised by secular scientists for what he is not: he is not a “young earth creationist,” nor is he a proponent of “intelligent design.” Given the state of the evidence for evolution, these are both very good things for a scientist not to be.

But as director of the institutes, Dr. Collins will have more responsibility for biomedical and health-related research than any person on earth, controlling an annual budget of more than $30 billion. He will also be one of the foremost representatives of science in the United States. For this reason, it is important that we understand Dr. Collins and his faith as they relate to scientific inquiry.

What follows are a series of slides, presented in order, from a lecture on science and belief that Dr. Collins gave at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2008:

Slide 1: “Almighty God, who is not limited in space or time, created a universe 13.7 billion years ago with its parameters precisely tuned to allow the development of complexity over long periods of time.”

Slide 2: “God’s plan included the mechanism of evolution to create the marvelous diversity of living things on our planet. Most especially, that creative plan included human beings.”

Slide 3: “After evolution had prepared a sufficiently advanced ‘house’ (the human brain), God gifted humanity with the knowledge of good and evil (the moral law), with free will, and with an immortal soul.”

Slide 4: “We humans used our free will to break the moral law, leading to our estrangement from God. For Christians, Jesus is the solution to that estrangement.”

Slide 5: “If the moral law is just a side effect of evolution, then there is no such thing as good or evil. It’s all an illusion. We’ve been hoodwinked. Are any of us, especially the strong atheists, really prepared to live our lives within that worldview?”

Why should Dr. Collins’s beliefs be of concern?

There is an epidemic of scientific ignorance in the United States. This isn’t surprising, as very few scientific truths are self-evident, and many are counterintuitive. It is by no means obvious that empty space has structure or that we share a common ancestor with both the housefly and the banana. It can be difficult to think like a scientist. But few things make thinking like a scientist more difficult than religion.

Dr. Collins has written that science makes belief in God “intensely plausible” — the Big Bang, the fine-tuning of nature’s constants, the emergence of complex life, the effectiveness of mathematics, all suggest the existence of a “loving, logical and consistent” God.

But when challenged with alternative accounts of these phenomena — or with evidence that suggests that God might be unloving, illogical, inconsistent or, indeed, absent — Dr. Collins will say that God stands outside of Nature, and thus science cannot address the question of his existence at all.

Similarly, Dr. Collins insists that our moral intuitions attest to God’s existence, to his perfectly moral character and to his desire to have fellowship with every member of our species. But when our moral intuitions recoil at the casual destruction of innocents by, say, a tidal wave or earthquake, Dr. Collins assures us that our time-bound notions of good and evil can’t be trusted and that God’s will is a mystery.

Most scientists who study the human mind are convinced that minds are the products of brains, and brains are the products of evolution. Dr. Collins takes a different approach: he insists that at some moment in the development of our species God inserted crucial components — including an immortal soul, free will, the moral law, spiritual hunger, genuine altruism, etc.

As someone who believes that our understanding of human nature can be derived from neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science and behavioral economics, among others, I am troubled by Dr. Collins’s line of thinking. I also believe it would seriously undercut fields like neuroscience and our growing understanding of the human mind. If we must look to religion to explain our moral sense, what should we make of the deficits of moral reasoning associated with conditions like frontal lobe syndrome and psychopathy? Are these disorders best addressed by theology?

Dr. Collins has written that “science offers no answers to the most pressing questions of human existence” and that “the claims of atheistic materialism must be steadfastly resisted.”

One can only hope that these convictions will not affect his judgment at the institutes of health. After all, understanding human well-being at the level of the brain might very well offer some “answers to the most pressing questions of human existence” — questions like, Why do we suffer? Or, indeed, is it possible to love one’s neighbor as oneself? And wouldn’t any effort to explain human nature without reference to a soul, and to explain morality without reference to God, necessarily constitute “atheistic materialism”?

Francis Collins is an accomplished scientist and a man who is sincere in his beliefs. And that is precisely what makes me so uncomfortable about his nomination. Must we really entrust the future of biomedical research in the United States to a man who sincerely believes that a scientific understanding of human nature is impossible?

Sam Harris is the author of “The End of Faith” and co-founder of the Reason Project, which promotes scientific knowledge and secular values.

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THE TANDEM PROJECT PROPOSALS

Proposals for constructive, long-term solutions to conflicts based on religion or belief:

(1) Develop a model local-national-international integrated approach to human rights and freedom of religion or belief, appropriate to the cultures of each country, as follow-up to the Universal Periodic Review. 1. (2) Use International Human Rights Standards on Freedom of Religion or Belief as a rule of law for inclusive and genuine dialogue on core values within and among nations, all religions and other beliefs, and for protection against discrimination. (3) Use the standards on freedom of religion or belief in education curricula and places of worship, “teaching children, from the very beginning, that their own religion is one out of many and that it is a personal choice for everyone to adhere to the religion or belief by which he or she feels most inspired, or to adhere to no religion or belief at all.” 2.

Documents Attached:

Science is in the Details - Equal Rights for all Beliefs

USA- Proselytism & Conversion - Universal Periodic Review

A Christian Reply - UN based Questionnaire on the Ultimate Meaning of Life

Standards: http://www.tandemproject.com/program/81_dec.htm

1: USA Example: Universal Periodic Review & Freedom of Religion or Belief

2: Mr. Piet de Klerk, Ambassador At-Large of the Netherlands on Human Rights, 25 year Anniversary of 1981 UN Declaration on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Prague, Czech Republic.

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United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, at the Alliance of Civilizations Madrid Forum said; “never in our lifetime has there been a more desperate need for constructive and committed dialogue, among individuals, among communities, among cultures, among and between nations.”

In 1968 the UN deferred work on an International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Religious Intolerance because of its complexity and sensitivity. In forty years violence, suffering and discrimination based on religion or belief has dramatically increased. It is time for a UN Working Group to draft what they deferred in 1968, a comprehensive core international human rights treaty- a United Nations Convention on Freedom of Religion or Belief: United Nations History – Freedom of Religion or Belief

The challenge to religions or beliefs at all levels is awareness, understanding and acceptance of international human rights standards on freedom of religion or belief. Leaders, teachers and followers of all religions or beliefs, with governments, are keys to test the viability of inclusive and genuine dialogue in response to the UN Secretary General’s urgent call for constructive and committed dialogue.

The Tandem Project title, Separation of Religion or Belief and State (SOROBAS), reflects the far-reaching scope of UN General Comment 22 on Article 18, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Human Rights Committee (CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.4). The General Comment on Article 18 is a guide to international human rights law for peaceful cooperation, respectful competition and resolution of conflicts:

http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(Symbol)/9a30112c27d1167cc12563ed004d8f15?Opendocument

Surely one of the best hopes for 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.

We welcome ideas on how this can be accomplished; info@tandemproject.com.

The Tandem Project is a non-governmental organization (NGO) 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 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 is a UN NGO in Special Consultative Status with the

Economic and Social Council of the United Nations