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This Times article was put on DOME-L (planetarium listserve). Hey, is this
the same Lawrence Krauss who wrote "The Physics of Star Trek"?

Jonah Cohen
Outreach & Public Programs Manager
Science Center of Connecticut

===

March 29, 2005
COMMENTARY

When Sentiment and Fear Trump Reason and Reality By LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS

I have recently begun to wonder whether I am completely out of touch with
the mainstream, and if so, what that implies.

When I was a young student it became clear to me that the remarkable success
of the scientific method, which changed the world beyond belief in the four
centuries since Galileo, made the power and efficacy of that method evident.
Moreover, scientific ideas are not only powerful but so beautiful that they
are on par with the most spectacular legacies of civilization in art,
architecture, literature, music and philosophy.

This is what makes the current times so disconcerting. We like to think that
spectacular intellectual developments bring progress, so that future
generations may benefit from what has come before. But this is often an
illusion.

I remember the shock wave generated four years ago when the Taliban
government in Afghanistan destroyed thousands of statues, including two
priceless and awe-inspiring archaeological artifacts, the world's largest
standing statues of Buddha, created almost 2,000 years ago. The Taliban
claimed that Islamic law prohibited the creation of idolatrous images of
human faces that might be used for worship.

I remember sharing the feeling of incredible sadness to know that the world
had forever lost a precious part of its intellectual heritage. It was
difficult to believe that in the 21st century such a return to the dark ages
could happen anywhere.

Those images came to mind again as I followed recent news of incidents in
the United States in which fundamentalist dogma and its fear of the
intellectual progress that comes from understanding nature has trumped the
scientific method. These actions attack intellectual pillars of our
civilization that are every bit as real as monumental statues of Buddha.

The "reality-based community," as one White House insider so poetically
referred to it recently, is losing the fight for hearts and minds throughout
the country to a well-orchestrated marketing program that plays on sentiment
and fear.

The open intrusion of religious dogma into the highest levels of government
is stunning. Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court speaks of "the fact
that government derives its authority from God" 
(during oral arguments before the court about displays of the Ten
Commandments) while the president of the United States has argued that
evolution is a theory not a fact.

The effort to blur the huge distinction between faith and science, between
empirically falsifiable facts and beliefs, was on display again this month
in two very different contexts.

Congressional leaders ignored the conclusions of the doctors who have
actually examined Terri Schiavo and judges who have listened to the
evidence. Senator Bill Frist, previously a heart surgeon who must have once
known better, shunned the conclusions of these doctors and, without ever
having examined Ms. Schiavo himself, stated his "belief" 
that she was not in a vegetative state.

Meanwhile, on a much less emotionally tragic but no less intellectually
puzzling front, the Templeton Foundation continued with its program to
sponsor the notion that science can somehow ultimately reveal the existence
of God by once again awarding its annual Templeton Prize for Progress in
Religion not to a theologian, but to a physicist.

Dr. Charles Townes, the winner, is a Nobel laureate whose scientific work
has been of impeccable distinction; his prime contribution to religion
appears to be his proudly proclaiming his belief in God as revealed through
the beauty of nature.

I confess that my immediate reaction was the same as it has been to all of
Templeton's recent awards to scientists. If this is the most significant
progress in religious thought, beating out the work of distinguished
theologians throughout the world, then it is a sad reflection on such
progress. Of course, I rather believe that it reflects on the foundation's
misguided goals and methods.

Nature's beauty inspires religious fervor in some scientists. For others,
like the Nobel laureate Dr. Steven Weinberg, it merely reinforces their
belief that God is irrelevant.

The point here, which should be obvious, is that science and religion are
separate entities: science is a predictive discipline based on empirically
falsifiable facts; religion is a hopeful discipline based on inner faith.

Theologians as ancient as St. Augustine and Moses Maimonides recognized that
science, not religion, was the appropriate and reliable method to try to
understand the physical world. Yet it is precisely this ancient wisdom that
is now under attack.

Foes of evolution and the Big Bang in this country do not operate with the
direct and brutal actions of the Taliban. They have marketing skills. Openly
condemning evolution as blasphemous might play well to the fundamentalist
true believers, but it wouldn't play well in the heartland, which is the
real target. Thus the spurious argument is created that evolution isn't good
science.

This "fact" is established by fiat. The Discovery Institute in Seattle
supports the work of several Ph.D.'s who then write books (and op-ed
articles) decrying the fallacy of evolution. They don't write scientific
articles, however, because the claims they make - either that cellular
structures are too complex to have evolved or that evolution itself is
improbable - have either failed to stand up to detailed scrutiny or involve
no falsifiable predictions.

What is being obscured in this manufactured debate is that the underlying
intent has little to do with evolution, or the age of the earth. The
fundamentalist attack is on the basic premise that physical phenomena have
physical causes that can be revealed by use of the scientific method.

Because science does not explicitly incorporate a deity in its
considerations, some fundamentalists believe that it undermines our moral
order, just as the Buddha statues presented a threat to the fundamentalist
Islamic moral order.

The pillar of our humanity that is most under attack is our remarkable
ability to understand nature. We claim that in places like Afghanistan the
enemies of truth are the enemies of freedom and democracy. If the scientific
method is out of the mainstream in our country it is time to take a stronger
stand against the effort to undermine empirical reality in favor of dogma.

Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss is chairman of the physics department at Case Western
Reserve University. His new book, "Hiding in the Mirror," will appear this
fall.

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