After 50 years of research, scientists are more than 99 percent certain they’ve found evidence for the Higgs boson, or “God particle,” the elementary particle that explains why objects in our universe have mass. The finding may complete the standard model of physics and give us greater insight into our existence.

Peter Higgs, professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh in England, proposed in the 1960s that the universe is bathed in an invisible field now known as the Higgs field, the glue that holds everything together. If the Higgs boson didn’t exist, our universe would be a dramatically different place—and we would have to change much of what we think we know about it.

As European Organization for Nuclear Research Director General Rolf Heuer announced the news in Geneva on July 4, Higgs himself wiped tears away. The finding represents the culmination of half a century of theorizing, proton-smashing, and head-scratching. But it’s also, as David Horsey writes in the Los Angeles Times, “a reminder that each of us is merely a tiny, carbon-based organism existing for a brief moment on a small planet that, by the scale of the universe, is no more singular than a grain of sand on a beach.” That reminder, however, doesn’t have to be disheartening.

For humanists, the discovery of the Higgs boson is even more assurance that science and reason can illuminate our understanding of our lives on this little planet in this gargantuan universe. It’s confirmation that we although we still don’t have the answers to everything, we can begin to unravel the secrets of the universe little by little, even if it takes decades. We don’t have to accept bizarre creation myths and pseudoscience—we can feel confident that hard science, in time, will guide us to the answers we’ve sought for millennia.

Each discovery we make will lift blinding ignorance, superstition, and fear. And, just as Higgs lived to see his theory supported, we can have hope that life-changing discoveries may happen in our lifetimes.

Stephen Hawking, the famed cosmologist and former holder of a chair once held by Isaac Newton at Cambridge University, is releasing a new book (with co-author Leonard Mlodinow) that explores the origins of the universe. Entitled The Grand Design, the book is already courting controversy with one of its central assertions: that the presence of a god is not necessary to explain the universe. In a widely quoted advance excerpt, the book states:

Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to … set the Universe going.

This promises to be a fascinating book! I look forward to reading it. It’s release date in the USA is set for September 7.

Already, leaders in the UK’s religious community are speaking out against Professors Hawking and Mlodinow’s assertion that a god is not necessary to explain the origins of the universe. Per CNN:

Writing in the Times, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said: “Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation … The Bible simply isn’t interested in how the Universe came into being.”

A couple of comments about that: first, I’m not so sure that I agree with Rabbi Sacks and his assertion that the Bible leaves the question of the origin of the universe alone. As a piece of evidence to the contrary, I would like to introduce Genesis 1:

1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

And so on. In the Biblical worldview, this is how the universe and the Earth were formed. God did it. End of story.

I don’t doubt for one minute that Chief Rabbi Sacks is well acquainted with the Book of Genesis and its rather prominent location at the beginning of the Hebrew Bible. I think he may have been alluding to something else, something rather remarkable: when it comes to the macroscopic explanation of how the universe operates, science now provides the dominant narrative, and most people, even religious leaders, accept it.

I grant that there are some big exceptions to this, but to a great degree science as it is practiced in the world today is accepted by Western religions. In the USA we still have problems with creationism, theocratic politicians, and charlatan faith healers who can cost people their lives. These conflicts continue to have serious consequences and represent a threat to religious freedom and science. But even so, many major religious denominations embrace science now rather than stand in its way. This is a monumental change for any denomination that continues to hold particular texts, such as the Bible, to be inerrant or sacred.

Nevertheless Chief Rabbi Sacks is defining religion down when he acknowledges that the Biblical creation story of Genesis is no longer necessary as a cornerstone of religious belief. There was a time when all the mysteries of the universe were perceived to be explained by the Bible. Pioneering scientists such as Galileo were recognized as threats not only because they gave information that contradicted the teachings of the church but also because they had a method of obtaining knowledge, a scientific method, that is, that circumvented the prevailing religious methods such as studying the Bible.

And when Sacks states that “religion is about interpretation,” he also reveals something very problematic, for indeed, religion is about interpretation, and as it stands now we have thousands of different religious interpretations for how the world works, many of them contradictory. Which is correct? The only method of interpretation that is self correcting and informed by the systematic work of thousands of people dedicated to advancing knowledge is science. That doesn’t mean that science always gets it right, but when it’s wrong, it is eventually corrected, and it must always be based on evidence.

Another religious critic of Hawking, as quoted in the same CNN article, argues:

“The ‘god’ that Stephen Hawking is trying to debunk is not the creator God of the Abrahamic faiths who really is the ultimate explanation for why there is something rather than nothing,” said Denis Alexander, director of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.

“Hawking’s god is a god-of-the-gaps used to plug present gaps in our scientific knowledge.

“Science provides us with a wonderful narrative as to how [existence] may happen, but theology addresses the meaning of the narrative,” he added.

He is defining religion down as well, as he has completely let go of the fact that religion once provided the overall explanation for the world around us. Like Rabbi Sacks, he acknowledges that science does, in fact, have most of the answers in hand already about the mysteries of the universe, and he even preempts the possibility that Professor Hawking will fill this picture in even more completely with his book, stating that “theology addresses the meaning of the narrative,” and therefore there is a continued necessity for religion in a scientific world.

But is this true? Does theology really address what science means to the rest of us? Or does it merely assign meaning? With so many contradictory and conflicting religious narratives, it’s hard to see the overall value in any single given narrative vis-a-vis science or even secular humanism, which does not layer supernaturalism onto that which is naturally observed.

I’m not arguing that Stephen Hawking has somehow made religion obsolete with this book; in my less diplomatic moments, I might make the argument that science as a whole has been working on this over the last several centuries, and this new book is another brick in that wall. But I do wish to point out that theologians such as those quoted here are stretching farther and farther to show that religion still has a unique purpose in the world today. And when they have already conceded such a substantial part of the battle, admitting already that science is capable of solving the greatest questions of how the universe operates, then is it so far-fetched to imagine that they may concede the rest someday?

In an age of PSAs and the Vagina Monologues, many of us consider ourselves informed and educated about institutionalized female violence.  “It happens over there,” we tell ourselves, pointing to remote locations on a map, barely envisioning what “it” might entail.  But some forms of violence against women are disguised as customs, some of those customs have crossed oceans to arrive here, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has created a loophole that will keep those customs alive.  Read the rest of this entry &raquo

In the aftermath of the tragic assassination of Dr. George Tiller, we need to remember what is at stake in the debate over abortion. Indeed, we don’t need to use our imaginations to envision what our nation would be like without legalized abortion; we only need to look at countries like Tanzania, where women suffer and die from policies that religious fanatics are trying to impose in our own country right now. The New York Times reports (h/t to Hullabaloo):

Abortion is illegal in Tanzania (except to save the mother’s life or health), so women and girls turn to amateurs, who may dose them with herbs or other concoctions, pummel their bellies or insert objects vaginally. Infections, bleeding and punctures of the uterus or bowel can result, and can be fatal. Doctors treating women after these bungled attempts sometimes have no choice but to remove the uterus.

Pregnancy and childbirth are among the greatest dangers that women face in Africa, which has the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality — at least 100 times those in developed countries. Abortion accounts for a significant part of the death toll.

Maternal mortality is high in Tanzania: for every 100,000 births, 950 women die. In the United States, the figure is 11, and it is even lower in other developed countries. But Tanzania’s record is neither the best nor the worst in Africa. Many other countries have similar statistics; quite a few do better and a handful do markedly worse.

Even more stunning is the effect that backroom abortions have on maternal mortality around the world:

Worldwide, there are 19 million unsafe abortions a year, and they kill 70,000 women (accounting for 13 percent of maternal deaths), mostly in poor countries like Tanzania where abortion is illegal, according to the World Health Organization. More than two million women a year suffer serious complications. According to Unicef, unsafe abortions cause 4 percent of deaths among pregnant women in Africa, 6 percent in Asia and 12 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Is it clear now what we’re talking about when we talk about choice? Is it clear now that when we talk about access to safe and legal abortion, we’re talking about saving tens of thousands of lives and preventing millions of hospitalizations and crippling aftereffects every year?

Keeping abortion outlawed does not actually reduce the number of abortions; rather, it reduces the safety of those performed. The Guttmacher Institute reports:

Legal restrictions on abortion do not affect its incidence. For example, the abortion rate is 29 [per 1,000 women aged 15–44] in Africa, where abortion is illegal in many circumstances in most countries, and it is 28 [per 1,000 women aged 15–44] in Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds. The lowest rates in the world are in Western and Northern Europe, where abortion is accessible with few restrictions.

Where abortion is legal and permitted on broad grounds, it is generally safe, and where it is illegal in many circumstances, it is often unsafe. For example, in South Africa, the incidence of infection resulting from abortion decreased by 52% after the abortion law was liberalized in 1996.

The anti-choice movement won’t paint this picture for you, but this is what they’re advocating: a world where women do not have legal rights over their own bodies and are injured or die due to lack of access to safe and legal abortion. It is a horrifying vision, but it’s one that some anti-choice people are willing to kill for. The best response to the terror waged by Dr. Tiller’s murderer and the hatred of the anti-choice movement is to rededicate ourselves to expanding access to safe and legal reproductive health services and ensure that clinics receive the support and security that they need to operate safely. And we need to ensure that freedom of choice in the United States rests on more than Supreme Court rulings by codifying a right to reproductive choice into law.

Ladies and gentlemen, for your daily dose of stupid, I give you Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) explaining why he doesn’t want to do anything about greenhouse gasses (via Thinkprogress):

“I would also point out that CO2, carbon dioxide, is not a pollutant in any normal definition of the term. It’s not hazardous to health, it’s naturally occurring. I am creating it as I talk to you. It’s in your Coca-Cola, your Dr. Pepper, your Perrier water. It is necessary for human life. It is odorless, colorless, tasteless, does not cause cancer, does not cause asthma.”

“And something that the Democrat sponsors do not point out, a lot of the CO2 that is created in the United States is naturally created. You can’t regulate God. Not even the Democratic majority in the US Congress can regulate God.”

Let’s say that a neighbor were spraying lots of water on his lawn, day and night. It’s ruining your garden, flooding your basement, and causing mold and mosquitoes to spawn in the standing water.

Would you be comforted to hear him say, “Did you know that H2O is naturally occurring? It’s in our Coca-Cola, is necessary for human life, is odorless, colorless, tasteless, does not cause cancer, and does not cause asthma! Besides, rain is water, and we can’t regulate the rain!”

No, you would want him to turn off the damn sprinklers.

We know the harmful effects of greenhouse gasses. No longer suppressed by the Bush administration, the E.P.A. recently declared that there was “compelling and overwhelming” evidence that greenhouse gasses “endanger public health and welfare.”

Barton also had this familiar gem:

“If you think greenhouse gases are bad, life couldn’t exist without greenhouse gases. … So, there is a, there is a climate theory — and it’s a theory, it’s not a fact, it’s never been proven — that increasing concentrations of CO2 in the upper atmosphere somehow interact to trap more heat than the atmosphere would otherwise.”

Keep in mind: this man is the highest-ranking Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee. Wonderful.

Obama is scheduled to give a promising speech on science today at the National Academy of Sciences pledging to devote 3 percent of our GDP to research and development, proclaiming: “We will not just meet, but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the Space Race… This represents the largest commitment to scientific research and innovation in American history.”

I’m sure that my standards have been lowered by living through the last eight years, but this sort of talk is extremely promising:

Fourth, we are restoring science to its rightful place.

On March 9th, I signed an executive memorandum with a clear message: Under my administration, the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over. Our progress as a nation – and our values as a nation – are rooted in free and open inquiry. To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy.

That is why I have charged the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy with leading a new effort to ensure that federal policies are based on the best and most unbiased scientific information. I want to be sure that facts are driving scientific decisions – and not the other way around.

There isn’t much question to whom those comments were directed.  Two examples come to mind:

On Plan B (Washington Post April 23): “In his 52-page decision, Korman repeatedly criticized the FDA’s handling of the issue, agreeing with allegations in a lawsuit that the decision was ‘arbitrary and capricious’ and influenced by ‘political and ideological’ considerations imposed by the Bush administration.”

On greenhouse gasses (New York Times April 17): “Agency scientists were virtually unanimous in determining that those gases caused such harm, but top Bush administration officials suppressed their work and took no action.  In his first days in office, Mr. Obama promised to review the case and act quickly if the findings were justified. The announcement Friday [April 17] was the fruit of that review.”

Beyond those cases, I would love to see science restored when it comes to:

• Sex-Ed classes (No more failed Abstinence-only classes)

• Curriculum’s on Evolution (No, there is no controversy)

• Stem-Cell research

Am I missing more?

On Friday the Environmental Protection Agency formally declared carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases to be “pollutants that endanger public health and welfare.” In the decision that should lead to the regulation of these gases for the first time in the U.S., the EPA called the evidence “compelling and overwhelming.”

This decision has been long delayed, and the fact that it finally happened now is a testament to how the Obama administration is different from its predecessor. As reported in the New York Times:

In 2007, the Supreme Court, in Massachusetts v. E.P.A., ordered the agency to determine whether heat-trapping gases harmed the environment and public health. The case was brought by states and environmental groups to force the E.P.A. to use the Clean Air Act to regulate heat-trapping gases in vehicle emissions.

Agency scientists were virtually unanimous in determining that those gases caused such harm, but top Bush administration officials suppressed their work and took no action.

In his first days in office, Mr. Obama promised to review the case and act quickly if the findings were justified. The announcement Friday was the fruit of that review.

It’s almost as if our government cares about science! My cynicism melted for a few minutes there.

But it came back in a hurry. Scientific evidence might overwhelmingly agree that high levels of carbon dioxide endanger public health, but not everyone in government is on board. Rep. John Boehner went on ABC’s This Week on Sunday and had this gem:

BOEHNER: George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.

Two quick notes: I don’t think anyone has claimed carbon dioxide is a carcinogen, only that in large quantities it has a negative impact on our health. Also, while I suppose cows exhale carbon dioxide like we do, Boehner’s euphemism implies that he’s referring to methane, not carbon dioxide. But these are minor corrections alongside the glaring logical flaw.

Boehner pointed out that carbon dioxide is one of our waste products. How is this evidence that it’s not harmful in large quantities? Humans also defecate, but I don’t want a corporation dumping solid waste in my water.

Rep. John Shimkus is better known for using Genesis to inform his environmental policy, but he also had this stunning line of reasoning: “It’s plant food … So if we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere? … So all our good intentions could be for naught. In fact, we could be doing just the opposite of what the people who want to save the world are saying.”

Boehner must belong to the Shimkus school of thought. It unfortunately seems to be growing.

(Crossposted at Friendly Atheist)

The Pew Forum is a reliable source of interesting surveys. This most recent one shows how strongly various religious groups believe that global warming is occurring and if so, whether the warming is caused by humans or not.

One number that does puzzle me is the 36% of Black Protestants who believe the Earth is warming, but due to natural patterns and not human activity. It’s twice that of the US population as a whole, and triple that of the unaffiliated. Why would that be?

But otherwise, the findings don’t surprise me. The most likely group to believe that humans are causing a global warming? Those unaffiliated with a religion, at 58%. Those least likely? The self-identified White evangelical Protestants, at 34%.

I’m guessing there are confounding factors – White evangelical Protestants are more likely to live in the South, so perhaps it’s their geographic location that causes them not to believe the Earth is warming instead of their faith. It’s a classic correlation vs. causation conundrum.

But I don’t think we can dismiss the notion that faith affects people’s environmental views. Not when we have examples like Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) who read from Genesis in a congressional hearing and proclaimed that “The Earth will end only when God declares it is time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth, this Earth will not be destroyed by a flood.”

On the other hand, we have to ask: why are these Hong Kong Christians building a full-scale replica of the ark?

(Crossposted at Friendly Atheist)

When Andrew Sullivan posted this disturbing video on his blog last Tuesday with no real description, I thought it was a recent campaign. After some digging, it turns out to be a 2006 video from Answers in Genesis which is now resurfacing, perhaps in light of the 10-year anniversary of the Columbine Shooting coming up on April 20th.

Now that it’s getting attention again, it’s causing quite a stir among the nonreligious blogging community, quickly racking up over 50 comments when Hemant at Friendly Atheist posted it and 80 on Daniel Florien’s post on Unreasonable Faith. Daniel titled his post “AIG Points a Gun at Atheists”. I wasn’t sure how to take it; see what you think:

It turns out that AiG still has a page explaining it:

Every day we are inundated with evolution-based messages intended to remove the Creator from the fabric of our society, our lives, our thoughts. But if we evolved from lower life forms, then the Bible can’t be trusted and life’s supposed billion-year history is one of continual death and struggle. If the Bible isn’t true, then why should we be fair and kind and love our fellow human beings, as the Bible teaches? After all, evolution relies on survival of the fittest—no matter who gets in the way.

It bears pointing out that while the history of life involves death and struggle, there’s so much more to it than that. There’s love and happiness and waffles!

So here’s where I get confused: Even if God told us how he wanted us to act, we still get to decide whether to obey. It’s often noted that if a person is choosing to act morally in an effort to stay out of hell, that’s not exactly altruistic. What I’ve heard more often is that people decide to obey because they feel gratitude and respect for God. Because of that gratitude and respect, they consider His will when deciding how to act.

Well, I feel gratitude to my friends, neighbors, and family. I respect the inherent worth of conscious, sentient life. Because of that gratitude and respect, I act in ways that take their feelings and their wellbeing into account. I don’t need an ancient book to “teach me” to be fair and kind.

The AiG page also says: “Those who feel that neither they nor their actions matter to God lose their motivation to care for the lives of others or for their own life.”

I can vouch from personal experience that they’re wrong. I suspect that most of you can, too.

Why do we care about the lives of others? There are different answers we can give: we have an evolved drive to care, we were raised to care in a social context, we get something out it. But the bottom line is that we do care. We don’t believe that our actions matter to God but we believe our actions matter to each other.

As I sat down on the metro last Saturday, I noticed three magazines on the seat. The first two were Awake! magazine and The Watchtower: “Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom”. The third magazine — I’m not making this up — was the April 2009 edition of Metro Weekly: Washington’s Gay & Lesbian News Magazine. I would love to know who was sitting there before I was.

I hope that the issue of Awake! is targeted at children, considering the lack of complexity in their articles. I also hope that no child reads it, considering its misrepresentation of evolution. In a short section “Was it Designed?” the magazine marvels at the toucan’s beak:

The consistency of the toucan’s beak has been compared to that of a hard sponge. Some parts of it are hollow, while other parts are made up of beams and membranes. The result is a lightweight beak that has astounding strength. “It’s almost as if the toucan has a deep knowledge of mechanical engineering,” says [materials scientist Mark Andre] Myers…

As a friend of mine noted, my circulatory system works remarkably well and yet I do not possess a deep knowledge of hydraulics. But I digress. The ending was the most frustrating:

What do you think? Did the toucan’s strong but lightweight beak come about by chance? Or was it designed?

How about C) neither of the above? I think the beak is a result of cumulative natural selection. Awake! seems to be implying that something so successful couldn’t have “come about by chance” and so it must be designed. This great mini-lesson from the University of Indiana’s Evolution & the Nature of Science Institutes would have been helpful:

This lesson provides an elegant, easy way for students to actually compare Darwin’s cumulative non-random selection with the non-cumulative version so often erroneously implied. Students working in pairs attempt to produce a full sequence of 13 cards of one suit (ace – to king). This must be done by shuffling the suit of cards for each round, then checking the cards. Half the teams must look for the full sequence each time, and repeat the process until this is accomplished. The other teams start to “build” their sequence by pulling the ace when it first appears as the top card, then adding to the stack whenever the “next” card for the sequence is shuffled to the top. Discussion clearly reveals how the second method mimics Darwinian natural selection, while the first does not.

Of course, there are some significant differences between this activity and evolution. The students have a desired outcome and are only accepting shuffles that get closer to that ace-king “strong/lightweight beak.” But there’s no reason to assume that nature had to result in that particular beak. Over time the successful random changes propagate while the unsuccessful changes don’t. In that sense, we don’t necessarily know which random mutations and variations will occur, but we know any that stick around will be successful for their environment. The toucan’s variation could have exploited a different niche in its environment, and Awake! would be marveling: “Did the toucan’s incredible, narrow, and flexible beak come about by chance? Or was it designed?”

It’s not chance that the toucan’s beak is successful. It is chance that this particular model is what happened, but I’m not going to give Awake! magazine credit for having that degree of nuance in their question.