The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Scott Harris:

"Jen @ 89: It doesn't have to be the beliefs of one specific religion, nor does it have to be a belief that is specific only to religion, to qualify as a religious belief.

If it is held by enough people for religious reasons, and prevents someone else from following the beliefs of their own religion, then it still runs counter to religious freedom."

The only problem with this formulation is that, taken to its logical conclusion, it would make it impossible to legislate against any of the following: animal sacrifice, human sacrifice, various forms of child abuse (ranging from witholding of medical care or proper nutrition to actual beatings and worse), ritual mutilation (from female circumcision to the emasculation required to be a priest of Cybele), or any number of other things currently considered crimes yet supported by various extant religious groups. These are all things that are forbidden by many religions, but required by a few. There does seem to be a point at which religious freedom can no longer trump the common law, however religiously based the original sources of that law might be.

However, I don't believe that abortion is such a case, since there is so much variation in what people believe about the status of a fetus on secular as well as religious bases. Given the lack of agreement, I firmly believe that it comes down to the individual woman's choice, whetehr religiously based or not.

There's not nearly as much disagreement on whether it is permissible for a practitioner of Asatru to perform the blood eagle on somebody, for example. However, something like murder can be outlawed for all without it infringing on anybody's religious freedom. However, I would tend to think that the religious use of peyote should be allowed on the basis of equal protection, by analogy to the use of wine in Communion. A similar argument could be made for allowing animal sacrifice by practitioners of Voudoun or Santeria, by analogy to kosher slaughter techniques.

CEP @ 3978:

Aren't there some ways in which copyrights and other types of rights in an intellectual property *could* be considered rivalrous, after all? I'm particularly thinking of the right to control the creation of derivative works, which impels Hollywood to pay (very few) authors considerable sums for the right to turn their work into movies. If any studio could produce an adaptation without licensing it from the rights holders, there would be no incentive to pay the creators anything, since some other studio could produce their own version at no such cost. There would also be the factor of whether the market could really support more than one adaptation of a given source at one time.

Or maybe I'm completely misunderstanding the economic meaning of rivalrousness, and it specifically includes consideration of markets and dilution of products within them. Or maybe that dilution issue makes this more properly a part of trademark law, which issues from different premises than copyright.

"I don't see why PVR's idea of service has to be so very gender-defined. Why "Serve women"? Why not just "Serve"? If it is good for a man to serve a women in order to subsume his baser instincts into a cause higher than himself, then it is good for any person to serve another cherished person that way. It is not only women who are valuable, nor men who have baser instincts."

Absolutely - shouldn't one 'serve' one's parents, one's children, one's brothers and sisters and friends? Shouldn't one do so regardless of one's own sex?

But really, with the exception of actual dependents (and I wouldn't count a spouse as 'dependent' in this sense, regardless of whether they work outside the home), I think the ideal should be less one of service and more one of fellowship and partnership.

My wife works about the same hours that I do, so when we're home it only makes sense that I take on my share of the cooking, cleaning, helping our son with his homework, etc. Fair's fair, and don't partners and friends at least try to be fair to each other?

I find it hard to fathom those who think (and have felt free to say to one or both of us) that the woman should have to take on all these household chores while the man is free to kick back, regardless of the fact that both work hard outside the home. Now, if one or the other of us made enough that the other could afford to stay home, we'd have to reevaluate the division of labor, but by no means do I think that would result in the 'bread-winner' being let off of all household duties; frankly, I think there's probably more to do to keep a home and family running than there is to do at any job I've ever had, with the possible exception of teaching high school. And yet, unless the decision were made for us by who gets a better-paying job first, I think my wife and I would both be fighting to be the one that gets to stay home...

"In "The Dispossessed" Ursula Le Guin describes a society whose language has no possessive form at all. Instead of saying "my partner", they say "the partner". As in the Draco Tavern atory, this leads to a different way of thinking.

If you think that the way you speak doesn't fundamentally affect the way you see the world, contemplate martial arts for awhile, and note how training is designed to make action automatic, to create correct habits. Speech is a collection of some of the most basic habits we have, and everything about it affects the way we think of, feel about, and react to the world. Speech about relationships is especially powerful because it describes those relationships to us."

True enough, but I don't think by this token that PRV necessarily deserves to be jumped on about the use of the word 'our', given that the possessive is also used reciprocally by the ones we're related to; e.g., my wife says 'my husband', my son says 'my father', and so on.

Yes, the lack of different forms for different types of connection is a problem for English, but it doesn't necessarily reinforce one party's role in the relationship more than another's. Nor does it indicate equality, either; a slave could refer to 'my master', after all, without implying ownership. But to assume that the use of 'our women' and 'our girls' has the same inequality built in to it just validates the attitude we're trying to deconstruct.

So, I didn't find PRV's use of the possessive creepy - just the assumption that 'service' would be all or mostly one way and gender-based.

I loved Webb's response, but it would have been nice to see him slam Bush's health insurance nonsense as the third prong of his devastating attack. I tend to think he actually should have lead with the mismanagement of the war, followed up with the spiel about the robber baron CEOs and disappearing middle class, and finished up with health care as a prime aspect of the second one.

"The tax break's nice, Mr. President, but I think Rep. Conyers actually has a better idea... one that would actually insure *all* of those forty-six million and bring down costs for *all* of us."

Not necessarily. As I said before, I found the law a useful backstop when I was a young human. It was the last trace of a set of cultural norms that meant that the default answer was no, which helped me to make that answer stick when I needed it to.

Abi at 79: I see your point, but suppose the backstop provided by fear of the law failed you, and you made the wrong choice from your perspective. Would it have helped matters for you to have been prosecuted and imprisoned?

That, to me, is the test of whether behavior should be criminalized as opposed to discouraged in other ways - are we really ready to send people to jail for it? If not, then whatever other measures we want to take, we should not resort to making it a crime punishable by jail time.

Sorry about that, Scott H. Guess I'll use the full name if you were here first.

"Show a clip of Rumsfeld saying "there was not an anticipation that the level of insurgency would be anything approximating what it is"

and then cutting to, say, General Shinseki saying months before the invasion that it would take four-hundred thousand american troops to occupy Iraq.

Nah, that would take jounalism, and might limit CNN's access to Rumsfeld and the rest of the administration. Better to play along so they can get good interviews down the road...."

You know, it's pretty scary that the only media outlet currently showing this type of journalistic ethic is the self-named "fake news". Skewering ridiculous claims with short clips of what was said long ago is pure Jon Stewart/Daily Show, and pretty much no other news outlet. Well, maybe Olbermann would do something similar, but that's about it.

Arlen Specter, one of the faux 'principled Republicans', was quoted yesterday as saying that he believed the law would inevitably get sent back to Congress by the Supreme Court.

Even assuming that he's correct (and God I hope he is), despite the provisions in the bill limiting the jurisdiction of all judges including the Supremes, I'd really love to see the press grill him on this point.

If you don't think the bill passes constitutional muster, why did you vote for it? Why did you rush it to a vote in the first place? Why not switch to the 'con' side when it became clear that your amendments weren't going to make it in? Isn't it part of your job to vote only for those bills you believe are, I don't know, *lawful and constitutional*?

It strikes me as kind of cowardly to depend on a whole other branch of government to do the right thing and correct your mistakes, rather than even try to do the right thing yourself. Risky, too, given the current composition of the Court.

Well, no. But if science is the epistomology that knowledge of cause and effects is acquired through material observation, then anything that's outside the observation of science is outside the observation of, well, me.

Things that I would consider outside the observation of science include:

1) Your preference for a particular flavor of ice cream - not the mere fact that you prefer it, or even the particular firing sequence of neurons responsible for it in terms of brain function, but your actual experience of liking one better than the other and feeling that *of course* it's better.

2) A value judgement such as saying that you shouldn't gossip about friends - not the psychological factors that lead to that judgement (a proper subject of psychology), but it's correctness or falsehood.

3) The qualia (actual experience) of just about any sensory experience or memory - what blue looks like to you, as opposed to what wavelength of light it represents.

I suspect you are quite capable of observing any and all of these.

If non-material observation if possible, I don't have the wherewithal for it; my brain and my senses are limited to the material world.

So, your brain is incapable of generating mental images and memories? You never get a song stuck in your head that's not actually playing on a nearby speaker? You don't have feelings about things, or thoughts concerning abstract concepts? You can't understand mathematical relationships unless represented by concrete examples actually physically present before you, and therefore are incapable of algebra, calculus, or the concept of transfinite numbers?

There are lots of things that it makes sense to think of *as* things that are not material objects... although I tend to agree that they don't include invisible people wandering around among us or looking down on us from the sky.

Steven - that's fine by me; I look kind of like Trotsky some days. Or Lenin, if I shave my head... but anyway, the only part of 'forming a vanguard party' I really wanted to discuss this thread was the part where I don't think it's necessary to exclude those who come to the same conclusions about social justice from different premises than oneself.

Frankly, I wouldn't be able to fully support any party whose ideology didn't allow for the existence of a plurality of political viewpoints after the Revolution. I'd ally with them, sure, but be on the lookout for ice picks afterward. ;-)

Individ-ewe-al - Yeah, that was a big boo-boo; have no idea what was behind it, either, or what my inner Freudian is trying to tell me. Probably something about my barely-existent Jewish identity or something...

All - science is a method of explaining things, one of whose rules is basically not to look for supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. Another way of looking at it is that if you can analyze something using the tools of scientific inquiry, it's not truly 'super'natural. It is not useful for explaining things outside the realm of natural philosophy entirely, such as aesthetic and moral judgements - even if we take natural phenomena to include neurological states and social dynamics.

I would also note that it doesn't help us with epistemological problems such as the problem of inference, since the scientific method itself is premised on some specific epistemological assumptions.

Quick note:

I must have had a brain fart in the previous post. Please mentally replace all references to "Buber"" with "Niemöller".

And Lenora's got it right, to my mind. But then, I was raised Unitarian, and in a Fellowship rather than a Church at that. Not too big on the Bible reading these days, and while a lot of fellow congregants were kind of iffy about that whole God thing, the vast majority were *very* committed to the aspects of Yeshua's message Lenora notes.

Yes, it's a very leftie version of organized religion (or is that disorganized religion? Nah, too many committees)to grow up with, but it at least demonstrates that, well, there *are* leftie version of organized religion. I *guarantee* you that if the UUs are not at the forefront of any Revolution in the near future, they'll at least be setting up a new Underground Railroad for those who are...

Steven Brust wrote: I believe that as the economic crisis of world capitalism deepens, the most reactionary right-wing elements will raise their heads. Officially, attempts by the state to restrict human rights. Physically, gangs and mobs will be used to intimidate anyone who tries to fight back. Idealogically, all of the most backward philosophies will be used to justify these attacks. To fight against the official attacks requires, in my judgment, the political independance of the working class, with a clear socialist program.

Well, I certainly hope that things will not come to this pass, and if they do, I'm not 100% certain what the ideology of a revolutionary party will be or if it will be traditionally socialist. Do you have a particular flavor of socialism in mind, btw? Is this straight Engels and Marx, or some later synthesis?

To fight against the physical assaults requires the working class to be organized its own defense. To fight against the ideological attacks requires a rejection of all forms of backwardness and superstition, in which class fall (trying to chose words carefully): belief in a non-material world, all forms of pseudo-science, and all idealogoies that deny the objectivity of material reality. It is a question of polarization. One can sustain reformist views up to a point: but if the question comes down to: support capitalism in its most brutal, reactionary form, or support the overthrow of capitalism, how will the reformists chose?

Presumably, according to their own self-interest as they understand it, and according to whatever principles they may have. I would think, if things do get really bad, the thing to do would *not* be to look for ideological purity in the members of the necessary countermovement, but rather to organize and unite all the multifarious groups which are in line to get screwed over by the right-wing attacks.

If Sally is up in arms because the fundies are going to take away women's choice and Johnny is with us because he's flamboyantly gay and knows what's in store for him if we lose and Fatima is worried because she figures even the most assimilated Western Muslims are targets and Samuel supports us because as a Quaker or an Orthodox Jew his conscience tells him the reactionary elements are wrong, wrong, wrong, am I going to care that some of them may believe in a personal God and some may not? Hell, I'm not going to much care if some of them are free-market libertarians who don't cotton to encroachments on civil liberties and others are radical communists who believe we should ultimately all live on farms together and abolish private property entirely. I don't even mind if only some really want a revolution, while others just want some concessions and a gradual return to the old status quo - that's pretty much how we got the US, anyway, when it become clear that King and Parliament weren't ever going to fully redress all grievances.

The time to purge the Mensheviks, if you really must, is *after* the revolution has been successful. In the meantime, you need all the help you can get.

One can support non-violence up to a point: but when fascist (which word I use advisidly, in its scientific meaning) thugs and goons are attacking, non-violence ceases to be an option. One must fight on one side, or the other. Which way will the pacifists go? I know it is far from obvious that a "crunch" of the same kind must necessarily proceed in ideology, even if you were to accept my premises. But, without going on forever, I will simply say that my own study of history has convinced me that it will.

Some pacifists (esp. the religiously motivated) will probably die rather than raise a hand in anger. Others will reluctantly take up arms when it becomes clear self-defense. I doubt any will join in on the side of the right-wing reactionary forces you fear, so to the extent that they all at least delay, annoy, and perhaps even turn public opinion against those forces, they'll do some good.

Again, thinking of the famous Buber quote about the Holocaust ("First they came..."), these are the times for building coalitions, not worrying about ideological divisions among potential allies.

It sounds like you are asking for a system of morality that stands above society. Since morality is a product of society, that seems a bit tricky.

No, I am stating clearly that science can not produce normative statements, only descriptive ones. Science may someday be able to predict how a new society will work, but it is a value judgement as to whether that new society would be better or worse than what we've got. And value judgements are not falsifiable...

Within the context of this society, that is "good" which leads to the political, spiritual, and economic emancipation of Man from domination by other men, or by the blind forces of Nature.


I tend to agree with that particular set of value judgements, but I don't think you can really say they were derived using the scientific method.

Note that I'm not saying science can't determine what the majority of people want and would support; or even that science couldn't figure out what would make the greatest number of people both happy and free. It's just that it's not science, but some kind of moral philosophy that tells us those are worthy goals.

Hmmm...unite the working class and all other progressive forces on the basis of racism, sexism, homophobia, belief in the occult, rejection of Darwinism and all the rest of modern science, pseudo-science, sexual repression, giving one's life over to Jesus....

Come now, this is unworthy of you. Surely you realize that Peter was ironically using the term 'backwardness and superstition' as you did in the post he was replying to:

To fight against the ideological attacks requires a rejection of all forms of backwardness and superstition, in which class fall (trying to chose words carefully): belief in a non-material world, all forms of pseudo-science, and all idealogoies that deny the objectivity of material reality.

He's saying why not let the ones who believe in a non-material world (which includes many mathematicians), pseudo-science, and postmodernism in on the fight, not advocating that we try to recruit direct from the enemy's camp. Heck, if nothing else people who believe in Heaven should make for good cannon fodder, right? But I kid.

Seriously, there are plenty of Christians who are more concerned about helping the poor than policing other people's bedrooms, who are anything but radical capitalists. Indeed, there are quite a few who take statements from Jesus, 'eye of a needle' and all that, seriously enough that they're out and out Socialists. Why would you not want them in your corner?

I listed the most backward ideologies, and said nothing like "all religions" nor anything that can be interpreted that way by any reasonably objective reader.

Again, not playing fair. He was responding to a post in which you described *all* belief in non-material things as part of what you meant by 'backwardness and superstition'.

Basically, you've got to deal with the observable fact that there are plenty of people whose religion actually *tells* them to support liberal and even revolutionary causes, and plenty more for whom the two are not inextricably linked but also not in any way opposed. The likelihood of this entire population deciding under pressure that they'll support either

1) a homophobic, racist, hypercapitalist, sexist, Atwood novel-worthy form of reactionary fundamentalist Xtianity, or

2) an ideologically pure as snow, secular humanist, Socialist Revolutionary Party,

is slim to none. There are plenty of groups that aren't going to give up their religion, but likewise aren't going to have the *option* of joining group #1. They won't disappear. If we're lucky, they will ignore their differences with group #2, godless Commies though they may be, long enough to prevent group #1 from truly taking over.

Even if there is no such coalition, however, I can't see such groups *not* defending themselves at some point in the process. Yes, Buber didn't do anything while the other groups were tagged, and then it was too late, but by that very token, I can assure you that story gets *wide* circulation among liberal churches and synagogues.

Anyway, I seriously doubt things will come down to a nice clean battle between Rational Good Guys and Irrational Bad Guys, if only because nobody can agree on their definitions of either reason or morality.

"I believe a scientific analysis of society will lead to revolutionary, not liberal views. "

Hi, Steven. Love your books, btw.

The problem is that a scientific analysis could tell us how revolutions occur, or how to best foment one, or how society might be structured after the next one, or even that they are an inevitable consequence of the dialectic. What it cannot do is tell us if they are a good thing, or if we *should* attempt one.

That sort of conclusion involves a value judgement that people need to derive from some other type of thinking, whether it be cultural inculcation, inborn prejudice, philosophy, or religion. Not that it isn't conceivable that some very commonly held social value ("we should strive for a good and just society according to the following simple standards") could combine with a set of scientific findings ("according to human psychology and the realities of economics, such and such a level of material wealth and equitable outcomes could be derived in this way") to form the basis for an actual revolution in our society. That would be great, quite frankly.

However, we need to be very careful we are correct about what values people hold. I can equally well conceive of the social sciences being used by some would-be Big Brother to devise a horribly stable form of totalitarianism, for example. Same science, different application, due to different values.

Carrie, Xopher - sorry for misattributing the wavicle analogy, but I thought it was a good shorthand for what Carrie was saying about seeing the world both ways at once.

Steven - saw your post about defining religion. Hm.

Okay, let's back up the definition of religion for purposes of discussion to *theistic* religions - those that consider it an important article of faith that there exists one or more real superhuman entities of some description that deserve the name God, Goddess, Gods, etc.

That still leaves a lot of room for accommodation with the scientific worldview. If you think of God as Creator, there's always the concept of the Prime Mover, setting everything in motion from the beginning, which can't be falsified using observational data, rendering it outside but not contradictory with science.

Or if you prefer the pantheistic view, 'life, the universe, and everything' can certainly be regarded as a superhuman entity, possibly deserving veneration, and it's not necessarily incoherent to think of it as in some ways conscious by thinking similar to Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis. Another take on this is Tipler's Omega Point version of the Eschaton; there's certainly enough wiggle room within the strangeness of current cosmological and quantum theories to sort of bang your religion and your (admittedly sometimes fuzzy) science together in many different ways.


I've also known neo-pagans and Wiccans to look at 'belief' in gods and goddesses as a means of accessing higher states of consciousness rather than being so much about the observable material world. Pragmatically, they have always seemed to me to get pretty good results. This can fit the "higher unseen power" definition quite well without contradicting science at all, although the objective study of subjective states is still a rather difficult field for science to tackle well. Heck, after reading Alvin Schwartz's _Unlikely Prophet_, maybe I'll take to creating/worshipping Superman as a tulpa, although probably not.

The main issue I had with your argument, though, was with the idea of science eventually being used to define our societal values, when I don't think it's really suited for that.

Now, I don't think religion is the only source of morals and values, by any means - in fact I find the fundamentalist assertion that the only way anybody could possibly know right from wrong is by divine fiat and fear of divine retribution to be rather offensive, frankly.

We really need to consider philosophy as a separate entity, and perhaps go back to the original definition of science as natural philosophy - which neatly defines science as only dealing with the natural world, whatever that includes. There are then other forms of philosophy that deal with other things, such as aesthetics, morals, metaphysics (although that one has some strange intersections with natural philosophy physics), etc.

Now as to whether philosophy and religion are necessarily in conflict - I don't think so. However, there are some very good philosophical arguments against certain specific forms of theism. If you rigidly define your God in terms of attributes such as being the Creator, but also being a person, or possessing qualities such as omnipotence (problematic in itself - can He create a rock He can't lift, etc.), omniscience, and omnibenevolence, as some theologies have in the past, I suspect you paint yourself into a corner where said definition can be logically deconstructed. However, many theologians are more savvy than that, and there can be interesting intersections where philosophy and theology agree with each other, or are even one and the same.

Very interesting thread. Before I chime in about the whole science vs. religion thing, let me stipulate to two things from the original post: 1) The Dobrich case is an utterly awful and ridiculous situation. The school district in question deserves to have all kinds of shame and ridicule heaped upon it, as well as judicial relief and monetary damages. 2) Having read the entire text of Obama's speech and his follow-up blog interview, I am not convinced that his intent was to give aid and comfort to the (radical right-wing theist) enemy, even if sound bites from it can be used in that manner. Given his personal faith, I suspect that this has less to do with pandering to the Republican base, and more with almost naively expecting to be able to have a reasoned and nuanced national discussion on the topic, which may doom him to be the Adlai Stevenson of our generation. Of course, it would be great if he'd directly address the Delaware situation, as really lots of different people should.

That said, it seems to me that some people in this thread, particularly Steven and Carrie, are talking past each other to a degree. I don't know if my formulation on the 'battle' between science and religion will make any more sense to either of you, but I'll make an attempt. First I'll summarize the arguments thus far.

Steven avers that there is an essential conflict between religion and liberalism. His reasons for this appear to be

proposition 1) that there is an essential conflict between science and religion, and

proposition 2) that the continuing study of science will promote liberal social thought, so that

conclusion 1) holding on to religious or at least theistic thought will hamper the advance of liberal thought and people holding both types of view will eventually have to choose between them.

Carrie contends that since she and many people she knows seem to have no problem holding scientific, religious, and liberal thoughts at the same time, this seems like nonsense.

Steven's response to this is that she and her acquaintances must therefore be experiencing cognitive dissonance, whether they know it or not, since the scientific (liberal) and religious viewpoints are inherently logically opposed, and this will become more and more apparent as a growing social crisis highlights and polarizes such differences in ideology.

Steven's primary reason for saying that science and religion are in conflict is basically the idea of the God of the Gaps. As science provides naturalistic (i.e., not requiring the intervention of any conscious or divine force) explanations for ever more phenomena, the 'space' remaining for God to have any influence is ever shrinking, and therefore any theistic religion is irreducibly under threat from science.

Carrie contends that she sees natural phenomena as *both* the result of natural laws amenable to scientific explanation *and* the direct actions of what she thinks of as (quite a pantheistic, immanent, all-encompassing) God.

I'm going to say right off the bat that Steven's arguments are flawed, but that Carrie has not squarely hit on those flaws. However, Steven's arguments are only flawed when one attempts to apply them to *all* religious people; they are perfectly valid for a certain subset, some of whose actions resulted in the original post.

It goes back to Gould's idea of non-overlapping magisteria. It's a nice idea, but falls down when you look at how many religions do in fact place extreme importance on their explanations of natural phenomena, most especially when they insist on a literal rather than an allegorical interpretation of their holy books.

So, in other words, science and religion need not be in conflict, but when they are it's most often religion picking the fight. This is true even if religion sees it as defending turf it's always handled, since Steven is correct to note that many (not all) religions have historically placed importance on the how and why of the natural world as well as on moral and spiritual concerns.

'Attacks' from the other side, e.g., scientific theorists such as Dawkins claiming that science proves all religions are bunk, are much less common. I would also contend that they stem from a misunderstanding of science and what subjects it can address.

What I want to say is that Gould's magisteria do in fact frequently overlap, but that it is always a case of religion treading in the realm of natural phenomena. Science functionally *cannot* likewise invade religion's magisterium of moral and spiritual values, or it ceases to be science.

I say this because science by its very nature is descriptive, not normative. Regardless of what observation and experiment can show us about *how* the world works, they can never tell us if it *should* work that way, nor what the right thing to about it might be. This is the point at which pathological memes like social Darwinism fall down; even if 'survival of the fittest' were a good formulation of how natural selection works (it really isn't), *that in no way implies* that we should consciously make rules for our society that follow the same principle.

I'll go further - this applies even to the social sciences, including psychology. We can have theories of moral development, without ever demonstrating that one of Kohlberg's stages or one set of values is better to hold than any other. We could have theories of cultural development that explain which patterns will result in a society's decline and fall, without being able to say that one society is better than another or that certain patterns are wrong. We could have solid economic theories about the distribution and growth of wealth, but such theories would never in themselves tell us whether it was *better* to redistribute that wealth or let it be concentrated in the hands of a few.

All such value judgements require a set of values to first be defined, which is the province of philosophy or religion, not science. Certainly, social science might eventually tell us exactly how our society should work in order to grow, prosper, and maximize the happiness of all - but it would not be science that told us to seek such utilitarian ends, only the means to get there.

*Even if* neuroscience eventually facilitates the creation of a good account of utility by determining what experiences actually make people most happy and satisfied through direct observation of brain states, the decision to try to apply that knowledge as Bentham would advise is a value judgement, opaque to the process of observation and hypothesis. Science could tell us, "If you want everybody to be happy, you should do such and such", but never "You should want everybody to be happy". The same with aesthetics; we could come up with a good neurological account of why people find certain images or music to be beautiful, but never replace an individual's actual reaction as the true arbiter of aesthetic experience. De gustibus est non disputandam - if you just don't like chocolate ice cream or the Mona Lisa, no scientific theory can prove you wrong and say that you do; only that the majority disagrees with you.

Since science *cannot* properly invade the philosophical/religious magisterium of the moral and spiritual, the question then remains whether religion *necessarily* seeks to invade science's magisterium of explanations of the observable world. I think the evidence is clear that many religions do this, but not all, and even ones that have done so in the past are frequently capable of adjusting themselves so that they are not left with a mere God of the Gaps. If you consider Buddhism to be a religion, originally it was not concerned with explanations, at least not of anything except certain subjective states. Even more theistic religions have certainly adapted themselves to match Gould's non-overlapping formulation in many cases. Yes, there are the fundamentalists and the literalists, but even so I think Steven's conflict between science and religion becomes a some but not all proposition.

There are a couple of other flaws in the argument that I will point out at less length.

That the study of science will necessarily promote liberal views in society seems to assume facts not in evidence. Certainly, there are social scientists who seem to derive more or less conservative rather than liberal views from their observations. As a dyed-in-the-wool liberal myself, I tend to think they're misguided or just plain wrong, but I also think the social sciences are still in their infancy in many ways, certainly too undeveloped to determine where their conclusions will fall on the right-left spectrum. Note too that any policies to be developed from those conclusions will depend on the ends we decide to seek as much as on the means suggested by scientific theories.

Steven also seems to assume that religious thinking will eventually be incompatible with liberal thinking, in and of itself. This seems strange; I don't see an argument that says, *even if* being religious meant rejecting any kind of scientific world view, that a particular religion could not promote liberal values for its own reasons.

In fact, I see strong evidence that *some* religions and denominations in the real world promote tolerance, social justice, peace, and other liberal values as core memes. They just don't do it for any scientific reasons. That being the case, I fail to see why even a major schism between science and *all* religions (which I don't see happening anyway) would necessarily result in those groups changing their tunes about liberalism versus conservatism. Quakers, for example, are probably going to continue to believe in peaceful resolution of conflicts and doing right by everyone, regardless of what they think of evolution or the Big Bang.

Finally, even if Steven were right in saying that there were essential logical contradictions between scientific thought and *all* religious thought (which neither Carrie nor I concedes), it does not follow that people will eventually have to choose between them. In this case, we actually have some rather good, scientific evidence on the topic.

Studies on cognitive dissonance have shown that people, by and large, are capable of holding *clearly* contradictory thoughts rather easily and for long periods of time, as long as they are not constantly and immediately confronted with those contradictions (in which case some people get more uncomfortable than others). If people can find *any* kind of explanation or rationalization for the source of such dissonance, whether it be Carrie's analogy of wave/particle duality or Gould's non-overlapping magisteria, then cognitive dissonance generally doesn't bother them at all.

So, I predict that while it is possible that more people will be moved to seek such explanations/rationalizations in the future, it is unlikely that many will abandon one or the other set of beliefs. Certainly it will not become *necessary* for everyone to jump to one side or the other of an imaginary science/religion line.

And now I should jump to the other side of the working/not working line...

Huh. If they got an actual judge to sign the search warrant, isn't that *two* branches of government ganging up on the third?

It seems like a dangerous game for the executive branch to play to me. If this stands, in light of language in the Constitution establishing that each of the branches of government is co-equal, it would imply that a search warrant for the Oval Office could stand equally well...

So, if Bushco wants to hit Iran before the '06 midterm elections, any bets as to whether they even ask the existing Congress for another resolution authorizing force? Or are they going to be arguing that the pre-Iraq resolution's language covers it, and even if it didn't, the President can do what he wants?

Here's hoping to contribute something new to your efforts to deal with the problem.

I consulted my Dad, who worked for many years for pharmaceutical firms like Roche and Warner Lambert, figuring that he would know more about the ins and outs of dealing with FDA bans, generics, etc. Here are his comments, verbatim:

"The only suggestion I have is that she should try to contact the manufacturer either directly or through her physician. In this kind of situation there is typically a considerable amount of the product in the manufacturer's
possession that is awaiting destruction. The manufacturer may be able to make the product available under the terms of what is known as a "Compassionate IND (Investigative New Drug)" or something similar."

Since Abbot stopped producing the brand version earlier, and Sandoz was producing (or just planning to?), I'm unsure which company you want to approach first. Maybe see which one tends to send more reps your doctor's way trying to sell the latest and greatest brands, since they have an incentive to try to make your doctor happy.

"Another option may be to try to obtain the product from another country in which the product is still on the market (e.g., Canada or Mexico). Of course, she must be wary of counterfeits and ensure that the product is identical in every way to what she is currently taking.

That's about all I can think of at the moment."

Of course, you've already established that pemoline got banned earlier in certain other countries; but it's still worth looking into, especially in those countries known for making generic versions of stuff still under patent in the US.

"One other thought is that if there are "thousands of people" in the same situation they can petition the FDA for an exception. They could also see if good old Sidney Wolfe at the Healthcare Public Interest Group would support their case with the FDA."

I know that petitioning the FDA has come up before on this post, but didn't see any mention of HPIRG or Sidney Wolfe by name as possible allies.

Again, offered for whatever it's worth, and I wish you the best of luck. Will shortly research my Congress critters' current stance on such things and determine if it's worth sending a missive directly.

I suppose there *could* be some variation of ID that wasn't theology. For example someone could claim to find a code in 'junk' DNA that is equivalent to a trademark or even a mathematical primer, and hypothesize that this was left by an alien race rather than a supernatural Creator. However, the point is moot given who is actually trying to push ID into the schools.

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