The Tree of Life

 
From RNA to Humans: A Symposium on Evolution is the title of a meeting held at Rockefeller University on May 1st and 2nd.¹ The entire series of lectures is available online at Evolution.



There are several interesting talks but the one that you need to listen to, in my humble opinion, is the talk by Ford Doolittle on Barking up the Wrong Tree: The Dangers of Reification in Molecular Phylogenetics and Systematics. Ford Doolittle challenges the common belief in The Three Domain Hypothesis and Norm Pace's idea that the term "prokaryote" is no longer useful. (Norm Pace is Carl Woese's bulldog.)

Furthermore, Ford Doolittle challenges the very way we think about phylogeny and the tree of life. If you want to keep on top of the current controversies in the field of molecular evolution then this is an excellent way to begin. Ford allies himself with Stephen Jay Gould and against Richard Dawkins. You may not agree with him but it is extremely important that all evolution supporters become aware of the controversy.

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1. An unfortunate choice of title. Why not "from RNA to E. coli" or, better yet, "from RNA to modern organisms"?

[Hat Tip: Panda's Thumb]

Breaking News: Denyse O'Leary Has a New Blog!

 
Denyse "Buy My Book" O'Leary has started a new blog. That makes four altogether. What's the new one all about? It's about a new book she's going to write on the multiverse [Today at Colliding Universes].

Oh well, look on the bright side. Now she'll be posting the same IDiot article four times so your chances of accidentally missing it are very slim.

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Nobel Laureate: Luis Leloir

 

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1970.

"for his discovery of sugar nucleotides and their role in the biosynthesis of carbohydrates"


Luis F. Leloir (1906 - 1987) was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the metabolism of carbohydrates, specifically glycogen [Glycogen Synthesis]. He discovered a key intermediate in that pathway; namely UDP-glucose. His discovery led to the realization that sugar nucleotides play an important role in many different metabolic pathways.

Luis Leloir was an Argentinian. For most of his career he was a faculty member of the University of Buenos Aires. Leloir began his scientific career working with Bernardo Houssay and in 1944 he worked briefly with Carl Cori in St. Louis (USA).

The presentation speech was written by Professor Karl Myrbäck, member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and delivered by Professor Arne Tiselius.THEME: Nobel Laureates

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen.

The 1970 Nobel Prize for chemistry has been awarded to Dr. Luis Leloir for work of fundamental importance for biochemistry. Dr. Leloir receives the prize for his discovery of the sugar nucleotides and their function in the biosynthesis of carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates, as everybody knows, form a comprehensive group of naturally occurring substances, which include innumerable sugars and sugar derivatives, as well as high-molecular carbohydrates (polysaccharides) like starch and cellulose in plants and glycogen in animals. A polysaccharide molecule is composed of a large number of sugar or sugar-like units.

Carbohydrates are of great importance in biology. The unique reaction, which makes life possible on Earth, namely the assimilation of the green plants, produces sugar, from which originate, not only all carbohydrates but, indirectly, also all other components of living organisms.

The important role of carbohydrates, especially sugars and starch, in human food and, generally, in the metabolism of living organisms, is well known. The biological break-down of carbohydrates (often spoken of as "combustion") supplies the principal part of the energy that every organism needs for various vital processes. It is not surprising, therefore, that the carbohydrates and their metabolism have been the subject of comprehensive and in many respects successful biochemical and medical research for a long time. While working on these problems, Leloir made the discoveries for which he has now been awarded the Nobel Prize.

Before these discoveries were made, our knowledge of carbohydrate biochemistry was rather one-sided. The biological processes which break down carbohydrates, including the so-called combustion, have been well known for several decades. Over the years many Nobel Prizes have been awarded for chemistry and still more for physiology or medicine for discoveries about the reactions and catalysts involved. However, our knowledge about the innumerable corresponding synthetic reactions which occur in all organisms, was fragmentary. We had to resort to doubtful hypotheses; it was usually assumed that the syntheses were a direct reversal of the well-known breakdown reactions. The work of Leloir has indeed revolutionized our thinking about these problems.

In 1949 Leloir published the discovery which became the foundation for a remarkable development. He found that in a certain reaction, which results in the transformation of one sugar to another sugar, the participation of a so far unidentified substance was essential. He isolated the substance and determined its chemical nature. It turned out to be a compound of an unknown type, containing a sugar moiety bound to a nucleotide. Compounds of this type are now called sugar nucleotides. Leloir established that the transformation reaction does not occur in the sugars as such, but in the corresponding sugar nucleotides. To put it simply, one may say, that the linking with the nucleotide occasions an activation of the sugar moiety which makes the reaction possible.

The remarkable aspect of the discovery was not the explanation of a single reaction, but Leloir's quick comprehension that he had found the key which would enable us to unravel an immense number of metabolic reactions. He ingeniously realized that a path had been opened to a field of research containing an accumulation of unsolved problems. In the twenty years that have elapsed since his initial discovery he has carried on his research in this field in an admirable manner.

Other scientists were quick to grasp the fundamental importance of Leloir's discovery; they realized that a vast field was now accessible to worth-while scientific investigation and started research along the path which he had opened. There can be no doubt that few discoveries have made such an impact on biochemical research as those of Leloir. All over the world, his discoveries initiated research work, the volume of which has grown over since. Leloir has been the forerunner and guide throughout; he made all the primary discoveries which determined the path and the objectives of the ensueing research work.

Leloir soon found that besides the sugar nucleotide first isolated, several others of the same type occur in Nature, and many have also been found by other research workers. Today more than one hundred sugar nucleotides which are essential participants in various reactions are known and well characterized. Some of them have an action similar to that of the first isolated, namely in the transformations of simple sugars to other simple sugars or sugar derivatives.

Still more important was Leloir's discovery that other sugar nucleotides have another action which occurs in the biological synthesis of compounds which are composed of or contain simple sugars or sugar derivatives. Leloir showed that all these syntheses are essentially transfer reactions. Sugar moieties from sugar nucleotides are transferred to accepting molecules which thereby increase in size. Probably the most sensational discovery made by Leloir was that the synthesis of the high-molecular polysaccharides also functions in this manner. The first example of the fundamental role of the sugar nucleotides in polysaccharide biosynthesis was found by Leloir in 1959 in the case of glycogen. It became clear that the polysaccharide biosynthesis is not a reversal of the biological breakdown, as had doubtfully been assumed earlier. On the contrary, Nature uses different and quite independent processes for synthesis and breakdown. Later on the same extremely important principle was also shown to be valid with other groups of substances, for instance with proteins and nucleic acids.

Through Leloir's work and the work of others, who were inspired by his discoveries, knowledge of great significance has been gained in wide and important sections of biochemistry, which were previously obscure. It can be readily appreciated that Leloir's work has also had far-reaching consequences in physiology and medicine.

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Baldwin and Lafontaine

 
The statues of Robert Baldwin and Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine on Parliament Hill in Ottawa commemorate two of the most important reformers in Canada. They played a major role in establishing parliamentary government following the union of Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec) in 1841.



The Historical Foundation of Canada has produced a number of short videos about Canada's history. There's one on Baldwin and LaFontaine. Watch it and read more about their historical alliance at Building Democracy: Baldwin and LaFontaine.

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You Think Biochemistry Is Hard? Try Being a Philosophy Major

 
Click on the cartoon to see a larger version.

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[Image Credit: bioephemera]
[Hat Tip: Mixing Memory]

Toronto Rising

 
Last week's issue of Nature has an interesting article on biomedical research in Toronto [Toronto Rising].

The area around my building contains one of the densest populations of researchers in the world. The problem is that hardly anyone knows about it. Toronto isn't on everyone's radar in spite of the fact that there's a lot of high quality work being done.

Most of this basic research is concentrated in Toronto's city centre. Within two kilometres of the intersection of University Avenue and College Street, on the University of Toronto campus, there are nine research hospitals, roughly 5,000 principal investigators, and research budgets totalling about Can$1 billion (US$990 million) a year. Since 2005, 93,000 square metres of research space have been added in this zone, with twice as much more planned.

The main research engine is the University of Toronto, along with its affiliated research hospitals, including the Hospital for Sick Children, St Michael's, Sunnybrook and Mt Sinai. Also downtown is the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, which employs 100 research scientists and is building an 110,000-square-metre site at the cost of Can$380 million.

There are problems with having so many labs—too many seminars! There's also a lot of internal competition for the best young scientists. (5000 P.I.s is a bit of an exaggeration. I think it's more like 1000.)

Where Toronto has had less success so far is in commercializing its academic research. Ontario has more biotechnology companies than any US state with the exception of Massachusetts and California. But judged against the amount spent on basic research in Toronto, the region generates only about half the commercialization opportunities it should, compared with successful biotech clusters such as Boston, says David Shindler, executive director of Biodiscovery Toronto, an organization that commercializes research.

"When you look at University Avenue and the billion dollars spent there annually, you're sort of saying, why aren't we the size of San Diego? Where are all the companies?" says Grant Tipler, chair of the Biotechnology Initiative, a non-profit organization committed to promoting the growth of biotechnology in Toronto and the surrounding region. He says there are a number of reasons Toronto has lagged — a research culture that values basic research more than entrepreneurship; lack of government funding for applied research; and a shortage of venture capital for early stage companies.

Since when did putting more emphasis on basic research become a bad thing?

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The Ottawa River

 
Two views of the Ottawa River from Parliament Hill. That's the City of Gatineau (Quebec) on the other side of the river. It used to be called Hull when I was growing up in Ottawa.

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High School Science Fair Winners

 
The Intel International Science and Engineering Fair bills itself as "the World's Largest Pre-College Science Competition."

The Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF), a program of Society for Science & the Public, is the world's largest pre-college science competition, bringing together more than 1,500 young scientists from over 51 countries, regions and territories in 2008.

Every year, talented students share ideas, showcase cutting-edge science, and compete for more than USD 4 million in awards and scholarships.

The title of the competition includes technology (engineering) but the descriptions are a bit confusing. It's not always clear that the "science" fair will also reward technology projects.

Here are the 2008 winners.

Sana Raoof, left, 17, of Muttontown, N.Y., Yi-Han Su, 17, center, of Chinese Taipei and Natalie Saranga Omattage, right, 17, of Cleveland, Miss., pose after receiving top honors at the 2008 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Atlanta, Friday, May 16, 2008. The young women each received a $50,000 scholarship from the Intel Foundation as part of their award. The 2008 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair brought together more than 1500 students from 51 countries, regions and territories to compete for more than $4 million in awards and scholarships.

Here's a description of the winning projects.

Omattage developed a more efficient and less expensive way to screen for food additive contaminants, including those responsible for the recent deaths of many pets. By developing biosensors based on quartz crystal microbalance (QCM), Omattage’s research provides a new way for ports and warehouses to more thoroughly screen for food additives and other contaminants that could be found in food imported into the United States.

Raoof’s research provided new insight into how a better understanding of mathematical knot theory could help resolve classic biochemical problems. Specifically, her work focused on the Alexander-Conway polynomial invariant for chord diagrams to help prove how to classify molecules on a structural basis.

Su focused her efforts on identifying a high-activity catalyst that could improve methanol reforming reactions in order to generate hydrogen more efficiently. In doing so, Su has developed a method that can be used to improve the homogeneity of metal mixing and increase the surface area of catalysts which can also be used for the synthesis of other multi-composition materials with high homogeneity.

Congratulations to the winners. They should be proud ot their achievements.

Am I the only one who finds it a bit sad that there is so much emphasis on the applications of science and so little on discovering new things about the natural world? This is not meant to detract from the efforts of the competition winners since they were following the rules. But I'd like to change the rules. Why couldn't we have separate competitions for science and applications of science?

The event was held in Atlanta, Georgia. This is one of the states that removed the word "evolution" from the school curriculum. Kathy Cox is Georgia's superintendent of schools and she explained it like this ... [ Georgia Takes On 'Evolution' As 'Monkeys to Man' Idea].

Georgia's schools superintendent, Kathy Cox, held a news conference near the Capitol on Thursday, a day after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an article about the proposed changes.

A handful of states already omit the word ''evolution'' from their teaching guidelines, and Ms. Cox called it ''a buzz word that causes a lot of negative reaction.'' She added that people often associate it with ''that monkeys-to-man sort of thing.''

Still, Ms. Cox, who was elected to the post in 2002, said the concept would be taught, as well as ''emerging models of change'' that challenge Darwin's theories. ''Galileo was not considered reputable when he came out with his theory,'' she said.

...

In the past, Ms. Cox, has not masked her feelings on the matter of creationism versus evolution. During her run for office, Ms. Cox congratulated parents who wanted Christian notions of Earth and human creation to be taught in schools.

''I'd leave the state out of it and would make sure teachers were well prepared to deal with competing theories,'' she said at a public debate.

Kathy Cox was one of the speakers at the Intel Science and Engineering Fair awards ceremony. Her favorite science fair project was one were a student was trying to discover whether kudzu would be a good source of biofuel.

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What Is Science For?

 
What Is Science For? is the title of a debate between Sir John Sulston and John Harris. Those of us who are scientists will recognize John Sulston as the Nobel Laureate who won the prize in 2002 with Sidney Brenner and John Horvitz. John Harris is a professor of ethics. The debate is sponsored by The James Martin 21st Century School at Oxford University.

The debate is introduced by Richard Dawkins who expresses his own opinion of what science is. (Be sure to listen to the questions & answers with Dawkins.)

John Sulston argues the case for curiosity motivated research and for science as a quest for knowledge. John Harris argues the case that science must do good and it must benefit humanity. The second half of the "debate" degenerates, in my opinion, into a discussion about the value of biotechnology. That is not the topic that should have been debated. Science is not technology. Sulston tries to make this point about science not being technology during the question period but Dawkins seems to dismiss it as "obvious." It's not at all obvious.

The issue was raised in the comments to Should Universities Help Students Become Good Citizens?. This is good, since it is exactly the problem that I wanted to debate.

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[Hat Tip: RichardDawkins.net]

Should Universities Help Students Become Good Citizens?

 
Academic Matters is an educational journal published by the the Ontarion Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA). Last Fall's issue was devoted to "The Engaged University" and one of the lead articles is by Professor Janice Stein of the University of Toronto.

Stein is often seen on local television discussing foreign affairs since she holds an appointment at the Munk Centre for International Studies. I'm a fan of hers because she often seems to make a lot of sense when discussing the Middle East and international politics.

Her article is titled The University as Citizen. In it she says,

I argue that universities have two fundamental civic obligations, obligations that flow directly from what universities are. The first is to help their students to become good citizens. The second is a broader obligation to the public: to share knowledge, explore issues, and create safe space for debate and discussion of public issues.

I don't have a problem with the second obligation, although I wouldn't have made it so specific. I would have left off the last three words on the grounds that a university should also be a place where science can be explored. Investigations of cosmology, for example, aren't necessarily "public issues."

I want to question Janet Stein's first obligation. Is it true that universities have a direct obligation to teach students how to become good citizens? And what exactly is a "good citizen?" Who decides?

Notice that I added the word "direct" here because I think that is Prof. Stein's intent. Later on in her article she gives examples of what a university should be doing.

Educating students to be better citizens is the easier of the two challenges, though by no means easy. In the last decade, universities across North America have broadened and deepened their commitment to the civic education of their own students and to students in the broader community. My own university, the University of Toronto, runs special programs for students in some of the most challenged neighbourhoods in the city. It works closely with high schools across the city to provide opportunities for students that have special interests, special needs, and special gifts.

My university also asks its students to do more, to consider actively how they can become better citizens. It encourages students to volunteer and provide assistance to people in neighbourhoods without shelter. Students work with university leaders to provide environmentally-friendly and healthy food in its cafeterias across campus. Those in classes on democratic theory go out into neighbouring communities to work with neighbourhood associations. Students studying global politics look at successful examples of social innovation and then go to their local communities to see how the global translates into the local. Students in the Faculty of Law work in neighbourhood legal clinics and with Legal Aid. Students and faculty increasingly understand that education is not only a classroom activity, that what happens outside the classroom is important. Learning and active citizenship are increasingly intertwined.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't object to students doing these things if they're so inclined. I also wouldn't object to students who would oppose some of these things on the grounds that they are not the most effective use of our resources. There's nothing wrong with social activism. It's a perfectly legitimate way for university students to behave. I just don't want it to become a goal of the university that every students should do this.

And I certainly don't want my university to be taking a position on what kinds of activities are example of "good" citizenship and which ones might be bad. Do all members of the university community agree, for example, on the right kind of food that should be served in our cafeteria? Not in my experience. Some of the students who want to dictate what I can or can't eat in the cafeteria don't necessarily qualify as "good citizens" in my book.

The main problem is whether this form of activity should be valued higher than all other activities in the university. Should community involvement of students really be an important obligation of a university?

I believe that education is an important goal of a university. I like to think that what we're trying to do is to teach students how to think critically. If that makes them better citizens then I count that as a beneficial spin-off but not a primary goal. For all I know, teaching students to think for themselves might lead to severe disruptions in our current society and I'm not certain that would qualify as teaching students how to be "good citizens." Universities are often centers of social change as we saw during the civil rights movement and opposition to the war in Viet Nam.

Another reason for being suspicious of Prof. Stein's view is that she seems to be coming from a humanities/social science perspective. She's only thinking of students who are at university to study human culture in one way of another. It makes some sense that such students might direct their energies toward improving the human condition by direct engagement.

What about science students? We have more than 10,000 science students on campus. One could argue that their primary focus is on learning about the natural world. Should the university be directing resources toward training these students to become "good citizens" according to the criteria established by Janice Stein? Or, is the acquisition of knowledge for it's own sake going to lead in the long run to good citizens in a knowledge based economy?

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Parliament Hill

 
Here are some photos I took on Parliament Hill in Ottawa when we were there on Monday, May 12. These are taken with my camera phone.

If you follow the link to the Government of Canada website you can see what the Parliament Buildings look like right now via a video camera installed on the top of a building across the street.

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The Threat of the Religious Right to the Core Liberties of the United States

 
Come to the Centre for Inquiry's lecture by Edward Tabash.

Friday, May 23, 7:00 - 9:00pm
Centre for Inquiry, 216 Beverley St., downtown Toronto (just south of College St. at St. George St.)

$6 general, $4 students, FREE for Friends of the Centre for Inquiry

Catered Reception exclusively for CFI members 6:00pm. Please contact us to join today!

The Threat of the Religious Right to the Core Liberties of the United States

Edward Tabash is a Los Angeles attorney and chair of the Center for Inquiry's First Amendment Task Force, on whose behalf he filed one of the briefs on the winning side of the California Supreme Court's split decision to allow same sex marriage on May 15. Tabash argued to California's high court that the ban on same sex marriage is grounded in religious dogma and violates the separation of church and state.

Tabash, a former two time runner up for a seat in the California Legislature, will be active in attempting to defeat a possible ballot by the religious right to overturn the decision by voters in November. In the meantime, the Center for Inquiry is celebrating this current victory for human rights and fundamental equality.

Tabash is a constitutional lawyer in the Los Angeles area. He is a specialist in the application of the United States Constitution to the controversies swirling round religion and government. An appointee of Congressman Brad Sherman to the State Central Committee of the California Democratic Party, he also chairs the national legal committee for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Tabash will be making his first election year presentation, outside of the United States, informing Canadians about the grave threat to the very fabric of American modern secular government that is at issue in the current presidential election.

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Monday's Molecule #72

 
Today is Victoria Day in Canada so it must be Monday—time for Monday's Molecule.


Today's molecule is essential for all life as we know it, but biochemists didn't even know it existed 'till after World War II. It's discovery was hailed as one of the greatest contributions to modern biochemistry when the Nobel Prize was awarded for working out its structure and the role it plays in metabolism.

You need to identify the molecule and give its correct common name. We don't need the formal IUPAC name in this case. Pay attention to the correct common name—some incorrect trivial names just won't do.

There's an direct connection between today's molecule and a Nobel Prize. The first person to correctly identify the molecule and name the Nobel Laureate(s) wins a free lunch at the Faculty Club. Previous winners are ineligible for one month from the time they first collected the prize. There are three ineligible candidates for this week's reward.

THEME:

Nobel Laureates
Send your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk (at) bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the molecule and names the Nobel Laureate(s). Note that I'm not going to repeat Nobel Laureate(s) so you might want to check the list of previous Sandwalk postings.

Correct responses will be posted tomorrow. I may select multiple winners if several people get it right.

Comments will be blocked for 24 hours. Comments are now open.

UPDATE: We have a winner! The molecule is uridine diphosphate glucose (UDP-glucose), one of several nucleotide-sugar coenzymes. The Nobel Laureate is Luis Leloir (1970). Several people got the right answer this week—either the quiz was too easy or lots of people have more free time now that undergraduate classes are ending! The first person to email the correct answer was Brian Rosenberg from Harvard University in Boston (Cambridge) (USA). Brian has been invited to a free lunch.

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I "Get" This Part

 
James F. McGrath is one of those theologians who criticize Richard Dawkins and the new atheists. According to McGrath, those atheists simply don't get it when it comes to modern sophisticated theology. The sophisticated theologians say that Dawkins and his fellow atheists are attacking a strawman version of religion.

Alister McGrath's¹ defense of religion falls into this category [Alister McGrath's Defense of Religion]. Like most theologians who employ the "sophisticated religion", defense their actual attempts end up sounding very much like the Courtier's Reply.

Over the past few weeks, James McGrath has attempted to educate atheists about modern theology. In response to many questions he has tried very hard to explain "sophisticated religion" and why the new atheists just don't get it. He hasn't been all that successful, in my opinion. I just don't see why his explanation of god is any different than the ones that have already been addressed by atheists over the past several hundred years. It looks a lot to me like the same-old, same-old, argument from personal experience.

That's exactly what it is. Yesterday McGrath posted an honest and forthright description of his views. A view that he has been very reluctant to describe in any other recent posting or in any of the comments that he has posted. Here's what he wrote on his blog in an article that was addressed to his followers [Spirits in a Material World: A Multi-Blog Conversation].

Would if be going too far to say that those who have had mystical experiences are in very much the position of sighted people trying to explain color to the blind, or music lovers trying to explain why a piece moves them so much to someone who is tone deaf? In this conversation, however, it is not clear that the other side of the conversation is "disabled". They simply have no interest in understanding the experience or appreciating the music. And there is no way I can introduce someone to the music or why it moves me just by talking in abstract terms about something that is deeply experiential.

On the other hand, part of the issue is that I have no interest in defending any particular doctrines about God, and so my "views" seem hard to pin down, because I hold them so loosely. I realized long ago that the life-changing experience I had when I cried out to God in surrender and felt a sense of peace wash over me does not prove that a tomb was empty 2,000 or so years ago, or that God is 3-in-one, or any other such claims. What seems to confuse some people is that I still can find Trinitarian language helpful and inspiring and meaningful, not as a statement about what God is "really like" (as though I had a means to study that scientifically or objectively), but as an image of how this God that we speak of only in inadequate symbols and metaphors can be eternal love (since love requires more than one person).

Thank-you James for being so honest. Your sophisticated explanation of God is just the old argument from personal experience dressed up so that it conflicts as little as possible with modern science and rationalism.

Atheists have addressed the argument from personal experience. Dawkins covers it in his book. I wish his opponents would pretending that they have a "sophisticated" explanation of God that atheists have not refuted.

James, I "get" your explanation. I understand how someone can feel "a sense of peace" when you give up the struggle to be rational and "cry out to God in surrender." I can understand why you draw a parallel between your mystical experience and being able to see clearly. I know why you think atheists are like a blind person.

Here's a question for you. People who believe in aliens and UFO's think the same way. They honestly believe that they have been granted special insight. They see things that the rest of us can't see. They will use the same analogies and metaphors that you use. Do you take that as evidence that UFO's and aliens actually exist?

If the answer is "no", then why do you think Richard Dawkins should pay attention to your personal mystical experience if it conflicts with everything he knows about the natural world? You have every right to interpret your mystical experience however you want. But you go beyond that, don't you? You claim that the case for atheism is weak because we cannot explain your sophisticated personal experience. As soon as you make that claim you are stepping outside of your own personal experience and asking others to validate it from the outside. When you do that, you are obliged to present evidence that your personal experience reflects reality and not an illusion. What is the evidence that an objective outsider like me should consider?

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1. No relation to James McGrath.

Clear as Mud

 
James F. McGrath is still trying to explain what modern sophisticated religion is all about, and why amateur atheists, like me, just don't get it.

His latest attempt is on his blog at Does Being Exist?. The most revealing paragraph is the last one ...

So if you are looking for evidence that ancient deities and angels exist, with or without wings, residing on Mt. Olympus or just beyond the moon, I don't believe that such entities exist. They were ancient explanations for what we today recognize as natural phenomena. But if you are asking about language that can give symbolic expression to the sense of awe many people feel about the "miracle" that anything exists at all, much less that we exist and can ponder the nature of our existence and wonder about these mysteries, then theology has a lot to offer. Not logical arguments for the existence of invisible persons, but metaphors that allow us to give voice to our limited and inadequate perception of life's inexpressable mystery, then theology has a lot to offer. That doesn't mean that amateurs can't do theology, or write poetry, or make music, or even make scientific discoveries. But in every field, there is a body of knowledge and wisdom that has accumulated that allows one to not repeat all the mistakes and positive groundwork done in the past and build on what has gone before, rather than reinventing the wheel. If one wishes to discuss theology at that sort of level of academic sophistication, it involves significant reading and research to inform oneself, and not simply a handful of conversations with fundamentalists.

Translation: You can't say that the Emperor has no clothes because you haven't invested years of study at the best institutes of fashion design in Paris and Milan. There are hundreds of smart people who have written sophisticated, metaphorical books on the Emperor's clothes. Don't talk to me until you've read all of them and can quote mystical passages and scholarly names as easily as I do.

What McGrath is illustrating here is referred to as The Courtier's Reply [The Emperor's New Clothes and the Courtier's Reply]. The term refers to an elaborate justification of a questionable viewpoint. Instead of addressing whether of not the Emperor is clothed, the courtier defends the "sophisticated" rationalization that the sycophants have constructed to preserve the delusion, and avoid admitting that they can't see the clothes either.

McGrath thinks that theology can be justified because it addresses "life's inexpressable mystery." This is reason enough to reject atheism even though he denies the existence of any of the classical gods. Furthermore, this is reason enough to call himself a Christian.

I'd like to discuss why he is impressed by some "inexpressible mystery" and why he thinks it's a "miracle" that anything exists at all. Why does he feel that this is enough to cause him to posit something beyond the natural world? Why are these feelings so powerful that he rejects the label of atheist and adopts theology as a way of knowing? Those are the key points.

But I'm not allowed to discuss those points, according to McGrath. I can't enter into a debate with him until I've read all of the sophisticated theologians who agree with him. I haven't done my homework. Until then, I'm just an amateur who doesn't understand the arguments against atheism and in favor of modern mysticism/theology.

That's not very helpful. It's a way of protecting one's core beliefs from close scrutiny by skeptics.

There's nothing new about McGrath's argument. It's just a version of the Argument from Personal Experience. Those arguments have been dealt with by atheists. There's nothing sophisticated about them.

Perhaps McGrath has been fooled into thinking that the argument from personal experience is valid because there are many scholars who find it convincing? If so, this is evidence of another logical fallacy called Argumentum ad nauseam.

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