Science, Religion and the Moral Arc – An Interview with Michael Shermer

(This post is part of the Sinai and Synapses Discussion Forum — a collection of perspectives on specific topics. It is part of our Winter 2015 series, “Why Do People Do Bad (and Good) Things?“)

Is the world becoming more just?

Michael Shermer thinks so. Shermer is the editor of Skeptic magazine, and has long been a strong advocate for science and rational thinking, since they are the best ways we have for understanding the way the world works.

Yet he has come to believe that not only is science our best source of truth for the natural world, it is also the best source of our morality, as well. In his new book The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity to Truth, Justice, and Freedom, he makes a strong and compelling case that scientific thinking has helped individuals and society become more free, more prosperous, and more compassionate.

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Why Judaism Needs Velcro

Why do we remember all the details of every urban legend we hear, but can’t remember the last PowerPoint presentation we saw?

That’s the question that brothers Chip and Dan Heath tackle in their outstanding book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Die and Others Thrive. The book answers the questions “What causes us to remember some things and not others? What makes something ‘stick’?”

Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly), for an idea to stick, the how matters a lot more than the what. After all, how many amazing stories have you shared on Facebook, only to realize later that they were hoaxes? Or, on the flip side, how many terrific educational ideas have you heard at conferences, only to have forgotten them even before you implemented them?

In other words, just because is an idea is good, it doesn’t mean that we will remember it. As we all know, bad ideas can be just as “sticky” as good ones, and far too many good ideas have been lost because they weren’t presented well.

So for those of us who care about Judaism and the Jewish future, then, we can’t just focus on the next big idea, or create more content, or believe that “if we build it, they will come.” Instead, if we want Judaism to “stick” for our students, we need to be intentional about how we do it.

And what we need is Velcro.

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How Technology Changes Theology

(This post is part of the Sinai and Synapses Discussion Forum, a collection of perspectives on specific topics. It is part of our Fall 2014 series, “Are We Using Technology, or is Technology Using Us?“)

I go to Target a lot. I get diapers, or groceries, or clothes. But every so often, I have to buy something that’s not on my usual list, and since Target is a huge store, I sometimes need to find an employee to show me where, say, the humidifiers are.

There’s only one problem — I often can’t find an employee, either.

Why is that? It’s because technology is radically changing how economically valuable human beings are. After all, humans can work only a few number of hours at a time. They get distracted. They require vacations. Their kids get sick. Computers don’t have those issues, so many companies are investing more money in technology and less money in people. Why pay for a cashier when a computerized self-checkout can work just as well?

And while technology has always changed economics, in many ways, we are starting to enter uncharted territory. That’s the message that YouTube educator CGP Grey makes in his troubling, fascinating and important video “Humans Need Not Apply”:

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Do You Accept Science, or Judaism? Yes.

During my seven years in the congregational rabbinate, I had so many people say to me, “I don’t believe in God, and I don’t feel connected to my Judaism. Instead, I believe in science.” Or they would approach me and explain that they saw Judaism and science as separate realms, with no connection between the two.

The way this was framed saddened me, but I could understand where it came from. Since the media portrays religion as anti-science, many Jews would say, “I don’t want my science and my Judaism mixed. And if religion is opposed to science, then I don’t want any part of Judaism.”

Yet are those statements representative of the Jewish community as a whole? How do Jews perceive the relationship between Judaism and science?

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Sorry, Science Doesn’t Make a Case for God. But That’s OK

Last week, Eric Metaxas wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal entitled “Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God.” In it, he argues that the parameters for human life are so precise that they are indicators of God’s existence. As he phrases it,

Today there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to support life—every single one of which must be perfectly met, or the whole thing falls apart…The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing.

Yet here we are, not only existing, but talking about existing. What can account for it? Can every one of those many parameters have been perfect by accident? At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we cannot be the result of random forces? Doesn’t assuming that an intelligence created these perfect conditions require far less faith than believing that a life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the inconceivable odds to come into being?

A fine-tuned universe is a compelling argument for God. It’s also deeply problematic.

Why? Two reasons.

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What Would a “Conscious Judaism” Look Like?

What does it mean for us to be “conscious”?

Sometimes, it means that we are aware of our surroundings, as opposed to the times when are we blind to what’s going on around us.

Sometimes, it means that we are acting intentionally, as opposed to the times when we act without thinking.

And sometimes it means that we know our self, meaning that we are trying to determine who we really are.

These aspects of consciousness — awareness, intentionality and self-knowledge — have become rich sources of scientific inquiry. Interestingly, these ideas also have deep resonance with teachings found within Jewish tradition.

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God as a “Scientific Object”

What do we know about “the earth”?

Well, if you had asked that question to people in the 1400’s, they would have told you that they “knew” that the earth was the center of the universe. If you had asked Lord Kelvin, one of the greatest scientific minds of the 19th century, he would have told you that he “knew” that the earth was between 20 and 400 million years old. And if you had asked that question to most geologists in the early 20th century, they would have told you that they “knew” that the earth’s continents were fixed in place.

And of course, we now realize that what all these people “knew” about the earth was completely wrong.

On one level, the earth has been whatever the earth has been over its billions of years of history. But what has changed over just centuries is our understanding of what the earth is. In other words, the earth as an actual object in reality is different from the earth as we know it at any given moment.

Indeed, everything scientific — such as the earth, the sun, atoms, genes, the universe, or humanity — lives in these same two worlds: what it is in reality and what we understand about it right now.

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What Playing Games Can Teach Us About Prayer

While I certainly use my iPhone to check my e-mail and make calls, far and away, what really drains my battery are apps like Cut the Rope, Dark Nebula, and Words with Friends. Like almost everyone else on the planet, I simply love playing games.

But why? What is it about games that draw people in?

According to psychologist Alison Gopnik, it’s because the best games place us right into a sweetspot in the interaction between two poles — structure and creativity.

Sometimes, structure stifles creativity. That’s why Tic-Tac-Toe gets so boring so quickly, because there’s no space for imagination.

But for the most dynamic games, the rules can actually enhance our ability to be creative.

One of my favorite examples comes in a podcast from WNYC’s Radiolab, where co-hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich interview chess expert Fred Friedel. Friedel wrote a computer program listing every chess move that has ever been played in any tournament. It’s called “Fritz.”

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Why I’m an Agnostic Theist

Researchers at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga have just published a new study about atheists and atheism, and interestingly, the authors argue that non-belief in God is just as variegated as belief in God. At least initially, they have identified six types of non-believers: Intellectual Atheist/Agnostics (IAA), Activist Atheist/Agnostics (AAA), Seeker Agnostics (SA), Antitheists, Non-theists and Ritual Atheist/Agnostics (RAA).

The way these different groups defined themselves show how many different ways there are to think about God, even if people don’t believe in God — the Antitheists actively try to convince people that religion is harmful; the Activists pursue social justice work (such as environmentalism or LGBT rights); and the Intellectuals tend to love to study science, philosophy, sociology and politics.

One group, however, seemed to encapsulate a large segment of the Jewish community: the Ritual Atheist / Agnostics. As Christopher Silver, co-author of the study, notes:

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How Much Do We Value Our Values?

A friend of mine — an ardent environmentalist — just had a baby. She was trying to decide whether she would buy cloth diapers, which would be much friendlier to the earth, or go with disposables. She naturally started with cloth, but within a couple of weeks of washing and reusing and washing and reusing and washing and reusing, she gave in and bought disposables.

“I love the environment,” she said. “Just not enough.”

Very often, when we talk about values, we want to talk about simple right and wrong — we should be good stewards of the earth, or remember that we have a responsibility to help those in need, or ensure that every human being has certain rights. But while some values are about simple right and wrong, in truth, the vast majority are actually about costs and benefits.

Indeed, even one of the greatest scholars in Jewish tradition realized that doing the right thing often has a cost — and doing the wrong thing sometimes has a benefit. In Pirkei Avot, a collection of rabbinic sayings, Rabbi Judah had suggested that we should “calculate the loss of doing a mitzvah against its gain, and the gain of a transgression against its loss.” (Avot 2:1)

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