….In This Issue.

"Prospects for Separation of Church and State Under the Current Administration" by Harry Schwartzdart.

Quote of the Month.

"Free Will, or Not Free Will? That is the Question." By Peter Anderson, Ph.D.

"The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism" by Niles Eldrege.

"Chapter Assembly Developments" by Gene Barmore

"Teen Pregnancy Virtually Eliminated in the Netherlands" from Reuthers Health.

"Abstinence Only and the Christian Right" by Dave Silva.

Humor - "Miracle" Image of Darwin Appears on Doggie Door Flap!

At the July 15th Meeting:

"Prospects for Separation of Church and State Under the Current Administration."

By Harry Schwartzdart

The Administration has made its views known on a variety of church-state issues and they portend perilous times for defenders of the First Amendment.

These issues include providing tax money to faith-based organizations to perform social services with no strings attached, teacher led prayers in public schools, vouchers and displaying the Ten Commandments (whose?) in government locations like schools and courtrooms. Above all, the President's appointment of John Ashcroft as Attorney General, and his comments about the kind of men he would nominate for Supreme Court are especially worrisome.

Quote of the Month:

"…general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air;

consequently, all character training must be derived from faith…"

… Adolf Hitler.

Editor's note: It is rarely reported that Hitler was a life-long Catholic and used his religious views to justify his persecution of Jews and Gays. Also rarely reported is that Christian prayers were mandatory in the public schools of Nazi Germany.

Free Will, or Not Free Will? That is the Question.

By Pete Anderson

(Adapted from a lecture–discussion, April 15, 2001)

What is this thing called Free Will? Is it related to the idea of a Soul? Can it be defined?

At our April 15 meeting, we explored these questions and others. We had a relatively small group of about 14 people, apparently due in part to the coincidence with Easter Sunday, which produces some family get-togethers for religiously mixed families. But, as far as I could tell no one exercised any "free will" and simply decided not to come.

A straw vote at the start of the meeting produced the following statistics:

Those with a "soul" - 0

Those with a "conscience" – All

Those who were "conscious" – All

Those who have "free will" – 9 Yes, 4 No, 1 Undecided

(This straw vote was done (obviously) without bothering to define the concepts).

I mentioned that a search for the term, "free will", on the internet produced about 50 websites for "Free Will Baptist Church" and one interesting website related to free will that turned out to be inactive. Juan Bernal suggested searching for the term, determinism, instead.

Is the existence of Free Will like the existence of God? – obvious to many, but unprovable? What are some arguments for and against the existence of Free Will?

There are various philosophical arguments for free will and likewise arguments for the various alternatives – determinism, nihilism, existentialism, etc.

Some arguments against determinism include ideas of randomness, but that is another tricky concept, commonly referred to but difficult to define precisely, and, if defined, difficult to substantiate.

Basically, it appears that the only "real" evidence for free will is anecdotal. We make choices all the time of our own "free will". Hence it is obvious that we have free will.

But, if we look closely at the choices and the situations, we tend to see that we are pretty much acting according to our training and experience. Most of our choices are pretty automatic. We could act contrary to our experience on a whim, but there is probably, in turn, some reason for this contrariness.

We each may (or at least I did) think of ourselves as having free will. But if we observe others, it is a bit easier to see that they are acting according to their training, experience and environment, and, the better we know someone, the more we know what to expect from that person.

Can one have a Conscience without having Free Will? Is Free Will related to Consciousness, Subjectivity?

The search for consciousness seems to lead to some sort of "whole brain" activity instead of some very localized center in the brain. Different parts of the brain are active depending on the current activity. There seems to be no central homunculus or soul. And "conscience" is another "whole brain" activity involving past experiences and training. So, it appears that we can have consciences without necessarily having free will.

What if there is no Free Will? Are we condemned to the hell of Universal Determinism?

When I first had thoughts about the possibility that free will could be a myth, it seemed quite a depressing idea. It is not quite what I expected when I started on my long time "quest for truth". But, just as I got over the idea of Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny, and a benevolent "God", I’m beginning to think that perhaps there is something better beyond the concept of free will.

We don’t think of animals as having free will. But they seem to manage quite well, although not necessarily as well as we would prefer for ourselves. We have the biological and cultural tools to interact with our surroundings for our own good and the common good.

Also, small children are not usually thought of as having free will, since they are quite dependent on those around them. But, they have a wonderful time exploring the world around them and interacting with it.

Which, perhaps, brings us to the question of meaning of life and what it’s all about. Is the meaning of life a meaningless question? Topic for further discussion!

After the lecture-discussion, Juan Bernal loaned me a very interesting book, Elbow Room, The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting, by Daniel C. Dennett, based on a series of lectures at Oxford University. Some of the above ideas are based on my skimming through the book and are an addition to the lecture-discussion.

From "THE TRIUMPH OF EVOLUTION AND THE FAILURE OF CREATIONISM"

By Niles Eldredge

"We will not go very far in teaching what science is if we pretend to our kids that we cannot tell the difference between real and phony science. Yet that was the gist of all those ‘equal time’ laws of the 1970s and 1980s: the Arkansas and Louisiana legislatures were actually telling the teachers in their public schools to pretend not to know the difference between real science--flaws and all--and outmoded or simply bad science. I cannot imagine anything more perverse, more deliberately harmful, than teaching kids that their elders cannot tell the difference between the real and the phony. Some of them, of course, cannot. But all but the relatively few creation-leaning science teachers throughout the fifty states most assuredly can, and requiring them in essence to lie to their students sends about the worst message imaginable to the younger generation. And kids, of course, can see right through that."

Eldridge is a Curator in the Department of Invertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History.

CHAPTER ASSEMBLY DEVELOPMENTS

By Gene Barmore

At the AHA annual conference in Los Angeles in May, the Chapter Assembly elected Robert Finch as the new Chair of Chapter Assembly. As Chair, he also becomes a member of the AHA

Board of Directors, representing the concerns of chapters.

Both Finch and the new AHA executive director, Tony Hileman said that the national office should be more active in promoting the formation and growth of chapters. HAOC members attended a long session at the conference where many suggestions for doing this were discussed. Among the HAOC members at the conference were Pete Anderson, Larry Small, Charles and Dorothy Harvey, Juan and Virginia Bernal and myself.

We should be hearing more about this in the near future.

TEEN PREGNANCY "VIRTUALLY ELIMINATED" IN THE NETHERLANDS

(From Reuters Health, Mar. 2, 2001)

"WITH A TEEN PREGNANCY RATE UNDER 1 PERCENT, the Netherlands has virtually eliminated a health and social problem," says a researcher at REUTERS HEALTH.

Sex education and free contraceptives, along with fostering liberal attitudes toward sex, has virtually eliminated teen pregnancy as a health and social problem in the Netherlands, says Simone Buitendijk of the Dutch Institute for Applied Scientific Research.

Holland has fewer pregnant teenagers than most Western countries. In the Netherlands less than 1 percent of 15- to 17-year-old women get pregnant each year.

Nearly 5 percent became pregnant in Britain, the highest rate in Western Europe. The rate is 9.9 percent in the United States.

The Dutch have seen a steady drop in the number of young mothers for decades, even as the teen pregnancy rate has been increasing in other countries. While other countries have been teaching celibacy, the

Dutch have accepted that teens are sexually active and have introduced measures to deal with it.

Oral contraceptives are available at pharmacies and free through the

National Sick Fund, a state-funded system that ensures that low-income people have medical care. Statistics show that Dutch teenagers are using them.

In 1995, 70 percent of sexually active 18-year-olds were using birth control pills. For students 3 or 4 years younger, the rate falls to 40%.

Eighty-five percent of teens used a condom, the pill or both during their first sexual experience.

Buitendijk attributes high contraceptive use by Dutch teenagers to "their sufficient knowledge of reproduction and contraception, the large amount of information available to them both in school and informally, and the general permissive attitude the Dutch hold toward teen sexuality."

ABSTINENCE ONLY AND THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT

By Dave Silva

The above article demonstrates why the religiously based abstinence only programs they are trying to force on the schools will not achieve the best results. Even when the Surgeon General, Satcher, issues a report saying we need more sex education Bush an the Christian Right ignore the evidence and say it sends the wrong message, because it's not their message. In fact Southern Baptists have the highest divorce rate of any belief group in this country, which is possibly a result of their views on abortion and their religious taboo on pre-marital sex.

This is Aaron Lynch's theory from his book "Thought Contagion". Abstinence combined with strong social pressure to start your own family cause Southern Baptists to marry young. Religious taboos about abortion cause them to marry for the sake of the child. Consequently, they are often emotionally unprepared and financially overwhelmed. Being from the South I have heard comments like "They just got married too Young." Or, "They really didn't know each other, but she was pregnant so he got a job and quit college."

"MIRACLE" IMAGE OF DARWIN APPEARS IN DOGGIE DOOR FLAP

RICHARDSON, TX (DPI) - Excitement was the order of business today at the home of Alfred and Martha Wallace, due solely to the miraculous appearance of an image in a stain on their back door. "I was just sitting on the den floor playing with my beagle, Russell," explained Alfred, "when I noticed that his comings and goings over the last 2 years had left a stain on the rubber flap on the doggie door. That's when I noticed that the stain was the perfect likeness of Charles Darwin." The Wallaces' neighbors seem to agree that there's something strange and wonderful going on.

"Once Al pointed it out to me," family friend Vera Deven relates, "I could clearly see Darwin's fatherly face, flowing beard and bald pate. He's looking downward, to his right, maybe at a piglet or puppy, I can't tell which. Sometimes, he even appears to be crying."

Martha Wallace is "thrilled" that Darwin has chosen their home to make his appearance. "Frankly, we're honored to be host to such a miracle, and hope that many others can come witness it with us. I truly believe that this is a sign that Darwin cares for us, and wants us to live together in peace and harmony. Maybe it will inspire some of those desperate, lonely people who haven't seen the light to shed their ignorance and accept evolution as the one, true Way! That would be so wonderful."