American Scientist

To the Editors:

Michael Shermer, a self-proclaimed scientific skeptic, presents a tour de force of muddled thinking in "The Soul of Science" (Macroscope, March-April).

Consider Dr. Shermer's statement: "Whether there is an afterlife or not, we must live as if this is all there is." This is no more scientific than the late Carl Sagan's unverifiable and philosophically illiterate assertion that "matter is all there is." Should we not be free to apply Dr. Shermer's acid test of "scientific skepticism" against such assertions?

Dr. Shermer also betrays a reductionist understanding of "essence" when he draws an incorrect analogy between the essence of humans and the essence of the ship of Theseus or his 1966 Ford Mustang. Why? Because he fails to distinguish between himself as a human versus a ship or an automobile as artifacts designed by humans. Dr. Shermer does not analogize. Rather, he equivocates because for him there is no essential difference between the "pattern of information" comprising humans versus human artifacts. The latter were clearly designed and constructed by humans, whereas the former were not designed but (it is claimed) arose through an evolutionary process driven by chance mutations and natural selection.

But chance cannot causally explain anything: It is invoked as an escape from recognizing that Dr. Shermer wrote his own article as a free act done with a purpose. Yet, if all is matter, how can this be? Matter doesn't "behave freely" but follows strict natural laws. Moreover, if something as simple as a thimble—let alone the faces on Mount Rushmore—cannot occur by the forces of nature alone but, in fact, demand a designer, is it unreasonable to ask who designed the designer?

Dr. Shermer also wants us to believe that "humans have evolved a sense of purpose" and that "every person counts … [and] entities have value … because of the purpose we create." This monumental non sequitur betrays a philosophical myopia: He claims that an evolutionary process, allegedly purposeless, can produce a being whose very nature is to act for a purpose. Moreover, to claim that persons "count" or "have value" because others create purpose is to reduce persons to nonpersons, in other words, to objects—which flows precisely from the logic of his false reductionist analogy noted above.

Dr. Shermer then asserts that "there is no Archimedean point from which we can authenticate final Truths and ultimate Purposes." Yet, he wants us to believe that his is a "final Truth." If we apply his own assertion back upon itself, it collapses. And, despite this declaration, two sentences later Dr. Shermer claims to have a handle on the ultimate purpose of life when he claims: "Life's most basic purpose is survival and reproduction." Where is the demonstration of the validity of this assertion?

Better if Dr. Shermer had done his homework rather than promoting such philosophical nonsense.

Alexander R. Sich
Science and Technology Center
Kiev, Ukraine

To the Editors:

"The Soul of Science" has too many contradictions to be taken seriously. Michael Shermer starts out by confessing his materialistic, naturalistic viewpoint, but then he goes on to espouse a number of terms that can only have meaning in a theistic context. He believes that man has a "soul," yet there can be no soul if materialism is true. Dr. Shermer speaks of "purpose" in nature, yet this is a teleological concept that has no meaning in a materialistic cosmos. Finally, the author lists "principles of morality," but there can be no basis for moral values in a material world.

One can only conclude from reading Dr. Shermer that soul, purpose and morality are all products of naturalistic evolution. That is nonsense. Material processes don't produce non-material entities.

Robert Lattimer
Hudson, Ohio

To the Editors:

Philosophy is fascinating. Dr. Shermer states, "Whether there is an afterlife or not, we must live as if this is all there is." Doesn't this weak position invite an ironic hypocrisy? How about, "we must live as if we sincerely believe this is all there is?" Or, would that be a religious statement? The tortured "Golden Rule" formulation of "higher moral" principles on page 103 seems to require so much subjective information about so many other people as to be useless. For example, how do we evaluate everyone else's "loss of purpose?" There are time-honored sources of "higher moral" guidance that establish right and wrong.

Richard A. Carpenter
Charlottesville, Virginia

To the Editors:

As a Christian, I read "The Soul of Science" with interest. Although Dr. Shermer made many interesting points, one that particularly caught my eye was, "...we must live as if this [life] is all there is." He went on to assume (it seemed to me) that living so would produce altruistic individuals. Surely there are other possibilities. For example, this belief could result in individuals who live entirely for themselves.

Understandably, working as closely as they do with His miraculous creation, there are numerous scientists who do believe in God, contrary to what the average lay reader might assume from Dr. Shermer's writing.

Raymond B. Hester
University of South Alabama

Dr. Shermer responds:

Alexander R. Sich remonstrates that I have not made my case using science. Robert Lattimer says I "confessed" my naturalistic viewpoint. To both I say that the scientific, naturalistic perspective is not a sin (for which one must confess); in fact, naturalism is the very basis of scientific methodology. I go so far as to say that there is no such thing as the supernatural or paranormal. There is only the natural, the normal and mysteries we have yet to explain with natural and normal causal vectors. Adding the supernatural or the paranormal into the mix does nothing. It is just a linguistic place filler, a confession (if you will) of ignorance: "I can't figure it out with natural explanations, so I'll just say it is supernatural." The conversation (and the science) ends right there.

As for soul, purpose and morality, I defined these in my paper, used them in a very specific (and non-theistic) manner, discuss them at length in my book, The Science of Good and Evil, and show precisely how material processes produced such nonmaterial entities. "The Soul of Science" essay under question was an opinion editorial, of sorts, and as such is necessarily truncated. The science behind it is not.

Richard Carpenter makes a good point about the golden rule as being laden with too much subjective evaluation needed about the other person in question (as in "do unto others"). The real problem as I see it is in the second clause, "as you would have them do unto you." What if you wouldn't mind someone doing something to you that they, in fact, would mind?

In The Science of Good and Evil I reference the experiment where subjects approach a member of the opposite sex and ask them for (1) a date, (2) to go home, (3) to have sex. Men and women were split 50/50 on giving an affirmative answer to the first, but almost no women said yes to the second, and zero women said yes to the third, while the percentages of men saying yes went up dramatically. The sexes are built differently, thus making the golden rule inapplicable in this situation (and many others). My proposed principles of happiness and liberty do not require that you know the internal state of others, only that you, first do no harm to others, and second, try to do good for others.

Regarding Raymond B. Hester's thoughtful letter, according to a survey conducted in 1996 by Edward Larson and Larry Witham, 39 percent of American scientists believe in God. So, statistically, it is indeed not only possible for a scientist to be a theist, a sizable minority are. But that is a separate matter from whether there really is a God or not, or whether science can have anything to say about God's existence.