HOLY SCIENCE
Recently, the Church of England criticized environmental activists who protested the church’s position on the safety of fracking. Philip Fletcher, who advises the General Synod and the archbishops of Canterbury and York, was quoted in The Telegraph:1
There is a real danger of distorting the arguments through protest. If we take an example from a little way back you will recall the completely misguided attack on the MMR jab. [That] is still causing outbreaks of measles now in our vulnerable children because it gave many households and many parents the wrong impression that MMR was somehow dangerous. You could be in the same position with fracking if you just take the very limited views being expressed by some opponents of fracking at the moment. . . . I don’t think that is at all sound scientifically.
Since the White House began funding faith-based initiatives under President George W. Bush, religious organizations have become an increasingly important mouthpiece for parroting the products of institutional research misconduct designed to support government policies and industry practices. Their strategy, as the example above illustrates, is to accuse scientists and community activists who raise concerns of putting public health at risk. It makes a lot of sense. Who could government and industry choose to carry that message with more moral authority than religious institutions?
Government and industry, increasingly, are involving religious organizations in their efforts to support government policies and industry practices. In 2011, for example, the CDC and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) held an “off-the-record, not-for-press-purposes” phone conference with church and community leaders to administer vaccines in churches, synagogues, and mosques.2 Under this program, religious leaders are encouraged to have their congregations vaccinated by Walgreens and other pharmacies. HHS writes:3
As you know, faith and community leaders play an integral role in helping to keep their communities and congregations healthy, especially during flu season. As trusted messengers, you are able to spread important information about healthy practices and the need for vaccination.
Similarly, at a recent conference of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, local activists combating environmental injustices associated with Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) talked about the negative impact religious leaders are having.4 As part of their strategy to control public opposition, companies running the CAFOs created nonprofit organizations and included locally influential clergy on each of their boards.
With both science and religion, the intrinsic value of their institutions rests wholly upon integrity. People can live with car dealerships that unload a lemon or two on unwary customers, and fruit stands that sell a few wormy apples from time to time. But science lacking the highest standards of integrity is worthless. It’s like a preacher who only runs around on his wife once in awhile. Scientific organizations cannot afford to sanction unethical behavior by individuals acting on behalf of their institutions, while punishing those who do the same things to serve their own self-interests. Hypocrisy knows no bounds. As institutions become more corrupt, they are more prone to punish the innocent. They do so, at least partly, to create an appearance that they don’t condone the very acts that they themselves commit with reckless impunity. According to Robert Kuehn: 5
There is a long history of attacks on scientists. During the Inquisition, the Roman Catholic Church charged Galileo with heresy and, after imprisonment and threats of torture, forced him to renounce his theory that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe. In the 1950s, politicians sought to silence scientists that allegedly held political views sympathetic to Communists. In recent years, research results, rather than the scientist’s religion or politics, have motivated attacks on scientists.
Kuehn’s snapshot of the motives behind attacks on scientists over the past four centuries seems to suggest that religion no longer plays an important role. The kinds of conflicts between science and religious fundamentalists that cost Galileo his freedom, however, rage on to this day. They determine what public schools are allowed to teach about evolution, and set the boundaries of stem-cell research and the causes of climate change. As incredible as it may seem, religion played an important role in the attacks on me by Henry Longest, EPA’s deputy assistant administrator for management for the Office of Research & Development (ORD).
Turning to One Another at EPA
In 2003, Longest held leadership meetings to develop ORD’s next generation of managers. For guidance, he distributed Margaret Wheatley’s book, Turning to One Another, bearing ORD’s seal of approval on its cover. Wheatley urged environmentalists to abandon Western science in favor of New Science.6 She taught that this experience initially leaves scientists in a state of confusion, which she calls the “space of not knowing” and the “abyss.” While passing through the abyss, scientists shed their religious beliefs and sexual inhibitions, emerging on the other side closer to nature and one another.
Basing the future of EPA’s research on some kind of new age environmental science that requires abandoning traditional science and religion seems too far-fetched to be true. Apparently it’s not. Longest proceeded to contract the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, to administer a questionnaire to ORD employees interested in moving up the ladder.7 Employees were informed that participating in his Appreciative Inquiry Research Study, which included answering questions about their religious beliefs and sexual desires and then being interviewed, involved “no risks or discomforts.” Anonymity was assured in that that their names would be replaced with a confidential code. But they were compelled to sign a “Minimal Risk Consent Statement,” and told that unforeseen circumstances may require decoding their names to “enhance the value of the research data.”
EXCERPT FROM THE ORD APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY RESEARCH STUDY:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Strongly Disagree Neither agree nor disagree Strongly agree
38. I can think of several personality traits that turn me on sexually.
39. Taking care of others gives me a warm feeling inside.
40. Many people respect me.
41. I am full of gratitude.
42. The people around me make a lot of jokes.
43. I feel wonder almost every day.
44. I often feel curiosity.
45. My life is very fulfilling.
46. On a typical day, many events make me happy.
47. I often feel hopeful.
48. People are usually considerate of my needs and feelings.
49. I’ve often imagined being sexual with a friend, colleague, or acquaintance.
50. I often notice people who need help.
51. I always stand up for what I believe.
52. I am always respectful of people of higher status than myself.
53. I make jokes about everything.
54. I often look for patterns in the objects around me.
55. I learn something new every day.
56. I slow down to enjoy the moment whenever I can.
57. Good things happen to me all of the time.
58. I am not a quitter.
59. I love many people.
60. Almost everybody has something sexy about them.
The whole exercise came to an abrupt end when some unappreciative employee leaked the questionnaire to the Washington Post.8 Interspersed among seemingly innocuous questions, the questionnaire asked participants to agree or disagree with statements of a sexual nature, such as, “I am a very flirtatious person”; “When I’m attracted to someone, I am overwhelmed by desire”; “Almost everybody has something sexy about them”; “I have dated a lot of people”; “I have difficulty talking to attractive persons of the opposite sex”; and “I become self-conscious when using public toilets.” A number of questions and statements also probed employees’ religious beliefs, such as, “Do you belong to a church, temple or other religious group?;” “I think about God;” “I regularly attend religious services;” “I put my trust in God;” “A higher power is looking out for me;” and “I seek God’s help. Others tested their loyalty, for example, “When someone criticizes ORD, it feels like a personal insult;” “If a story in the media criticized ORD, I would feel embarrassed;” and “I am always respectful of people of higher status than myself.”
Henry Longest’s infamous Appreciative Inquiry appears to have been an attempt to integrate Margaret Wheatley’s views on environmental science, sex, and religion when recruiting upper-level managers at ORD. If so, it is an extreme example of how even scientists working for the US government can still experience discrimination based on their religious beliefs as well as research results. Unfortunately, Longest’s interests in using Wheatley’s philosophies to build ORD’s management structure conflicted with my research documenting public health problems associated with the agricultural use of processed sewage sludge. In her book Turning to One Another, Wheatley stressed the importance of using wastes to produce food. So, believe it or not, in the bizarre world of ORD management in the late 1990s to mid 2000s, the future of EPA scientists turned on their positions regarding sewage, sex, and religion.
Religious Upbringing
My father, who was a Navy pilot, had no use for religion. He said he just saw too much hypocrisy among chaplains during World War II. In the late 1930s, he trained with the Canadian Royal Air Force. Air Marshall William Avery Bishop pinned his wings on just before he transferred to the RAF in London. After Pearl Harbor, he signed up with the Navy and started training to fly PBY sea planes at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. He eventually became a flight instructor as an all-weather-flying expert, and spent most of his time during the war flying high-ranking officers around when they needed to get somewhere regardless of the weather conditions.
He once delivered a dispatch to General Eisenhower’s office, and stood just a few feet away from him. So, in memory of my father, I have included a portion of President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address that directly relates to the subject of this book. The threat federal spending poses to academic freedom is “ever present” and “gravely to be regarded,” Eisenhower said.
My mother saw to it that I attended Sunday School at the First Baptist Church of Thomasville while I was growing up in South Georgia in the early 1960s. In 1975, I was licensed as a minister in the second largest Southern Baptist church in Alabama. I never wanted to preach for a living, and, after about ten years of volunteering in churches, I could understand why my father felt the way he did. The same year I was licensed, the church in Alabama voted on whether to allow African Americans to join the church. Now, as I look back, that seems like a fitting beginning to many years of introspection. I eventually realized that there were too many inconsistencies between what I experienced in church, and what I believe is inherently right or wrong.
Lt. and Mrs. H. W. Lewis Circa 1950–1953
Most of all, I couldn’t reconcile what was preached from the pulpit versus what was practiced by the institution. Eventually the chasm between the church’s views and mine became too wide to bridge. Nevertheless, it was insightful to observe how institutions dealing with religion and science both embrace different standards of ethics, one for individuals acting on their own, and another for those who serve the interests of the institutions. There’s little difference between the government’s manipulating research and targeting scientists who publish unwanted results versus churches and synagogues not practicing what they preach. Both are void of an essential ingredient of what I consider true science and religion, which is plain, old-fashioned ethics.
Ethics in Science and Religion
Based on religious beliefs, what boundaries should the government place upon scientific research? None, I would say, except that scientists should treat others as they want to be treated, which is the essence of ethics as well as religion. Scientists, no doubt, will continue to test the boundaries of knowledge in their quest to understand how the universe works. Inevitably, they will come into conflict with those who govern, whether by religious traditions, military force, or the will of the people. Still, so long as the goal is following the ethic of reciprocity, or Golden Rule, common sense and decency can prevail even when the most sacred beliefs and traditions are challenged.
Stem-cell research, for example, raises questions about what life is, and when it begins. Cells growing in a Petri dish, however, only have the potential to become people. Even those who interpret the Biblical story of Adam and Eve literally must agree that even a lump of clay has the potential to become a person. Of course, stem cells replicating in a culture have life, but so do viruses, which can be purified and stored in a bottle like crystals of salt until the sun consumes the earth. From the standpoint of the Golden Rule, a person comes into being at some point during prenatal development and ceases to exist at some point during the process of death. Because knowing how we would want to be treated requires a functioning brain, our existence as a person from the standpoint of the Golden Rule inextricably rests upon brain function.
Physicians who don’t want to be kept alive past the point at which they can no longer function as a person should have no remorse over treating their patients likewise, if that’s what their patients also want. The law, in other words, should not prevent people from giving up their lives so that those they love can go on with theirs. On the other hand, physicians who disagree should not be compelled to assist. The government should not stand in the way in either case, for some reason, it objects to people following the Golden Rule. Similarly, I expect that scientific studies could demonstrate that people with normal brains and the public interest at heart would want their own bodies to have been used to save others had they been aborted as fetuses. How is that any different than anyone, including Jesus Christ, giving his or her life to save others? It’s simply treating others as they would want to be treated, is it not?
Some, of course, may argue that the Golden Rule cannot always be applied. For example, should a suicidal murderer seeking a showdown with police, i.e., “death-by-cop,” be permitted to kill others because that’s how he wants to be treated? Of course not. Although it’s not always the case, the law of the land should be established by people of sound mind who have the public interest at heart. Most people meeting these requirements would want to be imprisoned, or even killed if necessary, if they ever became so morally corrupt, or insane, as to start shooting innocent people in schools and movie theaters.
With regard to research misconduct, the same standards applied to a single scientific article should be applied to the body of science as a whole. When authors are found to have selectively published data supporting their conclusions while disregarding unsupportive data, the whole paper is retracted, not just the portion containing fake data. Yet government agencies, corporations, and the academic institutions they fund appear to have no qualms about selectively funding scientists who support their interests, while taking out scientists who threaten them. The amount of resources that government agencies, universities, and corporations expend in making sure that the body of scientific literature as a whole supports government policies and industry practices is vast beyond imagination.9
Their objectives are to guarantee that most scientific studies agree with their positions, and that there is no documented evidence of any alleged problems with any of their products, policies, or practices. Achieving this position provides a powerful defense against lawsuits filed by plaintiffs seeking damages, and it wards off overly restrictive government regulations. Unfortunately, the body of scientific literature it produces is only an illusion.10
What if I held in one hand all of the peer-reviewed scientific articles in areas in which government and industry have heavily funded studies to support certain policies and practices, and suppressed the publication of studies yielding unfavorable results—and, in the other hand, held all of the articles retracted for selectively publishing only results that supported the authors’ conclusions? Which has more credibility?
If we apply the same standard of ethics to both, there is no difference between the two. What this means is that we have no credible body of science in any area in which government and industry have a major stake in what gets published in the scientific literature. Another way to look at it is that the only areas in which we have a credible body of science are those that have no significant impact on government or industry, that is areas that don’t really make much difference anyway in our daily lives.
To me, pure science has much in common with pure religion, at least as the book ascribed to James, the brother of Jesus, defined it.11 Pure religion is simply helping the poor, oppressed, and needy, and not becoming entangled in “the world.” The world, in his day, was progressing toward war between the Roman Empire and Israel’s theocracy, neither of which cared very much about the poor and needy. If morality is measured in terms of caring for those who are least able to care for themselves, then, in the same vein, science should not be corrupted by government and industry to the detriment of public welfare.
Hence, just as pure religion is moral and untangled in the world, pure science is ethical and free from worldly corruption. In short, we are talking about the same standard of right and wrong for both science and religion. I think most people would agree that our religious and scientific institutions, for all the same reasons, have both fallen far short of meeting such a standard.
Another shortcoming of both science and religion is epitomized in the old adage “not seeing the forest for the trees.” Most scientists tend to focus on one leaf or another, content to confine their work to some comfortable nook or cranny in science. But no one can really understand much about a leaf without comprehending how it functions as part of the whole tree, the forest, and even other forests around the planet. Many theologians, in my opinion, are even worse.
I often think back to something Clifford Baldowski, a noted political cartoonist for the Atlanta Constitution, once said. One of his sons was a college buddy of mine, and I spent countless joyful weekends with his family in my early years at UGA. One evening over dinner, “Baldy,” as he was known, responded to his wife’s supporting her point of view with a quote from scripture. He said something like, “Honey, the Bible can be used to support anything.” For many years, I wondered why that is so characteristic of a book many believe to be more reliable than science. I eventually concluded it’s simply because most religious leaders have never formed a big picture in which all of the parts of the Bible can fit without contradiction.
Absent any kind of overarching concept that encompasses all of its contents, any outlying statements are free to have any number of contradictory meanings. Generally, people just pick and choose whatever parts suit them, and just ignore the rest. I was never content with this approach, and spent several decades talking about it with David Gattie, a UGA professor of engineering who once worked with me at EPA.
Ancient religious texts, for example, the Tanakh (Torah, Prophets, and Writings in the Hebrew Old Testament), the Christian New Testament, and the Quran, require that their followers make certain moral choices: to judge or judge not; to love or hate. Influenced by their upbringing, life experiences, and whatever else motivates them, people use the ancient writings to establish their moral standards and religious beliefs.
In the Torah, for example, Moses, is credited with setting before the people a body of statutes that embodied both good and evil, which, correspondingly, would yield either life or death. They were free to decide whether to stone adulterers to death, or show mercy. Unfortunately, they chose the parts that led to death and, as a result, died in the wilderness. Likewise, Muslims must choose between following the verse in the Quran that praises Muslims for loving those who do not love them; or, they can kill unbelievers wherever they are found.12 The instructions that people pick and choose to follow from whatever body of documents they consider to be sacred simply reflect whatever is in their hearts from the beginning. In other words, they use religious texts to morally justify whatever they have done, or want to do. To quote the author of the Book of Hebrews, the scriptures are “a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”13
This is probably true of any collections of instructions that would cause someone to choose between what they consider to be right and wrong. For example, I could write “Stomp the ant” on one side of a piece of paper, on the other side write “Let the ant go,” and hand it to a child watching an ant go by. Most children would probably do whatever they are already inclined to do, which, at least for most boys, is stomp the ant.
Although many religious leaders are known for cherry-picking the Bible and other religious texts to support their beliefs, the Tanakh, Christian New Testament, and Quran all prohibit the practice, at least so far as the body of law is concerned.14 According to the Hebrew Law of Moses, anyone who transgresses any part of it is guilty of transgressing all of it.15 Hence, those who judge others as being guilty of idolatry, sexual perversion, murder, and other transgressions of the law without mercy, which the law requires, is condemned under the same law as an idolater, fornicator, and murderer himself.16 In other words, because the law was written such that one can only keep all of it or none of it, anyone who judges someone without mercy is guilty of transgressing the whole law. Although he may have never murdered anyone, blasphemed God, or committed fornication, he is no different in the eyes of the law than those who have.
There are doubtless many reasons why religious texts contain conflicting instructions concerning morality and ethics. But two things stand out. As mentioned earlier, Moses gave those who followed him out of Egypt a choice of paths to follow, one good and the other evil. After delivering them out of slavery, he instructed them to worship only one God. Egypt experienced a similar uprising in its past when Pharaoh Amenhotep IV moved Egypt’s capital into the wilderness, built the city of Armana, and instructed the people to worship only the creator Aten, the giver of life. His followers eventually ended up back where they started. Things didn’t go well with Moses’ followers, either. They later complained that they would have preferred that God kill them while they were eating in Egypt, instead of starving them to death in the wilderness.17
To deal with their rebellion, Moses re-created many of the trappings of Egypt’s religious system, including priests, animal sacrifices, and an inner sanctum for the high priest to commune with the Lord of Israel. He also reinstituted a system of law familiar to the people of Egypt and its neighbors, which carried the penalty of death for blasphemy, murder, adultery, homosexuality, and other transgressions. But with these changes, Moses proclaimed that the Lord is full of mercy as well as vengeance.18 This conflict between judgment and mercy, life and death, continues throughout the Tanakh, and carries over to the Christian New Testament and the Quran. James, for example, instructed the early Jewish converts that no mercy would be shown toward those who judge others without mercy.19
The struggle between judgment and mercy plays out in a multitude of contradictory commandments and teachings that are epitomized in the story of Jesus sparing a woman caught in adultery, saying, “He that has no sin, let him cast the first stone.”20 The purpose of the contradictions, as Moses indicated, was to force people to choose between good an evil, life and death—a choice that would come back to them in the end when God would judge them by whatever judgment they used to judge others.21
Religion versus Science
Another reason why religious texts contain conflicting instructions concerning morality and ethics is perhaps unintentional, and gives rise to many of the conflicts among religious groups, and between them and secular society. Mainstream religious leaders tend to believe that the Bible and other sacred texts deal with spiritual truths and are not meant to explain physical or biological phenomena. Fundamentalists disagree, and will cling to their beliefs no matter what science may demonstrate.
So far as science is concerned, most fundamentalists are comfortable living somewhere between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries—after Galileo and before Darwin. They accept the fact that the sun doesn’t revolve around the Earth, but not that they evolved from some lowly creature that once crawled upon it. Their core beliefs haven’t changed since the earliest times, when pagan priests attributed floods, droughts, and other natural disasters to an angry god punishing people for their transgressions. And, of course, the priests were never punished. Their gods always required the shedding of innocent blood instead.
The Bible as a whole reflects the evolution of religion from the dawn of civilization, when primitive cultures sacrificed humans and animals to appease their angry gods, to modern times, when people strive to rid the earth of slavery, genocide, torture, sexism, racism, murder, assault, fraud, deceit, and intimidation. Such was the life of the Apostle Paul. He stood with one foot in the ancient world of animal sacrifices, racial and sexual discrimination, and death by stoning for crimes that are not even recognized in modern society. The other was firmly planted in a new world in which laws and prophets were followed by simply treating others as we would want to be treated.22
When it comes to science, religious fundamentalists argue that most scientists aren’t believers; therefore, they are children of the devil. Yet the Bible says, “You believe there is one God, you do well, [but] even the devils believe and tremble.”23 Likewise, Jesus said that many who call him Lord, and have worked miracles in his name, are workers of iniquity.24 Fundamentalists believe that one day they will be like God, and reign in heaven. Isaiah said that Lucifer believed the same thing.25 Fundamentalist Christians believe that Muslims and Jews are bound for hell. But the Bible says that one day the Lord will say, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, my inheritance.” 26
Personally, I’m comfortable being like the man who brought his infirmed son to Jesus, saying, “I believe, help my unbelief;” or the Apostle Thomas, who could not believe in the resurrection without physical proof.27 I’m comfortable calling Jews and Muslims and anyone else who loves his neighbor as himself my brother. And I am confident that Jesus, who said, “No man comes to the Father but by me,” would judge them according to what in is their hearts, and receive them with open arms. To believe otherwise is to reject the very heart of what Jesus and his apostles taught, namely, that laws and the writings of prophets can be adhered to simply by loving our others as ourselves.28 As the Apostle John wrote, “Every one that loves is born of God, and knows God.”29 “Transgressing the law, or sin, therefore, is simply failing to treat others as we want to be treated.”30 “It is the law written not in stone, but upon our hearts.”31
Synagogues, mosques, churches, and other religious institutions, therefore, have but one mission, which is to show the world that loving God means, in all things, treating others as we want to be treated, and caring for even the least wealthy and least powerful among us. To those theologians who disagree, I would point to what Jesus told Nicodemus: “You must be born again.”32 But not as evangelical Christians use the term. Instead, you must forget everything you think you know about right and wrong, and become like the little children who entered the Promised Land with no knowledge of good and evil.33
This, I believe, is the true meaning of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, in which humanity was separated from God by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.34 Everything written in religious writings that people use to judge one another comprises the knowledge of good and evil. In other words, the proverbial fruit Satan used to tempt Eve was the fruit of the world’s religions. As James, the brother of Jesus, taught, to practice pure religion is to remain uncorrupted by the world, and simply treat even the least among us as we would have others treat us e.g., care for the fatherless and widows.35 Redemption comes not from the works of our hands, but from the love we have in our hearts for one another.
Jesus told his disciples that he will separate the sheep from the goats one day, and take to himself those who fed the least of his brethren when they were hungry, gave them water when they were thirsty, took them in when they were strangers, clothed them when they were naked, and visited them when they were sick and in prison.36 If that’s true, I will feel good about having devoted my life to science. I cannot think of anyone who has fed more of the hungry, provided more water to the thirsty, sheltered more strangers, clothed more people who have nothing to wear, healed more of the sick, and freed more of the innocent from prison than scientists who have truly worked for the public good.
Although the two worlds of science and religion can never merge, I still think that scientists should consider that research ethics, which is rooted in religious beliefs about right and wrong, good and evil, is an inherent part of science. The ethical ramifications of cherry-picking scientific data is just one example in which scientists may benefit from a better understanding of the parallels that are found in religion.
Perhaps understanding some of these parallels would help those who run our scientific institutions appreciate the utter degradation of integrity that comes from sanctioning unethical behavior by those who act on behalf of their institutions, while punishing those who do the same to serve their own self-interests. And, by appreciating how the Law of Moses was designed such that it could not be violated in part without transgressing the whole, perhaps scientists will understand why allowing one scientist to be unjustly silenced can destroy the integrity of the whole body of science.