The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine

Why Douglas Navarick’s Empirical God-Hypothesis Fails

by Richard Grigg

In his “The ‘God’ Construct: A Testable Hypothesis for Unifying Science and Theology” that appeared in Skeptic (Vol. 20, No. 3, 2015), Douglas J. Navarick lays out a laudably clear and thorough argument on behalf of what he regards as an empirical approach to at least one, potentially unorthodox, version of theism. He is to be congratulated for coming up with something genuinely new to say on a subject that has been nearly talked to death over several thousand years of Western debate. At the same time, Navarick’s approach contains a fatal flaw, one that brings down not only his own enterprise but any version of theism that suggests that a supernatural force has even the least influence upon the natural universe.

Navarick zeroes in on the question of whether the claim that the origin of life on Earth is to be explained through abiogenesis has sufficient evidence to back it up. “Biogenesis” is a word that we derive from the Greek “bios,” life, and “genesis” meaning origin or source. When the Greeks put an “a” (the Greek alpha) in front of a word, the so-called “alpha privative,” it reverses the word’s meaning. Most contemporary scientists assume that the first truly living thing, something more than a virus—specifically a living cell—arose via abiogenesis. This suggests that a chemical soup that did not itself contain any living things came together in such a fashion that a living cell emerged.

Of course decades of laboratory experiments that have attempted to reproduce the conditions of the early Earth that might have led to the appearance of the first cell have all come up empty handed, in that no mixing of likely precursor chemicals has ever actually resulted in a living cell. All of the living cells ever observed have derived from other living cells. This, argues Navarick, is absence of evidence, an absence that is sufficiently potent to register as evidence of absence. Perhaps life cannot come from something not itself living, then, but only from something of a quite different order. And, if so, perhaps it is an empirically defensible hypothesis that a God, one that need not be conceived in any more than the most minimalist terms, had to create the first cell or cells. Navarick defines his minimalist god as “a force that operates both through and independently of natural laws.”¹

The fatal flaw in Navarick’s argument is already visible in this brief definition, as it is in his earlier admission that “A precondition for conducting a scientific analysis of the evidence of God is an acknowledgement that science is capable of identifying supernatural influences in the natural world.”² What brings both of these formulas to grief is none other than one of the most basic laws of physics, the first law of thermodynamics, articulated in the 19th century: energy can be neither created nor destroyed; it can only change its form. The energy stored in the bonds of the gasoline molecules in my car’s gas tank, along with the energy in the oxygen molecules in the air, can make my car move down the road. Chemical energy is turned into kinetic energy, the energy of motion. But if we could add up every bit of energy with which we started and every bit with which we ended up, we would come up with the very same amount in each case. Things get tricky here in real-world examples, because the energy stored in fuel and oxygen doesn’t get completely translated into the energy of motion; much gets transformed into friction and heat energy, for example. But at the end of the day, energy has been neither created nor destroyed, just changed from one form into others.

Now any claim that a supernatural entity can have an influence within the natural world or can use already existing natural entities and phenomena in order to effect a new state of affairs immediately runs afoul of the conservation of energy. Let us begin with a simple analogy. There is a rake intended for raking leaves hanging on a hook in my garage. If I reluctantly pick up the rake, head out into my front lawn, and begin raking, what is actually moving the leaves? Proximately or most immediately, it is the rake. But the rake would still be hanging in my garage and would not be moving back and forth across my lawn if it were not for the energy that my body contributes to it. My body most definitely adds energy to the equation, even though one might choose to say that I work through the rake, that I am the “primary cause” utilizing a “secondary cause” to accomplish my purpose, language found in Medieval theologians such as Thomas Aquinas who believed that God was the primary cause who acted through secondary causes, the latter being finite, natural objects.

But here is the rub: if we consider my actions and that of the rake in artificial isolation from the rest of the world, the law of conservation of energy appears to be violated—I have not just changed the form of the energy contained in the rake (the inert rake’s energy includes, for example, the rapid motion of its constituent atoms and the potential energy it has by being suspended in a gravitational field). Rather, I have actually added new energy to the rake, and it has been necessary for me to do so if the rake is going to be used for its intended purpose of cleaning the leaves off of my yard. But when we remove the artificial brackets and place the energy that my body expends and the rake’s inherent energy within the whole surrounding natural universe, the conservation of energy holds. For instance, the energy that my body produces through cell metabolism is not a matter of creating new energy out of whole cloth, but of changing the form of the energy contained in the food stuffs that I imbibe and the air that I breathe.

Now take the idea central to Navarick’s contention, and to all claims that a supernatural being has effects within the natural world: the supernatural cannot act “through” the natural world and its physics without violating conservation of energy. Just as the rake wouldn’t move without my adding energy via my bodily motions, so the purely natural interaction of purely natural entities must obey the conservation law. But if the natural universe is left in this way to its own devices, Navarick wants to argue that these purely natural phenomena can never produce the first genuinely living thing. For that to happen, Navarick suggests, the supernatural must interact with the natural. But that will involve the supernatural adding energy (not just changing the form of energy) from outside the natural world as surely as my going to work with the rake adds new energy to the energy that the rake already possesses. But where my body’s interaction with the rake, when considered within its total natural environment, does wholly obey the conservation law, Navarick’s scenario does not: a supernatural entity, by definition, stands outside the closed physical world in which the laws of physics apply. And even if it were possible to imagine a deity not subject to those laws within that God’s own internal nature, the moment that that deity attempts to utilize or work through phenomena in the natural world, energy is being illicitly transported into that world from outside it, and not simply changing form. The conservation law is violated.

This is a gargantuan “woops!” That is, we should not underestimate the impossibility of countenancing any violation of the first law of thermodynamics. If energy were not conserved and could appear ex nihilo in our universe, whether via a supernatural agent or some other source, our reality would be a very different one from the reality in which we do in fact reside. But would the sort of violation of energy conservation implicit in Narvarick’s proposal necessarily be detectable? And if it were not, might it be possible to argue that Navarick’s hypothesis still has a chance of being correct? Perhaps even if it violates the first law of thermodynamics, the fact that we could never detect that violation renders the problem null and void, especially given the school of philosophy which holds that “laws” of nature are nothing more than generalizations derived from what we observe in the world around us. Perhaps this invisible contradiction between supernatural action within the natural world on the single matter of the origin of life and conservation of energy is akin to the contradiction between General Relativity and quantum theory. Each theory appears to hold within one segment of reality. An overly simple but oft-stated description of this situation is to say that quantum theory applies on the level of the very small, such as the atomic and subatomic realms, whereas General Relativity applies on larger scales.

But note how physicists react to this particular apparent contradiction. They do not simply shrug their shoulders and forget about the problem. Rather they tend to choose one of two options: either quantum theory and/or General Relativity is not a complete theory; there is some yet undiscovered theory that will be able to unite them. Or—and this is a smaller group of physicists—they conclude that there may be some conundrums that are simply beyond the capacity of the human mind to resolve; after all, there is no survival value to understanding these matters (but, of course, neither is there any obvious survival value to being able to solve many perfectly solvable mathematical equations).

But suppose we grant that if a supernatural force violated the first law of thermodynamics when it brought the first living thing into being, that violation would be invisible. It turns out that this only makes Navarick’s argument weaker. Being unable to observe any violation of the conservation law here is a lack of evidence for that violation, and when we find ourselves in that situation, it is certainly the more rational choice to adhere to an established physical law.

But wait, there’s more! While I have thus far confined myself to the origin of the very first cell, from which I am presuming all life on Earth derives, Navarick actually holds that the supernatural force that he suggests interfered in our world in order to create that first cell actually has to be present in all cells that will ever exist. That is, he wants to reinstate the long-abandoned philosophy called vitalism. Navarick argues that he has made “a reasonable case for the existence of a supernatural force that produced the first living cell and since then has continued to produce cells in such numbers that they now penetrate virtually every nook and niche of the planet.”³ If a supernatural force entered into the birth of the very first cell, that would be a violation of the conservation of energy, but it would be an undetectable violation. By contrast, if a supernatural force is inserting itself into the natural processes going on within every living cell, that would be a violation of energy conservation that is in principle quite detectable. If such vitalism were to occur, and a biologist carefully examined the energy transactions in a cell, he or she would find that more energy was being expended than was contained within the natural components of the cell. I am not willing to hold my breath on that discovery.⁴

About the Author

Richard Grigg, Ph.D. is Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut. He is the author of eight books and numerous articles on the subject of radical Western religious thought.

Biogenesis vs. Abiogenesis, Not Thermodynamics, Decides the Issue of Life’s Origin

by Douglas J. Navarick

Richard Grigg presents a challenge to my science-based “God” construct that he claims refutes both my hypothesis and any form of theology stating that a divine power interacts with nature. He argues that to alter a natural system, a supernatural power would necessarily violate the first law of thermodynamics—conservation of energy—which holds that the total amount of energy in the universe is constant. According to Grigg, the violation would occur because the power would have to add energy to the system that it was changing from a source outside the natural universe. (Actually, no energy would have to be added, as will soon be shown.)

Although the issues Grigg raises are important to address, it is not because they challenge the validity of the “God” construct. The issues are irrelevant. The test is whether life can be produced from non-life. If abiogenesis failed, then a supernatural (non-material) power in the universe would be established by default and physics would simply have to find a way to accommodate this new reality.

So in terms of assessing the evidence for the “God” construct, it’s all about artificial life. Hypothetical violations of conservation of energy are not a substitute for researchers’ continuing inability to demonstrate that abiogenesis really happens.

Still, if a supernatural power interacted with cells as required by the “God” construct, and its actions were to be understood within a scientific framework, then the dynamics of this influence would eventually need to be described in empirical terms, and ideally without requiring a violation of conservation of energy. In a follow-up article¹ to the one discussed by Grigg, I have already outlined such a process involving no transfer of energy from the supernatural power to the cell. Here I will elaborate on the evidence and explore its scientific and theological implications.

The cryopreservation model. As I previously discussed, life is either an emergent (material) or a transcendent (non-material) property of cells. Emergent means that life is the product of relationships that exist among the cell’s structures and biochemical reactions. Transcendent means that life is an independent property and requires no biochemical activity to sustain it. I cited evidence for transcendence from the process of cryopreservation. Life appears to act as a kind of catalyst that permits biochemical reactions to begin, at which point natural processes take over.

Here’s the evidence: In cryopreservation, single cells and tissues can be frozen to the point where metabolism stops but the cells remain alive if the cell wall is intact. This shows transcendence. When living cells are thawed, the pre-existing property of life allows metabolic activity to resume. This transcendent influence on the cell adds no energy to it. If molecular biologists suspected that the first law of thermodynamics was being violated during the reactivation of cells, then it would have to be a very closely held secret.

Evidence for transcendence from the Venter Institute. The J. Craig Venter Institute is a genomic research organization located in Rockville, Maryland and La Jolla, California. Perhaps its most famous accomplishment has been the creation of a synthetic bacterial cell that replicated itself using manufactured DNA. In May, 2010 some media outlets misinterpreted Venter’s demonstration and breathlessly announced that Venter had achieved synthetic life, a claim repeated by Venter himself in a 2010 “Ted in the Field” presentation viewable on YouTube (but later clarified to dispel any misunderstandings about whether life had been created).

There was such a strong public reaction to the news that President Obama asked his Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues to examine the implications of artificially creating life. Here is what they said²:

“Q: Did the Venter Institute scientists “create life?”

A: No. In our deliberations, we heard that while Venter’s achievement marked a significant technical advance in demonstrating that a relatively large genome could be accurately synthesized and substituted for another, it did not amount to the “creation of life.” The researcher’s man-made genome was inserted into an already living cell. The synthesized genome itself was a variant of a genome of an existing species. The technical feat of synthesizing a genome for its chemical parts so that it becomes self-replicating when inserted into a bacterial cell of another species, while significant, does not represent the creation of life from inorganic chemicals alone.

In addition to constituting a concession to biogenesis, Venter’s achievement provides further evidence that life is a transcendent property of the cell. To insert the new DNA, Venter had to remove the cell’s existing DNA. Yet even without this critical structure, the cell remained alive. If life emerged from a cell’s structure and biochemical reactions, then Venter’s cell should have died abruptly with removal of the DNA. As with cryopreservation, life transcended material reality.

Maimonides may have had it right. The cryopreservation model represents life as a supernatural influence that acts as a catalyst rather than by participating directly in the cell’s functions. The 12th-century philosopher and theologian, Moses Maimonides, seems to have envisioned such a process in his efforts to explain how an incorporeal being could bring about changes in the natural world:

There are actions that do not depend on impact, or on a certain distance. They are termed ‘influence’ (or ‘emanation’), on account of their similarity to a water-spring…[that] sends forth water in all directions…and continually waters both neighboring and distant places…whenever an object is sufficiently prepared, it receives the effect of that continuous action, called ‘influence’ (or ‘emanation’).³

In cryopreservation, a cell that is structurally intact is “sufficiently prepared” to receive the influence that life will have on its biochemical activity when the cell thaws. There is no necessity for life to physically act on the cell by adding energy to it the way Richard Grigg would have to add energy to the rake in his example that purports to illustrate the “fatal flaw” in the “God” construct.

“But wait, there’s more!” I have proposed that the supernatural power that produced the first living cell has continued to produce them. Grigg maintains that this concept of continuity in supernatural influence is indefensible because if the supernatural continued to act upon cells, researchers would have observed that the cells were expending more energy than they contained. However, cryopreservation shows that life can bring about biochemical activity in a cell without adding to its store of energy. This process can explain why researchers have observed no anomalies in cell reproduction.

At the close of my article on the “God” construct I suggested the possibility that life is God. From a strictly scientific point of view the life-is-God concept has the theoretical advantage of parsimony. Rather than speaking of two theoretical principles, abiogenesis for the first cell and biogenesis for all subsequent cells, we would only need one, biogenesis. If a theistic God existed before the first cell became active, and God = life, then that cell and all subsequent cells would be instances of the same principle—life comes from life.

About the Author

Douglas Navarick is an experimental psychologist and Professor of Psychology at California State University, Fullerton. He regularly teaches courses in Introductory Psychology and Learning and Memory. Since the 1970s Navarick has published research articles on choice behavior in pigeons and humans and is currently investigating how we make intuitive moral judgments.

Guns in the U.S.
We’re Better at Killing Americans Than Our Enemies Are

by Michael Shermer

If your gut tells you that mass public shootings are alarmingly common, your gut’s right.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines a mass murder as four or more deaths during a single incident with no distinct time period between killings. By this definition, according to Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, between 1980 and 2010 there were an average of 20 mass murders per year, or an average of one every 2.6 weeks.

Now it looks like that interval is shrinking. According to shootingtracker.com, there were 30 mass public shootings with four or more dead in 2014, and there have been 31 this year through the Oct. 1 tragedy in Roseburg, Ore., or one every 1.6 weeks.

No wonder President Obama feels like he’s repeating himself with sullen regularity in his post-shooting speeches.

Our gun problem of course extends beyond mass violence. In 2014 alone, for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 11,208 people shot to death, 33,636 injured by gunfire and 21,175 who killed themselves with a gun. That’s a total of 66,019 people who were killed or injured by a gun, which comes out to 1,269 per week, 180 a day or 7.5 per hour.

Add up all the gun fatalities since 1970 (approximate annual average of 30,000, according to the CDC) and you get the staggering figure of 1.35 million dead, which is disturbingly close to the figure of 1.39 million Americans who have died in all wars since the American Revolution.

Perhaps this is the gruesome price of freedom. The 2nd Amendment guarantees us the right to own a gun, and the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld that right in two recent cases. But should you, dear reader, choose to own a gun? …

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When Cops Kill:
An Insider’s Perspective

by Daniel DeLeon

Daniel DeLeon was inspired to write this article after reading Michael Shermer’s July, 2015 column in Scientific American titled “Outrageous: Why Cops Kill.” DeLeon thought readers might gain some insight hearing an answer to the question of why cops kill from a cop himself. He begins with some background, and then considers the many circumstances in which cops find themselves that can lead an incident to escalate into violence.

I am a white male 34 years old and grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles area for most of my life. I served in the U.S. Army with 2nd Battalion 75th Ranger Regiment. I did a tour in Afghanistan, finished my time in the Army and went on to obtain my college degree. Finally, at the age of 26, I became a police officer with what I consider the greatest department in the world—the Los Angeles Police Department.

One of my earliest memories as a child was of my grandfather’s answer to my question about what I should be when I grow up. His response: “Son, do what makes you happy. So long as it keeps a roof over your head and food on the table, do it.” My immediate response was, “I want to be a police officer.”

Why? I don’t know, and I cannot remember any experiences with law enforcement at that time that would have led me to want this. I guess you could say it was a “calling” for me. I geared my entire life toward the goal of becoming a police officer.

As I grew older in my childhood, I always had this strong desire to want to protect others who were being harmed. Even though I was a skinny little kid growing up, I never hesitated to start a fight with a bully who was picking on someone. I always played scenarios in my head of what I would do to help if I ever saw someone in a life-threatening distress.

I did my best to stay out of trouble, never doing drugs and never committing any crimes short of a traffic violation or using Napster. I knew a tour in the military would instill within me the disciplined mindset, and it surely did. I knew education would benefit in giving me the writing and legal skills needed to survive in my chosen career.

The Los Angeles Police Department was my only choice. Growing up as a kid and seeing the LAPD’s uniform always impressed me—it seemed like there was no other like it. Seeing how the officers of the department carried themselves motivated me to be that officer some day. Most of all, a personal experience with a single LAPD officer set it all in stone…

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Brain Surgeon—or Brain Addled?

by Donald R. Prothero

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald

What is it with brain surgeons? The strange ideas of leading GOP presidential candidate and retired brain surgeon Ben Carson have been making the headlines a lot lately. I have previously written about about brain surgeon Dr. Eben Alexander, who launched a new career on the lecture circuit after writing a bestselling book, Proof of Heaven, in which he claimed he visited heaven while in a coma, then come back to life. But as the detailed investigation showed, he made all sorts of statements that showed his “trip to heaven” was a hallucination. Even worse, he said things demonstrating that he doesn’t seem to know the first thing about neurophysiology; he appears to just know how to cut brains.

Then there are other weird beliefs by otherwise well educated doctors. Take, for example, Dr. Paul Broun of Georgia. He was elected to Congress, yet he said “All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. There’s a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I believe that the Earth is about 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.” Unsurprisingly, Carson, Broun, and the other fundamentalist M.D.s in politics not only deny evolution and Big Bang cosmology, but also climate change and other aspects of science that doesn’t fit the party line…

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The Passing of a Critical Thinking Giant: Richard Paul (1937–2015)

by Greg Hart

Since skeptics talk a lot about critical thinking it is important to note that the world of critical thinking lost a significant champion on August 30th 2015. After a lengthy battle with Parkinson’s disease Dr. Richard Paul passed away. Richard was the founder and iconic force behind the Foundation for Critical Thinking, headquartered in Sonoma County, California.

This is going to sound like a strange way to begin a tribute, but in the 15 years that I knew him, Richard never taught me a thing. And yet I learned so much. In fact, it would be difficult to adequately describe the profound effect he and his work have had on my life. This notion about the differences between teaching and learning is one of the things that I took from my work with Richard and the Foundation. It is not a minor contrast in mindset or approach—it affects everything. Learning is active, participative and rewards questioning. Perhaps most importantly, learning is how humans construct knowledge of the world. He saw the teacher as a coach to support learning and not an oracle of information to be pleased with predetermined correct answers. As he used to say, “If the coach is sweating, there is a problem.” It is the learner who should be doing the work. Many classrooms are unfortunately full of sweating teachers. So are conferences and other “learning” events…

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The Battle in Seattle
Do We Need God?

by Michael Shermer

Do We Need God? No. Thank you. Okay, seriously, there are at least 10 reasons why we do not need God…

1. Ben Carson, or Religious Ignorance. Only belief in God could infect a brain as smart as the renowned neurosurgeon and prominent Presidential candidate Ben Carson to mangle the Big Bang theory and preposterously propose that Darwin’s theory of evolution is a trick of Satan.

2. Kim Davis, or Religious Bigotry. Only belief in God could convince an otherwise decent and loyal civil servant that her personal interpretation of the Bible trumps the U.S. Constitution, the Supreme Court of the United States, and the law of the land.

3. ISIS, Al Qaeda, & Islamism, or Religious Extremism. Only belief in God could lead large groups of people to believe that the most moral thing they can do is to murder people in the most gruesome manner imaginable—beheading—anyone who does not believe their barbaric and primitive religious tenets, such as capital punishment for apostasy.

4. Crusades, Witch Hunts, and Wars, or Religious Violence. Only belief in God could lie behind these catastrophic moral blunders: the Crusades (the People’s Crusade, the Northern Crusade, the Albigensian Crusade, and Crusades One through Nine); the Inquisitions (Spanish, Portuguese, and Roman); witch hunts (the execution of tens of thousands of people, mostly women); Christian conquistadors (extermination of native peoples by the millions); the interminable European Wars of Religion (the Nine Years War, the Thirty Years War, the Eighty Years War, the French Wars of Religion, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the English Civil War); the American Civil War (in which Northern Christians and Southern Christians slaughtered one another over the issue of slavery); and the First World War (in which German Christians fought French, British, and American Christians, all of whom believed that God was on their side—German soldiers, for example, had Gott mit uns—God with us—embossed on their belt buckles.) And that’s just in the Western world. There are the seemingly endless religious conflicts in Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, numerous countries in Africa, and of course Islamist terrorism.

5. Slavery and Civil Rights, or Religious Intolerance. Only belief in God kept the slave trade alive through religious and biblical arguments that blacks were inferior to whites, that slavery was good for black souls, that slavery gave blacks civilization, that blacks liked being enslaved, or, later, that blacks should not have the same civil rights as whites (such as equal treatment under the law—interracial marriage was illegal until 1967) simply because the pigment in their skin was darker.

6. Women’s Rights, or Religious Suppression. Only belief in God would lead otherwise good men to think that women should not have the same rights as they, which is what almost all Christians believed until the women’s rights movement of the 20th century (and many today still believe in wanting to control women’s sexuality and reproductive choices). Like the meddling Puritanical control freaks of the Early Modern Period there are still men today who think they should decide what women do with their vagina. Women flourish in societies that are either not very religious or those, like the United States, that have separation of church and state; i.e., less religion equals more rights and equality.

7. Gay Rights, or Religious Moralizing. Only belief in God could cause otherwise decent Christians to become perversely obsessed with what other people do with their genitals in the privacy of their bedrooms, and that if these people don’t insert their genitals into the biblically correct orifice, or if genitals are stimulated in a biblically unapproved manner, they should not have the same Constitutional rights as straights.

8. Tribalism, or Religious Xenophobia. The world’s religions are tribal and xenophobic by nature, serving to regulate moral rules within the community but not seeking to embrace humanity outside their circle. Religion, by definition, forms an identity of those like us, in sharp distinction from those not us, those heathens, those unbelievers. Most religions were pulled into the modern Enlightenment with their fingernails dug into the past. Change in religious beliefs and practices, when it happens at all, is slow and cumbersome, and it is almost always in response to the church or its leaders facing outside political or cultural forces (slavery, civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights).

9. Absolutism, or Religious Dogmatism. The foundation of the belief in an Absolute Morality is the belief in an Absolute Religion grounded in the One True God. This inexorably leads to the conclusion that anyone who believes differently has departed from The Truth and thus is unprotected by our moral obligations; even more, they must be forced to see the Way, the Truth, and the Light. Unlike science, religion has no systematic process and no empirical method to employ to determine the verisimilitude of its claims and beliefs, much less right and wrong, so it can never self-correct its mistakes, which are legion.

10. Preposterous Moral Rules, or Religious Immorality. The morality of holy books—most notably the Bible—is not the morality any of us would wish to live by. Put into historical context, the Bible’s moral prescriptions were for another time for another people and have little relevance for us today. In order to make the Bible relevant, believers must pick and choose biblical passages that suit their needs; thus the game of cherry picking from the Bible generally works to the advantage of the cherry pickers.

In the Old Testament, for example, the believer might find guidance in Deuteronomy 5:17, which says, “Thou shalt not kill”; or in Exodus 22:21: “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” But the handful of positive moral commands are desultory and scattered among a sea of violent stories of murder, rape, torture, slavery, and all manner of violence, such as occurs in Deuteronomy 20:10–18, in which Yahweh instructs the Israelites on the precise etiquette of conquering another tribe:

When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the LORD your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its males to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourselves….

Nice. Or consider what Moses did with an army of 12,000 troops Numbers, 31:7–12:

They warred against Mid′ian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and slew every male. They slew the kings of Mid′ian … And the people of Israel took captive the women of Mid′ian and their little ones; and they took as booty all their cattle, their flocks, and all their goods. All their cities in the places where they dwelt, and all their encampments, they burned with fire, and took all the spoil and all the booty, both of man and of beast. Then they brought the captives and the booty and the spoil to Moses.

That sounds like a good days pillaging, but when the troops got back, Moses was furious. “What do you mean you didn’t kill the women?” he asked, exasperated, since it was apparently the women who had enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful with another God. Moses then ordered them to kill all the women who had slept with a man. “But save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man,” he commanded, predictably, at which point one can imagine the thirty-two thousand virgins who’d been taken captive rolling their eyes and saying, “Oh, God told you to do that, did he? Right.” Was the instruction to “keep the virgins for yourselves” what God had in mind by the word “love” in the “love thy neighbor” command? I think not.

Of course, the Israelites knew exactly what God meant (this is the advantage of writing scripture yourself—you get to say what God meant) and they acted accordingly, fighting for the survival of their people. With a vengeance.

What about the New Testament? The angry, vengeful God Yahweh of the Old Testament, Christians claim, was displaced by the kinder, gentler New Testament God in the form of meek and mild Jesus, who two millennia ago introduced a new and improved moral code. Turning the other cheek, loving one’s enemies, forgiving sinners, and giving to the poor sounds like a great leap forward in moral progress.

Yet, nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus revoke God’s ludicrous laws. In fact, quite the opposite (Matthew 5:17–30 passim): “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” Jesus doesn’t even try to edit the commandments or soften them up: “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.” In fact, if anything, Jesus’ morality is even more draconian than that of the Old Testament: “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment.”

In other words, even thinking about killing someone is a capital offense. In fact, Jesus elevated thought crimes to an Orwellian new level (Matthew 9:28–29): “Ye have heard it was said by them of old time, Though shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” And if you don’t think you can control your sexual impulses Jesus has a practical solution: “If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” May I see a show of hands of those who agree with this moral precept?

As for Jesus’s own family values, he never married, never had children, and he turned away his own mother time and again. For example, at a wedding feast Jesus says to her (John 2:4): “Woman, what have I to do with you?” One biblical anecdote recounts the time that Mary waited patiently off to the side for Jesus to finish speaking so that she could have a moment with him, but Jesus told his disciples, “Send her away, you are my family now,” adding (Luke 14:26): “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

Charming. This is what cultists do when they separate followers from their families in order to control both their thoughts and their actions, as when Jesus calls to his flock to follow him or else (John 15:4–7): “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” But if a believer abandons his family and gives away his belongings (Mark 10:30), “he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands.” In other passages Jesus also sounds like the tribal warlords of the Old Testament:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10:34–39)

Even sincere Christians cannot agree on Jesus’ morality and the moral codes in the New Testament, holding legitimate differences of opinion on a number of moral issues that remain unresolved based on biblical scripture alone. These include dietary restrictions and the use of alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine; masturbation, pre-marital sex, contraception, and abortion; marriage, divorce, and sexuality; the role of women; capital punishment and voluntary euthanasia; gambling and other vices; international and civil wars; and many other matters of contention that were nowhere in sight when the Bible was written, such as stem-cell research, gay marriage, and the like. Indeed, the fact that Christians, as a community, keep arguing over their own contemporary question “WWJD” (What Would Jesus Do?) is evidence that the New Testament is silent on the answer.

Middle Statement

Empirically speaking we can see why we don’t need God:

• Millions of Americans have no belief in God whatsoever, and 10s of millions have no religion and they’re doing just fine. There are no measures that believers are more moral than non-believers.
• Tens of millions of people in many Northern European countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Holland, and Germany have no belief in God or religion and not only are they doing just fine, by any measure they are far healthier societies than the most religious nation in the Western world: America.
• Gregory S. Paul study: 17 first-world prosperous democracies in the Successful Societies Scale database (Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United States). 25 indicators of social health and well being 1–9 scale: homicides, suicides, incarceration, life expectancy, gonorrhea and syphilis infections, abortions, teen births, fertility, marriage, divorce, alcohol consumption, life satisfaction, corruption rates, adjusted per capita income, income inequality, poverty, unemployment.
• Religiosity 1–10 scale: belief in God, biblical literalism, church attendance, prayer frequency, belief in an afterlife, and belief in heaven and hell.
• U.S. most religious by far & highest rates of homicides, suicides, incarceration rates, STD rates, teen pregnancy rates, abortion rates, divorce rates, income inequality rates & poverty rates.
• If belief in God & religion is such a powerful force for societal health, then why is America—the most religious nation in the Western world—also the unhealthiest on all of these social measures? If religion makes people more moral, then why is America seemingly so immoral in its lack of concern for its poorest, most troubled citizens, notably its children?

Concluding Statement (From Chapter 4 of The Moral Arc)

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The Bible is one of the most immoral works in all literature. Woven throughout begats and chronicles, laws and customs, is a narrative of accounts written by, and about, a bunch of Middle Eastern tribal warlords who constantly fight over land and women, with the victors taking dominion over both. It features a jealous and vengeful God named Yahweh who decides to punish women for all eternity with the often intolerable pain of childbirth, and further condemns them to be little more than beasts of burden and sex slaves for the victorious warlords.

Why were women to be chastened this way? Why did they deserve an eternity of misery and submission? It was all for that one terrible sin, the first crime ever recorded in the history of humanity—a thought crime no less—when that audacious autodidact Eve dared to educate herself by partaking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Worse, she inveigled the first man—the unsuspecting Adam—to join her in choosing knowledge over ignorance. For the appalling crime of hearkening unto the voice of his wife, Yahweh condemned Adam to toil in thorn and thistle-infested fields, and further condemned him to death, to return to the dust from whence he came.

Yahweh then cast his first two delinquent children out of paradise, setting a Cherubim and a flaming sword at the entrance to be certain that they could never return. Then, in one of the many foul moods he was wont to fall into, Yahweh committed an epic hemoclysm of genocidal proportions by killing every sentient being on Earth—including unsuspecting adults, innocent children, and all the land animals—in a massive flood. In order to repopulate the planet after he decimated it of all life save those spared in the ark, Yahweh commanded the survivors—numerous times—to “be fruitful and multiply,” and rewarded his favorite warlords with as many wives as they desired. Thus was born the practice of polygamy and the keeping of harems, fully embraced and endorsed—along with slavery—in the so-called “good book.”

As an exercise in moral casuistry, this perspective-taking question comes to mind: did anyone ask the women how they felt about this arrangement? What about the millions of people living in other parts of the world who had never heard of Yahweh? What about the animals and the innocent children who drowned in the flood? What did they do to deserve such a final solution to Yahweh’s anger problem?

Many Christians say that they get their morality from the Bible, but this cannot be true because as holy books go the Bible is possibly the most unhelpful guide ever written for determining right from wrong. It’s chockfull of bizarre stories about dysfunctional families, advice about how to beat your slaves, how to kill your headstrong kids, how to sell your virgin daughters, and other clearly outdated practices that most cultures gave up centuries ago. It’s time we all gave it up now. Won’t you join me?

Debating The “God” Construct

by Dave E. Matson

Douglas Navarick has obviously given some thought to “The ‘God’ Construct,” but the howlers I encountered robbed it of any credibility. For example: “Abiogenesis must be considered speculative considering that every cell ever observed has come from another living cell.”

I have yet to hear anyone in the science of abiogenesis claim that a living cell could appear naturally from scratch without benefit of prior cells! Given the complexity of even the simplest prokaryotes, such a claim would be preposterous. The goal of abiogenists is to recover the long pathway that eventually led to the first cells. If that is no longer possible, then the hope is to discover workable pathways. Navarick’s demand that abiogenists produce a living cell from scratch, comparing that to the failure to find compelling evidence for ESP, demonstrates a profound ignorance of abiogenesis. Yes, cells come from cells even as cats come from cats. However, the conclusion that cats cannot credibly come from non-cats (based on the observation that every single cat studied traces to a prior cat) is absurd in the light of evolution. Here we have a perfect analogy to Navarick’s attempt to discredit abiogenesis! Abiogenists will never witness a cell arising naturally from scratch; we will never observe evolution producing a cat from scratch. Neither predicts as much. Either path is a long, winding story!

Navarick derides abiogenesis for lacking a mechanism. In fact, there are plausible mechanisms now being sketched out. One can hardly expect all the bugs to be ironed out at this early stage; it’s a difficult field. Plausible mechanisms, complete with problems, are all that any science has to work with in exploring new areas. Do not confuse plausible mechanisms (with their inevitable problems) with “no mechanism in sight.”

The reason for keeping a supernatural deity out of science is that God is an ad hoc story that is compatible with everything and, therefore, explains nothing! Opening the door to supernatural “explanations” of any kind, which by definition cannot be investigated by the laws of nature—the only tool box we have—would turn science into a debating society unable to settle anything. We need not be dogmatic. If we observed a swimming pool that froze solid after the last person left, and became usable the instant someone jumped in, we might reasonably call it a “supernatural” event! However, we can’t even assume that such an event had a cause (let alone an intelligent, living cause) since that falls back on natural principles that might not apply to a supernatural event. Even if a supernatural event could somehow be certified, it could never be a part of any scientific explanation. It would forever be an isolated, odd-man-out fact sitting in a corner by itself. Any demand that scientific explanation include the supernatural is, therefore, totally wrong-headed.

Navarick’s minimalist construct of God is “A force that operates through and independently of natural laws.” Natural law is our best verification, within an appropriate range of measurement, as to what nature actually does. It is supported by countless laboratory experiments that are often done with unimaginable accuracy, and many experiments are conducted under extreme conditions. These experiments and measurements are done by highly trained observers who follow each others’ work in scientific journals, who are inclined to check the more interesting results by duplicating the experiments. To claim that a force exists that is not bound by natural law is to throw out the best attested facts in the world in favor of rank speculation! If Navarick’s unclear statement does not advocate the occasional suspension of natural law, then he must shear God of his super-powers. God then becomes another fixture in the natural world.

In reply to Stenger’s statement that there is no reason to assume that life could not have come from non-life, Navarick adds “But there is also no reason to assume that life could not have come from a supernatural source.” With every bit as much evidence, namely zero, we could have said “There is no reason to assume that life could not have come from a hair-brained Easter Bunny with magical powers!” Logically possible, I suppose, along with Bertrand Russell’s orbiting teapot, but hardly credible. Yet, if the Easter Bunny idea had an army of apologists refining it for two thousand years, if it were a part of everyone’s upbringing, it would have been the respectable story and God the silly one. In that sense the supernatural is not a legitimate alternative; it commands no more evidence than our hair-brained Easter Bunny. Countless apologetic works—complete with the usual errors, plus huge amounts of wishful thinking and cultural acceptance—do not establish scientific credibility. Presently, after we subtract the wishful thinking, and the naive thinking, scientific evidence for God is no better than that for a hair-brained Easter Bunny who possesses magical powers.

The “assumption” that abiogenesis will eventually show how life emerged from non-life should be seen as a practical conclusion rather than a philosophical dictum. Scientists who seek a career in abiogenesis do so precisely because the evidence is so suggestive, virtually begging for scientific explanations to connect the dots. These guys are not running on dogmatic gas despite some careless statements! They are motivated by evidence, evidence strong enough to risk a career on.

In sum, current problems in abiogenesis cannot be taken as support for a supernatural “alternative.” At present, to the extent that it is even a coherent concept, the supernatural is not a credible alternative at all. Evidentially—as in “zip”—it is on par with our hair-brained Easter Bunny sporting magical powers. Insightful theologians will often admit that God must be taken on faith, and science can’t run on that kind of faith. Therefore, trying to unify science and theology is like trying to unify apples and oranges. If they are squeezed together to such an extent that you can no longer tell the difference, then we no longer have apples and oranges. We have a mess!

About the Author

Dave E. Matson, a navy veteran and former programmer for Hughes Aircraft Company, graduated from San Diego State University in mathematics, his enthusiasm for the sciences almost supplying enough credits for an additional degree. Another major interest took in the study of Christian apologetics and creationist arguments which led to various informal publications scattered about the Internet, a study that gave him some feeling for epistemology (how we know). In recent years a continuing study of the sciences (introductory university textbooks—fat, serious, and still fun) with morning tea went hand in hand with photographing wild flowers throughout Southern California. Occasionally, Mr. Matson will drag out his ancient telescope (Celestron 5″) to view some event, usually with a few friends, and he is always good for a vigorous game of chess.

Abiogenesis: Hypothesis or Doctrine?

by Douglas J. Navarick

Matson’s objections to my article are based largely on misinterpretations of it and a gross oversimplification of the “God” construct, confusing it with stock conceptions of the supernatural and failing to recognize its potential for integrating diverse lines of research and for suggesting new insights. Listed below are my replies to Matson’s objections.

1. Complexity of chemical precursors. Matson writes, “Navarick’s demand that abiogenists produce a living cell from scratch, comparing that to the failure to find compelling evidence for ESP, demonstrates a profound ignorance of abiogenesis.” I never demanded that researchers produce a living cell from “scratch.” As shown in the second row of the table in my article, I considered evidence for the revival of dead cells. The level of chemical complexity that researchers started from was irrelevant. What mattered was creating life out of nonliving matter. The source of this misinterpretation may be that for the first row of the table, creating a living cell from chemicals, I highlighted the famous line of research beginning with the Miller-Urey experiments on producing amino acids from inorganic chemicals. However, the next row of the table, never mentioned by Matson, shows that I intended to include the broadest possible range of chemical precursors to life.

As for the ESP comparison, the evidence for ESP is arguably even stronger than that for abiogenesis. For ESP the evidence ranges from non-existent to weak (Daryl Bem’s studies: statistically questionable and many failures to replicate but something may be there) whereas for abiogenesis the evidence is, for now, simply non-existent.

I have not attempted to “discredit” abiogenesis as Matson claims. My goal has been to challenge the treatment of abiogenesis as an unassailable doctrine and return it its former status as a testable hypothesis as conceptualized by the originator of the term, Thomas H. Huxley, in a presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1870:

And thus the hypothesis that living matter always arises by the agency of pre-existing living matter, took definite shape; and had, henceforward, a right to be considered and a claim to be refuted, in each particular case, before the production of living matter in any other way could be admitted by careful reasoners. It will be necessary for me to refer to this hypothesis so frequently, that, to save circumlocution, I shall call it the hypothesis of Biogenesis; and I shall term the contrary doctrine—that living matter may be produced by not living matter—the hypothesis of Abiogenesis.¹

Biogenesis can be refuted by a demonstration of abiogenesis. What would it take to refute abiogenesis, or at least make it seem less plausible? If no contrary evidence was possible—if 100 more years could pass without a demonstration of abiogenesis and yet it remained as believable as ever—then clearly it would be functioning as doctrines do in religions, as sources of comfort for the faithful, insulated from the harsh realities of empirical testing. It seems to be serving that function now. Calling abiogenesis a “practical conclusion rather than a philosophical dictum” does not make it any less a doctrine.

2. Building the “God” construct, one empirical step at a time. Matson writes, “the supernatural is not a legitimate alternative; it commands no more evidence than our hair-brained Easter Bunny.” My article shows how the “God” construct can be elaborated in the same way as any construct in science, by adding properties to it based on empirical evidence. The initial statement of the construct was simply,

A force that operates both through and independently of natural laws.

The evidence (not proof) against abiogenesis implies that this force is also creative; it makes things. In addition, the evidence against multiple genesis events discussed in my article implies that random processes may not have been responsible for producing the first living cell. The alternative to random in this context would be willful. So a tentative, more elaborated version of the “God” construct could be stated as follows:

A willful, creative force that operates both through and independently of natural laws.

Each property is tied to empirical observations and subject to falsification.

In addition, the “God” construct makes stronger predictions than the widely accepted, materialist alternative: The “God” construct predicts that efforts to create a living cell, no matter how sophisticated, will fail. Researchers doing these studies may be working on “plausible” ideas about the underyling mechanisms but no one could predict that any particular mechanism would work.

The same strong predictions apply to searches for shadow life on earth (weird organisms that came from a different genesis event than all known organisms) and searches for life elsewhere in the universe, including SETI, newly rejuvenated by a $100 million grant from Russian physicist and entrepreneur, Yuri Milner, for a 10-year multifaceted project called Breakthrough Listen. If after 10 years of Breakthrough Listen projects there was still no evidence for life beyond earth, how should those 10 years of negative results be interpreted, as evidence of absence or as absence of evidence?

In item 5, below, I will propose an additional property for the “God” construct based on empirical evidence, transcendence. It’s a crucial step because it serves to distinguish between chemical and non-material characterizations of life.

3. Cats from non-cats = ? Matson’s next paragraph about the cats coming from non-cats constructs bizarre analogies to make an unnecessary point. The disagreement Matson is expressing is with an argument I didn’t make. I did not suggest that the only acceptable evidence for abiogenesis would be to reconstruct the convoluted molecular pathways that supposedly led to the first living cell. Any strategy that created life out of non-life would settle the issue.

4. A multiplicity of ideas about mechanisms. Matson writes, “Navarick derides abiogenesis for lacking a mechanism.” What I actually said was that there was “no clearly established mechanism.” If, as Matson suggests, researchers have plausible ideas about underlying mechanisms, then we are not yet at the stage where there is a clearly established mechanism.

5. The next step: Is life an emergent or transcendent property of cells? Life is generally seen as an emergent property of the structures and biochemical reactions that make up living cells and not the product of any specific parts of the whole.² Emergent means that a phenomenon depends on the relationships that exist among a set of elements. For example, in psychology there is the famous phi phenomenon that Gestalt psychologists used to support their principle that “the whole is more than the sum of its parts.” When two lights are turned on and off in rapid alternation, they are perceived as one light moving back and forth and not as two blinking lights. In our world of perception, 1 blinking light + 1 blinking do not equal 2 blinking lights. The appearance of movement is an emergent property of the temporal relationship between the two flashes of light.

For living cells, the “God” construct suggests a non-material alternative to emergence—transcendence. It is suggested here that life may be an add-on to the cell, an independent property that acts as a catalyst and allows biochemical reactions to occur without itself participating in those reactions. Life precedes the reactions; it does not result from them.

Is the transcendence principle just one more instance of the “rank speculation” that some see as part and parcel of any concept of the supernatural? Consider the following evidence.

Cryopreservation is a process of preserving living cells and tissues by freezing them in a way that keeps them structurally intact, i.e., prevents ice crystals from forming that could damage the cell wall. A wide variety of cells is routinely preserved in this manner, including fungi, bacteria, stem cells, oocytes, sperm cells, and embryos. All or most biochemical activity ceases in cryopreservation but the cells remain alive. As stated by D. E. Pegg³ in an article on the methodology of cryopreservation, “Unprotected freezing is normally lethal…#8221; but by adopting appropriate procedures “cooling can be used to produce stable conditions that preserve life.” Cells that remain alive in the absence of biochemical activity are evidence that life is not a product of, or equivalent to, biochemical activity. As the cell is thawed, the pre-existing property of life enables biochemical activity to resume. It is in this sense that life acts as a catalyst for the cell’s biochemical reactions. In light of this evidence, we may further elaborate the “God” construct as follows:

A willful, creative force that transcends material reality and operates both through and independently of natural laws.

About the Author

Douglas Navarick is an experimental psychologist and Professor of Psychology at California State University, Fullerton. He regularly teaches courses in Introductory Psychology and Learning and Memory. Since the 1970s Navarick has published research articles on choice behavior in pigeons and humans and is currently investigating how we make intuitive moral judgments.

Fact-Checking Vaccine Statements in the GOP Debate

by Harriet Hall, M.D., The SkepDoc

1. Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon, said that there have been numerous studies and they have not demonstrated any correlation between vaccines and autism. TRUE.

He said certain vaccines are very important: those that would prevent death or crippling. He said others don’t fit in that category. FALSE. Although some vaccine-preventable diseases have the potential to do more harm than others, there is not a single vaccine that doesn’t prevent a disease that can cripple or kill a percentage of its victims.

He said there should be some discretion. NOT SUPPORTED BY EVIDENCE. There is no reason to think “discretion” is warranted in following the recommended vaccine schedule, and there is clear evidence that not following the recommendations can lead to harm. If vaccines are delayed, the infant remains susceptible to a preventable disease until the vaccine is given. Decreasing the number of vaccinated children decreases the herd immunity of the entire population. It means that when a disease enters a community it is more likely to spread, and that harms 3 categories of people: infants too young to have been vaccinated for that disease; sick, elderly, and immunocompromised people who are more susceptible to infection and more likely to sustain serious harm if they catch the disease; and the small percentage of immunized people who may still be susceptible despite the vaccines, which are not 100% protective.

He said “but you know, a lot of this is pushed by big government.” NOT SUPPORTED BY EVIDENCE. In fact, I don’t even know what he means. It is not “big government” that supports the current vaccine schedule, but the scientific and medical community.

2. Trump responded to Carson, saying autism has become an epidemic that has gotten totally out of control. FALSE. Most scientists interpret the evidence as showing the rate of autism has risen very little or not at all. The perception of an “epidemic” is due to wider awareness of the disorder, better identification of patients, and re-categorization of children who formerly would have had a different diagnosis.

He said he was in favor of vaccines, but he wanted smaller doses over a longer period of time. NOT SUPPORTED BY EVIDENCE. We know smaller doses would be ineffective or less effective, and there is no reason to think any advantage would accrue from spreading doses over a longer period of time. The current schedule has been carefully thought out by experts to provide maximum benefit and safety.

He compared vaccinating infants to pumping in doses that look like they were meant for a horse. FALSE. Exaggeration for emotional effect. What a vaccine “looks like” has little to do with the number of antigens it contains. The volume of material injected is actually very small, both for infants and for horses.

He claimed to know of several instances where vaccines hurt children, describing a beautiful 2½ year old child who got a vaccine and a week later had a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, and is now autistic. FALSE. Under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, more than 5000 families have sought compensation claiming that vaccines caused their children to become autistic, but the courts examined the most striking cases and found that even in those worst cases, there was no evidence that the vaccines had caused autism. The details can be found online.

1a. Carson responded to Trump, agreeing with him that we are probably giving way too many vaccines in too short a period of time. He said “a lot of pediatricians now recognize that, and, I think, are cutting down on the number and the proximity in which those are done, and I think that’s appropriate.” FALSE. It is never appropriate to deviate from the recommended schedule without a very good medical reason for a particular individual. Those pediatricians are bowing to parental pressure and doing the children a disservice. The “too many too soon” argument is fallacious. Babies’ immune systems are more than capable of handling the number of antigens in vaccines, and in fact their immune systems encounter far more antigens in the course of their daily life. Vaccines don’t overload the immune system, they exercise and strengthen it.

3. Paul, an eye surgeon, said he was all for vaccines but he was also for freedom. “Even if the science doesn’t say bunching them up is a problem, I ought to have the right to spread out my vaccines out a little bit at the very least.” IRRELEVANT. One of the principles of medical ethics is autonomy: patients always have the right to refuse treatment, even if it means they will die. We have freedom with respect to vaccines; no one is forcibly restraining people and vaccinating them without their permission. No one is being forced to get vaccines on schedule. People have the freedom to act on the basis of emotion rather than reason, even though spreading out vaccines is more likely to harm them than to benefit them.

4. Huckabee said “there are maybe some controversies about autism…” FALSE. There is no controversy about autism in the scientific medical community. There is only a “manufactroversy” about vaccines that has been sold to a scientifically illiterate public.

“…but there is no controversy about the things that are really driving the medical costs in this country.” And he called for a war on cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s. IRRELEVANT. A blatant attempt to change the subject.

What I wish they had said

There is no evidence that vaccines cause autism. Vaccinating is safer than not vaccinating. The current vaccine schedule was carefully thought out by experts to safely maximize protection from vaccine-preventable diseases. I strongly recommend vaccinating on schedule because it protects others in the community and reduces the risk of avoidable tragedies like the recent outbreak of measles at Disneyland.

These attitudes are bad enough coming from the scientifically illiterate, but it is shocking that two of the candidates are medical doctors whose education should have given them a more science-based approach. Worse, Carson is a creationist who has rejected some of the fundamental tenets of Darwinian evolution as “incredible fairy tales,” has claimed that mutations only lead to degeneration rather than improvement, and has claimed that there are no intermediate species. As the world faces current and future challenges like climate change and epidemic infectious diseases, a solid understanding of science will be essential to making rational political decisions. The GOP debate was not grounds for optimism.

Colloidal Silver, Smurfs, and Ebola

by Harriet Hall, M.D., The SkepDoc

Colloidal silver is back! It competed in the ring of science and was thoroughly clobbered. If it had any dignity, it would have stayed down for the count and admitted defeat; but like some bizarre whack-a-mole or zombie it keeps stumbling back to its feet, wanting to fight again. This myth that refuses to die is now being promoted as a cure for Ebola, on the basis of nothing more than wishful thinking.

A Myth with a Silver Lining

There is often a grain of truth behind a myth. The grain here is that silver ions kill bacteria in vitro. But as Rose Shapiro famously reminded us in her book Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All, you can kill cancer cells in a lab with a flame thrower or bleach, but that doesn’t mean doctors should use flame throwers or make patients drink bleach. Silver is useful in medicine for external use (e.g., silver sulfadiazine cream for burns) and to disinfect surfaces and drinking water. But when swallowed, it is not only useless but harmful.

Naturopaths use colloidal silver. It’s available on the Internet or you can buy a generator to make your own at home, using a silver bar purchased from a coin dealer and parts from Radio Shack.

Promoters make bold claims: we are all suffering from “silver deficiency,” the depletion of silver from our soil has caused a drastic increase in immune system disorders, colloidal silver has been used successfully in the treatment of 650 diseases, it functions as a superior second immune system in the body. Testimonials abound for practically every known disease, but I couldn’t find any scientific evidence that it has ever been used successfully to cure even one disease.

The Natural News website calls it “an antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral miracle.” Mercola.com claims that some silver products are harmful but that “true” colloidal silver is harmless and effective for treating infections including MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Their evidence? A measly four studies that are not listed on PubMed and that only show that it kills MRSA in cell cultures and on surfaces in the lab; there are no studies in humans. There is hype about “nano silver,” but that’s only a new name for the same old colloidal silver.

Creating Smurfs

By 1843 doctors had recognized that silver causes argyria, an irreversible discoloration of the skin. Rosemary Jacobs’ doctor prescribed colloidal silver nose drops to treat her allergies back in the 1950s. The doctor naïvely believed fraudulent ads from manufacturers and salespeople and apparently hadn’t read the warnings in the medical literature. By age 14, Rosemary’s skin had turned slate gray. Despite cosmetics and dermatologists, she remains strikingly gray today. Her appearance has caused serious problems in her life; it cost her jobs, she was refused lodging because people thought she had a contagious disease, and nurses in a hospital misinterpreted her color as an indication of a heart attack.

Jacobs has dedicated her life to investigating colloidal silver and spreading the word. Her website rosemaryjacobs.com provides a wealth of information with references. She says, “In searching that literature for thirty years I have never found any evidence that silver in a person’s body benefits anyone other than the quack who sold it.”

Rosemary turned slate-gray, but Karl Karason looked more blue than gray. He was known as Papa Smurf; with his striking white hair and beard, he looked a lot like the cartoon character. If you want to look like a Smurf there are better options, like the entertainers in the Blue Man Group with their removable blue body paint.

The Scientific Consensus

Every reputable organization that has evaluated colloidal silver has rejected it. Even the CAM-friendly National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) warns against it: “Scientific evidence does not support the use of colloidal silver to treat any disease, and serious, irreversible side effects can result from its use.” In addition to argyria, they report that it may cause kidney, liver, or nervous system problems and can interfere with absorption of some drugs.

The FDA has issued an advisory that colloidal silver is not safe or effective for treating any disease or condition. In 1999, the FDA prohibited the sale of over-the-counter (OTC) drugs containing silver. A few prescription drugs contain silver, but they are all for topical application, not for oral ingestion.

The Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database says silver has no known physiological function. They rated it “likely unsafe” and found no credible evidence that it was effective for any condition.

In the US and Australia, regulators have ordered colloidal silver manufacturers to stop making false claims. One company in Australia had to pay court costs and provide refunds to customers.

Ebola Quackery

Ebola is exotic, deadly, and has no known treatment. It is not surprising that the recent outbreak has caused an epidemic of fear. When fear takes hold, rational thought flies out the window. We want to believe, need to believe, that we can protect ourselves from Ebola. Quacks and charlatans come out of the woodwork to calm our fears with false promises. As infectious disease specialist Dr. Mark Crislip says, “There seems to be a belief in the pseudo-medical world that if you just did everything right, ate the right food, took the correct supplements, and used the CAM du jour you would have a perfect immune system and never get an infection. Wrong.”

All sorts of remedies are said to cure Ebola or prevent it by strengthening your immune system, including selenium, magnesium, intravenous vitamin C, bicarbonate of soda, vitamin D, iodine, slowing the breathing down with a Breathslim breathing device, medical marijuana, infrared therapy, glutathione, coffee, fermented soy, homeopathic spider venom, genistein (found in soy), garcinia kola, estradiol, essential oils, Chinese herbs, turmeric, gingko, zeolite, Hulda Clark’s infamous Zapper, alkalinized and/or ionized water, elderberry zinc lozenges, medicinal mushrooms, probiotics, avoiding tap water/non-organic/GMO foods, drinking green vegetable juices and fruit juices, cinnamon bark, Rife therapy, and kogel mogel eggnog.

Peter Chappell claims he can treat Ebola with healing sound by playing the violin. Natural News published instructions for a homemade homeopathic Ebola vaccine made from the spit or blood of an Ebola patient (since contact with bodily fluids is how you get Ebola, this is obviously not a good idea). The ruler of the Igala Kingdom in Nigeria recommends bathing before 4:00 am with hot water and blessed anti-Ebola salt, and reciting verses from the Koran. Faith healing with laying on of hands is another great way to spread the disease. In Sierra Leone, a traditional herbal healer treated an Ebola patient, caught Ebola and died. At her funeral, numerous others were infected; eventually a total of 365 Ebola deaths were traced back to her. In the US, an entrepreneur was inspired by an episode of the Dr. Oz show to invent “Ebola-C shots” as an energy drink; he reportedly grossed $480,000 in the first 2 weeks.

Homeopaths sent teams to Africa, wrote letters to government officials, and circulated a petition begging the World Health Organization (WHO) to distribute homeopathic remedies to control the epidemic. A New Zealand politician signed the petition, was publicly ridiculed for it, and later admitted that signing it was “probably pretty unwise.” Chiropractors have claimed that Ebola can be prevented and cured by restoring spine alignment so innate intelligence can “whack the offending pathogen immediately.” Rotarians planned a humanitarian mission to Sierra Leone to train doctors there to provide ozone therapy. Natural News sold family pandemic protection kits for home use.

The FDA sent warning letters to three companies that were making fraudulent claims about Ebola cures. One, Natural Health Solutions, was selling a $24.95 bottle of Nano Silver for the “cure, treatment and prevention for Ebola virus.” The other two, DoTERRA and Young Living, were selling “essential oil” Ebola cures derived from cinnamon bark, peppermint, sandalwood, eucalyptus, and rosemary.

The Natural Solutions Foundation complained that authorities had blocked shipments of Nano Silver to Sierra Leone. Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, calls that a double standard, since the government allowed patients to be treated with ZMapp. He asks “How exactly is it that an unproven pharmaceutical is okay to use as a treatment for Ebola, but an unproven herb or natural remedy is completely unacceptable and possibly illegal?” There’s a simple answer: ZMapp is expected to work because it contains antibodies to the Ebola virus.

Ebola Conspiracy Theories

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Conspiracy theories range from improbable to insane: there’s no such thing as Ebola; it’s all a lie intended to limit our freedom and control us with restrictive laws. It’s a plot to kill Africans. Ebola turns people into zombies, which somehow benefits big government. Big Pharma and government plan to force an Ebola vaccine on everyone. President Obama wants to infect white people and make the US more like his “home” in Africa. Ebola is a plot to divert attention from vaccine fraud at the CDC. Ebola will be intentionally introduced into the US by ISIS terrorists. Those sick people don’t have Ebola; they have malnutrition and damaged immune systems due to wars, toxins, and poor sanitation. Ebola can be transmitted through the air. (This idea ignores particle size and scientific knowledge about disease transmission.) The US government holds a patent on Ebola, so it must have originated the disease. (It patented a different strain, back when organisms could be patented, as a preemptive strike so private companies couldn’t patent it and withhold it from other researchers.) Colloidal silver is not a cure for Ebola or for anything else. Yet a Google search for “Ebola silver” turned up 139,000,000 hits. Good grief!