From time to time, a column in a newspaper is more revealing than its author probably intended it to be. That seems to be the case with "Myths Widen the Science-Religion Divide" by Elaine Howard Ecklund, published in the July 19, 2010 edition of USA Today. In her essay, Professor Ecklund suggests that science and religion can enter into a constructive dialogue. But a closer look at her essay reveals that this dialogue, at least as it involves most Christians, is a one-way street.

Elaine Howard Ecklund teaches sociology at Rice University and is the author of a recently-released book, Science vs Religion: What Scientists Really Think. In her USA Today column, Professor Ecklund argues, based on her extensive research, that "the conversation between science and religion is besieged by misunderstanding and myths on both sides."

As she continues her argument:

Some of the assumptions of the present science-religion debates simply do not hold up under the weight of research data. Dispelling myths about religious and scientific communities could lay the groundwork for a new kind of dialogue — one based more on serious thinking and scholarship than caricature.

Any serious person will prefer serious thinking and scholarship to caricature, and Professor Ecklund has indeed provided much food for thought. Her column is interesting, but her book is far more important and substantial.

In USA Today, Professor Ecklund attempted to correct the view she says is held by many religious believers — that scientists are predominately secular and antagonistic to theistic faith. Many believers, she says, "hold scientists at arm's length, believing that they are all atheists who are interested in attacking religion and the religious community."

In conducting her research, Professor Ecklund surveyed 1,700 natural and social scientists and conducted interviews with 275 of them. Her research is most interesting as it focuses on "elite" scientists who have particular influence. In order to set the record straight, in her column she shared some of the data from her research. She reports that 30 percent of scientists are atheists. She concedes that this is "a much larger percentage than the general population."

This is what we can only call a gross understatement. According to the authoritative study undertaken by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, about 5 percent of Americans report themselves as not believing in any deity, but only a quarter of those actually call themselves atheists. In other words, the scientists Professor Ecklund surveyed reported themselves to be atheists at a rate at least six times the national average — and perhaps at a rate even much higher than that.

She says that "fewer than 6% of atheist scientists are working against religion," but the reader is left to wonder exactly what this is supposed to mean. Presumably it means that few elite scientists follow the model of Richard Dawkins in spending a great deal of their time attempting to argue against the danger of theism. That certainly does not leave the rest friendly to belief in God . . . or to believers.

Professor Ecklund reports that about half of all scientists report themselves to be religious in some sense, and some 20 percent are involved in some house of worship. "Top scientists are sitting in our country's churches, temples, and mosques," she asserts.

Well, a closer look at her research indicates that these "top scientists" are rather thin on the ground in more conservative sectors of Christianity. Consider her report that "there are 14 times more self-identified evangelicals in the general population than among the scientists at our nation's top universities."

In her book, Professor Ecklund provides a wealth of data and analysis that, in general, casts her column in a quite different light. For example, she reports that "scientists in general are much less likely than are members of the general population to identify as part of a traditional religion." Fully 50 percent of the scientists she surveyed reported themselves as having no religious affiliation, compared to 16 percent of the general population.

Only about 2 percent of these scientists identified as evangelical Christians. Far more reported themselves as Jewish, but defined more by tradition than theistic belief.

"On the whole, scientists tend to view themselves as religiously liberal," she acknowledges. And in another understated passage, she reports this: "When we hold this liberalism alongside the fact that scientists at elite U.S. research universities are the least likely to be evangelicals (at least to label themselves so), and that evangelicalism is heavily represented in the general population, we see that scientists who care about translating science to a general public might need a lot of help to do so effectively." You think?

She writes that "it is virtually impossible to find a group of Americans who do not believe in God," but she concedes that only 36 percent of these elite scientists "have some form of a belief in God." That would seem to leave 64 percent without any such belief.

Scientists who do have some belief in God tend to have what Professor Ecklund describes as a "closeted faith." She explains that "religious scientists generally tried to keep their faith to themselves because of the perception that other faculty in their departments think poorly of religious people and religious ideas." The result is "a strong culture of suppression."

Well, if Professor Ecklund was trying to counter the "myth" that science is basically secular and antagonistic to theistic belief, she had better hope that people read her USA Today article and not her book.

In the other angle of her argument, Professor Ecklund reports in her article that "scholars are also finding that evangelical Christianity is not as detrimental to acquiring scientific knowledge as they once thought."

Really? In both the book and her article, this argument seems to come down to the fact that the price of being considered "not as detrimental to acquiring scientific knowledge as . . . once thought" is the embrace of evolution and the relinquishment of objections to human embryonic stem cell research.

When it comes to the big public battles over science and faith, this professor clearly sides with the scientists. In fact, both the book and her article are cast as an effort to help scientists make their arguments more plausibly (and to protect their research funding) in the context of a nation with so many evangelical believers.

The great obstacle — evangelical parents. Professor Ecklund laments that "many young Americans may not be learning what they should about science because their religious upbringing poses a barrier." In her book she argues that many younger Americans "are not learning what they should about science because their parents' quarrels and impasses are holding them back from studying topics like evolution or from pursuing science careers (out of fear that such pursuits are incompatible with their religious beliefs)."

Once again, if Professor Ecklund hopes that younger Americans will think otherwise, she had better hope that these kids don't read her book.

We are in debt to Professor Ecklund for her massive and persuasive research as documented and presented in her book, even if her USA Today article seems to be a deliberate attempt to tell only part of the story.

Her research leaves us with much to consider, but one big message comes through loud and clear — evangelical Christians who seek a better public conversation with elite science had better know in advance that it is a one-way street.

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 I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Elaine Howard Ecklund, "Myths Widen the Science-Religion Divide," USA Today, Monday, July 19, 2010.

Elaine Howard Ecklund, Science vs Religion: What Scientists Really Think (Oxford University Press, 2010). [or Kindle edition]

"Not All Nonbelievers Call Themselves Atheists," Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, April 2009.

Beauty, says philosopher Roger Scruton, "is never viewed with indifference." Those words come to mind in light of a major article in this week's Newsweek magazine that purports to document the fact that employers show a marked preference for attractive people in making hiring decisions. Add to that article a recent news report on a new sperm bank dedicated to the reproduction of "beautiful people."

The Newsweek article, written by Jessica Bennett, begins by documenting what economists measure as the financial benefits of physical attractiveness. The "beauty premium" adds 5 percent to the lifetime earnings of attractive men, and 4 percent to the lifetime earnings of women. Economist Daniel Hamermesh argues that an attractive man earns an average of $250,000 of "beauty premium" income over his "least-attractive counterpart."

The magazine surveyed more than 200 corporate hiring managers and almost 1000 members of the public and confirmed that "from hiring to office politics to promotions, even, looking good is no longer something we can dismiss as frivolous or vain."

The mostly-male hiring officers also said (by 61 percent) that it would be advisable for a woman seeking a job to wear clothing to the interview that would show off her figure. No kidding. The managers even ranked physical attractiveness third on their list of criteria for hiring — above education.

A New York-based recruiter consulted by the magazine asserted that, in this job market: "It's better to be average and good looking than brilliant and unattractive."  Women, it is argued, face an even more complicated equation than men. Attractive women have an advantage over less attractive women in hiring for low-level positions. But when it comes to high-level executive positions, attractive women face added questions about their qualifications.

Plastic surgery is the answer for many. As Jessica Bennett reports, "We are a culture more sexualized than ever . . . with technology that's made it easier to ‘better' ourselves, warping our standards for what's normal." With plastic surgery and "enhancement" procedures becoming routine, a beauty arms race results, and those who are in competition find themselves "running to stand still." Cosmetic surgery, Botox, and an array of technologies and product lines compete for an expanding market of people running hard in the race to stay or get ahead.

Bennett offers two interesting angles of argument in her essay. First, she argues for objective standards of physical beauty — a necessary assumption for her article.

In her words:

Biologically speaking, humans are attracted to symmetrical faces and curvy women for a reason: it's those shapes that are believed to produce the healthiest offspring. As the thinking goes, symmetrical faces are then deemed beautiful; beauty is linked to confidence; and it's a combination of looks and confidence that we often equate with smarts. Perhaps there's some evidence to that: if handsome kids get more attention from teachers, then, sure, maybe they do better in school and, ultimately, at work. But the more likely scenario is what scientists dub the "halo effect"—that, like a pack of untrained puppies, we are mesmerized by beauty, blindly ascribing intelligent traits to go along with it.

The implication of this argument — blame evolution. Those who make this argument generally base it on a form of what might be called "aesthetic Darwinism," or the survival of the prettiest. Yet, even without the evolutionary baggage, there seem to be objective standards of human beauty that even infants seem to recognize.

Secondly, Bennett argues that the current quest for physical attractiveness — perhaps even a current expectation among the young — is rooted in their generation's experience of reality TV and popular culture "that screams, again and again, that everything is a candidate for upgrade."

The other news report is even more troubling. CBS News reports that "an online dating service for good-looking people" has launched a sperm bank intended to produce beautiful babies. As the report states, "The ‘fertility introduction service' aims to link wanna-be parents - handsome or homely - with good-looking sperm and egg donors who have registered with the site. The goal? Create a kid whose good looks stop traffic."

The founder of the service told the Vancouver Sun, "Initially, we hesitated to widen the offering to non-beautiful people . . . But everyone - including ugly people - would like to bring good-looking children into the world, and we can't be selfish with our attractive gene pool."

How unselfish of the service — It will allow even those it would consider to be unattractive parents to purchase "attractive" sperm in order to breed attractive offspring.

Mark these reports as signs of our confused times. At present, there are no laws that would prevent such a fertility service from offering its services just as outlined here. While laws preventing discrimination are on the books, there is little to stop hiring managers from hiring the more attractive candidate over alternatives. This, as if you needed further evidence, is a demonstration of what it means to live in a fallen world.

Christians reading these reports must remember that beauty and attractiveness are not the same thing. Beauty, according to the Christian worldview, is established by God himself, and is inseparable from truth and goodness. Attractiveness is the mere delight of the eyes. In a sinful world, our eyes delight in many wrong things, and many of the most beautiful realities are, to the mere eyes, unattractive.

After all, we follow our Savior who "had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him." [Isaiah 53:2]. The cross is not pretty, but it is beautiful. This is the ironic foundation of a Christian understanding of beauty. We cannot merely trust our eyes, for our eyes will lie to us, and we are to find beauty in truth.

According to the Bible, every single human being is made in the image of God, and is thus, for this reason alone, truly beautiful. Truth wins over "enhancements," and true beauty resides within an individual's character. The Bible straightforwardly condemns the human quest for physical beauty as vanity.

Jessica Bennett concludes: "The quest for beauty may be a centuries-old obsession, but in the present day the reality is ugly." She is right, of course. But the ugliness of our confusion about beauty is not merely a present day reality. That confusion goes right back to Genesis 3 — to a pretty fruit and the Devil's lie.

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I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Jessica Bennett, "The Beauty Advantage," Newsweek, July 26, 2010.

"Beautifulpeople.com Sperm Bank: Is Your DNA Sexy Enough?," CBS News, July 22, 2010.

The tragedy of abortion remains one of this nation's greatest reasons for shame, and the fact that over a million abortions are performed each year is nothing less than horrifying. In light of this tragedy, it is at least encouraging to know that abortion, though an industry of death, is not a growth industry. At least for now.

All that may change if a new movement meets with success. As reported by Emily Bazelon, a new movement seeks to move abortions from abortion clinics to your local hospital, medical school, and physician's office. In other words, those behind this new movement intend to mainstream abortion as medical practice, and to hide it behind a facade of medical respectability.

Bazelon's report, "The New Abortion Providers," appears as the cover story in the July 18, 2010 edition of The New York Times Magazine. As she reports, this new movement is training family physicians and other doctors to perform abortion as a standard part of their medical practice. As the cover of the magazine states, "They are doctors seeing patients in their offices. They have quietly learned how to terminate pregnancies."

The story of how and why this is happening is important, and Bazelon's cover article demands attention. If this movement is successful, abortion will become institutionalized within American medical practice.

The background for this new movement is itself interesting. When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the infamous Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in 1973, 100 obstetricians and gynecology professors released an open letter, suggesting that abortion clinics would be unnecessary if half of the nation's obstetricians would make abortion part of their medical practice. They also called upon hospitals to do "their proportionate share."

But, as Bazelon reports, this was not to be. As a matter of fact, hospitals largely worked their way out of the abortion business. Hospitals accounted for 80 percent of abortion facilities in 1973, when abortion was legalized. By 1988, 90 percent of abortions took place in an abortion clinic. In Bazelon's words, "The American Medical Association did not maintain standards of care for the procedure. Hospitals didn't shelter them in their wings. Being a pro-choice doctor came to mean referring your patients to a clinic rather than doing abortions in your own office."

This was not what the architects of the abortion rights movement had in mind. "This was never the feminist plan," Bazelon explains. She goes on to argue that the founders of the abortion clinics also did not intend those facilities to become the mainstays of the abortion industry, but this is rather hard to square with the financial incomes those clinics defend.

Nevertheless, the fact is that abortions were largely isolated to abortion clinics, and most doctors kept themselves far from involvement in abortion. In the words of a much-cited 1992 medical journal article, "Under pressure and stigma, more doctors shun abortion."

The turning point in Bazelon's article comes when she explains that this new movement is doing everything it can to reverse these trends — and to put abortion in the mainstream of American medical practice. Bazelon calls this "a deliberate and concerted counteroffensive."

Further:

This abortion-rights campaign, led by physicians themselves, is trying to recast doctors, changing them from a weak link of abortion to a strong one. Its leaders have built residency programs and fellowships at university hospitals, with the hope that, eventually, more and more doctors will use their training to bring abortion into their practices. The bold idea at the heart of this effort is to integrate abortion so that it's a seamless part of health care for women — embraced rather than shunned.

The center of the movement is the University of California at San Francisco. There, Professor Jody Steinauer told the magazine, "The '90s were about getting abortion back into residency training and medical schools . . . . Now it's about getting abortion into our practices."

Steinauer was a leader in founding Medical Students for Choice, a group that pushes for more visibility and for residency programs in abortion procedures and reproductive health. Largely due to the MSFC and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, fully half of the 200 OB-GYN programs in the country "integrate abortion into their residents' regular rotations."

The University of California at San Francisco medical school has also established a two-year "Family Planning Fellowship," designed to attract promising young physicians. The program has now spread to 21 medical schools.

What this fellowship program and the larger movement aim to accomplish is nothing less than the normalization of abortion within the practice of medicine. As Bazelton observes, "The providers that make up the new vanguard don't define themselves as ‘abortion doctors.' They often try to make the procedure part of their broader medical practice — by spending much of their week seeing patients for general gynecology or primary-care visits, and by being on call on the labor and delivery floor. If the young doctors succeed at making abortion mainstream and respected within medicine, abortion could move from clinics to doctor's offices and hospitals."

Another part of this movement is driven by the Kenneth J. Ryan Residency Training Program, started by former National Abortion Federation director Uta Landy and her husband, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California at San Francisco. That program finances abortion training for medical students and doctors on 58 campuses. That program, Bazelon reports, is funded by one foundation and one anonymous donor. The foundation is the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for the late wife of investor Warren Buffett. According to Bazelon's report, Warren Buffett contributed $3 billion to the foundation, and most of the foundation's spending goes to "abortion and contraception advocacy and research." Bazelon cites a report in the The Wall Street Journal that credited Buffett with funding the research to produce the abortion pill. Even with this massive funding in place, Warren Buffett has largely escaped public attention on the abortion issue.

And that is the aim — to normalize abortion without public notice, avoiding the protests outside abortion clinics. "We want to fight the battle, but not all of us are martyrs," said one physician.

They have a long way to go. The report states that only 2 percent of abortions are now done in a physician's office and only 5 percent are performed in a hospital. The medical profession is still reluctant, at the very least, to embrace abortion as normal practice.

As Bazelton explains:

This highlights the challenge of making abortion truly mainstream — of moving beyond residency training and outside the haven of medical-school faculties, so that more doctors offer abortions when they join a regular OB-GYN or primary-care practice. As yet, all the success in training new doctors hasn't translated into an increase in access. Abortion remains the most common surgical procedure for American women; one-third of them will have one by the age of 45. The number performed annually in the U.S. has largely held steady: 1.3 million in 1977 and 1.2 million three decades later. In metropolitan areas, women who want to go to their own doctor for an abortion can ask whether a practice offers abortion when they choose an OB-GYN or family physician. But in 87 percent of the counties in the U.S., where a third of women live, there is no known abortion provider.

Emily Bazelon's report offers a fascinating and important look at abortion in American today — past, present, and future. She points sympathetically to this new movement and its aims, but she seems to sense that the medical profession is still resistant to abortion, and may remain so.

She writes with great skill and insight, but she lets her own disposition slip when she refers to the aborted contents of a womb as "pregnancy tissue."

This new movement, fueled by fervent abortion advocates and financed, in part, by Warren Buffett's billions, may make real headway. We must pray that it does not. The normalization of abortion within the practice of medicine would be a tragedy beyond words — the embrace of death within a profession dedicated to life.

The front cover of the magazine asks the question: "Is this the new front in the abortion wars?" If the magazine's editors did not believe that indeed this is the next front in this long war, they would never have asked the question. Now, thanks to Emily Bazelon and this report, we all know the answer to that question.

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I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Emily Bazelon, "The New Abortion Providers," The New York Times Magazine, Sunday, July 18, 2010.

For those interested in the fate of our culture, New York Magazine is an indispensable barometer. This single magazine, perhaps more than any other periodical, offers feature articles that catch the cultural conversation. Granted, that cultural conversation is largely Manhattan-centric and geared to the highly educated and economically secure classes. But, since those are the very people who tend to direct the cultural conversation, what interests them will almost surely soon interest the rest of the nation.

This week, the issue is children and happiness. Not the happiness of children, but the debate over whether having children makes for parental happiness. Looking first to the sociological and psychological data, the picture looks bleak. According to the current scholarly consensus, parents are more likely to be depressed than non-parents, and parents report themselves as less happy as well.

In her article, "All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting," writer Jennifer Senior wonders aloud why parents seem to be less happy than non-parents, but simultaneously claim that parenthood is such a great thing. What is the disconnect?

"From the perspective of the species, it's perfectly unmysterious why people have children," writes Senior. "From the perspective of the individual, however, it's more of a mystery than one might think. Most people assume that having children will make them happier. Yet a wide variety of academic research shows that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so."

Trust me on this — you really do not need to read through those academic research papers. Here is a summary: The "scholarly consensus" is that children and parental happiness just do not go together. According to the data, parents are less happy than non-parents, parents of infants and toddlers are especially not happy, single parents are less happy than married parents, and mothers are less happy than fathers. Except, that is, when it comes to single fathers, who are the most unhappy of all.

And yet, people continue to insist and hope that having children will make them happier. Why? "One answer could simply be that parents are deluded, in the grip of some false consciousness that's good for mankind but not for men and women in particular," Senior explains.

There is good reason to doubt the value of much social science research and many psychological studies. Nevertheless, taking the data at face value is an interesting exercise in thinking about the nature of parenthood and the question of human happiness.

In the most important section of her article, Jennifer Senior tellingly suggests that what might have changed is the way we view children and parenthood. In her words, "the possibility that parents don't much enjoy parenting because the experience of raising children has fundamentally changed." This is where her article becomes especially important.

She writes:

Before urbanization, children were viewed as economic assets to their parents. If you had a farm, they toiled alongside you to maintain its upkeep; if you had a family business, the kids helped mind the store. But all of this dramatically changed with the moral and technological revolutions of modernity. As we gained in prosperity, childhood came increasingly to be viewed as a protected, privileged time, and once college degrees became essential to getting ahead, children became not only a great expense but subjects to be sculpted, stimulated, instructed, groomed. (The Princeton sociologist Viviana Zelizer describes this transformation of a child's value in five ruthless words: "Economically worthless but emotionally priceless.") Kids, in short, went from being our staffs to being our bosses.

Interestingly, Senior introduces this article with a spectacularly horrifying account of a mother trying to cajole her eight-year-old son away from the computer in order to do his homework. The account comes from the massive film project undertaken by the UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families. These hundreds of hours of recorded middle-class family life show over and over again that many, if not most, parents see themselves as constant negotiators with their strong-willed children. The absence of parental authority and control is genuinely horrifying. One UCLA graduate student described the experience of watching the recordings as "the very purest form of birth control ever devised. Ever."

What Jennifer Senior actually chronicles in her essay is the fact that parents now see children as projects to be developed. These children — especially those in middle and upper-middle class families — are constantly en route to one practice or another, subjected to class after class, and pushed into the level of academic and social success that their parents think absolutely necessary for success in life. These parents feel guilty if they allow a single opportunity for organized play or a learning activity to pass.

Yes, parenthood has changed. Many parents do see their children as described by Senior — as "subjects to be sculpted, stimulated, instructed, groomed." Parental authority is replaced by constant power struggles, lest the children be psychologically warped by a parent who stands in authority. Discipline is replaced by never-ending negotiation. The peace of the home is replaced by constant activity and frenetic energy. The earliest years of a child's life are increasingly filled with organized activity and institutional settings.

No wonder parents are less happy now. Add to this the very important insight Senior offers about the age of parenthood. As she suggests, when couples postpone parenthood for so many years, building careers and social lives and professional profiles, parenthood can seem more an interruption than a blessing.

Senior cites psychologist Jean Twenge, "They become parents later in life. There's a loss of freedom, a loss of autonomy. It's totally different from going from your parents' house to immediately having a baby. Now you know what you're giving up."

The Christian understanding of children and parenthood just doesn't fit these categories. The first problem is the isolation of happiness as the major concern. Interestingly enough, the Bible doesn't seem overly concerned with human happiness. One reason for this is surely that happiness is just too passing as a perception, and too inadequate as a category. In a fallen world, the wrong things will make us happy or unhappy. Add to this the fact that we seem to be largely incompetent at making ourselves happy, or even at knowing what will make us happy. Go figure.

The second problem is the fact that marriage and children now appear on our cultural screen as personal choices, rather than as the norm and expectation. Once these responsibilities are transformed into choices, the only reason to choose them is if we believe they will make us happy. If we do not find ourselves adequately compensated — especially in emotional terms — for making this choice, we assume it was the wrong choice.

The third problem has to do with the changes in parenting that Jennifer Senior documents in her essay. From a biblical perspective, these are not healthy changes. When children gain control of the household, the home is robbed of order, health, and peace. The child is robbed of what he or she needs most — a loving parent who is undeniably in authority.

Christians must see children as gifts from God, not as projects. We should see marriage and parenthood as a stewardship and privilege, not as a mere lifestyle choice. We must resist the cultural seductions and raise children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and understand family life as a crucible for holiness, not an experiment in happiness.

And when it comes to happiness, we must aim for something higher. Christians are called to joy and satisfaction in Christ, and to find joy in the duties and privileges of this earthly life. Every parent will know moments of honest unhappiness, but the Christian parent settles for nothing less than joy.

 

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I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Jennifer Senior, "All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting," New York Magazine, July 4, 2010.