Nature News is reporting that the Swiss government's ethics committee on non-human biotechnology has issued guidelines instructing researchers how to avoid offending the dignity of plants. If their projects are ruled as affronts to plants, their funding will be pulled.
What might constitute undignified interference with plants?
The committee has created a decision tree presenting the different issues that need to be taken into account for each case. But it has come up with few concrete examples of what type of experiment might be considered an unacceptable insult to plant dignity. The committee does not consider that genetic engineering of plants automatically falls into this category, but its majority view holds that it would if the genetic modification caused plants to 'lose their independence' - for example by interfering with their capacity to reproduce. The statement has confused plant geneticists, who point out the contrast with traditional plant-hybridization technologies, for example in roses, which require male sterility, and the commercial development of seedless fruits.
Let's forget modern biotechnology. What about such egregious violations of vegetal dignity as grafting cabernet sauvignon shoots to alien American grape rootstock? And might not hybridization be considered forced plant miscegenation? Also, what could be worse for plant "independence" than domestication? After all, domesticated plants can't thrive without human nurturing. We've turned such crops as corn, wheat, oats, potatoes, and tomatoes into photosynthetic slaves. Finally, what could be more outrageously disrespectful to chlorophyll-kind than being eaten by people? The horror, the horror!
It’s apparent that the crazed Green movement is a religion to many, but I don’t think we were aware that they are actually self proclaimed “prophets” now. Yes, prophets like in the Old Testament. The audacity is astounding.
We’re all too familiar with Greenpeace activist Annie Leonard, creator of the “Story of Stuff”, the anti-capitalist propaganda video that has been shown to our kids in schools nationwide. Just last week, Glenn Beck began to highlight their latest endeavor, “Let There Be Stuff”, a new twist on “The Story of Stuff” that is presented to appeal to Christian and Jewish youth groups as an act of obedience to God. Naturally, I was intrigued and wanted to see just how they would present this, so I downloaded the session materials they have made available online.
While browsing through the various sessions, I was surprised to discover that Annie Leonard and others promoting this Green Marxist message are the new prophets of our time. From their materials:
pg 2, Session 2
Often, God sends messengers to awaken our sense of the urgency of these challenges. These messengers are like prophets and we need to take their messages seriously.
pg 7, Session 2
In Biblical times, people who offered the kind of moral challenge The Story of Stuff provides were called prophets. They often weren’t popular, because they conveyed God’s judgment against society’s status quo and against deeply engrained habits. Our two Bible readings this week are selections about two prophets – Hosea and John the Baptist.
After a reading about these Biblical prophets and their message, our new prophets continue:
As these two examples show, the Bible is clear that the role of a prophet is a vital and dangerous one. Prophets represent the message of God to people and societies who are often unwilling to reckon with God’s high moral standards.
The message at this point is to let the kids know that being a prophet is tough business. They may not make it easy for us, but we are prophets, and wicked people often do not like to hear the truth from the prophets.
Later in the session, the facilitator is prepped on how to answer those pesky questions that the participants may come up with:
pg. 11, Session 2
Q: Who does she think she is? Why should I listen to her? She’s not a Christian?
A: This is the same kind of comment that people made about all the prophets in the Bible – when they didn’t like the prophet’s message, they attacked the prophet personally.
In other words, kids, just shut up and listen. Stop interrogating Annie the prophet.
At this point, the students will read the referenced passages and be able to make that important connection between the Biblical prophets and Annie:
pg. 12, Session 2
1. Read the passages Hosea 4:1-3 or Matthew 3:1-3, 7-10
2. Tell students: This passage is about John the Baptist, a powerful prophet who foretold the birth of Jesus and/or Hosea a prophet who criticized the people of Israel for their unfaithfulness. His message was a hard and challenging one.
3. Have students reflect on the following questions:
• How do you think the people of his time felt about his message?
• How do you think this relates to Annie and her message?
• What makes it possible to stay open when we hear challenging information about ourselves and our world?
“Let There Be Stuff” has much more provocative material to be sure, but the outrageous “prophet” angle alone should be more than enough to make it clear exactly what their intent is. Regardless of your views on how to go about being a good steward of the earth, how any church or synagogue could allow their youth to be led astray and propagandized in this way is inconceivable.
That's one of the findings in a huge study of leading scientists at the 21 top-rated research universities in the United States. And there's more:
Almost 52 percent of the 1,646 scientists who participated in the study have no current religious affiliation compared with only 14 percent of the general population.
More than 31 percent said they do not believe in God, and another 31 percent said they do not know if there is a God and there is no way to find out -- a whopping 62 percent of those surveyed.
More than 56 percent did not attend a religious service during the entire year preceding the survey.
Only 9.7 percent said they have "no doubts about God's existence."
The landmark study was conducted by sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund at the University at Buffalo, and Christopher P. Scheitle of Pennsylvania State University. Ecklund said it's the first study in decades of the religious beliefs and practices of "elite academics," and it included 271 in-depth interviews with leading scientists, some of which lasted several hours.
She notes that the participants may not be representative of scientists as a whole, because they are the superachievers in their fields, men and women who are obsessed with science. But the findings are important, she said, because these are the people who shape the scientific attitudes and goals of the nation's academic communities.
The clash between science and religion is as old as science itself, but it seems especially heated -- and particularly important -- these days because of burning issues ranging from evolution to stem cell research. It may seem that scientists tend to shy away from discussing religion, but Ecklund did not find that to be the case. About 75 percent of the scientists she surveyed, through a professional polling organization, agreed to participate in the study, a surprisingly high number. None of their names are being released.
The question she most wanted to answer was pretty basic: Does the study of science drive a person away from religion? It does not, she said in an interview.
Nearly all the scientists who said they believe in God, and have a current affiliation with a church, were raised in a home where religion was considered very important, she said. Thus, they conform to the same pattern seen in the population at large. As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.
Most of the scientists who believe in God have children, she said. And the 3,000 pages of transcribed interviews tell her something else.
"In my interviews, some scientists reclaimed the religion of their youth when they had children, and people in the general public do that as well," she said.
Unlike the general population, however, younger scientists tend to be more religious than older scientists. And although women generally tend to be more religious than men, that was not the case among the surveyed scientists.
"Gender did not play a role," Ecklund said.
"These data reveal that at least some part of the difference in religiosity between scientists and the general population is likely due simply to religious upbringing rather than scientific training or institutional pressure to be irreligious."
That is likely to be hotly debated in the years ahead, and there is a hint in her own research that suggests otherwise. The disciplines she studied include physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, economics, political science and psychology. Physicists did not lead the list of nonbelievers, which may be a bit surprising given the historic battles between the church and Galileo and Copernicus. Of all those surveyed, biologists were least likely to be religious, the study shows.
And who's on the hot seat these days? Biologists. Most of the controversial issues today involve various biological fields from stem cell research to evolution to genetic engineering. Physicists can relax. It's pretty much agreed now that Earth revolves around the sun. But biologists are in deep conflict with a society in which 90 percent claim some affiliation with a religious organization.
Ecklund said she doesn't know if the lack of religion among biologists is a cause or effect of that ongoing clash. One would guess it's probably both.
She made no attempt to define religion. Instead, she relied upon the terms and "predictors" that have been used in numerous polls of the general public.
So what is religion? And what is God?
No less than Albert Einstein grappled with those questions throughout his life. It is often said that he was religious, and believed in God, but his idea of God was quite different from the deity worshiped by so many today.
"Yes, you can call it that," he replied. "Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious." He spent the rest of his life trying to explain what he really meant.
Einstein, by the way, was raised in a religious home.
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