RELIGION IN AMERICA IS A BALANCING ACT BETWEEN WHAT UNITES AND DIVIDES US

I would describe my own religious beliefs as being a theological atheist, a Unitarian Universalist, a Humanist, and a Freethinker.  By claiming myself a theological atheist I am simply stating that I was raised without a God concept and have no interest in a God concept.  I am not an anti-theist (against God) but live my life without a need for a God concept. I have been a Unitarian Universalist since 1960 because it is a religion that has no formal creed and asks its members to explore what gives meaning to their lives and justice to the world, especially through movements that promote tolerance and improve the lot of humanity.  I am a Humanist because I believe we have only one life to live on earth governed by a biological life cycle that for our species is rarely more than 80 to 90 years for the vast number of all who have ever lived.  I believe that life should be lived as productively as circumstances allow giving our lives a sense of self worth and harming as few people as we can.   I am a Freethinker because I believe tolerance, education, and respect for diversity allow us to care for our neighbors and discover our human strengths and weaknesses.

Too often in human history religion has been used to divide people into believers and non believers.  It has led to wars between religions (Hindus versus Islam, Christians versus Jews, Christians versus Islam, Catholics versus Protestants) with millions of casualties.  Religions have also suffered from lack of faith and have been demoted to myths as is true for the polytheistic religions of ancient Greece and Rome or the polytheistic religions of Meso and South America.

Religions have also confused people by contradictory claims and acts.  A loving God wipes out almost all of humanity in Old Testament scripture. We can be taught to love our neighbor as ourselves but we can also be taught to reject our families if they do not believe as we do.  We can be told by the Ten Commandments that we shall not kill. But in the Same Old Testament God tells Moses to kill the Amalekites even their women and children.   The same contradiction appears in hymns invoking “Onward Christian soldier, onward as to war” but at the same time we are told “God is love” and that Christ is “the Prince of peace” and “Blessed are the peace makers.”  

The United States was founded on the religious principles that the state should make no preference for any religious creed. It allowed Protestants and Catholics, Jews, Theists, Deists, and atheists of that era all enjoying the benefits of society without the coercion of demanding a single state religion or set of religious beliefs. Our laws on religion that have been taken to the Supreme Court have tried to clarify attempts by non-believers to keep a wall of separation between church and state and by believers to breach that wall and allow their views to prevail for all. When I read Facebook commentary I often wince at the harshness expressed by people who believe so strongly in their particular faith that they would come to blows if they were facing each other. That is not a message of love.  That is not a message of compassion.  That is not a message of tolerance. It conveys to me, instead, a message of insecurity --  that unless we believe together we cannot get along.  That is not America.  That is the fury of the past witnessed in the 30 Year’s War in central Europe as Protestants and Catholics killed each other.  That is Ireland for three centuries before a peace agreement was worked out.  That is the Middle East today with its intolerance on all sides.  That is Pakistan and India fighting over the future of Kashmir.  Where is love in those wars?  Where is redemption in those hatreds of otherness?  Where is the Golden rule?  How can America be a land of tolerance for diversity if it excludes tolerance for the religious beliefs of others?  Believe what you want but don’t impose your particular interpretation on everyone.   

REFLECTIONS ON OBAMA’S EULOGY FOR THE MURDERED NINE

             Nedra and I watched President Obama’s eulogy as it was taking place and we were both very moved by it.  He used a language familiar to those who go to black AME churches.  He used the term grace to express the wonderful response (forgiveness) of the relatives of those slain and the response of many elected officials to take down the Confederate battle flag from state buildings.  He also put in an alternative to the idea of God’s grace by saying we all had a “reservoir of untapped goodness” within us that emerged. I prefer that to God’s grace because grace is a gift of God that cannot be petitioned by prayer or given as an award for behavior or belief. Grace also shifts positive change in society from individual and collective responsibility to something like a miracle over which we have no control or access. I also have problems with a “reservoir of goodness within us.”  Is goodness innate?  If it is acquired, what about those children raised in homes where the parents are bigots?  I would have invoked something different to explain the sudden shift in southern responses to their Confederate symbols.  I would say that we all have a capacity for empathy.  We see it in toddlers.  If one cries the others cry.  It might be genetic because there is a spectrum disorder of autism where such a response of empathy is diminished or absent. Governments can terrorize or brutalize their citizens as Nazis did when they beat up, humiliated, or killed Jews and many Germans looked the other way out of fear of being visited by the Gestapo if they protested.

           I have long believed that aggression, brutality, torture, and war crimes are issues that need honest research.  All governments duck this because they depend on spying, lying, misinformation, unexamined patriotism, secrecy, and justifying the harm they do as “collateral damage.”   It is easier to blame economics, ideology, religion, politics, or some other social process than to admit that our capacity for harming others or suppressing our empathy for others has an outlet at the governmental level.  It is also easier to rationalize that the wrongs of society are due to original sin, innate aggression, or human nature than to do the hard work of finding out why some people are decent, prefer peace to war, help others, avoid harming others, practice virtue as its own reward, and seek social changes to bring about equality of opportunity for all.  I am grateful that President Obama appealed to our “better natures” even if he called it an act of grace. I am hoping that psychology departments, psychiatry departments, and even the National Institutes of Health will do serious academic research on empathy, mass behavior, and the suspension of humane values that pervade so much of state and cultural practice. 

THE PLEASURE OF READING LAUGH OUT LOUD, WHACKY HUMOR

                Nedra and I have participated in a book discussion group since the early 1960s so we have had quite a range of fiction and non-fiction to read over the past half century. I was given a gift of a paperback by Richard Janda, a linguist who is now on sabbatical leave with his family in France.  It is a novel by Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel.  Its title is LUNATICS. I had not read any of their works before but I have occasionally read satirical novels (Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World are classics).  A more recent satirical novel is Jonas Jonasson’s The 100 Year Old Man Climbs Out of the Window and Disappears.

              Lunatics uses alternate chapters to describe shared experiences of two characters, one a pet shop owner and the other a “forensic plumber.” The pet shop owner, Stephen Hortman, and the plumber, Jeffrey Peckerman, hate each other.  Jeffrey believes Stephen made a bad call in a girls’ soccer game.  The two chase each other and create chaos that escalates into bungled traffic accidents, a downed helicopter, a blocked bridge, and a belief that terrorists are at work.  Things get worse at the Central Park Zoo as they are pursued by real terrorists and the police.  They escape and their actions lead to the beaching of a cruise liner in Cuba.  Their actions somehow get them out of trouble only to create more trouble as they go from Cuba to the Middle East and to China.  They become celebrated as international heroes and end up at the Republican National Convention and that chapter brought tears of laughter and bouts of uncontrolled giggles.  They reminded me of Zero Mostel at his best. For old timers like me, it was like a revival of the slapstick comedy of Laurel and Hardy, the Keystone Cops, and the Marx Brothers. 

TWO WELCOME DECISIONS BY THE SUPREME COURT ON DIVERSITY AND OPPORTUNITY

            For biologists evolutionary change is usually measured in hundreds or thousands of generations.  For our species, social change is measured in decades or a few generations.  I will be 85 in mid July so I have lived about four generations.  My memory of each of these generations is reasonably vivid.  I grew up when it was illegal for a white person to marry a person of any other race.  I grew up when it was illegal for a black person to sit in the front of a bus.  I grew up when it was illegal for persons to buy contraceptives for birth control.  I grew up when it was illegal for same sex couples to engage in sexual activity.  I grew up when it was still legal to sterilize women for having children out of wedlock.  I was conceived when it was illegal for a divorced person to remarry in New York State.  In 1940 my mother had to be repatriated as an American because although born in Bound Brook, New Jersey, her first marriage was to an immigrant born in Chernobyl in Russia (women were then considered the property of their husbands). Those were just the law.  Add to that the social view that blacks were banned from major league baseball and rarely admitted to medical schools, the law, engineering, or other professions considered white occupations.    Add to that women were routinely excluded or limited by quota to medical, engineering, and other professions considered as masculine fields.  Add to that Jews were excluded by “gentlemen’s agreement” policies from buying homes in non-Jewish areas of Long Island.

             When I was young I tolerated many of these injustices.  As I experienced diversity in my work, in school, and reading the newspapers, I changed.  It was incremental.  One piece of unexamined bias after another was expunged.  I wish I had had Promethean foresight to recognize all of these as injustices.  I did not.  I never thought of myself as a bigot or deluded myself with an idea of white male superiority. But I did change as each injustice resonated in my being.  For the individual, progress is slow.  For the historian, progress is incredibly rapid compared to the millennia long history of human injustices.  I am grateful for those who protested injustices to their families and who took up the cause of equality for others. I recognize that even with the Supreme Court decisions recognizing LGBT marriage and extending the grounds for bringing discrimination cases in housing that there is still a long way to go for social equality, equality of opportunity, and a respect for diversity in American social life.  Let us rejoice that another barrier has fallen and that equality of opportunity is a goal worth striving for and diversity of religious belief, but not imposition of that religious belief on others, is a goal worth preserving.  

OCEAN GROVE, NEW JERSEY -- NEDRA’S QUILTING RETREAT

              Nedra’s sister Sonya and her husband, Ted Weiss, bought a Victorian “ginger bread” house that used to be a bed and breakfast residence in the early 1900s.  It is in Ocean Grove New Jersey on a street called Pilgrim Path about four houses west of the Great Tabernacle.  Ted Weiss was born in Hungary, raised in South Amboy, NJ, and served 16 years in Congress representing the west side of Manhattan.  This was their “get away” house from Manhattan where they could relax on vacation and invite family for holidays.  Ocean Grove was a Methodist meeting grounds and the Great Tabernacle invited Chautauqua circuit speakers and famous preachers to stimulate the hundreds of weekend or summer visitors.  It was a dry town and so strict for its behavior that no motor cars were allowed to enter, leave, or be driven on Sundays.  One of my colleagues at Stony Brook University said in his youth it was called “Ocean Grave.”

              Now it is like most small towns and has its gay community, its revelers, its secular attractions linked to a gorgeous Jersey Shore, a board walk, and numerous musical performances at the Great Tabernacle.

              Nedra and I go at least twice a year to Ocean Grove because Sonya hosts Nedra’s quilters from Long Island, NY.  About 11 of them come and they call themselves “The off the wall quilters.”  They enjoy each other’s company and use those twice a year week of quilting to work on their projects.  I have been the resident drone because I use that opportunity to read books and write.  In this latest retreat I read and wrote reviews of two books for the Quarterly Review of Biology, one a biography by George Brownlee  of two time Nobel Prize winner Fred Sanger and a book by Nessa Carey on Junk DNA.  I then read Frank Close’s biography, Half Life, a scholarly study of Bruno Pontecorvo’s contributions to atomic physics (especially slow neutrons to induce nuclear fission and neutrinos and their role in cosmic events).  Pontecorvo is more popularly known for his defection to the USSR in 1950 and his possible role as an atomic spy.  I also read Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel, Flight Behavior, which uses global warming as its theme.  I also read Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel’s comic novel, Lunatics.  In my spare time I wrote a few Blogs for my bloggerelof site.  It is nice to read in the parlor or sit on the porch and read.  It is also nice to sample a different cook for each meal. Two are assigned each day.  Nedra and I prepared chicken Jerusalem for our culinary contribution.   

MISPLACED FAITH IS NOT LIMITED TO RELIGION: THE STRANGE LIFE OF BRUNO PONTECORVO

              I was given a copy of Frank Close’s biography of Bruno Pontecorvo (1913-1993) entitled Half Life (Basic Books, 2015).  Dr. Shari Cohn Simmons, a former student who now lives in Edinburgh sent it to me.  She remembered talking with me about Muller’s life when he was in Edinburgh (1937-1940) after fleeing the USSR where two of his students were executed as alleged Trotskyites and genetics was condemned as a science.  One of the students getting a PhD with Muller was Guido Pontecorvo, the oldest brother of Bruno.  I knew Guido Pontecorvo professionally and interviewed him in London when I was writing Muller’s biography.

              I also knew, from newspaper accounts, that Bruno Pontecorvo defected to the USSR and was considered an atomic spy who passed on nuclear weapons secrets in Canada, the US, and England. Close writes a history of both the Pontecorvo family and Bruno’s involvement in the working out of atomic physics, a story that begins in the early 1930s.  Bruno was one of eight children born in Pisa to a wealthy manufacturer of textiles.  Their father was a non-observant Jew whose wife was Protestant.  The children were raised without a religious identification. Of the eight children, Guido became a geneticist, teaching and doing research mostly in Glasgow.  Bruno became a physicist and Gillo became a motion picture director (The Battle of Algiers is his most famous picture).

              Bruno studied physics in Rome with Enrico Fermi, but after Mussolini formed an alliance with Hitler, Jews were no longer permitted to hold university positions because Jews were defined by fascist ideology as a biological condition and not a chosen religious belief.  Bruno went to Paris and worked with the Joliot Curies until Paris fell to the Nazis.  Bruno escaped and found his way out with other refugees to Lisbon and to the United States.  He worked in Tulsa, Oklahoma devising instruments to detect atomic signatures in drill holes for the presence of radioactive heavy elements that were found in oil shale but not in limestone or sandy rock formations.  Bruno Pontecorvo was well known among physicists in the US for his discovery that slow neutrons were effective in inducing fission in atomic nuclei and for his skills in devising instruments to detect the products of nuclear fission.

              Bruno worked in Chalk river in Canada in the early 1940s.  He was interested in nuclear reactor construction, an idea developed by his mentor, Enrico Fermi.  One product he hoped to study from the use of nuclear reactors was the production and detection of neutrinos.  His theoretical work on neutrinos was widely known. While his work was considered secret, it was not in weapons development.  Bruno was a pacifist who opposed scientific applications to war.  His experiences in Italy and France led him to believe the USSR was the only country where people would be treated as equals and where peace, and not war, was its goal.  This became his religion. He had become a communist party member while in Paris.

              Was Pontecorvo a spy?  Frank Close believes he was but there is no direct evidence to prove this.  Close believes most of Pontecorvo’s spying was done after the end of World War II and involved passing on information on nuclear reactor design and not on weapons manufacture. Nuclear reactors, of course, were a major source of enriched Uranium and Plutonium, both of which entered into weapons making. 

              In 1950 Pontecorvo and his Swedish wife and his three sons took a vacation from their home in Harwell, England (the British equivalent of Los Alamos) and never returned.  They disappeared.  It took five years before Pontecorvo made contact with the western world releasing a statement that he left England to do research on neutrino in the USSR and to avoid “persecution” from western governments.

              I much enjoyed the history of atomic physics that Close provides and the scholarly analysis of both Pontecorvo’s career and his troubled life.  Only after the collapse of the USSR did Pontecorvo admit to his colleagues that his defection was a mistake and that his faith in communism was wrong and that he “must have been a cretin” for his naïve embrace of Stalin’s speeches.