Sustainability and miracles

The latests Science arrived in my mailbox yesterday. Usually I'm too busy to read much of it, but this morning I decided to take a break and look it over. There's lots of good stuff in there, but the two things that caught my eye were sustainability and miracles.

Sustainability first. An editorial in this issue praised Pope Francis for his concern about the poor around the world and how environmental degradation affects those people, who have arguably had the least input in producing major problems such as climate change. A second article pointed out how religious institutions can have a dramatic favorable impact on these problems. In an earlier blog (a week ago, in fact - see Evolution Dreams) I argued that folks like Richard Dawkins, who contend that religion is a cancer and science is the only valid way of approaching the problems we face, were misguided at best. We need the moral authority of people like Pope Francis to help us make the best choices.

The second article might seem diametrically opposed to what I just wrote, as it's about an evolutionary biologist and linguist who has been investigating the origin and spread of human language and animal cognition. Russell Gray of the University of Auckland has a pet phrase - no miracles - which he uses when addressing what were previously regarded as questions beyond the reach of scientific investigation. He's using modern evolutionary analysis tools to address questions of the origin of human languages and the origin of "intelligence" in non-human animals.

The "no miracles" part is guaranteed to rub some religious folks the wrong way, but in context what he's saying makes sense. In fact, that's how science makes progress; previously unsolvable (by scientific means) problems become tractable when a clever scientist comes along and figures out a way to address them.

What about religious miracles? Well, science can't really help us there. Was Jesus divine? Sorry, no help. However, I'm in the racket I'm in because I regard life as "miraculous".