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Ask Dr. Robert Bakker About Dinosaurs and Merging Science and Religion
With his trademark hat and beard, Dr. Robert Bakker is one of the most recognized paleontologists working today. Bakker was among the advisers for the movie Jurassic Park, and the character Dr. Robert Burke in the film The Lost World: Jurassic Park is based on him. He was one of the first to put forth the idea that some dinosaurs had feathers and were warm-blooded, and is credited with initiating the ongoing "dinosaur renaissance" in paleontology. Bakker is currently the curator of paleontology for the Houston Museum of Natural Science and the Director of the Morrison Natural History Museum in Colorado. He is also a Christian minister, who contends that there is no real conflict between religion and science, citing the writings and views of Saint Augustine as a guide on melding the two. Dr. Bakker has agreed to take some time from his writing and digging in order to answer your questions. As usual, ask as many questions as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
A central tenant of science is that you could be wrong, that seems to conflict with religion. Which is not to say you can't have faith and be a scientist. Just that you would have to keep a fair amount of mental separation between the two. I would even go so far as to say that to be a good scientist you would have to question your faith.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Hello Dr. Bakker,
Has your thinking regarding mass extinctions, particularly the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, changed or evolved from the time of your writing THE DINOSAUR HERESIES?
Thanks sincerely -
There is a lot of speculation about dinosaur behavior. For example people talk about how velociraptors hunted in packs or how they hunted. When these things are discussed in the media the ideas are stated with a great deal of certainty. How do you react when these theories are stated as being definite facts? What do you, as a scientists, try to do to try to get reporters to understand the nature of science and the role of dialogue/debate and uncertainty within the scientific community?
It is my observation that reader comments on science article quickly follow a Godwin-like trajectory to a flame war between those who hold to religious (though many are scientists) beliefs and those who hold to scientific (usually atheist) beliefs. The two factions spew hate, obscenity, and generally impugn the intelligence of the other.
Question: What advice can you offer to help the readers, and thus the comment posters, to strike a balance? Can there be some kind of 'kumbaya manifesto' to skip the quarreling and get to the matter at hand? Climate change, dark matter, even human colonization need well-tempered minds, of all persuasions. How do we get there?
Dr. Bakker,
I'd just like to say thanks for the good childhood memories from your book, Raptor Red... I still have my signed copy of it, and should definitely re-read it some time.
I guess I should ask a question, too... If Raptor Red were being written today, are there any new discoveries in the last two decades that would neccessitate significant changes from how you wrote the original?
Whether the Bible is or is not based on divine revelation, it was written by pre-industrial people for pre-industrial people.
The moon was many times more important to them than black holes.
And the Bible's purpose is moral, not to "advance medicine".
The purpose of the creation story in Genesis is to establish God's authority as creator and ruler of man, not to teach science.
I have a bunch, but yes, only one question per post. So:
Dr. Bakker, people are incredibly fascinated with dinosaurs, and with good reason. But there's a huge swath of very interesting creatures that lived life on earth prior to the end-Permian event. Lots of really interesting creatures like members of the labrynthodonts and sauropsids. Although children's imaginations and movies like Jurassic park focus on dinos and their immediate relatives, have you ever thought about promoting the diversity of creatures prior to the end-Permian in cultural ways? In other words, will we ever see a giant flesh-eating Anomalocaris in a movie? Can you make that happen please?
I am aware of many ideas that "young Earth believers" foster to explain the stratigraphy of fossils in a 6K-year old Earth.
Question: What explanations have you heard? What answer can you offer from the middle ground between a scientist (whose expertise relies on that stratigraphic record) and a man of faith who reads the same Bible that the "young Earth believers" do?
This may be slightly outside your field of expertise, but I'd like to ask anyways:
There's a huge argument right now about what caused the end-Permian event, with lots of scientists thinking it was the Siberian Traps as the main culprit. Even with the end-Cretaceous event being thought of as a result of of a bolide impact, there's some scientists who think that the Deccan traps had to play a role. Now, I've read a number of books, especially "When Life Almost Died" that shows what appears to me to be a fairly strong relationships between bolide impacts and extinctions, but which also show the great possibility of these large eruptions causing the extinctions. There are some scientists who think that there is an antipodal relationship between bolide impacts and "bulges" or "plumes" going through the earth and causing large eruptions on the other side of the planet over time, thus contributing to or causing extinctions. (I also find it very interesting that in general, when positing the Siberian traps as the cause of the end-Permian event, no one ever really talks about what might actually have caused such a massive series of eruptions..)
As far as I know, the research on this effect is pretty limited, but to me as a non-scientist, I can say the relationship appears to be more than coincidental. But a real scientist can't say that, of course.
1) What is your opinion on antipodal bolide events causing or contributing to mass extinctions?
2) Do you have any recent information on research that is being done in this area that you could point me to? Any links? Thanks.
I am an atheist, but I will concede that science does not conflict with religion as a general idea (the belief in God, or things outside of science), but science often does conflict with specific religious beliefs.
My grandparents raised some of their children religious and some not religious. My parents are atheist but I have aunts and unlces who are missionaries and cousins who are young Earth creationists. They reject sciences like paleontology, geology, and astronomy as hoaxes because they all point to an Earth much older than their church tells them. Of course, they "know" evolution is wrong, though they have a weak grasp on what it actually is.
The question: how can the deeply religious be convinced (or reassured) that accepting what science teaches does not require rejecting their faith?
Part B: have you ever convinced someone to change their mind about accepting those sciences?
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
Dr. Bakker, what is the current status of the digging going on in southern Utah...do you expect to see new species found soon, or are they finding mostly duplicates of known species? Specifically, I'm really interested in the ceratopsids. I am fascinated by weird ones like Medusaceratops, and so I'm wondering if you think that they will find additional new specimens similar or even weirder than that one. Also, tell the naming committee to keep naming dinosaurs with very cool names. Medusaceratops is fantastic. Maybe...Shoggotheratops or Balrogeratops for the next one? Just a suggestion.
Christianity is very species centric. That is, according to Christian beliefs humans are allegedly the center of the universe and a focus of God's concern. With the modern realization that humans and the earth are not at the center of anything how does a Christian handle the obvious species centricity of Christianity.
We don't know of any other sentient species yet. If we meet some, we might find that God had a very different way of revealing himself and interacting with them. Read Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra for a Science Fiction take on this idea. Keep in mind that they were written a long time ago, so their portrayals of Mars and Venus, the planets they are supposed to take place on don't match what we know now very well.
Even today, we have people like you who cannot come up with simple logical answers to your questions.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
I can assure you, that the "God" of the Hebrew Bible, is not one used to explain nature. The Hebrew Deity was about how to live life "correctly" and has a prescription about that. I can understand the modern rejection of those principles as being archaic, but the result is, IMHO, more uncivilized behavior. Action without consequences are impossible, yet that tends to be the modern Atheist's goal.
Here is but one example: "I want to fuck all the time, but don't want to deal with pregnancy". The consequences are wraped up in terms like "fetus" and "tissue" and discarded to the trashheap. Regardless of your views, I think that anytime one can dehumanize the smallest among us, we all lose. To me, it is no different than saying "Jews are monkeys" and "Blacks are Niggers" or terms like "faggot", "Dweeb", "Retard" any other term of dehumization we use.
Words have power that science can't measure.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Religion is defined as the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods.
I can quote a few religious beliefs where the idea of a superhuman controlling power is absent or not required. Feel free to find a few as a homework for your own elucidation... or not, if you are the type to be content with spewing nonsense in the hopes of sounding avant garde.
Since there is no evidence gods exist and science is based on fact and evidence religion,
I like how you take the science banner while at the same time relying on a argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy (quoted in bold above).
by default, is bullshit and is therefore incompatible with religion.
That's an invective, not an argument. The nuisance is missed to most. I'm not saying whether you are right or wrong, but any truth values on your propositions are merely coincidental, and nothing to do with your actual understanding and application of the scientific method and the construction of logically-sound arguments.
Hello again Dr. Bakker,
What do you make of efforts by Jack Horner and others to 'reverse-evolve' a dinosaur from chicken embryos?
Thanks -
The funny part is how neatly this falls into "more of the same." If you read the biblical narrative of Jesus, the Pharisees and Sadducees would do similar tactics, asking no win trap questions, which Jesus was able to intellectually smack them down. You come to know the difference in people who are curious and seek knowledge, and those who have hate in their heart and seek to tear down. I'm sure Dr Bakker is content to speak to those free thinkers whose narrow world view isn't threatened by his views, nor will anyone on Slashdot be so clever as to trip him up in ways he has not already considered far more than they.
Will Pterosaurs ever be reclassified as Dinosaurs? They seem to far better fit as dinosaurs than reptiles yet a 100+ year classification seems to still lock them into being reptiles. The main argument I've heard was concerning hip rotation but that seems to be disputed. Is it really dogma keeping Pterosaurs classified as reptiles?
Science is the process of understanding, or at least generating workable knowledge, through observation, theorizing, and testing. The process of science is antithetical to faith since it requires that you test everything.
No. The scientific method was established in the west by medieval bishops. In more recent times the Catholic church has stated that scientific discoveries are not in conflict with faith, this includes evolution. Various other Christian churches hold similar beliefs. Basically that faith addresses areas that are beyond human observation and discovery, the intentions and expectations of God.
So, I see you are coming at the issue with an open mind...
I think that the thing that bothers me about those who see Science (capitalized for a reason) as the only means of knowing things is the same thing that bothers me about young Earth creationists: the utter lack of humility.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Here's the thing about evidence and verifiability. Science is a framework which has proven extremely useful, for good reason. It distills out a sort of best practices for a kind of practical philosophy of approach that results in its practitioners being able to make more effective predictions about the universe around them. I would hope anyone interested in truth of any sort is keenly attentive to the benefits of exploring the world scientifically.
But the problem is that this is not enough. We are forced to live in all the dimensions of life, constantly, many of which are partly or entirely made up of decisions and beliefs (or at least tentative beliefs) for which we have no choice but to rely on unfalsifiable, unprovable hypotheses. I would venture to propose that most of our everyday decisions about how to live our lives, what to pursue, how to interact with other people, what is worth spending a life on, what is good and what is bad...basically our entire set of operating assumptions about the meaning of our lives is untestable, because we can't step outside of those lives, we can't see them from an objective point of view, we can't repeat conditions, we don't live consistently enough to isolate any of the possibilities as we'd have to do in order to measure things in a controlled test, and we won't be around in the end to see whether we were right (nor is there is any obvious way of measuring this even from the perspective of the "end of the story"). Plus, well, once we're dead, the outcome is not helpful, so we all live according to our best estimation of what life is about.
This doesn't by any means demonstrate that a particular faith of any sort has a basis in truth. The point is that there is no choice but to live by faith, because the knowledge we have about the whole deal, or even that we can possibly acquire in time to make any difference, is miniscule. The faith we're holding to might not be religious or deistic in any way, but no matter who we are, we're living according to some operating assumptions, and putting enough faith in them to make decisions based upon them, letting our lives slip away having applied them irrevocably to one or another path. And so, knowing that there is utterly no way to apply the framework of science to all of the matters concerning us, we have no choice but to use other methods of exploration as well, in order to build anywhere near complete enough a working model of how things are. Philosophy, theology, these are just that sort of exploration: ways of searching for understanding in the midst of this situation. One can't live without them, live "only by science", any more than one can make a successful and worthwhile journey by car taking into account only those truths that are clearly visible within the small bit of road directly illuminated by one's headlights.
(Even worse would be to insist that only the things that can be illuminated by headlights exist at all. Occam's Razor often gets shoved into the "science vs. religion" debates in a way that doesn't work. It's a very useful expression of the mentality one uses within science because it creates methodical practice out of what could be chaos. What it is not is any kind of proof of how things actually are. It is helpful to investigation to avoid multiplying entities unnecessarily. But is it true that there are no entities beyond those which are required to explain the currently visible portion of a phenomenon? We can't actually make that kind of positive assertion without resorting to exactly the kind of unfalsifiable truth claim that science supposedly doesn't care much for.)
But interesting you should mention critical peer review- in this area you'll not find theology wanting, at least not when it comes to trying. There is not a doctrine out there that isn't dissected, taken apart, put back together every which way, and run through the rigorous gauntlet of critical review, in many cases hundreds or thousands of years of such review. Of course, the whole thing lacking some of wh
The Catechism you reference explicitly says that genesis uses figurative language. The difference between science and faith seems to only be with respect to a "soul" not the material body.
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"390 The account of the fall in Genesis uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents."
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P1C.HTM
"Theistic evolution or evolutionary creation is a concept that asserts that classical religious teachings about God are compatible with the modern scientific understanding about biological evolution. In short, theistic evolutionists believe that there is a God, that God is the creator of the material universe and (by consequence) all life within, and that biological evolution is simply a natural process within that creation. Evolution, according to this view, is simply a tool that God employed to develop human life.
Papal pronouncements, along with commentaries by cardinals, indicate that the Church is aware of the general findings of scientists on the gradual appearance of life. Indeed, Belgian priest Georges Lemaître, astronomer and physics professor at the Catholic University of Louvain, was the first to propose the theory of expansion of the universe, often incorrectly credited to Edwin Hubble. Under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the International Theological Commission published a paper accepting the big bang of 15 billion years ago and the evolution of all life including humans from the microorganisms that formed approximately 4 billion years ago. The Vatican has no official teaching on this matter except for the special creation of the human soul"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution