Marisa Bowe and Ken Kurson
God in the News
By Marisa Bowe
Posted Tuesday, June 27, 2000, at 12:05 PM ETGood morning, Ken. I'm sorry I'm late today. When I went out to move my car, I discovered that another vehicle had sheared off my taillight and part of my bumper. The culprit was a New York City Sanitation truck.
Of course, there is massive text everywhere today about the Big Tech News: genome mapping. "We have caught the first glimpses of our instruction book, previously known only to God," the New York Times quotes Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute as saying. It's interesting how these major scientific discoveries by humans always evoke the God comments. Scientists are naturally awed when they glimpse big chunks of the order of things. I share that, but I'm also terrified when I reflect on the disorder of things.
For example, the other God-invoking story that attracted my interest was the cover story of the New York Post, "Volpe Finds God." Justin Volpe is the ex-cop who sodomized Abner Louima with a toilet plunger and was sentenced to 30 years last December. He basically went nuts in prison--who wouldn't?--became extremely depressed, was waking up screaming and becoming suicidal. Now he has found religion via the help of a black female Harlem preacher, the Reverend Betty Neal.
Is Volpe just glomming onto a distracting painkiller for the moment? People in terrible situations, their minds spinning a relentless reel of self-condemnation, fear, and dread, are naturally drawn to the nice and hopeful-sounding promises of religion. It can be just a palliative. But for many, it's a sort of psychic technology that helps them deal with evil, despair, and redemption. Where is the map of that? Does Rev. Betty Neal have some kind of access to it? Is it different from the map of the brain and chemicals like serotonin? Will the Genome Project help anybody get a handle on that stuff?
God in the News
By Marisa Bowe
Posted Tuesday, June 27, 2000, at 12:05 PM ETMarisa Bowe is the editor-in-chief of Word, the executive producer of Sissyfight.com, and a co-editor of Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs at the Turn of the Millennium (click here to buy it). Ken Kurson is the editor of GreenMagazine.com, writes the "Green" column each month in Esquire, and is the author of The Green Magazine Guide to Personal Finance (click here to buy it). Reader Response from The Fray (to be read after the final entry):
[From the Fray Editor: Ken, Ken you didn't need to mention homosexuality or abortion to encourage controversy--saying there are too many people and they live too long (Tuesday) worked just fine. Fray posters came out in force, bringing with them Spinoza and a 95-year-old grandmother. The post below was titled Don't tell me when to die Mr Kurson:]
What an ugly letter by Mr Kurson! How exactly is the premise that people should live longer demonstrably false? I like the idea of using government money to prolong life (especially my life, it's demonstrably true that my life is cool). We have a right and responsibility to know what makes us tick and we have a right and responsibility to use that knowledge to help people better enjoy their lives. If science produces a way for people to live longer, I will gladly participate. If you don't want to, Mr Kurson, then don't. I'd hate to see you go, but I won't interfere. Just don't go around saying that longer lifespans are demonstrably bad--it might not seem so biting on the abstract level, but it's hurtful to individuals who are dying and would rather live. Whether or not this new knowledge brings us a step closer to godhood remains to be seen. Even if the answer is no, or if the question is irrelevant, it does make me happy to see that we humans are so clever, curious and philosophical that we've finally started to figure ourselves out--if not metaphysically, at least physically.
--Michael Maiello
(To reply, click
here.)
Since when are books not technology [Tuesday's entry]? I suppose Ken's definition of technology is any invention that makes people better off in a way of which he disapproves. But hey, if utter incoherence lets him live more comfortably in his savage little world, more power to him. Just don't make me live in it too.
--Ananda Gupta
(To reply, click
here.)
[This is part of a much longer post, detailing the many ways in which the writer disapproved of Mr Kurson's views and disliked the choice of Breakfast Table participants.]
(6/29)
What was the last big discovery that had so many scientists crowing and so many empty talking heads yelping at some utopian moon [genome project, Tuesday]? Splitting the atom, yes? After so many decades, what wonderful benefits has that achievement provided to us? Good lord, I can't think of any. (Don't give me any jive about radiation therapy.) Is there no one who can analyze this situation in a realistic way without sentimentalizing about God or waxing rhapsodic about science? Give us a damn break. You're not going to see any benefits derived from geeks in labcoats mucking around with genes.
--tek
(To reply, click
here.)
To tek: Humanity is richer, healthier, and happier today than ever before, largely because of scientific and technological advance. Please spare us the self-indulgent crap about lab-coated guys ruining life. In fact, it's been the damn artsy types (Hitler, Stalin, Mao--all prided themselves on their artistic abilities, none was a scientific or technical guy) who have been the architects of the last century's horrors. Where's the responsibility for that?
--A.G.Android
(To reply, click
here.)
[And this argument ran and ran--"had smallpox lately tek?" "No, how about AIDS?" "I feel quite the moron responding" "Trust your feelings".]
There's a huge amount of information in life other than DNA. Protein folding is one of the less complex and difficult. This is why Marisa Bowes is considering things that couldn't possibly be explained by DNA. I'm sure it's well for her to ask, but it's clear that the brain that questions the genetic code is extremely more complex than is the DNA that pointed it in the right direction.
What happens in the brain has crucial roots in DNA, yet its complexity and operation are far more ordered by the brain's environment, inside and outside of the body, than it is by DNA. You don't ask of anything as complex as a thought what its relation is to DNA without severe reductionism. The sooner the media learn something of the complexity of everything, the sooner we'll learn something of the complexity of what they usually report on. They've moved in that direction in the last 10 or 20 years. They still have a long way to go. One hopes the genome sequencing will take the media that way.
--Glen Davidson
(To reply, click
here.)
[Ms Bowe responded to this post in her second Tuesday entry.]
(6/27)
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Reader Response from The Fray (to be read after the final entry):
[From the Fray Editor: Ken, Ken you didn't need to mention homosexuality or abortion to encourage controversy--saying there are too many people and they live too long (Tuesday) worked just fine. Fray posters came out in force, bringing with them Spinoza and a 95-year-old grandmother. The post below was titled Don't tell me when to die Mr Kurson:]
What an ugly letter by Mr Kurson! How exactly is the premise that people should live longer demonstrably false? I like the idea of using government money to prolong life (especially my life, it's demonstrably true that my life is cool). We have a right and responsibility to know what makes us tick and we have a right and responsibility to use that knowledge to help people better enjoy their lives. If science produces a way for people to live longer, I will gladly participate. If you don't want to, Mr Kurson, then don't. I'd hate to see you go, but I won't interfere. Just don't go around saying that longer lifespans are demonstrably bad--it might not seem so biting on the abstract level, but it's hurtful to individuals who are dying and would rather live. Whether or not this new knowledge brings us a step closer to godhood remains to be seen. Even if the answer is no, or if the question is irrelevant, it does make me happy to see that we humans are so clever, curious and philosophical that we've finally started to figure ourselves out--if not metaphysically, at least physically.
--Michael Maiello
(To reply, click here.)
Since when are books not technology [Tuesday's entry]? I suppose Ken's definition of technology is any invention that makes people better off in a way of which he disapproves. But hey, if utter incoherence lets him live more comfortably in his savage little world, more power to him. Just don't make me live in it too.
--Ananda Gupta
(To reply, click here.)
[This is part of a much longer post, detailing the many ways in which the writer disapproved of Mr Kurson's views and disliked the choice of Breakfast Table participants.]
(6/29)
What was the last big discovery that had so many scientists crowing and so many empty talking heads yelping at some utopian moon [genome project, Tuesday]? Splitting the atom, yes? After so many decades, what wonderful benefits has that achievement provided to us? Good lord, I can't think of any. (Don't give me any jive about radiation therapy.) Is there no one who can analyze this situation in a realistic way without sentimentalizing about God or waxing rhapsodic about science? Give us a damn break. You're not going to see any benefits derived from geeks in labcoats mucking around with genes.
--tek
(To reply, click here.)
To tek: Humanity is richer, healthier, and happier today than ever before, largely because of scientific and technological advance. Please spare us the self-indulgent crap about lab-coated guys ruining life. In fact, it's been the damn artsy types (Hitler, Stalin, Mao--all prided themselves on their artistic abilities, none was a scientific or technical guy) who have been the architects of the last century's horrors. Where's the responsibility for that?
--A.G.Android
(To reply, click here.)
[And this argument ran and ran--"had smallpox lately tek?" "No, how about AIDS?" "I feel quite the moron responding" "Trust your feelings".]
There's a huge amount of information in life other than DNA. Protein folding is one of the less complex and difficult. This is why Marisa Bowes is considering things that couldn't possibly be explained by DNA. I'm sure it's well for her to ask, but it's clear that the brain that questions the genetic code is extremely more complex than is the DNA that pointed it in the right direction.
What happens in the brain has crucial roots in DNA, yet its complexity and operation are far more ordered by the brain's environment, inside and outside of the body, than it is by DNA. You don't ask of anything as complex as a thought what its relation is to DNA without severe reductionism. The sooner the media learn something of the complexity of everything, the sooner we'll learn something of the complexity of what they usually report on. They've moved in that direction in the last 10 or 20 years. They still have a long way to go. One hopes the genome sequencing will take the media that way.
--Glen Davidson
(To reply, click here.)
[Ms Bowe responded to this post in her second Tuesday entry.]
(6/27)