Bill Nye is enjoying a cultural rebirth on the scale of Red Scare-paranoia or feistier-than-meets-the-eye Golden Girl Betty White. And, what’s more, Nye recently took home the 2010 Humanist of the Year Award, granted to him by the American Humanist Association, for (among other things) educating children about dinosaurs, genetically modified food, and quicksand. It’s no wonder—being The Science Guy and all—that Nye is one of the world’s most outspoken, bow tie-clad boosters of the pursuit of knowledge.

In the acceptance speech for his Humanist award (reprinted in the November-December issue of The Humanist), Nye talks about how, when he was young, scientists lacked a solid explanation for the disappearance of the dinosaurs. His curiosity about their abrupt extinction was his scientific awakening, and he’s been questioning the way things work ever since:

I often wonder what else it is that we’re just completely missing that will integrate all sorts of our current scientific ideas. But we don’t have to know the whole answer right now. What I like to call the PB&J—the passion, beauty, and joy—is in the pursuit of it, right? That’s what we love about science. It is, absolutely, to me, the best idea humans have had. Science. I’ll even say science is the best idea we’ve had so far. It could change, right? Got a better idea? Bring it on.

“But then, my friends, with our brains we can imagine all of this,” concluded Nye. “It is with our brains that we can know our place in the universe. We can know our place in space, and that does not suck. That is worthy of respect. That is what’s so great. That is what’s so wonderful about humans.”

Unflappable faith in Science-as-an-institution, like Nye’s, is the topic Tikkun recently devoted an entire issue of its magazine to criticizing. "Scientism is the belief that nothing is real and nothing can be known in the world except that which can be observed and measured," writes Tikkun’s editor Michael Lerner in his essay “A Spiritual Approach to Evolution.”

A person who adopts a scientistic perspective believes that science can in principle answer every question that can be answered. Any claim about the world that cannot be validated, at least in principle, or at least falsified on the basis of empirical data or measurement is dismissed as meaningless.

Although he generally supports science, Lerner takes issue with scientism for its wholesale, potentially hypocritical dismissal of spiritual interpretations of the Universe’s inner-workings. Scientism, Lerner writes,

is a belief system that has no more scientific foundation than any other religious system. Consider its central religious belief: “That which is real and can be known is that which can be verified or falsified by empirical observation.” The claim sounds tough-minded and rational, but what scientific experiment could you perform to prove that it is either true or false? The fact is that there is no such test. By its own criterion, scientism is as meaningless as any other metaphysical claim.

The November-December issue of Tikkun has many other thought-provoking essays on the uncomfortable intersection of spirituality and science.

Sources: The Humanist, Tikkun 

Image by lifescript , licensed under Creative Commons . 

Every week we share links to stories, articles, and other interesting things we’ve come across online for you to enjoy over the weekend. It’s the utne.com crockpot; we add the ingredients for a great online meal. Enjoy!  

Fun! Get your own miniature copy of Patrick Somerville’s “The Universe in Miniature in Miniature” from featherproof books.

Do you know what a mosquito heart looks like? How about a rat’s retina? There are some truly amazing photos from the winner’s of this year’s Nikon Small World Competition that will blow your mind.

Conservationists have found a new species of monkey that sneezes when it rains, due to its upturned nostrils. These monkeys apparently sit with their heads between their knees when it rains. Awwwwwww.

Check out The Free Verse Project: Picture a Poem.

Conservatives for public transit? We know it sounds as dissonant as liberals for Sarah Palin, but Grist has a provocative interview with the head of a conservative pro-transit group who says better mass transportation—especially rail—is a matter of national security, wise government spending, and racial norms. (Yes, he touches that third rail.)

The New York Observer educated us about Longreads, an aggregator that brings long-form journalism back to into the lives of commuters who read on mobile devices and use applications like Instapaper. Nate Freeman explains: “Each piece on the Longreads site indicates the number of words and, using the average reading speed, the approximate amount of time it will take to read. For instance, the Vanity Fair piece that went up today about House Republican leader John Boehner contains 4220 words, and will take 17 minutes to read. Sounds like our daily commute on the F train! Perfect!”

Cover Spy secretly tracks down what people are reading in public.

What if they held a meeting to discuss the extinction of many animal species, and no one paid much attention? That unfortunately is what’s happening at the current Convention on Biological Diversity in Japan, which is not registering high on the U.S. mass media radar but whose agenda ought to matter to anyone concerned with the fate of species—our own included. Mongabay has a nice rundown of a massive new study being released at the conference, while E publishes a pithy commentary on what’s at stake, and Boing Boingexplains the meeting using Star Wars references for the sci-geek crowd.

Bill Nye (you know, the science guy) is the recipient of the 2010 Humanist of the Year Award, and The Humanist has adapted parts of his awesome acceptance speech.

This Magazine explores the consequences of Canada slamming the door on Mexico’s drug-war refugees.

Brian Trent is fed up with the moon landing conspiracy theorists, Obama birth certificate deniers, and natural selection naysayers. In his article appearing in the July issue of The Humanist, Trent laments how Americans “have come to be belief’s poster children. Reactionary, emotional, and almost blissfully willing to ignore facts if they contradict a cemented position.”

According to Trent, we have evolved (or devolved, I guess) into a “culture that thrives on the false principle that ‘all opinions are equal,’ even those without a shred of factual data, documentation, or reasoned methodology.”

The oftentimes scathing tone of the article exemplifies the frustration and astonishment many people experience when faced with certain demoralizing statistics, including that “20 percent of the American people believe NASA faked the Apollo moon landings” and “half of the population believes the world was made in six days.”

Lumping creationists in with members of the 9-11 “Truth Movement” is certainly a bold move, and one that some religious individuals would undoubtedly object to, but Trent tackles this thorny issue with dexterity:

There are many rational people who are highly religious; the two positions need not be in strict opposition. Only when religious sensibilities derail rational decision-making does it become the problem we’re outlining here. Believing that long ago God ordered a father to sacrifice his son is one thing. Believing that God is commanding you right now to kill your son warrants a phone call to the police.

Do I buy Trent’s diagnosis of our national “addiction”? I’m not really sure. When religion is brought into any argument, I am reluctant to touch it with a 50-foot pole, which is a concern that, according to this Utne blog post, I shouldn’t have. You’ll just have to read it and decide for yourself.

Source: The Humanist 

Photo Credit: Image courtesy of Lisa Zangerl.