Morals without God?

Emory psychologist Frans de Waal writes an opinion piece in the New York Times:

I was born in Den Bosch, the city after which Hieronymus Bosch named himself. This obviously does not make me an expert on the Dutch painter, but having grown up with his statue on the market square, I have always been fond of his imagery, his symbolism, and how it relates to humanity’s place in the universe. This remains relevant today since Bosch depicts a society under a waning influence of God. His famous triptych with naked figures frolicking around, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” seems a tribute to paradisiacal innocence. The tableau is far too happy and relaxed to fit the interpretation of depravity and sin advanced by puritan experts. It represents humanity free from guilt and shame either before the Fall or without any Fall at all.
Detail from "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch. The painting combines references from religion, nature and science. Source: Wikipedia Commons.

For a primatologist, like myself, the nudity, references to sex and fertility, the plentiful birds and fruits and the moving about in groups are thoroughly familiar and hardly require a religious or moral interpretation. Bosch seems to have depicted humanity in its natural state, while reserving his moralistic outlook for the right-hand panel of the triptych in which he punishes — not the frolickers from the middle panel — but monks, nuns, gluttons, gamblers, warriors, and drunkards.

Five centuries later, we remain embroiled in debates about the role of religion in society. As in Bosch’s days, the central theme is morality. Can we envision a world without God? Would this world be good? Don’t think for one moment that the current battle lines between biology and fundamentalist Christianity turn around evidence. One has to be pretty immune to data to doubt evolution, which is why books and documentaries aimed at convincing the skeptics are a waste of effort. They are helpful for those prepared to listen, but fail to reach their target audience. The debate is less about the truth than about how to handle it. For those who believe that morality comes straight from God the creator, acceptance of evolution would open a moral abyss.

Read the whole article in the New York Times.

Related:
The biology of shared emotion
Teaching evolution enters a new era
A new twist on an ancient story
Icons of evolution

The quest for inner peace and happiness

Depression is the most common mental disorder in the world. In addition to emotional suffering, it takes a terrible physical toll. “Over time, depression damages the heart and sets people up to get diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease,” says Charles Raison, clinical director of the Emory Mind-Body Program.

Emory researchers are looking for ways to treat depression without medication – including the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of compassion meditation. An initial study found that Emory students who regularly practiced compassion meditation had a significant reduction in stress and physical responses to stress. The research is now expanding, to explore whether a range of meditative practices have effects on the body and the brain that would be protective not just for depression, but other illnesses as well.

On Monday, Oct. 18, the Dalai Lama will lead a “Compassion Meditation Conference” at Emory, bringing together meditation experts and neuroscientists for a public discussion on the latest research into empathy, compassion and meditation.

So if you are not depressed, are you happy? What exactly is happiness? One way to explore the meaning of this elusive state of being is through the ancient traditions of the world’s major religions.

Happiness is something that people tend to take for granted, says Scott Kugle, an Emory expert on Islam. “But very often,” he adds, “you lose sight of the deeper psychological or devotional insights that are required to get to a point of deep happiness.”

On Sunday, October 17, the Dalai Lama will head an “Interfaith Summit on Happiness.” Broadcast journalist Krista Tippett will moderate the discussion, also including representatives of Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths.

Related:
The pursuit of happiness
Breathe in, breathe out, be happy
Richard Gere on Emory, Tibet and shyness
Monks + scientists = a new body of thought

Monks + scientists = A new body of thought

When you’re talking about cells, are you referring to their minds or their bodies?

The question from a Tibetan translator temporarily stumped Emory biologist Arri Eisen. In Tibetan, every organism has a mind and a body, and you have to be speaking about one or the other, explained Geshe Dadul Namgyal, a member of the team translating Western scientific concepts into the Tibetan language.

“I told him that Westerners don’t usually think of cells as having a mind,” Eisen recalls.

These are the sorts of conversations sparked by a groundbreaking program to bring the best of Western science to Tibetan monastics, and the insights of Buddhist meditative practices to Western scientists.

Launched in 2006, the program recently became officially known as the Robert A. Paul Emory Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI). It was the vision of Paul, the former dean of Emory College, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama that led to the formation of the Emory Tibet Partnership and the ETSI.

“It’s the way globalization should happen – taking the best of different traditions and creating something new,” says Eisen, one of many Emory science faculty who are involved with developing the ETSI.
Geshe Lhakdor, director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, looks at one of the early textbooks created for the program. Photo by Kay Hinton.

“The enthusiasm and the commitment of the science faculty has been a huge gift,” says Geshe Lobsang Negi, co-director of the ETSI.

“It’s amazing how smoothly the program has developed,” Negi says. “The pieces keep coming together as we need them.”

Emory faculty are developing special science curricula for the monastics, and teaching it every summer at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamsala, India, the seat of the Tibetan community in exile. The faculty are working in conjunction with three Tibetan translators based at Emory, and five more at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala.

Prototype materials were created in English covering three areas: physics, neuroscience and biology and the life sciences. Work is under way to refine the curricula, based on feedback from faculty and the monastics as the program progresses. The long-term goal is to develop and translate five primers for each of these three areas, and eventually integrate the five-year science education program into Tibetan monasteries and nunneries throughout India. (The completed texts for the first-year primers for neuroscience and for biology and the life sciences were recently sent to the printers.)

Instruction of the first cohort of 30 monastics began in 2008. Six monks from this cohort are on the Emory campus this fall, to sharpen their English skills while gaining more exposure to Western-style science.

“We want to train monastics and other science educators in India to teach the curriculum themselves, so that the program becomes rooted in the community and doesn’t disappear,” Eisen says.

Each year, ETSI keeps expanding its reach. Its student body now includes 90 monks and nuns from 19 different monastic institutions.

“When ETSI first began, there was quite a bit of skepticism in the monastic community about the idea,” Negi says. “Now we’re seeing a 180 degree shift in that attitude. There is huge interest and enthusiasm among the major monasteries for making Western science part of their education.”

Related:
Where science meets spirituality
Tibetan monks contemplate science
The quest for inner peace and happiness

Wasps add buzz to National Fossil Day

A chunk of limestone studded with fossils of wasp cocoons. Photo by Anthony Martin.

It’s National Fossil Day on Wednesday, October 13, and we can’t resist getting in at least one good dig: Why are so many paleontologists focused on the body fossils of dinosaurs? After all, anyone can stumble across a dinosaur bone. But it takes a special eye to hone in on prehistoric wasp cocoons.

Emory paleontologist Anthony Martin has just published the first study linking wasps and dinosaur nests, in the journal Historical Biology. It finds that wasps were nesting with dinosaurs 75 million years ago in the Two Medicine Formation of northwestern Montana.

“Insects reproduce quickly, and they’re extremely sensitive to their environments, so they can tell us a lot about prehistoric conditions,” says Martin, a leading expert in trace fossils.

Co-author David Varricchio, a dinosaur expert from Montana State University, had been studying dinosaur nests in a limestone outcrop at the site, and called in Martin to help analyze fossils that resembled insect pupae. They correlated the size, shape and weave-like impressions on the surface of the fossils with those of modern-day wasp cocoons. They also found the same prehistoric and modern-day correlations in the traces of prehistoric insect burrows and brooding chambers within the assemblage of dinosaur nests.

The Two Medicine Formation consists mostly of sandstone and limestone, deposited by rivers and deltas during the Late Cretaceous. The area is known for its dinosaur eggs and the earthen, ring-shaped remnants of the ground nests that held them.

The solitary wasps that were burrowing amid the dinosaur nests can provide clues about the plants that may have been flowering in the area and the climate. “Modern insects that use soil for reproduction tend to be relatively picky about where they reproduce,” Martin says. “Bees and wasps like really well-drained soils, for instance, and prefer semi-arid conditions.”
Martin stands by a section of the outcrop containing the nests of dinosaurs and prehistoric wasps. Photo by Ashley Proust.

The fossil cocoons litter the ground around the dinosaur-nesting site. “You can actually use the cocoons as prospector tools if you are looking for dinosaur nests,” Martin says.

Now that you know what to look for, click here for a bonus video on how to sustainably store your fossilized wasp cocoons, should you come across any.

Trace fossils include cocoons, tracks, trails, burrows, nests and dung. It’s not the glamorous branch of paleontology, and yet trace fossils often tell stories that body fossils cannot. For instance, Martin recently determined the swimming pattern of a prehistoric fish in a lake that disappeared millions of years ago.

Here’s a trace fossil quiz: What prehistoric animal left the impression in the rock in the photo at left? Look closely at the dark outline and see if you can make out a familiar creature.

If you’re stumped, click here for the answer.

Photo by Erich Fitzgerald.

Related:
Dinosaur burrows reveal clues to climate change

The monarch butterfly's medicine kit

The journal Ecology Letters just published findings by Emory biologists that monarch butterflies use medication to cure themselves and their offspring of disease.

So what’s in a monarch’s medicine kit? Milkweed – but only a particular species. Experiments show that egg-laying monarchs that are infected with a parasite choose plants that have a medicinal benefit for their caterpillars.

“We believe that our experiments provide the best evidence to date that animals use medication,” says evolutionary biologist Jaap de Roode, who led the research.

Watch the video to learn more, and get a tour of one of the few labs in the world studying monarch butterflies.

Photo at left of a monarch laying her eggs by Jaap de Roode.

Related:
Do monarch butterflies use drugs?
What aphids can teach us about immunity