Images of Jesus flitted across the screen as speakers prepared
for the debate sponsored by the Veritas Forum on Wednesday night
““ a national student organization that travels to
universities to discuss issues relating to religion.
The Ackerman Grand Ballroom nearly was filled to capacity to
watch Jesus as a surfer in a loin cloth, Jesus with dreadlocks and
Jesus promoting vegetarianism.
The debate discussing questions of free will and the application
of science to the spiritual realm was introduced by Dallas Willard,
a professor of philosophy at USC.
“Truth is where what you are thinking of is as you think
it is,” he said.
Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptic Magazine, said science can
seek to explain all phenomena.
“Miracles are not a part of science. It’s not what
we do,” Shermer said.
He showed images of what people considered to be spiritual
phenomena but what he saw as having scientific explanations.
In 1996 an imprint of the image of the Virgin Mary was
reportedly witnessed on the window of a bank in Florida. Shermer
saw this not as a spiritual sign, as some did, but as the result of
palm trees’ shading portions of the window, causing water
residue from the sprinklers to build up into the image.
“When people say science has nothing to say about God
“¦ that only applies to a God that doesn’t do anything,
a God that’s invisible, immaterial,” he said.
“If God does something in the world, then there must be
some way to measure it. And if it’s measurable, then
it’s a part of science,” Shermer said.
Shermer believes humans don’t possess a genuine free will
because their actions are determined by cause-and-effect
relationships in the universe.
“We feel free, but it’s a pseudo-free will.
It’s not a real free will because there is no little person
inside the head making decisions for you that isn’t affected
by all the causal variables in the world,” he said.
As Shermer’s debate opponent, Jeffrey Schwartz, a
professor of psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine,
doesn’t believe people’s actions are predetermined.
“In the new physics, in quantum physics, the focus of
attention can make the brain machinery work differently by holding
a circuit in place,” Schwartz said.
The Quantum Zeno Effect, what Schwartz refers to as the
“new physics,” states that with the focus of attention,
brain circuitry can be held in place so that one’s attention
won’t be influenced by other thoughts.
This allows people who have obsessive compulsive disorder to
focus on new activity and hold a “healthy” circuit in
place, which diminishes obsessive compulsive thoughts, said
Schwartz.
“If all there is in the world is the brain, just this
piece of complicated Jell-O in your head “¦ then talking about
making an effort or having willful action doesn’t make
sense,” he said.
“There’s no mind. There’s no will. It’s
all an illusion,” he added.
Whereas Shermer doesn’t think the decisions one
makes are independent of what was determined to happen,
Schwartz believes that with the use of one’s mind the brain
can be rewired to do as one wishes.
The debate that followed, “Detecting Design in
Biology,” focused on whether intelligent design can be
observed by science.
“For example, a cabbage plant is pretty intricately
designed, but actually cabbage plants come from other cabbage
plants, at least not immediately from an intelligent
designer,” Willard said.