Robert Jastrow, one of the noted astronomers of our time and, as it happens, a former professor of mine at Dartmouth, died earlier this year. This is my overdue tribute to his life and work.

Jastrow was one of the great popularizers of science. One of his books, Red Giants and White Dwarfs, became a national bestseller and conveyed to a whole generation of Americans the excitment and mystery of space exploration. When American astronauts landed on the moon, Jastrow provided expert commentary for the TV networks covering the event.

But Jastrow never permitted popularization to get in the way of serious professional accomplishment. After getting his doctorate in physics from Columbia, he became head of the theoretical divison at NASA. Later he was appointed head of the Goddard Space Institute. In 1992 he became chairman of Mount Wilson Observatory in California.

In addition to medals for scientific achivement, Jastrow also won acclaim as a gifted teacher. At Dartmouth, I always found him friendly and accessible. Later our paths crossed because Jastrow became an energetic and resourceful defender of President Reagan's strategic missile defense initiative, dubbed by its critics as "Star Wars."

While critics like physicist Hans Bethe said Star Wars would never work, the Russians agreed with Jastrow that it would, and they desperately sought to outlaw it. (Obviously if the Russians felt it was a boondoggle they would have supported it, since this would be a great way to waste America's defense budget.) In his last years Jastrow became increasingly skeptical of claims that global warming is destroying the planet. He saw global warming as an effort to exploit science for ideological ends.

One of Jastrow's gems is a little book called God and the Astronomers in which Jastrow, although himself an agnostic, made a startling argument. He argued that "the astronomical evience leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world." Jastrow not only documents his claim but shows why leading scientists including Einstein resisted the new discoveries, because they threatened the dogma that scientific laws enjoy eternal validity. Jastrow showed that in reality the laws of physics themselves came into existence with the Big Bang; beyond or apart from our universe, there are no such laws.

Jastrow's story reads like a detective novel, with the only difference that the facts he recounts are true. And here is his stunning conclusion: "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

The recent Pew Forum study on religion, widely reported in the media, shows that the vast majority of Americans remains religious: 92 percent believe in God. This percentage has remained relatively stable for more than half a century.

Atheists remain a tiny proportion of the population with some interesting anomalies: 21 percent of self-identified atheists say they believe in God, with nearly 10 percent of them "absolutely sure" of it. What this means is that 21 percent of self-described atheists are highly confused and 10 percent are certified nut-cases.

What got the most attention, however, was Pew's discovery that a majority of religious Americans believe that other religions make valid claims about God and can lead to heaven. Around 80 percent of Catholics, Protestants and Jews, as well as 55 percent of Muslims, reject the idea that their religion is the only way.

These findings, however, hardly suggest that pluralism has overtaken truth as the defining feature of American religion. First of all, Christianity is the only religion to hold another religion to be wholly true. That religion is Judaism. Second, Catholics and Protestants have become increasingly convinced that it is fidelity to creedal Christianity--and not the denominational differences of past centuries--that is decisive for salvation. Finally many people don't realize that just as Christianity sees itself as succeeding and incorporating Judaism, so Islam sees itself as coming after and incorporating both Judaism and Christianity. Consequently I'm not surprised that most Muslims view Jews and Christians as fellow monotheists rather than hell-bound infidels.

Soon my Orange County debate with atheist Christopher Hitchens and Jewish radio host Dennis Prager will be up on the web and I'll link to it. The debate, amusingly billed as a Christian-Atheist-Jewish showdown, had some fiery and fascinating exchanges. At one point Hitchens sought to alienate me from the Jews in the audience by asking me if good and decent Jews can go to heaven. I said I believe they can. This is no denial of the central Christian proposition that Christ is the way to salvation. The Bible clearly specifies that there is salvation through Christ for his followers.

But Scripture and Christian teaching leave open the question of what happens to virtuous non-Christians who either lived before Christ or who have not had a chance to accept him. My hope and belief is that God's mercy can extend to them also, as it did to Moses and Abraham and the God-fearing Jews of the Old Testament. If so, they too would be saved through Christ's sacrifice on the cross, even if they did not consciously and explicitly embrace that sacrifice. As for atheists who reject God and affirm with Hitchens that they want nothing to do with heaven, we can be reasonably confident that God will respect their free will and reluctantly grant their wish.

There are two kinds of pluralism: the kind that holds that truth does not matter, and the kind that holds that truth matters greatly but as flawed human beings our reason and experience gives us only limited access to the truth. The first kind of pluralism is deadly for religion, and is typically embraced by flaccid people who are too lazy to think or who have been seduced by postmodernist flimflam. The second kind of pluralism is the shared ground of debate between intelligent believers and unbelievers. The stakes could not be higher.

While seventeen teenage girls in the same Massachusetts high school are awaiting the birth of their babies, everyone wants to know whether or not they made a "pregnancy pact" to conceive within the same year. There were allegations indicating that the girls planned on having, and raising their children together. Even the Mayor of Gloucester got involved with the investigation to put an end to the rumors.

During a press conference today, Mayor Carolyn Kirk stated she is "not able to confirm the existence of the pact." She continues to say, " Any planned oath to become pregnant - there is no evidence."

Who cares whether or not there was a pact? That is the most unimportant element of the story. Those girls are all under 16 years of age, and are already expecting children. There is a significant issue here that has received very little attention.

Gloucester High School reportedly had to cut back on health education spending to meet federally mandated standards such as No Child Left Behind. With little emphasis on sex education, and no contraceptives readily available, it's no surprise that the school, located in a conservative fishing town, has had trouble controlling teen pregnancies for years.

In addition, the nature of the high school simply caters to the needs of pregnant teens. For instance, there is a childcare center provided in Gloucester High for young mothers who wish to complete their high school education. This can be seen as good or bad depending on ones perspective. On one side, it's great that young mothers are given the opportunity to finish school. On the other side, it sends out a message that conceiving a child while in high school is acceptable, and will be supported by the school itself.

It would be foolish to completely blame the high school for the teen pregnancies, although Gloucester High still has some fault. Hollywood definitely could have played a role in this case. For instance, actress Jamie Lynn Spears mentioned she was pregnant at the age of 16, and just delivered her daughter Maddie Brian. News of Spears' pregnancy led to a little criticism, but mostly a lot of positive attention.

"Juno" was entertaining and well written movie about a teenage girl who got pregnant by a first-time sexual encounter. In fact, I will be the first to admit it was my favorite movie of the year. However, I hate to say that it did send out a bad message to young girls who are easily influenced by the media. While some people are able to differentiate reality from a fictional movie, some young people simply are not. It's a sad fact that movies like Juno have to receive flack because of those who can't think straight. But that's just the world we live in.

Hollywood romanticizes pregnancy. Ashley Simpson is back in the media after she announced that she's pregnant, and Paris Hilton keeps talking about how she can't wait to have babies with her boyfriend Benji Madden. But if schools have actual programs to sit young girls down and tell them the truth about how difficult it is to raise children, and how easy it is to prevent unexpected pregnancies, I think it can counter Hollywood pregnancy romanticism. Education is power in every single aspect of life. These girls just need to be aware and educated, and Gloucester High somehow missed the memo.

According to this site linked on BoingBoing, a California Ford dealership ran a radio ad saying they'd just as soon non-Christians not buy cars from them. Here's an excerpt from the transcript:

Did you know that 86% of Americans say they believe in God? Since we all know that 86 out of every 100 of us are Christians, who believe in God, we at Kieffe & Sons Ford wonder why we don't tell the other 14% to sit down and shut up.

Conventional wisdom holds that the human mind is nothing more than the human brain. This belief derives from materialism. By "materialism" I don't mean the mania to shop unceasingly at the mall. Rather, I mean the philosophy that material reality is all that there is. Immaterial or spiritual realities are, in this view, simply epiphenomena of the material world.

We find the materialist view ably expressed in Francis Crick's The Astonishing Hypothesis. What Crick finds astonishing is that our thoughts, emotions and feelings consist entirely in the physiological activity in the circuitry of the brain. Daniel Dennett argues that "mind" is simply a term for what the brain does. And how do we know that the brain and the mind are essentially the same? The best evidence is that when the brain is damaged, the injury affects the mind. Patients whose brains atrophy due to stroke, for instance, lose their ability to distinguish colors or to empathize with others.

But in his book The Spiritual Brain, neuroscientist Mario Beauregard shows why the Crick-Dennett position is based on a fallacy. Yes, the brain is the necessary locus or venue for the mind to operate. It does not follow that the two are the same. Beauregard gives a telling analogy. "Olympic swimming events require an Olympic class swimming pool. But the pool does not create the Olympic events; it makes them feasible at a given location." Far from being identical to the mind, Beauregard argues that the brain "is an organ suitable for connecting the mind to the rest of the universe."

A provocative idea. Beauregard produces several lines of evidence, but there I focus on just one: the placebo effect. The placebo or sugar-pill effect is one of the most widely-attested phenomena in medicine. One medicine journal notes that "the history of medicine is the history of the placebo effect." So powerful is the impact of the sugar pill that today the effectiveness of drugs is measured by the FDA in comparison to the placebo effect.

Yet as Beauregard points out, the placebo effect is an embarassment to the simple-minded conception of the mind as an ephiphenomenon of the brain. The reason is that this effect shows the mind shaping the brain. The mental expectation of being cured leads to an actual alteration in the physical workings of the brain, and the patient experiences a measurable physiological improvement. One doctor who cured a patient through the placebo effect was asked what he gave the patient that produced such an incredible result. His answer? "Hope."

Beauregard also writes about something I didn't know much about: the nocebo effect. "The nocebo effect is the harmful health effect created by a sick person's belief and expectation that a powerful source of harm has been contacted or administered." So if patients are strongly convinced that a particular pill will give them nausea, they frequently become nauseous, even when the pill they have taken is not the one they expected but only a sugar pill.

Materialism is based on the assumption that the only way to alter the mind is to alter the physical operations of the brain. But Beauregard uses the placebo and nocebo effect to show the reverse. The mind can also regulate the operations of the brain. Beauregard writes that he placebo and nocebo effects are not triggered by the sugar pill but rather are "triggered by the patient's mental state. In other words, they depend entirely on the patient's state of belief."

But if minds can control brains, them minds are not the same as brains. This leads to the unavoidable conclusion that there is an aspect of thought and feeling that lies outside the realm of the material. This is what Beauregard calls "the spiritual brain." Atheists too have one, even if they refuse to admit it.

Why are secular liberals so unhappy? This question is provocatively discussed in Arthur Brooks' new book Gross National Happiness. Brooks is a sociologist and statistician at Syracuse University. I am reading his book while vacationing with my lovely wife on the beautiful island of Santorini. So it's natural for me, watching the most beautiful sunsets in the world, martini in hand, to think about the question of happiness.

Brooks' book is full of interesting data. We learn, for instance, that money does buy happiness, but only upto a point. Poor people and poor countries are unhappy, and by the self-description of the people involved. So the movement from grinding poverty to the comfortable middle-class brings a huge gain in happiness. But interestingly economic improvement at this point brings diminishing marginal returns. This is not to say that rich people aren't happier: they are. But not by very much.

Brooks also shows that, in his own words, "people who say they are conservative or very conservative are nearly twice as likely to say they are very happy than are people who call themselves liberal or very liberal. Conservatives are much less likely to say they are dissatisfied with themselves, that they are inclined to feel like a failure, or to be pessimistic about their future." Conservatives' mental health is far better than that of liberals.

Equally fascinating, Brooks notes that "faith is an incredible predictor, and cause, of happiness. Religious people of all faiths are much, much happier on average than secularists." Specifically, 43 percent of those who attend church weekly or more call themselves "very happy," versus 23 percent who attend seldom or never. Observant Jews and Christians are by Brooks' measure the happiest people in America.

So why are secular liberals in general so miserable? I offer two reasons. The first is that liberals are political utopians. They consider human nature to be wonderful, and they expect freedom to be used wonderfully well. So they are always bitterly disappointed when they discover that this is not the case. Conservatives, by contrast, have a dimmer view of human nature. So their expectations are more modest. When things don't turn out half-badly, conservatives are pleasantly surprised. They are happier because it takes less to make them happier.

It's not too hard to figure out why religious people are happier. Belief in God gives people a powerful sense of higher purpose in life. It assures people that the universe is in the benign hands of a omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate higher power. It offers people a code for how to live. It gives us a reason to hope in cosmic justice, which is better than the imperfect justice of our terrestrial world.

By contrast, secular people have little to hope for. They are sure that they came from nowhere--the chance product of random mutation and natural selection--and are going nowhere. They know that terrible things happen, and they don't believe there is any purpose in this. No wonder that secular people have so few children: they have much less reason than religious people to believe in the future.

So why is an atheist like Richard Dawkins so frequently wearing a conspitated scowl? And why am I usually smiling? Some may attribute these differences to our genetic temperaments. Others may put it down to the fact that I live in sunny California, eating healthy nouvelle cuisine and going on walking tours in Santorini. Dawkins, by contrast, lives in dank, rainy England and eats abominable English food. ("May I offer you some more kidney pie, Professor Dawkins? It's somewhat bland, I know, but perhaps it will work as a laxative.")

But Arthur Brooks would probably say that our temperaments are also the consequences of two very different worldviews, one producing the wholesome optimism of What's So Great About Christianity, the other the angry bitterness of The God Delusion. Read Brooks' new book yourself to see if he's right.

Today John McCain finally did what he should have done a long time ago -- he rejected Pastor John Hagee. We celebrate in the video below:




Putting the kidding about "strike back" aside, let me tell you why it's important that McCain denounce Hagee. As I explained later in the show, I don't believe that McCain agrees with Hagee's insane beliefs. But if McCain did not denounce him and he won the presidency, he would feel that he was indebted to Hagee for his endorsement. Hence, he would try to appease this nutjob -- as the Bush administration has been doing with all of these lunatic evangelical ministers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both of whom said the US had 9/11 coming).

A guy like Jeremiah Wright isn't going to influence a thing in the White House if Barack Obama wins. But the Christian Right is different because they are a well-organized political movement. They have real power. This is why the Bush administration had a weekly call with these prominent Christian Right figures and often tweaked their policies to appease them.

The problem isn't that John McCain agrees with Rev. Hagee or Rev. Parsley, it's that he has to try hold on to their political support by giving them something they want. That's what is dangerous.

That's why it's such good news that they are no longer with the campaign, because even if McCain wins now hopefully he won't feel like he owes them anything.

Young Turks on You Tube and Young Turks Headquarters

Atheists seem very eager to claim Einstein for one of their own. Richard Dawkins devotes a whole section to Einstein in The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens' Portable Atheist is peppered with Einstein quotations seemingly rejecting all belief in God. Recently an Einstein letter surfaced which showed the great scientist scorning the idea that the Jews were in any sense God's chosen people.

But all that these quotations prove is that Einstein was not an orthodox believer. He rejected the idea of a personal God "who would directly influence the actions of individuals or would sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation." Einstein also rejeted the immortality of the soul, noting that "one life is enough for me."

At the same time, Walter Isaacson in his celebrated new biography Einstein provides ample evidence that Einstein not only believed in a higher or transcendent power, but also that Einstein despised atheists. Here are some quotations, drawn from Isaacson's book with full documentation, that I offer as a needed counterbalance to the one-sided list provided by Dawkins, Hitchens and the others.

On whether he considered himself religious: "Yes, you could call it that. Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this foce beyond anything we can comprehend is my religion."

On whether he accepted the historical existence of Christ: "Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life."

On whether he considered himself an atheist: "I'm not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what that is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the most intelligent human toward God."

On the nature of God: "That deeply emotional conviction of a presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."

On whether science leads to religion: "Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of nature--a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort."

On how religion motivates scientific inquiry: "The cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research."

On whether science and religion are at odds: "The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

On how he feels about atheist efforts to claim him as an ally: "There are people who say there is no God, but what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views."

On how he regards atheists: "The fanatical atheists...are creatures who cannot her the music of the spheres. I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist. What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos."

John McCain recently received the endorsement of Reverend John Hagee. McCain said he was very proud to get that endorsement and just last week reiterated on ABC that he was glad to have it. Now, look at the unbelievable and hate-filled sermon of Reverend Hagee below:





How do people get away with this kind of perversion of Christianity? At least, I hope it's a perversion. Because if that's what people think Christianity truly stands for, that's very scary. You can watch the longer version of this sermon here to get the full context. Trust me, it doesn't get any better, it only gets worse.

If other Christians don't stand up against people like Hagee, what does that say about Christianity?

And what does it say about John McCain that he is proud to be associated with this guy?

Young Turks on You Tube

So far in his celebrated visit to America, His Holiness has expressed shame and regret for the massive sex abuse scandal and the way it was handled. But he also said it was sort of America's own fault.

According to Breitbart: ...He urged efforts "to address the sin of abuse within the wider context of sexual mores" as well as a reassessment of "the values underpinning society."

"What does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today?" the pontiff said on the first full day of his US visit.

More than four hundred children on the Yearning for Zion compound in Texas were removed by police after a sixteen-year-old girl called a family services hotline and complained of being beaten and raped.

Here's the AP description of the tipster's call: Her husband sexually assaulted her, and when he was angry, he would beat her while other women held her infant, she told a family violence shelter in a series of secret calls that triggered an investigation of the polygamist sect here.

A baby born to a couple in the north of India has two faces as a result of something called craniofacial duplication. Her four eyes, two noses and two mouths all work. AOL News has some AP photos of the girl, Lali.

People in the region have been going on pilgrimages to see the girl, who is now a month old and appears healthy. She's being hailed as a reincarnation of the goddess Durga.

Her parents are saying she's just like any other child, but their neighbors disagree, and so do doctors, who say the condition is a 1 in 2.5 million occurrence.

While Senator Obama's pastor has been ripped to shreds in the media, John McCain's have gotten a complete free ride. Did you know that the man John McCain calls his "spiritual guide" thinks the purpose of America is to get into a giant war with all of Islam and destroy it? Other than being bigoted, that's also insane. And how much have you heard about that guy? Who can even name who he is?

Other pastors whose endorsements John McCain has proudly accepted have blamed the city of New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina and America's liberal policies for the attacks of 9/11. How is that any different than what Rev. Wright said? Find out the heinous comments McCain's pastors have said here:




Get the full quotes of all the Republican nominee's pastors here. The double standard that the press has for pastors that support Democrats and Republicans is insane. It is so brazen that I can't quite believe they don't see it for themselves.

Unfortunately, a lot of what drives our elections are not the most pressing issues of the day, like the Iraq War or the economy. It's what the press chooses to cover. And if they choose to beat Obama's pastor to a pulp and never cover McCain's pastors, do we really have a fair system that allows to choose between the different candidates with all the information we need? This is not a level playing field and it's hurting the country.


Watch The Young Turks Online Video Show Here and Our You Tube Channel Here

By Jayar Jackson

The words and explanation from Senator Obama regarding his pastor's wildly unpopular and racist rant raised awareness for many, evoked conscious thought for others, but still turned some of his opponents away from him even more. How anyone could actually listen to the truth packed into this speech and conclude that his words were bogus was perplexing to me. Even after reaching out to the concerns of these very opponents, some still felt he was only telling them how much he was against them. I can understand that some don't agree with his policies, but I couldn't understand how they rejected the idea that race relations in need to be improved.

In an effort to practice what I preach, I've searched for a way to understand the reasons some still feel such resentment to the person that is thoughtfully looking for a route to move this country forward. I noticed that the most constant, blanket argument from the disagreeing mass was "Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a horrible racist." To that I thought, "I agree, good thing Wright isn't running for President. I'm glad Obama proved to us he doesn't think that way."

In attempting to put myself in the shoes of some White Americans, I've noticed that many are afraid of expressing everything they may think of minorities, particularly Black people. There have been instances where if they utter something that sounds like they're speaking negatively of a Black guy; the tag of "racist" is immediately slapped upon them. When they know they truly don't harbor racist or prejudiced feelings, and in fact dislike people that do, the worst thing in the world is to be considered just another racist White person. They've seen much of the dreadful history of truly hateful racist people in that opposed equality among the races, and they're sick of paying the price for things they never had anything to do with. Being misunderstood so quickly and easily causes feelings of resentment towards the accusing group, as they only wish these Black people could know what it's like to be in this situation. They may feel that Black people get a free pass in the game of racism. We get to say the N-Word we despise so much, while White people can't, we can dislike a White person for simply being who they are or for what some people that look like them did in the past.

When Reverend Wright opened his mouth in front of his congregation, he opened the door for the rare opportunity many White Americans took to call a racist a racist. No matter what explanations come, no matter how much Obama tried to take the discussion to a place of understanding and conclusion, Reverend Wright hasn't been lambasted enough by the man he taught, so the declaration of racist remains the only subject.

This feeling of making sure the other race experiences the pain felt by the other side of is nothing new. The country was fixated, racially divided, and somehow personally involved in OJ Simpson's "Trial of the Century." Upon hearing the verdict of not guilty, so many Black people celebrated as if we were the #16 seed of the NCAA Tournament that just took down the undefeated #1 powerhouse with a last second shot. Many Black Americans were overwhelmingly frustrated at the futility of the world's best judicial system to convict the many murderers in the past while obviously favoring White criminals over their Black victims.

The celebrating group didn't love the fact that OJ Simpson got away with killing two White people, they took delight in knowing so many people on the other side finally experienced what they had experienced so many times. Now they could say, "get over it, move on, and it wasn't your sister" the way they had been told so many times before.

Barack Obama's honest declaration that he cannot despise a pastor that brought him to his level of faith, married him to his wife, and baptized his kids kept this Reverend, an elephant-sized target in the crosshairs, right alongside him. The sooner we begin to understand each other, the sooner we will figure things out.

Continuing with our acclaimed "Something or Something" series, it's an epic religious battle.

Watch and weigh in!