This Saturday, Nov. 6, a rare and exciting event will take place at ASU’s Gammage Auditorium. It is has been named “The Great Debate” and is sponsored by ASU’s Origins Project.
The debate, “can science tell us right from wrong?” will take place between six world-renowned academics, such as two-time Pulitzer Prize Finalist and Harvard Professor, Steven Pinker, and the co-founder and CEO of Project Reason, Sam Harris.
The lineup also includes ASU’s Lawrence Krauss, the director of the Origins Project.
The battle between science and religion, as old as the concepts themselves, began in earnest during the Enlightenment in the 18th century.
In the 21st century, though, it appears that technology and science is increasing so rapidly that society is struggling to keep up with the implications, and this debate could not come at a better time.
This past month has demonstrated an exceptional sampling of the scientific struggle.
The first human embryonic stem cell trial took place at the Shepherd Center, a spinal cord and brain injury rehabilitation hospital in Atlanta.
And scientists from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center have managed to produce a small-scale version of a human liver in the laboratory using stem cells. This development, according to a BBC News article, “increases hope that new transplant livers could be manufactured.”
Most recently, the old way of thinking struck back: the U.S. Department of Justice stated that genomic DNA should not be eligible for patents, despite the long standing precedence of them and how this will negatively impact the biotechnological and medical community. This, according to an article in the New York Times, “because they are part of nature.”
But the line between natural and artificial has become increasingly blurry in recent years.
Biological reductionism, the tendency to reduce human beings to completely material objects, is an increasingly prevalent attitude in our culture. Belief in concepts like the mind and the soul are quickly becoming history.
You are not in love; you are experiencing a series of chemical reactions in the pleasure center of your brain. You are not a jerk; your neurotransmitters are just out of whack.
You are only a homosexual or a drunk or a musician because of your genes.
You are not an individual who makes decisions; you are simply a product of your environment. You have no essence; you are only appearance.
This debate, which will discuss, according to the ASU Origins Project webpage, whether or not science can “objectively determine what is right and wrong,” and if “morality is an evolutionary adaptation,” is the ultimate demonstration of biological reductionism.
The event poster poses the question, “Would this knowledge undercut the concept of morality?”
Of course it would.
But does it matter? Or is this the next logical step in society’s current paradigm shift?
Perhaps we are already there.
Either way, this Great Debate is something that no ASU student should miss.
Stand up for your biological reductions at djoconn1@asu.edu
