Posted on 11/08/2007 5:36:03 PM PST by Mobile Vulgus
"Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." --Albert Einstein
Secularists today love to frame the religion vs. science debate as one of "superstitions" against fact as if theistic truth, morality and the spiritual aspect of humanity is meaningless fluff not to intersect with the hard fact and incontestability of science. But, as I quoted Einstein, the patron saint of scienceists, there is a part of science that dangerously crosses over into religion's realm of morality even as secularists try to deny that fact. And here is a story that does, indeed, show scientists crossing over into the realm of evil to satisfy scientific curiosity. It is an evil not as bad as that of a Doctor Mengele to be sure, but one that rises to a level of evil that few would expect in today's modern age.
Imagine taking twin baby girls and purposefully splitting them up merely as an experiment to observe their lives as they grew up keeping them from knowing of the existence of each other? Would you find justified this dispassionate decision, this coldly scientific decision, to take away a lifetime of sisterhood just to satisfy a scientific curiosity? Apparently Doctor Peter Neubauer, an internationally renowned child psychiatrist, found no struggle with his conscience over such a scientific experiment because that is exactly what he did to identical twins, Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein, when they were infants. In 1968 Doctor Neubauer used the twin girls for a bizarre and immoral social experiment splitting them away from each other in order to observe how they would progress. They grew up neither knowing that they had an identical twin sister out there.
Nature versus nurture has been a nagging question for scientists for generations. Are we the result of our genes or of our environment goes the raging debate. Apparently, Doctor Neubauer decided to use the lives of these two girls to satisfy his curiosity over the ages old question. And evidently he knew what he was doing would be considered wrong because he ordered that the results of his study be locked in a Yale archive, not to be opened until 2066, long after all concerned should be deceased.
He didn't have the spine to own up to the consequences of his actions, obviously.
After 35 year apart, however, the girls found each other at long last. Of this inhuman experiment one of the girls, Elyse Schein, recently said, "Nature intended for us to be raised together, so I think it was a crime we were separated." Of what had occurred to them, her sister Paula said, "It was like something out of a movie, I broke down in tears."
We all know that the evil scientist who uses his intellectual gifts for evil instead of good is the trope of umpteen B grade horror and sci-fi movies but it isn't just fiction that has worried over the evil science can do. Einstein often worried over such evil as I relayed in the quote that started this piece. It is said that J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the creators of the first Atomic bomb, quoted the Hindi Bhagavad Gita upon seeing the power of the weapon he created: "I become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds." Over the decades, many scientists and inventors have found anguish rewarding them for their scientific experiments that led to weapons inventions, as well. Many say that Alfred Nobel's Peace Prize was his penance for having invented the destructive power of dynamite. The widow of the inventor of the Winchester rifle went mad and spent her enormous inheritance on séances and building and re-building her mansion in odd and unnecessary ways. It turns out that many highly intelligent, even brilliant, scientists have struggled with the fact that science can be used for evil just as easily as it can be used for good.
In the actions of Doctor Neubauer we have a man who gave away his humanity for the sake of a scientific experiment. And, while this particular experiment does not rise to the depths of depravity of Doctor Mengele, famed as the man who performed inhuman experiments in the name of science on live Nazi concentration camp victims, it shows the same sort of unconcern over the ideas of morality and care for their victims. It shows the same lack of human compassion and love that should guide the hand of science.
It shows an utter lack of morality.
But, in the end, that is the road down which science must lead us if it is treated as an end in and of itself. As a creed, as a moral guide, science is insufficient. Science cannot be a moral force for good because it has no provision for considering man "special" enough to safeguard his life, it has no aspect that can make man's existence sacrosanct. Science, as a singular goal, lacks any kind of morality that religion tries to promote. Science is, in fact, amoral. It is not necessarily anti-human, of course, but it has no special care for humanity at all -- neither good nor bad.
And that is just the problem. For, without a soul, science can be used as a justification for the actions of as many Mengeles and Neubauers as it can for Saulks and Madame Curies. Since it has no morality it can be used to justify any use of it despite how dismissive of human life or integrity it can be.
Naturally, religion has been perverted and used to justify any manner of torture and destruction quite unmindful of humanity. This we know. But, at its core, religion always held some group or another as sacrosanct and that is evidence of at least a basic moral code. Religion does not view humanity dispassionately to the point where his very existence is a meaningless cog in an experiment. Some moral system is intrinsic to religion no matter how uneven its observance.
Not so for science. And this is the very thing that Einstein feared when he uttered the quote that began this piece. The uncaring, inhumanity of science must be tempered with the soul of religion before man is reduced to nothing but a pointless collection of chemicals that needs no "rights" and whose existence is placed at the mercy of an ideology that makes of him a mere plaything.
This is a debate we desperately need in an era when science is on the verge of creating the destruction of humanity in new and undreamt of ways. But, we'd best not wait too long to have it, lest it become too late. It is certainly a discussion that neither the evil Doctor Mengle nor Doctor Peter Neubauer ever considered important enough to entertain. And humanity has been diminished as a result.
No, those aren't the facts. Twins were separated because of financial problems among adoptive parents not so that the twins could reach some potential that their twin would not allow them to reach.
There are loads of studies of twins separately adopted, going back at least to the 1930s, showing that it was common practice.
It was a common practice because of financial considerations not because of the nonsense spewed by the idiot in the article or to satisfy the whims of researchers.
I had the same question reading this article. Click on the name of the twins (see article) - the rest of the story is there. Like the author of this article, I do not trust science alone without a system (faith, ethics, etc.) to keep it in check. But, there were many more players in this story:
The adoption agency had a policy of separating twins, and the agency was "in on" the study. Even the adoptive parents were aware their adopted daughters were being studied, though they didn't know the true nature of the study. The birth mother has no interest in meeting the twins. They probably would've been raised separately, even if the scientist hadn't taken advantage of the opportunity to study them. I wouldn't put him in the same category as Mengele.
Even script writers recognize the perils of science guided only by human intelligence and greed.
Like others you are missing the point. It is not unethical for scientists to study spearated twins, it is unethical for twins to be separated to conduct a scientific study.
“How does one explain the countless cases of people who believe in religion that have done equally or more horrible things?”
Mainly by debunking them.
Exactly right. The article I posted was not decrying separating twins for adoption. It was decrying it becoming an EXPERIMENT while doing it. The experiment was the bad thing, the fact that twins were separated wasn’t even focused on at all.
Thanks. I suspected something like that. When the story’s emotional plea gets ahead of the details, I’m always suspicious.
I agree, jwalsh07! It just seems that, in this case, they would've been separated, anyway. Here's information about the adoption agency from the other article:
"The twins found that he was willingly aided by the Louise Wise adoption agency that handled both their adoptions. Viola Bernard, a child psychologist and consultant to the agency, had firmly believed that twins should be raised separately to improve their psychological development, and that dressing and treating them the same retarded their minds. Separating twins at birth was ended in the state of New York in 1980, a year after the study ended."
That's why I think the adoption agency is to blame in this story. For the record, I don't think siblings should be separated, whether they're twins or not. I'm glad that old policy was ended.
Peter Neubauer, M.D. - Board Member. Peter Neubauer, M.D. is a renowned psychoanalyst with a private practice in New York. A native of Vienna, Austria, Dr. Neubauer received his undergraduate degree from the University of Vienna Medical School and his M.D. from the University of Bern Medical School in 1938. He has served numerous Board appointments including the Sigmund Freud Archives and the Sigmund Freud Gesellschaft. He is a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association and the American Psychoanalytic Association. Previously, Dr. Neubauer served as Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Psychoanalytic Institute of New York University and as a Founding Member of the National Advisory Council for Clinical and Infant Programs at the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Neubauer has been recognized with numerous awards, most recently the Margaret Mahler Psychiatric Research Foundation Literature Award in May of 2003. He is author of over 150 chapters in psychoanalytic texts.
http://www.zukunftwissen.apa.at/fti-und-wissenschaft/special_volltext.html;jsessionid=azrqwkogPaZ_?level=0&meldung=CMS1185368977213&id=CMS1184159109446
Margaret Schonberger Mahler
Just nine months and 6 days after Gustav Schonberger and Eugenia Weiner-Schonberger were wed, they bore a daughter on May 10, in 1897. Margaret Mahler was born in the small western Hungarian town of Sopron close to Vienna............Eugenia dominated the household and was very unhappy with having a child at such a young age. Gustav became the primary care giver to Margaret.............. Four years after Margaret an expected child was born, Margaret had a younger sister named Suzanne that was adored by Eugenia. Margaret once overheard her mother say to Suzanne “I have brought you into this world, I suckle you, I love you, I adore you, I live only for you, you are my whole life.” Margaret’s heart being shattered, replied, “And I, I was born to my father.” Margaret later believed that the way her mother treated her was the reason she grew such an interest in pediatrics and psychoanalysis. One of the happiest moments of Margaret’s childhood was when Suzanne was two and put her cheek to a hot iron. Their mother was mortified and hysterical. She couldn’t believe her “pretty daughter” ruined her face............Growing up for Margaret was not a happy time, she had a very low self-esteem and was jealous of the praises that Suzanne received from their mother.
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/mahler.html
They are acting inconsistently with the tenets of religion and are condemned as hypocrites.
When 'science' is pursued in an amoral fashion, their are no consistent grounds for condemning such behaviour.
Cheers!
There is no morality outside of religion because there is no reason for any code of morality binding more than one person and if it only binds one person then it binds no one. It is not morality. It is self-interest only. For morality to be a norm for a population it must be perceived as emanating from a source outside and above that population. If it is the morality of omnipotent government then it is not morality because it is infinitely mutable and therefore essentially random. The great inhumanities that are perpetrated in he name of Religion are aberrations even when repeated over and over because at some point the moral norm is resurrected and the aberrations are recognized as just that, aberrations and IMmoral.
Capitalism was invented by the Jews in Europe in the Middle Ages and was only possible because of Jewish morality which permitted them to trust each other because the fact of being Jews gave them the knowledge that certain behaviour could be expected. If they had to rely on each man deciding his own morality it would never have happened. Trade would have remained primitive. The Christians were able to follow the Capitalist path the Jews opened up because they understood and believed in the same morality because it derived from the same ultimate source. It was promulgated by an outside source that was trusted itself, to wit, God. It is happening in Asia now. In Viet Nam the Catholics were the businessmen because Christians can trust other Christians who are not co-familial. The Buđhists saw the benefits and learned to follow suit, by adopting the Other-derived morality of the Christians and the country is developing fast. Korea, that business miracle of the modern Age brings it from that same Christian background which has been strong in that country for centuries.
Human beings can agree to norms of behavior if there is posited a superior promulgator and guardian of those standards, a standard against which each can measure others. Without that superior source no one can assume another’s morality. Again you would not have any basis for your own morality except that you are a part of a commonly religious society and others can assume something about your morality because they know that they subscribe to the same source. Anarchy does not work out. It is a great theory but must very quickly end in the strongest ruling by virtue of his strength. There is no real morality in paganism, real paganism, not the faux motherearthism of our modern “dissidents”. Because of that, pagans do not do trade very well. There is no superior guarantor that the standards are reliable. That is why the great Chinese corporations, huge as they are, are either family-only operations(among the overseas Chinese) or government/PLA corporations.
No one's much interested in facts when they get in the way of their righteous indignation.
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