Columnists

I’m a middle-aged, affluent, prototypical WASP. I was born in Los Angeles and raised in Orange County where my father and grandfather were small businessmen and Republicans. Knowing all this you’d expect me to be a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. But I’m not. I’m unabashedly liberal. -more-

I once heard a psychiatrist assert that consciousness is probably an illusion. He was an extreme example of being polarized toward the medical model of mental illness.

There are some psychiatrists and others who worship science and believe it is the whole answer to life. They don't realize that their dogmatic clinging to the belief that today's science must account for everything (or else it doesn't exist) is a religion too. It is arrogant to believe that human knowledge is anything but in its infancy.

The reader shouldn't construe that I am siding with creationists, who I believe to be deluded members of a Christian cult. I am simply saying that physical science isn't nearly advanced enough yet to justify the level of faith in it that some people have. A good scientist ought to agree with this. -more-