Gerald E. Marsh

Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism Volume 16(1) Spring-Summer 2008.

Pope Benedict XVI interleaved two themes in his talk at the University of Regensburg on September 12, 2006. These are discussed here in two separate parts: Truth, Faith, and Reason and The Dialogue of Cultures. The first addresses the Pope’s proposal to expand scientific reasoning to include the “rationality of faith”; and the second with the threat of radical Islam, and whether a “dialogue of cultures” is possible if the West persists in its belief in what the Pope calls a “reason which is deaf to the divine”.  Truth, Faith & Reason

USA Today Magazine (January 2008) Goracle PDF

“We are about to waste an enormous amount of money and effort on carbon mitigation without lowering CO2 emissions one whit. The Goracle and his fellow travelers will carry the day.”

AL GORE won an Academy Award for his skillfully done film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” It was well-deserved. Had he given as good a performance during his campaign for president, he would have won in a landslide. As environmental drama, it only can be compared with Michael Crichton’s novel, State of Fear. Both have elements of scientific and political fact, and both are excellent fiction.

USA Today Magazine (May 2007) (PDF)
Socialism, the Left, and its future in the United States.

The Left in the US is in crisis. It has lost the broad support it once enjoyed in the working class and finds itself captive to the past—or, worse yet, to an impotent radicalism. It no longer offers working people a political outlet for their interests, but only a means of protest about issues that are not central to their lives.

American Physical Society Special Session on Nuclear Reprocessing, Nuclear Proliferation, and Terrorism (15 April 2007)
Coauthors: William H. Hannum and George S. Stanford

In the public mind, the foremost reservation about nuclear power is, “What can we do with the waste?” Fortunately there is an answer: We can use the worrisome, very long-lived components as fuel in the right kind of reactors, and then the rest becomes manageable. Will this lead to proliferation of nuclear weapons or to an increase in the threat of nuclear terrorism? Not necessarily. Prudent recycle of nuclear waste will actually reduce these threats—while also reducing the time that nuclear waste must be sequestered to a few hundred years instead of thousands.

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USA Today Magazine (January 2007) (PDF)

In the Summer of 1993, Samuel Huntington introduced an apt phrase into the lexicon of futurologists: “The Clash of Civilizations.” While the clash that is developing between the Muslim world and the West is indeed cultural, it is driven by the economics of energy and, in particular, oil.

USA Today Magazine (July 2006) (PDF)

A full acceptance by the Israelis and Palestinians of the legitimate presence of the other and their right to exist in peace is a precondition that is unlikely to be accepted by either party any time soon.

Map of mandates in Arabia 1920 (PDF)

USA Today Magazine (March 2006) (PDF)

Saudi Arabia is the key to containing the terrorist menace, assuring stability in the Gulf, and keeping the oil flowing at a reasonable price.

Scientific American (December 2005)
Coauthors: William H. Hannum and George S. Stanford

Fast-neutron reactors could extract much more energy from recycled nuclear fuel, minimize the risks of weapons proliferation and markedly reduce the time nuclear waste must be isolated. (PDF)

Creationism and Science

As fundamentalist religious thought strengthens its hold on U.S. politics, and increases its role in politics around the world, enlightened values that form the very foundation of modern society are coming under attack. In the United States the wedge issue being used by fundamentalists is a pseudo-debate over creationism and Darwin’s theory of the descent of man.

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This Critique builds on A Global Warming Primer. Like the Primer, its purpose is to help the reader determine whether our understanding of the earth’s climate is adequate to predict the long-term effects of carbon dioxide emissions from the continued burning of fossil fuels, to permit informed public policy decisions. This is a limited critique, looking only at a few topics covered in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

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