Teach this controversy: A brief on atheism, evolution, religion, and education

I agree with PZ Myers. When one comes to understand the mechanism of evolution, the role of God to play in the emergence of species becomes vanishingly small. The mechanisms involved simply obviate supernatural interventions in life and that Richard Dawkins would be correct in stating that "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." We might wonder whether this is something to consider in high school science classes. Is it fair to invite students to consider atheism as a logical conclusion of modern science? Should there be a lecture and discussion during any 10th-grade biology class (just an example) wherein students are taught that the examined data, tested hypotheses, laws, and theories of modern science have A) provided no positive evidence for supernatural existence or causation and B) one may (though one needn't) become a philosophical naturalist from such a conclusion?

ATHEISM AS A CONCLUSION

First, atheism is an entirely reasonable philosophical conclusion. The weight of evidence that has formed the modern evolutionary synthesis, the big bang, plate tectonics, and contemporary neuroscience make it further tenable. Upon the many probes we put into nature, we find that descent with modification/changes in allele frequency in populations over time/non-random selection of randomly generated characteristics to be supported in the fossil record (we can observe the radiation of species following extinction eventsl, the steady evolution of hominids, or the emergence of the amphibian from the fish), biogeography (different species adapting quite similarly to similar environments like species of giant tortoises in South Asia vs. the Galapagos), genetics and genetic similarity (ca. 98% similarity in the genomes of humans and chimpanzees for example; if humans are so specially created why are they made out of the same stuff that everything else is?), emergence of mutations (sickle-cell anemia as an adaptation to malaria, bacterial antibiotic resistance, insect pesticide resistance, or bacteria evolving an enzyme to break down nylon), morphology (the mammalian body plan), evolutionary developmental biology (we can see the appearance of gills in a human embryo and then watch them disappear, a case of vestige), and vestigial traits in adults of a species (hips in whales).

Where do we put God(s) in there? Given at this point that we live on an earth whose tectonic shifts we can understand quite well and that the world exists in a universe some 13+ billion years old, what's the position for a tinkering God? I contest nowhere because God(s) explain(s) nothing about nature. They explain much about our own cognition, cultures, desires, and apprehensions and perceptions of nature, but nothing about the explicate order of nature itself.
We have probed much farther into nature...leaps and bounds farther...satellite-flights-around-Titan-farther...man-on-the-moon farther...subemersibles-in-the-Pacific-ocean-trenches farther than our most enlightened forebears could have conceived of. Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, Confucius, Spinoza, Hildegard of Bingen...whoever...would have their breath taken away by the incredible feats of modern science and engineering. Perhaps as the people of Papua New Guinea thought that the first Australian explorers were actually spirits of some kind the people of the first century C.E. in Israel would think us Gods. Our technology would surely be magic to them.

Plato's demiurge or Spinoza's and Jefferson's "god of nature" can fit in there somewhere as a first cause. It may provide comfort that there was something vaguely like us that built the watch, wound it up, and set it ticking. But it doesn't explain anything. Nothing at all. It is the "god of the gaps" or "argument from ignorance." "I don't know how it was done so God must have done it." I don't know how a snake's feces is formed inside its intestines, does that mean God did it? That would have been a perfectly reasonable argument until we studied snake digestion. One's ignorance does not entail any arbitrarily culturally or emotionally satisfying explanation.

However, the logically fallacious arguments for God (first cause, ontological argument, argument to design, argument to beauty) do not mean that they cannot be held. In a sense, they may not be logically fallacious so long as they are held in a strict dualistic epistemology that separates natural and supernatural phenomena. Most people today have some version of this - Catholics surely do. Nonetheless, those views, because they claim to deal with ideas outside of science, cannot be considered strictly scientific as they allege that they deal with non-material/immaterial reality. Science, founded on the methodoligically natural method of hypothesis testing, cannot deal with it if the claims are about actual supernatural phenomena.

ATHEISM IN EDUCATION

The aforementioned logical conclusion of atheistic philosophical materialism is, as the whole intelligent design creationism/creation science controversy has shown us, a very testy consideration. While philosophical materialism is a reasonable conclusion, we might wonder the following:
A) Could atheism or materialism be taught in public school classes as a reasonable conclusion of modern science (biology, astronomy, physics, etc.)?
B) Is it a fair, good, and/or necessary educational goal?
C) Are science classes the places to discuss such things? If not in science classes where?

These are huge questions for American education. This post will be woefully unable to explore many much less all of the parameters involved. However, consider it an invitation to consider what might be done in schools vs. what should be done in schools vs. what can be done in schools.

A) Could atheism or materialism be taught in public schools as a reasonable conclusion of modern science?

The spewings of the Disco 'Tute of late and of the past have this issue front and center. Michael Egnor has taken PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins as examples of this. He quotes Myers as saying

…greater science literacy, which is going to lead to the erosion of religion, and then we’ll get this nice positive feedback mechanism going where as religion slowly fades away we'll get more and more science to replace it and that will displace more and more religion which will allow more and more science in and we’ll eventually get to the point where religion has taken that appropriate place as a side dish rather than the main course. And if you separate out the ethical message from religion — what have you got left — you got — you got a bunch of fairy tales, right?

Egnor sees Myers' statement as an overt attempt to get atheism into the classroom. I can only judge by what is here (I haven't seen Expelled! yet so I can't see the quotation's context...don't quote-mine me cdesign proponentsists). But I don't think that Myers is actually trying to get atheism taught in schools. He's trying to get science to be taught in schools. A logical but not necessary conclusion from scientific literacy is philosophical materialism. This distinction is importanjt.

I think I have clearly explained above why it is logical but not necessary. A necessary conclusion of scientific literacy is that the scientific method works. We can use the hypethetico-deductive method to pose a test about nature that nature can give us an answer to. Additionally, nature is uniform. The laws of the nature are today as they have been. Repeated observations pan both of these things out. If we don't accept them after the numerous conclusions that science as a method reaches, then we do not accept science. They are necessary. the philosophical conclusion, though, that material nature is all that there is - that there is no such thing as the supernatural - is not a strictly scientific claim. It is reasonable and justifiable, but not necessary.

In a totally open educational system, then, we could teach such a thing. A class could discuss the philosophical implications of the scientific method and the historical and contemporary scientific enterprise. It might be done in a science, history, philosophy, or special interdisciplinary course.

B) Is teaching atheism or materialism good, fair, or necessary goal?
This question is much more tricky and depends in large part on the course context. The answer will immediately balloon out of the possible bounds of this blog. I will answer only briefly.

1. Good: A great deal of educational good can come from having students consider atheism as a possible conclusion. That atheism and materialism is a logical philosophical conclusion of modern inquiry can enrich the conversation of the role of science, philosophy, and, by extension, religion in American life. Students can be asked to consider the grounds of their beliefs, the assumptions that they make, evidence as it is understood within an epistemology, and the arguments that different epistemologies muster. No student should be indoctrinated into a materialist position, but they could be "taught the controversy" so to speak over the existence of God and learn a great deal from it.

2. Fairness: Certainly, such an approach could be fair. In any given subject (biology, astronomy, physics, etc.) the topic may be more or less fair. This is very dependent on context. However, a course that deals heavily in the history or philosophy of science, a portion of a course which deals in such topics (an evolution or big bang unit for example) could broach the topic and examine it as both a historical phenomena from the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Enlightenment, up to today, and as a dynamic field of argument. Additionally, considering the way in way that creation "scientists," young earth creationists, and intelligent design creationists have tried to wedge theistically friendly philosophical and pseudo-scientific stances into American public education, this seems entirely appropriate and fair.

3. Necessary: No. The philosophical extensions, though compelling and rich in conversational and didactic possibilities are not necessary. While students could discuss and learn how the scientific method informs our beliefs, this could serve as a large distraction from course content on what science is, how it works, what is done with it, and what we might continue to do with it.

Naturally, many students will come to face the question of what science means to their beliefs and some will consider how and why philosophical materialism logically follows from scientific inquiry. But course time is not needed to cover it.

C. Are science classes the place to discuss such things? If not science class, where?
Science courses can be a place for such conversations or instruction in how atheism can logically follow from the findings of the continued use of the scientific method. However, courses in sociology (social movements), political or scientific history, philosophy, or religious history could all incorporate such things within their purview. Theoretically, this is a fine idea. Teach the controversy over the existence of God as much of modern science might inform us about it.

CONCLUSION

From a pragmatic social standpoint, I doubt very much that this is a wise move for much of the country. Sectarian strife would ensue at some level, no doubt making pariahs of atheists who are already vilified by some church-going people and much of the media. However, given the stridency and force of the wedge of creationism so far, it may soon follow that such a course will not only follow but could be necessary to correct the swing of the pendulum that has gone so far in the wedge's favor of public opinion.

Nonetheless, there is certainly an educational good that can arise from this approach. Students would look at assumptions - scientific, philosophical, and religious - in contemporary and historical contexts without being indoctrinated into a way of thinking. The goal here would be to show how atheism can logically follow from scientific inquiry, not that it must. Perhaps some brave teachers will take up this "controversy."

Hometown mayor performs commitment ceremony for gay and lesbian couples

Go Bill Welch, mayor of my town of State College, Pa. Yesterday, he performed a commitment ceremony for two gay and two lesbian couples. The ceremony was a celebration what is best in people - love, compassion, liberty, and earned loyalty. It was a rejection of what is worst in us - ignorance, hatred, silent acquiescence, and blind faith.

According to the Centre Daily Times, there were about 500 supporting people there who cheered when the two couples came out of Penn State's HUB-Robeson Center. Of course, some Christian wingnuts came out and held a protest, what one of them referred to as "stand[ing] up for traditional family values." I love that some people think that if you place the word "tradition" in something that makes it somehow good. Lots of traditions - most of them I'd wager - have been scrapped. What's the argument that a "traditional" family is a good adaptive fit for modern America? Hmmmm. It's falling apart dumbasses. And it's falling apart the worst where religious adherence is highest. Paging Alabama!

My sister and her wife were so happy to hear about this. They live in the D.C. area and had a little 'Woo-hoo!' Now if we can just get the church out of civil unions altogether...

Obama comes to town

Barack Obama will be speaking today at the Old Main lawn at Penn State's University Park campus. This is going to be a huge event, surely drawing thousands from across the region and state. The Obama office is ready. My wife and I hope to be doing some volunteering there this week.

The Centre Daily Times reports:

The Barack Obama presidential campaign undertook final preparations Saturday for today’s rally on Penn State’s Old Main lawn. The gates in a snow fence perimeter open at 11:30 a.m., but there is plenty of room outside the fence.

The rally will feature Sen. Obama, of Illinois, and Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, who endorsed Obama on Friday and joined him on a bus tour of the state from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, stopping at Penn State, among other places.

Apparently, he got here last night with Sen. Bob Casey (D - Pa.).

Bill Clinton spoke here on Thursday night and got a big crowd in. He spoke on energy (one of my big issues of concern) and how prepared Hillary is. I honestly cringe when I think about her as president. I cringe more about John McCain. But let's throw the bums out.

Hope to see you at Obama's rally today.

Josh Timonen reviews Expelled!

The war of words and images continues as Josh Timonen of RichardDawkins.net thrashes Expelled! in his overview. If you've read the Dawkins review, "Lying for Jesus?" from last week, you can pick up on the "Lord Privy Seal" critique in Timonen too.

Timonen writes something interesting. "The Discovery Institute is just a harmless little group on half a floor! They all look so friendly! A very friendly interview follows with someone from the Institute, and the implication is that they are the struggling underdogs." This shouldn't surprise us at all, but it is kind of shocking for its disingenuousness. If you look back at the Disco 'Tute's financial records, you'll find they are, very well funded. According to guidestar.org the 'Tute logged $3,781,988 on its 2006 990 form up from $2,784,188 from 2005. That's so *cough* paltry. Those poor poor people at the 'Tute getting pushed around by "big science." It's so hard to be funded by Big Religion. I weep for the future.

Read Timonen's account.

Randi was a delight!

As you know from previous posts, the Penn State Atheists/Agnostics Association hosted James Randi this week. We had many chances for some funny anecdotes over dinner regarding Penn & Teller, Frank Zappa, and Peter Popoff "the unsinkable rubber duck." We also chatted about his adventures at TED Talks, Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins, and the who's who of skepticism. It's truly a gift to be able to spend time with someone who has had so much engagement with the world of rationality.

On the local side of things, Randi posed a challenge to Paranormal State and the Penn State Paranormal "Research" Society that he is willing to help them investigate. He read an email exchange to the audience between Ryan Buell and me which said that Buell would be willing to have "a dialogue" with Randi.

I wonder, what is a dialogue going to present in terms of evidence? I doubt much of anything.

It's pretty clear that the PRS are making claims that it can't back up with evidence. Example: that Ryan has been followed by the same demon, named Belial, for some years and now. It was haunting some people in Syracuse. It followed them there. Yeah. Sure. How do they know?

The cast's theatrical just-so stories?

That the family's daughter has said that there is a monster after her? She's a little kid. Maybe two or three. Little kids believe there are monsters in their closets at night. It's part of being a little kid. We all know this. How is this evidence?

The family dad says that a demon has pushed him around and ripped his shirt. The show says that Belial is the demon doing it. But they beep out the demon's name when the dad says it. We're supposed to believe that?

They've put up crosses that got turned upside down. What is this? Poltergeist? No person could have done that when the cameras were away? It reminds me of Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) and Ray Stanz (Dan Aykroyd) in Ghostbustsers talking about some stacked books in the New York Public Library:

Ray: Symmetrical book stacking. Just like the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947.

Peter: (looks unimpressed) You're right. No human being would stack books like this.

My hunch, and Randi's hunch too, is that Paranormal State and the PRS are making it up and/or buying into a collective delusion. If they think they have some evidence, then they should take the $1 million challenge. If it's just entertainment then admit it. If they are helping people and helping to cure them of their ills, then they should be observed and regulated to maintain an even standard of care the way that we see in psychology, psychiatry, and medicine. But any of these would allow reality to infringe on the collective delusion.

Come on PRS. Take the challenge. Put your money where your mouth is without the editing wizardry of an A&E camera crew.

Anyway, the lecture went really well - running the gamut from homeopathy to counterfeit money to Peter Popoff to Sylvia Brown to psychic surgery and the danger of our assumptions. A good trickster - magician, faith healer, so-called psychic, or medium - plays on our assumptions and uses them to her/his advantage. People will try to take you for a ride and we might like it so much that we play along. Some of us, it seems need to believe it no matter how threadbare the evidence. Sigh.

During Q & A people asked a lot of good questions: What does he think of religious belief in general? It's a thought stopper. What about the New Atheism? It's a solid movement and each of its members does not have the same position. They are a reaction to the new American theocracy (hell yes!).

You can get a bit more flavor (if compromised) at The Daily Collegian.

We had a blast!

I'll be posting pictures shortly!

James Randi tonight

Come one and all to the Penn State Atheist/Agnostic Association's hosting of James Randi. Three of us (the club president, vice-president, and me the events coordinator) got to spend a couple of hours with Randi last night, eat some dinner, and chat about all sorts of things from Peter Popoff and Benny Hinn to peacock farms and giant iguanas. It was a great time.

Tonight at 8 pm, he will be speaking at 8 pm in 112 Kern Building at the University Park campus. Bring everyone you know.

Additionally, I submitted a letter to the editor of The Daily Collegian. They didn't print it. They're too busy dealing with Ann Coulter's pending visit. All the more reason they should have printed ours...a voice of reason in a scree field of utter nonsense.
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To the editor:

Has anyone stopped to scrutinize the claims of the Paranormal Research Society (PRS) and their TV show, Paranormal State? In the 21st century, they still use medieval investigation methods dressed up in pseudo-scientific language and techno-buzz that misleads the public.

Some claim it is just entertainment. Some say the PRS help people. "We have good intentions," they say.

Let me repeat the old adage, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

None of their methods, from "dead time" to the use of "psychics," has any legitimate, reliable, or valid scientific corroboration. In fact, wherever and whenever the scientific method has been trained onto extraordinary paranormal claims - from clairvoyance, ESP, aura reading, reiki, alien abduction, astral projection, and the healing power of prayer or faith healers - the extraordinary evidence needed to back those claims up is depressingly absent.

The PSU Atheist/Agnostic Association hopes to enliven the discussion on our campus regarding claims of the paranormal, supernatural, or divine. As such, we are hosting noted skeptic and founder of the $1 Million Paranormal Challenge James Randi on Wednesday night at 8 pm in Kern Building to confront these myths.

Let's end the delusion.

Peter Buckland
Events Co-ordinator – PSU Atheists/Agnostics
Graduate – Education

"Because it says so in the Bible."

If you have some vanishing notion that creationists actually engage in any kind of scientific enterprise at all, watch these two men indoctrinate little kids into banishing their brains to the nether regions.


It's tragic. Maybe some of these kids will grow up and think for themselves. Maybe some of them will wonder how Jesus made the universe and why, out of the thousands and millions of historical deities that it was Jesus and not Tezcatlipoca. Those men are shameful. How do they know that evolution is wrong? The chorus of kids respond, "Because it says so in the Bible."

Chilling.

Thanks skwerl for the video.

Is/ought: Just say not.

When it comes to evolution, sloppy and/or unscrupulous thinkers (to say the least) peddle some pretty heavy nonsense. They try to pass off that whatever is ought to be. In this obtuse language game what could be more natural than natural selection? And if we apply natural selection to the artificial construct of government isn't that the way it ought to be? Surely not. But The Disco Tute's John West, an endless harpy for the link between Darwin and Hitler continues to make this error over at the DI's propaganda wing.

He tries to take Richard Dawkins to task for saying the following in 2005:

No self respecting person would want to live in a Society that operates according to Darwinian laws. I am a passionate Darwinist, when it involves explaining the development of life. However, I am a passionate anti-Darwinist when it involves the kind of society in which we want to live. A Darwinian State would be a Fascist state.

That's easy enough to understand. If one tries to institute a government built on a humanly constructed selection process that is every bit as cold to human desires and aspirations and our agreed-upon human rights as natural selection, then you will get a eugenics program and a vicious society that is "red in tooth and claw." If you were dumb enough to apply what is in some parts of nature to what ought to be in human culture then you will get fascist states and the institutions of Social Darwinism that were so popular at the end of the 19th and early- to mid-20th centuries.

West states that "Darwinian ideology provided the Nazis with one of their key justifications for sterilizing the "unfit" and killing the handicapped." To call it a Darwinian ideology is false. Darwin's contribution to the world was not a set of ethical or ideological statements; they were a set of observations on the evolution of life that formed the backbone of a predictive and descriptive theory that remains largely intact as a scientific tool. Others, including his own cousin Francis Galton, sought to create human breeding programs to elevate us from our miserable genetic state via either positive or negative eugenics programs. But in Galton's case, it was his racist and classist views from his imperial Victorian culture that formed the foundation of his desire for eugenics. His misunderstanding of evolution and development of statistical analytical methods were tools he could use to support (fallaciously) his ideological goals.

The same is true of the Nazis. There is no evidence whatsoever that Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann, Hoess, and Heydrich had the foggiest notion of what the theory of evolution actually predicts and describes. It is abundantly clear that they could appropriate a term like "survival of the fittest" wherever they saw fit to prop up the T4 program or garner sympathy for the Endlosung der Judgenfrage (Final Solution to the Jewish Question) to an ideology built on ancient German anti-semitism richly reinforced by Martin Luther's "On the Jews and their Lies" (among other things), Catholic
anti-semitism, and bizarro-world pagan mumbo jumbo. Their appropriation of "survival of the fittest" was fallacious.

The free market, that market that the DI tries to defend in its apologetics every day, has more historical ties with actual Social Darwinism than does the modern field of biology. Very briefly consider the words of Ray Crock, the founder of McDonald's:

"Look, it is ridiculous to think this an industry. This is not. This is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I’ll kill ‘em, and I’m going to kill ‘em before they kill me. You’re talking about the American way of the survival of the fittest.” (emphasis added)

There's more where that came from. A lot of it. And something comes to mind about Crock being a Christian too. Am I supposed to link his adoration for the alleged savior of the universe to his capitalistically-driven Social Darwinism? That would be ad hominem of me.

But are we supposed to expect that because the industry is "rat eat rat" that that is the way it ought to be? Am I supposed to accept as inevitable and good that Crock or Carnegie or the rest of the magnates think that because there is such a thing as natural selection that they should be able set up institutionalized selection processes? Of course not. Neither does Dawkins. Neither did Darwin.

This naturalistic fallacy is also known as Hume's Law, defined in Flew's Dictionary of Philosophy "...that conclusins about what ought to be cannot be deduced from premises stating only what was, what is, or what will be - and the other way about."

Slavery. Childhood sexual servitude. Genocide. Gang rape. Murder. Environmental degradation. Reruns of Dallas. Barney the big purple dinosaur. Ben Stein's acting career. All of these were, are, and will be (tragically in Darfur and much less sad though not a affront to all human benevolence so will Stein's acting career though that might be a faulty piece of induction that Hume could point out). Got it?

People mature within political, social, and economic systems that they perceive as natural. Aristotle thought that slavery was natural. Who's to argue? We are.

West's bluster is so huge he's written a book on the matter. I've read enough of his propaganda posts to induce that it's a steaming pile of misconstrued history, sophistry, scholarly and moral irresponsibilty, and logically fallacious garbage. He's a sloppy thinker and a double-talker who works for an organization that wants the market to be free to select as it sees fit so long as they get to keep their magical man in the sky. Hey. The ends justify the means. Lie for Jesus.

People have been lying for him for almost 2,000 years. That's what you're supposed to do. Right?

Evan Bayh's brilliant assininity

In yesterday's NY Times, Senator Evan Bayh (D - Indiana) who supports Senator Hillary Clinton was quoted as saying,

"So who carried the states with the most Electoral College votes is an important factor to consider because ultimately, that’s how we choose the president of the United States,” Mr. Bayh said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

And who won the 2000 election because of the Electoral College you dipshit?!?! George W. Bush you dipshit. Why wasn't Al Gore the president you dipshit? Because an antiquated system that preserves a semblance of an oligarchy you dipshit.

In an attempt to out-asshole even James Carville, Bayh has decided to add more fuel to the fire to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by running the disenfranchisement treadmill some more for Michigan and Florida. Do they want to pay for the new votes? No. They want a convenient way to boost Sen. Clinton's delegate count. Groups make rules - read: the DNC and the Democratic party - and their individual satellites have to obey the rules they have agreed on. Michigan and Florida knew what they were getting into and Bayh's and Clinton's and Carville's kvetching is so much "blah blah blah" at this point. Had it played in their favor, we wouldn't being hearing this from party bosses. [I should like to say that the rule was a bad rule in the first place but it was one that was agreed upon anyway and executed.]

Does Clinton still agree with the following statement?

“I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people and to me, that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.”

Evan Bayh should shut up. This is a transparent power play for the derrier garde of the Democratic party who are still stuck on Clintonism. You're day has passed. Fade into the sunset guys.

Dawkins: "Lying for Jesus?"

ID's layers of deceit know no ends. So those of us who watch the Wedge's movements find little to be shocked about when they lie for Jesus. They had really hoped to use EXPELLED! to score an enormous hammer stroke to drive the Wedge further into the tree of science. But their deceit is matched by their incompetence.

On Good Friday, PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, and some other attendees of the American Atheists conference in Minneapolis attended a regional showing of EXPELLED! (see earlier posts here and here) Shouldn't the subtitle be "No Intelligence, Competence, Sanity, Honesty, Science, or Good Judgment Allowed"? PZ was promptly asked to leave the premises, while Dawkins and the rest were not. This demented irony seemed lost on Mark Mathis the film's producer and played brilliantly into the hands of their opponents. And when you have as an ingenious thinker, scientist, and wordsmith as Dawkins as an opponent, you'd best think lucidly about your decisions.

Following a brief intro on the "Good Friday Massacre,"Dawkins writes:

Now, to the Good Friday Fiasco itself, Mathis' extraordinary and costly lapse of judgment. Just think about it. His entire film is devoted to the notion that American scientists are being hounded and expelled from their jobs because of opinions that they hold. The film works hard at pressing (no, belabouring with a sledgehammer) all the favourite hot buttons of free speech, freedom of thought, the right of dissent, the right to be heard, the right to discuss issues rather than suppress argument. These are the topics that the film sets out to raise, with particular reference to evolution and 'intelligent design' (wittily described by someone as creationism in a cheap tuxedo). In the course of this film, Mathis tricked a number of scientists, including PZ Myers and me, into taking prominent parts in the film, and both of us are handsomely thanked in the closing credits.

Seemingly oblivious to the irony, Mathis instructed some uniformed goon to evict Myers while he was standing in line with his family to enter the theatre, and threaten him with arrest if he didn't immediately leave the premises. Did it not occur to Mathis -- what would occur any normally polite and reasonable person -- that Myers, having played a leading role in the film, might have been welcomed as an honoured guest to watch it? Or, more cynically, did he not know that PZ is one of the country's most popular bloggers, with a notoriously caustic wit, perfectly placed to set the whole internet roaring with delighted and mocking laughter? I long ago realised that Mathis was deceitful. I didn't know he was a bungling incompetent.

Continue reading "Lying for Jesus?" It's a blend of vicious criticism, incredulous finger-pointing, and factual/philosophical correction that shows the IDiots for the petty, religiously-motivated, minions of an anti-reason army of the night they are.

They should be expelled.

Thinking more on intelligence...nature...nurture...what is "g"?

The following post is a reply I got on a thread I started, "How do we define intelligence?" at Blogcatalog. It's a long thought on what IQ is and what intelligence could be. Leave thoughts below.

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Thanks for that extensive reply. I am fairly familiar with some of the research that you have referred to here if indirectly. I take “g” to be a construct, not a thing itself that as much as Spearman, Jensen, Yerkes, Goddard, and Murray and Herrnstein may have wanted or continue to want it to be. While there is a lot of evidence for the predictive validity of these tests, their constructs are, sadly, not culturally neutral and tests of fluid intelligence. There is a great deal more enculturation playing into these tests than their makers want to admit. Finally, it would seem that my definition as posed at the beginning – “Intelligence is any given organism's cognitive and emotional capacities to adapt to its ecological and cultural environment(s).” – could not be adequately measured as “g” and its representation as I.Q. because I.Q. tests are not contextually relevant.

There is, to my mind, little to debate regarding these tests accurately assessing people’s abilities regarding language acquisition, abstract object manipulations, digit spans, etc. It also seems that one can use the combined score on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) to account for some portion of the variance of income the way that we can use the SAT to predict some of the variance of student performance in college. This would be a point that Murray and Herrnstein made in The Bell Curve and Murray continues to make today. Those facts are undeniable. On this, we seem to agree.

You say, as Murray and Herrnstein said in a New Republic distillation of their research, that “Most experts take the approach that it is mostly genetic with contributing environmental factors.” This is not true. Most experts do not agree on this matter. In fact, when we see “most experts agree…” we should get some citations, names, institutes…anything. For example, we could look through history and find a lot of people disagreeing with the “g” assessment – John Locke, J.S. Mill, Alfred Binet, Vygotsky, Stephen Jay Gould, Orlando Patterson, Stephen Pinker (who has a very nuanced position), Berry, Glaser, Lewontin, and the two people you mentioned before Gardner and Sternberg. Glaser, for example, writes that intelligence is about 50/50 nature/nurture while Pinker notes that some cognitive activities are entirely environmentally controlled (what language you learn for example and then how you use it) while others seem to be entirely biologically determined like autism (but whether it is genetic or developmental may in certain circumstances be at issue). I should note that these objections lie on a continuum of debate from someone like Gould who was practically a total contextualist (nurture) to Pinker who sees great fluidity for both though individual tasks necessarily have different levels of genetic vs./plus environmental combination.

It’s not clear to me why you discount athletic ability as a potential manifestation of intelligence. Consider Peyton Manning. He needs considerable requisite cognitive skills to execute a complete pass to Dallas Clarke while the blitz comes from the New England Patriots line and secondary. In the space of just a few seconds, he must be able to visualize the predetermined play, process the changing formations of the defense, track his line’s reaction to it, track his receivers, compare all of that data to the predetermined play, and execute the pass. Some of this would no doubt be crystallized intelligence as defined for an I.Q. test. The memorized play is learned culture. There is no question about that.

But when it comes to Manning’s processing speed or ability to visualize the field, we might not be able to tease out how much of his ability is genetic, developmental, or environmental. Surely, his genes are good – he has manifested an incredible ability and broken the single-season TD record previously held by Dan Marino. (Tom Brady has broken it again.) But how much of Manning’s ability came about from good prenatal care? How much from his father’s cultivation of his son’s abilities and good school coaching as well? These might be unteasable at this point. Interestingly, WAIS digit span test has some of these elements too.

A simple mental exercise pans this out. Imagine you are a Korean eight-year old child. Your parents own a small grocery store in your city neighborhood. You parents enlist your aid every weekend to help take stock of the shelves. Speed is of the essence here because the faster and more accurately you count, the faster you get to go play with your friends for the afternoon. You learn that you can group things together from individual shelves: brillo pads, sponges from three companies or of various colors, steel wool, wash cloths, and so on. Other shelves have different things on them and you count and sequence them too. As you go you relay the information to your parents, progressively accelerating over the weeks and months. All of this is done in Korean. It becomes second nature.

At school, you are given a WISC. When it comes to the digit-span test, you crush it, scoring three standard deviations above the mean. Are we to believe that this child’s ability to do this is because of some sort of genetic Korean-ness? That’s not a very parsimonious answer given the light of her/his experiences. Is s/he good at this because of her/his parents’ genes or the environment in which they reared her/him? If we transformed the environment so that the child in question is Yanamamo from the Amazon would we expect that digit span would be in any way an appropriate evaluation of their intelligence? No. It is a culturally-loaded assessment based on Greek ideals of abstract reasoning that have continued to be important to us but are in only the smallest part an assessment of how smart someone actually is. How well have they adapted to their environment?

In the case of the Korean child in the grocery, we see someone who is well-adapted to her/his environment and groomed in an activity that gives them fitness. That skill transfers well to the digit span test. Now, place them in the Amazon and see how smart they are there. I sense some potential disasters that digit spans and its relatives aren’t going to overcome. Perhaps a sorting test of spotting hidden details might be better to accomplish given that you might want to avoid that anaconda that looks like a log at the water’s edge or be able to tell the difference between two species of spider because one will kill you and one will just make you really sick. What about hearing? Should we be able to distinguish between the calls of different animals and how they might alert you to the presence of large predators. Surely, the sound world we live in is as important as the abstract world of shape manipulation and counting.

The I.Q. tests with their roots in the Stanford-Binet do no such thing and for all of the factor analyses they provide or the logistic regressions they run, they do not distill the vast majorities of cultural or ecological environments to which humans adapt themselves. They distill culturally valued aspects of Euro-American culture. They are not thrown together at “random” – anyone asserting that has fought a straw man and I suspect that you have set one up in that assertion.

I hardly think that you can call any of what I have said here a “PC attempt[] to refute the hard science behind I.Q. testing. Those are shortcomings in the nature of the tests themselves.

In some sense, though, they do show that people have intelligence and use it to adapt to their environments. Those people for whom tests determine their fitness in a given cultural environment will learn how to take these tests. Maybe they’ll be so fortunate as to become a bang-up member of MENSA where they can indulge in the satisfaction of having a high I.Q. How nice that they have been afforded an environment that allows them to play abstract games a great deal of the time.

You closed by saying that “intelligence consists of a generalized ability to induct, deduct and manipulate one's environment for one's personal benefit. This ability will transcend specialized areas.” We surely agree on that matter. But based on my above questions and the refutations of the other scholars I have cited, it should be clear that this is not what I.Q. tests measure because they do so in A) atypical contexts, B) in a way that can not represent contexts on which many tasks are dependent, C) in ways that provide no space for social or auditory facility or discernment like navigating a dangerous jungle environment or engaging in diplomacy, and D) pretend that some tests are neutral.

I think that I.Q. tests do ascertain some level of our industrially-adapted intelligence as Americans and that they can account for some of the predicted variance of our success within our culture. But the tests assume a homogenous American culture where there is not one. The enormous difference between a black family in poor Baton Rouge is so hugely different from a mixed Japanese-European family in Seattle from a rural Native American family in Montana from an upper-class sixth-generation Jewish family in Manhattan. Those contexts are totally different and the Stanford-Binet tests do not assess people’s fitness to those environments. They assess some of people’s fitness to educated industrial American society as its been understood by psychometricians and the people paying them.

"The Atheist Apocalypse"

This from VirusComix.

PZ and Dawkins the "gatecrashers"

Yesterday I posted that PZ Myers had been blocked from seeing from the Minneapolis premiere of the ID propaganda film Expelled! while Dawkins was admitted. When they say, "No intelligence allowed," I guess they mean it. Had they known Dawkins was there, he'd have been banned too for sure.

The New York Times has picked it up as have a ton of blogs. Plus, there's new video up of Dawkins and PZ talking at RichardDawkins.net about Myers' expulsion.


P.S. You have to check this blog from PhysioProf titled "Ridiculous Demented Right-Wing Wackaloon Theocratic Douchemonkeys Fuck Up Big Time":

PhysioProf is not real up on the controversy surrounding the movie Expelled, but apparently it is some absurd piece of right-wing Jeebus-freak dreck about how the theory of evolution SUXX0RS!!!11! and how horrible “evolutionists” are suppressing the BEST SCHOLARS EVAH!!!!11!11 from the “Intelligent Design” community (which as far as I can tell is just a Potemkin village from which right-wing theocratic beserkers can peddle their ridiculous Jeebus tales to credulous drooling moron right-wing authoritarian followers).

Anyhoo, the name of the movie, Expelled, is supposed to be a reference to how these totally fucking awesome Jeebus-freak “scholars” have been “expelled” from the regular scientific community by nasty “evolutionists”, despite their brilliant insights into some goofy wacked-out Jeebus-freak crapola, and that it is TOTALLY UNFAIR that they have been expelled because their loonie-tune nonsense does not suit “evolutionist” dogma and is unpopular. So the basic idea is that it is TERRIBLE and HORRIBLE and EVIL for people with unpopular views to be expelled from any particular realm of intellectual discourse.

PZ Myers expelled by Expelled! But guess who got in?!?!

I have usually tried to avoid outrightly insulting the ID people. But their IDiocy has just made for a great showing.

At Talk Reason, PZ Myers tells us that he went to attend a showing of the ID propaganda film EXPELLED! . He says, a policeman

"pulled me out of line and told me I could not go in. I asked why, of course, and he said that a producer of the film had specifically instructed him that I was not to be allowed to attend. The officer also told me that if I tried to go in, I would be arrested. I assured him that I wasn't going to cause any trouble."

I went back to my family and talked with them for a while, and then the officer came back with a theater manager, and I was told that not only wasn't I allowed in, but I had to leave the premises immediately. Like right that instant.

I complied."

None of us are really that surprised that a bunch of conspiratorial wingnuts with a clandestine religiously totalitarian agenda can't stand to have their opponents come and see a movie that actually features one of the people they attack in the film. See, sunshine is the best disinfectant as Louis Brandeis wrote. And our scrutiny of this schlock is an inoculation against the infectious meme of creationism. No. It is their boundless hypocrisy that sets me right over the edge and should offend every person's sense of fairness and dignity. Well...almost.

There's a Keystone Cops flavor in all of this that brings with it a silver lining. Guess who was with PZ? Guess who got in without any problem at all.

Guess.

Come on.

RICHARD DAWKINS!!! Love it. I am practically quivering with anticipation to see this blow up in the IDiots' faces. From Bill Buckingham to Ben Stein it's a ship of fools.

Stephen Novella on "A Golden Age"

Stephen Novella, the president of the New England Skeptical Society has a good post up at Neurologica regarding the fate of science and Enlightenment thinking in the world. It is a thoughtful post that cites several major skeptics from Paul Kurtz to Stephen Barrett to get some sense (if only the elite) of opinion within the skeptical community.

He writes in the middle of the post:

Taking the very long term perspective, I think it is undeniably true that in recent centuries the overall trend has been toward enlightenment, toward a larger role for science in society and a diminishing role for faith-based belief systems. I am hopeful that this large trend will continue, and that we should not be overly worried about what may turn out to be a short term reversal lasting only decades. I also agree with Marcia Angell that science has a distinct advantage - it works, its principles are valid, and in the end it seems to work out.

But my long term optimism is tempered by two pessimistic possibilities. The first is more dire, if less likely. It may be true that the long term trend over the last 600 or so years has been positive - reflecting the rise of science and reason in human civilization. But if we take an even longer view we see that at other times in human history the light of science and reason has been extinguished - for example the death of empiricism in ancient Greece and the other historical factors that lead to 1500 years of Dark Ages.

I too am ambivalent but also quite hopeful. Perhaps my hope is built on my subjective experiences but there are a lot of people out there who are tired of the foolishness of religious dogmatism that has pervaded our society since at least the Reagan era. The problem though lies in the other forms of soft quackery and pseudo-science that are out there. From alien abduction to ESP, homeopathy, iridology, and reiki, it's all a bit much and it pervades our culture. We are hard-wired to accept nonsense.

It is my sincere hope that we can move the conversation forward so that more people can learn more about more. Instead of investing our Sundays in the segregated pews of supposedly divinely sanctioned ignorance, maybe we can move forward to consider what Lucretius called "a scheme of systematic contemplation." Perhaps what we need is to reconsider the foundations of our thinking and overturn our modes of information gathering and our bases of knowledge.

I suppose that like Novella and the original skeptics, I believe that we know almost nothing. But that which we know, should be sewn and must blossom.

Always with the corrections

Sometimes it's a bit much to read and hear the incredible double-talk from the Disco 'Tute. The degree to which they seek crowd deception veil on veil can trouble even their most ardent watchers like yours truly. Really, it can nearly make me scream. And Casey "I-never-met-a-logical-fallacy-or-misappropriated-quotation-I-didn't-love" Luskin has once again shown that he is totally willing to abscond with the truth and let the ends justify the means even if it means lying. He is a spineless jerk.

In his latest line of bulls*** at Evolution Lies and Deceptions, he's posted the following about a recent rather poignant article about Stephen Godfrey, a scientist who saw the proverbial light and dropped his YEC views because they were untenable in the light of not only evolution but the explanatory power of modern science:

The Science article focuses almost entirely upon efforts to promote young earth creationism. In the one sentence where it mentions intelligent design, it casts it merely as religious “creationism.” Darwinists are promoting a false dichotomy. If you want to have a scientific view about origins, they tell you that your only choice is neo-Darwinism. Otherwise, they tell you that you must believe in religion-based creationism. This is harmful because it tells people that if they want to be both religious and scientific, their only choice is to accept neo-Darwinian evolution. That’s a false dichotomy because it tells people that if they dissent from Darwinism, their only option is a religious view—it willfully ignores scientific skepticism of evolution or science-based ID. While religious persons can of course accept neo-Darwinism if they so choose, this false dichotomy ignores the fact that there are some alternatives to evolution that are scientific (i.e. intelligent design).

Given that Godfrey was a YEC it makes sense that the article focuses on that branch of creationism and not on the "big tent" of ID. But Luskin is really trying to pull a bait and switch here by claiming that ID is science. If you follow the "big tent" according to Phillip Johnson - the father of the ID movement - you see where this all goes - to creationism. Here are some of Johnson's words:

I was fascinated with the evolutionary story, which is really the creation myth of the modern age. The first thing I noticed about it is that it contradicts the book of Genesis.

So his impetus was the Bible. Doesn't that, in itself, reek of YEC thinking? Calling Ken Ham. If your concern is to make this an issue of God or not and that you are beginning your query based on the Genesis account, then you are moving from a YEC position. It's transparent.

So how about this?

If you have a biblical creation story, then getting the right relationship with God and getting to heaven are the most important things. If you throw that overboard and you have a naturalistic creation story, those things become unimportant and what becomes important is how we apply scientific knowledge to make a heaven here on earth. That's a dream of various kinds of reform programs--socialism, for example. [emphasis added]

Here he concedes that he's engaged in a spiritual fight built on a relationship with God and using science to "make a heaven on earth." How is that - in any way, shape, or form - a scientific enterprise? Science depends on a natural method, not a supernatural method. As much as Johnson et al want to make science accept supernaturalism, they aren't going to. You accept Johnson's theistic realism into the mix and you have to admit the "dead time" they do on Paranormal State. Sorry guys. That's what Penn & Teller call Bullshit!

One more. How about Paul Nelson who has admitted that ID has no "full-fledged theory of biological design...[and] no general theory of biological design":

Within the past decade, the ID community has matured around the insights of UC Berkeley professor Phillip Johnson, whose central insight is that science must be free to seek the truth, wherever it lies. The possibility of design, therefore, cannot be excluded from science. This outlook has deep roots in the history of Western science and is essential to the health of science as a truth-seeking enterprise. Under the canopy of design as an empirical possibility, however, any number of particular theories may also be possible, including traditional creationism, progressive (or “old-earth”) creationism, and theistic evolution. Both scientific and scriptural evidence will have to decide the competition between these theories. The “big tent” of ID provides a setting in which that struggle after truth can occur, and from which the secular culture may be influenced.

But if you research their statements on theistic evolutionists, like Ken Miller, you'll find that they have no tolerance for them either. It's all a shield for creationists to get together and spread their "logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory" or other equally pointless cloaked religious endeavors.

Don McElroy, the head of the Texas Education Agency thinks the "big tent" is a great idea. After citing Johnson's influence on fighting naturalism, he said:

Now I would like to talk a little bit about the big tent. Why is intelligent design the big tent? It’s because we’re all lined up against the fact that naturalism, that nature is all there is. Whether you’re a progressive creationist, recent creationist, young earth, old earth, it’s all in the tent of intelligent design. And intelligent design here at Grace Bible Church actually is a smaller, uh, tent than you would have in the intelligent design movement as a whole. Because we are all Biblical literalists, we all believe the Bible to be inerrant, and it’s good to remember, though, that the entire intelligent design movement as a whole is a bigger tent. So because it’s a bigger tent, just don’t waste our time arguing with each other about some of the, all of the side issues. And that’s one thing that I really enjoyed about our group is that we’ve put that all in the big tent, we’re all working together.

Then with regard to theistic evolutionist:

I’d like to make a quick comment about the option of theistic evolution, and it’s a very poor option. There’s not anybody in our group that’s advocating this. Because Darwinism doesn’t allow God to do anything. Consider natural selection of random mutations. If they’re random mutations, they can’t be God-directed, and if they’re naturally selected, you can’t hav, quote, “God-selecteds.” And so no one in our group represents theistic evolution, and the big tent of intelligent design does not include theistic evolutionists. Because intelligent design is opposed to evolution.

There is simply no evidence here that there is a scientific program going on and every indication that this is a clandestine attempt to pull a Lazarus for creationism. ID is a trojan horse. Over and over again it's biblical literalists trying to dress up their arguments with scientific language to prop transparently religious notions. There is simply no question about it. For all of Luskin's shouts and arm waving, anyone with a computer and internet access can merely look at Touchstone magazine and find their agenda.

Finally, even though Luskin wishes it weren't so, "if [people] want to be both religious and scientific, their only choice is to accept neo-Darwinian evolution" is at this point is basically true. If you want a broad and predictive theory about the evolution of life on earth, then the modern neo-Darwinian synthesis is where it's at. There is no current viable and strong explanation in biology that can do the legwork. How does a totally subjective notion like the "explanatory filter" get us anywhere? It doesn't. There is currently no viable alternative.

Because ID has no scientific research, it sure isn't viable. And given the genesis (haha) of ID from YEC in the wake of the Arkansas ruling and the Of Pandas and People "cdesign proponentsists," they're torched. Here is a graph (from the same link at The Panda's Thumb) that clearly shows how they tried to switch creationist, creationism, etc. with intelligent design proponent and intelligent design.

You can't hide in plain sight. Lying for Jesus will only get you so far. Don't you fear for your immortal soul?

Neanderthals and human differences likely caused by genetic drift and upright walking dates to 6 m.y.a.

The newest evidence on Neanderthal and homo sapiens split about 370,000 years ago according to Tim Weaver of USC and may well have been caused by genetic drift. The article at Science Daily notes:

Weaver's study appears in the March 17 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It builds on findings from a study he and his colleagues published last year in the Journal of Human Evolution, in which the team compared cranial measurements of 2,524 modern human skulls and 20 Neanderthal specimens. The researchers concluded that random genetic change, or genetic drift, most likely account for the cranial differences.

In their new study, Weaver and his colleagues crunched their fossil data using sophisticated mathematical models -- and calculated that Neanderthals and modern humans split about 370,000 years ago. The estimate is very close to estimates derived by other researchers who have dated the split based on clues from ancient Neanderthal and modern-day human DNA sequences.

The close correlation of the two estimates -- one based on studying bones, one based on studying genes -- demonstrates that the fossil record and analyses of DNA sequences give a consistent picture of human evolution during this time period.

In other news:

A shape comparison of the most complete fossil femur (thigh bone) of one of the earliest known pre-humans, or hominins, with the femora of living apes, modern humans and other fossils, indicates the earliest form of bipedalism occurred at least six million years ago and persisted for at least four million years. William Jungers, Ph.D., of Stony Brook University, and Brian Richmond, Ph.D., of George Washington University, say their finding indicates that the fossil belongs to very early human ancestors, and that upright walking is one of the first human characteristics to appear in our lineage, right after the split between human and chimpanzee lineages. Their findings are published in the March 21 issue of the journal Science.

They estimate that the split occurred about 6 m.y.a.

Their analysis included a large and diverse sample of apes, other early hominins, including Australopithecus, and modern humans of all body sizes.

“This research solidifies the evidence that the human lineage split off as far back as six million years ago, that we share ancestry with Orrorin, and that our ancestors were walking upright at the time,” says Dr. Richmond. “These answers were not clear before this analysis.”

New findings add new wrinkles.

Even the reviews for D'Souza are maddening

Over at Christianity Today Tony Snow (the once and former Bush press secretary) has posted a review of Dinesh D'Souza's What's So Great About Christianity? The book is one of the many responses to the New Atheists and a hearty defense for the faithful. I have watched D'Souza debate Dan Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Michael Shermer. When I say debate, I mean that he misappropriates other people's arguments, misconstrues science, states that the universe is lawful and that therefore it must have a lawgiver, and repeatedly asserts that morality is meaningless without a creator. Tony Snow trots out some of the same garbage. A couple of examples will suffice.

For example, Snow seems to think that science as practiced A) necessarily casts religion into the dustbin and B) has limits that its practitioners don't understand. Snow writes:

D'Souza takes up a second major tenet of the New Atheism—that religion and science cannot coexist. He defangs Darwinists by demonstrating the compatibility of evolutionary theory and Christian doctrine, and reiterates Aquinas's assertion that reason and faith complement each other.

Sadly, the D'Souza defanged no one. It is true, as Dawkins has admitted, that science is on one hand there are rigorous scientists who are religious and that their faith seems undisturbed by scientific inquiry. Take cell biologist at Brown University and lead witness for Dover plaintiffs Ken Miller as an elite example and former Dover high school physics teacher Bryan Rehm as a non-elite professional in the sciences: they are Christians who have reconciled their faiths. Dawkins doesn't understand it personally but it shows that people can compartmentalize scientific reason and faith even if they aren't strictly compatible but that people holding those two positions can see them as complimenting one another.

That said, it is somewhat beyond me to see how they can see amazingly wasteful process of evolution as the work of a loving God. Over and over again it seems that the answer is to simply have faith that God has some other plan for us or that he/it is not to be understood or that, perhaps in some theological acrobatics, God might be perfect in some way but not omnipotent. It's a mystery and that's part of the fun for them. But ultimately, it's a mystery built entirely on words - logomata - that is terribly incoherent and scientifically untenable. You can eat your cake and have it too I suppose, but there's no evidence that your cake is real. It's an intentional object. A simulacrum.

Sadly, Snow and D'Souza both think that their misrepresentation of science is compatible with their faiths. Snow continues,

Yet science has insurmountable limits. It cannot answer empirical questions about the origins of the universe, for instance. D'Souza quotes Nobel laureate Arno Penzias and astronomer Robert Jastrow to the effect that the Big Bang leads us back to a moment when everything began—and delivers us not to the doorstep of atheism but theology.

This is false negative argument that lands us in a non sequitur. First, it is not the case that science cannot answer the empirical questions about the origins of the universe. There are hypotheses out there that explain much of the data of the observed universe as it expands in space and time. As Victor Stenger has written, the universe may have appeared "as an uncaused quantum event from an initial state of zero energy." That is a tentative statement as all scientific statements are, but it is consistent with and descriptive of observed phenomena within astronomy and quantum physics as is the multiverse hypothesis. Should Stenger et al be right, as seems justifiable within limits, we can reasonably infer an atheistic universe.

But even if it is totally wrong, we are still absent any evidence of a divine origin. If we were totally ignorant about the universe's origin, it would not follow that we are "delivered...to the doorstep of...theology." We would simply still be ignorant. Theology explains nothing whatever about how and why the universe began. Snow and all believers who try to explain that it happened because "God made it happen," have explained and described nothing other than their own subjective feelings on the matter that they learned from a religious leader and his magic book.

Like all bad interlocutors on this matter, Snow and company have to insist that accepting atheism means that we are going to have to trot out a few hundred buckets of paint and our carpentry tools and do a fixer-upper on the Gulag, Dachau, the Great Leap Forward, the Killing Fields, and the French Reign of Terror. Snow writes, "Atheism fails as a creed because it lacks humanity. It destroys the wall of sanctity that defends the weak from the strong."

This is almost enough to make me scream. What Snow can't possibly understand as a believer (though many believers seem to understand it just fine) is that atheism is not a creed. It is the absence of one. It is practically devoid of content. An atheist does not form a moral or ethical system on her/his lack of belief in the supernatural as that her/his moral or ethical system will simply lack that content. Atheism makes no claims about morality at all.

Ethical systems - whether a religious ethical doctrine like the Jesus's version of the Golden Rule or a secular ethical system like J.S. Mill's On Liberty or Utilitarianism - form content. In the case of the Golden Rule we hold that people who follow it will behave in a given way (we hope) and do so in part because they have a belief in the divinity of Jesus. But the ethical content of the Golden Rule is not predicated on believing in Jesus's divinity. Being a utilitarian is not predicated on our acceptance of the divinity or non-divinity of J.S. Mill (or Bentham or Singer for that matter) but on the cogency of their moral reasoning. Whether or not one is an atheist or not has nothing, strictly speaking, with morality.

So Snow's following statement simply falls apart:

This leads us to perhaps the strongest argument against atheism, which D'Souza makes only indirectly—the argument from experience. Atheism cannot reach our hearts. A rigorous atheist cannot console in a time of grief, cannot explain love, cannot sigh in happy wonder at life's endless surprises. He can only utter, "What is, is."

Atheism is not about "hearts." Ethical systems are about "hearts" and our philosophies and beliefs - not our absence of beliefs - shape our thoughts and help us make sense of love, grief, happiness, and death. It just doesn't follow at all that an atheist "can only utter, 'What is, is.'" Way to set up a straw man Tony.

Of course it follows that Snow wants to imply that no atheist can have a sense of something larger than her or himself. The fact that we atheists form communities, share our thoughts and feelings, celebrate and love, make art, raise families, and many of us marvel at the incredible texture of the Milky Way or feel the incredible loss of self and immanent quickening of realizing that we are all related to one another and every other living thing on our pale blue dot...these things are lost on Snow and D'Souza. They, not us, choose to believe in the straw man atheist. We have a longer view here in middle world.

James Randi coming to Penn State

We at the Penn State Atheists/Agnostics Association is hosting James Randi at Penn State University Park on Wednesday, March 26th at 8 pm in 112 Kern Building. Given that Penn State is the shooting grounds and home base for A&E's Paranormal State who have connections with other noted *cough* "psychics", it seems appropriate to host the world's foremost skeptic to rebut such nonsense.

He'll be doing his presentation:

Prophecy, Divination, and Faith Healing
Modern-day Swindlers and How They Deceive, Cheating Us Out of Billions Annually.

"Religious" services on cable TV and after-dark infomercials are stealing billions from the gullible in our society, including the elderly and those who are less fortunate, by promising healing, financial largesse, and advice on people's love lives and futures, through charismatic preachers, financial "gurus," and "900 number" psychics.

The record is dismal indeed: never has there been a proven case of faith healing; financial "gurus" have only proven that one way to get rich is to sell a "How To" kit on getting rich; and out of approximately 2400 psychics from the Psychic Network, not one predicted they were going belly-up.

Psychics and astrologers who offer us prophecies have been notably unable to predict their own futures, and have missed the most important events in history, while concentrating on who in Hollywood is seeing who. Surely, this is an aspect that gives us a clear indication of their credibility.

For more on Randi go the James Randi Educational Foundation.

And ID gets more and more disses

Oh Casey Luskin et al...what will you do? Your English brethren in faith have, as the most recent winner of the Templeton Prize has, sent you to the cleaners. The International Society for Science and Religion have unequivocally repudiate ID as a "science stopper." Right on.

They write:

We believe that intelligent design is neither sound science nor good theology. Although the boundaries of science are open to change, allowing supernatural explanations to count as science undercuts the very purpose of science, which is to explain the workings of nature without recourse to religious language. Attributing complexity to the interruption of natural law by a divine designer is, as some critics have claimed, a science stopper. Besides, ID has not yet opened up a new research program. In the opinion of the overwhelming majority of research biologists, it has not provided examples of "irreducible complexity" in biological evolution that could not be explained as well by normal scientifically understood processes. Students of nature once considered the vertebrate eye to be too complex to explain naturally, but subsequent research has led to the conclusion that this remarkable structure can be readily understood as a product of natural selection. This shows that what may appear to be "irreducibly complex" today may be explained naturalistically tomorrow.

So they admit the God of the gaps and move on without really attributing anything to God. Cool. But doesn't that make God kind of lame? Why believe in the omnipotence of something that so often has its cajones taken away from it by a human enterprise like science? That wouldn't be because it...I don't know...was invented by humans or anything would it? Hmmmm.

But really, I'm glad to see some pretty reasonable people come out and unequivocally defend science and reason while they keep the NOMA. While I am incapable of using NOMA on myself, I see it operate within very healthy people and see that the anti-naturalists among us can be beaten back on many fronts.

Deny creationism as much as you want to boys...

...but it's not gonna work. The Disco 'Tute takes us for a bunch of morons. Really. How many times do they have to be trapped in their double-talk before they just crawl into bed with the AiG and ICR folks in public and have a love-in for the trinity? No one believes them. Not even the young-earthers like Ken Ham and John Morris. They are, as I said recently, trying to hide in plain sight. Guess what? It doesn't work.

After the typical bemoaning of "Darwinist" evils and anti-ID prejudice, Casey Luskin, one of the most prolific quote-miners and truth-absconders in history writes at the end of his usual nonsense screed related to a friendly blurb at Men's News Daily, seems to believe that the media is helping to suppress them. For f***'s sake, has he seen how many times Phillip Johnson or Behe have been featured in or on major news outlets with almost no scrutiny? Luskin and LaSalle (the Men's News writer) also seem to believe that there is no tie between the Wedge, the endless talk of the God in Phillip Johnson's books, in Dembski's position in Christian apologetics, Behe's slip on the Colbert Report that God is fighting back, the whole idea of the "big tent," or the convenient revisions of Of Pandas and People that yielded the word substitution (missing link some might say?) of "creationists" to "cdesign proponentsists" to "design propoenents."

Luskin must think we're stupid. Sorry bud, but we can all see you. Go have another congregational symposium at Biola (Bible Institute of Los Angeles) to discuss the inevitability of creationism...err...design. While you're at it, use design to create a novel research program. Oh wait...you can't.

I'm on the Atheist Blogroll!

Just want to let everyone know that I've joined the Atheist Blogroll. You can find the rolling version of the Blogroll on the left of my page below "Science and Education" and "Philosophical Wanderings."

Its mission, so to speak, is as follows:

The Atheist Blogroll is a service provide to the Atheist and Agnostic blogging community. The blogroll currently maintains over 350 blogs. Membership is limited to Atheist and Agnostic bloggers.

Glad to be aboard and eager to be in contact with lots of other non-believers and freethinkers.

Thanks Mojoey! Check his blog, Deep Thoughts.

Newest winner of the Templeton Prize disses ID

The newest winner of the Templeton Prize, a Polish priest and scientist named Michael Heller, has chided the ID movement. The Templeton is, by and large, a shady $1.6 million award that seeks to reconcile science and religion and make "progress or discoveries about spiritual realities."

The Associated Press reports, "Heller in his statement criticized adherents of intelligent design - which holds that aspects of the universe and living beings are best explained by a higher power - as committing a "grave theological error."

I'll say. It makes their God into a meddling tinkerer who injects his will at arbitrary times for no reason other than to make things more complex. It is a transparent attempt to make a god in their own image.

Still inventing reasons to kvetch over Dover

Casey Luskin is a grade-A deluded nutter. More than two years after Judge Jones III stuck it to ID with the landmark Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling, they still have to bring it up and lick the old wound because it hurts so much. Such is Luskin's whine today at the Evolution News and Views at the Disco 'Tute.

Luskin is crying because the judge had the gall to read between the lines of the Wedge, writing that“The ACLU and the judge noted that the Intelligent Design backers, the Discovery Institute, had written something called the ‘Wedge Strategy’ document, which laid out a multiyear plan to introduce ‘theistic and Christian science.’” Luskin wants us to see the "world of difference" between that and the Wedge's quoted text which states they desire "science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."

That world of difference would be like comparing this world with a world nearly exactly like it. Anyone who reads the Wedge and the innumerable spewings of Dembski and Phillip Johnson sees that Luskin is trying to hide in plain sight. Take the Wedge's first and sixth paragraphs alone:

The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built. Its influence can be detected in most, if not all, of the West's greatest achievements, including representative democracy, human rights, free enterprise, and progress in the arts and sciences.
...
Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies. Bringing together leading scholars from the natural sciences and those from the humanities and social sciences, the Center explores how new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature. The Center awards fellowships for original research, holds conferences, and briefs policymakers about the opportunities for life after materialism. [Emphasis mine.]

So being "created in the image of God [as] one of the bedrock principles" and "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies" and hoping to make a broadly "theistic understanding of nature" have nothing to do whatever with Jones' ruling? Luskin is a known quote miner (that's just the most recent example in a seemingly endless chain at The Panda's Thumb) but to also totally decontextualize his own employer's mission statement and lie about? Way to go ace. Way to fight for those Christian values of lying and hypocrisy.

Give me some of that old-time religion.

Sewing confusion with semantics

Yesterday, I posted on Florida's SB 2692, the euphemistically titled "Academic Freedom Bill." John West at the Disco 'Tute has posted a rebuttal, "Florida Darwinists Can’t Get Story Straight about Opposition to Academic Freedom Act," to the "Darwinists" who are allegedly suppressing people's academic freedom. Interestingly, he and I agree on some things; he just chooses to leap to bad conclusions.

The first thing that I want to point out, which I haven't done in quite a while, is that the term Darwinist is misleading. It casts someone who accepts the theory of evolution as a follower of Darwin in a similar way to calling someone who believes that Jesus is the savior of mankind is a Christian. This is false. While we clearly see Darwin as a leading figure in the history of science in particular and thought and philosophy in general, and that we accord him a high degree of respect, we don't revere him in a religious sense. We sure as hell don't worship him. But given that the anti-evolution forces are so religiously bent, it seems that they are totally unable to conceive of the difference between respect and worship. Unlike their slavish devotion to their supposed messiah, we recognize that Darwin had both personal and intellectual shortcomings and that there were simply things that he couldn't have known - like the mechanism of inheritance - and got just plain wrong.

West et al make this into a faux cult of personality that is simply inappropriate but works to the crowd of staunch believers. It's more of the public relations game to frame us around a person instead of a set of facts and predictions. It's clever, but it's deeply disingenuous.

That's just the beginning. West writes that in a recent Miami Herald article

"Marc Caputo had to concede that “indeed, natural selection is under active challenge from evolutionary-developmental biologists, who say multicellular organisms can dynamically change form under certain environmental conditions, producing major evolutionary jumps.”

Once again, though, this is a deeply disingenuous ploy. They are blowing a bunch of smoke from a fire they've set themselves and saying that the fire is in biological science. To say that "natural selection is under active challenge from evolutionary developmental" biology is partially true. However, that challenge is neither questioning whether natural selection plays a role at all or challenging whether or not evolution has occurred. These are questions of mechanism and the role played by different mechanisms - morphogenes in development, sexual selection, genetic drift, mutations, duplications, or natural selection. The active challenge is fully within the modern synthesis and continues to confirm descent with modification.

It's an open scientific question as to how much development will play in the further development of evolutionary theory. Let's let people like Jerry Coyne (a gradualist) hash it out with PZ Myers (an evo-devo biologist) and learn what they have to discover. Or, get into the research game and make some observations and run some experiments to further the endeavor. West and Luskin aren't doing this. They are (like me) non-experts. They're lawyers skilled in the art of rhetoric and semantics who wish to frame this argument in seriously misleading ways.

West writes later

"Right now, as Luskin correctly pointed out at the press conference, there is a debate raging over whether intelligent design is science. Scientists and philosophers who support ID certainly think it is scientific in precisely the same way Darwinism is scientific."

Not really. The debate might be whether it might ever become science. Almost ten years after the writing of the Wedge document, the CSC has produced no science at all despite having hoped "[t]o see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory." They would accomplish this in part by publishing "[o]ne hundred scientific, academic and technical articles by our fellows." As many of us have noted, this hasn't happened. Not even remotely. The only places where ID has a foothold are in theologically conservative Protestant bastions like Biola and they have one peer-reviewed journal article that contained only negative arguments against evolution and is a literature review and meta-analysis that concludes with a negative argument against evolution. ID has no research program so it hopes to wedge itself into the public mind by attacking a sound idea that isn't consonant with its theistic realism.

Once again, West's entire piece is misdirection. He isn't actually asking for freedom. He is asking for special treatment. He is screaming about unfairness and trying to cram an unfair policy into the Florida school system. It's unfair to students because it makes mountains out of anthills, misleads students about the actual nature of scientific scholarship and debate, substitutes false controversies where there are real controversies (most of which are frankly well beyond 9th-12th grade biology classes), and makes exceptions where they aren't earned.

West concludes with this tour de farce:

Ironically, the only reason Florida Darwinists would have to fear that this bill might protect intelligent design somewhere down the road is if they already have concluded they cannot win the debate over whether ID is science. Indeed, by insisting that intelligent design must be covered by the bill, Darwinists in Florida seem to have admitted that despite their rhetoric, they really believe that intelligent design is science after all! And that may be the most telling admission in the entire debate. [Emphasis West's.]

The bravado of the ID camp has to be admired. They are tenacious and that is their greatest strength. From West to Dembski to Johnson, they've been sounding the death bell for evolution for years and anticipated the day when ID will win. This is another version of the same. There is no "debate" in science about whether ID is science. The pro-science camp in Florida isn't stating that ID needs to be covered by SB 2692, they're saying it's sneaky trick to get ID in the back door by opening up "biological and chemical evolution" for special treatment and "critiques." Most of the critiques put forth by the Disco 'Tute are muddled, false, or invented and don't constitute scientific critiques.

So his statement that the anti-ID camp "believe[s] that intelligent design is science after all" is totally laughable. It's more saber rattling. That's really the most telling admission in the entire debate - that the ID proponents have to put words in their opponents' mouths to make themselves feel better.

Saying goodbye to Gary Gygax

Gary Gygax, the inventor of Dungeons and Dragons died earlier this week. I've played D & D for over twenty years from the Basic rules of the late 70s and early 80s through the annoying nonsense of 2nd edition to the more efficient rules of 3.0 and 3.5. Soon we'll have a 4th edition.

Wired has a nice little obit up as do CNN, New York Times, and NPR.

Wizards of the Coast who currently publish D & D have this up at their site in honoring him. So cast your Bless spells on your fellow gamers and send your wishes to Gygax as he resides in the Seven Heavens with Bahamut the platinum dragon.

Florida SB 2692 defends ignorance not integrity

A new Florida Senate Bill is seeking to protect all of those honest teachers out there who want to "protect the right of teachers to objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding chemical and biological evolution." It has been presented by state Senator Ronda Storms. It is yet another in the long chain of recent conservative attacks to uphold so-called academic freedom (pasted below). It is a special protection case for a hidden religious political agenda.

The Florida Citizens for Science have already posted on this subject so I will be fairly brief.

The content of this bill is taken right from the playbook of the Disco 'Tute.
A) It asserts that teachers have a right to dissent from the overwhelming findings within their field and that they should be able to do so without fear;
B) it asserts that there is "information relevant" to evolution that somehow calls the broad sweep of evolution into question;
C) it limits its critique to evolution instead of the entire scientific enterprise.
This embodies "teaching the controversy" perfectly.

It simply boggles the mind how Storms, a legislator with a history of various religiously-inspired antics, can be taken seriously at all. She wants to defend teachers' rights only insofar as protecting them will protect her cherished notions of inspired Christianity. The slippery slope can easily turn into a logical fallacy and a stupid scare tactic, but in our case here it's a real thing. Let's say we let Florida teachers do a lesson on Haeckel's fudged developmental drawings as Wells would have us do a la Icons of Evolution wherein students would learn (incorrectly) that the evil Darwinists have been covering up Haeckel's mistakes for over a century.

Sadly, this lesson would be misleading. As Paul Gross and Barbara Forrest write in Creationism's Trojan Horse, embryologists and evolutionary developmental biologists have known that the drawings were fudged for about a century, they do not use them as current models, and only two textbooks have used them for instructional purposes. But the point remains that if we allow a Wells-style critique as Senator Storm would like to see, then we open up a door to an educational morass. When a set of critiques like Wells's have been shown to be error-ridden and misleading (to be generous) then they have no place in education. You let them in, you let in a notion like panspermia (the seeding of life on Earth by aliens), ID, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster in with his noodly appendage.

Bad lessons that, in this case, defy the consensus positions of your field do not promote academic freedom. They promote sloppy thinking that teaches people to see smoke where there are no fires.

When educational media gets it right the Discovery Institute cries

Channel One, the educational TV channel broadcast to an estimated 6 million children in the U.S. every day, did a spot on the argument about teaching ID in public school science classes. Watch it here. Over the Disco 'Tute's propaganda wing Robert Crowther has a post up kvetching about the unfair treatment that ID got in the piece. I am happy to report that the Channel One piece is accurate and a good representation of the kinds of arguments that the two sides occupy.

Crowther writes that

"scientists are interviewed about evolution and a minister is questioned about intelligent design. Not being a scientist or design theorist at all, he gives a poor and unclear definition of ID -- presumably exactly what Channel One wanted."

It's true that they interview the curator of the American Museum of Natural History and they interview a minister. The curator gives us a good understanding of what evolution entails by stating that all living things are related. The process of our diversification has been evolution by natural selection.

On the other hand, Crowther seems to think that it would be fair to represent the bulk of the ID movement by placing a scientist there. That would be nice if scientists or so-called theorists were the people representing ID on the street so to speak. But they aren't. The overwhelming majority of ID advocates are Christians. Where are they taught about ID? In churches. If you follow where EXPELLED! has been playing, it's been in churches and at religious colleges (older post on that here). These aren't bastions of science. They are places for religious ideas to fester and fight reason. It is absolutely warranted that Channel One asks a reverend to define ID as he is a representative proponent. If he doesn't know what ID is, then the Disco 'Tute needs to get its ducks in a row and keep religion out of it. Of course, that's impossible, so they have to wave their arms around and pretend like they're being oppressed by the priesthood of Darwin.

Crowther also writes this piece of misdirection:

Remember that in Florida it was the Darwinists who kept talking about intelligent design. No one ever suggested that ID be included in the state's science curriculum, but Darwinist claimed this was what was happening. All that was ever proposed was the dogmatic teaching of only Darwinian evolution sans any critical analysis. A minority report was submitted, but likewise didn't deal with intelligent design at all.

Well that is only half the truth and a total lie. Has he seen what the editorial pages looked like in Florida? I wrote a post about this earlier in which we see that beneath all of the angst lay religious indoctrination. Two of the letters I cited in that post are from the Reverend Bernie Diaz and the Reverend Robert Gray. (This also supplies a bit more evidence for my assertions above about who represents ID.) Did Crowther attend or attend to the school board meetings where Christians fumed about Darwinian anti-religion? Apparently not.

He goes on to cite the so-called "minority report" (slick packaging ain't it?) which states the following:

“If Florida students are to remain competitive in science, students need to see how scientists debate important topics, such as Darwinian evolution or the chemical origin of life...Students should learn why some scientists give scientific critiques of standard models of neo-Darwinian evolution or models of the chemical origin of life.”

I agree that students should learn something about how scientists debate important topics. Cool. Then give them an actual controversy within science and not between a group of politically-motivated Christian ideologues armed with rhetoricians and lawyers vs. the scientists whose work they attack. That's not a scientific battle. That's a public relations and political war. If they really want to get into the scientific critiques of the modern synthesis - what these clowns call neo-Darwinism - then they're going to have to wade into some pretty technical literature that is, in the vast majority of cases, unfit for high school consumption. (No doubt the Disco dancers want to get something like Icons of Evolution in there. It's just too bad that it is a book saturated with deliberate falsehoods.) While ID is not specifically brought up in the minority report the next step in the Wedge following the disaster at Dover is voiced loud and clear: "teach the controversy."

The long and the short of it is that there are real critiques out there between gradualists like Jerry Coyne and "hopeful monster" types like Aaron Fuller. Coyne and the gradualists are carrying the day on this one again as Dawkins did with Stephen Jay Gould during the "punctuated equilibrium" controversy (see this older post or Jerry Coyne's guest post at the Loom) or the recent brush-up over whether the fossils of small hominids in Indonesia are homo sapiens or some other species as has recently been covered in the popular press and nicely fleshed out at Research Penn State. Students can learn about these things as part of the healthy if sometimes rancorous disputes in science. But not one of the "design theorists" that the Disco 'Tute has put forth has contributed an iota to these discussions because they are just trying to burn the house down.

But why single out evolution? It's transparently political and religious all being pushed by an ID "think" tank that supports "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism." As Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross note, these people view science as a form of idolatry that distracts from a higher truth.

I'm glad that Channel One got this piece in and gave us a good sense of what is at stake. Bravo!

A great use of technology for the world's poor

This is a great idea.

"Why is the world ordered and whence cometh this order?"

Creationists like to ask two annoying questions. Actually, they ask a lot more than two...but these two really irk me. They are as follows:
1. Why is the world the way it is?
2. Where did that order come from?
Sometimes they dress it up in erudite language as Bill Dembski did on page 98 of Intelligent Design where he put it, "This is the mystery confronting scientists. Why is the world ordered and whence cometh this order?" These are interesting questions but creationism and its ID version a la Dembski don't give us any good answers. We'll use Dembski's versions of the questions.
1. Why is the world ordered...

Matter and energy are ordered. Apparently, the world is made of matter and energy (world here being synonymous with universe). Without some kind of order there would be no matter as we know it and energy would behave very differently if it were to behave at all. This order arises from what modern scientifically literate humans have come to understand as the fundamental laws of physics and chemistry in the form of Newton's laws of motion, the laws of thermodynamics, and so on. We understand how gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces work but not why.

As many many scientists have pointed out (Lawrence Krauss and Stephen Hawking among them) we understand very well how gravity works and affects objects but not why it works. We can use our understanding of gravity to generate predictions that allow us to engineer a flight path for objects like the Cassini, Galileo, Pioneer or Voyager spacecrafts. We do not however understand why gravity works the way that it does. It is a profound mystery that physicists and astrophysicists are very actively puzzling over and squabbling about. Last summer, in fact, I had one of the librarians at Penn State cull some literature on this subject for me (most of which was terrifically beyond my woeful understanding of detailed physics and astronomy) to show me that, indeed, the fundamental underlying reason for gravity is beyond current knowledge.

This brings us to...

2. ...and whence cometh this order?

Any responsible person, physicist or otherwise, will say, "I don't know." Why has the universe come to be in the particular arrangement of matter and energy that exists now? The really simple answer is that it has just happened that way and we don't have knowledge of the details of the universe's development. We can make reasoned and justifiable inferences based on the data and we can likely throw lots of them out. It seems possible, though far from certain, that
we live in one of many universes contained within concurrent multiverses or as one among a great chain of universes. Stenger says in "Physics, Cosmology, and the New Creationism" in Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism that the universe may have appeared "as an uncaused quantum event from an initial state of zero energy (Atkatz and Pagels 1982; Hawking and Moss 1982; Vilenkin 1982; Linde 1984a)."

That conclusion is totally tentative. Really, even calling it a conclusion is misleading. It is an inference based on necessarily limited data that may or may not explain available and future data well. Time will tell. Why order might have emerged from a scenario such as the unfolding of matter and energy from an "uncaused quantum event" is something for physicists, astrophysicists, particle physicists, and cosmologists to puzzle over for a many years to come. Or maybe it will be something that they discard in the next decade.

Why am I annoyed that a creationist like Dembski brings this question? Because he pretends to answer the question. He seems to think that by inserting the fiat of God the designer that he has answered the question. This is bad reasoning because it seems to actually answer the question. I say "seems to answer" as opposed to "actually answers" for a good reason.

Dembski has written that the world can be:
A) gifted with order from without by "the language that proceeds from God's mouth" or
B) that "the order of the world belongs to the world intrinsically."

Taking A first and my reason for taking issue with it at all:

First, as history shows, this answer shuts down inquiry. It seems to answer the question by fiat, but as Ken Miller wryly observed at the Dover Trial, "It's a science stopper." The assumption of God the Creator, Designer, Demiurge, Information Generator, or however one would like to phrase it, controls the questions that can be asked. In principle, any set of philosophical assumptions do this. It just so happens that the supernatural assumption of inquiry has yielded no findings related to nature worth revisiting. The Reverend Paley's "watchmaker" or has had no impact on science in two centuries except as a way to set up disproofs. The argument was debunked by Hume before Paley ever made it.

Second, it doesn't actually answer the question at all. If it did, it would answer the question, "How did the creator (or whatever term you choose) manifest this order?" This may, ultimately be an insoluble puzzle that humans will never figure out. That's sad but ok. We have things like famine and global warming to figure out. But when it comes down to the actual answer, the transcendental magic answer does nothing at all because it doesn't answer, or even attempt to answer by what mechanism(s) the creator(s) used to order and create the universe or with what intentions the creator had in mind when s/he or it or they created the universe(s).

Dembski has already said that he won't engage in the "pathetic level of detail" that "mechanistic theor[ies]" entail. But isn't part of the point of a theory to explain as much of the available data as possible? ID can't do it at all because it tries to infuse a non-natural explanation into the material universe. At the end of the line, what we find is that Dembski has placed a non-explanation as an explanation of something that is already confusing enough. Occam's Razor says cut it.

Just ask yourself the question, would we have this picture if we accepted Dembski's answer to the question?

No. Why? Because we never would have asked what processes govern the radiance of the sun? Nuclear fusion? What's that? Spectroscopy? Huh?

That leaves answer B which is not proven either. However, it has afforded us an enormous amount of prediction and explanation. To be a little short on the matter, all of the predictions that engineers generated to get the Cassini to Saturn relied entirely on materialist hypotheses. So have every medical science finding or the brewing of tasty beer from Victory Brewing in Downingtown, PA or the repair of my Independent Fabrication bike. Was a God responsible for the fermenting of the yeast and the wafting aroma from the hops in my delicious Hop Devil? Is my single speed actually controlled by a little bike homonculos? Not that we are aware of. We can make animistic intentional objects out of anything we want and insert them wherever we wish, but what is their explanatory power?

In the farsical examples I've given, not very much. At some very deep and mythical psychological levels we might find some explanations or bonds of human nature connected by myth a la Joseph Campbell. Those seem appropriate or at least interesting as they get at a kind of Uhrmind of humanity. But that those myths (Dembski is inordinately fond of the Book of John) actually explain anything about the objective non-human universe is beyond a doubt false. They explain nearly nothing beyond artificial culture and our historical apprehension of nature.

So these questions bother me because they have not been answered at all by the ID proponents or their considerably less savvy creationist brethren. They try to shut down inquiry in the service of ancient myths and dogma. Let's move beyond the silly and try to actually answer the questions.

[To be fair, I am not a physicist and so my knowledge of this matter are quite incomplete. I welcome thoughtful direction to good sources on these matters.]

The Southern Baptist Convention gets out of the denial business

CNN, the New York Times, and others are reporting some good news. 44 high-profile members of The Southern Baptist Convention has taken a reality-based stance on climate change. After being a bastion of conservative climate change denial yoked to the misdirection of big energy and anti-science dogmatism, they've at least partially woken up.

They say:

We believe our current denominational engagement with these issues have often been too timid, failing to produce a unified moral voice. Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed. We can do better. To abandon these issues to the secular world is to shirk from our responsibility to be salt and light. The time for timidity regarding God’s creation is no more.

First: THANK YOU!!!!

Second, I'll say you can do better. There are some Christians out there who believe that the biblically given dominion of humans over the Earth is a call for stewardship. That line of reasoning is involved with the statement. But so are the standard nonsensical statements about abortion and gay marriage which they say "constitute the most pressing moral issues of our day." This kind of sectarian thinking irks me. But we are all compromising in this fight against climate change.

The four parts of the statement are as follows:

1. Humans Must Care for Creation and Take Responsibility for Our Contributions to Environmental Degradation.
2. It Is Prudent to Address Global Climate Change.
3. Christian Moral Convictions and Our Southern Baptist Doctrines Demand Our Environmental Stewardship.
4. It Is Time for Individuals, Churches, Communities and Governments to Act.

The statement properly recognizes that they have not received any kind of special revelation that guides their ability to discern whether or not climate change is occurring due to human activities. They are looking at the same evidence everyone else is. Yes sir. Evidence matters. Unlike the nuts at WorldNet Daily who deny climate change because they haven't received some kind of bizarro-world Holy Spirit discernment.

I'd like to reiterate, that though I find the conservative Christian obsession with abortion and gay marriage to be really silly, I greatly appreciate this statement and the kind of action that we can take together to protect the Earth.

You can read the whole statement at the Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change.

The prices of our food consumption

Going a little farther from yesterday's post on real threats to the United States and the globe, let's consider the cost of our food. The monetary costs are one thing, and they are rising as The New York Times tells us today. But the total energy cost of industrial agricultural production, distribution, and processing is astronomical and their associated pollution is incredible. Many of the following figures have been around for a long time and are hiding in plain sight. We don't attend to them because we are continually able to eat as we please so long as our pocketbooks can support our food habits.

Just a couple of quick notes on this issue. The Times quotes Daniel W. Basse of the AgResource Compant as saying, “Everyone wants to eat like an American on this globe. But if they do, we’re going to need another two or three globes to grow it all.” First, it isn't really true that everyone wants to eat like an American. McDonald's in India, for example, had to reconnoiter its menu to get rid of beef. However, the larger point of eating in a bigger is better fashion has gripped a great deal of the world. The country (the U.S.) that has mastered the industrial feedlot for cattle has also mastered the industrial feedlot for humans from McDonald's and Wendy's to Applebee's and Red Lobster.

Considering even a hypothetical meal at Crapplebee's, Lobster Hut, or Backdoor Outhouse. You find that there are enormous production costs and energy expenditures. Shrimp, lobster, breading, processed cheesey biscuits or potatoes, soda, and more. The total fuel costs of that meal are amazing. Even a simple thought experiment will do: Raise or trap those shrimp or lobsters (which are on the low end of meat production in comparison to a hamburger), process them, transport them to distributors that also have huge energy-sucking freezers, transport them further to your restaurant, the same for the biscuits or potatoes with their processed "cheese" added to them, the same for the soda whose corn-based existence goes through an incredibly energy-wasting process. We didn't even do a side salad.

If you had a globe and started drawing lines across it for each part of each meal you would see a mess of inefficiency criss-crossing North America before it ever gets to your plate. If there's garlic in it, that might come from China. A dessert? Strawberry cheesecake maybe? Those strawberries might come from New Zealand.

Immanuel Kant created the categorical imperative. It says, ""Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." The question for our food can be, "What would happen if every person on Earth ate the way that we do in the U.S.?" As Mr. Basses noted in the article, we would need two or three Earths. That's only eating. That excludes car use. Home heating. The energy infrastructure for all of it.

With 300 million people eating as we do on average, we are an enormous burden on the environment. If you reconfigure your thinking to include the rising "affluence" and "development" of China and India and quickly you should realize that we need to think in terms of the categorical imperative in the way that we eat and how many people are eating. Too many people eating too much that is being produced using fossil fuels that artificially prop up this whole process. We need population and consumption restrictions while we innovate new technologies that increase our fuel efficiency and reduce pollution.

People will no doubt scream and cry about population restriction because it infringes on their freedom. "Be fruitful and multiply" says the Bible. In the U.S., any attempt at population control would be met with insane paroxysms from the religious right. You can hear James Dobson caterwauling already and comparing us with the Nazis, Soviets, or China for even considering such a thing.

But the time came a long time ago that given the way that the west uses energy, we need to become more frugal with our reproductive habits and our consumption habits. By setting an example the rest of the world might follow.

This is the post where I go off on President Bush and wind up tying torture to extinction

Our dear leader, G. W. Bush has made the world that much safer for torturers. Yesterday he vetoed a senate bill that would limit "harsh" interrogation technique's used by the C.I.A. The president of good and evil has not only, as the New York Times put it today, further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers" but further cemented his place in history as the great destroyer of American humanitarianism.

Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the agency from using interrogation methods like waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning and that has been the subject of intense criticism at home and abroad. Many such techniques are prohibited by the military and law enforcement agencies.

The veto deepens his battle with increasingly assertive Democrats in Congress over issues at the heart of his legacy. As his presidency winds down, he has made it clear he does not intend to bend in this or other confrontations on issues from the war in Iraq to contempt charges against his chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, and former counsel, Harriet E. Miers.

Mr. Bush announced the veto in the usual format of his weekly radio address, which is distributed to stations across the country each Saturday. He unflinchingly defended an interrogation program that has prompted critics to accuse him not only of authorizing torture previously but also of refusing to ban it in the future. “Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists,” he said.

Torture away C.I.A. Torture away.

Bushels is quoted as saying, “We have no higher responsibility than stopping terrorist attacks. And this is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe.”Surely the President's duty as the executive is to protect the union and this may entail, at times, some swift and unitary actions that compromise the Constitution in the short term. We need only think of Lincoln and F.D.R. to recognize these facts as they moved us through WW II and our Civil War respectively. At times, the president must be able to act unilaterally to defend the citizens. But his (it's been a him so far anyway) role as Commander in Chief of the armed forces is not a blank check and this president has f***ed our civil liberties and the liberties of millions of people the world over to "stop terrorist attacks."

It is simply false to say that we don't have any higher responsibility than this. We should all fear the expansion of jihadist movements. Islamo-fascists want to impose Sharia law in its most draconian form on non-Muslims, banish idols, gag our speech, and turn women into cattle. [Note: I am not calling all Muslims jihadists.] We ought to fight them. But using torture? And publicly saying so without saying so? It's nuts.

Additionally, to believe, as Bush does, that jihadist movement have developed in a vacuum is to blind ourselves to the forces of history that have fed these movements: the U.S.'s deliberate cultivation of jihadism in Afghanistan, our continued polarizing and unquestioning support of Israel, and the resentment of the Christian capitalist west united behind the banner of globalization - really Americanization and McDonaldization - propped up by the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the G8, and others. Globalization has trashed the environment and enabled despots who serve short-term pocket book gains of free marketeers who own Dole, Exxon/Mobil, and Monsanto (just to pick three).

So-called unregulated markets (it is regulated by the aforementioned organizations) that can mine humans and the natural environment without forethought and with almost total impunity have created a global human and ecological disaster. Consider the following: the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the mercury poisoning of Indonesians who live adjacent to coastal gold mines, the Centralia mine fire, the deforestation of the Amazon and the Congo, the Bhopal Union Carbide plant explosion of 1984, the Chernobyl accident, the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, and the undisputed fact that we are in the midst of the sixth great extinction event in Earth's history because of humanity's transformation of the environment. I think we might have something more to worry about than terrorism like actually signing onto real climate change agreements and enforce real environmental protection. The rapid destruction of the biosphere because of atmospheric and hydrospheric transformation might, just might, be something else for us to worry about.

If only our dear leader would awaken to the reality that he could use the unitary executive today. To turn Bush's words around, we ought to give ecologists, climatologists, geologists, biologists, meteorologists, engineers, farmers, and policy makers "all the tools they need" to halt further climate change. But no. The president of good and evil will go down as the president who embraced the torture of his fellow humans and the deaths of tens of thousands of other species.

Let's play dress-up

When I was a kid I used to dress up in girl's clothes or as a superhero and run around the neighborhood. Or maybe my neighbors and I would go undercover and dress up so that we could spy on some other neighbors. What a great time.

Apparently, ID advocates and researchers are so childish (what they call "oppressed") that they have to don disguises to work in labs that are carrying out ID research because of the incredible stigma attached to the whole research project. The neo-Darwinian boogeyman is so mighty that if he gets even the slightest whiff that a scientist is interested in ID, he'll be expelled. That's all according to David Klinghoffer's new piece, "Evolution's Glass Ceiling."

After telling his readers about a visiting lab researcher who bleached his hair and changed his appearance (what is this guy, a Mozart opera character or a Tom & Jerry character?), Klinghoffer writes:

Welcome to the underground world of Darwin-doubting scientists, who say they fear for their professional future. The challenges faced by these academic nonconformists have implications that go far beyond the faculty lounge.

A criticism often leveled at intelligent design is that ID theorists haven’t done the research or the writing in peer-reviewed scientific journals that would make their view a serious contender to overturn Darwinism. This proves—say ID’s opponents-that intelligent design is nothing more than religion masquerading as science. If such “pseudo-science” were taught in public schools, that would amount to the establishment of a state religion.

The non-conformity bit is really rather interesting but sadly played out. Researchers and scientists whose ideas are unpopular in their fields can always cry "Wolf!" when they are sidelined by the majority in their field. In an effort to show that their ideas are worthy, they can appeal to our general and the field's (in this case science's) sense of fairness. Fairness, in the social sense, deserves an idealized place. Any idea worth hearing should be heard, attended to, and scrupulously considered. Unpopular ideas should receive even more careful attention. Why?

Unpopular ideas might well turn our notions on their heads and give us strong directions that we can use to shape our understanding. We know of many of these things in science including evolution by natural selection, plate tectonics, heliocentrism, Mendelian genetics, the discovery of the neuron, the discovery of black holes, and the theory of the big bang. Darwin and Wallace both analyzed years of their own collected data from field observations, breeding, biogeography, embryology, and synthesized them with the findings of generations of previous scientists' work, most notably Lyell's work in geology. In so doing, they finally each formulated an explanation for how organisms change over time. The idea met incredible resistance from naturalists, theologians, and the general public. But over time, and through many trials not the least of which was Lord Kelvin's challenge regarding the Earth's age) "descent with modification" has continued to win the day. Alfred Wegener's hypothesis of plate tectonics met with similar resistance though Wegener initially lacked a mechanism. Later, Alfred Holmes would develop the idea of convection currents that would be solidified and shown fully in the early 1960s. Today, we understand that the sea floor spreads, continents drift, they collide, and that Earth's surface changes very slowly as it floats on the mantle. To use Thomas Kuhn, both of these theories have shifted the paradigms of biology and geology after some considerable resistance. The ideas, after years of fighting about data, keep winning because they keep making accurate predictions.

But is ID such an unpopular idea?

Not in the least. For the ID crowd to claim as they regularly do that there is a mighty cabal of clandestine ivory tower dwelling high priests of Darwin...well...that's pure misdirection. I don't pretend to believe that most scientists are particularly interested in ID or getting it funded. That's not because ID is ideologically at odds with their field, though that will play into some people's considerations. They primarily object to it because there has been no set of positive research set up and they make no hypotheses that they can test by either experimentation or observation. And the overwhelming work done in ID has consisted of quote-mining other people's materials - from Dembski's film lifted from Harvard to Jonathan Wells' disingenuous portrayals of evolutionary developmental biology - or subjective inferences propped up with jargon - see irreducible complexity or Complex Specified Information (CSI) or Specified Complexity (depending on Dembski's mood), the Design Inference, or the Explanatory Filter. It sounds like science but it's not science.

The majority of scientists who castigate ID and shun it do so because it is a bad idea, it is dead science whose heyday was the late-18th and early-19th centuries. The idea is unpopular because it doesn't work.

Another aspect of the cry about unfairness and the need to give unpopular ideas a fair hearing is that it is often used by people trying to support ideas that are reactionary, feed old prejudices, and would serve a particular political goal. I've just been reading the work of Murray and Herrnstein who wrote The Bell Curve which purported to show that 60% of intelligence is caused by heredity and that programs like Head Start and remedial education programs aren't worth the funding because you can't overcome the biological determinants. They sought their findings and reported them in the spirit of "individualism."

Murray and Herrnstein knew that a firestorm would ensue following their books' release and they called for a fair hearing. They decried political correctness because it could act as a blanket of censorship. They weren't censored. In fact, the media gave them enormous coverage and free press for them to speak their minds. Scientists from all over shredded them, found flaws in their methods, their assumptions, their rhetoric and eventually their agenda too. Why?

They served those who were already elite. They fed common prejudices. The effects on policy would save money at the expense of the disaffected and would serve to crystallize existing prejudices. Stephen Jay Gould wrote,

However, if Herrnstein and Murray are wrong, and IQ represents not an immutable thing in the head, grading human beings on a single scale of general capacity with large numbers of custodial incompetents at the bottom, then the model that generates their gloomy vision collapses, and the wonderful variousness of human abilities, properly nurtured, reemerges. We must fight the doctrine of The Bell Curve both because it is wrong and because it will, if activated, cut off all possibility of proper nurturance for everyone's intelligence. Of course, we cannot all be rocket scientists or brain surgeons, but those who can't might be rock musicians or professional athletes (and gain far more social prestige and salary thereby), while others will indeed serve by standing and waiting.

The same can be said for ID.

ID is not an unpopular idea. It is an exceedingly popular idea that is built upon very old religious subjectivities and the inherent subjectivity of human experience that comes in a syllogism something like this:

We design complicated things.
Living things are really complicated.
Therefore, some super version of us must have designed those really complicated living things.

On the face of it, it seems reasonable. If it quacks like a duck then it's probably a duck. But the duck isn't a duck. The appearance of design, what Dawkins has called designoid, is not design. The mass of millions or billions of data points has led us away from the conclusion of ID. But ID still remains very popular and its proponents' cries are actually cover for reactionary ideas that feed old prejudices serve a particular political goal of instating a theistically friendly (pseudo-)science that would "overthrow materialism." If that's the expressed goal of ID as the Wedge declares, then why should a lab fund it?

As yet there is no positive research. That means that there are no findings corroborated from the scientific method. How are we to teach this in public schools? Would that be fair? To teach students that something that is not science is science? That a "program" of "research" that defies the rules of science is science? Are we going to start teaching people that music is architecture? Sure, they are both arts, but they most certainly are not the same thing.

The ID people should be used to playing dress-up anyway. They pretend to have an actual science agenda all the time when they don't. Too bad their disguise is actually as good as the emperor's new clothes.

Maher and Hitchens

Always a blast. They chat on the presidential election, the electability of a non-believer, and religious demographics.

Notes on CFI CIvic Days

Last weekend I attended the CFI’s Civic Days conference. The CFI holds a modest office on the 600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue. There and elsewhere around the city we had some excellent opportunities to connect with people who are interested in moving their local and national politics toward a secular mainstream.

Let’s face it. Most of us want to maintain our faiths or non-faiths whatever the case may be. We would like to enter our houses of worship, stand before the stones of our forefathers, seek the spirits of our ancestors as the Roman did or the Shintos do (rather differently), pray to the unified or disparate spirit of the unitary, dual, or triune deity of our choosing, or do none of the above at all with impunity. We seek to do so because we understand that our subjective experience of the material universe or the divinity of that universe is necessarily different. When we understand, accept, and respect that, we can have a (non)religiously plural society. Much of what the CFI Civic Days informed us about were encroachments on that state.

We discussed global warming. Absolutely abominable bills before congress. Jefferson. Madison. Evolution. Gun control. The utter importance of science.

I’ve met a lawyer now who will be shortly bringing a suit that alleges that the Federal Government is giving money to a proseletyzing group in nowhere better than Kansas.

And others?

The SAMHSA Act is a bit alarming. It is a harbinger of religious charity at the expense of civil liberty. It allows for religious litmus tests for hiring and firing employees (as does the above lawsuit), it entangles the state in religious affairs that are necessarily mixed with the role of welfare (welfare from the church is ok but from the state it isn't?!?!) , and the bill gets into the business of monitoring the state's expenditure for the state.

The most important thing that I got out of the weekend was Stuart Gordon's presentation on climate change. It struck me as odd that he would have to open with a caveat that would say, "It's real." As a solar physicist he has been able to study the sun's effect on the climate and found that while the sun (duh!) supplies our insolation it's not the "cause" de jure for global warming. That's the humans stupid. CO2 is a real problem and we better get on it.

In a later blog I'll get on the doomsday scenarios for Greenland and the west Antartic Ice caps. Stu didn't endorse these scenarios. Wisely. But he did not rule them out.

Sadly, I had to leave before doing a whole lot. The flu is a harsh mistress and I fell apart in the middle of the capitol tour. I met great people of strong conviction. There were good conversations. I really hope this continues into next year. If all goes well...who knows...maybe I'll run for school board.