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Science Did That

Wednesday 6 September 2023

People throughout the centuries have begged their gods for healing. We see the religious praying for healing. We see the faith healers preying upon their vulnerabilities. We hear of miracles like reversed blindness and re-growing toes.

We hear about this, but we don’t see the evidence. The toe woman won’t show any images of her toes. While it was supposedly happening, apparently no one videoed it or photographed it. People have written about it, and there’s even a website called showmethetoes.com.

Crickets. Not a word.

And then science comes along and simply does what no god has ever done. It gives voice to someone who can’t speak.

It makes the paralyzed able to walk.

Why is science superior to prayer? Because it works. Pure and simple.

Observations and Scripture

Tuesday 18 July 2023

A member of a Catholic forum recently asked the following question:

Should we allow our observations of the material world and the universe to inform our interpretation of scripture?

To many of us, this seems like a simple issue — the cliche “no-brainer.” It’s literally asking, “Should the things we learn from humanity’s scientific endeavors affect how we view a 2,000+ year-old book?” Of course it should! In what common-sense universe would it not?

But the responses went the other way:

We should allow the word of God to inform us of the interpretations of the study of the material world.

I’m not sure what the hell would be the point of this. If we were to do this, we would be looking for the firmament of water above the earth, and our study of genetics would consist of putting striped sticks by mating animals to see if it produced striped offspring. Hint: it won’t. Yet both of these ideas are from the Bible…

Another response:

No, the opposite..we should view the world from a biblical perspective, seeing through the lens of the word so as not to be deceived

Talk about pots and kettles!

Spring Monday

Monday 3 April 2023

The Boy and I have been listening to Josh Clark’s The End of the World podcast, and it opens with a discussion of the Fermi Paradox, which the Boy tried to explain to his friend on the way to the pool this evening.

“See, the universe is millions of years old and…” he began when his friend cut him off: “No, it’s only a few thousand years old.”

Fresh shoots

“No,” argued the Boy. “It’s millions of years old.”

“No!” his friend insisted. “It’s only a few thousand years old. It’s in the Bible.”

At this point, I intervened: “Boys, stop arguing — talk about something else.”

On the way home, after dropping off his friend, I explained to the Boy what had happened, giving him a primer on young Earth creationism.

“But it’s science!” he insisted incredulously. “There’s evidence.”

“But they don’t accept that evidence,” I explained, and he had a hard time understanding how someone doesn’t accept evidence. I do too, truth be told. “It’s just not worth arguing about because you won’t change anyone’s mind who thinks that way.”

Hidden treasure

I went ahead and corrected his numbers while I was at it: “The Earth is, in fact, about 4.5 billion years old, and the universe is somewhere in the area of 13 billion years old — much older than the couple million years you were insisting upon. I didn’t correct you then because that would have meant correcting your friend, and I’m not sure how his parents would react to that.”

My parents were young Earthers, too (at least for a while), but I’m not sure how they would have reacted to me coming home and announcing that one of my friend’s father said indirectly that I was wrong and that the Earth is in fact much older than what they taught me. I don’t imagine they would have prevented me from seeing the kid again, but if it had happened again, they might have. And certainly, very fundamentalist Christians would likely make such a move, and the Boy’s relationship with his friend is much more valuable to me than what he’s been taught about the universe.

Young blueberries

The Boy, then, experienced something like what I experience regularly: that sense when among more literalist Christians that we view the world in a completely different way.

Science Fair 2018

Monday 12 March 2018

I find it hopeful when we take L for the science fair project display. Of all disciplines, science is the one we as an American populace most obviously show a general, nationwide deficit. The fact that millions of people don’t understand the basic tenants of evolutionary theory, that millions of people think global warming isn’t a reality and if it is, isn’t the cause at least in part of human activity, that millions of people think vacations are a greater risk than they are a benefit, that millions thousands (thankfully not millions — yet) think that the moon landing was faked and the earth is actually flat, that millions of people think the earth is only 6,000 years old despite an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence to the contrary — all these facts make it clear that as a society, we have some work to do regarding basic science education.

It’s not the science education, per say, that is so important — it’s the critical thinking that goes along with it. The methodical, analytical, self-critical way of thinking. The notion that no single answer will always stand the test of time and peer review. The humble idea that you could be wrong. Go to a presentation of scientific findings and you’ll hear people constantly couching their findings in self-effacing comments designed to show everyone in the room that the presenter doesn’t think she knows it all. For every scientific finding, there are other researchers chomping at the cliché bit, attempting to replicate a given experiment, hoping to prove something wrong. Science is about putting forth a hypothesis and then watching a bunch of people try to show you you’re wrong. It must be a humbling experience.

Looking at the other projects around hers

Ironically, on the other end of the knowledge spectrum, we find the Dunning-Kruger Effect, a cognitive bias that essentially says that the less a person actually knows, the more superior that person feels about his knowledge; the less competent a person is, says Dunning-Kruger, the less likely he will recognize his incompetence.

“And what I like about this one is…”

It’s a scary thought, the idea that I could have an inflated opinion about my own talent and knowledge and not even see it. Fortunately, I don’t think I suffer from this: I see what other teachers do and know that I’m a “fair to middling” teacher: I do some things well, but I know perfectly well that I quite frankly suck at other aspects of teaching. The same goes for just about everything else. And K — she’s even harder on herself.

Or perhaps I’m just fooling myself about myself — indulging in self-reflection filtered through a carnival mirror.

At any rate, we walked around the project posters and witnessed kids getting a good first or second (or third or fourth) exposure to experience with the research methods of the scientific process, and I found my hope for humanity lifted just a bit.

Coming home and playing with the Boy did more for me, though.

Rings

Wednesday 25 November 2009

As a kid, I used to wonder what the view of the heavens would look like if we had some characteristics of other planets in our solar system. I would imagine multiple moons in the sky and vaguely wonder about the effects they would have on the earth.

Learning about dual stars and watching 2010, I wondered what the earth would be like with two suns. “Two suns in the sunset” Roger Waters sang on The Final Cut, the last album he recorded with Pink Floyd, but he was referring to the prospect of nuclear war.

For some reason, though, it never occurred to me that the earth could have rings. Apparently, it’s occurred to others:

Collins and the Mind

Tuesday 28 July 2009

Sam Harris, author of the excellent The End of Faith, has an op-ed in the New York Times about Obama’s selection of Dr. Francis Collins to head the National Institutes of Health.

Collins is famous for his work leading the Human Genome project as well as his stance that there exists “a consistent and profoundly satisfying harmony” between science and Christianity. While he is not a proponent of Intelligent Design, Dr. Collins believes both Genesis and Darwin. Harris explained it thus:

What follows are a series of slides, presented in order, from a lecture on science and belief that Dr. Collins gave at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2008:

Slide 1: “Almighty God, who is not limited in space or time, created a universe 13.7 billion years ago with its parameters precisely tuned to allow the development of complexity over long periods of time.”

Slide 2: “God’s plan included the mechanism of evolution to create the marvelous diversity of living things on our planet. Most especially, that creative plan included human beings.”

Slide 3: “After evolution had prepared a sufficiently advanced ‘house’ (the human brain), God gifted humanity with the knowledge of good and evil (the moral law), with free will, and with an immortal soul.”

Slide 4: “We humans used our free will to break the moral law, leading to our estrangement from God. For Christians, Jesus is the solution to that estrangement.”

Slide 5: “If the moral law is just a side effect of evolution, then there is no such thing as good or evil. It’s all an illusion. We’ve been hoodwinked. Are any of us, especially the strong atheists, really prepared to live our lives within that worldview?” (Source)

Harris is concerned about this blending of religion and science. He writes that when Collins is

challenged with alternative accounts of these phenomena – or with evidence that suggests that God might be unloving, illogical, inconsistent or, indeed, absent – Dr. Collins will say that God stands outside of Nature, and thus science cannot address the question of his existence at all.

Similarly, Dr. Collins insists that our moral intuitions attest to God’s existence, to his perfectly moral character and to his desire to have fellowship with every member of our species. But when our moral intuitions recoil at the casual destruction of innocents by, say, a tidal wave or earthquake, Dr. Collins assures us that our time-bound notions of good and evil can’t be trusted and that God’s will is a mystery.

In short, Harris is worried about the fact that, when it comes to the moral dimension of the universe, Collins ceases being a scientist and becomes a theologian. Certainly the statement “God’s will is a mystery” is not something that can be tested scientifically, Harris rightly points out.

But Harris is up to more, though. He rightly points out that this view of creation — evolution to one point, divine spark-of-morality injection at another — recreates an age-old problem: the mind-body problem.

1-phineas-gage-skullJust how is the mind/soul connected to the body? Where does one end and the other begin? Things we’ve traditionally thought of as part of the mind/soul (such as personality) are oddly susceptible to influence through physical media. The most famous example is Phineas Gage, a railway who, through a series of unfortunate events, had a railroad stake placed in his skull. He survived, but was never the same. He changed. Instead of the kind, fun-loving Gage, he became a foul-mouthed, short-tempered jerk. His personality changed through violent manipulation of his brain. It kind of indicates that personality is not an aspect of the soul.

Contemporary examples abound. As a teacher, I see it every day: Ritalin. Over-medicate a child on Ritalin and you’ll get a somber, introverted, sleepy individual; get it just right, and you’ll get a “normal” person; under-medicate and you’ll get someone almost bouncing off the walls. When I was in school, this would have all been chalked up to “personality.”

This is exactly what Harris has in mind when he writes,

Most scientists who study the human mind are convinced that minds are the products of brains, and brains are the products of evolution. Dr. Collins takes a different approach: he insists that at some moment in the development of our species God inserted crucial components – including an immortal soul, free will, the moral law, spiritual hunger, genuine altruism, etc.

As someone who believes that our understanding of human nature can be derived from neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science and behavioral economics, among others, I am troubled by Dr. Collins’s line of thinking. I also believe it would seriously undercut fields like neuroscience and our growing understanding of the human mind. If we must look to religion to explain our moral sense, what should we make of the deficits of moral reasoning associated with conditions like frontal lobe syndrome and psychopathy? Are these disorders best addressed by theology?

Dr. Collins sees morality as an element of the soul; Harris points out that this is untestable and amounts to a re-introduction of the mind/body problem into contemporary science. It’s an insightful point, and Harris builds to this point very effectively.

It’s a tricky issue. Religious beliefs are often bedrock beliefs: they inform and shape other beliefs. Would we want a Christian Scientist in the role, someone who believes that all ailments are spiritual, figments of an unenlightened imagination?

But will Collins’ religious beliefs affect his scientific reasoning? I’m not convinced, like Harris, that it will. It didn’t when he was director of the Human Genome Project. Then again, Sam Harris is a long-tailed atheist in a Christian rocking chair country: he’s more than a little skittish, and often justifiably so.

Source: Gary Stern, at Blogging Religiously.

Young Earth

Wednesday 30 May 2007

The Creation Museum recently opened in Kentucky.

DefCon provided an informative guide about the errors of young earth creationism. Entitled “Top 10 Reasons Why the Universe, the Sun, the Earth, and Life Are Not 6,000 Years Old,” it’s available at the DefCon web site.

Credentials

Tuesday 13 February 2007

An interesting story from the NYT yesterday:

There is nothing much unusual about the 197-page dissertation Marcus R. Ross submitted in December to complete his doctoral degree in geosciences here at theUniversity of Rhode Island.

His subject was the abundance and spread of mosasaurs, marine reptiles that, as he wrote, vanished at the end of the Cretaceous era about 65 million years ago.

But Dr. Ross is hardly a conventional paleontologist. He is a “young earth creationist” — he believes that the Bible is a literally true account of the creation of the universe, and that the earth is at most 10,000 years old.

There are lots of issues in the article, a couple of them worth touching on.

First, there’s the question of whether graduate schools should reject applicants who hold to creationism. “It’s not a matter of religion,” say the proponents, “But of science.”

In this case, Ross’ work is impeccable, from a scientific point of view. That he doesn’t actually believe what he discusses in his dissertation is a philosophical oddity, which Ross explains by saying he’s working in a different paradigm: Just as a Marxist could do the work in an economics department with a free-market bent, he explains, so he as a creationist could work in a department that teaches the scientifically standard position of evolution.

But the issue is larger than that, and feeds into the second concern I have:

While still a graduate student, [Ross] appeared on a DVD arguing that intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism, is a better explanation than evolution for the Cambrian explosion, a rapid diversification of animal life that occurred about 500 million years ago.

Online information about the DVD identifies Dr. Ross as “pursuing a Ph.D. in geosciences” at the University of Rhode Island. It is this use of a secular credential to support creationist views that worries many scientists.

Eugenie C. Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, a private group on the front line of the battle for the teaching of evolution, said fundamentalists who capitalized on secular credentials “to miseducate the public” were doing a disservice. (Link)

This would put a university geology department in the odd position of asking applicants about the motivation and eventual use of their degree, and the morally questionable position of using that to make decisions about admission.

But the larger issue for me is the phrase “to miseducate the public.” Here, creationists have an advantage, because they generally get their worldview confirmed on a weekly basis, in church. Educating the public about evolution, however, is a bit tricker, for not only is it culturally competing with creationism, but the amount of time it’s presented is significantly less than creationism. Unless an individual majors in science, his exposure to systematic education about evolution is limited only to a few years in school. Creationism, however, puts forward its case on a weekly basis.

Skeptics and True Believers: A Review

Wednesday 22 November 2006

There are some books that, after you put them down, your only response is, “Huh?” Chet Raymo’s Skeptics and True Believers: The Exhilarating Connection Between Science and Religion is certainly one such book.

Is it an attempt at soft apologetics by an enlightened scientist? Is it an attempt to convince fundamentalist to stop insisting that the world was created in six days? Is it a cliche celebration of the human spirit? Is it an ode to a great over-soul that has fewer specific characteristics than Emerson’s? Is it a tribute to the wonder of nature? Is it an expose on the inefficacy of astrology and intercessory prayer? Is it a devotional book?

Yes! Yes! A thousand times, yes! A bundle of yeses! Numberless quanta of yeses!

I’ve never read a book more muddled than this. It is, in short, the ramblings of a man who’s given up theism and yet desperately wants to genuflect to something. Anything!

Read this book too quickly and you’ll get mental whiplash.

What is Raymo, a science writer for the Boston Globe, trying to do here? Sell science to believers? Sell belief to skeptics? Sadly, Raymo himself doesn’t even know, for it’s not entirely clear where he stands on the issue himself.

Is he an outright skeptic, completely denying the validity of organized religion? Yes:

It became obvious to me [while taking academic degrees in science] that certain doctrines of the Judeo-Christian tradition, including such central tenets of faith as immortality and a personal God who answers prayers, were based on long-discredited views of the world that placed humans in a central position and ascribed human attributes to other creatures and even to inanimate objects. (8)

Is he a theist at heart, somewhat bewildered by what he finds in the Bible and what science tells him? Yes:

There’s a “God-shaped hole in many people’s lives,” says physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne. He’s right, at least about there being a hole in our lives. To call the hole “God-shaped” begs the question, for the affliction of our times is that we have no satisfactory image of God that rests comfortably with what scientists have learned about creation. (1)

Or maybe. The problem with Skeptics and True Believers is that Raymo alternates between denying the existence of anything vaguely associated with mainstream religion read: Christianity to the point of denying the existence of the soul, of a personal God, of a spirit world, and yet talking of “worship” and “liturgy” as if any of that has meaning if there is no divine being.

Raymo insists that he’s not trying to “turn science into a religion; science is too shallow a vessel to hold ultimate mysteries.” (8) Yet, there’s really no other way to interpret his feeble book as a whole. It’s the confession of a man who wants to reject his theology and write it too.

Raymo begins, though, by setting up a dichotomy of True Believers and Skeptics. At first it seems that “True Believers” is just a polite term for “fundamentalist”

True Believers have low tolerance for changeable knowledge. They prefer stable truths of faith, even if those truths run counter to a preponderance of physical evidence. For example, a 1993 Gallup poll indicates that nearly half of Americans believe in a geologically young Earth, despite the fact that not a shred of reproducible empirical evidence can be adduced in favor of the idea and a mountain of evidence is arrayed against it. (5)

True believers believe surprise religion, which everyone knows is an idiosyncratic belief system. Raymo then quotes what Anthony Storr says about idiosyncratic belief systems:

“Idiosyncratic belief systems which are shared by only a few adherents are likely to be regarded as delusional. Belief systems which may be just as irrational which are shared by millions are called world religions.” (66, 7)

Religion, then, is irrational. Fine. But unlike Gould in Rocks of Ages, he never really defines what religion is. Is it, like Gould suggests, primarily (or at least “primarily” in a proper understanding) an ethical system? Is it something akin to belief in UFOs? Is it somehow a logical result of evolution? Raymo suggests all of these things, and gives priority to none. Perhaps this is because Raymo himself doesn’t want be too specific. Yet, though he is using too broad strokes, he’s just making more work for himself, for he’s both painting and erasing as he goes along.

Primarily Raymo wants to be identified as a Skeptic, because they’re cool. They can live without the emotional fluff of weak religion. They look the cold, hard universe in the eye and say, “Well, I don’t care about you, either!”

The forces that nudge us toward True Belief are pervasive and well-nigh irresistible. Supernatural faith systems provide a degree of emotional security that skepticism cannot provide. Who among us would not prefer to believe that there exists a divine parent who has our best interest at heart? Who among us would notprefer to believe that we will live forever. Skepticism, on the other hand, offers only uncertainty and doubt. What keeps scientific skepticism on track, against the individual’s need for emotional security, is a highly evolved social structure, including professional associations and university departments, peer-reviewed literature, meetings and conferences, and a language that relies heavily on mathematics and specialized nomenclature. The point of this elaborate apparatus is to minimize individual backsliding into the false security of True Belief. (5, 6)

And yet, if we look closely enough, we realize that God (?!) has revealed himself through the marvel of his creation:

The God of my early religious training pulled off tricks that are not beyond the powers of any competent conjurer; Harry Houdini or David Copperfield could turn a stick into a serpent or water into wine without batting an eye. But no Houdini or Copperfield can turn microscopic cells into a flock of birds and then send them flying on their planet-spanning course. No Houdini or Copperfield cause consciousness to flare out and embrace the eons and the galaxies. The dubious miracles of the scriptures and of the saints are an uncertain basis upon which to base a faith; the greater miracle of creation is with us twenty-four hours a day, revealed by science on every side, deepening and consolidating our sense of awe. (133)

The real miracle is creation, not creation. I mean, the real miracle is the functioning of beings created by slow, tedious, testable evolution, not the way God created the world in six days. Wait did I say “miracle”? Of course, I really didn’t mean “miracle” like, you know, miracle. I’m speaking only metaphorically. But in a very real way.

Aggh! This book was infuriating!

If all this were not bad enough, Raymo actually suggests the following:

If the prodigious energy of the new scientific story of creation is to flow into religion, the story will need to be translated from the language of scientific discovery into the language of celebration. This is the work of theologians, philosophers, homilists, liturgists, poets, artists, and, yes, science writers. Only when we are emotionally at home in the universe of the galaxies and the DNA will the new story invigorate our spiritual lives and be cause for authentic celebration. Knowing and believing will come together again at last. Cautious and skeptical as knowers, we can then give ourselves unreservedly to spiritual union with creation and communal celebration of the mysteries. (234)

What does he want? “Take this, all of you, and eat: this is my DNA, encoded for you for the creation of a communal ceremony to produce warm and cozy feelings”?

Just eleven pages later, he writes,

The Copernican and Darwinian revolutions [“] have brushed away the last cobwebs of animism, anthropomorphism, anthropocentrism. The human gods are swept from their thrones. Angels, devils, spirits, and shades are sent packing. We are contingent, ephemeral animated stardust caught up on a random shore, a brief incandescence. (245)

What is this man trying to do?! And the madness doesn’t stop there, for the very next page includes this:

If we can surrender the ancient dream of immortality, then we can begin building a new theology, ecumenical, ecological, non-idolatrous. It will emphasis our relatedness and our interrelatedness, our stewardship rather than our dominion. It will define our value by our participation in a cosmic unfolding; we are flickers of a universal flame galaxies, stars, planets, life, mind a seething cauldron of creation. Natural and supernatural, immanent and transcendent, body and spirit will fuse in one God, revealed in his creation. We have discovered the story on our own. On this speck of cosmic dust, planet Earth, the universe has become conscious of itself. The creation acknowledges the Creator. Our lives are sacramental. We experience the creation in its most fully known dimension. We celebrate. We worship. (246)

There is no God, but we worship!? Pardon the crudeness of this, but what the hell are we supposed to be worshiping?

Answer: the uber-soul:

Deep and inviting, beautiful and mysterious, the starry night draws us into communion with a soul and a life force greater than ourselves that animates the spiraling galaxies and untangles the knots of DNA. (43)

Such religious imagery. Communion and sacrament and worship and celebration and life force and soul! Just never mind that he says earlier that science proves souls don’t exist. They do. Metaphorically. Except in the case of the uber-soul. I think.

Double arrggh!

What an awful waste of time. I only continued because I wanted to see how bad it could get.

Perhaps I should conclude in a manner befitting the book itself and declare it to be the

confessions of a wise religious humanist who also loves, practices, understands, and lives by the ideals and findings of science show us how to heal the false and unnecessary rifts in our intellectual cultures, and to bridge the gap between knowledge and morality.

But too late Stephen Jay Gould already did, on the back cover. And that’s the ultimate irony, for Skeptics is a prime example of what Gould said in Rocks of Ages was an absolutely dreadfully inappropriate use of science: to bolster religious faith.

Burying Pluto in the Backyard

Wednesday 23 August 2006

And so Pluto is no longer a planet. No longer will fourth graders find themselves thinking in science, “Forget putting a human on Mars — putting a person on Pluto would be the really impressive thing.” Out in the far edge of the universe, Pluto was invisible, ugly, and neglected. And incredibly cool. The very things that makes made Pluto the coolest planet in the system led to its ultimate demise. It’s funky, indecisive orbit means that for periods of several years, it was actually not the planet furthest from the sun. It’s lack of sphericalness made it the ugly duckling planet. This is the most destructive thing humans have ever done, for we’ve destroyed a planet. With a few hours of deliberation, we took a perfectly good orbiting body and relegated it to the same status as Grumpy, Sleepy, Happy, and the rest of the gang. We now have dwarf planets to go with our dwarf stars. The pen might not be mightier than the sword, but obviously, a scientific committee is. At least it keeps its name. Let’s hope the same is not true for Xena…