Thoughts in a Haystack

PZ Myers has a review of Ken Miller's Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul in Nature, a portion of which you can read even if you don't have a subscription. The review is favorable but PZ has at least one prominent criticism:

Only a Theory deals poorly with one central aspect of this battle: why this problem is so much greater in the United States than elsewhere. Miller's rationalizations are sometimes painful to read. Europe's relative freedom from the scourge of creationism is explained with a condescending anecdote: a British colleague offers that any outbreak of such nonsense is rapidly quashed by "dispatch[ing] a couple of dons from Oxford or Cambridge" to overawe the locals with their prestigious degrees, to which the populace will defer. The popularity of creationism in the United States is ascribed to independence and rebelliousness rather than religiosity, which, as someone who has dealt with many creationists, I find disingenuous. The hallmark of almost any creationist argument is the tireless bleating of the same points we have rebutted since the trial of teacher John Scopes in Tennessee in 1925, which tested the law on teaching Darwinian evolutionary theory; the only twists come from new creationist authorities that enter the fray. An equivalent US variant of Miller's British anecdote is that the enemies of science need only dispatch Dembski or Behe from the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington, to stir up more doctrinaire creationism among school boards and in elections and churches. To call US citizens more independent-minded than European citizens flatters the creationists too much and demeans Europeans.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 1:14 PM 17 comments

Scientists have at least partially deciphered the purpose of the Antikythera Mechanism.

[T]he device not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern Olympic Games.

[E]xamination of this device, called the Antikythera mechanism, including x-ray and CT studies, shows it to be a remarkable assembly of precisely designed gears. Many scientists believe that it was a device for predicting eclipses and planetary motion, but its precise function is still a mystery. Its resemblance to an analog computer is striking (an x-ray image is shown above). Archeologists believe that the technology to produce such a device didn't emerge until at least the 14th century A.D. They have no evidence as to who designed it, and no evidence even of who could have designed it. Yet the inference to design is obvious, and no archeologist doubts that it is a designed artifact. Design can be inferred from an artifact alone, regardless of the obscurity or the implausibility of a designer.

The latest research has revealed details of dials on the instrument's back side, including the names of all 12 months of an ancient calendar. ...

The months inscribed on the instrument, they wrote, are "practically a complete match" with those on calendars from Illyria and Epirus in northwestern Greece and with the island of Corfu. Seven months suggest a possible link with Syracuse.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 11:35 PM 0 comments

This just in!

DISCOVERY INSTITUTE LIES!

Film at eleven!

Actually, there is a bit of news involved. It seems that word of the penchants of the Seattle Spew is starting to reach the more rational Right. John Derbyshire of National Review has been on board for a while and now Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs is catching on to something that anyone who pays any attention to the activities of creationists has known for a long time.

Of course, it is of interest that what the DI is lying about is its connection with Islamic creationists. Bruce Chapman swats at strawmen but there's this from the DI's Muslim point man, David Berlinski:

There's a long interesting tradition of design theoretic arguments within Islamic theology that goes straight back to the 9th century. And there are outstanding figures within Islamic theology who participated in these discussions ... there's no reason to be surprised, this is a very rich tradition. We need to get together, we need to talk. There needs to be an exchange, a current needs to flow.

This is a hot issue. We're in the midst of a world-wide religious revival. I mean, historians 500 years from now will talk about the religious revival of the late 20th, early 21st century. There are a billion Muslims out there who are taking Islamic doctrine very seriously. Christianity too.

Labels: Designer As God

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:52 PM 3 comments

PZ Mxyzptlk has pointed the way to the Third Carnival of Elitist Bastards.

Labels: Carnival of Elitist Bastards

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 7:38 AM 1 comments

Our old friend Babu Ranganathan is back with another of his confused screeds. A self-described "experienced Christian writer," Mr. Ranganathan used to boast of a "B.A. with academic concentrations in Bible and Biology from Bob Jones University" but now claims only a "B.A. degree with concentrations in theology and biology," no doubt realizing that his former description revealed only that he knows next to nothing about biology and probably just as little about the Bible.

This time around, in "How Dawkins Misrepresents Evolution!," Babu at least seems to dimly realize that claims that evolutionary theory depends on "random chance" are a misrepresentation of the science, so he sets about adjusting his misrepresentations but without correcting any of them. His arguments (if simple repetitions of bald assertions already assuming his desired conclusions can be called "arguments") are jumbled and their intellectual honesty are well represented by the fact that he calls Walt Brown, a mechanical engineer who nonetheless proposes that the continental plates went skidding around the globe (downhill!) at high speed during and after the flood, a "scientist."

Be warned that attempting to follow along with Babu or Walt may well cause you, in Tantalus Prime's memorable phrase, to want to "remove all the Brodman areas from your brain in numerical order with a grapefruit spoon just so that you will never again have to comprehend something so wrong." We experienced creationism-handlers have learned to draw back well before that point so I will just present one amusing point I discovered before slamming shut and locking the stupid-proof container on Babu's effluvia.

Babu points out that biological variations do not arise from natural selection (doh!), a process that he explicitly admits occurs, and spends the rest of his time repeating the same petitio principii, in slightly different phraseology, that "macroevolution" cannot happen because macroevolution is more than merely the sum of biological variation. All the usual lame analogies about "new information" being impossible are trotted out but Babu makes the mistake of allowing for the possibility of "beneficial mutations":

But, even if a good mutation does occur for every good mutation there will be hundreds of harmful ones with the net result over time being disastrous for the species.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 1:46 PM 0 comments

In the aftermath of the "Altenberg 16" meeting and the extravagant claims about the impending death of Evolutionary Theory As We Know It, coming from creationists, sensationalist journalists and even from some within and about the scientific community who should know better, it is apt to review David L. Hull's discussion, in his seminal book, Science as a Process, of the tendency to declare the coming of great revolutions in science.

There is nothing new in such claims and, perhaps, no area in science is more prone to the phenomena than evolution. In retrospect, sometimes the claims are warranted -- the onset of evolutionary theory itself, popularly initiated by the publication of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation by Robert Chambers in 1844 and put on a scientific footing by Darwin and Wallace, certainly qualified as a major change in scientific thinking. Conversely, as Hull points out, during the so-called "Eclipse of Darwin" at the beginning of the 20th century, "numerous authors argued that area after area of biology was incompatible with Darwinian versions of evolutionary theory," a death every bit as premature as Mark Twain's. Most, of course, fall somewhere in between. The "Modern Synthesis," for example, while it was a correction of the errors of the Eclipse of Darwin, was not, in fact, a monolithic "movement," despite the best efforts of its proponents to portray it as one. Hull quotes A.R. Templeton and L.V. Giddings observation that:

... the Modern Synthesis is often treated as if it were a single, unified view of evolution, yet as is evident to anyone who has read and contrasted the works of Fisher, Haldane, and Wright (three of the principal contributors to the Modern Synthesis from the population genetics viewpoint), there never was a single evolutionary theory.

[S]cientists are engaged in the ongoing process of jockeying for recognition in science. Some scientists exaggerate their differences with the received view to emphasize how original their contributions are, while others exaggerate the similarities between their views and those of contemporary Darwinians in order to throw the mantle of the great Darwin around their own shoulders. Their opponents then attempt to unmask these exaggerations. ...

From the beginning of their careers, scientists are presented with a dilemma. They can make their work look as conventional as possible -- just one more brick in the great edifice of science -- or as novel and controversial as possible -- declaring the foundation of a whole new theory or possibly even a whole new science. On the first strategy, their work is likely to be incorporated effortlessly into the greater body of scientific knowledge. If so, then they will get some credit, but not much. On the second strategy, the work is likely to be greeted with silence. If the author is especially lucky, perhaps an authority can be smoked out to attack these radical new views. However, if on the outside chance that these new views become accepted, the author receives considerable credit. The choice is between a safe strategy with minor payoff versus a very dangerous strategy that promises great rewards. From my own reading of the recent history of science, I see no strong correlation between my own estimates of the novelty of an idea and which strategy an author adopts.

... at any one time in his conceptual development Darwin toyed with a variety of mechanisms, settling strongly on one or another only for periods in his life. ... Darwin was not above changing his mind.

Darwinism was many things to many people. It was rank materialism, an atheistic attack on the Christian faith, unadulterated positivism, a death blow to teleology. Simultaneously it was irresponsible speculation, an outrage against positivistic science, a rebirth of teleology, proof of the beneficent hand of God, a Christian plot to subvert the Muslim faith. It was also an intellectual weapon to use against entrenched aristocracies, a justification for laissez-faire economic policies, an excuse for the powerful to subjugate the weak, and a foundation for Marxian economic theory.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 7:29 AM 3 comments

A thought:

Why it has been called the Mosaic account of the creation, I am at a loss to conceive. Moses, I believe was too good a judge of such subjects to put his name to that account. He had been educated among the Egyptians, who were a people as well skilled in science, and particularly in astronomy, as any people of their day; and the silence and caution that Moses observes, in not authenticating the account, is a good negative evidence that he neither told it nor believed it. -- The case is, that every nation of people has been world makers, and the Israelites had as much right to set up the trade of world-making as any of the rest; and as Moses was not an Israelite, he might not choose to contradict the tradition. The account, however, is harmless; and this is more than can be said for many other parts of the Bible.

- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:32 PM 2 comments

Ohhh! Ron Bailey really punctured the Discovery Institute contingent at Freedomfest!

The DI never admits defeat and never admits it has no response to any argument. In response to Michael Shermer pointing out that IDers have produced no science, Robert Crowther actually replies:

I guess he's not familiar with the Biologic Institute, or the lab research being done by scientists like Scott Minnich, Ralph Seelke and others.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:46 PM 4 comments

You may have heard of Todd Bentley, the latest in a long line of Pentecostal Christian "healers" who have aroused controversy. Besides Bentley's ... um ... unique personal appearance -- close-shorn head, multiple tattoos, body piercings, etc., rather than gaudy suits, pinkie rings and overdoses of hair spray -- he has a ... how shall I put it? ... surprising method of laying on hands ... balled in a fist. Bentley regularly punches and kicks the sick people who come to him to be cured, allegedly at the direct instruction of the Holy Spirit. He has even kicked a man with stage IV colon cancer in the gut. Orac gives the medical view of such a procedure, which is, as you might imagine, more than dim.

This story from the Louisville Courier-Journal gives an overview of Bentley's "ministry" and the criticism, from both inside and out of the Pentecostal movement, that surrounds it. What caught my eye was this:

One person unimpressed with Bentley is William Dembski, a former professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, who is best-known as a proponent of the "Intelligent Design" theory as an alternative to evolution.

Dembski, of Texas, said in a Baptist Press column that he and his wife drove 130 miles with their 7-year-old autistic son to a service led by Bentley, hoping for a divine healing.

But after hours of music and preaching, the family was turned away when they tried to bring their son up for prayer, Dembski said, though others were allowed up.

The family left at midnight, feeling exploited, Dembski wrote.

"Nowhere in Bentley's message did I see an emphasis on the love and compassion of God -- that healing is an expression of God's goodness and care for humanity," Dembski wrote. "Rather, the emphasis throughout was on power."

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 7:36 AM 6 comments

Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine has a version available of his remarks during the FreedomFest 2008 debate: "Is There Scientific Evidence for Intelligent Design in Nature?" They are good reading.

One point well worth emulating when discussing the subject with doubtful but still open minded people is Bailey's skillful weaving together of various forms of evidence from the fossil record, genetics and development to make a multifaceted case for evolution that is neither too complex to be understood by people with no particular expertise nor too simple to convey the true richness of the evidence for evolution.

In this instance, though, that part of Bailey's case is only the substrate to his real aim. Noting the Discovery Institute's statement: "Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design is agnostic regarding the source of design and has no commitment to defending Genesis, the Bible or any other sacred text," Bailey sets the stage:

Near the end of the silly new anti-evolution film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed—in which fellow panelist Steve Meyer appeared—host Ben Stein asks Richard Dawkins, who is arguably the best-known living evolutionary biologist on the planet, if he could think of any circumstances under which intelligent design might have occurred. Incautiously, Dawkins brings up the idea that aliens might have seeded life on earth; so-called directed panspermia. This idea was suggested by biologists Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel back in the 1970s. In the film, Stein acts like this is a great "gotcha," like it's the silliest thing he's ever heard. Of course, the irony is that this is precisely what proponents of intelligent design are claiming—that a higher intelligence has repeatedly created life on earth.

So, since our esteemed opponents are agnostic with regard to the "source of design," and because intelligent design cannot rule out the hypothesis that super-intelligent purple space squids are not the "source of design" of life on earth, I will provisionally accept that hypothesis for the remainder of my talk.

As I understand it, intelligent design proponents—such as our distinguished Discovery Institute panelists here—fully accept the fact that the earth is around 4.5 billion years old and that some form of life has existed on earth for about 3 billion or so years. If that is the case, it would seem the record shows that the intelligent designers—which I am hypothesizing are super-intelligent purple space squids—evidently spent more than 2 billion years tinkering with single-cell algae and bacteria before they got around to creating multi-cellular species. Do intelligent design proponents have a theory to explain that? Were the space squid creators just lazy?

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:57 PM 5 comments

One of the more interesting phenomena to arise out of the Great Frackin' Cracker Flap is the seeming fixation that some Christians (I gather mostly of the conservative bent) have with getting the "New Atheists" to pick on Muslims. Some of them, such as the crude and threatening anonymous correspondents PZ has revealed, apparently think that it is a cheap and safe way to play Henry II and be rid of a troublesome anti-priest. So great is the reflexive fear response of the right, after seven years of Bush playing their nerves like a five year-old sawing on a violin for the first time, that some seem to think that a mere sideways glance at a Muslim is the equivalent of a death sentence.

A step up from there -- in that he uses his real name ... nobody would make up "Rod Dreher" -- is the "Crunchy Con," who delivers, under the title "P.Z. Myers, coward," this alleged, and profane, sarcasm under BeliefNet's banner of "Inspiration. Spirituality. Faith.":

If P.Z. Myers had any guts, he would put out a call for someone to send him a Koran so he could blow his nose and wrap fish in it. After all, it's nothing but frackin' ink on paper, right? So what's stopping you, Big Man? It's easy to shit on what Catholics regard as sacred. But just try doing the same thing to what Muslims regard as sacred. Let's see what you're made of.

Besides which, I think we all know if a professor at a major American university had issued a public call for people to send him a Koran or a Torah for the purpose of desecrating them, it would be front page news. Does anybody doubt that?

It also doesn't help that their riots are confirming the caricatures rather than opposing them. Once again, religiosity turns people into mindless frenzied zombies, and once again it interferes with progress.

Please STOP SENDING EMAIL TO THESE INDIVIDUALS. There are too many of you, the over-reaction is excessive, and you are not doing our reputation any favor.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 11:24 PM 15 comments

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Here is a nice story by Bronislaus B. Kush in the Worcester (Massachusetts) Telegram & Gazette giving an update on Matt LaClair

Matthew LaClair looked forward to taking his accelerated 11th-grade American history class, hoping to learn how the founding fathers, among other things, framed the U.S. Constitution to guarantee that the government would be free of religious influences.

The 16-year-old got more than he had hoped for — becoming the focus of a lingering separation of church and state controversy that some feel will be discussed for years to come in constitutional law classes.

He was surprised that most people in Kearny ended up supporting Mr. Paszkiewicz, a well-liked 16-year veteran of the school system.

Mr. LaClair said that even many longtime friends turned against him. One student sent him a death threat. ...

Frustrated with a lack of response, Mr. LaClair told his story to the local newspaper. He said he was surprised with the response, with many charging that he had set up the teacher and that he had an "agenda" that he wanted to pursue.

It wasn't until The New York Times reported the issue a month later that Mr. LaClair said he finally started to get some support.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 11:57 AM 0 comments

There are certain obstacles one has to climb in order to maintain, as I do, that religion doesn't make people stupid.

And one of the biggest this side of Kent Hovind is Bill Donahue. PZ has already dealt with Donahue's insistence that the entire Republican party is afraid of one vocal, but otherwise mild-mannered, professor of biology. But another part of Donahue's paranoid fantasy is also threatening to peg the needle on the stupid dial hard enough to make it a dangerous missile:

[PZ] Myers went on Houston radio station KPFT last night saying that Bill Donohue has 'declared a fatwa' against him. He should know better -— I don't need others to do the fighting for me. I'm quite good at it myself.

But [PZ had] better be careful what he says, because if I get any death threats, it won't be hard to connect the dots.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 8:48 PM 4 comments

Eighty-three years ago today, the Scopes "Monkey Trial" began in Dayton, Tennessee and ran over 12 days, though surprisingly little of that was actually trial time. Anyone who missed my series of daily posts from last year (and who is interested), can read them here.
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Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:17 PM 0 comments

Once again an evolutionary puzzle has been illuminated by an expedition into one of deepest, darkest regions known to humankind: museum drawers.

The Chicago Tribune is reporting, based on an article, "The Evolutionary Origin of Flatfish Asymmetry," appearing in Thursday's edition of the science journal Nature, that the issue of how the eyes of flatfish, such as sole, plaice, turbot, flounder and halibut, wound up on the same side of their head.

Essentially, Matt Friedman, a 28-year-old University of Chicago doctoral candidate, discovered a series of fossil flatfish in museum collections, the significance of which had not been recognized before, that formed a "transitional series" showing one eye socket slowly migrating from near the top of the head towards its modern position, thus favoring a slow evolution of the eye position over some sort of "sudden" appearance of the trait. In a paragraph that will doubtless set Larry Moran's teeth on edge, but which we must remember is the work of a journalist, it is explained:

Scientists have until now largely assumed the asymmetrical, one-sided eye arrangement was a trait that must have arisen suddenly in flatfish because they could not see a benefit for the fish if it took millions of years for an eye to migrate from one side to the other. Even Charles Darwin had trouble answering critics who used flatfish and their strange eyes as an argument against his evolutionary theory after he published it in 1859.

In 1871, St. George Jackson Mivart, a Catholic lawyer and zoologist, published "On Genesis of the Species" as a challenge to Darwin, and prominently used the example of flatfish and their eyes in his argument.

"Darwin feebly responded with a scenario that relied on evolution of inherited traits," said Friedman, and the flatfish argument has been an arrow in the quiver of anti-evolutionists ever since.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 6:59 AM 3 comments

Knowing full well I'm taking on an 800 pound gorilla with nothing more than a popgun, let me explain why I think PZ is only partly right -- and the smaller part -- about this.

First, the background: a student at the University of Central Florida, for reasons not made clear, apparently took communion at a Catholic church, a ritual supposedly reserved for members in good standing in the faith. This involves being given a small piece of unleavened bread officially dubbed "the Eucharist" -- what PZ calls "a cracker." Instead of swallowing the bread, which is a part of the ritual, he carried the eucharist away, supposedly to demonstrate to a friend "what it meant to Catholics." The student apparently succeeded in that objective beyond his wildest expectations, in that Catholics the world over are furious and the young man has even received death threats, despite his having returned the eucharist.

PZ is, of course, one hundred percent correct about death threats being insane and anyone who made one is a demented fuckwit -- though I prefer the more correct technical term "criminal."

Where I disagree with PZ is the notion that the arational nature of the symbolism that Catholics attribute to the eucharist means that others should be able to violate those symbols with impunity. PZ goes as far as to propose to obtain, no questions asked, eucharists for his own purposes:

Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I'll send you my home address.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:33 AM 581 comments