Thoughts in a Haystack

To continue with Nick Smyth's response to criticisms, Nick asks:

I have come to accept that we shouldn't dwell on the semantics of the prefix "pseudo", here, but rather that we should just ask ourselves how we would feel if we were the target of this kind of accusation. That is to say, what if someone walked up to you and accused you of being a "pseudo-person".

Labels: Smyth's Bollocks

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 7:23 AM 4 comments

There's nothing like a challenge to get me moving. Nick Smyth showed up here and laid some snide on me:

I can't help but suspect that you can't think of ways to respond to my specific critiques aimed at your points. I made three (three!) in the new response and there is nothing about them here.

That's all I have time for this morning but I'll come back to this, I hope, later today with a few more thoughts, as well as corrections of Smyth's misconstruals of my criticisms.

I concluded with an obvious truism, one that even most IDers would support: scientific practices, as diverse and indefinable as they may be, seem to deliver truths about the world. This is what is important about them. The alleged "pseudosciences" (astrology, ID-creationism) do not deliver such truths.

"Therefore, no creation, unless you invoke magic. Science doesn't invoke magic. If we can't explain something, we do not uphold that position. It's not, ooh, then magic. That's not the way we work."

"Contrast that with creationists. They never try to disprove creationism. They're all running around trying to prove it. That's deduction. It's not science. Scientifically, it's nonsense."

... claim that the courts need to keep hammering away at the "science" question [to keep creationism out of public schools in the US]. When you prove that something is nonscientific, you do not prove that it is religion.

We should only teach children truths. Therefore, we should teach them about the sciences, and pass over astrology and creationism in silence. We do not need the demarcation project, we should abandon the search for a definitive "scientific method", and we should recover the older idea that the value of the sciences lies is the value of truth.

Labels: Smyth's Bollocks

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:22 PM 4 comments

Well, the long anticipated response of Nick Smyth to criticisms of his article at 3Quarks Daily is up at his own blog and I can't muster much enthusiasm for another round of discussion about it. There's not much new there and what there is, at least in the case of my criticisms, suffers from a lack of understanding of the original critique.

Let's start with the big one, since this whole discussion is in the context of whether there is a definition of "science" that would exclude creationism from public school science classes in the US. As I said before, I suppose that Nick, as a Canadian, may not understand the American constitutional scheme and he has proved me right. His main contention, as you'll remember is that we cannot make a distinction between "science" and "pseudoscience" (or the more correct term, "non-science") but we can make a distinction between "truth" and "bollocks." He then says:

I cannot believe that a supreme court judge in America could fail to see the logic of don't teach false things in schools.

You may well be able to convince a Supreme Court Justice that it is bad public policy to teach false things in schools, but the Supreme Court does not decide (at least officially*) between good and bad public policy. That is the job of the legislative and executive branches of government, subject to the will of the majority. This is further complicated by the fact that public education in the US is decided by local elected school boards subject to the will of local majorities.

The Supreme Court (in this context) is limited to protecting the rights of the minority as defined by the Constitution. The logic that the Supreme Court is permitted to exercise is restricted to what follows from the premise that the majority can dictate the public policy except to the extent that such policy violates a constitution rights of any minority. Nothing in the Constitution gives anyone a right to "truth" (as even a quick glance at our political history and Supreme Court jurisprudence would reveal).

The Constitution, however, gives the right to be free from religious proselytization by the government. The Supreme Court has ruled that dressing religious concepts up in pseudoscientific garb and teaching it in science classes is religious proselytization. If we concede that there is no distinction to be made between science and non-science, then there are no constitutional grounds to bar the majority from teaching what they want in public schools with their tax money.

That, of course, is no evidence that a distinction can, in fact, be made between "science" and "pseudoscience" but it does indicate that Smyth deeply misunderstands the context of the debate in the US.

That's all I have time for this morning but I'll come back to this, I hope, later today with a few more thoughts, as well as corrections of Smyth's misconstruals of my criticisms.

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* There are, of course, political claims (not least in the area of church/state separation) that the Supreme Court has engaged in policy-making but it is generally agreed that, if such claims are true, it is a bad thing under our Constitution.
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Labels: Smyth's Bollocks

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 7:09 AM 3 comments

Robert McCredie May, Lord May, the president of the British Science Association, a former President of the Royal Society and a former British Government chief scientific advisor thinks the world is on a "calamitous trajectory" because of its failure to coordinate measures against global warming ... and belief in God may be the answer:

He said that no country was prepared to take the lead and a "punisher" was needed to make sure the rules of co-operation were not broken.

[Lord May] said in the past that was God and it might be time again for religion to fill the gap.

"Maybe religion is needed," said Lord May, who was brought up a Scottish Presbyterian but went through an "inverse epiphany" at the age of 11.

"A supernatural punisher maybe part of the solution."

He said in the past a belief in a god, or gods, that punish the unrighteous may have been part of the mechanism of evolution that maintains co-operation in a dog-eat-dog world.

Having a god as the ultimate punisher was possibly a logical step for a society to take, he added.

"Given that punishment is a useful mechanism, how much more effective it would be if you invested that power not in an individual you don't like, but an all-seeing, all powerful deity that controls the world," he said.

"It makes for rigid, doctrinaire societies, but it makes for co-operation."

Such a system would be "immensely stabilising in individual human cultures" and societies, he pointed out.

He said that while religion maybe one possible answer, it remained, at the moment, very much part of the problem as it had teetered ever more towards fundamentalism.

In less troubled times religions had become softer and less dogmatic, and embraced a more humane set of values, he said.

But that pattern was now reversing with the rise of fundamental Islamic and Christian beliefs.

At the same time, the human race was facing tremendous challenges with population soaring, energy and food resources running out, and the spectre of climate change looming in the distance.

"Under stress you reduce complex doctrines to simple mantras," said Lord May.

"I would say the US is one of the worst examples. The Catholic Church under Its present pope is another appalling example, for instance with its declaration that people with HIV shouldn't use condoms. I think that's a reaction to difficult times."

Authoritarian religion had directly undermined attempts to achieve global co-operation on climate change, he maintained.

"People who believe in the End of Days, who believe the world is going to come to an end, don't care about climate change," he said. "I think there is quite a strong connection between the religious right and climate change denial."

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:01 PM 0 comments

Labels: Carnival of Elitist Bastards

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 7:33 AM 0 comments

Nick Smyth has been continuing the discussion of my criticism of his article at 3 Quarks Daily, entitled "Science, Pseudoscience and Bollocks," in the comments here.

The gist of his claim is that "science" is impossible to define and, therefore, there is no basis for denying anyone the right to call whatever activity they want "science." Instead of defending any definition of "science," as opposed to non-science/pseudoscience:

... truth is what matters, and that all we need to say about creationism, astrology and the like is that they are extremely bad truth-tracking programmes. They are, in a word, bollocks.

My contention is that he is, at least as far as solving the problem of how to keep creationism out of public school science classes, simply pushing the problem back one step ... to distinguishing truth-producing epistemology from epistemology that does not reliably produce truth. I am not denying that such epistemology exists, just that it suffers the same problems that distinguishing "science" from "pseudoscience" suffers from.

More importantly, his criteria actually produces a demarcation between "science" and "pseudoscience." I've asked him what truth-producing epistemology that he is discussing (but has declined to define) "science" does not employ. My point is: if science employs truth-producing epistemology and pseudoscience, in whole or in part, does not, that is a basis for distinguishing "science" from "pseudoscience." His "truth programme" is, itself, I think, a way of telling one from the other. It is not necessary to completely define "science" in order to distinguish it from other truth-claims as long as we have a marker that is consistently found in one and not consistently found in the other. I need not define every characteristic of those organisms within the family Suidae or of devices for holding money to know a pig from a poke.

On another level, his attempt to use epistemological arguments, rather than a demarcation between science and pseudoscience, as a social argument against creationism is deeply impractical. Despite at least one hundred years of experience (as far as creationism goes), he insists that creationists will somehow be more amenable to accepting epistemological principles that refute their beliefs than they are in accepting that part of "science" which refutes them. But anyone who has followed the "controversy" knows that creationists regularly deny the epistemological basis of "science" as it is practiced (though they don't use the word, since they know their target audience's eyes would glaze over -- which is, I think, what would happen generally no matter which side raises it).

In, what is to me, a telling admission on Smyth's part, he accuses me of:

... skepticism about epistemology [which is] is not wise. It amounts to saying that we cannot say what "truth" is at all. This is relativism! In effect, you undermine the entire discipline of science by denying it the right to claim truth-status over other fields. If you look into it, you will find that there are clear-cut, widely accepted logical rules that are not "fuzzy" and which can help us do epistemology correctly.

Quite apart from the irony of accusing me of relativism when his original argument, that there is no such thing as "science" but that it is only a social claim to prestige, is precisely the argument made by Steve Fuller in his defense of ID, I think this assertion leads to the refutation of Smyth's point. I fully agree that we have epistemological methods that produce (within the limits of human knowledge) greater and more reliable "truth" than other methods. But I maintain that is why we can speak about the "discipline of science" and its "truth-status" in the first place. If we can't define the "discipline of science" (and, necessarily, what counts as "non-science"), then we can't talk about its truth-value, since there is no "there" there that to could be discussed and evaluated. If we can rationally talk about those things, then Smyth's contention that science cannot be defined -- at least sufficiently well to distinguish it from pseudoscience -- is refuted.

Anyway, Smyth is promising to produce a response at his own blog, which I will doubtless respond to, so, if your eyes have not already glazed over, you might want to review the discussion ... or else skip reading this blog until the dust clears.
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Labels: Smyth's Bollocks

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 8:25 PM 6 comments

The Dishonesty Institute has released a "College Student's Back to School Guide on Intelligent Design."

All you need to know about this piece of crap is that, within two short paragraphs, it perpetrates a quote mine of Darwin:

Part I: Letter of Introduction: Why This Student's Guide?

Welcome to College, Goodbye to Intelligent Design?
The famous Pink Floyd song that laments, "We don't need no education / We don't need no thought control," is not just the rant of a rebellious mind; it is also a commentary on the failure of education to teach students how to think critically and evaluate both sides of controversial issues.

Few scientists understood the importance of critical thinking better than Charles Darwin. When he first proposed his theory of evolution in Origin of Species in 1859, Darwin faced intense intellectual opposition from both the scientific community and the culture of his day. To help restore objectivity to the debate over evolution, Darwin wisely counseled, "A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question." [Emphasis in original]

Labels: Quote Mining

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 1:56 PM 5 comments

Whew!

Jerry Coyne is not only somewhat crippled in his ability to address the subject of religion rationally, he seems to lose his ability to comprehend the English language when the subject comes up. His latest is dubbing the following from Josh Rosenau as part of some "Hall of Shame":

If the goal of this blog is to be at all educational, one hopes that a vigorous defense of analogy will serve some salutary effect in the difficulties people have with analogical thinking, whether they be religious fundamentalists bent on Biblical literalism, or atheists bent on insisting that literalism is the true form of religion.

I weep for the NCSE if this kind of idea is running the railroad. We atheists don't give a tinker's dam about what the true form of religion might be, because we don't think there is one! Nor do we have one. We don't worship Darwin, nor think that he's infallible. Is this part of a strategy to marginalize atheists along with Biblical fundamentalists?

[T]here's one thing that both atheists and the devout agree on: Karen Armstrong's God-is-but-a-transcendence-beyond-a-symbol theology is not only unrepresentative of religion in general, but hard to distinguish from atheism.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:14 AM 6 comments

Nick Smyth has posted an article at 3 Quarks Daily, entitled "Science, Pseudoscience and Bollocks," that John Wilkins calls "infuriating but thought-provoking." I confess that I find it mostly confusing. Smyth wants to replace any talk about a demarcation between science and non-science/pseudoscience with a demarcation between "truth" and "bollocks."

According to Smyth, the current way of opposing creationism is deficient.

[M]any of us will continue to oppose religious/mystical/creationist "cranks" in the name of Science. One of our main lines of attack will be territorial: we will accuse them of being on the wrong side. Science is over here, we will say, and you are over there, and we all know what that means.

The most interesting thing about this manoeuvre is that almost no-one performing it—scientist, philosopher, or otherwise—will be in possession of a single defensible definition of "science". In other words, they won't know what they're talking about.

Want to keep creationism out of schools? Point out that we shouldn't teach bollocks in schools, and that constitutional freedom of religion cannot imply that false things should be taught as if they were true things. Want to keep government funding away from creationists? Point out that the government shouldn't fund bollocks. I could go on, but Reisch, Pennock and others seem to think that once we abandon formal demarcation we are left with "no difference" between molecular biology and talking snakes. This is clearly absurd.

The only rational and intellectually honest thing to do is to forget about demarcation and to give authority to powerful, accurate and consistent explanatory programmes. In other words, we must recover the original sense of "science" as a diverse, evolving set of human activities that are only important because they produce systematic knowledge. Otherwise, that clever creationist is going to come along one day and point out that a central pillar of our rejection of his doctrines—the concept of "pseudoscience"—is bollocks.

We can go back 150 years and recover our epistemological focus. We will discover that truth is what matters, and that all we need to say about creationism, astrology and the like is that they are extremely bad truth-tracking programmes. They are, in a word, bollocks.

Someone once famously asked "What is truth?" How are we, philosophically or legally, to answer that question? And what is the "proper" epistemology? Creationists, such as Answers in Genesis, have their own answer:

The 66 books of the Bible are the written Word of God. The Bible is divinely inspired and inerrant throughout. Its assertions are factually true in all the original autographs. It is the supreme authority in everything it teaches. Its authority is not limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes but includes its assertions in such fields as history and science. ...

By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.

According to their epistemology, it is evolution that is "bullocks." And in a democracy, why shouldn't their definition of bullocks prevail if they are, as they are in many places in this country and around the world, in the majority?

The problem, then, has just been pushed back one step by Smyth. Instead of deciding what is science and what is non-science/pseudoscience, now we are required to decide which epistemology best produces "truth," a category even less capable of a bright line definition than "science."

Smyth seems to recognize this in the comments:

You're right that the ultimate success of the strategy I advocate depends on the establishment of some epistemological ground rules. Indeed, I have been whinging--annoyingly--about this on 3QD for years now: science requires philosophy, and this is one of the (many) reasons why.

Yet, I think this particular post is better read as an address to you, I, or any other "scientifically-minded" person. Do you believe that creationism is pseudoscience? If yes, then tell me what science actually is. Hey, it turns out you can't. Alternately, do you believe that creationism is false? Well, clearly you do. So, why not specify the grounds on which you think it is false?

But the issue before the court in Kitzmiller was not whether creationism is false -- which Smyth certainly must have known because the very sentence before the part of Judge Jones' decision that Smyth quoted is:

After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science.

The question Judge Jones was answering was more limited than the one Smyth wants to address: 'is ID sufficiently like science as it is presently practiced that its roots in and support for religion must be ignored in determining whether it violates the First Amendment separation of church and state?' Government teaching of science is a legitimate "secular purpose," even if the science contradicts some religious tenet. But the reverse is true as well and, if some scientific result supported a religious tenet or contradicted an atheist position, the state could legitimately teach that as science.

Thus Judge Jones was, by the nature of the case (not to mention the arguments of the parties), required to determine whether or not ID was within the parameters of science as presently practiced.

Ironically, the way that courts go about this task -- which they also do in deciding whether a person who claims to be an "expert" in science can testify to his/her "opinion" rather than be limited to testifying about "facts" as every other witness is -- has to do with the epistemology the "expert" uses and whether or not other "scientifically-minded" people (i.e. scientists) accept the "expert's" methods as within present-day scientific practice, even if they disagree with the conclusions the "expert" reaches.

In other words, the law applies the very criteria Smyth is groping for. And in what way is Smyth's proposal not a demarcation criteria, since it is the same as what Judge Jones ultimately applied?

This is long enough, so I'll close here. But I may come back to address other things I think Smyth got seriously wrong.
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Labels: Smyth's Bollocks

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 8:11 PM 10 comments

In another sign of the coming Apocalypse, there is an actual indication that Ray Comfort can learn ... or else yet another creationist is lying through his teeth depending on what audience he is speaking to, which would be a sign that everything is normal.

Last February 12th, Comfort appeared on Pat Robertson's delusion-fest and had this to say (starting at around 1:52):

Robertson: Tell me about the essentials of Darwinism. What have you understood that Darwin taught.

Comfort: Well, Darwin was a very bitter man, who went into the ministry ... fell away ... never knew the Lord ... and lost his daughter at the age of 12 ... she was 12 ... and became very bitter at God and then denied his faith and came up with this fairy tale for grown ups.

Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.

This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the Origin of Species; and it is since that time that it has very gradually with many fluctuations become weaker. But then arises the doubt—can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? May not these be the result of the connection between cause and effect which strikes us as a necessary one, but probably depends merely on inherited experience? Nor must we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children producing so strong and perhaps an inherited effect on their brains not yet fully developed, that it would be as difficult for them to throw off their belief in God, as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred of a snake.

I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.

Comfort cites a recent Wall Street Journal article, titled "Man vs. God" that pits atheism against God, and wrongly depicts Darwin as going head-to-head with God.

Comfort says of the common gaffe, "The newspaper is free to publish anything they wish, but they are revealing either ignorance or a strong bias. Darwin wasn't anti-God at all. In his famous book Origin of Species, Darwin refers to creation as the 'works of God,' and calls Him the 'Creator' an amazing seven times!"

But I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant 'appeared' by some wholly unknown process. It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 11:03 PM 7 comments

Here is PZ Myers discussing the new report on that 15% of Americans who responded "No Religion" to the American Religious Identification Survey that shows that only 10% of the "nones" identify as atheists:

Those "Nones" don't believe in a Bearded Ape of Cosmic Proportions, they aren't propping up the local priestly den of ignorance with donations, and Pat Robertson is still confident that every one of them will burn in hell. Most are not as vocal or as confident as the spokespeople for atheism are, but then, most of the people who have been filling church pews for centuries haven't been as noisy or assertive about their faith as have the priests and bishops and deacons, but no demographers have therefore felt compelled to split definitions and point out the weakness of Christianity by declaring only some tiny percentage to be church leaders.

Don't fall for their subtle attempts to divide the unbelievers. Religious institutions would love to see atheists continually demonized, even by, especially by, agnostics. It furthers their ends, not ours. There is no meaningful division — we are all abandoning the old superstitions together.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:05 PM 4 comments

PZ Myearshertz on the aftermath of the Rapture:

Have any Christian friends or neighbors? Go knock on their door. If no one answers, they're in paradise — help yourself to their house, their car, their jewelry, that nice TV in their living room. Traffic on your commute should be a little lighter in the morning. The Republican party has evaporated, and the entire staff of Fox News are gone, and the network will have to shut down.

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Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 6:02 AM 2 comments

Not much comment necessary:

Daniel Jones, founder of the religion inspired by the Star Wars films, says he was humiliated and victimised for his beliefs following [an] incident at a Tesco store in Bangor [Wales].

The 23-year-old, who founded the International Church of Jediism, which has 500,000 followers worldwide, was told the hood flouted store rules.

But the grocery empire struck back, claiming that the three best known Jedi Knights in the Star Wars movies – Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker – all appeared in public without their hoods. Jones, from Holyhead, who is known by the Jedi name Morda Hehol, said his religion dictated that he should wear the hood in public places and is considering legal action against the chain. ...

Tesco said: "He hasn't been banned. Jedis are very welcome to shop in our stores although we would ask them to remove their hoods.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker all appeared hoodless without ever going over to the Dark Side and we are only aware of the Emperor as one who never removed his hood.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:56 PM 6 comments

PZ Megahertz already had this but I just thought I'd say goodbye to all my friends and readers who are going to be raptured today ... assuming I have any that qualify..

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:24 AM 4 comments

A thought:

In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"—part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus creationists can (and do) argue: evolution is "only" a theory, and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is less than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science—that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was."

Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.

Moreover, "fact" does not mean "absolute certainty." The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Evolutionists have been clear about this distinction between fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory—natural selection—to explain the mechanism of evolution. He wrote in The Descent of Man: "I had two distinct objects in view; firstly, to show that species had not been separately created, and secondly, that natural selection had been the chief agent of change. . . . Hence if I have erred in . . . having exaggerated its [natural selection's] power . . . I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations."

Thus Darwin acknowledged the provisional nature of natural selection while affirming the fact of evolution. The fruitful theoretical debate that Darwin initiated has never ceased.

-Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory," Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994, pp. 253-262.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 6:06 PM 3 comments

Miss Porky Pig flies through the air during the Pig Racing and Diving show at Melbourne Showgrounds, September 18, in Melbourne, Australia. The Show has been taking place in Melbourne since 1848 and is Victoria's largest and longest running annual public entertainment event, expected to attract around half a million visitors in 2009. Photo: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 11:17 AM 3 comments

Abbie at ERV has pointed out the announcement that the powers that be at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History have listened to the science-friendly blogosphere (or, just maybe, being highly intelligent people themselves, were working on it all along). The museum is not just going to open for special hours between 6 and 11 p.m., free of charge, the night of the Invasion of the Brain Snatchers, but will be presenting a free public lecture beginning at 5 p.m. (the Discovery Institute's flimflam film starts at 7 p.m.) by the museum's curator of invertebrate paleontology, Stephen Westrop, titled "The Cambrian Explosion and the Burgess Shale: No Dilemma for Darwin."

As Abbie says:

So if youd like to laugh at Darwins Dilemma'/Wells/Meyer, there will be plenty of guilt-free science activities to help you get over your TARD hangover! YAY!

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 8:58 AM 0 comments

And so it continues.

There is a lot of rational discussion being had about Josh Rosenau's piece on different "ways of knowing" and Jerry Coyne, as usual, is adding nothing to that discussion. His latest is a pep rally for Jason Rosenhouse's post on the subject. But I shouldn't say Coyne has added nothing because I think he has inadvertently revealed one of the real problems here.

First, let me digress and recommend Chris Schoen's entry at u_n_d_e_r_v_e_s_e. Chris, along with making an eloquent case for our being a storytelling species, where we convey and learn knowledge best through the stories we tell each other, discusses Ophelia Benson's and Jason Rosenhouse's posts and notes that they both concede that nonscientific means can lead to "truth." Benson agrees that "[t]elling stories ... can be a great way to convey certain truths about the world" and Rosenhouse relates a story about how a difficult chess match revealed things about himself that he may not have learned otherwise. Both then turn on a dime and declare that those truths are not a result of a "way of knowing," with little or no explanation.

It is at this point that Coyne comes to the "rescue":

As Jason says, nobody has yet provided one truth — about the divine or otherwise — that has come from non-empirical ways of knowing.

... about the world and/or universe that has been arrived at by faith alone, could not be arrived at by secular reason or science, and that is true in that it is in principle verifiable by all people.

OED: Truth: Conformity with fact; agreement with reality

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:57 AM 5 comments

In no surprise at all, the Discovery Institute's Ministry of Misinformation is claiming that it is being subjected to "Suppression and Censorship" because the science-respecting part of the blogosphere is upset about the screening of the DI's propaganda film, Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Explosion, at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History.

Well, sort of. In fact, Robert Crowther quotes from a post by PZ Myers (though, for the moment, at least, he links to a different follow-up post) that nowhere recommends that the museum refuse the DI the use of its auditorium. Instead, they quote PZ to the effect that having such an event puts a "little spot of schmutz on [the museum's] glossy reputation" and that the "University of Oklahoma biology professors ... the staff of the museum ... [and] the rational people of the state of Oklahoma ... should all be rising up in disgust to mock this ridiculous affair."

This Crowther calls "an implicit threat of censorship." I suppose the sort of mentalist ability to discern censorship in a call for more speech is the same power that enables IDeologists to detect science in their theological babblings.

The follow-up article from PZ makes it even clearer, if possible, that he is not calling for censorship:

They [the museum staff] need to address the dishonesty directly: stir up controversy of their own to get people to want to hear the rebuttals. Don't claim to respect every religious belief out there; point out that this religious belief is incredibly bad science and rotten theology, and have people lined up to criticize it without the lame excuses. They don't need to bring in a bunch of atheist hired guns to do that, either: they almost certainly have biologists on campus with religious views of all kinds who will happily agree that intelligent design creationism is garbage.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:51 PM 1 comments

I've long known about Cornell University biologist Allen MacNeill's blog, The Evolution List, but have not, for some reason, followed it. It hasn't been updated in a while (which I hope is related to the summer break) but it's well worth reading back through it.

One interesting post ("What's So 'Intelligent' About 'Intelligent Design'?") is on why the problem with Intelligent Design Creationism isn't "design" but, rather, with "intelligence." It also touches on a point I've noted before, namely: when creationists speak about "random" evolution, they mean "non-intentional," not "highly contingent" or "unpredictable," and, therefore, pointing out that natural selection is not "random" has no effect on their real objection ... which is that evolution eliminates a supernatural force or deity as the causal factor in biological evolution.

Another post ("Why Intelligent Design Supporters Insist That ID Must Be True") that caught my eye delves into:

... why Intelligent Design (ID) exists, why websites like Uncommon Descent exist, and why the regular commentators who support ID at those websites are so determined to assert the absolute reality of ID, in spite of a complete lack of empirical evidence.

Of course [the validity of an objective moral code] is all dependent upon the truth of the existence of God and the truthfulness of scripture - most of us here are aware of that.

Since God must exist (otherwise there are no morals and anything is permitted), then there must be empirical evidence for His existence. Finding none, it is therefore necessary to pretend that some exists, or to make some up. Otherwise there can be no objective basis for morals, society will necessarily collapse into chaos, and we will all inevitably become insatiable, maniacal, cannibalistic, orgiastic mass murderers, rapists, and thieves.

[A]n action is permissible if and only if it's not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that action. This is just the standard inferential scheme for formal deontic logic. We've conformed to standard principles and inference rules of logic and we've started out with assumptions that atheists have conceded. And yet we reach the absurd conclusion: therefore, for any action you care to pick, it's permissible to perform that action.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 4:21 PM 0 comments

The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History has issued a statement on its website about the Discovery Institute's screening of the propaganda film, Darwin's Dilemma, at the museum's Kerr Auditorium:

Although the museum does not support unscientific views masquerading as science, such as those espoused by the Discovery Institute, the museum does respect the religious beliefs of all people. Moreover, the museum is obligated to rent its public space to any organization that is engaged in lawful activities, free speech and open discourse. The museum does not discriminate against recognized campus organizations based on their religious beliefs, political philosophy, scientific literacy, or any other factors.

The museum's many galleries will be open for free before and after the showing of the Discovery Institute's film "Darwin's Dilemma" on Sept. 29 so the public can see that there is no scientific controversy in evolutionary science's explanation of the development and history of Earth's biodiversity.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 6:58 PM 0 comments

Jerry Coyne is once again displaying for all to see the entire depth of philosophical reasoning and discourse he is capable of.

Naturally, that involves name-calling and passing the buck to others to do the heavy lifting, in this case, Ophelia Benson (not necessarily the best choice) and her commentariat. I suppose that's better than if he does it himself, given past results.

The particular occasion for Coyne's latest outburst is Josh Rosenau's piece at Thoughts from Kansas, "On vampires and ways of knowing." Josh's main point (if I may be so bold as to interpret) is that religion and science are making different sorts of "truth claims" and, so, the standards imposed on one sort are, at least, potentially inappropriate to apply to the other.

Of course, there can be intelligent and reasoned disputes about Josh's view. Coyne will have none of that, however. Invective and ridicule is the most he can muster.

But what I find most interesting relates to a post by Ed Brayton on what may seem like a different topic but which I think is deeply related to all of Coyne's posturings. Ed points out a recent exchange between David Frum and David Horowitz over whether conservatives should defend Glen Beck's "over-the-top" (read: "dishonest") attacks on Cass Sunstein. Frum's point is, basically, that the end does not justify the means, especially when the means contradict your own ends. As Ed puts it:

This is the mantra of extremists. No matter how bad they can admit their own behavior is, it's justified because the other side is even worse. Strength and vigor in one's opposition to the evil other side becomes paramount and no tactic can ever be too much because, after all, They are even worse and must be stopped.

The only basis Coyne offers, and the only one I can recall being offered by other enablers [people who, like Coyne, support creationists in their muddling of the nature of science], is that religion and science are incompatible because religions can make false empirical claims.

But so can art. I think that people who would read A Tale of Two Cities as an historical account of the French revolution are being just as bad as those who read the Bible as an historical account of the Bronze Age. It's perfectly possible to read Dickens or the Bible as true, but not as empirically true. And if the battle is between people who read the Bible in a non-empirical sense and those who don't, then it seems like we should strengthen the hand of moderate theists, not disparage them.

I wasn't aware that there was a movement to replace the teaching of European history with the view given in Dickens's novels, nor a push to deny people contraception because that's what Dickens would want, or to keep women subordinate because Mrs. Micawber would never desert Mr. Micawber.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:02 PM 4 comments

In a development that promises that pigs will soon sprout wings:

[O]rganizers of next year's Conservative Political Action Conference — the country's biggest annual meeting of activists on the right — said last week that they had rejected a request to schedule a panel on whether Obama was a native-born U.S. citizen.

"It would fill a room," said event director Lisa De Pasquale. "But so would a two-headed monkey. There really are so many more important issues, and it's only a three-day conference."

CPAC officials said WorldNetDaily's [Joseph] Farah asked the group to hold the panel.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 7:04 PM 3 comments

In response to yesterday's post about the debut of the propaganda film by Intelligent Design creationists, Darwin's Dilemma, at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, a comment was left by Linda Coldwell, of the SNOMNH:

You are correct that the Sam Noble Museum is not endorsing this film or this school of thought. As an equal opportunity institution, and part of the University of Oklahoma, the museum rents its facilities out to any organization able and willing to pay for the space.

A tour of our terrific Paleozoic exhibits will provide lots of fascinating, factual information on the current scientific understanding and interpretation of the Cambrian Explosion.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 2:03 PM 1 comments