Thoughts in a Haystack

John Wilkins has started an important project.

John notes that something called "the scientific method" is often the focus of social and political arguments over the demarcation of science from pseudoscience. Those arguments, in turn, can have enormous consequences, as in the case of global warming or proper education.

However, as was the case with the attempt to arrive at a demarcation criteria between science and pseudoscience, the demarcation between the scientific method and all the other nonscientific methods of investigation will not be some bright-line, easy to draw, sum-it-up-in-10-words-or-less rule suitable for grade school textbooks. Of course, most nonscientists wind up with just such a grade school understanding of "the scientific method," often involving a set of rigid steps, such as: Observation --> Hypothesis --> Testing --> Theory --> More Testing --> Law.

Indeed, as John points out, there is no such thing as the scientific method but, instead, "there are many, but like a family portrait, they all have a resemblance, and there are clearly some that have been adopted from outside the family tree." That is no reason to throw up our hands and declare that there is no way at all to distinguish scientific methodology from nonscientific. It's just a messier and, ultimately, imperfect project but still well worth the effort, in that it will assist nonscientists in evaluating conflicting claims to the mantle of science.

John proposes to aid in this task by producing a kind of "operating manual" for nonscientists:

So when a non-scientist approaches scientific reasoning, it pays for them to know how science is done and why, and if they aren't about to undertake a scientific education, or worse, a philosophy of science education, then they don't want to have to deal with these complexities and nuances. This book will be written for them. We aim to provide simple summary explanations of what science does, and justify those practices. Why, for example, do medical researchers use double blind methods? Why do psychologists test null hypotheses? Why are error bars used? How do physicists come up with these increasingly complex and odd theories? And should they do this?

Labels: Wilkins' Manual

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:20 AM 0 comments

The Discoveryless Institute’s Stupendous Traveling Circus and Amazing Pandemonium Show recently made a visit to Southern Methodist University. The Sensuous Curmudgeon has already featured the student newspapers’ report of the event, which includes the incredibly garbled statement that:

While some who study geology believe in the Cambrian explosion, in which animals did not evolve from small organisms but were created by a 60-million-year long explosion, Darwin thought otherwise.

Last Thursday evening, the SMU community witnessed another dishonest attempt to present a particular form of religion as science, entitled "4 Nails in Darwin's Coffin: New Challenges to Darwinian Evolution". It was designed and presented by Seattle's Discovery Institute (and its subsidiary the Biologic Institute). This was a follow-up to their equally dishonest 2007 presentation "Darwin vs. Design".

We were outraged by the dishonesty of Thursday's presentation, but not entirely surprised by it. The Discovery Institute is a well-financed organization that has repeatedly attempted to discredit Darwinian biology and thereby advance its brand of religion called Intelligent Design. We do not object to religion as such. But we do object to blatant distortions of Darwinian thinking, and to pseudo-scientific alternatives to it that are falsely alleged to be better supported by the evidence.

The Discovery Institute is a fringe group of pseudo-scientists who are busily trying to pass themselves off on the unwary as legitimate scientists.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:40 AM 2 comments

Sunday School Times, June 3, 1922

Another 88 years of bad prognostication.
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Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:01 AM 4 comments

Moody Bible Institute Monthly, December 1925
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Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:01 AM 34 comments

The article begins:

Florida's schools come in for a lot of criticism. But the schools still are full of students who produce thoughtful work.

An individual cannot yell, "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater, but an individual can interrupt a presidential speech by yelling, "Lie!" The first instance, if allowed, would endanger lives by causing a stampede. The second instance would endanger the very core of American democracy if we disallowed it.

The freedom of religion is ideal because believing something in your heart and not being allowed to express it is so limiting. It keeps all of the citizens in the same mindset. All of the modern day theories, like the big bang theory or intelligent design, were created because the people of the United States are allowed to express their religious opinion. Allowing the freedom of religion keeps our minds open for change. It's inspiring and allows us to come together and appreciate what a wonderful country we live in.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 7:42 PM 25 comments

Here's an interesting report in ScienceDaily, entitled "Losing Your Religion May Be Unhealthy, Research Suggests."

People who leave strict religious groups are more likely to say their health is worse than members who remain in the group, according to a Penn State researcher.

The percentage of people who left a strict religious group and reported they were in excellent health was about half that of people who stayed in the group, said Christopher Scheitle, senior research assistant, in sociology.

About 40 percent of members of strict religious groups reported they were in excellent health, according to the study. However, only 25 percent of members in those groups who switched to another religion reported they were in excellent health. The percentage of the strict religious group members who dropped out of religion completely and said their health was excellent fell to 20 percent.

Strict groups typically require members to abstain from unhealthy behaviors, such as alcohol and tobacco use. These groups also create both formal and informal support structures to promote positive health, according to Scheitle. The social bonds of belonging to the group might be another factor for better health.

"The social solidarity and social support could have psychological benefits," Scheitle said. "That could then lead to certain health benefits."

Religious beliefs may also promote better health by providing hope and encouraging positive thinking.

Besides losing connection to these health benefits, exiting a religious group may increase stressful situations.

"You could lose your friends or your family becomes upset when you leave, leading to psychological stress and negative health outcomes," said Scheitle.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 1:53 AM 5 comments

Larry has changed his own definition of "accommodationism."

Today, at least, "accommodationism" means "rhetoric [that] comes from atheists (secularists) who direct a great deal of anger toward the vocal atheists but go out of their way to excuse their religious friends."

Hmmmm ... just 6 months ago, Larry declared the following, from Peter Hess' article "God and Evolution" on the NCSE website, had "all the earmarks" of accommondationism:

Of course, religious claims that are empirically testable can come into conflict with scientific theories. For instance, young-earth creationists argue that the universe was created several thousand years ago, that all the lineages of living creatures on Earth were created in their present form (at least up to the poorly-defined level of "kind") shortly thereafter, and that these claims are supported by empirical evidence, such as the fossil record and observed stellar physics. These fact claims are clearly contradicted by mainstream paleontology, cosmology, geology and biogeography. However, the theological aspect of young-earth creationism—the assertions about the nature of God, and the reasons why that God created the universe and permitted it to develop in a particular way—cannot be addressed by science. By their nature, such claims can only be—and have been—addressed by philosophers and theologians.

The science of evolution does not make claims about God's existence or non-existence, any more than do other scientific theories such as gravitation, atomic structure, or plate tectonics. Just like gravity, the theory of evolution is compatible with theism, atheism, and agnosticism. Can someone accept evolution as the most compelling explanation for biological diversity, and also accept the idea that God works through evolution? Many religious people do.

No anger directed at atheists nor indiscriminate excuse of the religious.

In fact, aren't the people Larry is calling "accommodationists" those people who were dubbed "faitheists" by Jerry Coyne?

Now, of course, Larry is free to make up his own private definition for any word he likes but, out of common courtesy, he might wave a flag or set off a flare or something so the rest of us know ... just so we don't get whiplash.
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Labels: Accommodationism Incompatiblism

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 7:19 PM 14 comments

David Klinghoffer is over at the Undiscovery Institute's Ministry of Misinformation once again demonstrating that the real aim of Intelligent Design Creationism is theological, not scientific:

Under a scientific view that leaves open the possibility that we really do reflect God's intelligent designing purpose, making us in a genuine sense his "handiwork" and the "fruit of [his] labor," we can make a plausible claim on his mercy. A very plausible claim, perhaps more so even than a child's claim on the mercy of his mortal father.

But under an extremely attenuated vision of God's involvement in our having come to existence, like that proposed by theistic evolutionists, it's much harder to see what claim I have on God's mercy. Not being his handiwork in any meaningful sense, exactly what relationship do I have to him?

Labels: Designer As God, ID Not Religious

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 5:31 PM 6 comments

Larry Moran appears to believe that people who don't think "science" is necessarily "incompatible" with religion (i.e. "accommodationists") are somehow duty-bound to point out that Pope Palpatine Benedict and that pimple on theism's ass, Bill Donohue, are being stupid when they try to lay the blame for the Holocaust on atheism.

What those comments have to do with the question of whether or not science is "compatible" with some religious beliefs is beyond me. But, though I don't feel my accommodationism obligates me to criticize the Pope and the dope, I am happy to do so on the general principle that stupidity should be mocked.

The Pope started it off by lauding British resistance to Nazism and contrasting that to "the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century." As John Wilkins points out, that is nothing but historic revisionism*, something that anyone who fancies himself a scholar should be ashamed of.

But the dope, unsurprisingly, multiplies the dopery. According to Donohue, who ups the ante by adding Stalin and Mao, it was the "anti-religious impulse that allowed them to become mass murderers." Riiight! Only those with an anti-religious impulses become mass murderers! So, the genocide against Mesoamericans was carried out by atheists who just happened to be wearing the robes of the Catholic Church and carrying the banners of Christ in the vanguard of the conquistadors? Torquemada was anti-religious? The Malleus Maleficarum was written and enforced by atheists?

To his small credit, Donohue knows he's spouting nonsense but he thinks it's okay:

... since the fanatically anti-Catholic secularists in Britain, and elsewhere, demand that the pope—who is entirely innocent of any misconduct—apologize for the sins of others.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 11:49 PM 27 comments

This is a repost from October of 2005 (while I wait for the Percocet to kick in), though I've added a picture as is now my custom.

Apparently conservatives have fallen love with the nature documentary, "March of the Penguins". According to conservative film critic and radio host Michael Medved, quoted by Jonathan Miller in his New York Times article "March of the Conservatives: Penguin Film as Political Fodder" (still available as a pdf file):

[March of the Penguins is] the motion picture this summer that most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing.

It was a movie about pitiless Darwinian circumstances. Drop the egg, it freezes and the embryo dies. Newborn chick wanders away, it freezes and dies. One parent dies of predation or weather, the other has to abandon the young to starve, freeze, and die.

. . . an old tradition in Christian treatment of nature. Ever since the classical period, there has been a tradition of drawing moral lessons from organisms. Of course, such people only read into the organisms, like the lion, the eagle or the fox, what they want to find there. It's not like they actually learn from nature or anything.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 1:09 AM 1 comments

Obama wants the government to take over social security. That's why I'm voting Tea Party.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:38 AM 11 comments

My, my ... Wild Bill Dembski, at his blog, Uncommon Dissonance Dissent Descent is telling us that "This is an important event. I would encourage all UD readers to try to make it to it. I'll be speaking on ID."

So what event are we talking about? A scientific conference, surely, since we all know ID is science (because the Discoveryless Institute tells us so)!

Not quite! It's the:

National Conference on Christian Apologetics 2010, Defending the Faith and the Family

Labels: Designer As God, ID Not Religious

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:04 PM 8 comments

Wiley Richards, a retired professor of theology and philosophy at The Baptist College of Florida in Graceville, helps by identifying the nature of Intelligent Design:

Arguments to prove God's existence fall under two broad categories, general revelation and special revelation. Christian apologetics in the public arena largely is pursued along the lines set forth by William Paley (1743-1805), an English theologian who used the example of a watch. He argued that its existence demanded a watchmaker. A present-day example has been set forth by Michael J. Behe in his seminal book, Darwin's Black Box, in which he contends that Darwin and his followers posit the existence of the first living cell but have failed to explain how it could come from non-living matter. This view is commonly called the argument of Intelligent Design, the ID approach.

... as if we didn't know that already.
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Labels: Designer As God, ID Not Religious

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 6:55 AM 9 comments

Sometimes you just have to wonder:

I'm starting to realize that my quest for free will in philosophy may be futile, because I have a narrow notion of what I mean by the term. I see free will as the way most of us conceive of it: a situation in which one could have made more than one choice. If that's how you see it, and you're a determinist—which I think you pretty much have to be if you accept science—then you're doomed.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 12:16 AM 15 comments