There was to have been a broadcast debate today between a Creationist and a Biologist. Ray Comfort (of the Banana Proves Creationism fame) against PZ Myers (a.k.a Pharyngula). But the station wimped out, and broadcast Comfort in relative quiet comfort today, and will allow Myers to respond tomorrow morning (Weds. Aug. 6, 2008 10:00 CDT (GMT-5)) on WDAY

Here is Pharyngula’s play-by-play, blogged during the first 40 minutes of the broadcast.

The first response comment was:

A friendly reminder to turn all irony meters and bullshit detectors to the lowest sensitivity, lest they be vaporized.

with a reply at comment #73 that I appreciated

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I’ve blown up electronic panels with inadequately specified parts in the past, with actual noise and smoke. So I “get” each of these units. Except, how many MegaDubyas are there in a TeraHaggert?

There is yet another story going around about dinosaur and human footprints found together in ancient (maybe 4,000 years old!) rock. Here is the local credulous Texas take on the find.

All the previous pictures of contemporaneous dinosaur and human footprints provided by these people showed that humans used to have 19″ long feet with only 3 toes. This new isolated sample, long removed from its secret setting, is available to view in person by true believers. The dinosaur track might be real, but any anatomist or gait specialist could tell you what is wrong with the human footprint, and its intersection with that of the dinosaur. Any paleontologist want to comment on the dino-print?

If they really wanted actual paleontologists to believe the evidence, they would invite them to the site of the find to seek the rest of the footprint trail. As an attempt to gain credulity, they claim that over 800 x-rays were taken of the rock (one CAT scan?) after the human footprint was “revealed”. Um, I guess they need to prove that it is a rock through and through. Actually, the claim is that fossil footprints are made by compressing layers of rock, rather than in a soft single sediment layer where they are usually found. The scans reportedly show that both footprints distorted underlying layers.

The daughter of the discoverer has studied some geology, so she is skeptical of its evidentiary value as proof of a Young Earth. But Dr. Carl Baugh, the founder and director of the Creation Evidence Museum in Texas, hopes to get these pictures into Texas textbooks (and therefore all other states) under the Strengths and Weaknesses doctrine of the Discovery Institute.

MSNBC has recently reported on the prosperity gospel of Televangelist Kenneth Copeland, which appears to be benefiting mostly—Kenneth Copeland and his relatives.

Kenneth Copeland, 71, is a pioneer of the prosperity gospel, which teaches that believers are destined to flourish spiritually, physically and financially — and share the wealth with others.

His ministry’s 1,500-acre campus outside Fort Worth is testament to his success. It includes a church, private airstrip, a hangar for the ministry’s aircraft and a $6 million, church-owned mansion.

I shake my head when I read these corporate media reports about these upstart religions. That’s because many long-established religions also allow their leaders to live in wanton opulence. Consider, for instance, the Catholic Church (in which I was raised). When is the last time the Pope or any of the Cardinals or Bishops missed a meal because they couldn’t afford it? Although I know of frugal (and morally admirable) priests and nuns, I have yet to hear of any high-ranking Catholic clergyman who had to scrape by. If you doubt this, check out the opulent living quarters of your local Cardinal or Arch-Bishop.

It’s also pathetic to watch the mainstream media attacking newly-established religions for preaching the prosperity gospel. You can almost hear the sneering and snarling when the big media outlets report that preachers like Copeland (or, another example, Joel Osteen) teaches that there’s nothing wrong with being rich or enjoying a life of conspicuous consumption.

It’s a rare religion, though, that has ever ejected any member for being rich or for consuming conspicuously. It doesn’t matter that Edward or Susan or Walter has five vacation homes or a private jet or pays 27 times more to eat at fancy restaurants than most people pay for food. Here’s what being rich does for members of organized religions: they get more deference and more respect than lower earning members of the church. Never are they scolded from the pulpit. I beg you—if anyone reading this knows of any rich person being asked by any mainstream church to stop living so lavishly, let me know.  I assume that it occasionally happens in tiny or fringe sects, but not in Big Church USA.  For instance, do you think the Catholic Church has ever told any of the Kennedys that they should sell their lavish property at Martha’s Vineyard or that they should otherwise cut down on their conspicuous consumption? Their whirlwind vacations or their fancy cars or their fancy jewelry?  Churches are utterly obeisant to rich people.

Here’s the real-life gospel every Sunday: “No matter what we say up here, it’s OK for you to keep the vast majority of your money and to blow it on any luxury you care to dream up.”

Mainstream certainly preach the gospel that “Blessed are the poor,” but they actually push their members to act on it. I’ve yet to see it. Therefore, why does the mainstream media pounce on churches that allow its leaders and members to flaunt their wealth?  Jealousy?  Schadenfreude? For rich people (and for many poor), church is for Sundays only.

Most churches founded by organized religions are country clubs with steeples. They are happy to accept most anyone who walks into the door, especially if that person has some resources he or she might donate to the church. In return, wealthy members of mainstream churches have grown accustomed to a substantial return benefit. Never will a church leader suggest that those wealthy members need to actually change anything about their lifestyle unless it involves something about family planning or sex for pleasure.

It’s less likely that a mainstream church will scold a member for conspicuous consumption than it would be for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

In case you’ve been out of touch, a student in Florida took Our Lord Jesus Christ hostage a few weeks ago. He walked out of church with a consecrated communion wafer to show to a friend, rather than promptly eating the true flesh of the 2000 year old man. Ignoring the question of whether Jesus really did say, “Eat Me”, this little event became big news. First, the college and the church denounced and eventually impeached the poor kid. Demands that he be expelled and/or excommunicated flew. (Orlando Sentinel summary article).

Then famous rationalist and biologist PZ Myers got into the act. He published a post in which he suggested that those incensed need to get a reality-based life: “It’s a frackin’ cracker” said he. Myers even suggested that someone should procure for him one of these blessed wafers, so that he could personally desecrate it.

Then the spam hit the fan. Thousands of comments and emails and demands for his expulsion and his firing and even death threats followed. Well, back and forth over several posts. One woman made international news for being fired for using a company computer to send her death threat.

Finally, Myers posted “The Great Desecration” beginning with “It is finished.” He discusses the way the church has used just the allegation of wafer misuse in history to spur mobs to mass murder (with specific examples). He posts a few of the more lucid (and publishable) denunciations of his proposed desecration, with commentary. And finally, he shows a picture of the desecration itself. Not only does he drive a rusty spike through the cracker (wondering in print if Jesus has a current tetanus shot), he nails it through the Koran and into one of Dawkins’ books, then artistically covered it all with the traditional banana peels and coffee grounds.

Desecrating the Koran was a suggestion made by many of his Catholic detractors, who suggested that he didn’t dare offend the Muslims, but only picks on Catholics (the group from whom he received the most death threats) because they are so kind and forgiving.

Desecrating Dawkins is to point out that he is not selectively suggesting that the Biblical injunction against worshipping images be used only against Judeo Christian churches. But that all icons be examined from the point of view that the symbol is not actually the object. Or to quote Korzybski, “The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing”.

Tonight I watched “It’s Bad For Ya,” George Carlin’s final nationally televised performance. The entire show is available on YouTube (Below is Part I of VII). The show was broadcast live on March 1, 2008, only a few months prior to Carlin’s death (due to a heart attack, on June 22, 2008).

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Carlin opened the show by announcing that he was 70 years old. In Parts I and II, he speaks bluntly about society’s failure to deal frankly with death. It’s impossible to watch this performance without feeling the irony. At one point, he states:

So don’t be afraid to get old. It’s a great time of life. You get to take advantage of people and you’re not responsible for anything! You can even shit in your pants!

He dissects many other topics, including law, religion, children, education and national pride. He shows no patience for the way our culture handles any of these issues. His performance gets especially dark when he asserts that there is essentially no hope for us, ecologically speaking—he predicts that in 40 or 50 more years, the entire planet will be a massive ball of pollution. At many points in the performance, it’s not easy to tell whether Carlin retains any personal optimism. Is his performance intentionally injected with hyperbole or is this really and truly what Carlin thinks. I suspected the latter, but I don’t really know.

I heard many gems during the performance (meaning that I heard many things with which I agree wholeheartedly). Here’s my favorite, this one delivered during the topic of society’s often-stated goal that “we should teach our children to read.”

It’s not important to get children to read. It’s much more important to teach children to question what they read. They should be taught to question everything. Everything they read and everything they hear. They should be taught to question authority . . .

Amen.

Writing on a NYT blog, Olivia Judson argues that we should abolish “Darwinism.” Here’s what she means:

I’d like to abolish the insidious terms Darwinism, Darwinist and Darwinian. They suggest a false narrowness to the field of modern evolutionary biology, as though it was the brainchild of a single person 150 years ago, rather than a vast, complex and evolving subject to which many other great figures have contributed. (The science would be in a sorry state if one man 150 years ago had, in fact, discovered everything there was to say.) Obsessively focusing on Darwin, perpetually asking whether he was right about this or that, implies that the discovery of something he didn’t think of or know about somehow undermines or threatens the whole enterprise of evolutionary biology today.

Sounds good to me. That way, it will be more apparent that the Creationists are arguing against an entire phalanx of theorists, biologists, statisticians, geologists and biochemists (among others). Without the term “Darwinism,” it would be more apparent that the Creationists can’t win simply by claiming that a single man stands between them and our science classrooms. I agree with Judson that to call modern evolutionary biology “Darwinism” is like calling aeronautical engineering “Wrightism.”

I only disagree with Judson in one regard. She suggests that Darwin accomplished more in his lifetime than any of us could accomplish in two lifetimes. I would suggest that the proper number is ten or more, based upon Darwin’s far-ranging achievements. He was truly an extraordinary scientist and thinker.

This video of John McCain is truly incredible. The questioner asked whether insurers, who cover Viagra, should also cover birth control pills.

The simple answer should have been that insurance companies should, indeed, cover birth control pills. Any organization that covers Viagra and Prozac (and vasectomies, much less surgery for tennis elbow) should cover the pills and medical care necessary for people to control if and when they will get pregnant. But McCain was incoherent. Here’s the Straight-Talk Express at work:

This is not the first time McCain has shown profound ignorance on birth control and sexuality. And see here for much more. The problem is that he is trying to hold onto the radical right, which wants to outlaw all effective birth control. See also, here, regarding the political positions on birth control pushed by those bastions of misinformation, “Pregnancy Resource Centers,” which dot the land, often well-funded by tax dollars. The Republicans are controlled by those who believe that they should control when and how you feel sexual pleasure. And here’s more proof. And check out the special proms for prepubescent girls. For more proof of this Republican ignorance, check out the statistics demonstrating that abstinence-only education (also well funded by the federal government) is a joke. I should clarify. I think that abstinence can be a substantial part of sex education for adolescents, but not the only part. The phrase “Just say no” doesn’t, on its own, stop kids from unintentionally getting pregnant.

Also check out McCain’s ignorance on the relationship between condom use and HIV.

As you can see, then, even when you set aside the issue of abortion, Republicans are further determined to tell you if, when and how to get pregnant. How can they not see that this should be a decision left to individuals? The answer is that Republicans are pandering to the radical “religious” Right’s wacko view that use of birth control pills constitute a method of causing an “abortion.”

I learned about this sculpture in Nature (June 26, 2008 Edition, available online only to subscribers).  Scroll down after clicking the link.   You won’t miss it.

The creator is Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. What does the sculpture mean? In the Nature article, Martin Kemp indicates that Cattelan leaves some clues:

The title, La Nona Ora, or The Ninth Hour, the first of the time of Christ’s death on the cross. This representation of the death of Pope John Paul II might be an imitation of Christ. In a typically elusive interview, Cattelan said, “I like the idea that someone is trying to save the Pope, like an upside down miracle, coming not from the heavens but from the earth.” But he adds dismissively, “In the end it is only a piece of wax.”

Cattelan’s sculpture is certainly compelling.  Is it yet another unhappy encounter between science and religion?

The same issue of Nature features a spread of articles concerning the manner in which the solar system was pummeled by meteorites just after its formation 4.6 billion years ago.  According to the article on page 1160, “The hole at the bottom of the Moon,” It was a ferocious and sustained blast of debris.  “The barrage even knocked off enough of Earth to Create the Moon in the first place.”   By 3.8 billions years ago, though, “impact rates had tailed off to a level not too different from those of today.”

How often was the Earth a target of a big meteorite?  Author Eric Hand reports on a conservative estimate: “Every million years, something would come along big enough to make a 1,000 kilometre basin.  Such impacts would have vaporized Earth’s oceans ad steam-sterilized the surface . . . an atmosphere of rock vapor could linger for thousands of years after the impact.”

About some things, Americans are incredibly stupid. For instance, I’ve kept an eye on science and religion related ignorance for years. 15% of Americans don’t know that the Earth revolves around the sun. Half of the people in the United States (an allegedly “Christian Nation”)  can’t name Genesis as the first book in the Bible.

There are a lot more statistics where those came from. If you’d like to read a few dozen zingers, read Rick Shenkman’s article in Alternet, “Ignorant America: Just How Stupid Are We?” There are some real head-shakers in Shenkman’s article. Several might have you wondering whether we should require citizens to pass rudimentary intelligence tests in order to vote. Shenkman’s compilation of stupidity had me wondering this. I know that this is an extremely controversial idea based on the way it has been misused in the past. It is clear, though that huge numbers of people have no idea how their government is designed to work, who is running their government, the basic characteristics of the scientific method, the basic facts of the religions to which they cling, or rudimentary principles of geography, history or economics. Now really . . . should such a person vote? This question makes me squirm.

I’m not really suggesting that we should take official government action to keep people from voting based on their intelligence levels. On the other hand, reading Shenkman’s article makes me wonder whether our “Get out the vote” campaigns should be focused on getting people to vote only if they know something other than their favorite TV shows and sports stars. Rather than “get out the vote,” perhaps we should have “vote only if you’re informed” campaigns. Here’s one of Shenkman’s many statistics that especially got me thinking in this entirely unacceptable way:

In the election of 2004, one of the hot issues was gay marriage. But gauging public opinion on the subject was difficult. Asked in one national poll whether they supported a constitutional amendment allowing only marriages between a man and a woman, a majority said yes. But three questions later a majority also agreed that “defining marriage was not an important enough issue to be worth changing the Constitution.” The New York Times wryly summed up the results: Americans clearly favor amending the Constitution but not changing it.

What is stupidity? Early in his comprehensive article on the lack of comprehension, Shenkman designates the five types of stupidity:

First, is sheer ignorance: Ignorance of critical facts about important events in the news, and ignorance of how our government functions and who’s in charge. Second, is negligence: The disinclination to seek reliable sources of information about important news events. Third, is wooden-headedness, as the historian Barbara Tuchman defined it: The inclination to believe what we want to believe regardless of the facts. Fourth, is shortsightedness: The support of public policies that are mutually contradictory, or contrary to the country’s long-term interests. Fifth, and finally, is a broad category I call bone-headedness, for want of a better name: The susceptibility to meaningless phrases, stereotypes, irrational biases, and simplistic diagnoses and solutions that play on our hopes and fears.

Although the article at the top of this post, “Ignorant America,” is full of compelling statistics, it (like many articles documenting American stupidity) is also riddled with many questions that confuse trivia for knowledge. How important is it for most Americans to know the name of the Secretary of Defense? Isn’t it possible that someone can be rather up to speed about America’s military policies without actually knowing the name of the Secretary of Defense?

America is obsessed with trivia and it is not unusual for trivia to masquerade as something important for tests that purport to measure intelligence. Knowing lots and lots of facts, though, especially the inert facts common for trivia buffs, is not the same thing as being intelligent. If these two things (knowledge and facts) were equal, we would regularly have great insights and discoveries occurring as a result of Trivia Nights, yet I don’t believe that has yet happened even once.

The problem with many intelligence tests is that they only measure ability to recall bits of information rather than detecting true understanding, much less wisdom. For this reason, many of the questions used to illustrate how “stupid” we are resemble the same problems found in many formal “intelligence tests.” A thorough review of those problems with IQ tests can be found in Stephen Jay Gould’s Mismeasure of Man (1996).

I recognize that we all have our focus when it comes to understanding the world. Someone who is dedicated to one field of study might not know as much about other fields of study. It is also important to remember that all of us have huge gaps in information. If we have dedicated our lives to understanding nanotechnology, how much are we actually going to know about the history of classical music ? If you work as a professional athlete, should we really be expected to know all five of the specific legal rights granted by the First Amendment? (Did you know that one of those rights is the right to petition the government?). Having written this, I think it’s more likely that those who truly excel at a field tend to be rather well-rounded.

There’s probably more than a few people who would insist that the scientific method is the be-all and end-all of intelligence because of its insistence on proof. There is an uneasy truce between belief and proof, however. In the area of religion, belief is often said to be justified even in the absence of proof. But don’t forget that even very smart people find an irresistible urge to believe many things that they cannot prove.

Here’s another caveat for those who walk around wagging their fingers (like I do) at the large number of “stupid” Americans. Howard Gardner has put forth a strong argument that there were actually multiple intelligences. He holds that the concept of “general intelligence” is highly suspect and that there might not be such a thing as GI. There are those who are incredibly talented at reading the moods and motives of other people (he calls this interpersonal intelligence), but who don’t do well at mathematics. There are people who are terrifically talented in musical ways (e.g. Hillary Hahn), but might not be very good at biology (I’m not suggesting that Hillary on is not good at biology– because I am deeply infatuated with Hillary Hahn, I assume that she is excellent at everything she does!). Many of us do know some “absent-minded professors” who can talk for hours on esoterica such as Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative but who seem inept at coping in the real world on a day-to-day basis. In the category of super-intelligent, I would quickly place my plumber (who can talk knowledgeably about almost anything, it seems) and a carpenter who has done work at my house, who has a superhuman grasp of his profession. I can’t imagine being as good as he is at the many arts of transforming a house, even if I trained for 20 years at the foremost “carpenter school.” (more…)

It’s incredible that to be a candidate for President of the United States, you need to know more than how to run a country.   You need to know the Bible.   Oh, and this is only true if you’re a Democrat (I would love to see a shrewd reporter hit John McCain with an impromptu pop quiz on the Bible).

There’s a spirited exchange going on between the Reverend James Dobson and Barack Obama. Looks like Obama is winning.  But just in case, a phalanx of Bible-toting preachers has now come to Obama’s assistance.

Dobson, as is well known, serves as the center of morality for the entire country.   Here’s his take on lesbian sex, for example.

I was surprised yesterday to find a post by Jerry Pournelle (well known SF author and technology columnist) on MensNewsDaily (a starkly conservative news magazine site with pretensions of middle-of-the-roadism). His column, Intelligent Design: Answers and Questions, is openly favorable to the premise that Intelligent Design and Global Warming denial should be taught in science classes.

I have read much by Pournelle, starting with his collaborations with Larry Niven in the 1970’s and ’80’s, and then his columns in Byte magazine, and his solo novels more recently. There is a strong Libertarian feel in his recent works (such as “High Justice”), where big corporations are the good guys and “liberal” governments merely stumbling blocks to progress or even survival. But he does write some great adventure stories. I was only mildly put off by the contention in “Fallen Angels” that embracing the global warming hoax would lead into international Luddism. I figured that it was just a plot device.

But now I see that the writings of Pournelle reflect an overall feeling that Nature and Man are but players on a stage that no mortal can understand. Perhaps it has something to do with his recurring close brushes with mortality. If you read some of his other columns at JerryPournelle.com, you’ll see that he champions all manner of oddball challenges to “Mainstream Consensus Science”. Sooner or later, one of these challenges may turn out to be valid. But historically speaking, successful challenges to the well established theories of thermodynamics and quantum theory are far between.

I’m currently reading a new book by Susan Linn, The Case for Make-Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World (2008).

The main point of the book is that modern parents tend to over-schedule their children and otherwise deprive them of time for creative play.  For instance, many parents are letting their children get addicted to two-dimensional screens (television and computer screens) and many of us are inundating our children with toys that deprive them of creative play, toys that “aren’t designed with the goal of engaging children for years, or even months.  They are designed to sell.”  The net result is that creative play “is in danger of extinction.”

Why is this loss of time for creative play important?  Because children use play to cope with “the greatest of human challenges, including life-threatening illness, death and loss.”  Play is much more than momentary fun.  It is “a fundamental component of living a meaningful life and essential to mental health.”  Linn was motivated to write her book to encourage readers to ensure that their children are given ample opportunities for creative play.

It seems as though Linn’s subject matter, creative play, might also extend to adults in a critically important way.  Such application would have the potential for shedding light on religious rituals.  Although Linn’s book doesn’t dwell on this possibility, it is certainly acknowledged.

Linn speaks of the transitional objects of childhood, the blankets, bears and other “cuddlies” that are crucial for a child’s comfort.  Sometimes they “seem to be even more important than actual parents because children cannot bear to be parted from them.” As Lynn observes, children invest these objects with “special meaning.”  Such objects help children feel safe.  The children “create the blanket’s meaning.”  Furthermore, the power of these transitional objects flourish “because adult caretakers accept the importance of their significance to the young owners.”  (75)

The phenomenon of transitional objects is nearly universal.  Such objects “live at the intersection of inner experience and outer reality.”  Lynn notes that as children grow up, these transitional objects “fade in importance.”  At the same time, however,

the psychological space they occupy remains and [it's] in that space that creative play takes place.  Our childhood experience of what D.W. Winnicott calls “transitional space” as children affords us access as adults to a rich panoply of experiences that are neither wholly internal nor wholly external, but somehow both.  Religious and patriotic symbols, like a cross, a star of David, or a flag, for instance, have meaning beyond their physical properties that vary depending on your experience.

Though the growing children eventually put their stuffed animals away, these animals “teach” the children symbolic meaning.

What remains, for the rest of our lives, is the capacity to experience a kind of psychological space that is simultaneously internal and external, real and not real, me and not me–a transitional space.  In that space, once occupied by beloved transitional objects, people continue to assign personal, powerful meaning to objects from the outer world and to mold and shape these objects to give tangible shape to dreams, ideas and fantasies.  [I]n play, not unlike artists, we express real feelings by using ideas or objects that are symbols of real objects.

Based on Winnicott’s account of transitional objects, Lynn concludes that “we play in the service of a dream.” (80)

It doesn’t take much imagination to see religious and governmental rituals as extensions of the creative play of childhood. The objects of a ritual can be seen as a “transitional objects” that bridge the gap between often times disturbing real-life experiences and one’s hopes and fantasies.

I’m not claiming that all religious believers engage in rituals because they are in some way “infantile” or as a conscious attempt to extend childhood play into their adult lives; rather, they might be (unconsciously) extending the important benefits of childhood play into their adult lives.

I believe that people are “religious” for numerous reasons, and many “religious” people are not much into rituals.  On the other hand, it would seem as though the creative play of childhood could enable children to engage in religious or civic rituals. Or, at least, the lack of creative play as children might cause adults to struggle to understand religious and civic rituals.

The objects of  adult rituals  might serve to bridge the gap between what actually exists in the world of adults and the things for which  religious adults hope and dream.

I’m not finished with Susan Linn’s book yet.  I’ll be looking to see whether she comments further on this potential adult application of the function of creative play.  I would also be interested in knowing whether adults who get lots of time for creative play as children are more (or less) likely to feel fulfilled when participating in religious and civic rituals.

It’s the political season and there are a lot of bad arguments being made these days. There are plenty of non sequiturs, red herrings, ad hominem attacks and ex hominem attacks. It is the season when we vividly see that there is no such thing as pure reason. Instead, cognition is always infused with emotion (as Antonio Demasio described in his excellent work, Descartes’s Error).

This is also the season of unrelenting rhetorical tricks. One of the most common rhetorical tricks is the constant misuse of the word “because.” Simply uttering the word “because” tends to convince people that you are correct and logical even when you have said nothing meaningful at all. The great power of the word “because” has been demonstrated in a classic experiment involving a stooge trying to butt in line at a library copy machine. I discussed that experiment at a post that I entitled “Just Because.” I highly recommend a quick review of that psychology experiment before proceeding.

Considering the persuasive power of the word “because” reminded me of a special day in sixth grade, back in the late 1960s. This is a true story. I went to All Souls Grade School, a Catholic grade school in Overland Missouri. It was a school where boys wore pants and girls wore dresses (Catholic school girl’s uniforms, to be precise). A few times a year, one of the parish priests would drop by to teach religion to the students (we were usually taught by nuns). One of the parish priests at All Souls was an energetic, articulate and likable young man named Father Wilkins.

In order to convey the proper emotion of this story, I need to emphasize that the children in the sixth grade class were all starting to get laced with sex hormones, compliments of our maturing bodies. We were 12 and 13-year-olds. We were all fascinated with sex, but no one talked straight about sex back then (remember, this was back in the 1960s). It was a land of half-truths and outlandish lies. Now, back to the story.

Into the classroom walks Father Wilkins with a big smile. He sat at the teacher’s desk at the front of the classroom, chatted with us a bit and then paused for a couple seconds before starting his lesson:

“Do you know why boys wear pants and girls wear dresses?

I remember feeling shocked to hear this question. And I was also excited because I had wondered about this precise topic and I was eager to learn the answer. But no one raised a hand. I vividly remember the silence and I remember everyone looking down, hoping not to get called on. Undeterred, Father Wilkins asked the question again.

“Come on now. This is a simple question. Why do boys wear pants and girls wear dresses?”

Again, no one raised his or her hand and there was painful silence. Although my knowledge of female anatomy was quite limited back then, I assumed (with some embarrassment) that girls wore dresses for a reason that had to do with their lack of penises. I wasn’t about to raise my hand and volunteer such an answer, however. No one else was willing to volunteer an answer either.

Father Wilkins was starting to look frustrated. He cajoled us a third time.

“Nobody knows? Nobody’s going to answer my question? Well then, I’ll answer it. Why do boys wear pants and why do girls wear dresses?”

Father Wilkins folded his hands on top of his desk and looked straight at us.

“Boys wear pants and girls wear dresses because boys are boys and girls are girls! Now do you see? Now do you understand?”

Father Wilkins uttered his answer in a proud, almost smug way. He thought he was really onto something big. He went on to explain that things are often the way they are because that’s the way they’ve always been. And that’s the way they should be, et cetera. This was a perfect sort of answer for the sort of fellow who believed in the virgin birth and infallibility of the Pope.

To this day, I remember the immense disappointment I felt upon hearing this “answer.” His “answer” was actually no answer at all. I was certain of this, but I was not about to raise my hand to accuse the parish priest of pulling an intellectual con job on a classroom full of sixth graders. I can guarantee you, though, some of the kids in that classroom found his “answer” to be meaningful in the same way that they found his sermons to be meaningful. They believed that they had been provided knowledge when they had been subjected to nothing but a tautology anchored by that magically powerful word “because.”

“Because” is such an incredibly powerful word that a politician who sprinkles into his or her speeches sounds like he or she is a bubbling ferment of precision logic. We needed to attack Iraq because of 9/11. We need to fight them over there because we don’t want to fight them over here. We need to privatize Social Security because we’re trying to save it. We need to torture innocent people because other people are trying to kill us. Or “[Fill in this blank] because America is the worlds greatest country.” Or “because we’re freedom loving people.” or because [whatever].

For many people, it seems, hearing the word “because” turns off all sense of skepticism. It is for this reason that “because” is such a powerful and dangerous word.

Epilogue

I’m wondering whether the real lesson of Father Wilkins was the importance of stare decisis, the importance of doing something a certain way because that is the way it’s always been done.

I now believe that I have a much better answer to the father Wilkins question (and I do believe his question was a good one). I believe that girls wear dresses to display their legs in order to convince potential mates that the girls are biologically fit. In other words, this is a question for which evolutionary psychology offers an interesting perspective. For more on this connection, see my earlier post, “Killer High Heels.”

Do it just because.

Why, we all wonder, is America alone among the “First World Nations” to have such a high proportion of science-denying religionists, and even in high offices? According to Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman in Why the Gods Are Not Winning (that I found via this summary by Pharyngula) religiosity is higher as the more poor more envy the more rich. That is, the bigger the difference between the downtrodden and the ruling classes, the more people turn to religion to explain their lot. Our country may still be relatively rich, but as the government openly appears to ignore the needs of the sugffering (Katrina, Economic collapse, National Guard and “Stop Loss” in Iraq, etc) more people turn to religion for comfort.

These articles attempt to show that we are not actually being overrun by religious thinkers, that mega-churches are just a consolidation of the remnants of dying neighborhood churches, and that the best chance that churches have of taking over like they had in the dark ages is to increase the disparity between rich and poor. The current administration has been doing them a bonny service, but it is not enough to stem the tide of ever increasing rationalism. So they claim, and I hope.

Absolutely! As long as we teach ALL of the controversies. This is some clever science/religion/humor.

In brief, Stephen Jay Gould proposed the idea that evolution is truly stochastic (a particular technical kind of random), that if we started evolution over as of a million years ago, we probably wouldn’t be here in our current form. That is, any evolutionary step is contingent on the history of steps that went before, each based on a combination of random mutation and environment.

I’ve read several posts about the new discovery today, and the best summary with accurate excerpts and clear analysis is this one from Pharyngula (PZ Meyers Myers).

In brief: A single experiment ran over 20 years, or 33,000 generations of bacterial cultures, where they froze a sample every 500 generations from each of 20 separate populations, all nurtured identically over the entire time with a particular set of stressful conditions. When a particular beneficial change occurred to the population, they could track back genetically and see what the genetic change was, and what probably allowed it to manifest in a visible way. Then they tried to get the same thing to happen again starting from various suspected branching points. In some cases, the same mutation happened again.

Of course, Michael Behe of the Discovery Institute quickly posted a sort of rebuttal to the idea that yet another piece of evolutionary theory has been proven, so Meyers took him to task. Behe claims that the experiment proves how incredibly unlikely such changes are, and therefore they need an Intelligent Designer to guide them. Apparently he missed the point that the complex series of changes did happen, and were repeatable, but only in a statistical manner. As opposed to in a pre-ordained, designed sort of way.

Or possibly his point is that God individually guides the evolution of laboratory E. Coli to fool scientists into thinking that supernatural intervention is unnecessary. It’s hard to tell.

[Admin note:  here is the description of the experiment by New Scientist]

As the mercury rose past 90 on this sunny Sunday, I biked over to see the Pagan Picnic in Tower Grove Park. I attend this event regularly, and it gets a bit bigger each year. There are many booths selling fair foods and drinks, and psychic readings, acupuncture, massage, crystals galore, and anything else out on the loose edge of New Age (”Ancient Wisdom”) Credulity.

It’s fun.

What I like most about the event is its disorganized ability to weird the normals. Does a top hat go with a black leather skirt and army boots? That guy seems to make it work. One post-apocalyptic sort with a blond Mohawk is videotaping the Creative Anachronisms/ Dungeons and Dragons/ Swords and Sorcery crowd beating each other about the limbs with padded swords and staffs. And the damsels. I admit that it is fun to see what young women wear to scandalize their elders. In the flesh, as it were. Well, one man with bones through his earlobes only had on “primitive” jewelry and a loincloth. But his tan seemed up to the job.

Yes, that woman is sitting under the tree spinning her own thread from wool she probably carded herself. Does Dr. Pepper go with a pterodactyl leg? Why not? Well, turkey, actually. But the hawker is convincing. Do glacier spalled obsidian needles make good wind chimes? Ya bet! I bought. And there are many drums. Several booths provide different sorts of handmade drums with wood or skin tops.

Various musical and dance troupes perform in the Bardic Circle, one of the pavilions in the park. Somewhere there is a schedule posted. But this crowd is anarchistic. No one seems to be in charge, but it works.

What is the entry fee? Well, free. But donations to a local food bank are suggested, and bins for collecting cans of food are provided.

Charity, like honor, mercy, and tolerance, are basic pagan family values.

For three decades I’ve puzzled about the idea held by Christian Fundamentalists that the Bible must be proven absolutely and literally true in every way, or else Christianity is false. The latter clause being accepted as silly, therefore most science of the 19th and 20th century is patently on the wrong course.

I think I finally get it: It isn’t so much about the whole Bible, as about a literal Adam and Eve and serpent and fruit. If one even momentarily entertains the idea that this particular tiny part of the Bible is allegorical, then where is the original sin? If A particular orphan named Adam didn’t bite of a particular forbidden fruit, then the underlying momentary lapse of ancestral judgment for which Christians claim God holds all living people responsible didn’t happen. Therefore Jesus died in vain, if one belongs to a congregation for whom Original Sin is The Big One.

Therefore, one must reject the geology, astronomy, and functional biology as was available to 19th century discoverers like Darwin. One must also reject all the subsequent discoveries that frustratingly and consistently reiterate his conclusions, like the periodic table, plate tectonics, cell biology, quantum theory, biochemistry, radiological dating, germ theory, cosmology, dark matter/string theory, genetics, chaos theory, and so on. If it can cast doubt on the timing or existence of biblical original sin, it must be wrong.

It makes perfect sense, in a narrow world view sort of way.

I found this link at Andrew Sullivan’s site, The Daily Dish.

Consider, also, this post on Carl Sagan’s point that most religions fail to consider the rest of the universe.

Apparently the Pacific Justice Institute is suing a couple of Berkeley professors for putting up a website that explains evolution. The PJI apparently sues anyone who might constrain Christian evangelism in America, including in public schools. I read about this current suit here, on CitizenLink.org.

CitizenLink is a newsletter for Focus on the Family, a non-profit political action group for Pro-Life, evangelical Christian, and/or Young Earth education policies, but with redeeming social action programs. As long as they don’t mention candidates by name, they don’t have to pay taxes.

The legal claim is that evolution is a faith-based idea, and that the professors used Federal Grant money (National Science Foundation grant no. 0096613) as part of the funds needed to develop the site. Apparently the site disregards Creationist sources and ideology, and as such is religiously biased and violates the separation clause.

www.UnderstandingEvolution.com is full of references and citations, explanations, illustrations, and teaching guides to try to lead one to an understanding of many facets of what evolution is, and how it affects, well, everything. Topics include easy to follow answers for skeptics, like “How does evolution impact my life?”, “What is the evidence for evolution? ” and “What is the history of evolutionary theory?”. There are guides for teachers at all levels.

As such, this site has been a thorn in the side of Intelligent Design since 2004. Let’s see how much mainstream press this current nuisance suit attracts.

In my daily scan of Creationism related news, I found this historical analysis of presidential faux pas. Author Wm. C. Shelton explains in detail how Dubya’s lowest presidential approval rating in history is not his reason for rating our present leader the “Worst Ever”:

The measure of a bad presidency, for me, is neither popularity nor lack of accomplishment. It is lasting damage to the Republic and the wellbeing of its citizens. Such a judgment requires assessment of past failed presidencies and their impact on our shared history. By that measure, I judge the younger Bush to be the worst U.S. president ever.

The article proceeds to compare and contrast various “bad” policies and decisions of various presidents in light of their eventual historical significance.

So refresh your knowledge of G.W.B’s less luminary predecessors and read this article to get an idea of how history may regard leadership in our current era.