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.

Chimpanzees aren’t the only spectacularly intelligent animal species.  Sometimes human beings act intelligently!  Yes, humans are animals, as difficult as this is to believe for many people.

In this TED video, Joshua Klein reminds us about the intelligence of yet another species: crows.  Using their  intelligence, crows continue to flourish among human populations.

You read that right! No reader of Dangerous Intersection, radical materialist or hard-bitten skeptic believes in science. To say otherwise is to give a false impression of what science actually is. Science is not something in which a person believes or does not believe. Science is not a belief system; it has no holy screeds or sacred tenets. It is merely a tool, a method of gleaning knowledge, and the language used in reference to it should reflect this.

What on earth am I ranting about? Well, it goes back a few years to the Discovery Institute, and spans all the way to the present with Ben Stein’s film Expelled. The intelligent design/evolution debate has become quite the pop topic, and hence, the endless battle of science vs. religion has come into everyday discussion as well. Everyday people in normal daily settings run through these issues, turning any public place into a potential battleground.

I’ve heard a lot of the less experienced science advocates say things about science that frankly aren’t accurate. While these people mean very well, they fail to frame their debates properly, and the content of the discussion suffers for it. Since science vs. religion has become as much a layman’s debate as an expert’s one, I think the time has come for those of us on the science side of things to agree on the language we should use.

I have no expertise in science, religion or philosophy, I have no refined understanding of the psychology of persuasion, and I am no orator. However, I still have the gall to make a few semantic suggestions for any person who plans to engage in a lengthy discussion on evolution, intelligent design, or the general clash between religion and science. My tips, and their justifications, are as follows: (more…)

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.

Many people still bristle at the idea that chimpanzees can have “cultures.” The evidence is accumulating, however, as documented in “Almost Human,” an article found in the April, 2008 edition of National Geographic. The article was written by Mary Roach, with incredible photos by Franz Lanting.

In 2007, an Iowa State University anthropologist named Jill Pruetz reported that while studying chimpanzees in the field (two years earlier) she noticed a female chimp:

Sharpening a branch with her teeth and wielding it like a spear. She used it to stab at a bush baby–a pocket-sized, tree dwelling nocturnal primate that springs from branch to branch like a grasshopper. Until that report, the regular makings of tools for hunting and killing mammals had been considered uniquely human behavior. Over a span of 17 days at the start of the 2006 rainy season, Pruetz saw the chimps hunting bush babies 13 times. There were 18 sightings in 2007. It would appear the chimps are getting creative.

Pruetz has spent more than four years studying the Fongoli chimpanzees (they are savanna-woodland chimps from eastern Senegal, across the border from western Mali). Pruetz has been habituating the Fongoli chimps (allowing them to get used to her) for the past three summers. She has done this hot, filthy and exhausting work six days a week, from dawn to dusk. She has gotten sick with malaria seven times. In the course of watching the Fongoli champs, she has also noticed them engaging in other behaviors unique to these Fongoli chimps: “soaking in a water hole and passing the afternoon in caves.”

Spearing bush babies is only the most recent of the many cultural behaviors documented regarding chimpanzees. Jane Goodall was the first to report seeing chimps making tools (for termite fishing). The world-famous bonobo named Kanzi has learned hundreds of symbols to communicate. This National Geographic article reports numerous other behaviors unique to various communities of chimpanzees have been documented. Some communities of chimpanzees use rocks to smash open nuts much like we would use hammers and anvils. Other champs chew leaves into a spongy wad to soak up water for drinking. Several communities of chimps cool down by a wading into pools of water. Numerous communities of chimpanzees throw rocks, sometimes as weapons and other times as part of displays.

The article notes that chimpanzees and humans share between 95 and 98% of their genomes. The article cautions, however, that this is “less meaningful than it sounds. Humans share more than 80% of their gene sequence with mice, and maybe 40% with lettuce.”

The author of this article, Mary Roach, was surprised to learn that chimpanzees’ yawns are contagious, “both among each other and to humans.” In the course of writing this article, she also learned that chimps laugh, and even get upset if someone laughs at them. They sometimes spit in disgust. Some chimps have been known to adopt other species of animals (one chimp named Tia adopted a small kitten).

Chimps get up to get snacks in the middle of the night. They lie on their backs and do “the airplane” with their children. They kiss. Shake hands. Pick their scabs before they’re ready.

The observations reported in this article certainly blur the cultural boundary between humans and chimpanzees. These sorts of observations will make many people upset, however. They want to believe that humans are sui generis among animals, of their own kind and that there is no real comparison, certainly no cultural comparison between humans and animals of any other species.  In fact, there are hordes of people who resist thinking of humans as animals at all (and see here) (and here and here).

Perhaps it won’t soothe the critics to view the situation in the way suggested by a famous evolutionary biologist:

It is perhaps less problematic to view the situation as does The Third Chimpanzee author Jared Diamond: Not that chimps are a kind of human, but that humans are a kind of chimp.

This is an article that truly transported me around the world. It made me feel that I was almost there, observing these magnificent animals. As I’ve commented before, this type of writing and photography is nothing out of the ordinary for the National Geographic.

Ouch! The serious study of philosophy or neuroscience might make you less moral. That’s my take-away from a recent article: “The Value of Believing in Free Will: Encouraging a Belief in Determinism Increases Cheating,” by Kathleen D. Vohs and Jonathan W. Schooler. This particular article by Vohs and Schooler purports to find a direct link between exposure to articles criticizing free will and self-centered conduct.

I suspect that the conclusions of the article by Vohs and Schooler tap into the concerns of many conservatives, that too much intellectual activity (too much science and free-thinking philosophy) can cause a person to become self-centered and immoral (or, at least, amoral). I don’t agree with that assessment as a general rule. Based on my experience, many intellectuals, as a result of their wide-ranging studies, actually expand their realm of moral concern well beyond the narrowly-defined types of in-groups honored by many conservatives. Obviously, there are free-thinkers of all stripes and I need to be careful to not over-generalize. Also, I’m not suggesting that my personal opinions and anecdotes could possibly serve as a counter-balance to a carefully controlled study.

The authors of this particular study recognized that belief in a free will is strong and pervasive. On the other hand, they also recognize the view of many scientists “that genes, underlying personality dispositions, brain mechanisms, or features of the environment cause behavior.” The authors’ hypothesis was that “cheating would increase after persuading participants that free will does not exist.”

Although some have speculated about the possible societal risks that might result from adopting a viewpoint that denies personal responsibility for actions, empirical exploration of this hypothesis has been absent. In two experiments, we manipulated beliefs related to free will and measured their influence on morality as manifested in cheating behavior. We hypothesized that manipulations of lay beliefs about free will would affect cheating behavior, such that participants induced to believe that human behavior is under the control of scientifically predetermined forces would cheat more than would participants not led to believe that behavior is technically predetermined. The results of two experiments supported this hypothesis.

The authors manipulated the subjects’ belief that free will is an illusion and that free will is a side effect of the architecture of the mind by exposing them to arguments criticizing the belief in free will. The subjects who were exposed to these anti-free-will arguments tended to act in more self-centered” ways on subsequent tasks. The conclusions of the authors:

The present findings raise the genuine concern that widespread encouragement of a deterministic worldview may have the inadvertent consequence of encouraging cheating behavior.

The Vohs and Schooler experiments involved only about 30 subjects, although the statistical significance of their most outcomes was p<.01.

I’m not entirely convinced by the conclusions of this study, for the reasons I set forth above. I suspect that there is something else that might combine with a free-thinking intellect that can (and does) often lead conduct less responsive to one’s most salient in-groups. If this study indeed shows what it purports to show, however, it has highlighted “free will” as a highly useful falsehood. I suspect that all of us cling to many such useful falsehoods.

Full disclosure: I have strongly criticized the notion of “free will.” Perhaps that belief taints my opinion on this study.

I started thinking about the the “reductionist attitude” in presenting science when I read Erich’s Post To deal with “arrogant” scientists we need to move beyond reductionism and break the “Galilean Spell” (from May 7, 2008). Curricula seem to begin with biology, work through chemistry, and finally introduce physics. If English were taught categorically as science is now, students would go through phases in this order:

• Elementary English: Analysis of Literature (done orally)
• Intermediate English: Sentence structure, paragraphs, and essays (done graphically)
• Advanced English: Introduction to the Alphabet and Spelling Lessons

The alphabet of science is made up of basic natural “laws” as discovered by Newton, Maxwell, Mendeleev, Heisenberg, and so on. Sentences and paragraphs are like molecules and chemical syntheses. And finally you have enough structure to begin to see how biology works from cells (essays) through organisms (stories) and populations (novels).

One could be taught holistic science, building to the grand ideas from the simple ones. By constructing the ideas instead of breaking them down, the interrelationship and the interactions of the parts can be seen, as well as the nature and function of the parts themselves. A whole is never the sum of the parts; it is the sum of the interactions between the parts set on a foundation of the parts themselves. This becomes obvious when building, but is obscured when deconstructing.

No wonder Americans doubt the “theory of evolution”. Schools try to teach this advanced and universal concept without any foundation. By the time the basic laws of nature (whose interaction supports this conclusion) are introduced, the theory has been mentally discarded.

Why is it done this way? (more…)

I stumbled onto this fellow as a respondent on other blogs or the subject in yet others. Herman Cummings is an active proponent of Biblical truth over Scientific Inquiry. Why don’t I just say “Creationism”? Because Herman argues against them, as well. He has nothing good to say about “Intelligent Design”.

He is heir to a higher truth. He knows “The Observations of Moses” that are revealed in a book called “Moses Didn’t Write About Creation!” that was written by … Herman Cummings. In every blog response I can find by him, he cites this book as the final authority. He won’t deign to respond to any direct arguments unless it is predicated by an affidavit of of having read his book.

Here are some Cummings Quotes:

• My name is Herman Cummings. I am the foremost terrestrial authority on the book of Genesis.
• I am the only person I know or ever heard of presently on this Earth that is qualified to teach Biblical Creation. Many school districts are grappling with the doctrine of “Intelligent Design”. Unfortunately, “ID” is an inept and shallow doctrine that merely says that life on Earth is too complex to have developed by chance.
• I’ve already written the governor and members of the education committees of every state legislature. I have hope that officials will introduce legislation that will free the public schools to teach all viable theories of origins, and explanations of the ancient history of life on Earth, removing the threat of (atheist) lawsuits.

Why is this guy different than the folks at the Discovery Institute? Because he takes as his authoritative text, the root of all his arguments, a book that he himself wrote. At least the DI ID’ers claim to have external evidence, although they never produce any when asked. Also, Herman is a columnist for theConservativeVoice.com, home of other luminaries such as Ann Coulter.

Another name to watch out for.

Neil Shubin recently published a book celebrating the discovery of a life form that clearly constitutes a transitional life form: tiktaalik, a fish that crawled out of the water by use of its rudimentary limbs. In a post in which I described Shubin’s book (Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5 Billion Year History of the Human Body (2008)), I argued that every life form is a transitional life form. We’re all on the way to something else, at least those of us who will leave biological offspring. But some life forms are more obviously transitional than others and no currently living animal is more obviously transitional than the platypus.

The May 8, 2008 issue of Nature (articles available online only to subscribers) announces: “Top Billing for Platypus at End of Evolution Tree.” The article starts out by describing the platypus, one of nature’s oddest creatures:

Seemingly assembled from the spare parts of other animals. The semi-aquatic monotreme is a venomous, duck-billed mammal that lays eggs, nurses it’s young and occupies a lonely twig at the end of a sparse branch of the vertebrate evolutionary tree.

The Nature article describes the findings of a study analyzing the genome of the platypus. It was conducted by Wesley Warren of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. The study found that the platypus genome contains both reptilian and mammalian elements.

The study also explains the emergence of the many odd features of the platypus. For instance, the platypus does produce true milk (although it doesn’t have true nipples). The new study shows that the platypus has the genes for caseins (milk proteins) which map in a way that corresponds to the protein mapping in humans.

This is a sign that one of the genetic innovations that led to the development of milk occurred more than 166 million years ago, and after mammals first split from the lizard-like sauropsids that gave rise to modern reptiles and birds.

The platypus results from a mix of reptile and mammal genes. “The genomic features of what are now two separate lineages can coexist in the genome of a single organism.”

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.

The results are out at Science Debate 2008:

A new poll (charts, pdf, 3.1mb) shows that 85% of U.S. adults agree that the presidential candidates should participate in a debate on how science can be used to tackle America’s major challenges. The poll found no difference between Democrats and Republicans on this question. A majority (84%) also agree that scientific innovations are improving our standard of living.

The poll, commissioned by Research!America and ScienceDebate2008.com and conducted by Harris Interactive®, shows that 56% strongly agree and 29% somewhat agree that the presidential candidates should participate in a debate to discuss key problems facing the United States, such as health care, climate change and energy, and how science can help tackle them.

So here’s my initial thought: How can 15% of Americans oppose any debate by the presidential candidates on the relevance of science to solving key issues such as health care, climate change and energy? Who are these incredibly ignorant people? Americans have been shown to be incredibly ignorant. Maybe the 15% don’t know enough to know that they are ignorant? Don’t they realize that science has much to offer to analyzing these issues and potentially solving some of these problems? How can anyone be against having an open discussion on these issues?

I must admit, however, that in light of the bizarre questions forced on candidates during many previous “debates,” I am reluctant to watch any further “debates” on any topic. I wonder, then, whether the 15% are mainly anti-science or whether they are anti-debate . . .

I was meandering in cyberspace, and stumbled onto this column by Australian Michael Ruse: The struggle between evolution and creation: an American problem. This appeals to me after all the news about Australian Ken Ham and his Creation Museum here in the U.S. The muse of Mr. Ruse is that the U.S. is vocally and publicly debating the science of evolution versus competing Biblical philosophies, and their roles in education and culture

But his main point is that this is just a symptom. Ever since the Scopes trial, the vocal Biblical Literalism Fundamentalist minority has been fighting for its life. Part of their claim is that evolution is not as values-neutral as proponents like to claim. Ruse agrees. Evolution theory was bolstered by Darwin’s books with his additions to the theory. But it might have stayed a quiet and intellectual revelation, had it not been for Darwin’s contemporary, scientific and social activist Thomas Huxley.

Huxley, who was known in the popular press as “Pope” Huxley, preached evolution-as- Christianity-alternative non-stop at working men’s clubs, from the podia in presidential addresses, and in debates with clerics, notably Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. Huxley, who invented for himself the religious label of “agnostic”, even aided the founding of the new cathedrals of evolution, stuffed as they were with displays of dinosaurs newly discovered in the American west. Except that these halls of worship were better known as museums of natural history.

Ruse follows the history forward to show why he considers this to be An American Problem. The rest of the world’s Christians are content to accept science for what it can provide, and leave to the Bible issues outside of what can be examined. But America was settled in part by religious extremists, exiled from England and other countries for their radical beliefs. This culture is diluted, but still present and very vocal. The founding fathers were well aware of this element, and set the nation up to minimize the damage that they can cause, while allowing them to be themselves.

As the orders of magnitude of scientific understanding kept expanding beyond the narrow scale of the Biblical universe, the Biblical Literalists had to draw a line. It was too late to hold at a geocentric universe, and much too late for a flat Earth. Sin and demonic possession as the causes of disease also gave way to germ theory without much of a fight. But spontaneous divine creation of man is now the sticking point. Any evidence or theory that contradicts direct and intentional divine creation is labeled unholy.

In America the battle between secular government and a theocracy is being fought in the guise of Evolution versus Intelligent Design (or whatever name Scientific Creationism is using). From the vantage of Australia, it is an interesting skirmish. Here in the Bible Belt, it scares me.

This computer animation was dramatic. I’d never seen anything like it. It is a lively model demonstrating how DNA is copied and how DNA is transcribed into RNA, among other things. These critical activities certainly need to zip along, given the total unraveled length of the DNA in each human cell: six feet.

This animation was created by The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medicine at Melbourne, Australia.

We have a nice brewery run by the Schlafly family in our town. A town already renowned for beer. But a relative by marriage is more famous than the beer because of her stance against women’s rights and against progress through knowledge. Yes, Phyllis Schlafly is in the local news with a new controversy. In brief, this Washington University Alumna has been offered an honorary degree, and the faculty is in an uproar.

Why? After all, my own commencement speaker (honoree of the year) at that institution was Bob Hope. He claimed to be the most degreed high school dropout in the world at that time. The link above goes to the article containing the full text of a scathing letter by the faculty about the choice of Schlafly, specifically from the Law School. The flap is because the faculty thinks that honoring an outspoken anti-intellectual with another degree would demean an institution of learning. At least Bob Hope says silly things on purpose.

Our own Erich had put a response up there, but I found the post it by browsing news involving Creationism, another educational priority of Ms. Schlafly. Quoth he:

The problem is that if Ms. Schlafly completely had her way, core values of true academics, including skepticism and tolerance, would be extinguished. Under those conditions, Washington University would cease to exist.

According to this article, essentially copied from the AP, Adnan Oktar, who writes as Harun Yahya, has been convicted of fraud. His extensive organization has the goal to persuade the world (or at least the schools therein) of the Truth of Young Earth Creationism, as revealed in the Bible. In his case, he began by defending Islam against that Christian Evolution Conspiracy. But he also publishes books for the YEC Christian market in which he substitutes the return of Jesus for the coming of Mahdi.

I’ve read that he does produce beautiful books in support of his ideas. I expect him to get out on appeal of his apparently politically motivated incarceration. Then he and his followers around the world will continue to produce high class anti-science textbooks the like of which the Discovery Institute only wishes they could produce.

Frans de Waal was recently interviewed by Stephen J. Dubner in the Freakonomics blog of the NYT. Dubner co-authored Freakonomics with Steven D. Levitt. De Waal and Dubner discussed the ramifications of an experiment where capuchin monkeys received either a grape or a piece of cucumber in return for a simple task.

If both monkeys got the same reward, there never was a problem. Grapes are by far preferred (as real primates, like us, they go for sugar content), but even if both received cucumber, they’d perform the task many times in a row.

However, if they received different rewards, the one who got the short end of the stick would begin to waver in its responses, and very soon start a rebellion by either refusing to perform the task or refusing to eat the cucumber.

This is an “irrational” response in the sense that if profit-maximizing is what life (and economics) is about, one should always take what one can get. Monkeys will always accept and eat a piece of cucumber whenever we give it to them, but apparently not when their partner is getting a better deal. In humans, this reaction is known as “inequity aversion.”

I actually don’t think the response is irrational at all, but related to the fact that in a cooperative system, one needs to watch what kind of investment one makes and what one gets in return. If your partners always ends up getting a greater share, this means that you’re being taken advantage of. So, the rational thing to do is withhold cooperation until the reward division improves.

This holds an important message for American society which is becoming less fair by the day. . . If monkeys already have trouble accepting income inequality, you can imagine what it does to us. It creates great tensions within a society.

The post indicates that the U.S. now ranks 42 in longevity rating, suggesting that the increasing inequity in the U.S. is a contributing factor. The WashPo article linked to the blog post indicates that “Forty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe had lower infant mortality rates than the U.S. in 2004.”

For more on this study, which was done with Sarah Brosnan, see the DI post: Is it really possible to be unselfish?

I don’t want no god on my lawn
Just a flower I can help along
‘Cause the soul of no body knows
how a flower grows… Oh how a flower grows . . .

“Longer Boats,” by Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf Islam).

Why are so many religious people uncomfortable with so many scientists? I can think of several reasons.

According to many Believers, scientists are arrogant know-it-alls. Believers see scientists as emotionally sterile lab-dwellers who flaunt their white coats and their fancy lab equipment.

Scientists exacerbate the situation by speaking and writing using esoteric language that makes science-phobes feel ignorant. By using such difficult concepts and language, scientists have raised the bar, which excludes many folks from joining scientific discussions.

It’s not like the “good old days,” where people were generally informed enough to join many conversations regarding science (or social science). Things are different now. Those who want to join a discussion regarding evolution, stem cells, or cosmology (to take a few examples) would be well-advised to first spend at least a week in the library reading several reputable books on these topics. This is a far greater time commitment than it takes to go to church. It’s a lot easier to accuse scientists of being “elitist” or to hurl Bible quotes than it is to take the time to responsibly prepare so that one can meaningfully participate in scientific discussions. Those who put their trust in their church leaders on matters of science are often not willing to make such an investment, however. They prefer the opinions of non-scientist preachers over those of real-life scientists. In doing this, they engage in religionism (see definition #3 here).

Making matters worse for Believers, scientists and other intellectuals have had the audacity to disprove a steady stream of religious claims. The Earth is obviously older than 6,000 years. The Shroud of Turin is a fake. The clumps of 60 cells we call blastocysts are biologically incapable of thinking or feeling (despite claims of “souls”), and not all of the words of the Bible are authentic. The list goes on and on. Almost every time scientists focus their methods on religious claims (the ones that are amenable to testing, anyway), those religious claims tend to crumble. Methodical and rigorous evidence-based analyses keep making fools of religious folks, especially literalist Believers.

It makes it even more painful for Believers that most world-class scientists have no patience with religion and they are getting more vocal about it every day. A new wave of books, including Daniel Dennett’s 2007 effort, “Breaking the Spell” rallies the troops of scientists to put religion itself under the microscope.

In the minds of Believers, the scientists have no plans to stop until they have completely destroyed everything that is sacred or moral. Look at all of the damage that they’ve already done by promoting the works of Darwin, who has A) “demoted” humans to the level of animals; B) promoted the idea that nature’s great function and beauty randomly happened; and C) made a formidable argument that nothing is truly immoral anymore because there is no longer any need for God.

Worse yet, Believers can plainly see that the scientific establishment has gained command of magic that really works (as opposed to religious magic). Those damned scientists have figured out how to build airplanes that really fly and they’ve designed diagnostic tests that really show why a person is sick. Contrast these undeniable accomplishments to the track record of Believers: prayers that don’t really heal, predictions of the end of the world that fail and promises of heaven that have absolutely no basis in fact.

That’s how many (though certainly not all) Believers see the situation. Many religious faithful are thus become motivated by what Nietzsche termed ressentiment: the transfer of the pain that accompanies feelings of inferiority onto an external scapegoat, coupled with an urge for vengeance against those who are noble.

But it gets even worse for Believers. What gripes them more than anything else is that so many scientists act like they know it ALL when they don’t really know it all. They don’t really know that there is no heaven! They can’t disprove that I talk with God in my prayers! They weren’t there when the universe was created. So why are they so certain that they are right where scientific facts collide with religious factual claims?

To many religious folks, scientists constantly threaten social traditions in an arrogant and ignorant way. Therefore, many members of conservative religions don’t merely disagree with scientists on particular issues. No, they disparage all of science (except the science that helps them disparage science, such as the science that allows them to possess those marvelous computers on which they rant about “arrogant” scientists). When this level of frustration festers, it can even culminate in the election of a President who gains immense support when he, himself, disparages science.

If the above descriptions are even half-true, no wonder scientists are the targets of so much animosity these days!

Is there anything we can do about this sad state of affairs? Perhaps there is. It would involve a reframing of what it means to be a scientist. It has to do with publicly recognizing serious limitations of science. It involves a recognition that science is a “sacred” endeavor.

I have just finished reading a provocative new article by Stuart Kauffman: “Breaking the Galilean Spell.” Kauffman is a professor of biological sciences, physics and astronomy. He is actively involved at the Santa Fe Institute and he is the author of a book on complexity that inspired me: At Home in the Universe: the Search for the Laws of Self Organization (1995). Kauffman’s writings are both rigorous and poetic.

I sense that Kauffman feels the rampant distrust that many people have regarding scientists. Although Kauffman doesn’t mention the fever-pitched ressentiment felt by many Believers, I suspect that this ressentiment motivated Kauffman to write “Breaking the Galilean Spell.” (more…)

In the April 24, 2008 edition of Nature (available online only with a subscription), it is reported that the Swiss Federal Government has issued guidelines to help granting agencies “decide which research applications deeply offend the dignity of plants.” Those studies that fail to treat plants with “dignity” won’t be funded.

This is not a spoof report.  It is real, and this new requirement has many scientists wondering what it could possibly mean to consider the “dignity of plants.”

The Swiss Ethics Committee has offered little guidance to this point, but suggests that genetic modifications causing plans to “lose their independence” by “interfering with their capacity to reproduce” could be suspect.  This leaves many plant geneticists wondering whether there is now a problem with traditional plant hybridization.  For instance, roses require male sterility.  The article raises the question of whether the development of seedless fruits is now unethical in Switzerland.

This article leaves me wondering what new ethics guidelines we’ll see next.  Perhaps there will be a new law requiring the ethical treatment of non-living things, such as rocks, clouds or spoons.  Perhaps there will be new labor restrictions imposed to keep us from abusing our computers by constantly giving them keyboard commands or by making them work more than forty hours per week.

I’ve been following the reviews of the Ben Stein “Expelled” movie since it was first shown. Many of them properly criticize it for its many inherent cinematic flaws. Others angrily take it to task for its clear violations of sense or sensibility. There is also ExpelledExposed.com, the not-mentioning of which I get chided for every time I post about this movie.

Then there are some who applaud it for “speaking the truth” and “opening conversations”. On my second post about this movie, I asked people to send me links to any non-negative review coming from sources outside of the Discovery Institute (Answers in Genesis, EvolutionNews.org, etc). I suspect that there is now an effort afoot to produce as many positive reviews as there are negative ones, in order to keep things “fair and balanced” online.

After the initial spate of bad reviews by reputable critics, various Christian columnists have been lauding it for exposing the religious suppression of the “Scientific Theory of Intelligent Design” and especially the efforts of reviewers (and scientists, and “W” appointed conservative judges) to associate this “scientific theory” with the openly religious (and mostly equivalent) ideas of Creationism. Bad intellectuals, bad experts.

But, what is this Scientific Theory? Well, an idea has to have 3 elements to qualify as a scientific theory :

1. Explain all currently and previously observed facts in the category of interest in terms of natural laws.
2. Describe what facts, if discovered, would prove it false.
3. Make predictions about future (as yet undiscovered) measurements or discoveries, and suggest how these might be found.

As near as I can tell the Scientific Theory of Intelligent Design misses on all three counts. (more…)

I was in a bad mood after I wrote a post summarizing a recent Harpers Magazine article demonstrating that the United States government is working hard to keep its citizens from knowing whether numerous commonly used chemicals are dangerous.

After all, our government is supposed to be there to protect us yet it appears that our government is, instead, kissing up to the chemical manufacturers, allowing them to dump highly questionable substances into the products American consumers purchase and use.

And now, I’m in a worse mood. I just finished reading an extraordinary article called “You Are What You Drink Out Of,” by Nadia Pflaum. This article appeared in a local alternative St. Louis newspaper called the Riverfront Times. Pflaum’s story is available online, and thank goodness, because this is extraordinary piece of writing and it serves as an illustration of just how corrupt the system has become. I’ll give just the basic outline here. You’ll want to go read the entire article, however, if you want to be prepared to pull out Exhibit A the next time you get into an argument with one of the many remaining Bush-loving purported free-marketers.

The story centers around Frederick vom Saal, a biology professor at the University of Missouri. He is one of the leading experts on bisphenol A, a chemical that is ubiquitous in the United States-more than six billion pounds are produced every year. The trouble is that bisphenol A contains a substance that acts as a synthetic hormone that has been suspected of being dangerous for human beings. Vom Saal’s research found that the synthetic estrogen that leeches out of bisphenol A can pass it right into human cells at doses 25,000 times lower than any toxicologist ever before studied, and it wreaks havoc with developing reproductive organs.”

Vom Saal and his colleague, Susan Nagel (a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and women’s health), found that bisphenol A is so potent that exposing a developing fetus to it could permanently alter crucial phases of development. Their experiments showed that tiny doses of bisphenol A could trigger breast cancer. Their experiments also showed that tiny doses enlarged the prostates of laboratory mice.

The problem is that humans are exposed to bisphenol A everyday. We are exposed to it in the form of food packaging, almost every water bottle, eyeglass lenses and the linings of aluminum food cans. Bisphenol A is a synthetic material that is commonly used to make plastic.

But this is where the story only begins to get interesting. Vom Saal and Nagel published their findings regarding the dangers of bisphenol A and they were about to publish a second article (announcing that exposure to bisphenol A lowered sperm counts in mice) when they received a visit from a scientist from Dow Chemical who offered to pay the University a huge amount of money to conduct a new bisphenol A “study” at the University. Here’s the kicker: the Dow Chemical scientist (who told the university scientists that he represented the Chemical Manufacturers Association) asked “Can we arrive at a mutually beneficial outcome where you withhold publishing this paper until authorized to do so by the Chemical Manufacturers Association?”

University scientists knew that they were being offered a bribe. (more…)

How do you make your baby healthy? If you live in Solapur (in Western India), and if you believe in religion, ritual and tradition rather than modern science and common sense, you drop your baby from the top of a tall building. I cringed while watching this video, thinking that I was about to see a baby turned into a lifetime paraplegic. This could easily happen if the baby fell in an odd angle and its neck snapped when it was suddenly caught on a stretched-out blanket at the bottom of the fall (check out Paraquad’s site on this mechanism of injury). Even if the baby appears to be OK, damage can occur due to a deceleration Injury.

Oh, and the bit about “there never have been any injuries” is something I truly have to wonder about. When your baby acts lethargic after the fall, are you going to speak up and risk blasphemy?

I suspect that baby dropping is yet another instance where the felt need to socially bond by publicly participating in a ritual overwhelms any concerns one might have with this procedure. This is a good example of just how strongly humans feel the need to placate the herd.

Yall might could be tiring of my babbling on about Bible study in science classes. But I shall continue. According to this article, Louisiana has, and Florida still may pass amendments to their education codes to give free reign to teachers who choose to use texts other than (and conflicting with) science books to teach biology in science classes. Although these remarkably similar bills don’t actually mention the Bible, Creationism, nor their apparent origin from the Discovery Institute, their intent is clear.

I’ve been following this issue for a while (here’s one of my earlier posts), and continue to find it disturbing.

The main argument they make is that nothing is “proven” in science. Dedicated and well educated scholars have been trying diligently for over 200 years to disprove evolution. Yes, the battle predates the birth of Chas. Darwin! So far, no luck. Every piece of evidence and each new tool reinforces this theory. But with shrewd political action, the anti-science crowd could win enough popular support to hide the actual science from American kids. Theocracy, here we come!

If Pope Urban VIII (nee Cardinal Mafeo Barberini) had the political clout of American Fundamentalists, the Copernican/Galilean theory of heliocentrism might still be challenged in schools.

I previously wrote that I bought a little camera that I try to take everywhere. Having that camera nearby forces me to look more carefully at the startling sights that are everywhere. Many of those sights are the postures and expressions of people, but privacy concerns keep me from freely photographing or sharing the photos of strangers (I haven’t given up somehow accomplishing this!). To this point, I’ve focused on taking photos of nature and architecture. This morning, my wife Anne and I took a walk in Forest Park (in St. Louis, Missouri). In the morning light, we came upon some startling bursts of color, causing me to take out my little camera.

When I look at biological wonders, I sometimes imagine standing with Charles Darwin and learning from him. That’s how I felt a few weeks ago at an orchid show at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Even before Darwin published his findings there were various levels at which one could appreciate nature (it’s beautiful, it’s functional, it inspires poetry). Darwin added an explosive new level, however. Such was his impressive legacy. Before I appreciated Darwin’s contributions, my attention to plants was limited. But now I see functionality embedded in the beauty–there is now so much more to behold [I was also inspired last year when I viewed David Attenborough's Private Life of Plants and Life in the Undergrowth (focuses on bugs). These are both spell-binding must-watch collections].

There are life and death wars going on out there among the plants and bugs. The thing that first caught our eye this morning was this flowering fruit tree. It was truly exploding with blossoms in its effort to propagate.

It’s beauty was “fractal,” in that it offered similar views from different distances. Anne especially enjoyed the contrast between the blossoms and the blue sky behind them. She took the photo below.

I was most fascinated by the sex organs of the trees (see below photo–parental discretion advised).

As we strolled away from this tree I noticed the expansive patches of clover that were lit up by a huge ball of nuclear explosions 93 million miles away. I took this picture to illustrate a quirky story: I have repeatedly seen something (actually many things) that I can’t explain. This particular story has to do with my wife Anne. She has the uncanny ability to spot a four-leaf clover while walking