To deal with “arrogant” scientists we need to move beyond reductionism and break the “Galilean Spell.”

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.

Continue ReadingTo deal with “arrogant” scientists we need to move beyond reductionism and break the “Galilean Spell.”

How to keep customers coming back for things they don’t need.

How do you keep customers coming back? Keep them constantly dissatisfied. That is the topic of this article in Orion Magazine.  The author is Jeffrey Kaplan.  Here's are a few excerpts from this well written article.   [Note:  you might be blocked from going straight into the article.  If so, go…

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Arianna Huffington on why the Right is wrong.

Arianna Huffington has just released her new book, Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe. Huffington has reviewed the main themes of her book at Huffpo. In the book, Huffington concludes that there are three main areas to consider…

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What it really means to “nuke” human beings

I'm tired of hearing Neocons cavalierly talking about "nuking" one or more Middle Eastern countries. These days, Neocons often talk about this "need" to use nuclear weapons to show people in the Middle East that "we" mean business. I have personally heard this sort of talk several times (when you…

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Just What is Intelligent Design?

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
…
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