It’s time for church . . . er, I mean baseball

I live in St. Louis, where major league baseball is taken seriously. After I was invited to attend the opening day game as part of a business function this year, and I attended as an amateur anthropologist, not as a baseball fan. A bit of background: About 15 years ago I was an avid sports fan. I followed all of the St. Louis professional teams. I watched some games on television, attended occasional games and read the sports page almost every day. For reasons I don't really understand, I decided to stop being a sport fan. I was frustrated that I didn't have enough time to get to attend my alleged priorities, which included trying to become a writer and trying to achieve a deeper understanding of cognitive science. What could I do to make room for those things in my schedule? Well . . . I was spending about 10 hours per week being a sports fan. If I went cold turkey, I'd have about 500 hours more per week to do other things. That's the equivalent of 12 weeks of vacation. So I did go cold turkey (interrupted only to follow the St. Louis Rams for a few years while they were Superbowl winners and contenders). For the most part, I've successfully cultivated a high level of apathy for professional sports. I don't feel any compulsion to spend any money on tickets or to ever to read the sports page. I really don't care whether the team won last night. My experiment was a success. A bonus is that I now have a privileged perch from which to appreciate the extraordinary lengths to which sports fans spend their money and invest their time in order to root for their teams. In St. Louis, rooting for the Cardinals is far more than entertainment. It's much like a religion. Check out the schedule above (you can click on any of the images for an enlarged view). It is the official list of 162 holy days of 2011. I know many people who plan their schedules around the baseball calendar. Being knowledgeable about the local sports teams is also the preferred ice-breaker at many business gatherings: "So, do you think LaRussa left the starting pitcher in for too many innings last night?" Sorry, but I don't know. Sometimes I admit, "I gave up sports." Inevitably jaws drop. I don't dare follow up by blunting saying, "I wanted to live more in the real world. Therefore, a few days ago I attended the St. Louis Cardinal's opening day game as a member of an out-group. I was much worse than a luke-warm fan. You see, if you offered most sports fans 12 extra weeks of vacation, they'd spend it watching more sports and thinking more about sports. It wouldn't occur to them that they should go cold turkey and pursue anything else. What else is there of equal of greater importance? In this religion of St. Louis Baseball, Albert Pujols is the Savior. Incredible amounts of ink have been spilled over whether this man will sign a new contract with St. Louis. People relate to Albert; apparently, they think that they are Albert. If you attend a St. Louis Cardinal Baseball game, you will see many hundreds of people wearing Pujols jerseys, and most of them are adults. What are they thinking? Are they thinking "I'm like Pujols because I am wearing his jersey"? Are they thinking "I want people to think I'm a bit like Albert Pujols when I wear his Jersey"? Are they thinking that they somehow get credit for Pujols' accomplishments because they are wearing his jersey? Even after leaving the stadium, you will see Pujols jerseys all over town (I spotted the one to the right at a grocery store after the game). Playing into the role of "Savior," Albert has an interest in a local Christian radio station. [And do check out the image to the left, where I caught Pujols having a chat with Pujols.] The physical church is Busch Stadium, of course. I see people staring at it even in the dead of winter. People have been known to get married at Busch Stadium (there was a wedding in the snow last week). You would have been amazed to hear how the team "needed" a new stadium a few years ago. When something is considered "sacred" there is no rational bargaining. The owners said we need it, so we go the new stadium. There are sacred food items in the religion of baseball. I do believe that nachos serve as the bread of the religion of baseball, and the "wine" is obviously beer. At opening day, I was greeting with twin 30-foot bottles of beer. But it can't be a religion because the fans are really attending those games because they are serious about baseball, right? Well I'm not so certain of that. If you had to guess what people do the most of at ball games, it would either be eat and drink, or socialize. The food stands are ubiquitous, and I would estimate that far more than half of the people attending aren't concentrating on the game much at all. How else can you explain that thousands of people are leaving a close game in the 7th or 8th inning? They paid $50/seat and they aren't going to watch every pitch? It seems as though most people go to the ball game to bask in the crowd, and to display their loyalty. When you are surrounded by 50,000 people, regardless of what is going on, it does seem important. And that is very much how it is in most churches.

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Is religion an evolutionary adaptation or a byproduct?

I just finished reading "The Adaptationist-Byproduct Debate on the Evolution of Religion: Five Misunderstandings of the Adaptationist Program." The article was written by Richard Sosis, a professor of anthropology at the University of Connecticut, and it was published by the Journal of Cognition and Culture 9 (2009) 315-332. This article will mostly consist of a summary of Sosis' article (I am putting page numbers from the Sosis' article next to various parts of my summary). Sosis is convinced that the often contentious debate as to whether religion is an adaptation or a byproduct, and the premature declaration that it is a byproduct, is hampering serious interdisciplinary efforts to scientifically study religion. He holds that these disagreements stem largely from disagreements as to the meanings of "core ideas upon which the evolutionary study of religion is founded." Nonetheless, he is hopeful that these debates can be largely resolved after we take the time to clarify these core ideas. Many people will probably not take the time to read Sosis' fine article because they will presume religion could not possibly be an adaptation because the practices and beliefs of many people strike them as bizarre (I also find many such practices and beliefs bizarre). Richard Dawkins and many other prominent writers have taken this position that religion is not an adaptation; rather, they find it to be an annoying and sometimes dangerous byproduct of evolution (I've written about this byproduct position here and here). In fact, this byproduct position is the dominant position among scientists studying religion from an evolutionary perspective. [More . . . ]

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Ham and Eggheads

Ken Ham is the head of Answers In Genesis, an organization that promotes and perpetuates the Creationist view that the Earth is less than ten thousand years old, that homo sapiens sapien trod the same ground at the same time as dinosaurs, the the story of Noah is literally true, and that evolution is All Wrong. He’s an Australian and a biblical literalist. He built the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, in 2007. Check the link for an overview by an (admittedly) biased source, but for simple clarity is hard to beat. It is a fraud of research, flagrantly anti-science, and laughable in its assertions (in my opinion). Ken Ham is one of the more public figures in our current national spasm of extreme religiosity. He’s attempting to have built another show-piece in Kentucky, a theme park based on Noah and the Flood. The problem with this, however, is that tax dollars are being used in its construction and it is a blatantly religious enterprise. In the meantime, Ken Ham and Answers In Genesis have recently been disinvited from a conference on homeschooling.

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How to destroy science education in America

Try to think of a great way to destroy math and science education in the United States. Think of something that Osama bin Laden would have tried to do if he had tried to destroy math and science education in the United States. You might propose this: Defund the STEM Fellows GK-12 Program. Guess what? The U.S. National Science Foundation has done just that. Here is an excerpt from page 29 of the March 4, 2010 edition of Science (full article available online only to subscribers):

Researchers are shocked and upset by a decision by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to cancel a high-profile and successful fellowship program that is brought more than 10,000 graduate students into elementary and secondary schools around the country. A recent evaluation says the graduate Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (stem) Fellows in K-12 education program, begun in 1999, brings science to life for students, improves the skills of their teachers, and offers graduate students valuable training in the classroom. So participants don't understand why the president's 2012 budget request would abandon a $55-million a year program that addresses key aspects of the Obama Administration's push to improve US science and math education.

Officials at NSF say that the program has been effective but claim that it is now time to move on. The scientists involved in the program aren't buying this piece of garbage explanation, however. They know that the program was wildly successful, and that it has been highly touted, even by NSF in its recent budget requests to Congress. In its most recent independent evaluation, last fall, this program was declared to be achieving most of its goals pursuant to "substantial and credible evidence." It has been a win win win program, except that it had a "modest impact on the graduate students' research skills. Of course it has, since these graduate students are spending more time learning to be good teachers.

The fellows became better teachers, learning how to work collaboratively and how to communicate science to a non-technical audience. The public school teachers improve their knowledge of science and welcome to having graduate science students in the classrooms. The fellows' new skills made them better college instructors, and their off-campus experiences gave them an edge in finding full-time jobs after graduation.

Consider what the NSF has recently said about STEM Fellows:

This program provides funding for graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines to bring their leading research practice and findings into K-12 learning settings. Through collaborations with other graduate fellows and faculty from STEM disciplines, teachers and students in K-12 environments, and community partners, graduate students can gain a deeper understanding of their own research and place it within a societal and global context. The GK-12 program provides an opportunity for graduate students to acquire value-added skills, such as communicating STEM subjects to technical and non-technical audiences, leadership, team building, and teaching while enriching STEM learning and instruction in K-12 settings. This unique experience will add value to the training of U.S. graduate students and will energize and prepare the students for a broad range of STEM careers in a competitive globalized marketplace. Furthermore, the GK-12 program provides institutions of higher education with an opportunity to transform the conventional graduate education by infusing and sustaining GK-12 like activities in their graduate programs.

By slashing the STEM Fellows program, the Obama administration will now save $55 million per year. Let's put that in perspective. This country spends more than $2 billion per week pretending to fight a war in Afghanistan while actually propping up corrupt leaders and the poppy crop and antagonizing dirt-poor civilians-- Afghanistan is a place where the U.S. military struggles to find even 100 members of Al Qaeda, according to the CIA. The war has nothing at all with which to commend itself, and yet we spend more than $2 billion per week on this "war." That comes out to about $1 million for every five minutes. In other words, we have just destroyed a perfectly good science and mathematics education program, a program that brought 10,000 math and science graduate students into elementary schools and high schools, at a time when we are desperate to find ways to teach those students science and mathematics. We destroyed STEM Fellows GK-12 to "save" $55 million per year, the amount of money we burn in Afghanistan every five hours. This is an absolutely pathetic display of bad priorities by our Peace President (who is also willing to toss out hundreds of billions of dollars to his buddies on Wall Street). I can't think of a better way to move the United States toward second world or third world status. [Lest there be any confusion, I voted for Obama and I am sorely disappointed with him, yet I still consider him a much better President than John McCain would have been--I am not claiming that Obama is trying to destroy math and science education, only that he has made a terrible decision.]

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The strangeness of humans

The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered:

Man.... Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.

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