Rantings of a true-blue atheist...

Never underestimate the ability of scientific inquiry...

2008-07-14T19:55:00.000-07:00

Today I'm going to blog about something that I actually have some expertise in, for once. This has been a blog a long time in coming, an idea that came from an especially bad argument someone defending the existence of the supernatural: Science can't measure everything therefore it is unreasonable to dismiss the existence of the supernatural. This is backwards logic. Since by definition one can have no knowledge of the supernatural, discussing the topic as if any knowledge about it can be had is irrelevant. One example this person gave me refuting the ability of science to measure everything was in the form of a question: "How can I know that I love my wife?"

There are several things wrong about this example, which underscore the problem with the argument itself. Indeed, Science can't measure everything - at the moment. The implication of the above statement is that if something like emotion can't be quantified by any current method available, then it will never be measureable. A bold statement indeed, especially in light of the second premise behind the above challenge which is itself incorrect. I can indeed demonstrate that I love my wife. In fact, I have access to the equipment needed for the experiment.
A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system is an expensive piece of lab equipment, especially the new generation of high-field systems, but man can they do some amazing stuff. I sat in on a General Electric luncheon in Toronto earlier this spring and was floored not just by the quality, but the applications of MRI. So, how does one go about using MRI to investigate what we call love? This is a special application of MRI called functional MRI, or fMRI for short. The ability to detect brain activation comes from a peculiar decoupling of neuron function and blood flow. What I mean by this is that when the inputs to a neuron from other neurons (delivered by connections between neurons called synapses) cause it to activate and transmit a current down the axon and be the input to the next neuron. This activation of a neuron results in membrane depolarization (ion gradients across membranes, which are kept high by ion transport proteins in the cell membrane, equalize, resulting in electrical transmission down an axon) an increase in metabolism, as it tries to recover the electrical potential across cell membranes. That is, glucose and oxygen usage rise sharply upwards. Local blood flow is sensitive to neuronal activation and increases to meet the increased demand for oxygen, but actually overshoots the requirements of tissue.

Oxygen is carried in red blood cells by hemoglobin. When the oxygen molecules are delivered, hemoglobin becomes deoxyhemoglobin. From a MRI perspective, this is an important change. Deoxyhemoglobin has unpaired electrons (supplied by the iron it contains) that, when oxygen is bound, are not normally there. These unpaired electrons cause very strong local fluctuating magnetic fields, which cause the signal from protons in water molecules (which is how we do MRI) to dephase. In essence, these local fluctuating fields cause the signal to dephase, resulting in a decreased signal that is acquired to produce the image.

How does this show us where brain activation is happening? Well, when tissue is running at a higher metabolic rate, more oxygen gets taken up from blood, increasing the local concentration of deoxyhemoglobin. This deoxyhemoglobin would cause a signal drop to to the dephasing phenomenon, but blood flow local to this increase in oxygen uptake increases to meet the added burden. However, since blood flow overshoots what is necessary, it actually clears out more deoxyhemoglobin relative to tissue that is not running at a higher metabolic rate. Thus, what is seen in the image is an increased signal intensity in those regions where the brain is activated. This is known as the blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) phenomenon. It's somewhat more complicated than this, but these are the main events which lead to our ability to do fMRI.

When I made my reply to the question "How can I know that I love my wife?", I wasn't up on the literature in the area. But the experiment was quite obvious to me, so I wasn't all that surprised when I was listening to a CBC radio program called "Between You and Me" where the host was discussing with Helen Fisher of Rutgers University some of the fMRI experiments she has done to study the emotion we call love. So I went into the literature earlier and dug out a couple of papers.

One of the trickiest things in science is designing experiments. The answer from an experiment may not be the answer to the question you were interested in asking, but answering another question altogether. For instance, in Blind Faith Richard Sloan describes the results of a study which seemed to show a significant health benefit related to the amount one attends church. The more often subjects went to church seemed to be healthier than those that did not. What the author of the study failed to account for was what is known as a confounder, which is essentially a word used to describe a monkey wrench thrown into the works. The simple fact of the matter is that healthier people are able to attend church more often than those that are not as healthy. Studies of the type Fisher is engaged in are no different and take very careful designing to remove counfounding variables.

What Fisher and others have shown is that people in a state of what is called romantic love (other states being attachment and lust) show brain activation when the name of their beloved partner was mentioned. The paradigm also included giving the subjects names of neutral friends or describing hobbies they were passionate about. Regions of the brain which are recruited are parts of dopaminergic systems (that is, the primary neurotransmitter in these regions is dopamine). Dopaminergic systems are typically involved in reward/motivation and include such regions as the right ventral tegmental area and right caudate nucleus. This suggests that dopaminergic reward pathways are important in the general arousal component of romantic love.

So, it's quite clear that the poser of the question we started with is in error not only in what we can measure now, but also more fundamentally in the process leading up to the erroneous conclusion. Claiming that Science can not know everything is no reason to believe in the supernatural (which by definition lies outside our experience), nor is there any reason to suggest that we can't at some point in the future measure all things within our experience and then some.

Is this reductionist? Absolutely. But those that use the word in derision are simply ignorant. No one is attempting to demean the emotion of love as a whole by trying to understand from whence it arises. And no understanding of the highest level, our experience of love, can come without understanding the next lower level. Indeed, we gain a lot of insight into other behavior. The same dopaminergic pathways are also involved in gambling addiction. The mind as a whole can not be understood without understanding how neurons work, but not a single neuroscientist will say that such emergent phenomena as the mind can be understood by simply looking at its most basic components. By analogy, we can not understand how a clock works without knowing how gears work. By the same token it is difficult to make a clock by simply looking at a gear. We need to understand each level of organization.

I want to say one more thing here about a new phenomonen popping up, a pseudoscience known as neurotheology. I have one word to describe it: nonsense. What those which push neurotheology are trying to suggest comes from a study on nuns in what they subjectively called "a state of union with God". There are those out there that make outrageous claims that this is some kind of "picture of God". Absolute rot. There is nothing in these images which can not be accounted for by a self-induced change in brain function. As Richard Sloan pointed out in a speech to the Freedom From Religion Foundation on the topic, you will see the brain "light up" while eating a piece of cheese. Does that mean that if you acquired images under such tasty circumstances that you are viewing a picture of Gouda? Hardly. What this is is confusing what we feel with what we believe is the source. However, we've known for a long time that the conscious mind can have a profound effect on brain function and the existence of god is utterly unnecessary in explaining what the fMRI data shows with these nuns.

References:

Fisher H, Aron A, Brown LL. Romantic love: An fMRI study of a neural mechanism for mate choice. J Comp Neurol 493:58-62 (2005)

Beauregard M, Paquette V. Neural correlates of a mystical experience in Carmelite nuns, Neurosci Lett 405:186-90 (2006)

Fisher HE, Aron A, Brown LL. Romantic love: a mammalian brain system for mate choice. Phil Trans R Soc B 361:2173-86 (2006)

Ortigue S, Bianchi-Demicheli F, de C Hamilton AF, Grafton ST. The neural basis of love as a subliminal prime: An event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study. J Cogn Neurosci 19:1218-30 (2007)

In Search of the Protocell - The Work of Jack Szostak

2008-06-24T10:28:00.000-07:00

The origin of life problem is perhaps the most important question to ever have been the focus of scientific scrutiny. The only other question that I think rates of similar importance is the origin of the universe. Both questions have special obstacles to overcome before any answers are within sight.

The Miller-Urey experiment of the 50s was a lightningrod for research into this question, but the euphoria caused by the viewpoint that the answers were near quickly receded once the scope of the problem was realized and it was decades before the excitement was rekindled in the scientific world. It's no surprise that the search is a difficult one. Remember, researchers are trying to compress the millions of years that undoubtedly were required for nature to give life a kick start into the lifespan of humans. Couple this with only a limited knowledge of what the conditions were at the time life started except in the grossest terms with the possibility that trace elements may be essential for the synthesis of life greatly compounds the issue. Anyone thinking that if life arose through naturalistic processes means it should be both easy, and that a mere 50 years of research should have resulted in the creation of protolife really doesn't have a good grasp of the scope of the problem.

The molecules of life in the prebiotic world were all over the place, and not just on this planet. We know this not only from the Miller-Urey experiment itself, though we now think were the conditions at the time were somewhat different (which does not change the conclusions drawn from that experiment, or from similar ones which simulated what we now think the conditions at the time were), but meteorites have been found with complex organic molecules which could have seeded a barren Earth with the raw materials for the synthesis of life. Amphiphilic molecules (molecules possessing both water-loving (hydrophilic) and water-hating (hydrophobic) regions) have been generated by a variety of means simulating conditions found naturally: ultraviolet radiation of ice particles in the vacuum of space and at hydrothermal vents. Such molecules would provide the first cell membranes.

A plan for synthesizing life was put forward by Szostak in 2001. It is based on a heterotophic model (cell structure first) rather than on an autotrophic one (metabolism first). First, create a spontaneously-replicating membrane through which small molecules can diffuse but bar larger molecules synthesized from these precursors from escaping. Next, create a replicase - a molecule mediating polymerization of a second molecule - a template containing protogenetic information to be copied. The template could be RNA complimentary in sequence to the replicase or an unfolded replicase. RNA molecules can be encapsulated in vesicles and the whole cell self-assemble. This compartmentation inevitably results in the replicase component being subject to variation and natural selection.

Under the right conditions, amphiphilic molecules in solution can form micelles, or vesicles. This is similar to what soap, another amphiphilic class of molecules, does. Soap molecules (in the correct range of concentrations) cling together to form balls with the water-loving heads facing outward. In the case of vesicles, the molecules stand tail-to-tail with their hydrophilic heads facing outward from both the inner and outer surfaces of the ball.

These vesicles would provide microenvironments for retaining and protecting primitive oligonucleotides (short sequences of RNA or DNA, typically of less than 20 bases). It is unlikely that early cell membranes would be made up of the same types of molecules which make up those in modern cells: phospholipids. Membranes made up of phospholipids are far too efficient at keeping out negatively charged ribonucleotides. Modern cells have evolved specific transport proteins to take in nutrients, but the earliest cells would have had no such mechanism available to them.

Rather, the earliest cells would have used less efficient amphiphilic molecules, such as fatty acids, through which small molecules like ribonucleotides (such as uridine monophosphate, which make up RNA) could pass accross by simple diffusion. One hypothesis for both vesicle formation and RNA synthesis is respectively the interaction of fatty acids and ribonucleotides with clays. There is a growing body of evidence that this is a viable mechanism by which both of these process could happen. The clay montmorillonite has long been known to be able to catalyze RNA from activated ribonucleotides, but it can also greatly increase the rate of formation of fatty acid vesicles. The clay has a positively charged surface which attracts and concentrates the negatively charged fatty acids and thus facilitates their formation. Fatty acid membranes are also permeable to magnesium, a divalent cation necessary in many biochemical reactions and itself increases membrane permeablilty to negatively charged ribonucleotides.

The surprise is that vesicles created in the presence of montmorillonite will also incorporate clay particles! It was immediately obvious to Szostak that this provides not only a mechanism for vesicle formation, but a method of synthesizing RNA oligonucleotides from ribonucleotides which diffuse through the membrane. Oligonucleotides formed within the vesicle are unable to escape the interior and are trapped. (As an aside, it also provides an explanation as to why L- rather than D-amino acids are utilized in protein synthesis. D- and L-amino acids are non-superimposable versions of each other, rather like the mirror image of your hand is not superimposable on your physical hand. Amino acids synthesized in an isotropic medium would be an equal (racemic) mixture of both optical isomers. These optical isomers have exactly the same physical properties bar one - each rotates the plane of polarized light in opposite directions. However, catalysis by a surface breaks the symmetry and one optical isomer would be selected over the other. It just so happens that L-amino acids were the ones selected. For sugars like glucose, it is the D-optical isomer that is used in biochemical reactions.)

Not only will these vesicles form, they have been shown to be able to spontaneously grow and divide in a series of elegant experiments. It was found that if the high vesicle concentration decreased by slowly adding a dilute solution of fatty acids, the vesicles would actually grow rather than just form new micelles. Vesicle division can be accomplished by extruding them through a polycarbonate filter. This likely happens by elongating the micelles so that they are no longer spherical and resealing after being pinched-off. As confirmation of this, vesicles preloaded with fluorescent dye were run through a filter released the dye into the medium in amounts only slightly greater than what was predicted for this mechanism of division. Had complete membrane disruption and reformation of vesicles occurred, the entire contents of the micelles would have been dumped into the medium. Vesicle division thus strongly resembles cellular division via budding and their formation, growth and division require no complex machinery at all, only raw physical forces. This is consistent with our current hypotheses on how early cell membranes must have formed. It even supplies a means for the first genetic material to have been generated through ribonucleotide uptake and mineral-catalyzed oligonucleotide formation.

Now our good friend Darwin steps in. Vesicles under osmotic stress due to their encapsulated contents need to decrease osmotic pressure by increasing their volume (and hence their surface area) by capturing fatty acids. Either that, or explode, dumping their contents. They do this by stealing fatty acids from other vesicles. But this is not a random process. The encapsulated contents have something to say about how well a vesicle will relieve the stress. Thus, we have what may have been the first example of biological competition! In the paper which covers this research (Chen, 2004), however, the competition was purely for stealing fatty acids from isotonic micelles (that is, vesicles not under osmotic stress). In other words, they feed. Once a truly replicating protocell is synthesized, a goal not yet reached, natural selection will become paramount in importance. The replicase can easily mutate through random mutation (since there are no error correcting mechanisms yet) and those which replicate better than others, eat other vesicles more efficiently and, as a consequence, divide more often will become more prevalent. Sounds like evolution to me.

So, when vesicles divide, how can the genetic material split into two as well? This is a Holy Grail in abiogenesis research. Some RNA can act like enzymes (another tantalizing clue to the origin of bioactive molecules). Such RNA molecules are known as ribozymes. Hammerhead ribozymes, which can catalyze cleavage and ligation of RNA molecules, are thought to be important in an RNA world and allow a mechanism for self-replication in the presence of magnesium. Encapsulated hammerhead ribozymes perform this self-cleavage as well, a necessary first step in this line of study. Research continues in developing a truly self-replicating protocell, and the results to date are highly encouraging. Activated nucleotides permeating across amphiphilic membranes have been shown to non-enzymatically replicate - this is key - encapsulated DNA templates. It just remains to fill in the lines.

When all is said and done, is this going to show us how abiogenesis occurred? Maybe. Note the language that Szostak uses: "model protocell vesicles", "prebiotically plausible membrane", etc. It's very careful language. What these experiments and others give us is a possible pathway, not necessarily the pathway. Perhaps autotrophic and heterotrophic abiogenesis are not either/or propositions and both are possible but only one historically occurred. Unless someone invents a time machine that can take us back to that point in time (current theoretical designs can only take us - well, actually only particles, not us - back in time to the point at which the machine was turned on), it is unlikely that we will be at all confident in having found the pathway. But this is not the point. The point is to find a plausible mechanism whereby abiogenesis could have occurred naturally, and we are well on our way there.

Sometimes the journey is more important than the destination.

References:

Szostak JW, Bartel DP, Luisi PL, Synthesizing Life, Nature 409387-390 (2001)

Hanczyc MM, Fujkiawa SM, Szostak JW, Experimental Models of Primitive Cellular Compartments: Encapsulation, Growth, and Division. Science 302:618-622 (2003)

Chen IA, Roberts RW, Szostak JW, The Emergence of Competition Between Model Protocells. Science 305:1474-1476 (2004)

Chen IA, Salehi-Ashtiani K, Szostak JW, RNA Catalysis in Model Protocell Vesicles, JACS 127:13213-13219 (2005)

Mansy SS, Schrum JP, Krishnamurthy M, Tobe S, Treco DA, Szostak JW, Template-directed Synthesis of a Genetic Polymer in a Model Protocell, Nature [Epub ahead of print] (2008)

A sad day in Calgary

2007-10-18T21:23:00.001-07:00

I was driving to work this morning, traveling north on Crowchild Trail, when I noticed traffic backing up. As I got closer I realized that it was not due to an accident on my side of the divider, but people rubber-necking at an accident on the other side. There were six or seven cars by the side of the road along with a short school bus and a gravel truck, but I didn't see much in the way of damage. And I must have missed being an eyewitness by mere minutes since the police hadn't arrived yet (an unmarked police van, undoutedly generating cash for the city playing photoradar possum, whizzed by me to get to the scene).

That was until I was going past the gravel truck. On the back end was a yellow school bus panel. I realized what must have happened. The school bus must have sideswiped the gravel truck, shearing the whole right side of the bus off the vehicle in one piece and others had stopped to help out. Once that was clear I hoped no children were on the bus. Unfortunately, my fears were realized. There were 11 special-needs children on the bus on their way to a private school. Two were taken to the Calgary Children's Hospital in critical condition and three others in serious condition. One of those in criticial condition, an 8-year old girl, succumbed to her injuries later in the morning.

To those that stopped to help out I say thank you. I would have myself, but those that know Crowchild will understand how dangerous that would be. It wouldn't be the first time I had been first on the scene of a serious accident and had to care for the injured, but that's another story. My thoughts and those of my wife go out to the victims and their families.

The full news story can be read here. It's hard to believe, but the bus looked completely undamaged from my viewing angle.

Ontario Tories trounced by electorate on religious school funding

2007-10-11T11:12:00.001-07:00

Canadians pride themselves on being different from our southern cousins. One of the biggest differences in our political systems is that religion is bad form when even mentioned in an electoral campaign, let alone when part of a platform. Yesterday gave us a glimpse at this in the results of the Ontario provincial election. Ontario is the largest Canadian province in population, but no longer is it the economic center. And yet the federal government still acts as if the universe revolves around Toronto (ptew!). Well, enough of my western patriotic rant.

Any how, the election saw two archrivals in the incumbent premier Dalton McGuinty of the Liberal party and Progressive Conservative John Tory. There were the usual accusations of broken promises by the Tories (for those not familiar with the Canadian or British political vernacular, the term 'Tories' refers to Conservatives, not to the coincidentally-similar name of their temporarily-current leader). In response, McGuiny accused the previous Conservative administration of hiding a $5.6 billion defecit.

But what sunk the Tory boat was the inclusion of an ill-advised promise of public funding for religious schools. With the current religio-political climate of the US, I doubt anybody outside card-carrying members of the ACLU and FFRF would bat an eye, but up here you just don't do that. There are two things you don't touch if you don't want to commit political suicide. Obviously, this is one of them (the other being Medicare). This was the first big mistake and I very much doubt that this idea was floated within the party beforehand to test the waters. More likely, this was a solo improvisation which in politics is not a good idea. The second was floating a promise like this a mere nine days before the election date. McGuinty correctly seized upon this. "We do not want to see our children divided," McGuinty told supporters gathered at Ottawa's Fairmont Chateau Laurier. "We want publicly funded schools, not public funds for private schools."

This incredibly bone-headed political move of Tory's completely demolished any chances of an electoral victory. Out of 107 seats up for grabs in the Ontario legislature, McGuinty's Liberals won 71, the Tory's Tories took 26 and the remaining 10 went to the New Democratic Party. All in all, a resounding Tory thumping by the Liberals in a record-low voter turnout. But the final insult was to John Tory himself. He lost his own seat to Liberal incumbent Kathleen Wynne who, appropriately enough, has served as education minister under McGuinty.

John Tory has put on a brave face and plans to remain as leader of the Conservative party in Ontario, but this is highly unlikely in the face of both an electoral defeat and a rejection by voters in his own riding. “You can't stay where you're not wanted to stay, quite frankly,” he told listeners of a Toronto (ptew!) radio station. Well, duh.

Dawkins reviews Hitchens' "God is Not Great"

2007-09-06T11:39:00.000-07:00

Bible belter
Richard Dawkins

Christopher Hitchens
GOD IS NOT GREAT
The case against religion
307pp. Atlantic. £17.99.
978 1 84354 586 6
US: New York: Twelve. $24.99.
978 0 446 57980 3

There is much fluttering in the dovecots of the deluded, and Christopher Hitchens is one of those responsible. Another is the philosopher A. C. Grayling. I recently shared a platform with both. We were to debate against a trio of, as it turned out, rather half-hearted religious apologists (“Of course I don’t believe in a God with a long white beard, but . . .”). I hadn’t met Hitchens before, but I got an idea of what to expect when Grayling emailed me to discuss tactics. After proposing a couple of lines for himself and me, he concluded, “. . . and Hitch will spray AK47 ammo at the enemy in characteristic style”.

Grayling’s engaging caricature misses Hitchens’s ability to temper his pugnacity with old-fashioned courtesy. And “spray” suggests a scattershot fusillade, which underestimates the deadly accuracy of his marksmanship. If you are a religious apologist invited to debate with Christopher Hitchens, decline. His witty repartee, his ready-access store of historical quotations, his bookish eloquence, his effortless flow of well-formed words, beautifully spoken in that formidable Richard Burton voice (the whole performance not dulled by other equally formidable Richard Burton habits), would threaten your arguments even if you had good ones to deploy. A string of reverends and “theologians” ruefully discovered this during Hitchens’s barnstorming book tour around the United States.

With characteristic effrontery, he took his tour through the Bible Belt states – the reptilian brain of southern and middle America, rather than the easier pickings of the country’s cerebral cortex to the north and down the coasts. The plaudits he received were all the more gratifying. Something is stirring in that great country. America is far from the know-nothing theocracy that two terms of Bush, and various misleading polls, had led us to fear. Does the buckle of the Bible Belt conceal some real guts? Are the ranks of the thoughtful coming out of the closet and standing up to be counted? Yes, and Hitchens’s atheist colleagues on the American bestseller list have equally encouraging tales to tell.

God Is Not Great is a coolly angry book, but there are good laughs too; for example, Hitchens’s hilarious account of how Malcolm Muggeridge launched “the ‘Mother Teresa’ brand upon the world” with his story that, while the BBC struggled to film her under low-light conditions, she spontaneously glowed. The cameraman later told Hitchens the true explanation of the “miracle” – the ultra-sensitivity of a new type of film from Kodak – but Muggeridge fatuously wrote: “I myself am absolutely convinced that the technically unaccountable light is, in fact, the Kindly Light that Cardinal Newman refers to in his well-known exquisite hymn”.

Hitchens also offers an extremely funny brief history of Mormonism: how it was invented from scratch by Joseph Smith, a nineteenth-century charlatan who wrote his book in sixteenth-century English, claiming to have translated the text from plates of gold – which conveniently ascended into heaven before anyone else could see them. Even the amanuenses to whom the illiterate Smith dictated had to sit behind a curtain lest they should catch a glimpse and be struck dead. Do you know anyone so gullible? Yet today, Mormonism is powerful enough to field a presidential candidate, its clean-cut young missionaries patrol the world in pairs, and the Book of Mormon nestles in every Marriott hotel room.

Hitchens’s title alludes, of course, to those famous last words “Allahu Akhbar”. The subtitle has suffered from its Atlantic crossing. The American original, “How religion poisons everything”, is an excellent slogan, which recurs through the book and defines its central theme. The British edition substitutes the bland and pedestrian subtitle “The case against religion”.

I referred earlier to Hitchens’s old-fashioned courtesy, and that was not (entirely) a joke. You can hear it in recordings of his lectures and debates, and you can see it in the first chapter of this book, “Putting It Mildly”.

I leave it to the faithful to burn each other’s churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can always be relied upon to do. When I go to the mosque, I take off my shoes. When I go to the synagogue, I cover my head.

The next chapter, “Religion Kills”, benefits from Hitchens’s experience as a war correspondent. (Others have likened him to Evelyn Waugh or Graham Greene, but my own comparison is with Waugh’s intrepid rogue Basil Seal, who couldn’t keep out of trouble or away from the world’s trouble spots.) Publicly challenged by an American preacher to admit that, if approached by a gang of men in a dark alley, he would be reassured to learn that they had emerged from a prayer meeting, Hitchens’s return volley was unplayable:

Just to stay within the letter “B”, I have actually had that experience in Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem and Baghdad. In each case I can say absolutely, and can give my reasons, why I would feel immediately threatened if I thought that the group of men approaching me in the dusk were coming from a religious observance.

He does give his reasons too, and in no case are they vulnerable to the objection “But the dispute in B— is tribal / political / economic, not religious”. It is doubtless true that the people of B— are killing each other over something more than a mere liturgical disagreement. They are pursuing hereditary vendettas, paying back economic injustices. It’s all “them and us” stuff, yes, but how do they know who is them and who is us? Through religion, religious education, sectarian apartheid; through decades of faith-based separation, starting in kindergarten, working up through faith school and on to later life and the inculcated horror of “marrying out”; then, most importantly, the dutifully segregated indoctrination of the next generation.

I once had a televised encounter with a leading “moderate” Muslim, of the kind who gets a knighthood or a peerage for not being an “extremist”. I publicly challenged this “moderate” to deny that the Muslim penalty for apostasy was death. Unable to do so (the Koran is word-for-word inerrant), he wriggled and twisted, and finally claimed that it was an “unimportant detail”, because never enforced. Tell that to Salman Rushdie, of whom the knighted “moderate” had earlier said, “Death is perhaps too easy for him”

. . . . the literal mind does not understand the ironic mind, and sees it always as a source of danger. Moreover, Rushdie had been brought up as a Muslim and had an understanding of the Koran, which meant in effect that he was an apostate. And “apostasy”, according to the Koran, is punishable by death. There is no right to change
religion . . . .

Thus Christopher Hitchens on his friend Salman Rushdie, whom he welcomed into his Washington home and was subsequently warned by the State Department

. . . to change my address and my telephone number, which seemed an unlikely way of avoiding reprisal. However, it did put me on notice of what I already knew. It is not possible for me to say, Well, you pursue your Shiite dream of a hidden imam and I pursue my study of Thomas Paine and George Orwell, and the world is big enough for both of us. The true believer cannot rest until the whole world bows the knee. Is it not obvious to all, say the pious, that religious authority is paramount, and that those who decline to recognize it have forfeited their right to exist.

Hitchens invokes the Danish cartoons to discuss complicity and cowardice in the West:

Islamic mobs were violating diplomatic immunity and issuing death threats against civilians, yet the response from His Holiness the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury was to condemn – the cartoons! In my own profession, there was a rush to see who could capitulate the fastest, by reporting on the disputed images without actually showing them. And this at a time when the mass media has become almost exclusively picture-driven. Euphemistic noises were made about the need to show “respect’” but I know quite a number of the editors concerned and can say for a certainty that the chief motive for “restraint” was simple fear. In other words, a handful of religious bullies and bigmouths could, so to speak, outvote the tradition of free expression in its Western heartland.

While I admire Hitchens’s courage, I could not condemn those editors. There are times when “cowardice” amounts to no more than sensible prudence. But Hitchens is surely right to despise leaders of other religions who, while under no threat, go out of their way to volunteer a gratuitous “respect” and “sympathy” for those who incite murder in the name of God.

To return to Hitchens on Rushdie and the fatwa:

One might have thought that such arrogant state-sponsored homicide . . . would have called forth a general condemnation. But such was not the case. In considered statements, the Vatican, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the chief sephardic rabbi of Israel all took a stand in sympathy with – the ayatollah. So did the cardinal archbishop of New York and other lesser religious figures. While they usually managed a few words in which to deplore the resort to violence, all these men stated that the main problem raised by the publication of The Satanic Verses was not murder by mercenaries but blasphemy.

Moving to today’s Iran (and this may go some way towards explaining his otherwise mysterious flirtation with the neocon blackguards of Washington) Hitchens notes, “as I write, a version of the Inquisition is about to lay its hands on a nuclear weapon”. This is an unexpected threat. Theocracy doesn’t obviously nurture the sort of cultural and educational advancement that goes with modern scientific inventiveness. Hitchens develops his point with respect to September 11, 2001, when

from Afghanistan the holy order was given to annex two famous achievements of modernism – the high-rise building and the jet aircraft – and use them for immolation and human sacrifice. The succeeding stage, very plainly announced in hysterical sermons, was to be the moment when apocalyptic nihilists coincided with Armageddon weaponry. Faith-based fanatics could not design anything as useful or beautiful as a skyscraper or a passenger aircraft. But, continuing their long history of plagiarism, they could borrow and steal these things and use them as a negation.

While my own primary concern as a scientist has been with religion’s claims about the cosmos and the sources of life, Hitchens restricts such matters to two short chapters. Where he really comes into his own is with the evils that are done in the name of religion: “religion poisons everything”. His list is pretty comprehensive. There is a good chapter on religion as child abuse; another on religion as a health hazard, which doesn’t fail to mention those Roman Catholic priests, including at least two cardinals and an archbishop, who solemnly told their flocks, in African countries ravaged by AIDS, that condoms transmit the virus.

Reviewers have variously described Hitchens as an equal opportunity atheist, an equal opportunity embarrasser (of all religions), an equal opportunity ranter, and an equal opportunity bigot. He is certainly not a bigot, nor does he rant (any critic of religion, no matter how mild, is automatically assumed to “rant”). But it is true, as another reviewer of God Is Not Great has put it, that it is “ecumenical in its contempt for religion”. Even Buddhism, which is often praised as a cut above the rest, gets both barrels.

It is no surprise that Hitchens’s chapter “The Nightmare of the Old Testament” effortlessly lives up to its name. The next one, despite its promising title (“The New Testament Exceeds the Evil of the Old”) is more about the unreliability of the texts than about any evil to match the admittedly high standards of the Pentateuch. Many Gospel stories were invented to fulfil Old Testament prophecies, and the shameless candour with which their authors admit it is almost endearing: “All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet . . .”. The real evil of the New Testament gets a chapter to itself: that is, the divine-scapegoat theory of Jesus’s crucifixion, as vicarious atonement for “original sin” (the past sin of Adam who had never existed, and the future sins of people like us who didn’t yet exist but were presumed to have every intention of sinning when our time came).

Hitchens is quick to note the similarity of Christianity to extinct cults. Jesus slots right into a cosmopolitan catalogue of virgin births along with Horus, Mercury, Krishna, Attis, Perseus, Romulus and, incongruously, Genghis Khan. Is it Jungian atavism, shrewd PR, or sheer accident that leads the inventors of cults, and the religions into which they mature, to conjure their gods out of virgin wombs, like so many rabbits out of hats? Jesus’s case was abetted by a simple mistranslation from the Hebrew for “young woman” into the Greek for “virgin”.

One of Hitchens’s central themes is that gods are made by man, rather than the other way around. A related theme is plagiarism: “monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay, of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents”. A pair of chapters explores “The Tawdriness of the Miraculous” and the widespread fallacy that we derive our morals from religious rules such as the Ten Commandments. As Hitchens witheringly puts it, does anybody seriously think that, before Moses delivered the tablet inscription “Thou shalt not kill”, his people had thought it a good idea to do so?

I said that Hitchens comes into his own on the evils that are done in the name of religion: “in the name of” is important. You can’t just point to evil – or indeed good – individuals who happen to be religious. The case to be made is that people do evil (or good) – because they are religious. Crusaders and jihadis are – by their own lights – good. They do evil things (by our lights) because their faith drives them to it. The nineteen murderers of September 11 scrupulously washed, perfumed and shaved their whole bodies in preparation for the martyrs’ paradise, as they set off on what they sincerely, truly, prayerfully believed was a supremely righteous mission.

If ever a man embodied evil it was Adolf Hitler. He never renounced his Roman Catholicism, and affirmed his Christianity throughout his life, but unlike, say, Torquemada or a typical crusader or conquistador, he did not do his horrible deeds in the name of Christianity. Another deeply evil man, Joseph Stalin, was probably an atheist but, again, he didn’t do evil because he was an atheist, any more than he, or Hitler, or Saddam Hussein, did evil because they had moustaches. Hitchens is especially good on the idiotic challenge “Stalin and Hitler were atheists, what d’you say to that?” – doubtless after plenty of practice. Stalin, Hitler and the others may not have been religious themselves, but they understood the ingrained religiosity of their subjects, and exploited it gratefully. Hitchens makes the point only briefly in the book, but he has enlarged upon it in later speeches and interviews:

For hundreds of years, millions of Russians had been told the head of state should be a man close to God, the Czar, who was head of the Russian Orthodox Church as well as absolute despot. If you’re Stalin, you shouldn’t be in the dictatorship business if you can’t exploit the pool of servility and docility that’s ready-made for you. The task of atheists is to raise people above that level of servility and credulity.

The point applies again to Kim Jong Il (the Dear Leader) and to his late father, Kim Il Sung (the Great Leader), who is still the Eternal President of North Korea, despite having died in 1994. Hitchens has personal experience of North Korea, and his observations on its modern cult of ancestor worship are the sort of thing he does best.

Having failed myself to find anything to complain about, I thought it my duty to examine other reviews in the hope of uncovering something negative to say. Most of them have been favourable, but Matt Buchanan, in the course of an otherwise rave review in the Sydney Morning Herald, hit home with this:

He is also occasionally guilty of crassness. For example: “In the very recent past we have seen the Church of Rome befouled by its complicity in the unpardonable sin of child rape, or as it might be phrased in Latin form, no child's behind left.” Hitchens squanders a lot of trust with that vulgar lapse: readers suddenly catch sight of him chortling at his desk and it’s not pretty, or funny, and it impugns his seriousness elsewhere.

An undeniable lapse but not a characteristic one. The slightly odd habit of downsizing self-important leaders by calling them “mammals” is a lesser error of tone that might be corrected in a future edition.

Peter Hitchens begins his negative review in the Daily Mail quite well (“Am I my brother’s reviewer?”), but the substance of his complaint seems to be that Christopher is as confident in his disbelief as any fundamentalist is confident in his belief. The answer to the familiar accusation of atheist fundamentalism is plain enough. The onus is not on the atheist to demonstrate the non-existence of the invisible unicorn in the room, and we cannot be accused of undue confidence in our disbelief. The devout churchgoer recites the Nicene Creed weekly, enumerating a detailed and precise list of things he positively believes, with no more evidence than supports the unicorn. Now that’s overconfidence. By contrast, the atheist says the humble thing: of all the millions of possible entities that one might imagine, I believe only in those for which there is evidence – trombones, pelicans and electrons, say, but not unicorns or leprechauns, not Thor with his hammer, not Ganesh the elephant god, not the Holy Ghost.

The second commonest complaint from reviewers is that Christopher Hitchens attacks bad religion. Real religion (the religion the reviewer subscribes to) is immune to such criticism. Here is the theologian Stephen Prothero in the Washington Post:

To read this oddly innocent book as gospel is to believe that ordinary Catholics are proud of the Inquisition . . . and that ordinary Jews cheer when a renegade Orthodox rebbe sucks the blood off a freshly circumcised penis.

This complaint, too, is familiar, and the answer (even when the point is not exaggerated, as it is by Prothero) is obvious. If only all religions were as humane and as nuanced as yours, gentle theologian, all would be well, and Hitchens would not have needed to write this book. But come down to earth in the real world: in Islamabad, say, in Jerusalem, or in Hitchens’s home town, Washington DC, where the President of the most powerful nation on earth takes his marching orders directly from God. Channel-hop your television in any American hotel room, look aghast at the huge sums of money subscribed to build megachurches, at museums depicting dinosaurs walking with men, and see what I mean.

Finally, there are those critics who can’t resist the ad hominem blow: “Don’t you know Christopher Hitchens supported the invasion of Iraq?” But so what? I’m not reviewing his politics, I’m reviewing his book. And what a splendid, boisterously virile broadside of a book it is.

_________________________________________________________

Richard Dawkins FRS is Oxford's Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science. His latest book, The God Delusion, has sold more than a million copies in its first year, and is being translated into more than 30 languages.

This review was taken from the Times Online website.

The Biology of Sexual Orientation - Cristian C A Bodo

2007-08-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

Reposted from the American Sexuality magazine online.

The Biology of Sexual Orientation

Insight from animal research about what turns us on

By Cristian C A Bodo

What determines sexual orientation? What makes a person gay, bisexual, or straight? These sort of questions hold an undeniable interest to the general public and the answers are still hotly debated both by the experts in the field and by society at large. There are some powerful reasons for this universal appeal: First, the vast majority of us have experienced in the course of our lives some sort of sexual attraction toward other human beings, and this attraction in turn exerts a powerful influence in our mood, our behavior, our social interactions, and on the image that we have of ourselves. Since this plays such a key role in our lives, it is only natural that we would be interested in knowing at some point about its origins, and why we are oriented only toward people with certain characteristics and not others.

The examination of sexual orientation also holds relevance to specific social policies. Whether sexual orientation is the result of a conscious choice by the individual, as opposed to just another trait that comes "built-in" in our system, helps determine if it should be categorized as a "moral problem" or not. This seems to matter a lot in shaping out attitudes toward sexual minorities. Specifically (and for better or worse), the public appears to be more sympathetic to variations from the norm, in this case strict heterosexuality, if they are convinced that the individual has no "say" on this departure since it is the product of biological determination. On the other hand, sexual minorities have traditionally regarded this argument with suspicion. They fear that scientific research may open the door to treating these variations as little more than a disease and that efforts will be made to reduce or eliminate incidences of homosexuality in human populations.

Still, as it often happens with contentious issues that have such an impact for everyday life, society has turned to scientific research in order to get some answers. Despite the many occasions in which it has been proved otherwise, science still holds in the public conciousness the image of an unbiased actor whose answers are based solely in the pure application of a rational methodology and are therefore beyond the usual "contaminations" introduced by those who have specific interests in directing the public opinion toward their side of the field.

The question of sexual orientation has received special attention from biologists from early on. In part, this is due to the relevance that this trait is supposed to have for the survival of animal species with two (or more) separate sexes: If reproduction depends on successful mating with a member of another sex, then being attracted and actively attempting to interact with them would seem to be important to ensure that the genes of one generation be well represented in the next.

Plenty of experimental work has been done using lab animals to try to figure out how this is established, and how they develop an attraction for potential mates belonging to a sex other than their own. Most of it has been carried out in rodents (rats, mice, hamsters) for the simple reason that they breed well and adapt easily to a laboratory environment. Their proverbial capacity to deliver plenty of litters in a short time also comes handy at the time of doing an experiment.

The evidence derived from lab animals points directly to hormones derived from the gonads (testes in males, ovaries in females), specifically testosterone, in the determination of sexual orientation. When male pups are castrated at birth, they no longer seek the company of females after they have gone through puberty. Conversely, when females are injected with testosterone early in life, they later show an attraction toward other females, just like a male.

This is often referred to as the "organizational" effect of hormones, meaning that hormones trigger changes in the brain circuit, so that the brain develops in a particular way making animals predisposed to seek the company of one sex over another after reaching sexual maturity. In addition, the levels of hormones that they have in adulthood are very important to maintain this preference: If the gonads are removed, the preference quickly disappears, no matter how strong it may have been before the surgery. So the evidence is strong for a "built-in" mechanism in the determination of sexual orientation in rodents. Whether they will be attracted to females or to males when they grow up seems to be largely determined by the presence of functional testes or ovaries early in life (or even before they are actually delivered by the mother). The million-dollar question, the one that continues to generate heated debates both within and outside the scientific community, is whether this can be extrapolated at all to humans. And the answer is far from being trivial, since there are indeed powerful reasons that call for caution when doing so.

Sexual behavior in rodents is strictly associated with reproductive function, to the point that females will normally accept to mate with a male only during a particular stage of the estrous cycle: immediately after ovulation. Attempts by the male to initiate copulation during any other stage of the cycle are generally met with rejection, and this can turn into downright aggression. It is easy to see why this should be so. By limiting sexual activity to the period in which the female is actually fertile, the waste of energy that mating not resulting in pregnancy represents is actually avoided. Not surprisingly, gonadal hormones control the coordination between these two events (ovulation and sexual receptivity). Cycling ovaries release estradiol and progesterone to the bloodstream, which triggers ovulation and sexual receptivity.

In humans, on the other hand, the situation is radically different. Despite several attemps that have been made over the years to measure variations in sexual desire in women during the cycle, there is virtually no evidence to support such a claim. In humans, and other selected mammalian species, the willingness to engage in sexual activities seems to be dissociated from the hormonal status, and therefore not limited to be a mere prerequisite for succesful reproduction. On the contrary, we are all familiar with the multiple roles that sex plays in human societies, ranging from the expression of affection to the validation of social status. Even in non-human primates we can see some clear evidence of this emancipation of sex from its primitive role: Pygmy chimpanzees (or bonobos) are famous for using sexual intercourse to regulate many aspects of their social interactions, including greeting each other, resolving conflicts between members of the same clan, and exchanging food and other commodities.

Does this diminished role of gonadal steroids in the regulation of sexual activities also translate to the determination of sexual orientation in humans? With perhaps a single exception, researchers have in general failed to find a link between this characteristic and exposure to gonadal hormones at any point during the life of the individual. The exception is a study that showed women affected by congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), a syndrome that caused their adrenal glands to excrete an excesive amount of sex steroids during their development, exhibited a higher proportion of individuals reporting same-sex sexual orientation compared to the general population. Notice, however, that this is not the same as saying that all the women exposed to high hormonal levels as a consequence of their syndrome became homosexual, which suggests that if hormones are playing a role here, they have to be doing it in combination with other factors. On the other hand, there is not a single study to this date that has conclusively proved that gay men are exposed to subnormal levels of testosterone or other sex hormones during development.

So, the evidence for gonadal hormones as the determining factor for sexual orientation in humans seems to be much less abundant than does the evidence in animal models. Perhaps, in part, this is because in the former case studying the phenomenon under strict experimental conditions is impossible, and thus researchers have to rely almost exclusively in the so-called "experiments of nature," clinical syndromes such as CAH in which it is particularly difficult to control for other variables—such as psychosexual history, genetic and social background—that may affect the outcome.

Another reasonable consideration is that with the evolution of higher cognitive functions, our sexuality became a much more complex phenomenon, with multiple purposes beyond mere reproduction and also with multiple variables affecting its different aspects, and this includes of course sexual orientation. And yet, it is difficult to shake off the feeling that some deeply ingrained biological root exists that determines who we feel sexually attracted to. When asked, most people declare having no recollection of making a conscious choice about this issue at any point in their lives. Instead, there is a strong feeling of having been "made" in certain way, which implies an underlying biological cause that overrules any attempts to modify it by conscious decision. (This has been and often still is the cause of a heavy psychological burden for gay/lesbian individuals raised in an environment that does not tolerate their sexual orientation and blames them for it.) But regardless of whether improved experimental methodology and more advanced technology would allow us one day to shed some light on the elusive biological factors that determine sexual orientation in humans, it is important to ask ourselves if we are interested in finding an answer to it, and thus if it should continue to be the object of scientific enquiry. As mentioned at the beginning, sexual minorities have repeatedly expressed concerns about this, since they fear that it may actually increase discrimination practices against them.

It is easy to sympathize with this point of view, especially considering the many instances in which supposedly neutral scientific knowledge was used in the past to justify racist policies or to deny women their civil rights. But at the same time it is perfectly reasonable to wonder if such an attitude is not putting the blame in the wrong place. Instead of making researchers scapegoats, we should ask why society at large would use the tools they create to enforce discriminative policies.

There is a wide amount of variation in human traits, ranging from some that have an obvious external manifestation (eye, hair, or skin color) to others that are virtually impossible to recognize without resorting to specific test tools (blood type), and they are known in many cases to have an evident genetic component. Even though human societies seem to have the unfortunate tendency to use these variations to discriminate, we have made remarkable progress in exposing this tendency as irrational and as the cause of much suffering, so that what was once universally accepted and justified is today relegated to the fringes. There is no reason to believe that this would not also be achieved in the case of our attitudes toward sexual orientation, even if an agreement on its biological causes is eventually reached as a consequence of further scientific research on the subject. By embracing too quickly the other option, seeking to prevent scientists from looking for the causes because of fear of what we may do with such knowledge, we may indeed find ourselves sharing our views with very strange bedfellows.

Cristian C A Bodo was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Virginia in August 2007. The topic of his dissertation research was the role of gonadal steroids in the sexual differentiation of the mouse brain.

Experiment in Belief Origins - The Cargo Cults

2007-08-12T09:42:00.000-07:00

I found this on AirForce Magazine Online (January 1991, Vol. 74, No. 1). I've been fascinated by the rise and continued following of the so-called Cargo Cults. I think this is a great accidental experiment in the rise of a religion and all believers should take note and see the similarities their beliefs have in common with something they consider false.

The Cargo Cults

By C. V. Glines

After World War II, veterans returning from the Pacific all had stories to tell, not only about the war, but also about experiences with other cultures. There were tales of mysterious customs, strange lifestyles, and curious ceremonies. Of all the experiences, however, few were like the encounters with a number of bizarre--to Americans, at least--religious groups: the cargo cults.

"Cargoism" was, and is, a widespread religious movement among natives of the islands of Melanesia in the South Pacific. The theology and practice of the cult centers on the worship of cargo.

In simplest terms, followers of cargoism believe in the imminence of a new age of blessing which, they believe, will be heralded and fulfilled by the arrival of special cargo sent to them by supernatural powers. This belief existed long before the appearance in the Pacific of Western troops.

Western sociologists specializing in Melanesian religions say all the cargo cults are based on a curious mixture of native and Christian beliefs and rituals. The cultists believe their deities will send them ready-made goods just like those used by the military forces that came from far away. In their estimation, the goods will come from heaven, thought by some to be in Australia or, alternatively, in the sky immediately above it.

Those who hold to the latter view of paradise believe that Heaven is joined to Earth by a ladder, down which ancestral spirits carry the goods, packed in crates addressed to specific individuals. They expect that the precious cargo will come to them by ship, airplane, or truck, depending on where they live.

The Millennium at Hand

When soldiers and airmen from the United States and other allied countries arrived in the islands with huge war cargoes, it was for the worshipers proof that those who followed the beliefs of a cargo cult were to be rewarded for their faith. Though the natives did not benefit directly from the appearance on their islands of those types of cargo, the cultists believed that their predictions were confirmed and that the cargo-millennium was at hand. A time of plenty had arrived. There was no longer a need to work. Money was unnecessary. Crops could be, and were, neglected. Pigs were randomly slaughtered for feasts. It was a time to celebrate, and the cultists lived it up.

Things didn't turn out as the cultists expected, but few lost the faith. When goods fail to appear, as in the postwar period, the followers usually assume it is because they have not yet performed the correct ritual, because foreigners have schemed against them, or because the cultists have neglected the gods.

Although the worship of cargo is basic, there are slight variations in theology among the approximately seventy cargo cults that are known to have existed. There are fewer now, and those remaining seem to be waning in religious fervor. However, world religion scholars say interest fluctuates and is revived by forceful, persuasive leaders who appear from time to time.

Typically, all cargo cults begin when someone claims that, through a dream or vision, supernatural powers have told him or her that a messiah and the ancestors or spirits of the dead will soon return bringing huge supplies of manufactured goods. Their arrival will usher in a wonderful new era when the believers will have their identity, dignity, and honor restored. Inequality, suffering, and death will cease. The riches of those they think have so far monopolized wealth and defrauded them of their share will then belong to the cultists.

The cargo cult members do not know how the goods of foreigners are made. They believe that the arrival of cargo must be stimulated by some kind of religious ritual, because the gods will respond only to correctly performed ceremonies. Cult leaders and sometimes whole native communities demonstrate that they have received news about the coming of cargo by falling into ecstatic states.

Typical of cargo dogma is a belief adopted by three groups in Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides). They worship a god named John Frum, king of America, who is said to have arrived in the islands before the appearance there of Christian missionaries in the mid-1800s. John Frum also is expected to return.

The cultists embrace the deity of Frum because he promised them a life untroubled by economic strife and the demanding ways of foreigners, especially Europeans. Although Frum hasn't shown up, Frum followers saw great significance in the arrival of cargo-rich foreign troops on the island Tana in the New Hebrides during World War II. Cargo cult believers on other islands of Melanesia were likewise convinced that the cargoes they saw being unloaded were heaven-sent and that a god or messiah would soon follow.

Worshiping George V

In Papua New Guinea, cargo cults are numerous. The first to be discovered were the Baigona, reported by researchers in 1912, and the Vailala, first described by sociologists in 1919. Researchers found that cultists often were seized by mass hysteria that led to violent shaking fits and ecstatic trances. The Marching Rule movement is popular in the Solomon Islands. Another cult worships a faded portrait of King George V of England, declaring that it is the picture of Ihova, also known as God.

Some cult members believe they must imitate the foreigners. They even drill with wooden rifles and hold flag-raising ceremonies. They adopt Western dress and imitate Western behavior. They have built wharves, storehouses, airfields, "radio masts," and lookout towers in anticipation of the arrival of good fortune. Cult leaders make contact with the deities by using "wireless telephones," often nothing more than wooden posts or carved totem poles.

Cargo is expected to appear in local cemeteries, on altars, or in other places they consider holy and where the deity is expected to emerge. Cultists of Vanuatu have not lost faith in the long-absent John Frum; believers still await his return.

If someone tells you that he has seen natives of the South Pacific building airstrips and piers to prepare for the return of vast cargoes, don't pass it off as just another tall war story. There are still hundreds of cargo cultists out there, patiently awaiting the day when their lookouts will spot a great armada on the horizon and a string of giant aircraft lined up on final approach to their airstrips.

C. V Glines is a regular contributor to this magazine. A retired Air Force colonel, he is a free-lance writer and the author of many books. His most recent article for AIR FORCE Magazine was "The Visions of Hector Bywater," which appeared in the December 1990 issue.

The joys of demolishing bad religion....

2007-08-01T08:33:00.000-07:00

I hadn't meant to blog this morning, but I saw this one and thought I'd set yet another theist who just didn't get it straight. Feel free to go over and add you own two cents worth of reason. It's fun! It's free!

Atheism: Does it make sense or is it an uncompromising, fundamentalist religion?
I'm not going to respond to the other blogs any more. The readers have taken them so far down rabbit trails that the subject matter and purpose of the blogs have gone way over their heads. Instead, I will pose this points for all of you evolutionists, theistic or otherwise, atheists, and agnostics to consider:

You claim that you cannot trust the bible because it was written by men, yet you trust and seem willing to be martyred for fallible textbooks written by... men. Think about that one for a moment.

You claim tolerance when you can't even tolerate us speaking up against a THEORY.You wonder why the Bible never changes, when textbooks and evolutionary 'discoveries' change all the time to stay 'current'. Here's my quesetion: Which scientific statement in the bible needs to be updated? Answer: They are all current, yet were written 4,000 years ago. Hmm...

You wonder how theists can believe that there is something outside of time and space and matter, yet you wholeheartedly, uncompromisingly believe that matter came from nothing. Question: Where's the evidence for that?

You wonder why Christians are always trying to 'shove the Gospel down your throat', yet would not stand idly by if someone was in danger and you were the only one around to rescue them. Answer: Chew on this - If you wholeheartedly believed there was a heaven and a hell and knew you had the information to prevent people from going to hell, would you sit on your hands and watch people go there daily, or would you do something about it?

Do you realize that your insults and cursings look to us like prisoners on death row despising and forsaking a pardon from the governer? We are adamant with you because we can't comprehend why you would be willingly ignorant of the idea of a Creator, whose rules you have violated, just as we have, who has every right to judge His Creation, yet cares enough to offer you redemption. We just can't figure out why you would reject that offer.

Everything in you screams "Oh, I don't want to die", yet you celebrate death (evolution would mean death brings forth the next kind, whereas Creation dictates God breathes life, and life is a gift not to be taken for granted).

Rather than answer me point-by-point, pick the point that bothers you the most about this blog, and respond to it FREE OF CURSING OR INSULT. I just received a message from one of you saying you don't use insults, then replying to my response with cursings and blasphemy. Come on, act your age and let's reason together.

Here's what we do know: You're going to die, and we care enough about you to rescue you from the grips of Hell. Is that not compassion?

Also, please proofread your responses to make sure they make sense to the other readers. Thanks.

With all the presupposition I can muster, God bless!!

Atheist's Nightmare

I must say you know absolutely nothing about not only atheism, but your own religion. You are so wrong that I cannot possibly do this point-by-point. Okay, let's begin the education (cracks knuckles....).

"You claim that you cannot trust the bible because it was written by men, yet you trust and seem willing to be martyred for fallible textbooks written by... men. Think about that one for a moment." No. I accept provisionally theories (the definition of which you, as many other fundies, do not actually know, as I will get to in a moment...) which explain sets of observations. The Bible has all the hallmarks of being written by men and none of those I would expect if it were a god's word. It has changed drastically to the point where we do not actually know with any certainty what parts were actually contained in it! Atheism, on the other hand, is simply an acceptance of the null hypothesis in the lack of any evidence to the contrary that there is no supernatural being.

"You wonder how theists can believe that there is something outside of time and space and matter, yet you wholeheartedly, uncompromisingly believe that matter came from nothing. Question: Where's the evidence for that?" This seems to me to be the First Law of Thermodynamics argument. The problem is that the sum total of the mass-energy of the universe is exactly 0. As to what initiated it, we do not know. So what? To immediately jump to a supernatural origin is what is known as premature curiosity satisfaction. The so-called Big Bang model predicted the results of several to incredible accuracy. Two of these are the hydrogen/helium ratio and the cosmic microwave background. Question: what part of the Bible predicted the observed expansion of the universe? While we do not have all the answers yet, at least we are willing to admit it instead of making convoluted arguments as to how scientific discoveries 'fit' into the Bible somehow.

"You wonder why the Bible never changes, when textbooks and evolutionary 'discoveries' change all the time to stay 'current'. Here's my quesetion: Which scientific statement in the bible needs to be updated? Answer: They are all current, yet were written 4,000 years ago. Hmm..." The Bible has changed considerably, as I've said. Any textual critic would tell you that. As for the "scientific statements" in the Bible (there are no correct ones), how about rabbits and coneys chewing cud? (They do not.) How about a description of the Earth as flat? (It is not.) A bat is not a bird, etc. For a more full description of biblical 'science' gaffs, see here. The reason that Science changes is due to our ever increasing knowledge base leading to asking new questions. Question to you: what new discoveries in Science have been made stemming from the Bible? Answer: none in the last 2,000+ years. Hmm....

"You wonder why Christians are always trying to 'shove the Gospel down your throat', yet would not stand idly by if someone was in danger and you were the only one around to rescue them. Answer: Chew on this - If you wholeheartedly believed there was a heaven and a hell and knew you had the information to prevent people from going to hell, would you sit on your hands and watch people go there daily, or would you do something about it?" There is a big difference between pulling someone from a burning building (a very real, immediate threat) and some perceived, nebulous future threat. Let's change the question around. Would you kill someone if you thought that they would some day years later attempt to cause you harm and claim self-defense in the same way you might kill an armed intruder invading your home that meant you immediate physical harm?

"You claim tolerance when you can't even tolerate us speaking up against a THEORY." You are under the impression that a Theory is just some sort of idea pulled out of thin air. Nothing could be further from the truth. A Theory in Science is something that 1) explains a set of observations; 2) makes testable predictions which can verify the theory; 3) explains new data as it comes in; 4) is falsifiable (that is, it can be shown to be incorrect). Natural Selection is a Theory, explaining a huge amount of data from comparative morphology, molecular genetics and paleontology. Intelligent Design, on the other hand, has absolutely none of the attributes just described. Nothing makes a scientist like myself angrier than someone ignorantly saying "Well, it's just a theory." We fell embarrassed for people that say that. The biggest difference between Religion and Science is that in Science our Theories can change if a better explanation can be found. This has happened a number of times. Two that come to mind are the development of the Relativity and Quantum Theories. Along with Natural Selection, these Theories changed the way in which we look at the world and even the universe. Religious dogma, on the other hand, is brittle and incapable of taking in new ideas and prefers to place its fingers in its ears and annoyingly go "La-la-la-la-la!"

"Do you realize that your insults and cursings look to us like prisoners on death row despising and forsaking a pardon from the governer?" The reason people insult you for 'witnessing' to them (what an odd term) is because they are insulted. What it says to them is that you think you have a superior moral system (you do not, by the way). By trying to convince someone to convert to your world view you are insulting theirs. You bring insults onto yourself and haven't the foggiest why. Such is the blinding effect of religion. Not everyone shares your beliefs, even other Christians. 'Witnessing' is disrespectful every bit as much as if you were asked to dinner and insulted your host's cooking . Actually, it's more disrespectful because you are rarely invited.

"Everything in you screams "Oh, I don't want to die", yet you celebrate death (evolution would mean death brings forth the next kind, whereas Creation dictates God breathes life, and life is a gift not to be taken for granted)." I have found this to be the opposite. Knowing that I have only this one life to live I cherish every moment of it. I am willing to lay money down on a bet that I have accomplished more in this life to this point (roughly half way) than you will in the whole of yours. When I leave I will go to the same place I was before I was born: oblivion. Religious people are quite happy to hasten the process for some reason.

"You're going to die, and we care enough about you to rescue you from the grips of Hell. Is that not compassion?" No, it's just disrespect for my beliefs. Worry about yourself and I will worry about my own fate. You don't have the right to take that responsibility onto yourself.
"We are adamant with you because we can't comprehend why you would be willingly ignorant of the idea of a Creator, whose rules you have violated, just as we have, who has every right to judge His Creation, yet cares enough to offer you redemption. We just can't figure out why you would reject that offer." Let me say this really slowly so you can understand. All religions bear the hallmarks of being totally man-made. Therefor there is no gods, no heaven, no hell (what kind of a god would create hell? not a loving one...), no redemption, no.... If the Bible is God's word, wouldn't you think that he would have made his words immutable and immune to the huge number of copying errors made by scribes? There are more errors in the manuscripts than words in the whold of the New Testament! What atheists don't understand is why you would believe in a deity just because a book says so! I've said it before, just because the National Enquirer says Bat Boy exists doesn't make it so!

I am not one of those atheists that will insult you or curse at you (unless you really tick me off). That there are atheists that will do that is true, just as there are theists who will do the same, but they are a minority. People are people. Most atheists are (unfortunately) silent. Thankfully, this is changing due to people like you.

In Reason,
Unashamedly Atheist

Columbia - Bill O'Reilly's "Paradise on Earth"

2007-07-31T10:01:00.001-07:00

Bill O'Reilly is some piece of work. He's certainly opinionated, which is okay. So am I. But the difference between us is that I rely on verified facts to guide my views, whereas Bill makes the stuff up as he goes along. Many readers already know about O'Reilly's interesting statistics about the need for abortion when the mother's life is in jeopardy, but I'll restate it here simply because it is just so asinine: "South Dakota, as you know, has voted to outlaw abortions unless the mother's life is in danger, which is never the case, because you can always have a C-section and do those kinds of things." It never ceases to astound me what things Bill can pull out of his own ass.

First, there's ectocopic pregnancies, the condition where the egg implants itself outside the uterus. The worst case is when the implantation site is the Fallopian tube and accounts for 9% of all (according to Bill, nonexistent) pregnancy-related deaths. According to the Mayo Clinic, "The developing embryo can't survive, and the growing placental tissue may destroy important maternal structures. Without treatment, life-threatening blood loss is possible." Bill's comeback? You can always have a C-section- as long as you live long enough to get one.

How about preeclampsia, which is abnormally high blood pressure and protein in urine? It occurs in one in seven pregnancies world-wide and can lead to seizures after the 20^th week of pregnancy (eclampsia) resulting in permanent damage to organs, coma and death. Bill's comeback? You can always have a C-section- as long as you live long enough to get one.

So, what would Bill's ideal world where abortions were outlawed look like? Unfortunately, we do not have to use our imaginations. Thanks to Mother Fucking Theresa and the Vatican, we need look no further than South America. (For those that think that Mother Fucking Theresa really was a saint, I suggest either viewing Penn & Teller's Bullshit episode on the subject, or read Christopher Hitchens' The Missionary Position. She had no interest in helping the poor out of their plight, since she felt suffering brought one closer to God and who was she to change that?)

I was listening to a documentary on The Current yesterday morning about a woman named Martha Solay that lived in Columbia. (Unfortunately, I can't give a link since "Due to various rights issues this segment is unavailable for internet use".) While abortion is illegal in Columbia, 400,000 procedures are performed each year under unsafe conditions. At the time she was diagnosed with cancer three years ago, Martha was pregnant and could not legally undergo radiotherapy because it would kill the fetus, becoming a de facto abortion.

Martha's story lead to Columbia's Supreme Court partially lifting the ban on abortions, the penalty for which is outrageously severe. The all-male court legalized abortions after sexual assault or incest when the fetus is expected to die, or when a pregnancy puts a woman's life at risk. How gracious of them (dripping with sarcasm). Her struggle also lead to her excommunication from the Catholic Church, despite the fact that she was never able to obtain an abortion enabling her potentially lifesaving treatment. In fact, the church has vowed to excommunicate anyone having an abortion. I for one can not 'conceive' why this would be a bad thing, but apparently some do. One priest was quoted as saying she should have more faith, as if that has ever done anything. I'd like to meet that bastard in a dark Bogota alley.

Martha was not sorry she gave birth to her last child, of course. But she knew that because of the seven month delay in her treatment that she would not live to see them grow up. Sadly, Martha died on June 11 of this year, leaving behind four motherless children. They lost their house and the children have been split up and live apart from each other. But I guess anti-choice people can console themselves knowing that they accomplished their goal

It has always galled me that there are people will fight tooth-and-nail and even to kill in order to deny access to abortion services, but these same people do nothing to help once they have achieved their goals. Why should they? It's a fait accompli, not their problem. I lose all respect for people like that. To equate a blastocyst with being a person is simply ridiculous. I had one discussion with a Catholic on this and he brought up the 'silent scream' propaganda that we so often see. The problem with that argument is that the fetus has no capability of feeling pain before the 24^th week (hence the 26-week limit on abortions in Canada and the US), and some place this point even later into term. How do we know this? The connections from the thalamus (a brain structure critical in pain sensation) to the cortex have not formed. Certainly, pain perception is impossible before 12 weeks gestation, the first point at which there is a measurable EEG signal.

I'm not trying to push an agenda whereby everyone should have an abortion, and the idea that it ends up being used as a form of birth control is pretty damned stupid. The only absolutist view here is anti-choice, not pro-choice. The vast majority of planned and/or wanted pregnancies are wonderful experiences, and why would I have a problem with that? But not everyone finds themselves in such happy situations and I firmly believe that the option should be available. People that picket abortion clinics, or worse, organizations masquerading as abortion counseling services when they are really pushing their victims take their pregnancies to term no matter what, have no concern for the harm that they cause. Am I supposed to respect them for their beliefs? Not when they are actively engaging in twisting a pregnant woman's psychological suffering.

Oddly, I do not want Bill O'Reilly to shut up. He has a right to say his say (but I don't have to listen, and generally, I don't), even though I doubt he would say the same for me. But this does not mean he should be immune from criticism and Fox has an obligation to keep his stupidity in check. I mean, The O'Reilly Factor purports to be a journalistic (sort of) program for crying out loud, so Bill should probably include some facts for once. As such, I reserve the right to call him for what he is - an asshat.

Is Evolution the Drunken Man as Behe claims?

2007-07-17T11:25:00.001-07:00

I was listening to the latest episode of 'The Things That Matter Most' with Dr. Michael Behe, the man that put forth the idea of Irreducible Complexity (IC), as guest. Wow. Some of the worst arguments for Intelligent Design (ID) I've heard to date. It's no wonder that his colleagues at Lehigh University have disowned him.

I've blogged on the many problems of the IC concept before and, even though it is impossible to believe that Behe has never heard of the complete and utter refutations by others with far more expertise than I (little-known people such as Richard Dawkins, Ken Miller, PZ Myers, Jerry Coyne,....), he continues to espouse this idea. Even his mousetrap has been found to be reducible. I'm sorry, Dr. Behe, but this makes you a dishonest broker. 'Irreducible complexity is this fancy phrase that all it means is that you've got a machine like a mousetrap... that has a number of different parts all of which are required [for it] to work.' The mousetrap is a red herring because I have yet to see a mousetrap replicate. Since the primary mechanism by which Natural Selection is removed, the analogy is false one.

Behe arbitrarily declares that structures serving other functions can't be co-opted to be brought together for a new function. 'Even if you are hoping to use those things [parts] for something else, like a doorstop, a doorstop has nothing to do with catching mice.' What's he done here? He's concocted a straw man (hardly original) of Evo. He presumes that catching mice (function) is something not only desirable, but a necessary end point. But function is something we ascribe to a system - the genes themselves do not care what or even whether they provide a function, only that they impart survival value.

So, what we should always be looking for is whether a genetic change imparts a survival advantage, not whether the change maintains function. The latter is simply irrelevant. DNA does not care about any one of its gene's functions, or whether there even is a function for it, only the effect of the gene on survival probability. To illustrate this using the mousetrap example, let's say that a cell contains the parts that are required for the mousetrap and the catching a mouse results in an increase in the chances of survival. If bringing some of the parts together confers some survival advantage (or is benign in terms of survival) then the changes will tend to be passed on to the next generation. In other words, bringing two parts together can increase the chances of survival more than the parts being separate. Then, in a future generation, another part gets added, conferring even more survival value, and so on. Thus, structures better and better suited to survival are produced. Here's the kicker: the function of the early versions of the mousetrap need not even have involved catching mice at all so long as some net survival advantage was gained by combining parts! When looked at in these terms, there is no basis on which to deny the base of the mousetrap to have originally served as a doorstop!

At some point, the functions of the structure changed from whatever they were to by catching mice. This is immediately apparent to anyone familiar with Natural Selection and Behe's poster child for ID, the bacterium flagellum. When Behe artificially rules out functional change the flagellum seems 'irreducible', but he provides no good reason that we should accept omitting such evolutionary paths to this structure. He is simply invoking an artificial restriction that he claims Evolution can not violate (yet it clearly can and does) simply because it makes IC look good and for no other reason that anyone can fathom.

Does the Type III secretory system, which comprises part of the flagellum motor, lose its function when combined with another part on its way to powering the flagellum? Quite probably. Does this matter? Not at all if a net advantage is gained.

For all his philosophizing he has yet to perform a single experiment to confirm irreducible complexity. I can think of a number of experiments off the top of my head to test the validity of IC. One is simply looking at the parts of a complex structure such as the bacterium flagellum and seeing if the parts have analogous structures in related organisms. That the individual proteins of the flagellum are completely conserved and have wholly different functions in related bacteria does not bode well for IC at all and clearly points to an evolutionary process. Why would you, if you wanted to design a mousetrap as opposed to evolve it, use a blender? I think if you wanted to make a mousetrap you would do what is already done - create the individual parts specific to the task.

The blood clotting cascade, another of Behe's examples, can also be tested as to whether it fits the IC model. In this case, we do not have a single structure composed of several proteins, but a series of biochemical reactions. Ideally, one would like to be able to remove one or more enzymes catalyzing reactions in the cascade. Can this be done? Absolutely. Genetically engineering mice to inactiveate genes is routine these days. Dr. Behe has never even suggested such experiments, let alone performed them. Fortunately, less lazy researchers have. Knocking out one gene or even several encoding enzymes in the cascade does not stop the blood of mice from clotting. That knockout mice blood doesn't clot as well is irrelevant, since Behe predicted there should be no clotting ability at all. Of course, all that has to be done is look at the blood clotting cascade in whales and dolphins to see that they have what Behe would have considered an incomplete cascade already.

Indeed, all examples held up as for IC are similarly fatally flawed. Behe claims that 'blind searches do not lead to complex systems.' Really? Again, this is a blanket assumption for which he has no evidential basis for making, and Dr. Behe has never made an attempt at experimentally verifying his ideas. For purely random processes this statement is true, but Natural Selection is anything but random. For examples of such complexity arising from blind searches just google 'genetic algorithms'. A word to the wise: If you are going to put forward a radical idea such as this, you'd better have something to back it up with and that something had better be more than half-baked philosophizing.

Interestingly, Behe says 'I think the most compelling evidence for common decent is when you see features in organisms that seem not to have any particular function but look like genetic accidents and if that's the case then a kind of a parsimonious or a reasonable explanation is that these organisms are both descended from some previous organism. This genetic accident happened in the previous organism and both lines descending from that earlier one inherited the change.'

Wait a minute, Dr. Behe - You accept common decent, but deny macroevolution? What the....? Is he trying to tell us that bacteria containing the flagellum, which are closely related to bacteria having the Type III secretory system from which it evolved, both have a common ancestor, yet the flagellum needed to be added to the 'design'? For this to work, the molecular genetic evidence pointing to close relationship to these two types of bacteria must be wrong. Not bloody likely. He's trying to have his cake and eat it, too, by picking data supporting his position and ignoring all other data.

The question must be asked: why does Dr. Behe accept some parts of Natural Selection while discarding others? The answer is simple: he has a major problem explaining the existence of broken genes. I once heard PZ Myers say what he'd like most explained by supporters of ID, why a 'designer' would equip humans and other primates with a broken enzyme catalyzing ascorbic acid synthesis. This is exactly why Behe brings a limited version of Natural Selection into his world. He realizes that ID, as originally formulated, has no answer to this. But if you accept one part you must accept, if you are to remain intellectually honest, Natural Selection in its entirety. Note to Dr. Behe: the Theory of Natural Selection is irreducibly complex.

I've already blogged about the example contained in his new book, Edge of Evolution, where Behe claims that the development of malarial resistance to chloroquine through evolutionary processes is improbable. Behe again arbitrarily says that two mutations are required for any level of chloroquine resistance without explaining why no resistance is conferred by a single mutation in the right place except that it suits his argument. 'But suppose in order to be effective it needed not just one but it needed two and with just one that it didn't help or might even hurt the organism. So it had to get a change not only in the left side of its DNA but somewhere in the middle of its DNA as well. Then it turns out that that is a whole lot more difficult than just getting one [mutation].' Sorry, but as many have pointed out, mutation is not the bottleneck in Evolution. The arbritrary assumption that multiple mutations must take place at the same time is simply baseless. And what exactly is he saying? That a designer is making malarial parasites more resistant to human medical interventions in order to make them better killing machines? I don't think he's thought this through...

But my biggest objection is his analogy of the drunken man to Evolution, which falls flat on its face. (I know, I know - bad pun. Bad!) Behe describes his analogy thus: 'Suppose there were this drunk, this dizzy fellow, who had a blindfold on, and you want to get from some place in the city to the top of some tower in the downtown and suppose he's in the suburb. Well if he had to follow a rule that whenever possible you feel the ground going up you have to take a step up and you can never go back down because going back down means becoming less fit in a Darwinian sense, then if this fellow walks along he will climb up onto roofs of cars or onto porches of houses. Once he's up there he'll get stuck and he's not going to find his way to the tower downtown.' Here he's plagiarizing Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable example, the peaks of Dawkins' version correspond to the car roofs and porches in Behe's. Such a view gives the false impression that point B is some kind of objective. In Natural Selection there is no desired end point, just what is working at this point.

Behe twists Dawkins' version to make it appear as if the tower (the highest mountain peak in Dawkins' version) can't be reached by random processes without outside help because it is only one person. The likelihood that one person will reach the tower through a random walk with the rule that you can't take downward steps is indeed extremely low. But Evolution is an ensemble of organisms each taking paths going in any direction without any thought as to where they will end up, not a single one trying to get from A to B. To make this analogy work better, you need many, many drunks (an experiment which seems to be carried out spontaneously during Stampede Week every year). As in Behe's version, you will have many drunks finding car roofs or porches, but there will be those that do indeed get to the tower. In fact, with enough drunks all apexes in the search space will be occupied. His is a horribly inaccurate analogy and I've done my best here to try to correct it.

Are there limits to what can and can not be done by Natural Selection? Absolutely, but it's quite clear that Dr. Behe has not found the Edge of Evolution yet at all.

Stampede is over for another year....

2007-07-17T09:37:00.000-07:00

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.... The tourists have either gone home or to Banff. I feel almost agoraphobic. No more vehicles blocking traffic while the driver figures out where he's going, no more yielding in a merge lane (well, not much, anyway), no more people trying to merge onto Crowchild 30 km/hr below the speed limit (except for the usual geriatric drivers), no more getting cut off by Texan drivers (well, there was that one Texan on the way in to work this morning).

I do enjoy the Stampede, the one time I go. The rest of the time I just stay the heck away from downtown Calgary. This year in the 10 days of the Stampede there were over 1.1 million visits to the grounds. The temperature in Calgary for most of the week was quite hot, in the mid-30s, but on the Stampede Grounds, where it's mostly asphalt, the thermometer read The bars are overflowing all Stampede Week, so I avoid those as well. It's just crazy. And while the mayor is unsuccessfully trying to get money from the Province of Alberta to shore up the infrastructure of the city, our illustrious premier gives $40 million to the Stampede for future expansion. I agree that the Stampede brings in a huge amount of cash to the city, but I never see any benefit from it. People here are not too pleased with the situation.

In all the times that I have been to the Stampede I have never been to the Rodeo. I'm going to have to do that next year. I have, however, seen the chuckwagon races. In one of the last races of this year's competition, a serious accident (which resulted in killing one horse outright, and two others had to be put down on the spot) caused a wagon to lose its driver. One of the outriders had to jump from his horse onto the wagon a la Hollywood to keep things from getting worse.

This is also the first year that I didn't do any of the rides on the midway. Been there, done them. It's a lot of fun, but my darling wife gets motion sickness easily. I was impressed that she went on some of them with me last year as it was. I went last Friday mainly because the Payola$ were playing. It was a really good set, taking me a long ways back. A new EP is being released next week with some pretty good material. I especially like the song 'Bomb', a politically charged piece about suicide bombers. Some of the old songs had the instruments reworked a bit and I thought improved certain songs like 'China Boys'. The one tune I didn't like redone was 'Never Said I Loved You', since (as Paul Hyde lamented) Carole Pope wasn't there to sing the female role of the duet.

But the main reason I go every year is to see the doodads in the Roundup Center. I like seeing all the latest kitchen gadgets, etc., and I usually fork out $150 for something, but there wasn't all that much that was new this year. Along with the usual fudge and mini donut stands there was a place that sold cheesecake-on-a-stick. The cheesecake could be dipped in one of several coatings. But I did end up forking out $100 this year not for a doodad (at least, not one I could take home), but for a salon-style teeth whitening procedure. I have never understood why it is that for the longest time you had to go to the dentist for this service, resulting in paying several hundred dollars. The conditions on this have relaxed and you can go to the local Safeway and pick up a kit, but then it takes 2 weeks to do it. The whole length of the procedure at the Stampede was 12 minutes. The light in the photo is not UV, but approximates daylight (similar to the lights used to treat seasonally-affected disorder). Considering that one of those kits from Safeway costs about $50, the $100 fee for a few minutes as opposed to two weeks was a good deal. The company is planning to open salons in malls across Canada.

Firearm violence and gun control

2007-07-16T13:41:00.000-07:00

Sure, guns don't kill people, people kill people. But what this popular (at least in the US) bumper sticker fails to convey is just how much easier killing is made by the culture of firearm ownership. I pretty much always agree with Penn & Teller's show on Comedy Central, 'Bullshit', till the one on gun control. While not a problem in Canada, for some reason even the US Supreme Court seems to take the First Amendment in a rather weird light.

The original Second Amendment states "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Penn (and presumably his usually silent partner Teller) complains that gun control advocates concentrate on the first part of the amendment and ignore the second. However, it is clear that Penn is concentrating on the second part and ignoring the first. The Founding Fathers were smart guys and didn't put the part before the comma in there for no reason. It's a caveat, dictating under what conditions the part after the comma makes it valid. Is there a necessity for a militia? I don't think so. This is just a holdover from when militias were a valuable military resource, hardly the case in modern warfare. But money talks, and the NRA certainly has a lot of that. I suggest that Penn and Teller get out of the 18th century and back into the 21st on this one.

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine clearly demonstrated that you are more likely to kill a family member than an intruder. Penn counters that this study did not take into account the number of intruders that were scared off by a weapon-wielding homeowner, but this does not in fact change the results of the study, nor put them in a new perspective at all.

So let's take a look at some interesting statistics that Penn and Teller completely ignored. Firearms are involved in about 2/3 of homicides in the US compared to only 1/3 in Canada. Looking at violent crime rates in 30 North American cities shows some stark contrasts between cities that are separated only by the international boundary. In Toronto the homicide rate is 1.6/100,000 persons, while just across in Detroit it is 42.1. Seattle has 4.2 homicides/100,000, while in Vancouver it is 2.6. (Oddly, New York rates much better than most US cities at 7.0 homicides/100,000 persons. You wouldn't believe that from watching movies or television.)

So, on the surface, it appears that gun control legislation is a no-brainer. But, did I miss something? There was something that was not said at all in this episode of 'Bullshit', but was plainly obvious if you watch. Gun control can not work unless the culture of gun ownership (in particular, ownership of firearms which have no purpose other than killing fellow humans) is changed to allow gun legislation to work. I propose that the major reason that the difference between violent crime rates involving firearms in Canada and the US is cultural and not legislative in nature. I find it very hard to believe that gun control can work if the general population does not buy into it like we do here in The Great White North. The current Wild West attitude which pervades large swaths of the US doesn't make me hopeful that this will happen any time soon.

What do I mean a culture of gun ownership? Just look at the woman (7 min into part I) with the .357 under the counter, a pump-action shotgun behind a wall, a .45 by the phone, a 9 mm carbine behind a door and a .32 in her bra, and all easily accessible (except for the .32, of course) by anyone in her store. Why? Because she doesn't want to get mugged! She's a lawsuit waiting to happen when some kid finds them and starts playing around. You call this a responsible gun owner? I'm afraid to ask what percentage of gun owners she represents. I'll bet they didn't have to look far, at least not in Texas.

Let's face it, the vast majority of handgun owners haven't got the first clue about how to use one. Use of a handgun requires a great deal of training and upkeep of that training, and I seriously doubt that more than a few percent have this training. I know, I was in the Canadian military. (I gotta admit, firing off a submachine gun is an awful lot of fun.)

One part I totally agreed with was that passing 'feel good' gun legislation that doesn't work is a waste of time and in fact makes it harder for police to do their jobs. We've had our own bad law recently, the failed gun registry. I have absolutely no idea how they thought that registering every gun would do any good, even if you could register all weapons. The cost overruns were huge and the present administration is attempting to repeal the law. Simply put, we need legislation that works, but first the culture of firearm ownership has to change.

No atheists in foxholes? Give me a shovel and a gun...

2007-07-04T16:16:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm a big believer in gun control, which is a good thing. What's got me in such a frenzy? My brother Boomer informed me that on the latest segue of The Things That Matter Most, entitled Why Good Arguments Often Fail, part of my angry response to Don the Engineer's (what I took to be) insulting quote by Julian Huxley's grandson, who implied on the Merv Griffin Show that those that accept Evolution and Natural Selection as its explanation do so because of their lack of morality. I don't know about you, but I would knock anybody that said something as asinine as this to my face. This is a personal insult even if you are speaking in the general sense. If Don didn't think it himself, he wouldn't have wrote in that quote. So I'm going to ask Lael point blank whether she believes this herself and why that wasn't even mentioned when discussing my email to her.

I was not asked if that could be read out on the air (the show is on FM radio in the Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth areas). I wouldn't have denied such a request, but I would like to have been at least included in some way to ensure that this kind of attack in absentia didn't happen. I don't believe this was at all nefarious, but it is still unsettling.

I admit that I wrote that email in a very agitated state, but I'm the one that was insulted. I got the distinct feeling from the show that I was being made out to be the bad guy! My feelings while listening to this?

I'll keep you all posted.

Yet another nail in the coffin of ID

2007-07-04T13:04:00.000-07:00

Seen any of the Terminator movies lately? If so, you may want to wait a while before reading this, but this is cool. Trust me. Even if you spell it 'evilution', you are going to think this is cool. Really cool. Alan Bellows did a writeup on hardware evolution, a brand new area of study, which has direct parallels to biological evolution. The main figure in this article is a Dr. Adrian Thompson at the University of Sussex. The experiment that has so wowed me involved the use of a field-programmed gate array (FPGA) to distinguish between two tones. The FPGA used was small, only 10 x 10 cells in size, and removed access to the system clock (I presume that this ensured that the program could not time the waveforms coming in and accidentally result in a program that just measured the waveform frequencies). Dr. Thompson programmed in a random set of binary data, the initial DNA if you will, and judged the ability of each set of digital DNA. The programs which produced the best ability to differentiate between tones were kept for the next generation, with a bit of random mutation thrown in for good measure.

"For the first hundred generations or so, there were few indications that the circuit-spawn were any improvement over their random-blob ancestors. But soon the chip began to show some encouraging twitches. By generation #220 the FPGA was essentially mimicking the input it received, a reaction which was a far cry from the desired result but evidence of progress nonetheless. The chip's performance improved in minuscule increments as the non-stop electronic orgy produced a parade of increasingly competent offspring. Around generation #650, the chip had developed some sensitivity to the 1kHz waveform, and by generation #1,400 its success rate in identifying either tone had increased to more than 50%.

Finally, after just over 4,000 generations, [the] test system settled upon the best program. When Dr. Thompson played the 1kHz tone, the microchip unfailingly reacted by decreasing its power output to zero volts. When he played the 10kHz tone, the output jumped up to five volts. He pushed the chip even farther by requiring it to react to vocal "stop" and "go" commands, a task it met with a few hundred more generations of evolution. As predicted, the principle of natural selection could successfully produce specialized circuits using a fraction of the resources a human would have required. And no one had the foggiest notion how it worked." And that is what is so cool about this. Until the program was back-engineered, how it did what it did was a complete unknown and totally up to the selection process.

And that was where the surprises were found. A mere 37 of its logic gates were used, compared to hundreds of thousands in a sound processor designed specifically for the task. Even though only a very few gates were used, they were organized in a complex and completely unexpected way. "The plucky chip was utilizing only thirty-seven of its one hundred logic gates, and most of them were arranged in a curious collection of feedback loops. Five individual logic cells were functionally disconnected from the rest– with no pathways that would allow them to influence the output– yet when the researcher disabled any one of them the chip lost its ability to discriminate the tones. Furthermore, the final program did not work reliably when it was loaded onto other FPGAs of the same type." The purpose of the seemingly unconnected logic cells seems to be in supplying magnetic flux, and the program makes use of this in lieu of not having access to the system clock.

"These evolutionary computer systems may almost appear to demonstrate a kind of sentience as they dispense graceful solutions to complex problems. But this apparent intelligence is an illusion caused by the fact that the overwhelming majority of design variations tested by the system– most of them appallingly unfit for the task– are never revealed." This concept is key in understanding why proponents of intelligent design (IDiots) see conscious design everywhere. Natural selection eliminated the 'designs' that didn't work, so we only see the ones that do! So everything around us are the resulting successful designs. It's no wonder why engineers see god everywhere. But it's all an illusion, complexity arising from a simple set of rules. What works moves on, what doesn't is discarded. Random mutations occur ensuring that falsely optimized configurations don't occur. Evolution is such an elegant process!

From Pharyngula, PZ Meyers writes: "That looks a lot like what we see in developmental networks in living organisms — unpredictable results when pieces are "disconnected", or mutated, lots and lots of odd feedback loops everywhere, and sensitivity to specific conditions (although we also see selection for fidelity from generation to generation, more so than occurred in this exercise, I think). This is exactly what evolution does, producing a functional complexity from random input."

I think there are limits on the analogy to biological evolution, but the parallels are immediately obvious. There will always be those out there that say that Dr. Thompson was the designer because he set up the initial conditions. But simulating the initial conditions and creating them (as many IDiots are wont to say of the ) are two very different things, so reading that kind of IDiocy into this is reaching. One thing this experiment makes abundantly clear is that by following the rules set out by natural selection apparent complexity can become manifest in a relatively short amount of time.

Science is so cool.

William Lane Craig's worthless apologetics

2007-06-25T15:39:00.000-07:00

A recent episode of The Things That Matter Most featured William Lane Craig speaking on the subject of "Is God Real or Imaginary?" Of course, being a theist, Craig posits that God is real. Fine, but what follows disgusted me to no end, as Christian apologetics are wont to do.

About 9 min into the show, Craig tries to explain why he feels Dan Barker's journey to atheism is wrong. He seems to think the problem lies in a rigid belief that the Bible is inerrant, and once that rigid position is broken it is more reasonable to believe that the Bible may be wrong here and there than to cross over to the 'Dark Side' known as atheism... "The Bible is not an accurate record of what God is like, that the ancient Israelites in writing these narratives got it wrong about God." OK. If the Bible is wrong about God, how can he even speak about God in an authoritative way? If the Bible is NOT inerrant, then you must pick and choose what you want to believe and there is no basis which is not arbitrary! This is just nonsense. His suggestion that this is an argument against the inerrancy of the Bible and not the existence of God is correct, but he doesn't go to the obvious conclusion that if the Bible is wrong here and there, and you do not know exactly where or how many of these places there are, you have to throw the whole thing out. In fact, Craig throws the Old Testament out, but as we'll see, he arbitrarily claims that the New Testament is okay.

Telve minutes in, Craig answers the questions of God committing genocide. "God is not bound by the same moral duties we are. Our moral duties are established to God's commandments to us, that in virtue of being commanded to do this or that that we have certain moral obligations or duties.... So it would be wrong for me to whip out a gun and shoot somebody for no reason at all. But if God wants to strike me dead right now that's His prerogative.... But when God commands the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanite clans they are acting as God's moral agents under his command and so I feel that God has the right to command them to do something which in the absence of a divine command would have been wrong... it becomes their moral duty." So, God says do as I say, and not as I do. God should set an example for His creatures!!!! At the very least, God should do His own dirty work. Especially if he doesn't want His creatures going around doing the things that under ordinary circumstances He wouldn't want them to do! Does anyone out there understand this idiocy? It gets better: "Moreover God had good reason to give this command. He waited for 400 years while the Israelites were slaves in Egypt [Blogger's note: there is no extra-biblical record of the Israelites being slaves in Egypt.] until the Canaanite nation was so wicked and so debauched that it was right for divine judgment." Why kill them then? What happened to free will? God couldn't wait to judge each as they died? The whole argument collapses under its own inanity. "He used the armies of Israel as His instrument of judgment upon these clans in Canaan known that ultimately their extermination would be better for Israel in the long run, they wouldn't be contaminated by their influences, that these persons were deserving of judgment. And in the case of innocent people who might have been killed that even in their case God has the right to give and take life as He sees fit." Is this compatible with a kind, loving God? I think not.

I find it interesting that there are no provisions in any penal code I know of that allows one to be found not guilty by reason of God! Paul Hill claims he was commanded by God to kill abortion providers, yet he was executed for his crimes. But, if it's in the Bible it's not only okay, but mandatory! This is the most disgusting apologetics! I could barely get through this bullshit. It's SICK!

Now for the punchline: "the [Canaanite] children, by being killed are really, in one sense, better off if we believe that children go to heaven, as I do, than they would be allowing them to live on in the circumstances in which they were." I've said it many times: religion allows the expansion of our limits on what morality normally allows to the point of atrocity. It assuages our consciences in order to rationalize committing the most terrible crimes. Remember, Hitler assuaged his own guilt by claiming he was doing God's work. Craig's spear would have been the most soaked with Canaanite blood had he been there, I'm sure. How noble a warrior he would have been, sending babes to Heaven!

And who said God commanded the Israelites to slaughter the Canaanites? Somebody wrote it, presumably the victors! Who says they wrote the truth? Remember, the Bible is not inerrant.

The rest is the normal fatally-flawed First Cause arguments and stuff that I've blogged about before, so I go into that here. Craig claims that the weight of scientific evidence is on his side, and you can predict my reaction to that crap.

He deals with morality at about 21 min. He feels that an evolutionary basis for morality is an illusion, something that serves only to help in perpetuating the species: "But there's nothing about this [evolutionary] morality that makes it really objectively true; it's really just an illusion. And in that case the rapist or the pedophile or the homophobe or the racist doesn't really do anything wrong when he goes against the herd morality. He's just acting unfashionably, and there's no [ultimate] moral accountability." He's right. It is just an illusion, but one that makes living in social groups possible! Being moral because it is God's commandment just makes morality arbitrary and no more objectively true!!!!

About 33 min. in... "... I don't think that ultimately the belief that God exists is based upon evidence I think that it is primarily based upon the witness of God's Holy Spirit." Huh? You mean it is primarily based on, as David Hume would say, "sophistry and illusion." This is bunk. "...Anyone who, at the end of his life, ultimately rejects God or the Gospel of Christ... doesn't do so on lack of evidence... He does it because he deliberately ignores or suppresses the testimony and work of the Holy Spirit in his heart." There it is. That inability for the theist to get their mind around the idea that that feeling of the 'Holy Spirit' is purely in their own minds, that as an atheist I can categorically say that no such feeling exists in me. Never did, never will. The human psyche can do some amazing things, and we interpret them in ways which are not always valid. For instance, near death experiences can seem very real to those that experience them, but the fact that such experiences can be reproduced in subjects subjected to high g-forces in centrifuges points to a less than supernatural explanation.

I said in a recent blog that we are not like the Amish, who don't have any use for things like cell phones. It's not that we atheists do not have any use for deities, it's that we see no reason to believe that there are any deities at all! For some reason, theists can never get their minds around this. Like the great Laplace said to Napoleon, "I have no need of that hypothesis." Theists, get it through your skulls: I do not deny a god I know somewhere deep down exists, but simply take the null hypothesis that God does not exist because there is no reason to accept the hypothesis that God does exist. The burden of proof is always on the one positing existence, and no one has ever made even a promising case for God's existence.

As to the New Testament's validity (ca. 46 min): "...the drift of New Testament scholarship in the last 50 years or so has be solidly in the direction of confirming the accuracy of the New Testament records of the life of Jesus. I think that most scholars would say that we can treat the gospels very seriously as historical sources for the life of Jesus of Nazareth."

I had tears streaming from my eyes from laughter at hearing this! Oh, my! What scholars has this guy been reading?!?!? I think that the FACT that there are NO contemporary sources of the Jesus myth should be a clue to the story's validity, and not a supportive one at all either. That NONE of the Gospels was written anywhere near the time of his supposed time on Earth. We don't even have a clue as to their authorship! What is this guy smoking? The Gospels themselves significantly disagree with each other!

Throughout the show, the commentators seem to revere this guy (who I had never heard of before) and say that Dawkins and Harris don't have any right to go against such great minds as Craig, Einstein and Hawking. Let's get one thing straight: Craig is no great mind. I was appalled and disgusted at his ridiculous idea that sending kids to God is okay and if I actually believed in doing debates I would take him on any day. From everything I heard on this show I deem him to be a mental lightweight espousing the most idiotic apologetics. Second, I don't think that Einstein and Hawking are exactly in agreement with an Abrahamic god. We really don't know exactly what these two actually think (thought), but I can assure you they reject the Abrahamic god every bit as much as I do. Third, to cast Dawkins as being outside of the company of Einstein and Hawking would greatly underestimate the influence of him. Harris won't be far behind, and he is very young to have so much influence in his own right.

I really do like Lael Arrington, one of the hosts of the show. We email each other back and forth, not necessarily about the show. I have always applauded their choice of guests. How many radio shows with a decidedly Christian slant would invite the likes of Dan Barker and Sam Harris as guests? But religious people do have a blind spot when it comes to applying logic to their own beliefs, something that I've spent my whole life doing.

More comments....

2007-06-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

Aaaaawwwwww. It seems I have offended my creationist friend. I did accuse him of being a mental patient, but then I was getting tired of him passing off tautology as argument. As soon as I can actually get into my MySpace blog I'll put the latest in for all to see. Mind you, I did point out several times that it was tautology, that he demonstrated no connection between god and logic anyway, etc., and made no attempt to refute me (other than to say the usual what other explanation is there? crap) so he kinda deserved it. And I gave him an evolutionary explanation (a crude one, admittedly) of where logic came from for good measure. It was getting tiresome anyway.

J. K. Jones said...

"You have not established any connection between the two whatsoever!!! You are simply repeating yourself in the hopes that it might be true! I really see no connection at all! In fact, it is a complete tautology!"

Just because you are not capable of setting aside your prejudices to see the logic of an argument does not mean the argument is not sound. An unchanging ground is required for there to be unchanging laws in a universe that changes constantly. This ground cannot change.

"Such a statement is cause for me to ask if you are on medication for a psychological illness!"

Interesting that you stoop to such childish comments. I reply with: 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.'

""The Christian theistic worldview can account for the laws of logic by stating that they come from God." Again, not explanatory. Just the insufficient 'goddidit'."

Unchanging things have to come from somewhere. There must be an explanation. If we try to explain the unchanging laws of logic or mathematics or morality or the uniformity of nature without finding an unchanging ground for those things. The God I serve does not change in the way He thinks or the way He is. The universe He set up is consistent with His unchanging being and thinking.

"All I see is ad hoc ergo propter hoc and personal incredulity."

I have still not heard a single alternative explanation that we could debate.

I might add that the law of causality also requires an unchanging ground. On top of that, the existence of a logical fallacy requires the laws of logic, and you have not provided an alternative explanation for them.

All I see is someone who cannot get beyond his personal bias long enough to consider an argument. I will leave the last comment to you. It is your blog. Besides, I don't like it when you call me names and arbitrarily insult my intelligence.

June 19, 2007 7:45 PM

Shamelessly Atheist said...

"Just because you are not capable of setting aside your prejudices to see the logic of an argument does not mean the argument is not sound. An unchanging ground is required for there to be unchanging laws in a universe that changes constantly. This ground cannot change.

What prejudice? The whole of your argument is this: God created the laws of logic (no substantiation provided), thus logic proves the existence of a god. To call this a tautology is not prejudice, just a statement of fact. You have not substantiated any connection between a god and logic. I don't even need to give you an alternative explanation for the existence of logic (but for good measure, I do so below) to point out the inadequacy of your statement. This isn't prejudice, just a statement of fact. It is from YOUR prejudice that you ASSUME a connection between god and logic. Like I said, you keep repeating this mantra hoping that the more you say it, the more valid it is. But no matter how many times you repeat it, it's still a tautology.

"All I see is someone who cannot get beyond his personal bias long enough to consider an argument." I haven't seen an argument yet, just tautology. One can not debate a tautology, except to point out that it is indeed a tautology.

"Unchanging things have to come from somewhere. There must be an explanation. If we try to explain the unchanging laws of logic or mathematics or morality [morality is unchanging? BULLSHIT! See below.] or the uniformity of nature without finding an unchanging ground for those things. The God I serve does not change in the way He thinks or the way He is [source of this insight?]. The universe He set up is consistent with His unchanging being and thinking." Baseless assumption after baseless assumption. Even if there is no answer to the uniformity of nature axiom is true (You're right. It does require an explanation. Guess what? Physics provides it. It's called gauge symmetry.), arbitrarily reaching for a supernatural answer as you do is irrational. While it was perfectly rational to do this a couple of thousands of years ago (indeed, it is why religion exists), it is completely unbecoming of anyone living in the 21st century. It amazes me that in every other aspect of the lives of the devout their outlook is modern, but when it comes to questions of life, the universe and everything, they haven't advanced beyond the Bronze Age. Better to say you don't know an answer than to look (and be) foolish by immediately jumping to an unsupported conclusion. Physics has shown us that the universe is actually exactly as we would expect in the absence of a creator. I suggest reading Vic Stenger on the subject.

You really shouldn't have mentioned morality. Morality has been shown to be innate in not only humans, but many other social mammalian species as well (not to the same extent as in H. sapiens, but Evolution predicts this as well). The evolutionary advantage of morality in social animals is obvious: it allows a group to interact in a cooperative manner. It is a set of rules hardwired into the brains of social mammals. Behavioral studies have clearly shown that religion is not at all required to be moral. From religious to atheist, the responses to moral dilemmas are statisically identical. Read Marc Hauser's Moral Minds for an excellent review of the current stated of evolutionary behavioral science. The most interesting thing is that the majority of people can't express the logic behind their responses to moral and ethical situations. Moral calculations are not performed on a conscious level, but are done in regions of the brain not accessible to conscious thought. The value behind this is again obvious. Having to think through every outcome of every decision would be utterly paralyzing.

Contrary to what you believe, you don't get your morality from the Babble, and never did. You don't buy and sell slaves, do you? Commit incest? Kill in the name of God? The morality contained in the Bible is one that is completely consistent with the morality of a brutal time in our history. It does serve one purpose: it shows us that morality is NOT an absolute, but changes with the moral zeitgeist. That there are a few nuggets of good in it is not at all relevant to its value as a moral source. If you have to pick and choose what is good and what is not, you had to already have an internal basis on which to perform your cherry picking.

Logic is just as much a product of the evolution of our species as morality. Logic such as, if three bears go into a cave and two come out, is it safe to enter the cave?, obviously provide value to survival. The way in which humans perform logic analysis points to its purely evolutionary origins.

Evolution is the ultimate designer, shaping form and function through the blind forces of Natural Selection. It is a brute force method for finding optimal configurations. But often (as for 99% of species that have ever lived) it does not find the global optimum, but only the local optimum. If conditions change radically, species can not make the transition from one optimal gene set to a whole new optimal gene set. If there actually was a designer, it isn't a very good one. If you owned an engineering company, would you keep a guy around whose designs failed 99% of the time? This is completely consistent with the blind pushing and pulling on gene propogation combined with the occasional random mutation that we know as Evolution, and completely inconsistent with some nebulous designer. Certainly not a god that showed himself to one small group through a rather disappointing medium copied by purely human hands. Ever wondered why God didn't tell everybody on the planet simultaneously through a truly impressive medium? Instead, he chose parchment. PARCHMENT!? The books you revere are supposed to be the word of god. Why? Because they say so?! C'mon, the National Enquirer is at least printed on newsprint. It even claims to be a bastion of responsible journalism. You believe that, too? Tell it to Bat Boy, not to me. Everywhere scientific inquiry has been applied to religion shows the same thing. Religion is consistent with being man-made and not divine in nature.

I have indeed read David Hume on the problems of uniformity of nature and induction, but I am quite comfortable with them. They are philosophical rather than practical issues, and so far they have not at all been a bother to Science. To say that the problem of the uniformity of nature "seems to have invalidated scientific endeavors" is rather silly considering that we make use of the benefits of Science on a daily basis. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as it were. Physics has shown that throughout the history of the universe the laws of nature have not changed, and there is no known mechanism by which they can change. If and when the uniformity of nature axiom fails, then, and only then, will it become a practical issue. (Of course, if they do, it would most likely a complete extinction event.) Till then, Science will continue to successfully refute and supplant the religious superstition currently rampant in the U.S.A. Science demonstrably works, whereas religious explanations have continually been shown to be insufficient, wrong and at times just plain silly.

For instance, prayer in medicine is being advocated by devoutly religious people, including some physicians. But tell me, would you want someone that relies on prayer to heal and not his/her skill as a surgeon? Not one properly performed study on the efficacy of intercessory prayer (even those supported Templeton Foundation money) has shown more than a placebo effect. If prayer is supposed to be a big effect, God seems to be hitting the 'Hold' button a lot lately.

Miracles are another aspect of religion that Science has dispelled. Kinda hard for the Catholic Church to make new saints these days. None of the miracles in the Bible could not have been faked. Remember, there are absolutely no sources of the Jesus myth, so the miracles he is said to have performed never even happened anyway. They were just written in after the fact. There were many prophets around said to perform miracles (I gave you Apolonius of Tyrana as just one example), but once the light of scientific inquiry is shone on them they scurried away like cockroaches in the night. The so-called miracles used to canonize Mother Theresa and Pope John Paul II were pathetic. If you look hard enough, and enough sick people pray to one of them, you will find one person that recovers from an illness. But the rate of recovery of people praying to either of them will not be any different statistically than from a random sampling over the whole population suffering from the same illness. Ever wondered why there hasn't been a real miracle reported in the last oh, let's say, 2000 years? Simple. People back then were superstitious almost to the last person and reasonably so, without the tools with which to combat superstition.

"An unchanging ground is required for there to be unchanging laws in a universe that changes constantly. This ground cannot change." Another tautology. God created the uniformity of nature, therefore the uniformity of nature proves the existence of god.

You're an intelligent guy, but your 'arguments' smack of desperation. You know that you have absolutely no empirical evidence to fall back on in supporting. Thus, you believe that your tautologies are valid, even reasonable, when they are actually irrational. No tautology is rational, nor are any valid. You may not have a problem with the inability of your tautologies to be falsified, but you should. Without falsifiability you are safe from attack, but hampered by the fact that you can not show your position to be true. And the burden of proof is on the one positing the existence of god(s), not the one claiming the null hypothesis.

When you have a real argument let me know, as your tautologies aren't impressing me at all. It was indeed childish of me to stoop to name calling. But as Sam Harris said, "We do not respect stupidity, unless it is religious stupidity." and the time for respecting religious stupidity is over.

June 20, 2007 10:53 AM

A response to my blog on the importance of mechanism in explanations....

2007-06-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

I'm having some fun with someone on my blogger.com with respect to comments made on a blog I wrote in May.

J. K. Jones said...

Interesting how you decided that a theist must first be able to explain to you how the univrse came into being before he can claim God's creation of it. The thing of it is, you ignore allot of evidence whne you do that.

All the theist must do is show one thing in the universe which requires a God to create it. Evolution itself is a process that requires a designer. Rational thought is a process which requires a designer as well.

June 13, 2007 1:38 PM

Shamelessly Atheist said...

It is not arbitrary that the burden of evidence is on the one who posits the existence of something. The null hypothesis is that there is no deity. This is logic 101. I have absolutely no idea what evidence I have ignored, but if you start mentioning the bible, save your breath. That document, while of interst to historians, can't even get history correct.

No one has ever provided one shred of evidence for a 'designer'(no matter how voluminously the Disco Institute claims otherwise). I presume that you are trying to say that if Science hasn't explained something yet (which is a far cry from saying that Science can't explain a thing), then it must be attributed to a designer. This is simply a mixture of the god-of-the-gaps and false dichotomy arguments.

The greatest scientific mind ever, Newton, wrote one of the greatest works in Science, the Principia. As he described the laws governing the motion of the planets, Newton, himself a very religious (if in a heretical way) never even mentions a god. It isn't until he gets stumped when trying to calculate the motions of more than two bodies does he finally give in and invoke god because he could not make it stable. Newton didn't know of perturbation theory yet, and while there is no analytical solution describing the motion of three or more bodies, the motion is ammenable to numerical analysis. God-of-the-gaps. And those gaps get smaller every day.

As for Evo, there is no need to invoke a designer. Evo obeys Natural Selection and there is no need invoke a deity at all. This has been shown. What you might be doing is mistaking the origin of life for Evo. These are not the same thing, though many people wrongly lump the two together. The origin of life problem is known as abiogenesis. We know little about it (but more than you think), but just because we do not know something yet does not mean that we should jump to a supernatural conclusion. That would just be a lazy excuse. Why stop there? Why not stop all scientific progress and just say god did it all? This is the very reason that methodological naturalism is the basis of all scientific study. No miracles allowed.

June 13, 2007 10:41 PM

J. K. Jones said...

shamelessly atheist,

Thank you for a thoughtful response.

Some ideas:

Science depends on rationality to proceed. Our rational thinking is based in part on the laws of logic. These laws are universal and unchanging.

God establishes logic because that is the way He thinks. That is the way he set up His universe. God's being and thinking do not change.

A Christian can provide an explanation for the universal laws of logic: an unchanging God upholds them in His being and knowledge. Randomness, convention, and observation of a changing world cannot account for an unchanging standard. Only an unchanging being can.

You must supply a logical alternative explanation for the universality of the laws of logic before we can even disagree on any subject.

Now you have to come up with an alternative hypothesis before the "experiment" begins, although I am not sure what hypothesis testing has to do with this discussion.

Second idea:

Evolution, if true, is a process. That process proceeds toward an end, namely the perfection of life. Random processes do not tend toward an end, or purpose. Only an intelligence can set up a process to do that. Natural selection itself is a part of the process (the feedback loop) that shows intelligent intent.

Evidence for any purpose whatsoever at any point anywhere demonstrates the existence of an intelligence to set that purpose. There is no "gap" here.

Third idea:

How does scientific naturalism establish the fact that "…methodological naturalism is the basis of all scientific study. No miracles allowed?"

If you still want to, we can discuss the Bible latter. But I have found that those discussions tend to degenerate into "my scholar trumps your scholar" very quickly. I do ask that you not neglect the last 100 years of archeologogical and historical research in your studies.

June 14, 2007 5:31 AM

Shamelessly Atheist said...

Don't you see what you just did? You arbitrarily invoke god: "God establishes logic because that is the way He thinks." Where is the empirical evidence behind this statement? Again, this is simply a god-of-the-gaps argument mixed with the argument from personal incredulity. This is how religion came into being. It was a primitive step in trying to understand our place and existence, but since the tools we now have weren't available deities were invented. In future we will have even better tools to answer these questions. We don't know how the universe came into being therefore it was due to a creator. Who created the creator? You can not arbitrarily stop the infinite regression at the creator.

Natural Selection is not at all purposeful. It shapes traits giving the appearance of design. If you select those traits that work better than others for a certain function (i.e., larger beaks on finches for breaking harder seeds), then birds with larger beaks will pass on those characteristics to the next generation. Natural Selection is blind without being random. Evo being random is a common and totally erroneous misconception. Evo does not proceed to some predetermined end at all. If the environment changes (and it always does), then the characteristics necessary for survival are continually in flux. There is no final endpoint, only what works today.

I've already explained why scientific naturalism (the proper term is methodological naturalism) does not allow the invocation of miraculous events. ALL Science stops if miracles are allowed. If you make an exception in one place you have no basis for which it can not be applied everywhere. Science ends because you now have an excuse to not look for the real answers. It is illogical to jump to the baseless conclusion of the supernatural. Gods were created to explain lightning and thunder, but have long since been known to be an insufficient answer. It is no different for invoking deities anywhere else.

So, how do we know that methodological naturalism works? Because it does. The reasoning is rather inductive, but that doesn't bother me. Just like we know that the sun will rise tomorrow because we have seen it rise so many, many times before, we know that naturalism will answer our questions if we keep pushing because Science has explained so much already. We may not ever be able to answer everything, but that doesn't bother scientists. Why? Because we would much rather say that we do not know than be intellectually dishonest and shrug it off as supernatural.

I do not ignore archaeological evidence at all. Take the story of Moses, for example. There is an utter paucity of evidence for the Jews being enslaved by the Egyptians, and 500,000 people don't wander anywhere, let alone the Sinai, without leaving mountains of evidence. Biblical archaeologists have scoured the Sinai clean in attempts to verify the Moses story and found nada. The Noah has no empirical basis and it is simply lunacy to believe it in light of what we now know. Millions and millions of species on a boat? We couldn't even come close to that with modern shipbuilding technology. It is exactly as one would expect from a priori knowledge that these are stories made up by humans. It was simply a bad local flood in a time the world didn't extend much beyond the horizon. What about Jesus? Sorry, there are no contemporary accounts of his existence at all. Even the history of it was wrong. There were many prophets at the time. You were nothing if you couldn't perform miracles. Apolonius of Tyrana was said to do the same things Jesus did, and he was just one of many. That the Jesus story was the only one that survives in popularity is not very impressive. I could go on and on and on. Religion simply doesn't bear close scrutiny and makes every effort to make sure no one does look too closely.

June 14, 2007 10:44 AM

J. K. Jones said...

"God establishes logic because that is the way He thinks." Where is the empirical evidence behind this statement?"

Laws of logic cannot be established through empirical evidence. They are abstract concepts. They don't exist out there somewhere where we can see them.

God is transcendent; that is, He is beyond the material universe and is its creator. God has originated the laws of logic because they are a reflection of His nature. Therefore, the laws of logic are absolute (or unchanging). The are unchanging because there is an unchanging God.
It sounds as if you are trying to force me to use the scientific method to explain the laws of logic. Logic is used to evaluate the evidence we see with our senses. It is, in one sense, thought about observations of the world. Using the scientific method to establish logic is a circular argument.
There are no gaps here because scientific observation can never prove an abstract law. It's a here and now thing, not a way back when thing.

"Who created the creator? You can not arbitrarily stop the infinite regression at the creator."

You cannot have an infinite regression of finite causes, either. The line of causes would never have been moved through to get to the things that exist now. The regress must stop with something, or someone, which has always existed.

"Natural Selection is blind without being random. Evo being random is a common and totally erroneous misconception. Evo does not proceed to some predetermined end at all. If the environment changes (and it always does), then the characteristics necessary for survival are continually in flux. There is no final endpoint, only what works today."

Thanks for educating me on the concept. Then the purpose of evolution is to improve life so it will survive in today's environment. Remember that the environment is part of the system to.

I still do not understand how "methodological naturalism" can establish its own truth claim. How does the empirical observation of the world we live in justify the claim that only scientific observation of the world we live in yields information? Saying that it works "Because it does." is a cop-out.

I'll leave the Bible and archeology stuff alone for now, but there are answers and there is evidence. I have been looking closely at my own religious beliefs for several years now, and they "bear close scrutiny."

June 15, 2007 2:23 PM

Shamelessly Atheist said...

So you agree, then, that there is no empirical evidence for a god(s). I would then consider the discussion closed, but I would doubt that you would be satisfied with this.

"You cannot have an infinite regression of finite causes, either." I'm not sure how this was relevant, but I believe you are referring to the fatally-flawed First Cause argument. The problem with this argument is that there are a number of processes which do not require any cause. These tend to lie within the quantum realm, such as radioactive decay and virtual particle formation/annhiliation. Current theoretical models place the formation of the universe also in the realm of quantum mechanics.

Why does everyone think that everything has to have a purpose? Evo has no purpose. It is BLIND. It has no agenda of its own. In fact, the universe is completely oblivious to what humans do, believe, etc. The vast majority of the universe is completely hostile to human life. It has no consciousness (regardless of what Deepak Chopra thinks), no purpose, no agenda. If we puny humans can't get our heads around that, the universe doesn't care. Who are we to be so arrogant as to think such a thing?

"Saying that it [methodological naturalism] works "Because it does." is a cop-out." Hardly. I'll admit that there is an element of faith in the idea that all phenomena can be explained through natural laws. But do you then include other forms of knowledge like the so-called 'inner knowledge'? There is nothing which says that this isn't a simple word substitution for 'belief'. David Hume made it very clear that we can not rely on our perceptions since these are continually being fooled. Optical illusions are a prime example of this sort of thing.

David Hume said it best: "If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, "Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?" No. "Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?" No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." In other words, anything based only on our feelings and 'inner knowledge' without experiment and empirical data to back it up is junk.

People that trust in their beliefs without empirical evidence to guide them end up believing in weird things, like near-death experiences. We actually know that these odd experiences are due to neuronal depolarization due to lack of oxygen. The exact same near-death experiences can be reproduced in centrifuges. Fighter pilots see this in training all the time.

Without empirical evidence, you can't talk intelligeably about anything, including god(s), simply because there is no data to work from. What I always find amusing when theists say that we can not know God's plan for us immediately speak volumes about said plan.

"...the laws of logic are absolute (or unchanging). The are unchanging because there is an unchanging God." Wow, now that statement is missing about a thousand intermediary steps. Prove it, or at least have some supporting data. It smacks of 'I can't think of why logic works, therefore there is a god.' That is horrible logic. Logic is a human invention based on how the universe works. The ultimate logic is mathematics. In this universe, 1+1=2. This may not be true in other universes, but it works for us.

If you think methodological naturalism can't establish itself, how do you know that there are indeed laws of logic? Same problem. In Science we use what works to explain phenomena. In fact, it's the ONLY thing that works. And it keeps on working, and working,... Science dies in the presence of metaphysics, because then any crackpot idea based on a feeling one has after eating cheese for breakfast goes. Saying 'goddidit' is just invoking intelligent design because we are stumped. But as I showed clearly in the blog, it is no explanation whatsoever. It provides no mechanism for observed phenomena.

This is a direct challenge: I would love you to explain to me how invoking a designer is at all scientific. Any hypothesis must have these attributes:

(i) has data in support
(ii) explains new data as it comes in (we'll skip this one for now)
(iii) makes testable predictions
(iv) is falsifiable

Missing any one of these attributes and it ceases to be Science. I'll tell you now that I have only the utmost disdain for non-empirical methods...

June 15, 2007 3:50 PM

J. K. Jones said...

"David Hume said it best: "If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, "Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?" No. "Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?" No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." In other words, anything based only on our feelings and 'inner knowledge' without experiment and empirical data to back it up is junk."

Faith is based on reason, not "inner knowledge." I have sound evidence from the world as it now exists for God's existence: the existence of undeniable uniform and absolute abstract laws like the laws of logic and mathematics.

Again, the claim that "only empirical evidence can establish truth" is itself an abstract truth that cannot be established through empirical evidence.

Have you ever studied Hume's skepticism regarding the uniformity of nature? He seems to have invalidated scientific endeavors. He said something about us not being able to say with confidence that the world will behave in the future the same way it did in the past. That destroys inductive reasoning, the basis for science.

Science requires the uniformity of nature, or that nature behaves in the future the way it did in the past. Hume says we cannot count on that.

"What I always find amusing when theists say that we can not know God's plan for us immediately speak volumes about said plan."

I find that amusing to. Like Mark Twain before me, it's not the parts of God's plan that I don't know that bother me. It's the parts I do know. The part about living a perfect life devoid of sin. The part about me not doing that. The part about having to humble myself and trust in Christ's death on the cross to pay the penalty for my sins. Christianity invalidates any false pride in my own morality and good works.

"The ultimate logic is mathematics."

I don't care which uniform and absolute set of laws we take first: logic or mathematics. They are both unchanging, invariant and abstract (not something we can find with the five senses). We could talk about the uniformity of nature in the same way.

These abstract laws are not the result of observable behavior of object or actions. We do not observe the laws of logic occurring in matter. Therefore, no law of logic can be observed by watching nothing. We assume that logic's laws work in order to evaluate scientific evidence.

The Christian theistic worldview can account for the laws of logic by stating that they come from God. God is transcendent; that is, He is beyond the material universe being its creator. God has originated the laws of logic because they are a reflection of His nature and thinking. Therefore, the laws of logic are absolute. They are absolute because there is an absolute God who upholds them.

"…how do you know that there are indeed laws of logic?"

Take one for instance: the law of non-contradiction. It says that something can not be both A and Non-A at the same time, in the same relationship, and in the same sense. You cannot deny this law. If you say "A can be both A and Non-A…" I could then interpret you as saying "A cannot be both A and Non-A…" The laws of logic are undeniable because to question them is to invoke them.

I am not here saying anything about a faith that is unreasonable or a 'blind leap.'

I do not accept the idea that a truth claim must be falsifiable for it to be reasonable. The laws of logic are not falsifiable in the sense of requiring empirical data to validate or invalidate them. Neither are the laws of mathematics or the uniformity of nature for that matter. All of these things must be assumed to be true to have scientific or empirical knowledge. We presuppose that their principles are necessarily true. We assume, for example, that nature will behave in the future the way it does in the past.
They are all established by an absolute God who designed His universe to exhibit these traits.

June 18, 2007 6:31 AM

Shamelessly Atheist said...

"Faith is based on reason, not "inner knowledge." I have sound evidence from the world as it now exists for God's existence: the existence of undeniable uniform and absolute abstract laws like the laws of logic and mathematics."

Bullshit! You have not established any connection between the two whatsoever!!! You are simply repeating yourself in the hopes that it might be true! I really see no connection at all! In fact, it is a complete tautology!

Such a statement is cause for me to ask if you are on medication for a psychological illness!

"The Christian theistic worldview can account for the laws of logic by stating that they come from God." Again, not explanatory. Just the insufficient 'goddidit'.

"I am not here saying anything about a faith that is unreasonable or a 'blind leap.'" Yes, you are, for the above stated reasons...

All I see is ad hoc ergo propter hoc and personal incredulity.

June 18, 2007 8:59 AM

God vs Evo - Last Installment

2007-06-20T13:18:00.000-07:00

Many of us that have looked at religious or anti-religious blog comments will have seen this inanity: "If there were no god nothing would stop me from killing and raping" or some similar idiocy. I have news for people that believe this crap. Morality is innate. This has been well-demonstrated scientifically. If you want to review the literature on the subject, I highly recommend reading Marc Hauser's Moral Minds.

It not only totally confounds me, but insults me to no end this idiotic, stupid and dispicable belief that people chose to believe Evo to be the path that life took must be immoral. Why is this belief prevalent? Kent Hovind espoused this crap and look where he is. Don't bend over for the soap, Kent. Believers think this to be the case because they believe that atheists must be denying god even though for some reason we know god exists. Evo is part of our denial. This silly and prejudiced belief is born of arrogance. How can anybody not believe god exists when I 'know' he does? This so-called 'inner knowledge' is synonumous with belief, and is therefore not knowledge at all. Knowledge requires evidence, for which there is (again) none. The internet show The Things That Matter Most did a whole show entitled Evidence for God Within Our Souls and Desires without ever first providing evidence for the very existence of the thing they are using to provide evidence for God!

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Creationists deny the Science behind Evo at every turn! I've shown clearly that creationism is born of ignorance. In the 21st century, this is inexcusable. The new form of ignorance is so-called 'intelligent design', an idea completely devoid of substance. There is no Science here, folks. Who designed life? How was life designed? How was the design implemented? Without answers to these questions, you are essentially left with goddidit. Empty and vacuous.

Don shows he is no different, and I was absolutely insensed by his quoting Julian Huxley. Don has, to his credit, apologized (I'm not sure he knows exactly what for, though), but this is irrelevant. He believes this travesty, and so has raised my ire... We begin yet again with the last part in this series.

"The world's leading evolutionist, the late Sir Julian Huxley, grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley (Darwin's Bulldog) and brother of Aldous Huxley, once said on the Merv Griffin show that scientists would have not been so ready to accept Darwin's theory of evolution except for the fact that the idea of God was not compatible with their sex mores." Now Don has really pissed me off. What he implied is that those that accept Evolution are really just looking for an excuse to remove God from their lives and deny God's existence, even though they know somewhere in their minds that God exists.

Let me tell you something, Don,. I don't just deny God's existence, I have absolutely no thought as to God's existence until some theist tries to convince me otherwise. In essence, anyone that believes as 'Sir' Julian Huxley, that atheists use Evo as an excuse to be 'wicked', is projecting their prejudice and bigotry onto their inability to understand atheism. Kent Hovind said as much in a debate with Prof. Pagliucci that I blogged about some time ago. I find it ironic (and not without some self-satisfaction, I'm embarrassed to admit. Well, no, but I have to say that…) that I am where I am, and he is where he is now. I have actually had someone ask me on my blog, what I did that I don't feel that I can be forgiven for? My reply is 'Nothing. What did you do that you feel YOU need to be forgiven for?' Religiosity of a society has been shown to have a direct link to crime, spousal and child abuse. Yet, I would not stoop to call religious people wife-beating, child molesting criminals. I would not even say that religion is a cause for these undesirable activities. That would be an improper conclusion. 'Sir' Julian Huxley can (figuratively) go to hell.

I'm not looking to be saved, nor am I looking to for myself. I know who and what I am. I like my life. You say that Christians are supposed to 'witness' (what were they witness to?) and not coerce, but the two look very much the same. America seems well on its way to making that dream a reality. I have seen the faces of evil, and they look a lot like Jim Baker, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart and the late Jerry Falwell, amongst a host of others. People that have created corporations selling fear of what will happen in an afterlife they have no idea even exists. Hope does not beget reality.

I must admit, your engineer friend did change my mind about one thing: Sam Harris is right. I now realize that the PC attitude I had towards religion is only an invitation to be trampled by Believers. To quote Christopher Hitchens, 'Religion becomes philosphy as astrology becomes astronomy.' It is my fervent hope that this happens.

Your friend asked how I will handle death. As Mark Twain is attributed as saying, "I do not fear death, in view of the fact that I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." Amen. Atheism makes one realize that the one life we have is precious and by extension we understand that everyone's life is precious. I'm not so sure religion promotes this, particularly those with the promise of an afterlife, as I have seen ample evidence to the contrary. I'll keep my atheism, thank you.

I just don't see a point in any further response. But I will keep listening to your show [The Things That Matter Most]. I am very pleased that you do not limit yourself to Believers as many would do, and many of your guests (believers or not) have been quite interesting. I'm looking forward to the interview with Vic Stenger.

Randy Tyson

God vs Evo - Part III

2007-06-19T12:27:00.000-07:00

So how does an engineer come to believe that life was designed, discarding a heck of a lot of data to the contrary, as well as a perfectly good explanation? It didn't take a lot of thinking. The first is obvious. Having grown up in a religious setting makes for a prediliction of seeing design in life. We often borrow ideas from nature and incorporate them into things we actually do design. The mind is prepared by both a religious upbringing and a career in engineering to see design. But nature does what works, discarding things that don't. This creates an illusion of design.

Remember, 99% of all species that have ever lived on this planet are long gone. We see a progression of complexity everywhere we look. The eye is more complex in new species than in phyla which have been around longer. The brain of humans is more complex than that of a chimpanzee, but not dissimilar. There are so many examples that I could give, but other authors have said it better elsewhere. Common descent is the only explanation for the similarities and the dissimilarities that we see.

Anyhow, back to the battle. I left off with Don attempting to tell me that atheists want minority rule....

It is instructive to look at a more secular society in comparison. From here in The Great White North, we look southward and see politicians tripping over each other in their eagerness to demonstrate that they are more religious than their opponents (it's embarrassing to watch…); we see biblical references in what should be secular institutions like judicial buildings even though neither your legal system or ours has anything to do with them and the law must be for everyone, not just Believers; we see official favoritism towards Christian groups even though the First Amendment was placed in your own constitution to prevent that very thing. That's just for a start.

In Canada, no one running for public office either expresses their religiosity or questions that of others; we do not place obviously divisive symbols representing only one group (and thereby giving that group preferential treatment) in our public institutions. I was asked to take an oath last year. In Canada, there are different oaths depending on whether you are theist or atheist. Both are equally legally binding. This kind of accommodation hurts no one and at the same time does not show any favoritism. It works incredibly well and completely circumvents the current hiccups in the American system due to theocratic 'reforms'. I was not a vocal atheist at all until my eyes were opened by people like Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and their intolerant ilk. We don't have them up here, yet there are many theist politicians in Canada. It just doesn't matter to us unless their religiosity starts to become policy. It's not that we don't care about beliefs, it's just that we accept that everyone is an individual and we go out of our way to accommodate widely varying beliefs. As a result, we have almost completely avoided the problems that occur when religion is mixed with politics. We have seen what happens when societies become theocratic. Life under the Taliban was truly repressive, and if you don't think that America can end up that way you are kidding yourself.

I was surprised that Don didn't bring up Michael Behe's concept of irreducible complexity, though he does list his book as reading material at the end. The only thing as discredited as the concept of irreducible complexity (demolished even before the book was published) was his atrocious and laughable testimony at the Kitzmiller trial. Behe can't even be bothered to keep up with the relevant literature, so how can he be taken seriously? Contrary to Don's belief, there is no conspiracy in Science to keep ID out of the journals. From Science classes, yes, but that's because ID contains no Science. It's vacuous. The trick to getting published is to present positive evidence for something, not negative evidence against something else. ID has no positive evidence in its favor and Judge Jones recognized this in the Kitzmiller trial. The only place where Evo is in crisis is in the court of public opinion and the Disco Institute has done a remarkable, if harmful, job of it. The US is the laughing stock of the world, ranking second only to Turkey in rejecting Evo.

In essence, and as usual, the sum total of evidence presented for design was zilch, unless you count "I am an engineer. I know design when I see it. This is design." This sums up the ID position in toto. The rest just seems to be twisted attacks on Evo, which is to say, not evidence at all.

And since he spoke of Newton, perhaps the greatest mind in history, Newton found the inclusion of God unnecessary in his Principia till he hit a snag. He couldn't get the planetary system to stabilize in his math, so what did he do? You guessed it. He invokes God. Perturbation theory solved the problem later on, of course. I mention this because it shows that even the greatest minds jump to a supernatural conclusion when they find that they can't explain something. God has always been the God-of-the-gaps. Your friend himself retreats into this trap himself several times. For instance, he says "If evolutionists know that life evolved from non-life why don't they create life in the laboratory." (He never did answer my question as to why a designer would incorporate a broken enzyme into the design. There are a lot of other reasons, all in a similar vein, to reject the design hypothesis- the eye (wired backwards), the ureter (makes a rather unnecessarily circuitous route), etc. As an engineer, I'm surprised that he has missed all this. I mean, what kind of designer throws away 99% of his designs after he builds them? "if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck….", you fire the duck's ass for incompetence.)

As to the complexity of the brain, I don't know enough about devo to answer his criticism properly. But then, neither does he to have made it in the first place. (I've asked a devo specialist for insight into this...) But I do know that the brain does self-assemble under biochemical control, which places it under the purview of Evo (actually, Evo/Devo). A great deal is known about brain development, and none of the explanations involve magic. My limited understanding that chemical signaling is important, which means that the timing of when genes are turned on and off is critical in terms of the final outcome. A gene for consciousness, you ask? There isn't one, of course. Don seems to maintain this strawman view of Evo – one gene, one trait. There are a couple of reasons why mathematics is a bad way of dealing with Evo. First, Evo simply doesn't lend itself well to mathematics, though it is used in simulating it with computer modeling. Second, there aren't many (if any) mathematicians out there that are also well-versed in the nuances of Evo. Evo is not for the faint of heart (or mind), and William Dumbski [sic] especially seems utterly incapable of understanding it. Spend less time trying to prove that brain development is magic and more time looking at how it does in fact develop. And Don wonders why I think mathematicians without training in Biology (like Dumbski [sic]) should stick to mathematics.

"Science is built on truth not consensus," Don said. Sort of, but I'm not sure what truth means. Is truth the observation? It's certainly not theories. Truth is an absolute. Scientific theories are provisional hypotheses which: explain the current data; explain data obtained after positing the hypothesis; makes testable predictions; and is falsifiable. Theories model reality (truth). In discussing the current thinking about a particular theory, it is often useful (as in the case of Evo) to poll the experts. Each individual expert, however, judges the validity of the theory according to the characteristics that I have just listed. Truth is the ideal goal, but I don't think that any scientific theory has accomplished this. Pretty much everything he wrote was just a rehash of failed apologetics mixed in with Disco Institute PR releases (which is all they have ever produced on ID).

Don brings up the old 'evil atheist' list. But the implied insult to all atheists is that old canard of the evil atheist list, and I took it personally. Very personally. Is he saying that I am prone to mass murder? That in being an atheist, I am evil? Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler... Wait - Hitler? Sorry, while ideologues all with personal ambition (to the point where they were really promoting religions without a deity), Hitler was a THEIST. He was born and raised Catholic (and tellingly never excommunicated) and said often that in his final solution he was doing God's work. I would not insult any Believer with a list of theists that committed atrocities in the name of religion, even though the body count would be far higher my list, starting with numerous characters in the Bible, to de Torquemada, to Jim Jones, to David Karesh, to Paul Hill. (Ooops. That's a list, isn't it?) I don't like to speak in biblical terminology, but if there is such a thing as evil, Jerry Falwell (a man who promoted hatred and fear in his followers) would be my candidate as its personification. George Bush Sr. knowingly allowed 500,000-1,000,000 Iraqis (the estimate provided to the White House by the NSA) to die due to ineffective sanctions post-first Gulf War. All he had to do was give the Shiites and Kurds ammo and Hussein (a man Bush himself helped to power) would have been toppled with far less loss of life. Not ideal, but far better than what actually occurred. Most of those sanction victims were children. That puts him in amongst the top killers of all time, but history is written by the victors. After all that killing by proxy, I don't remember George acknowledging his atheism. In fact he has been quoted as saying he doesn't think atheist Americans should be considered citizens. How Christian of him.

I live a very moral life, though my morals and ethics may be different from yours and your friend's, I will put them up against anyone else's for comparison any time. I would much prefer to speak of those atheists that have done something with their lives, like Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln (probably a deist, but certainly not a Christian), Thomas Paine (a deist, but with significant atheist leanings), Oscar Wilde, Albert Camus, Isaac Asimov and many, many others, as I would of theists that have performed similar works. Religion is no guarantee of morality. The Bible itself condones slavery (amongst other unsavory behaviors), something that today we find reprehensible. To make that list and recite it to me, your friend made my case for me against religion. I am dismayed, despondent and insulted beyond measure by the response. The Evolution of our species (and others, it has been found) has resulted in an innate set of moral rules. The so-called Golden Rule is just a codification of this. Mere babies will behave in accordance to this rule, far younger than they could have been taught it, or acknowledge the existence of God. Science has at every turn peeled back the layers of religious belief till there is essentially nothing left but denial.

In the final part, Don shows his true baseless prejudice against atheists (and pissed me off) when he quotes Julian Huxley....

God vs. Evo Part II

2007-06-13T09:38:00.000-07:00

I just realized something last night. I really should have asked these people if I could put the communications I have had with Lael and Don up on my blog. It never occurred to me till now to do that, and for that I do apologize, but seeing as it's a bit of a fait accompli....

One thing you will clearly notice with creationists in general is the selective change in standards of evidence used for and against anything related to religion and its war on Science. For instance, yesterday my comments about the complete and utter lack of evidence for the biblical Jesus. There are no contemporary sources accounting Jesus' life (Josephus wasn't even born yet and there are major problems with using Tacitus, since it is likely that not only did he NOT write anything about Jesus, that the writing was done much later and someone attempted to attribute the authorship to him), no corroboration of the 'historical' account (there was no census taken at the time of Jesus' birth, except one that was NOT done by Pontius Pilate, and that one some time prior to even the earliest possible birth date, no Massacre of the Innocents is recorded anywhere but the Bible, no accounts outside of biblical codices of even his existence). With Caesar, we have the man's own words, the dedications to him and an unbroken history of political rulership which includes him. We have none of this with Jesus.

I mentioned yesterday that Don keeps demanding hard scientific evidence to refute the at-first-glance impressive odds against life-by-natural causes, while thinking that anecdotal evidence of people saying they saw something that might be Noah's Ark is the motherload of proof! What's needed in any discussion like this is an evidentiary standard that encompasses both positions. A good start would be a framework that has already shown itself to work, so let's try the legal framework. Jesus: No substantiation or corroborating evidence, no eyewitness accounts, no physical evidence. In short nothing. Noah, Moses and David fall short as well. Evo, on the other hand, has comparative morphology, paleontology and molecular genetic evidence all corroborating each other under one framework theory. Kind of tough to dispute it, but Don tries. He mentions the finding of a fossil fish that pushes back the earliest date of this form of complex life and claims that by altering our timeline as we must do in this situation makes Evo unfalsifiable. Sorry, but that's bullshit. I did know of this recent finding. Was I worried? No, because even though it did indeed change the timeline, but IT DID NOT FORCE AN OUT-OF-ORDER SEQUENCE. If you find a fossil rabbit in the Cambrian, then we've got a problem and ToE is falsified. Not only is Science not dogma, it continually works towards divesting itself of dogma.

Don mentions Simon Greenleaf's conclusion after viewing all the evidence that the Ascention actually occurred is hardly impressive in the light that he came from a very religious family (that all the family members had biblical names was a bit of a clue) and his standard of evidence was likely to have lowered in favor of inclusion rather than exclusion of questionable sources. Kinda like Don...

On to Part II....

(Continuing from "Don attempts to tell me...")

that Christians were the founders of Science. Baloney! Ask Galileo (persecuted for scientific conclusions not held by the Church), Descartes (forced into fleeing to the Netherlands by religious authority), Hypatia (murdered by a Christian mob incited by "Saint" Bernard) and others what religion thought of their scientific advances. Early scientists professed their Christianity, therefore Christianity was responsible for the invention of modern Science?!? This is spurious logic. We don't know how many of them were actually atheists. Those that professed their disbelief had a nasty tendency to be murdered by religious authority. These men were thinkers in spite of religion, NOT because of it, and it was Christianity that tried to suppress their work and do them bodily harm. Hypatia (from what little we know of her she was a remarkable woman) was flayed alive with abalone shells by a Christian mob! Christianity has an uninterrupted history of suppressing knowledge. For instance, the church even attempted to suppress the invention of the printing press! Far be it for the church to allow the common man to read the scriptures! They might start thinking about it for themselves! For once they were right. The Bible has turned more people to atheism than anything else. Besides, it was the ancient Greeks, not Christians, which started the modern process of Science. Islam had at one time a much better record than Christianity for fostering modern scientific thought. The word 'algebra' and most star names are of Arabic origin, and we use Arabic numerals.;

that there are real prophecies in the bible even though every last one is either self-fulfilling or fulfilled within the biblical text. Sam Harris has likened the latter are much like prophecies made in The Fellowship of the Ring coming to fruition in The Return of the King! C'mon, every generation since the beginning of Christianity thought that the prophecies were being fulfilled and that they were in the End Times! They aren't at all specific and require 'interpretation', just like Nostradamus'. Let's put this claim that all these prophecies have come to fruition to the test. Remember, I only need to show one failure. How about Ezekiel's Tyre prophecy (Ezek. 26: 1-11; 29:17-20)? Tyre was supposed to have been destroyed. A quick look at a map will show where Tyre still stands. He also predicts that Babylon would conquer Egypt. I don't think that one will ever be fulfilled for some reason... As a prophet, Ezekiel, well, sucked. Utterly. And forget the Book of Daniel prophecies, since scholars agree that it was written in ca. 165 BCE and not 6th cent. BCE that it claims, and thus simply wrote prophecy through the eyes of then recent history. Looked good while the fraud lasted, though. The list just goes on and on and on. A full (and very long) list of failed prophecies is available at The Skeptic's Bible. I'd like to see one, just one so-called prophecy that wasn't self-fulfilling, unambiguous, doesn't require 'interpretation' and wasn't made after the event actually took place. Just one.

implying that Einstein was correct when he said God does not play dice when time has shown us that Bohr was correct and God does indeed gamble. I'm not sure where Don is going with this quote, other than continuing his disingenuous quote mining. Einstein's 'god' has absolutely no relation to an Abrahamic god, or any personal god. He was quite clear on that subject. In 1935 Einstein, Rosen and Podolsky proposed an experiment called the 'EPR paradox' in a vain attempt to refute Quantum Mechanics, the results of which they thought were impossible. It's unfortunate that Einstein never lived to see the results of the actual experiment, for which Einstein's 'impossible' outcome was indeed observed. I like to think that he would have dropped his objections to QM having seen the results.;

that because we have so few transitional fossils that Evo is discredited (without accounting for the actual many transitional forms that have been found. Can anyone say bird? horse? whale? etc.?). I'm not a big fan of Stephen Gould (the more I learn about him the less I like him), but he may have been correct about punctuated equilibrium (the debate goes on). However, this was so obviously a quote mine. Gould may very well have said "We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.", yet he remained a scientist staunchly committed to the study Evolution right through to his death. I frown greatly upon quote mining, and Don does this all over the place.;

that there is some sort of crisis in biology over Evo (You have GOT to be kidding me. I'm in the field and have never heard one peep about it till now...). I think I saw that book in a store last summer and on the jacket the promo started with 'There is a quiet controversy…', at which I started laughing [you might remember that incident in McNally-Robinson, Boomer]. It's so quiet it's silent.;

that "Christ commanded Christians to be witnesses not coercive." WHAT!?!?!? Coercion doesn't have to involve putting someone to torture. It means attempting to subvert them to your belief in any way, INCLUDING 'WITNESSING'! There is a double standard here. When Believers 'witness' it is not only acceptable, but many think it is commanded by their god. When atheists try to reason with Believers about the illogical nature of their (blind) faith, whoa, Nelly! That's evil! The only thing that atheists have ever wanted was to have a level playing field. Even most of the militant ones. Why do you think they went militant? If theists respected nontheists (or believers in religions other than their own) they would see how their views of how things should work impinge on them. Putting the Ten Commandments in a secular building is favoritism towards a group, in this case the Christians (the Ten Commandments were indeed NOT the basis for the legal system, but rather has Hammurabi to thank for its basis.) Let's face it. It is the Christian right that is doing all the trampling, NOT atheists.

"Atheists don't want minority rights, they want minority rule." Bullshit. The way I see it, the Christian right wants a theocracy, and all others (including, but not limited to, atheists) are simply fighting for their survival. Debbie Schlussel believes that freedom of religion does not include freedom from religion, something I doubt the Founding Fathers intended the First Ammendment to mean. Ann Coulter- well, no one gives a hoot what that guy thinks. Doesn't anybody see the danger inherent in this kind of intolerance? Such a slippery slope leads to the logical conclusion of returning to the days where nonbelievers, or believers in other religions, were oppressed. What Don mistakes for an attempt at 'minority rule' is simply the inevitable (and well-deserved) backlash of those that the religious right has wronged. The religious right has had it coming for some time now.

I talk a bit about our significantly more secular (for now) society, whether or not Science is about Truth and comment on the 'impossible' complexity of the brain in Part III.

My ongoing conversation with the religious at The Things That Matter Most...

2007-06-11T14:09:00.001-07:00

Well, anyone that is still with me after reading that monstrous, convoluted blog entry of yesterday is truly hardcore. For those who have not read the prior blog entry on this, it is necessary to at least refer to it to fully understand this and the next several entries. I'm going to give people a bit of a break and separate my response out into several parts. I'd like to say that these things are labors of love, but I don't think the word 'love' is appropriate. Certainly, they're not my usual cup of tea, since I like to pick a topic, write succinctly and clearly on that without going off on tangents, and not bore/confuse you poor readers to death.

I don't know that I will ever send this off to Don Ortloff (via Lael Arrington), but I will post it here. The quote mining of Don's I ignored, as I did the anecdotal emotionalistic claptrap at the end designed to try to convert me. To quote Bugs Bunny, 'He don't know me vewy well, do he?' It begins.....

Don:

plays the same invalid numbers game that Dembski plays. William Dumbski [sic] has been thoroughly debunked elsewhere and in the interests of brevity I won't get into it here. All one has to do is google it. Suffice it to say that these number games are self-interested convoluted methods of promoting the argument from personal incredulity that show no more than that DNA sequences could not arise through random chance. Fancy that. ToE says the same thing. The massive fallicies in his arguments have been pointed out to William Dumbski [sic], yet he continues to say things like 'we can not explain cellular machinery without invoking a purposeful design' and then usually brings forth Behe's example of the bacterial flagellum when it has been shown clearly in the literature how in fact the bacterial flagellum could evolve. This makes Dumbski a LIAR. He wants you to believe that a non-purposeful evolutionary process is the same thing as saying it is random. Bullshit. Natural Selection is anything BUT random.;

tries to tell me that Tacitus and Josephus were contemporary sources on Jesus. It is in doubt as to whether Tacitus even was the author of the missive on Jesus, and neither Tacitus nor Josephus had even been born before the supposed Ascention! I reiterate: there are no contemporary accounts of the Jesus/Horus myth! As for the existence of Caesar and why his existence is (now) accepted without question, scholars had long ago established from numerous sources (not all literary) that Caesar was a genuine personage. The reason no on questions his existence is that his existence was established long ago. At least we have Caesar's own writings, which is much more than we have for Jesus. Unlike for Julius Caesar's life, the data surrounding Jesus' birth, life and death is completely uncorroborated even though records from the period are available.;

hypocritically accepts hearsay data of the absurd account of Noah and the flood, and then asks for 'real' evidence for Evo (which he doesn't accept anyway). People say that they have seen reminants of the Ark (you mean that geological formation that people keep mistaking for the Ark?) and finding a bit of wood of approximately the right age. Yes, there was wood, even in the time of Noah. Of course, the whole myth is just a retelling of Ziusudra and the flooding of the Euphrates in ca. 2900 BCE for which we actually have evidence of the event. The same can not be said for poor Noah, nor for the myth of Moses and the Exodus, nor for....;

tries to tell me that the 2nd law of thermodynamics can be applied to preclude the generation of order in an open system (He's trying to snow a Chemist with this?! Boy, was he barking up the wrong tree.);

that asymmetric synthesis is impossible without direction when all that is required is a surface for one optical isomer to be preferred in a reaction. The synthesis of one optical isomer of dl-pairs, such as l-amino acids, over their . l- and not their mirror image d-amino acids are exclusively the building blocks of enzymes, yet have identical physical properties. (asymmetric synthesis is big money in the pharmaceutical industry, which according to him isn't possible);

that Evolution includes the origin of life in its theory, when abiogenesis is a completely different problem. The only relationship between the two is temporal – abiogenesis had to occur before Evo could start its work. We've come a long way since the Stanley-Urey experiment. This is primary evidence that Don has never read anything on Evo outside of Christian 'Science' lit;

that behavior has no biochemical basis (in answer to his question of what part of the genome governs emotions like love, a number of biochemicals like oxytocin, the genes that encode their synthesizing enzymes and the genes which control their activation come to mind immediately) and therefore cannot be under evolutionary control (I would like to know how he then explains the observed genetic changes in the Russian silver fox experiment of Dmitri Belyaev if genetics play no role in behavior, where silver foxes were bred for either tameness or viciousness). Your friend seems to think that one gene-one enzyme is how DNA works. It does not. Genes interact, sometimes in unpredictable was (definitely the case in the Belyaev experiment, unintentionally resulting in changes to coat color and tail stiffness). Emotions such as love are just as likely to develop as fear. Co-operative behavior is just as effective in species which use social coherence as a survival strategy as the fight-or-flight response, even in tooth-and-claw natural selection (there is no such thing as Darwinism). None of this takes away from the actual feeling of love itself or makes it any less wonderful. Again evidence that Don has never read anything on Evo outside of the Disco Institute's official reading list (which means all he knows of Evo is the usual strawman the Diso Insitute disingenuously touts);

Part II tomorrow....

Calgary succumbs to forces of nature

2007-06-07T13:36:00.000-07:00

I was away for a few days in Edmonton on a very successful attempt to implement automated shimming on a high-field MRI system. I'm quite proud of this, since I did all the work from developing the pulse sequence to analysis and shim correction. The only thing I haven't done because of a lack of expertise is actually doing the change in shim values.

Then I came home Tuesday evening and ran into a rather nasty storm. On Deerfoot Trail, the main route into Calgary, was backed up and I could see the northbound lanes were blocked by police. I thought it was a nasty accident, as I could see debris on the road, and people going my way were rubber-necking. But as I drew closer I realized that what I thought was road was a new lake, and the debris was all that was left of car roofs! We had over 700 mm of rain that evening and the light show was fantastic. Two people were struck by lightning (a la Caddyshack), but are expected to recover. Traffic is still being affect due to washouts of major interchanges in the city.
UPDATE: June 8 - The ramp to eastbound Glenmore at 14th St. SW is still closed due to washout. The rainfall Tuesday evening was 72 mm. That's double the previous record of 36.6 mm!

A new bundle of joy in our household....

2007-05-31T06:45:00.001-07:00

I picked up our new puddy late yesterday from the SPCA, a little 2-lb. ball of orange striped fluff that we have given the name Timbit. (Only fellow Canucks and a very few privileged Yanks will undersand the reference.) The current kings of the household, Murphy and Omar, don't quite know how to deal with the fuzzy ball of energy yet, but I did witness Timbit chasing Murphy-the-13-lb-coward this morning. Needless to say, I didn't get all that much sleep last night. Welcome to the family, Timbit!

My ongoing discussion with The Things That Matter Most...

2007-05-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

Those of my blog readers that have been with me for a while may remember a discussion I had with one of the hosts of the internet program The Things That Matter Most, Lael Arrington. I took her to task in her interview with Sam Harris. (For a Christian program, they are surprisingly broad-minded in who they interview.) Some of their comments I vehemently objected to. To my surprise, I got a response. I rebutted and Lael apparently sent it off to an engineer friend of hers, Don Ortloff. While I have no reason to believe that Lael's belief is anything other than honest, I can not say the same for Don. Just reading his comments made my blood pressure go through the roof. For some reason he felt that I would be impressed by his credentials (MEng). Not bloody likely. I have him beat, hands down, with a PhD. His comments were the usual parroting of the Disco Institutes invalidated bullshit plus the usual anti-atheist Christian fundamentalist apologetics. I was enraged. If you can think for yourself, you will see what I mean by reading the twisted half-truths, the quote mining, the numbers games and the usual arguments from personal incredulity.

But when he trotted out the tired old list of evil atheists, that is a personal insult. It implies that I, and every other atheist, am continually fighting off urges to commit mass murder. This is hardly the case. But let's get one thing straight, theists: HITLER WAS A BELIEVER! There is every reason to believe, from both his speeches and writings, that he believed in a personal god. It also glosses over the potential list I could throw back in his face (and I will) of theist monsters. Anybody want to take a bet that my list will be longer and bloodier than his? He considers de Torquemada an aberration and not the norm for his time!

My brother has pointed out that Don also says that the Golden Rule is not innate and God must be in your life to hold sway (this is farther down than I was willing to read for the time being). This asinine belief has long since been blown out of the water. One just has to read Moral Minds and the references therein. Empathy isn't even unique to our species!

Anyway, before I have a heart attack or do go out on a violent religion-induced rampage, here is the full missive. My original comments are in black, Lael's response to those in red, my rebuttal to those in blue, and Don Ortloff's stupidity, arrogance, ignorance and prejudism in green. It's long, I know, so have a coffee and a donut while you read. I will have a full rebuttal in a later blog, don't you worry....

Randy, I have passed our exchange along to a friend, Don Ortloff whose comments are in green.
Sorry for the delay but I thought you still might be interested in seeing them.

Lael

My original email with Lael's comments in red, my rebuttals in blue… I will update this as it gets
edited. Any comments to add would be welcome and I will send this off when I am satisfied with it.

I'm listening to your show of Feb 25 right now and I suggest you folks look up the definition of 'faith'
again. Webster (your purported source) defines 'faith' as:

1 a : allegiance to duty or a person : LOYALTY b  (1) : fidelity to one's promises  (2) : sincerity of
intentions;

2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b
(1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust;

3 : something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially a system of religious
beliefs.

I see nothing here about 'justifiable belief'....

Your atheist guest was well spoken. We do not need to prove the non-existence of an exceptional
proposition.

The point I was trying to make was that "In the beginning were the particles" is a statement of
belief without proof. I remain unclear as to why this does not agree with both of our dictionaries'
primary and secondary definitions of faith.

The default position is the non-existence of said proposition. If there is a complete paucity of
evidence for the existence of god (and by all accounts, an Abrahamic god is a BIG effect), then it
can be concluded that god does not exist (any pseudoscientific claims to the contrary, like the
illusion of a fine-tuned universe (it most definitely is not, as it is very hostile to life), aside).

Reasoning without evidence is irrational. Beliefs based on feelings and not physical evidence is
irrational.

I believe that I have thoughts. I cannot open my brain and find any physical evidence for my
thoughts themselves, only their effects. Postmodernists are increasingly rejecting empiricism as the
only reliable source of knowledge. And in this we agree. Neuro-scientists tell us that our brains
process millions perhaps even billions of bits of information. But the bits that penetrate and stick
usually have some affective connection.

The more emotional impact in which empirical information is "wrapped" the more we tend to
remember it. Were learning that our brains do not assimilate information in an emotional vacuum.
Quite the contrary. Our feelings have a great deal to do with our beliefs. Many people with injuries to
brain regions that process emotions result in people not being able to reason well. See Daniel
Golman's Emotional Intelligence.

We do indeed have a significant body of evidence for the existence of thought (aside from the
obvious 'I think therefore I am' (the logic of which has actually been shown to have significant
flaws)) that have provided, even at this very early stage in this Science, models for the production
of thought. However, what you have written does not change my conclusion that reasoning without
evidence is irrational. I know when I decide that something is incorrect based on a feeling I am often
the one that is wrong. Being correct by relying on feelings is coincidence, and I see no reason to
praise that.

The brain is composed of 12 billions cells (neurons) each connected with 10,000 to 100,000 other
neurons for a total of 120 trillion to one quadrillion interconnections.

One quadrillion is 1,000,000,000,000,000.  Each interconnection deals with a specific function,
whether thought, motor function, emotion or whatever.  Millions of years is not nearly enough time
for it to have evolved by random mutation and natural selection.  I am a mechanical engineer.  I
have a Master of Science in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.  For
things I design to work the numbers have to add up.  Biological evolutionists ignore mathematics and
just like to philosophize.  Their arguments are always qualitative and not quantitative.  Millions of
years sounds like a long time so random mutation and natural selection must be able to do anything! 
Like Thomas Henry Huxley’s monkeys banging out Shakespeare’s plays on typewriters.  Impossible!  
Like Sir Karl Popper, the world’s leading philosopher of science said, evolution is metaphysical and
unfalsifiable.  So it doesn’t even qualify as a scientific theory.

The weakest form of evidence in a court of law eyewitness evidence,

On the contrary, eyewitness testimony will put a man in the electric chair as well as DNA evidence.

Ask any lawyer if eyewitness testimony will ever trump properly-obtained physical evidence. The
answer is most definitely no. Eyewitness testimony is quite mutable. The longer a witness has to
wait before giving testimony the less reliable it is. Many verdicts have been overturned on the basis
of physical evidence that was unavailable at the time. Not so many because of eyewitness testimony.
This is moot, though, since…

which we don't even have because there are absolutely no eyewitness accounts of Jesus.

It depends on what you mean by, "accounts." For example, many credible biblical scholars believe
that Christ's apostle John wrote the epistle attributed to him where he writes, 1 John 1:

 1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,
which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life-

 2 the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal
life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us-

 3 that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship
with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. John was
eyewitness to both Jesus' transfiguration and his resurrection.

And many others, even as early as the 2^nd century CE, have disputed the claim that it was John.
The most often accepted date for this codex is in fact 90 CE. I would have thought that if god
wanted to be believed that something more than a book (which has been translated umpteen times
into many versions with many translational errors). It makes no sense, even from the point of view of
free will. You wouldn't base your beliefs on the contents of the National Enquirer, so why this?

The Bible is the word of god only because it says so, which is a bit of a tautology. I mean, if the
manual for my car said that it could fly, I think I'd like some evidence to back that up. Taking the
Bible as truth without independent confirmation is dangerous. You end up with people like Paul Hill.

There are hundreds of times as many New Testament manuscripts as manuscripts about Julius
Ceasar, Sophocles, Pliny the Younger, etc. and the New Testament Manuscripts are many hundreds
of years closer to the originals than any secular documents, yet these secular documents are never
questioned by historians.

Historian Alfred North Whitehead said “Christianity is the mother of science” because Scientists,
including Sir Isaac Newton, believed that the universe was created by a reasonable God and that
man through reason could discover God’s creation.  The German astronomer Johannes Kepler said of
his discoveries that he was just “thinking God’s thoughts after him.”  Even Einstein was not an
atheist.  He told Niels Bohr, criticizing his theory of quantum mechanics, that “God almighty does not
throw dice.”

Any belief in any deity is BLIND FAITH. Period.

You overlook a great deal of empirical evidence from textual criticism, archaeology, biology, physics,
etc. Part of our mission on The Things That Matter Most is to review this evidence with experts who
are knowledgeable in these fields. All our conversations are on our web site. Interestingly we taped
an interview this week with a best-selling author who focuses on the persuasiveness of non-empirical
evidence for faith in Christ, the evidence within our own souls: our cravings for love (not just sex),
destiny or purpose, and meaning. The show will be aired on Sunday.

There are many events that are only verifiable in the bible, lacking any independent verification at all.
There is absolutely no archaeological evidence for the exodus. Jericho was not even settled at the
time Joshua blew his trumpet. There is no record of Harod ordering the massacre of the innocents,
no record of a census at the time of Jesus' supposed birth, or even that David and his powerful
kingdom existed, and the list goes on. So how can textual criticism be accurately applied when you
have to pick and choose (arbitrarily it seems) what is and isn't correct? Do Biology and Physics in
support of the existence of god? Hardly. More on that later.

These events are not unverifiable.  Have you ever heard of Immanuel Velikovsky and read his books
Worlds in Collision, Earth in Upheaval, and Ages in Chaos?  He was certainly no Christian and was
scorned by the scientific establishment yet gave much evidence for the Exodus.  He just tried to
give a natural explanation for the plagues.  The walls of Jericho were discovered to have been
flattened outwardly as though by an earthquake.

Jesus’ existence is affirmed by Jewish historian Josephus and the Roman historian Tacitus.  The
Christians turned the Roman empire upside down over time.

Jesus Christ literally fulfilled over 300 Old Testament Prophecies about his birth, life and death and
there are over500 prophecies about his Second coming.  I think they will all be fulfilled, too.

Simon Greenleaf, Royal Professor of Law at Harvard in the nineteenth century, has been called the
greatest authority on legal evidences in the history of the world.  He focused upon the Resurrection
of Christ in the light of all the laws of evidence and concluded that the Resurrection of Christ was a
reality.  Frank Morrison, a British lawyer who set out to write a book refuting the Resurrection of
Jesus Christ, became convinced that the evidence for it was overwhelming.  He became a believer
and wrote Who Moved the Stone?  Lew Wallace also set out to write a book disproving the deity of
Christ and His resurrection and ended up writing Ben Hur.

If the Bible is inaccurate in any area, how can it reliably be used as evidence for anything? No one
has proven the existence of a soul, and any conclusions drawn are invalid outside of a religious
framework. It's a tautology- the existence of the soul proves religion because religion tells us the
soul exists. In fact, all evidence points to its non-existence. For instance, how does the existence of
a soul jibe with behavior changes after brain injury? It was another early attempt to explain
consciousness that has been superseded by less metaphysical explanations.

Evolution is a tautology.  The rock layers are dated by index fossils and placed in the evolutionary
order of the index fossils, not the order they were lain on top of each other.  The evolutionary order
is assumed according the Aristotle’s Great Chain of Being and the rocks are dated accordingly.  Even
the Encyclopaedia Britannica admits this is circular reasoning, a tautology.

Our cravings for love (not just sex), destiny or purpose, and meaning, not to mention morality and
ethics, and a host of other behaviors can all be traced quite satisfactorily back to their evolutionary
origins. Application of non-empirical evidence (whatever that is) is an admission that there is no
empirical evidence in support of belief and, frankly, a copout.

Love - a product of millions of years of tooth and claw Darwinism?

Which mutations and substitutions by the purine base adenine for the base guanine in the DNA
molecule gave rise to our cravings for love, purpose, morality and ethics?  If these are so
satisfactorily explained by evolutionists why don’t they give specifics?  Dostoevsky said that “If
there is no God then all things are permissible.”

There is not one shred of evidence to support the existence of Jehovah any more than there is any
evidence to support the deities you do not believe in, like Zeus, Baal or Wotan.

You never did answer your guest's valid point about the incompatibility of a loving god and the
existence of hell. He was completely correct in the utter lack of reasoning there. Punishment for bad
behavior is a spanking and being sent to bed early, not scalding a child. You should be morally
outraged at such a god! Indeed, the willing acceptance of such a god is telling.

I would be morally outraged if there were no such God. Deeds that cry out to heaven (Auschwitz,
9-11) also cry out for the justice of hell. Hitler should not just be sent to his room. If we don't want
God on his terms, if we refuse him, and he withdraws all his good gifts-his creation, his invitation to
grow and build and seek and find, his presence and his people, his hope, his future-what would be
left?  "Outer darkness." If I reject God on his own terms then I am asserting that life is ultimately
about my self-sufficiency. If "it's all about me," then in the end there seems a certain symmetry that
it really is that and absolutely nothing more. No plot. No setting. No other characters to interest or
even use. Just me. Alone in outer darkness. Living small beyond imagining. I am left with no gifts from
God. Only what I can provide for myself. I grieve the loss of anyone who makes these choices. But I
respect their choice.

'Ultimate justice' sounds good, but there is no evidence for such a thing. If god had been outraged
at the actions of Hitler, Pol Pot, Tomas de Torquemada, why did he wait till they were dead to take
action? Since omniscience is supposedly an aspect of God, God's inaction in the face of holding the
power to prevent such atrocities is unconscionable. For a god that was very hands-on in the Bible he
has certainly backed off of that position in more recent years.

I have a problem with the idea that anyone, no matter how morally and ethically they have lived,
make one slip that they are said to be fated to the same treatment as these monsters. This is not a
deity to be admired, but one to be shunned. And I can not even conceive how one can describe the
Old Testament god as having the attributes of 'grace' and 'mercy'. The only word I can see that is
most apt is 'genocidal'. Sure, God sent his only son to die on the cross for our sins (I do not
subscribe to the story, by the way), but just how does this form of masochism work exactly? God is
God! Why not just forgive unconditionally? There is simply no logic attached to this.

As for refusing god, you forget that I hold that there is no god to refuse (a seemingly small, but
crucial distinction). That self-sufficiency you reject is actually quite fulfilling. How fulfilling? How
fulfilling do you want it to be? That freedom is amazing and you will never know it. My life is what I
make it to be, and I have done a lot with it. But at least you respect the choice. Many theists out
there do not, and I thank you for it.

The Bible does not state that a person who makes one slip is treated to the same fate as monsters
like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Tse Tung, who were all evolutionists, by the way.  Jesus said a
man could be beaten with many stripes or few for his punishment.  But since God is Holy, you must
become Holy with the free gift of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, who was the only
perfect man, in order to enter into the presence of God.  This is done through faith.

Freedom is not the same as autonomy.

I applaud your reading Dawkins, Hawking, etc., but your guest has it correct. Modern physics has a
number of models which do indeed have no time beginning, though the jury is still out on which model
is the most accurate.

As I understand Hawking and the scientists who have looked at the data of radiation from the big
bang, the ruling consensus is that indeed the Universe did have a beginning. Yes, there are a few
other models, but none with a shred of evidence. In fact the expansion of the universe is actually
accelerating, not slowing down to an eventual contraction. Brian also mentioned the law of
conservation of energy (1st law of thermodynamics) being the most fundamental of the universe.  Of
course each Big Bang would violate that, having come out of nothing.  He also failed to mention the
other most fundamental law of the universe, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which states that the
universe is running down to an even heat distribution, not evolving to more complexity.

No. You are referring to the Penrose/Hawking singularity model, which implied it had a beginning.
Some time after this both authors rejected it since the model did not include quantum mechanics.
Hawking jokes that he became famous for proving that the universe began as a singularity and then
became famous again for showing that it could not be a singularity. The consensus now is that time
had no beginning and has no end.

What consensus?  Kind of like all the consensus among scientists that global warming is caused by
man and we need to adopt draconian measures to stop it.

Twenty years from now Hawking may be joking about current consensus being another blunder.

Science is built on truth not consensus.  It is built on testable falsifiable and verifiable hypotheses,
not universal philosophies like evolution.  Good read on this: Dr. Michael Denton’s Evolution: A
Theory in Crisis, particularly the chapter on The Priority of the Paradigm.

Herman Bondi, the British Astronomer who began much of these cosmogonies said that they are just
mind games based on mathematical speculations having nothing to do necessarily with reality.  All
sorts of possibilities can derive from Einstein’s equations on General Relativity.  The “Big Bang” is
based on the arbitrary assumption of the Copernican Principle, which Copernicus himself would not
have believed.

Dr. Richard Lewontin, Harvard geneticist and evolutionist, is very critical of Richard Dawkins and his
simplistic examples of supposed evolution.

The average energy density of the universe is zero and thus mass-energy is conserved. The positive
energy stored within matter is cancelled by the negative gravitational potential energy. The universe
can indeed come from nothing, as weird as that sounds. Absolute nothingness is extremely unstable.
What you were referring to is the law of conservation of mass, which has been superseded by the
post-Einsteinian law of conservation of mass-energy. No energy was even required to form the
universe. Particles in our universe are constantly being spontaneously generated and annihilated
uncountable times as I write this, and that is not even in totally empty space. As for the second law,
the universe as a whole is not becoming more complex, but the second law does not preclude local
increases in order. In fact, for our existence on this planet, the second law is not even valid, since
the Earth is thermodynamically-speaking an open system.

Sounds like Sir Fred Hoyle’s steady state theory.  He is the one who gave the name “Big Bang” to
George Gamow’s theory as a perjorative.  Even Hoyle didn’t believe the steady state theory at his
death.  The first law of thermodynamics is the law of conservation of Energy, matter being a form of
energy according to Einstein’s famous equation E=MC^2.  Even if particles are being spontaneously
generated and annihilated in the universe they don’t turn into people.

The 2^nd law of thermodynamics is valid for all natural systems, including open systems, according to
Harvard Scientist John Ross.  Just energy from the sun is not sufficient to increase complexity in life
on the earth.  The energy has to have an energy conversion mechanism, like photosynthesis, and it
has to be specifically directed, i.e. with information.  The 2^nd law applies not only to heat energy but
to probabilities and to information.  I am a professional mechanical engineer.  Thermodynamics is a
mechanical engineering discipline.  I know this is true.  As Sir Fred Hoyle said you cannot send a
tornado (lots of energy) through an airplane parts store and assemble a Boeing 747.

Absolute nothingness cannot be extremely unstable.  Absolute nothingness is not ether, potential,
the cancellation of matter by equal and opposite antimatter or anything else or it is not absolute
nothingness.  As existential philosopher Jean Paul Sartre said the basic philosophical question is
“Why is there something instead of nothing?”  As Francis Schaeffer said absolute nothingness is like a
zero with the rim knocked off.

Might I suggest an excellent guest for a future show? Vic Stenger has written a number of books on
this subject. His latest is “God: The Failed Hypothesis”.

There is certainly no consensus. We simply do not know what happened prior to the Planck time
following the initial expansion of the universe. Stenger's recent book, God: The Failed Hypothesis
covers this and other cosmological arguments for the existence of god quite well. And to explain the
Big Bang as 'these particles bumping around' sounds a lot like that old debunked strawman argument
of random chance again. It was quite condescending.

Science models the universe, and it is extremely successful at this. THIS is 'faith'. The fossils and
rocks that you so easily dismiss strengthen the models that we construct to describe nature.

I do not dismiss the fossils and rocks. The rocks are the rocks. What I reject is an interpretation of
the rocks that says the complexity of a cell can self organize like a snowflake. All we see self-
organization producing is simple, repetitive patterns. Ben Wiker and Jonathan Witt beautifully show
the inability of Nature to produce the genius woven into the Natural order in A Meaningful World.

Wait. You have no problem with a snowflake self-organizing, but not something like a cell? Certainly,
we can not expect a cell to just assemble by random chance, and no Evolutionist has ever said that
this occurs. A cell is a modern construct, earlier organisms were much simpler.

Micelle formation strongly resembles a cell, and you form them every time you wash your hands with
soap. It is not a big stretch of the imagination that life would make use of such chemistry in order to
be better survival machines (see “How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity”).
Early life made use of physics and chemistry to evolve from simpler organisms to more complex
organisms in small steps. Complexity from simplicity has been demonstrated over and over in the
laboratory. If you would like references I can supply them. Biologist PZ Meyers has an interesting
question for proponents of ID: if humans were designed, for example, why is the enzyme responsible
for synthesizing ascorbic acid (L-gulonolactone oxidase) broken? Natural Selection explains this
perfectly; ID does not.

A living cell is infinitely more complex than a snowflake. All snowflakes are different anyway and
form randomly. Snowflakes do not reproduce. A living cell does reproduce or else after it died the
line would die out. Hypothetical earlier organisms than the cell could not reproduce. They did have
to form randomly. Try to find one of these hypothetical earlier organisms in the fossil record.
Marcel Golay, in Reflections of a Communications Engineer said it would take 2 to the 1500^th power
bits of information for the earliest cell to reproduce. Natural reactions thermodynamically produce L
and R (as in L-gulonolactone oxidase). L and R isomers are thermodynamically exactly the same and
are mirror images of each other (left and right). Produce it in the laboratory and you will get an
equal amount of L and R isomers of the same molecule. Yet all isomers in living cells are L. This
could not have happened spontaneously. It had to be directed. Complexity coming from simplicity
in the laboratory can only come from experiments like the Miller Urey experiment which created amino
acids from methane and ammonia. They were then dropped into a trap where they were protected
and could not be destroyed. This would not be the case on the early earth. If evolutionists know
that life evolved from non-life why don’t they create life in the laboratory. A protein molecule is
infinitely more complex than the amino acids it is built from. Evolutionist extrapolate unreasonably
from relatively simple experiments to claim life could evolve.

Imagination is not refutation.

To find meaning in the universe dangerously approaches anthropomorphizing. Humans evolved to find
patterns even when no pattern exists, which is one reason I believe empirical evidence is the
strongest kind of evidence. But I will look for a copy of that book.

Read The Privileged Planet, too.

We see no need for deities in our models and Ockham's Razor does the rest. If an Abrahamic god did
exist, this would most definitely not be the case. Consciousness is a direct consequence of Evolution
(Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett, eg.) and we now have some tools to explore it and
even the evolutionary basis for morality using fMRI and PET (Moral Minds by Marc Hauser is a good
read).

Again, which substitution of a pyrimidine cytosine base for thymine base occurred in the DNA
molecule by mutation to create consciousness?  As C.S. Lewis said, quoting professor Haldane, “If my
mind is just a mechanical dance of atoms I have no reason to suppose that my mind is composed of
atoms.”  Darwin himself said he wouldn’t trust a monkey’s brain, referring to us.

Francis Collins, by the way, sees what he thinks are patterns in DNA, but unfortunately for his views
there are perfectly reasonable naturalistic explanations for everything he sees. And after reading the
book I would agree with your guest that his whole argument is based on the 'argument from personal
incredulity', which is no argument at all. Complexity from simplicity is demonstrably very easy to
produce. All you've done is produced one scientist that has done something quite remarkable that
also believes (quite irrationally, in my opinion) and disingenuously propped him up as a poster boy,
but 93% of the American Academy of Sciences, the most esteemed scientific body in America, do
not believe in the existence of personal gods. Funny how that was never mentioned.

Change in scientific paradigms always begins with a minority. Usually greeted by a chorus of protest
from the status quo.

Interesting. Christianity in the general population is hardly a minority. At the time Darwin proposed
Natural Selection his position most definitely was in the minority. Many stones were thrown at it
(Darwin himself a stone-thrower), it withstood all attacks and that is how Science works, and how
Natural Selection became a standard Theory of Biology. Quantum Theory and Relativity did not
supersede Newtonian Mechanics, but complement it. Newtonian Mechanics is still used and is
accurate to amazing precision. And I use that big-'T' with good reason. These now widely accepted
Theories became so because of a huge body of evidence in support. That's not a weakness of
Science, but a strength. Otherwise, fly-by-night ideas such as ID end up getting totally unearned
credibility. Einstein himself had a great deal of problem with the interpretation of quantum mechanics
and proposed experiments that would yield (to him) impossible results. I'd like to think that when the
.experiments were finally carried out (unfortunately long after Einstein's death) and his 'impossible'
results were verified that he would have set aside his objections. Lord Kelvin had vehement
objections to the Theory of Evolution on thermodynamic grounds. His calculations showed that the
age of the Earth could not be sufficiently long for natural selection to act. Unfortunately, he could
not have known about a mechanism for heating the mantle (radioactive decay). Once this was
known Lord Kelvin did in fact remove his objections. This is how Science works, and it works (on the
whole) very well.

Sir Isaac Newton was a Christian and a creationist, not a fly-by-night.  A group of mathematicians
met, including Dr. Murray Eden, a professor of Electrical engineering from MIT.  They concluded that
it would take billions of TIMES longer than the supposed 4.6 billion year age of the earth for evolution
to have made us on the earth.  This is documented in Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian
interpretation of Evolution.  Again, read Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.  Read
particularly the chapter on The Priority of the Paradigm.  Evolution is the paradigm now.

We atheists are becoming vocal simply because our beliefs are threatened daily. Believers are not
satisfied with believing, but seem to be compelled to convince others to believe as well.

Believers have for 2,000 years been compelled to convince others to believe as well. That is Christ's
command. So why does it feel like things are changing? The Hubble and the electron microscope are
revealing complexity previously unimagined and it doesn't fit Darwinian theory. Also, believers are
becoming more active (and successfully so) in the public square. As long as we kept our beliefs
private and focused on private charity work, we were tolerated. The success of even the faith based
initiatives to fund our charity work threatens people who want to keep God out of the public square.

Since when have theists kept their beliefs private? I dispute that whole-heartedly. Even McDonalds
does not have that many franchises, all of which are totally visible to the public. It is we atheists
that have kept quiet, and what got us into trouble. Theists took our silence as quiet assent to
having our freedoms placed in jeopardy. Have you ever considered that it is your belief that you are
commanded to convert people overrides the fact that coercing beliefs on others is unethical and
immoral? Atheists don't go door-to-door espousing that we should unshackle ourselves from outdated
belief systems. Maybe we should. The outcry would be tremendous! Why is that? It was theists that
tried to place the Ten Commandments in public (and supposedly secular) buildings, even though this
is clearly unconstitutional. Our legal systems owe far more to Hammurabi’s Code of Laws than to the
Ten Commandments. God does indeed not belong in the public arena. It is offensive to thrust any
one groups ideals upon any other without concern for trampling their beliefs. The only solution to this
is that government remains neutral and secular. Faith-based initiatives, as far as government support
is concerned, are clearly unconstitutional in the American system. The Founding Fathers were quite
specific about government not backing any religious group at the expense of others. How would you
feel if when taking the Pledge of Allegiance you had to say 'One nation under Allah?' Probably not all
that hot about the idea, right? Then think about how an atheist must feel when forced by their own
institutions to lie under oath…. The fact that the majority of Americans are theistic is not a reason
to trample the rights of minority groups by enforcing Christianity on them. Indeed, that they are the
majority makes it their responsibility to uphold the Constitution and protect minorities from being
swamped. Might does not make Right.

Hammurabi’s code does predate the Ten Commandments.  Also, there are traditions of a global flood
from all over the world, including Babylon, and the stories are essentially the same about a small
family being saved in a boat while the rest of the world perished.  The details vary but the story is
essentially the same.  Suppose it could have been from an actual event and actual ancestors, Noah
and his sons, who spread out after the Ark landed in the region of Mt. Ararat.  There have been
numerous, though unconfirmed sightings of Noah’s Ark on Mt. Ararat over the years and wood has
been discovered there and Carbon 14 dated to the time of Noah.

Speaking of the Founding Fathers, George Washington was an officer in the French and Indian War
and was ambushed at the Monongohela River. The following is from David Barton’s book The
Bulletproof George Washington: “During the two hour battle on July 9, 1755, the 23 year old Colonel
Washington had ridden to and fro on the battlefield, delivering the General’s orders to other officers
and troops. The officers had been a special target for the Indians. Of the 86 British and American
officers, 63 were casualties. Washington was the only officer on horseback not shot down.
Following the battle, Washington wrote a letter to his brother in which he readily and openly
acknowledged: ‘By the all-powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all
human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under
me, yet (I) escaped unhurt, although death ws leveling my companions on every side of me!’ Fifteen
years later, an old, respected Indian chief sought out Washington. The chief, explaining that he had
led the Indians against them in the battle fifteen years earlier, revealed to Washington what had
occurred behind the scenes during the conflict: ‘ I called to my young men and said, mark yon tall
and daring warrior [Washington]?... Himself is alone exposed. Quick, let your aim be certain, and he
dies. Our rifles were leveled, rifles which, but for you, knew not how to miss—‘twas all in vain, a
power mightier far than we shielded you. Seeing you were under the special guardianship of the
Great Spirit, we immediately ceased to fire at you…I am come to pay homage to the man who is the
particular favorite of Heaven, and who can never die in battle.’”

God had a plan for George Washington, and he does for you, Randy, if you will give him a chance.

This can be found at www.wallbuilders.com.

Thankfully here in Canada religion and politics don't mix much. I'd like it to stay that way.

Since when have atheists kept their beliefs private?  You mean Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse
Tung, Hitler, and Pol Pot – All these non-coercive people?  How about Madlyn Murray O’hair?  After
her son. Bill Murray, became a Christian she said she would not forgive him and welcome him back to
atheism because she was not a Christian and did not hold such values as a Christian.  Atheists keep
their beliefs private?  Christ commanded Christians to be witnesses not coercive.  Unfortunately at
times in history the Church has been coercive (eg. Torquemada).  No one is forced to say “One
nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance here.  In fact it is the “non-coercive” atheist Michael
Newdow who got the 9^th federal circuit court of appeals in San Fransicko to force children NOT to
say “Under God” in the Pledge of allegiance.

The evolutionist majority of scientists in the U.S are using “might makes right” to silence in criticism
of evolution in the public schools and in the universities.  Atheists don’t want minority rights, they
want minority rule.

Believers find new ways to attack science that is incompatible with their beliefs, like 'intelligent
design'. The Theory of Natural Selection is THE backbone of biology, the only game in town.

Read the hundreds of scientists with terminal degrees that disagree on the Discovery Institute's
website.

Ah, yes. The much touted DI list of people supporting ID. Almost none of those people in fact have
specializations which are even remotely associated with the biological sciences. Every major body
representing the vast majority of the thousands of scientists working in the biological sciences has
stated that Natural Selection is it- period. As I said below, they have a slick ad campaign, but that's
all ID amounts to.

What is so special about biology?  Again, biologists and paleontologists have an aversion to
mathematics.  Engineers understand design and why the numbers need to add up for a system to
work.  Evolutionists believe that the universe and life have the appearance of design but no designer.
But, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, flies like a duck…..

Eric Harris, during his murderous rampage at Columbine High School wore a T-shirt with the words "Natural Selection" emblazoned on the front.

Professor Louis Bounoure, former President of the Biological Society of Strasbourg and Director of the Strasbourg Zoological Museum, and later Director of Research at the French National Centre of Scientific Research stated that "Evolutionism is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory as helped nothing in the progress of Science. It is useless."

Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist and Curator at the British Museum of
Natural History Stated "One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary
view, or let's call it a non-evolutionary view, was last year I had a sudden
realization for over twenty years I had thought I was working on evolution in some
way.  One morning I woke up and something had happened in the night, and it struck
me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one
thing I knew about it.....Question is:  Can you tell me anything you know about
evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true?  I tried that question on the
geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was
silence.  I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the
University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there
was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, 'I do know one thing -
it ought not to be taught in high school'."

The sum total of evidence for ID amounts to deceitfully erroneous attacks on Evolution and a slick
ad campaign. Science is being decided in the political arena as a result, which is patently ridiculous.
As scientists, we are forced to push back. ID, young Earth creationism, etc., make the prior
assumption that there was a designer, or creator, and this is where they start and end. The level of
bias in this is immense, and is how you end up with baseless ideas like ID or Kent Hovind's. Science
starts with observation, then a model is constructed to explain the observations. These models make
testable predictions. If the predictions are verified, then the confidence of the model is increased.
There is no assumed end point.

I disagree. Science assumes the end point of Naturalism and naturalistic processes and has redefined
"science" to assume Naturalism. The scientific revolution was launched by Christians.

No. It is methodological naturalism (of which I profess) that proposes that all phenomena can be
explained by natural processes. That Christians launched the scientific revolution is irrelevant and
not even accurate. The ancient Greeks had a better understanding of how to do Science, and
Science owes a great deal to them. Indeed, Science has adopted naturalism as it does not allow
miraculous events in explaining phenomena. But there is a very good reason for this: one invocation
of god begets others, and as Richard Dawkins rightly points out, it becomes an excuse to not look
for the true underlying mechanism. Even if there is no good naturalistic explanation at the present
time this does not preclude a naturalistic explanation at a later time. Here is where faith comes into
Science. We can do this because of naturalism's phenomenal track record.

I thought you didn’t believe in faith.  Again, check out Richard Lewontin’s opinion of Richard Dawkins’
pop science.

The late Sir Fred Hoyle (English astronomer, Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge
University) and Chandra Wickramasinghe (Professor of Astronomy and Applied
Mathematics at University College, Cardiff)in 'Convergence to God', in Evolution
from Space state  "Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at
random is so utterly miniscule as to make the random concept absurd, it becomes
sensible to think that the favourable properties of physics on which life depends
are in every respect deliberate......It is therefore almost inevitable that our own
measure of intelligence must reflect in a valid way the higher intelligences to our
left, even to the extreme idealized limit of God."

The late Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University) said "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.....Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study."

David B. Kitts, PhD (zoology), (School of Geology and Geophysics, University of
Oklahoma) states "Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and
paleontology does not provide them."

Recently, fish have been found in the Cambrian, the earliest supposed geological
period for complex life.  Vertebrates and fish were not supposed to have evolved
until hundreds of millions of years later. All of the phyla of animals, including
the chordates and vertebrates, are now found in the “Cambrian explosion” which
supposedly occurred over the short geological time period of about 10 million years.
And don’t suppose the explosion occurred just because the animals all got hard parts
at the same time and they could just now fossilize.  Jellyfish are soft bodied
creatures and are fossilized in the Cambrian.  Embryos are also found fossilized
there.  In the Pre-Cambrian all you have are some fossil single cell animals and
some “sad little worms”.

Paul Ehrlich (Professor of Biology, Stanford University)and L.Charles Birch (Professor of biology, University of Sydney) state "Our theory of evolution has become, as Popper (Dr. Karl Popper, considered the world's leading philosopher of science) described, one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus "outside of empirical science" but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it. Ideas, either without basis or based on a few laboratory experiments carried out in extremely simplified systems, have attained currency far beyond their validity. They have become part of an evolutionary dogma accepted by most of us as part of our training."

According to Dr. Karl Popper evolution is an unfalsifiable theory and is therefore metaphysical.

The world's leading evolutionist, the late Sir Julian Huxley, grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley (Darwin's Bulldog) and brother of Aldous Huxley, once said on the Merv Griffin show that scientists would have not been so ready to accept Darwin's theory of evolution except for the fact that the idea of God was not compatible with their sex mores.

As Science increasingly showed that the invocation of deities was not required to explain observed
phenomena, religion became a hindrance to the accumulation of knowledge, not a help. Many
scientists that are also theists, such as Georges Lemaître (who proposed the Big Bang), have had to
deal with the clash between scientific discovery and their personal beliefs. Lemaître, much to his
credit, published his findings despite his personal beliefs, not because of them. Others' belief, like
Kurt

Wise's, overrode reasoning and he rejected (in the face of what he knew to be overwhelming
evidence for) Natural Selection.

In no other aspect of anyone's life would they reject reasoned arguments over belief.

We just go where the data takes us. If it takes us to the existence of god, so be it. But it does not.
What I do wonder is why you mention several times that atheists are aiming at children. It sounds
like a bit of fear mongering, the nasty atheists are coming to take your children away. I know of no
atheist groups or atheists which practice this.

Brian admits to targeting youth in his advertisements to take the Blasphemy challenge. See the
transcript of his Nightline interview.

I have indeed found that he does try to attract teens. While I disagree with his method, he is not
doing the atheist equivalent of taking them to church every Sunday. He is, in fact, only making the
information available to those that want to learn more. The blasphemy challenge itself is only for
avowed atheists, and their average age is 24. Hardly teenage. Dawkins does the same thing. He is
only passively making the information on atheism available for those that come to him. I won't hold it
against you, though, if you don't agree with this assessment. It's a fine distinction. (I have been
unable to find a copy of that Nightline transcript and would appreciate a link.)

Indeed, it is theists that actively engage in the practice of converting children, indoctrinating young
minds before they can form an educated opinion on what they should believe. All we desire is that
everyone be able to make an informed decision when they are ready, and children are not. There is
no atheist alternative to 'Jesus Camp' and never will be. I was outraged when I saw that film.

I haven't seen the film. From reading accounts of their methodologies, it doesn't sound like anything
I've seen or would recommend. And I've seen a lot of evangelical ministries across the country. But
of course parents will want to teach their children their worldview. It seems more appropriate for a
parent to send his kid to a Christian camp than for a young teen to be proselytized by Brian on the
computer his parents provided.

I am glad to know that you do not support the child abuse that is performed by the subjects of
'Jesus Camp'. But these parents are doing just what you espouse: teaching their children their world.
view. It's a tightrope act to be sure, but teaching any particular religion to your children as if it is
the only possible valid belief system is wrong and leads to the massive misunderstandings that we
see today. Atheists are not immune from the effects of this. The CNN debacle on Paula Zahn Now
demonstrated this clearly. How can you have a discussion group talking about atheism without a
single atheist included?

Gods have been around a long time. They had their place once. They were invoked to explain natural
phenomena, like lightning and thunder, the sun, day and night, etc. We have perfectly reasonable
naturalistic explanations for these. Atheists have simply said to themselves that it is time to let them
go.

We do not wish to actively engage in changing minds,

Have you visited Brian's website? Read Sam Harris's "End of Faith"? Some of your fellow atheists most
certainly want to change minds. Harris acknowledges that he wants to wants to create a cultural
consensus that will mock Christians to the margins of society. Just as has been done with the KKK
(his example).

I have indeed read Sam Harris and agree with him that religion, no matter how moderate, will breed
fundamentalists. I've already mentioned Torquemada, and Paul Hill is a more modern example.
Ideologues such as Stalin and Pol Pot are cut from the same cloth; it's just that there is no god in
their system. This does present a prickly problem. Harris does not believe that the danger
fundamentalism represents can be eliminated without eliminating religion, but he does not suggest a
way to do this either. We just have to hope reason can prevail, but religion has a habit of suspending
the ability to reason.

but simply want to be understood. We atheists have been extremely quiet till now, but we can no
longer afford that luxury. The harmful misconceptions about atheists that are out there need to be
countered. Atheists are just as moral as theists, we love, we have likes and dislikes, and it is quite
likely that every theist knows at least a few and don't realize it (except for more vocal ones like me).

We believe that everyone has a right to their own beliefs, an ideal that seems to be eroding in US
public institutions. This erosion is what has precipitated the writings of Dawkins, Harris and others,
and created a need for atheists to stand up and be noticed.

In reason,

Randy Tyson

Thank you Randy for your thoughtful response. I have tried to honor the time you put into this by
taking the time to respond thoughtfully. If you have the opportunity to listen to next week's show on
non-empirical evidence, I would love to hear your comments.

And thank you for responding. As you can tell, I am very passionate on this subject. I guarantee you
will not change my mind (as I probably will not change yours), but I do enjoy listening. Open dialog
such as this is, I feel, the way to go. The idea is not about conversion, but mutual respect. I believe
that that alone will divert our path from the disastrous end that Sam Harris is predicting. It's too easy
for people to have preconceived and erroneous ideas about others holding different beliefs. This leads
to intergroup tensions that history has shown to be disastrous. I look forward to listening to that
webcast when it gets put on the website (I missed the original webcasting).

I invite Randy to read books like the following:

The Long War against God – Dr. Henry Morris (Hydraulic Engineering)

Darwin’s Black Box – Dr. Michael Behe

Evolution: The Fossils say no! – Dr. Duane Gish (Biochemistry)

Evolution: A theory in Crisis – Dr. Michael (Medicine and biochemistry)

                                      and not a creationist.

Starlight and Time – Dr. Russell Humphreys (Physicist)

The Privileged Planet – Dr.Guillermo Gonzalez (Astrobiologist) and 
                             Dr. Jay Richards (Philosopher of Science)

Also, read the works of C.S. Lewis the atheist Oxford don and Cambridge Professor
who after being challenged by his fellow Professor, J.R.R. Tolkein studied the facts
of history and became a Christian.  He is one of the greatest Christian apologists.

Read Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell, another former atheist who
became a Christian.  He is an expert on ancient history, Bible Prophecy and
Archeology.

I was an aerospace engineer for many years and have a pilot’s license.  You don’t
just stick wings on a fuselage and have an airplane fly.  The wings have to be
aerodynamically just right.  The mathematics have to be just right.  If the
aerodynamics are not right the airplane does not fly less efficiently, it does not
fly at all!  You don’t just stick a partial evolving wing or skin flap on a reptile
and expect it to have a natural selection advantage and eventually evolve into a bird
which has wings far more complex than any airplane, complete with flaps, slats,
ailerons, vanes, slots, etc.  A part wing would only be a hindrance on an evolving
reptile not an advantage.  Paleontologists and biologists again just philosophize
and don’t do the math.  This is the whole point of Michael Behe’s book, Darwin’s
black box.

On August 2,1990 my fiancée, Polly Routh, went to be with the LORD after a 16 year
bout with chronic myologenic leukemia.  She was diagnosed in 1974, had her spleen
removed, and went in remission. She was widowed, her husband having died suddenly
after an attack of an acute form of leukemia in 1981.  She prayed that God would
allow her to live long enough to see her son graduate from high school.  She came
out of remission in the fall of 1989.  David, her only child, graduated in May 1990.
She went into Baylor Hospital in Dallas for a bone marrow transplant on June 13,
1990.  Her Oncologist said that 98% of people with CML come out of remission within
10 years.  Polly was in remission for 16 years.  The transplant was successful but
in the recovery process she developed pneumonia, because of the lack of white blood
cells, and died from complications on August 2, the same day Saddam Hussein invaded
Kuwait.  God her answered her prayer for her son.

Polly always had tremendous faith and said her faith was a gift from God.  I was in
so much pain for almost the next year and a half that I didn’t think I would survive.
I wouldn’t have except for the fact that I knew she was with the LORD.  Do you
really expect me to believe that she is now non-existent?  That her spirit and soul
were just imaginary?

And don’t think I wasn’t mad at God when he took her.  I’ve gotten mad at my earthly
father, too.  I was sure glad I had a heavenly father to vent my anger on.  And I
know I will see her again someday.

Shortly after her death I contacted a man who had gone through a similar experience
and written a book 20 years later called A Severe Mercy.  His name was Sheldon
Vanauken.  He and his wife studied at Oxford under C.S. Lewis and his wife became a
Christian.  She literally offered up her life so her husband would become one, too.
He did only after her death.  The title, A Severe Mercy, came from a letter he
received from C.S.Lewis.  It is one of the most powerful books I have ever read,
about his journey through his intellect, his grief, and finally to his LORD. 
Sheldon and I corresponded for several years and he helped greatly in getting me
through my grief.  I finally got to meet him in December 1994 at his home in 
Lynchburg, Virgina, where he was a retired English Professor.  He died on October
28, 1996, my 51^st birthday.  I treasure all the letters I have from him and from
many other Christians.  I am 61 now.

You sound rather young, Randy.  How do you deal with death?  Maybe it seems remote
to you personally now or maybe you have lost a loved one.

You are obviously very smart.  I would challenge you to read A Severe Mercy, and
some of the works of C.S. Lewis, such as Mere Christianity, The Abolition of Man,
The Chronicles of Narnia, Miracles, The Screwtape Letters, and A Grief Observed
(his wife died,too).  His friend, J.R.R. Tolkein and he decided to write Chistian
fiction based on space and time.  Tolkein wrote The Lord of the Rings, and Lewis
wrote his Space Trilogy.  Just be intellectually honest and give God a chance.

In Christ,

Don

What a condescending jerk.

They say a picture is worth 1000 words...

2007-05-24T07:45:00.000-07:00

And sometimes it's just all expletives.

Hitchens on Falwell

2007-05-18T15:36:00.000-07:00

Many of us have seen the interesting comments by Christopher Hitchens on Hannity and Colmes recently. If not, look below...

I was a bit uncomfortable with Hitchens not having some respect for the feelings of Falwell's family, since there may be in fact someone close that actually does have good feelings for him (as unlikely as that may be). However, I must side with Hitchens on this: I simply can not think of one good thing to say about him.

Hitchens was asked to appear on the segue, so you know that it was a setup for a ratings grab. Should Hitchens feel used? Nope. He was using them just as surely. But if they are going to ask him on as guest Hannity should have treated him as one and allowed him to say his peace, no matter what he thought of Hitchens' opinion. If Hannity wants his own show to monologue on, I'm sure it will last about as long as the Chevy Chase Show. He's perfect for where he is - an uninteresting person there to make interesting people even more interesting - and he should really play his part better (i.e., moderate, not opine).

Hitchens' position is as simple as it is honest. He can't come up with anything good to say about Jerry Falwell, so why afford him respect in death that he never deserved in life? But this is just one half of the equation. The other half comes from external sources. People have come out in praise of a man that deserved our contempt. Hannity mentions Falwell giving scholarships at his own Liberty U. Liberty U is an institution dedicated to the continuation of Falwell's 'ideals'. Hannity claims to have known Falwell (when Hannity said 'I knew Jerry Falwell' I half expected him to say 'and you are no Jerry Falwell'...) , so how could Hitchens say such awful things about the man? Easy. Aside from the lies that religion continues to spout even in view of information that shows that they are no more than man-made invention (of which I have blogged ad nauseum), there's ample information that Falwell himself supplied on his ethics. Let's take a look at those ideals of his:

"If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being."

Such a positive outlook on people that do not share his belief. I've done pretty well in life as an atheist so far, so screw him. OK, so what? That's reasonably mild, right? On who was really responsible for 9/11:

"And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, "You helped this happen.""

And here it was that I thought that 9/11 was due to some other equally fanatic religious wingnuts. I love how the ACLU, an organization dedicated to protecting even his civil rights, is disparaged. He would love to reverse women's suffrage, segregate the nation once again and basically turn back the clock to a less enlightened time. He reiterates his view of the ACLU:

"The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews."

Oh, but Hannity said that he apologized for this remark. So what? This isn't something you can take back, because you know he's still thinking it after the apology.

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

His version of a just and loving God. I must have missed the memo. Just when did he establish this AIDS-God connection? Whatever happened to "hate the sin, love the sinner"? I've yet to see a Christian separate the two except when saying this mantra.

Of course, he's quite the ladies' man:

"It appears that America's anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men's movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening."

His source of all Science and History is impeccable (lest those that agree think I am being serious, I am not):

"The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible,without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc."

Must be why everybody is clamoring to get Lehigh U grads into their research programs.

My favorite was a clip played on the Randi Rhodes Show where he is discussing helping people with financial planning. If tithing wasn't at the top of the list, he said you were doomed to remain poor.

As you might expect, heads-in-their-asses right wing conservatives (is there any other kind?) were quick to jump on the bandwagon of praise for the unceremoniously fallen fundamentalist. Ann Coulter (I know I said I would never mention that bitch again, but she is entertaining, if in a scary, really stupid way):

"Let me be the first to say: I ALWAYS agreed with the Rev. Falwell."

No surprises here. Stupid is as stupid does. But I've always found it interesting that Ann is single at such a late stage in her fundamentalist life. Shouldn't she be busy obeying her husband, waiting on him while the product of their multiplying run around? Makes one wonder if she has something in common with Tinky Winky... According to Ann, he was very good at picking out homoeroticism on children's television (one can only wonder at how and why he got this reputation). Sarcastically, she writes:

"Of course, Falwell also thought the show "Queer as Folk" was gay, so obviously the man had no credibility."

Wow. That took amazing powers of deduction. He get his 'reverend' moniker from Cracker Jacks, too?

Speaking of Teletubbies, I've actually watched a bit of that show and can't for the life of me figure out what made Tinky Winky so flaming. Sure, the show was sort of gay in the sense that it was dumb, but all kids shows are like that. I have an interesting hypothesis on how that conclusion was made. I posit that Falwell got together with his evangelical buddies for beer and sat around thinking of what was the stupidest thing they could get there flocks to believe. He may very well have won the bet.

So, Mr. Hannity, we are left with two possible conclusions. Either you fully agree with Jerry Falwell's beliefs, in which case you are in the racist, bigoted, intolerant, woman-hating class, or you are lying about his virtues, of which Falwell has none. Christopher Hitchens is exactly right. If there is no reason to think that Jerry Falwell had any virtuous qualities (demonstrably, he does not), even saying nothing and just nodding as people lie about Falwell in their praise of him is hypocritical. I can not help but feel that this man has fundamentalists on the run anywhere he speaks out against them and I would dearly like to buy that man a drink. They have too long held the limelight without opposition. Their time is past, and one can only hope that Falwell actually managed something that no one else has - that he found a way to take his ideas with him.

But Hitchens' most scathing comment is one of the funniest things I have heard in a long time:

"If you gave Falwell an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox."

Amen.

A sad day in our household

2007-05-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

We have three cats in our house, two are my wife's and the big bruiser is mine. It's amazing how these unpresuming animals burrow their way into your being. So it's always sad when one of these unconditionally loving animals makes an exit from our lives.

My wife's eldest cat Mickey was diagnosed a few months ago with diabetes. Her 13th birthday was just this last Sunday. The spark of life had just gone out and we made the decision to euthanize her Tuesday.

She was a very sweet cat. She would start purring before you laid a hand on her to pet her. My wife feels guilty that she didn't pay more attention to her, but I don't think that that is true. Mickey got a lot of attention around here.

We called in a vet to make a house call and he assessed her condition. He agreed with our decision and gave Mickey a sedative to relax her while she lay in my wife's lap. This is the only way to do this. Mickey passed away with the people that loved her and at home.

She will be sorely missed.

Fun with MRI. Guess that produce...

2007-05-11T13:45:00.000-07:00

I took this image yesterday while we were enabling 19F spectroscopy in Edmonton. Extra credit if you get this one. I'll give a hint: this piece of produce is rather dry, hence the darkness of the image. Interestingly, there are spots where there is some water (which is why when I cut one of these I see water bead on the cut surface). The FOV was 40 mm X 40 mm on the bottom one (transverse image) and 50 mm X 40 mm on the top (sagittal image). The size may throw people off. I'll just add that these things can be bought big as well. I will withhold any correct answers for a while.

New argument for God's existence?

2007-05-11T13:15:00.000-07:00

This past week Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron debated with the Rational Response Squad on the existence of God. Comfort promised us a proof of God, so while many of us in the atheist community were dubious about whether these two twits had even the brain power to come up with something new, we held our breath and actually hoped we wouldn't see one of the tired, old, pathetic apologetics we've be subjected to for the past thousand years. Verdict? We risked hypoxia for nothing. Not really a surprise when these two clowns are involved.

The argument? Ray Comfort held up a picture of a painting of the Mona Lisa and told us that it is obvious that the object must have been made by a painter, a designer if you will. By analogy, then, the universe must have had a creator. This creator they call 'God'. Sound familiar? It's hardly original. William Paley used this argument more than two hundred years ago.

On the surface, this argument seems powerful and compelling. Something that has the complexity contained in a painting must have been designed. But this argument's strength is in fact its fatal flaw. Once the question 'how do we know the painting was designed?' is asked, the argument is dead. We know that a painting was produced through a willful and conscious act of an agent (the painter) because we understand how a painting is made, even if we hadn't seen the painter paint this particular painting. Indeed, we do not even need to know who the painter was. This is an example of making a conclusion based on an understanding of the mechanism by which a painting can be made. This is good Science and this part of Paley's argument from design is so far legitimate.

The flip side of the argument is that like the painting, the universe and its contents is so complex that it must also have had a designer. The problem with this analogy is that 'God did it' does not suffice as a mechanism by which anything can be explained. In point of fact, not only does this response 'beg the question' (I would say 'questions'), but never answered the question in the first place. Genesis tells us that God said 'Let there be light, and there was light'. In essence, 'God did it.' If I say to my coffee maker ,'Let there be coffee', I think its easily predicted that I must go without caffeine. A terrible fate indeed. Generation of coffee requires that I use hot water to extract flavorful compounds and caffeine from coffee beans. In other words, a mechanism must exist for creating a cup of coffee from a handful of beans. Genesis is just another example of bad Science, an attempt without supporting data to explain the universe's existence in the absence of a plausible mechanism. This is a very different animal from the creation of the painting.

Mechanism is an extremely important concept in Science. Saying the universe is here because God created it tells us nothing. We gain no knowledge from it, and it is therefor valueless. Tell me HOW God created the universe and then I'll have a listen. Evolution is a fact. We see a progression of speciation in the fossil record for which the only known plausible mechanism is natural selection. Show me a fossil rabbit in the Paleozoic and then natural selection would fail as a potential mechanism for speciation. But we never see such out-of-order lineages. Gene mutations in current species are predicted by Evolutionary Theory. For instance, have you ever wondered why dogs and cats do not need to eat fruit in order to maintain their vitamin C levels? Primates have a mutation in the gene encoding L-gluconolactone oxidase (a PZ Meyers favorite) which catalyzes the reaction producing ascorbic acid (vitamin C). This is also true for fruit-eating bats. When fruit-eating bats split off from an ancestor common to fruit- and non-fruit-eating bats a mutation in this gene occurred, making this enzyme ineffective in this fruit-eating lineage. Indeed, the use of molecular genetics as a molecular clock is in very good agreement with the fossil record, greatly strengthening the argument. The universe is old. We know this from the measurements of red shifts in supernovae. Our home planet is quite old as well. We know from various methods of radiometric dating that the Earth is ca. 4.5 billion years old. The fact that numerous different methods point to the same age makes this estimate very strong.

The argument from design really shows its inadequacy when the knowledge of mechanism is removed. Let's take a scene from the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, a movie I highly recommend. In this scene, a Coke bottle is discarded from an airplane flying over the African savanna and is picked up by a Bushman (followed by a series of incidents which force the poor sop to conclude that the gods are nuts, hence the movie's title). Having never seen a bottle before, and never having known how a bottle is made, the Bushman makes the perfectly human (and just as perfectly incorrect) conclusion that the bottle was made by the gods.

Was the Bushman's conclusion made on the basis that the bottle is so complex? No. The Bushman jumped to the conclusion without a plausible mechanism. Complexity is just a nebulous buzzword used by the IDiots. When you can quantitate complexity and also determine how much complexity is too much for a conscious agent to NOT have created the universe, then we'll talk some more. But this idea that the chances of a cell spontaneously forming are about the same as a tornado moving through a junkyard and spontaneously creating a Boeing 747 does not cut it as an argument, especially when Evolutionary Theory agrees.

We humans are predisposed to jumping to conclusions in the absence of data or a plausible mechanism. Michael Shermer has written about this extensively in his book Why People Believe Weird Things. Invoking the supernatural as an explanation is an example of bad Science. The scientifically-correct conclusion the Bushman should have made is that he simply can not know the source of the Coke bottle or how it was made without more information. While this is an unsatisfactory answer to any human being (I am not different), jumping to the conclusion that the supernatural is responsible for the Coke bottle's existence, while understandable, is illogical and unscientific.

This is exactly the problem with Paley's argument. On the one hand, we know how a painting can be made from the application of pigments to a canvas in a concerted fashion by a conscious agent. A plausible mechanism is available (good Science). In Paley's time, no plausible mechanism for the creation of the universe was available to draw any conclusion - indeed, we still do not know how it came to be -yet he concluded that it must have had a creator (bad Science). The scientifically-correct conclusion is that there is no conclusion. No scientist, myself included, is satisfied by such an unsatisfying answer (ok, so that's a tautology - sue me). But the difference is that we atheists don't find retreating to the supernatural any more satisfying.

Of course, the final joke of the debate was that Ray Comfort was not holding up a painting as he asserted, but a reproduction of the Mona Lisa. The inaccuracy of this fits exceptionally well with his, or rather Paley's, 'argument'. Neither jumping to conclusions without supporting data nor superstition, alone or in concert, can ever be considered as good Science.

Canada introduces new 'pocket change'...

2007-05-03T09:31:00.000-07:00

The Royal Canadian Mint has issued a rather sizable piece of pocket change: a $1M coin. Yes, that's a 1 followed by six zeros all in one single hunk of metal alloy. This reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons where Burns steals the trillion dollar bill. But if you are one of those annoying people that enjoys jingling their coins while walking down the street (and one would think that with this kind of tender that it would be more of a nervous habit than usual), think again. The coin is made from 99.999% pure gold and weighs in at 100 kg. You'd have to have pretty big pockets and be able to do leg presses as well as Pat Robertson to carry this sucker around.

The mint was surprised that there would be any takers, yet they have managed already to sell several of these monstrosities, perhaps to be used as coffee table tops?

Canada has had a rather interesting history with its coinage over the last 20 years. The original $1 coin, replacing the old $1 and $2 paper bills, had on the opposite side of our usual Queen image, artwork displaying a couple of voyageurs paddling away in a canoe. The dies for this coin, however, were 'lost' and new artwork had to be created. What did they come up with? A loon. The $1 coin thus came to be called the 'looney', and the rest is history. The $2 coin came out some years later, with a rather interesting coin-in-a-coin design and following its $1 predecessor, came to be known as the 'twoney'. The twoney is somewhat larger than the looney, prompting me to predict that by the time the $20 coin came round Canada would produce the greatest discus throwers in Olympic history.

Of the air for a while....

2007-04-10T10:05:00.000-07:00

I will be heading for Egypt tomorrow for a rather less-than-restful (but intriguing) holiday with my beautiful wife starting in Cairo, then crusing the Nile... As an Egyptology buff, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I can't pass up.

Faith and Science

2007-04-08T15:55:00.000-07:00

In my last blog on the MySpace version, I had the following comment:

"None of this can ever be proven. So what must you have in your theorys? FAITH. You really have no evidence of transitonal fossils, Have not found the missing link between human and ape....."

My rebuttal was scathing, and rightfully so. First, Science does not deal in proof. Never has, never will. Science is about explaining observations, coming up with a provisional explanation which explains the data. As to this person's assertion that there are no transitional fossils, that's baloney. Go to any museum of natural history and you will see (literally) tons of them. There are many lineages which have demonstrated the progression to new forms. The development of the horse, dinosaurs to birds, the whale from land to sea mammal, and many others have been clearly delineated. Indeed, Evolutionary Theory predicted that such intermediary forms existed and where they would be found in the fossil record. This is the ultimate test of any theory and in this the Theory of Natural Selection has been astoundingly successful. The human evolutionary lineage is also remarkably fleshed out, despite this person's belief. It is very difficult to find such fossils, though we have and continue to add to our knowledge when a new fossil is found.

This commentor also ignores (or is perhaps unaware of) the fact that while the fossil record is of great interest in the verification of Evolution, it is not all that important. Darwin did not have fossils to work from when he wrote his great opus, the 'Origin of Species'. He was using comparative morphology. Just as important has been the development of molecular genetic techniques to look at and even time branching in the phylogenetic tree. Using the molecular clock, for instance, molecular genetics has shown that champanzees and man have a common ancestry which split some six million years ago. All of this data fits together elegantly. When you have different techniques from completely different areas fitting together like that you know you have a very robust theory.
Could the Theory of Natural Selection be wrong? Yep. What is the likelihood of it being wrong? About the same as a tornado going through a junkyard and spontaneously assembling a 747. ToE is correct far beyond any doubt, let alone reasonable doubt. Any protestations by those that take the a literal interpretation of the Bible are simply the weak, desperate cries of those drowning in a sea of the untruths they seem incapable of divesting themselves of.

But I did say one thing in response that was incorrect: that there is no faith in Science. As Sam Harris has pointed out, there is faith at some level in Science. But this kind of faith can not be equated with religious faith. Let's take a look at a couple of examples to illustrate this point. Let's say that I want something from a department store and I need it by this evening, but I have no time to go out and get it. So, I ask a reliable friend to take some of my hard earned cash and buy it for me. I certainly would not ask a complete stranger to do this, so why do I ask my friend? Simple. This friend has a track record of doing similar things for me. This is faith. I have faith that my friend will accomplish the task that he/she has agreed to do.

Now, let's take a look at the second example. Let's say the manual for my SVT Focus says that my car can fly. Truly fly long distances, not just when going over hilly terrain. But it also says that it will only do this when there is no one in the car, and no one is looking. Any reasonable person would be skeptical about this, wouldn't they? But if you take a literal interpretation of the manual, you would say that it does. Why? Because it says so right in the manual, of course! The correctly skeptical person would require evidence that the manual is correct, but a literal interpretationist does not. Is this literal interpretation faith? Absolutely not. It is BLIND FAITH, a completely different animal. It is belief without substance, and is therefore totally unreliable. Can blind faith ever be correct? Sure it can. By accident. But look at the number of faiths in the world today, which falls in the thousands. Let's say that one is correct. Even if you are a believer you have only a small chance of being right. Those odds drop vastly farther when dead religions are included in the calculation.

There is a vast difference in the type of faith that is in Science from that which Believers hold. In fact, we have confidence in Theories (note the use of 'T' here) because they explain observations, make testable predictions, and are falsifiable. Faith is more about the methodologies used in Science, not in the actual theories themselves. Blind faith can be correct only by accident, and is NEVER right.

Damn. Now why didn't I think of this?

2007-04-04T09:11:00.001-07:00

I was watching the news this morning and saw that some enterprising Canuck has come up with a new invention for those pesky Tim Horton's 'Roll up the rim' cups. For those not familiar with (or worse, not blessed with a local franchise of) Tim Horton's, this is a rather successful Canadian coffee/donut place (which has since expanded to include lunch menu items) and is now owned by Wendy's international division. Tim Horton's is even responsible for the term "double-double" (two creams, two sugars) which appears as an entry in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. The coffee is good. (Starbucks sucks!)

Anyway, Tim Horton's periodically has a contest whereby you look under the rolled rim of the paper cup to see if you have won a prize. This contest has become hugely popular, to the point where problems with littering and even a lawsuit over who should get the prize after someone threw away a vehicle-winning cup that was picked up by someone else (which I'm sure did nothing to hurt their sales).

The problem with this contest is that the rims of the cups are difficult to roll up. People break nails and Tim Horton's has asked that people (like me) not use their teeth to find out if they have won. (Damned if I didn't lose again this morning.) So this inventor has come up with a device that slips over the rim and when you pull on it automatically rolls the rim of the cup up. For $2 a pop, and the likelihood of the contest's continuing reappearance for years to come, will likely make this guy a lot of dough.

Bastard.

Just 'beatiful'....

2007-04-02T12:45:00.000-07:00

Religious processes never cease to amaze me. Say a few words in Latin (which nobody understands anymore) and sprinkle a bit of water (holy or not, it's just water…) and your soul is cleansed. Sound glib? I don't think so. Heck, I have yet to see even the slightest evidence in favor of the existence of the soul. Holy water is just good ol' H₂O.

Take for instance the current beatification and canonization of the late Pope John Paul II. Since John Paul can not be considered a martyr (though this was almost the case), it must be shown that a miracle has taken place by his intercession. These days this miracle almost always takes the form of a disease. Catholicism, with all its saints (that are really lesser deities), makes the hierarchy of Hinduism looks simple.

So, what was John Paul's miracle? "John Paul's cause has been bolstered by the testimony of a French nun, Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre, who says she was cured of Parkinson's disease after she and her fellow sisters prayed to the late pope." Wow. Why do I remain unimpressed? First, how was her Parkinson's diagnosed? There are similar paroxymal dyskinesias which can undergo spontaneous remission that can easily be mistaken for Parkinson's. Even if the diagnosis was correct, temporary or (more rarely) permanent remission is not unknown.

Statistically speaking, if you have a large body of believers that are afflicted with Parkinson's disease that pray to John Paul (and I'm sure there are more than a few), some of them will show signs of a recovery. This is hardly miraculous, though the person afflicted might feel that way, and not incompatible with the known course of the disease. Certainly, the prayer to the specific individual has not been shown to be causal and is mere happenstance. But the Church needs to be seen to go through the motions to make those clamoring for John Paul's deification happy.

Miracles are getting scarcer, aren't they? Is it because God isn't granting them as much? Or is it that there are fewer individuals with the required purity of heart? How about this one- Miracles are scarcer because they don't happen. What people long ago took to be miracles simply have natural explanations. Back in the days of Jesus if you didn't perform miracles you were nothing. Miracles were indeed commonly claimed back then, and not just by Jesus. Today we are better educated and the supernatural is failing more and more to be a satisfyingly explanation for anything. People are taught to think more critically (with the exception of those religious zealots of the American bible belt) and analyze events more deeply. As Martin Luther once remarked, "Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding." Why? Because reason, sense and understanding lead to the truth: "there is no spoon".

As an outsider looking in, this so-called miracle just doesn't cut it. The lack of a connection between cause and effect of this nun's prayer makes it look ridiculous and at best over-reaching, but not to the truly faithful. This suspension of reason is what all religions, even those I might call more moderate, have in common. You have a brain, people. Use it!

I just wonder what Karol Józef Wojtyla would think of all this.

Paul Lauterbur, inventor of MRI, dies at 77

2007-03-28T13:26:00.000-07:00

A sad day for my profession. My brother Boomer informed me of Paul Lauterbur's death yesterday from kidney disease. I knew he was ill for some time. Paul belatedly won the Nobel Prize in 2003 for this work, which he shared with Peter Mansfield (and not Raymond Damadian, heh).

There was considerable contorversy around the award, mostly stirred up by Damadian (he took out full page ads in the New York Times and other newspapers complaining of this 'omission'). Damadian deserves some credit for showing that tissue can have different relaxation mechanisms (by which we get contrast in images), but that was it. He was not a player in the development of MRI and this 'omission' was warranted.

I remember Paul speaking when I was an undergrad at the U of S in Saskatoon. It was a memorable talk. He was one of those animated speakers that could make watching grass grow a riveting subject. Mind you, this was very young in the history of MRI and it was an already interesting subject. While my own current use of MRI comes more from the point of view of spectroscopy, it did kindly my interest in the subject. He was one of those brilliant and dedicated scientists that made significant changes to the way we do things.

Paul passed away yesterday at the age of 77.

Got barbecue?

2007-03-27T12:37:00.000-07:00

Can anyone hazard a guess as to what I'm imaging here? Looks tasty, actually....
Well, this is a MRI image of a cow knee (200X150 mm2 FOV, driven equilibrium FT sequence, 256X256 matrix). Our sample came from a reputable source (the butcher shop across the street from the hospita- wait a minute, on second thought, maybe I should quit getting my meat there...). Not the strangest thing I ever saw across from a hospital. When I was doing my PhD in Winterpeg I laughed every time I got off the bus because right in front of the hospital was a funeral home. Talk about having the jump on the competition.

I'm still hungry after lunch. Maybe I'll crank up the rf and see if I can turn this sucker into a giant microwave...

The Connection Between Religion and Morality is an Illusion!

2007-03-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

As Sam Harris said in his speech to the Freedom from Religion Foundation, we never respect stupidity in our society unless it is religious stupidity. People that believe stupid things are not necessarily stupid, though some certainly are. Nor are they necessarily lunatics, though undoubtedly some of them are.

The erroneous connection between religion and morality is the key to the animosity towards atheists. If you think it isn't a problem, or it isn't irrational, read the following comment to another blog:

LoL! So, because the Bible is old, and inconvenient, it's just some fantasy? A respected woman I know once said this, in reply to the Bible and Christianity being false:
"If I'm wrong, then what does it matter? I have taken great comfort in these teachings. And if I'm right, what will happen to you?"
Judaism should not exist at all? By what standard? If there is no God, or even the word of God passed onto us through such things as the Bible, who's to say what should and shouldn't be? When there is no clearly defined Good, and no clearly defined Evil, everything becomes acceptable. Without God, without his word, there is no evil, and there is no good. Any person could do anything that they so desired without punishment, because there is nothing to hold them to any obligation. Ask yourself why it is that you would think it is wrong to murder an innocent person. Ask yourself why it is cruel to sexualy molest young children. Without God, these things are not wrong.
"The worst thing the Devil could have done is prove he didn't exist."
Don't disbelieve in something just because it is unpopular, or inconvenient. Disbelieve something if it is false, illogical, and unfounded.

Ah, Pascal's Wager (if in a rudimentary form)! As if that argument for belief hasn't been destroyed many, MANY times over… First, which god should you believe in? You can't believe in them all. And if you are wrong you have lived the whole of the one life you get based on a lie. Is it just me, or is that not a horrible fate?

There are many things in the Bible we now take to be shockingly immoral which seem to be part of everyday life in the time that the original codices were written. Take slavery, for instance. In no place in the Bible is slavery condemned, yet a civil war in America was fought in part over this. In fact, the Bible even tells us specifically how to treat slaves and was used as an argument by the South in favor of it. I had one discussion over this where my opponent said that this was ridiculous. The passages I was quoting were based on people selling themselves into slavery voluntarily. My response: So what? Was this person suggesting that some slavery is okay and other types not? Why is this not condoned by our society? Why are there no poor houses? Congratulations are in order; she had just reduced the Bible from something heinous to something to be reviled.

The idea that religion has anything to do with being moral is a lie. How can performing acts of good be respected when they are done out of fear of punishment? How can anyone really say they are moral on the basis that if they disobey dogmatic rules they will not be rewarded in the end? As Sam Harris said, religion gives bad reasons to be good, where good reasons available.

I also agree with Harris that the only rational basis for a system of morals is a concern for the well-being and suffering of others. To say that "without God, without his word, there is no evil and there is no good" is plainly wrong. I feel good when I open the door for a disabled person. I felt outrage with the knowledge that Saddam Hussein gassed Kurds and Shiites, people that he had an obligation to protect. Yet I do not believe.

I firmly believe that murder is wrong. I also firmly believe that molesting children is immoral. In neither of these moral calculations have I invoked any deity, let alone the Christian god. According to this person's view, I should not feel that way. I should be raping, mugging, murdering with abandon. Yet I am not. If the Bible and belief in God are the sole sources of morality, then why are responses to moral and ethical dilemmas virtually the same whether you are a believer or non-believer? This has been studied in great detail, and those interested should consult Marc Hauser's Moral Minds.

This misconception that only a belief in God can make us good must be dispelled. I don't disbelieve because it is unpopular (and just when was Christianity unpopular in the last century?) or inconvenient. I disbelieve because any religion is false, illogical and unfounded, not to mention irrational.

The last of Chopra 'debunking' The God Delusion

2007-03-15T20:51:00.001-07:00

This is the last in Deepak Chopra's refutation of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. In this episode, he attempts to refute Dawkins' assertion that:

The evolution of life can be explained completely without intruding (introducing?) the notion of an intelligent designer.

One of the few he gets correct. He writes:

"This point would seem to be a slam dunk, since Darwin's theory--and those that have sprung from it--is purely physical. Evolution proceeds, according to Darwin, through environmental stresses that put pressure on a species to survive. A sudden change in climate, the appearance of new predators, a drastic drop in the water supply are all examples of such stresses. Some creatures will adapt better than others. This is measured by whether a population of animals increases or decreases. Thus adaptation comes down to reproduction. If an animal exhibits changes that increase its chance of passing those changes on to its offspring, evolution moves forward. If, however, a mutation occurs that lowers the chance for reproduction, obviously it can't be passed on, and as a result other species survive in the endless competition for food, territory, and mating rights. This whole scheme, which has been validated thousands of times over, excludes God. Random mutations have nothing to do with a designer. The rise and fall of species shows no intelligent plan. Even the idea of progress is over simplified. Evolution doesn't automatically make a species bigger, stronger, more intelligent, or more beautiful. Blue-green algae, for example, is one of the most primitive forms of life, yet it fits its niche in the environment perfectly well today, just as it has for billions of years. The fact that an orchid seems more beautiful to our eyes and a redwood tree more majestic doesn't mean God created that beauty and majesty. Or that nature intended those qualities in any way."

He gets a lot of this right for once, except that it is not animal populations that are a measure of Evolution, but gene population and propogation.

"Yet the triumph of materialism in explaining the formation of life is grossly flawed. Dawkins realizes that there are enormous gaps in evolutionary theory, but he keeps assuring us that these will be filled in over time. Genetics, like evolution itself, proceeds by increments, and we mustn't leap to embrace an intelligent designer just because so many things around us seem, well, intelligently designed."

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Chopra, if he believed in the Christian God, would be a poster boy for the Discovery Institute, with the brains to match.
"The fact that the world appears to be so perfectly knit, so stunningly precise down to the millionths of a degree, so beautiful, and in the end so meaningful to anyone who can appreciate these qualities, is a problem for materialists. For centuries one of the strongest proofs of God has been the inference that nothing less than a supreme being could have created life. Unfortunately for Dawkins, refuting this claim isn't nearly as easy as he thinks."

Really? Explaining the balance of ecosystems is a total triumph for Evolution! No species evolves in a vacuum. For instance, for gazelles to escape predators such as lions they natural selection can select for gazelles with longer legs. There is a limit to this, as longer legs mean a longer drop to the ground for gazelle young at birth, etc. The lion species' evolution is sensitive to this, and selection for those characteristics which will allow them to keep up with gazelles. This trickle-down effect makes Reaganomics look like child's play. The evolution of every species is interconnected with every other species. Equilibrium is never achieved, but is always strived for in the gene pools. Simulations have demonstrated the validity of the principles of Natural Selection over and over, and have been corroborated through observation.

In the same way we find the quantum world strange because we evolved in a world dominated by Classical Mechanics, we find it difficult to understand Evolution (the fact, not the Theory) because we did not evolve in a world where these changes are rapid on a human time scale. The fact that we have understood Evolution is a testament to the human ability for logic and reason. It is easy to see how people can succumb to the Argument of Personal Incredulity, but once such emotional 'arguments' are set aside and the evidence looked at for what it is, there are no reasonable arguments against Evolution.

Scientists still study the finches of the Galapagos. It's a wonderful natural laboratory. Beak size varies from year to year. These are small changes, to be sure, but significant. It all depends on food availability, the size and hardness of the seeds which form the birds' diet, etc. I can almost hear the naysayers now. But that's just adaptation! As if there is a difference between micro- and macroevolution other than in magnitude. Sheesh.

If over the centuries that interference from some god was required to create life is the strongest of arguments for the existence of God, then it comes up short and needs to be discarded. I can only assume that he is thinking of Paley's watchmaker. That idea was debunked long ago by David Hume. While abiogenesis lies outside the purview of Evolution, a large body of work on the subject has shown how life might have originated. If it was so impossible, then we would not be able to do even that. So, yes, it is easy to refute the existence of God.

"God, on the other hand, is merely inferred. He's an invisible supposition, and who needs one when we have fossils? The flaw here is subtle, for Dawkins is imagining God in advance and then claiming that what he imagines has little chance of existing. That's perfectly true, but why should God be what Dawkins imagines--a superhuman Creator making life the way a watchmaker makes a watch?" Here we go back to misunderstanding the target of The God Delusion. Dawkins is quite specific about refuting an Abrahamic god in his book. True, Dawkins does not believe in the existence of any god, but to debunk Chopra's vision of god would require another book. "Let's say God is closer to being a field of consciousness that pervades the universe. Let's say that this field keeps creating new forms within itself. These forms swirl and mix with each other, finding more combinations and complexities as time unfolds." Huh? First, Chopra arbitrarily invokes some 'field of consciousness' (Isn't that word 'field' cool? It makes it sound like he knows what he is talking about…). He offers no substantiation. He's already shunned random chance (another strawman of Evolution), but is willing to invoke it here just because it suits him? Again, Chopra's ideas are self-inconsistent. "Such a God couldn't be imagined because a field is infinite, and there's nowhere it isn't. Thus trying to talk about God is like a fish trying to talk about wetness. A fish is immersed in wetness; it has nothing to compare water to, and the same is true of consciousness. We are conscious and intelligent, and it does no good to talk about the probability of not being conscious and intelligent." We exist in air, yet we feel the wind. We can detect air, water, whatever. We can detect all manner of fields for which our senses are not attuned. If such a field of consciousness exists it could be detected as well. Not only has such a field never been detected, Physics has not even postulated it. Unsubstantiated garbage; all a house of cards built in the clouds.

"We are in God as a fish is in water. Dawkins doesn't take this argument seriously (he imagines that he can entirely dismiss geniuses on the order of Plato, Socrates, Hegel, Kant, Newton, and Einstein simply because they aren't up on the current issue of Scientific American, as he is). In the past, thinkers saw intelligence and consciousness all around them, and they set out to explain their source, which some called God. It's not necessary to use such a word. But it is necessary to find the source." Is Chopra saying that we should not adjust our views in the face of new evidence? It's easy to see intelligence and consciousness all around us, but does that mean that it is so? When we take a closer look at the universe we see the opposite. We see no direction, but complexity and order generated by a set of rules which are themselves a product of gauge symmetry. He attempts to support his position by dropping a few names. Big deal. Stephen Hawking knows more about the origins of the universe than you or I will ever know, Deepak, yet he sees no reason to invoke God. And it really pisses me off when people try to tell me that Einstein was religious; he was a pantheist at most. He most certainly did not believe in a personal god, nor did he believe the univese was self-aware. Thinkers in the past saw intelligence and consciousness all around them because they had no better alternative to this belief. We have much more information to make use of now. It's called advancement.

"Are information fields real, as some theorists believe? Such a field might preserve information the way energy fields preserve energy; in fact, the entire universe may be based upon the evolution of information. (there's not the slightest doubt that the universe has an invisible source outside space and time.)" Really? This last sentence would be news to Physicists. There is absolutely nothing in current models to suggest that even speaking about anything outside of space and time has any meaning. And if anyone out there has any idea what the hell an information field is, send me a link please. My only idea of what he is talking about is something akin to the Gaia hypothesis, which is just more unsubstantiated spiritual garbage. It's all 'if's and 'maybe's, yet their appearance in this setting is acceptable to him because it suits him. It's not acceptable to me.

"Dawkins falls prey, not to the delusion of God, but to the delusion of an all-mighty chance acting mindlessly through matter. He cannot admit the possibility of an ordering force in Nature." Why should he? No such thing ordering force is needed in explaining anything, let alone been detected. Invoking such a thing is completely arbitrary. "Therefore, he has no ability to discover the precursors of the human mind, which is ultimately the greatest triumph of evolutionary biology, not DNA. Until we have a credible explanation for mind, it's pointless to argue about God as if we understand what's at stake. Religion and science are both operating with incomplete concepts." If that's the case, Deepak, why do you keep blathering on as if you have some insider knowledge? You don't. I'll stick to logic and reason, my conclusions supported by empirical evidence (as if there is any other kind). I'll leave the superstitious crap to you. "The entire universe is experienced only through consciousness, and even though consciousness is invisible and non-material, it's the elephant in the room so far as evolutionary theory is concerned. This is a huge topic, of course. It's difficult threading one's way through the battlefield, with fundamentalists firing smoke on one side and skeptics arrogantly defending the scientific status quo on the other, but earth-shaking issues are at stake. When we understand both intelligence and design, a quantum leap in evolutionary theory will be possible." I'm sorry, Deepak. Intelligent design in Science is dead, not that it was ever actually alive. Whether you like it or not, the Theory of Evolution has been extremely successful in explaining even the rise of consciousness. It does not have the gaps that you believe it has. The underlying principles of Natural Selection are pretty much set. It's only details that are being argued over in scientific circles, and believe me, your ears will never burn. You're not even a blip.

So, what has Chopra presented? I could almost respect Chopra's position if he was a pantheist as Einstein probably was. But he doesn't stop there. He believes, offering no evidence in support, that the universe is intelligent and self-aware. Apart from this, there is little difference between his empty vision of intelligent design and that of creationists. In essence, he posits 'god-did-it'. God-did-it offers nothing explanatory. Like all creationists, instead of actually answering the question of the universe's and our existence, he just creates a new one; begging the question, as it were, to which he has no answer. He's smart enough to dump the idea of a personal god, but still too lazy to look for real answers. He provides no positive evidence for his own position and makes easily refuted negative arguments against a caricature of materialism. In essence he offers nothing but unsubstantiated garbage, exactly the type of voodoo that would appeal to what Sapolsky referred to in his speech to the Freedom from Religion Foundation as 'schizotypal personalities'. Richard Dawkins is in a completely different league than you, Deepak.

Deepak Chopra 'debunks' The God Delusion - Part V

2007-03-13T09:40:00.001-07:00

I've already shown my contempt for Chopra's ability to think, and he continues his irrational diatribe in Part V of his debunking of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. I'm sure he thinks he's being clever, but the strawmen keep coming. In this installment, he attempts to attack what he believes is part of Dawkins' position:

Consciousness is a byproduct of matter.

No, consciousness is an evolutionary development. Yes, matter is required, but so is organization. Evolution gives a perfectly good explanation of the development of consciousness.

In his attempt to refute this, he comes up with a thought experiment: "Think of a yellow flower. Can you see it? If so, then the experiment has been successfully completed. When you see a flower in your mind, there is no flower inside your brain. That seems simple enough. But where is that flower? There's no picture of it in your brain, because your brain contains no light. How about the color yellow? Is there a patch of yellow inside your brain? Obviously not."

Now, even Einstein's thought experiment required a great deal of empirical confirmation before acceptance, even for himself. This is something that Chopra is mistaken about: ideas require verification. So, let's look at his thought experiment. You think of a yellow flower. The thought of yellow causes us to access memory associated with the visual cortex, as does the thought of a flower. We can see such things using something called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Experiments using fMRI study how the brain does exactly these things. When you think of yellow, certain parts of the brain start working and increase blood flow in these regions, clearing deoxyhemoglobin. This causes an increase in image intensity in those reasons from a resting state. How does Chopra's position explain this? It doesn't. Nor does it explain personality changes due to damage of the frontal cortex, the effects of single gene disorders such as schizophrenia, or a host of other brain disorders. The evidence that to Chopra doesn't even exist just does not bear out his position. Chopra's ideas are intellectually bankrupt.

Another strawman approacheth: "Yet you assume--as do all who fall for the superstition of materialism--that flowers and the color yellow exist 'out there' in the world. In fact, they do not. The entire experience of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell is created in consciousness. Molecules don't assemble in your head to make the sound of a trumpet blaring in a brass band. The brain is silent. So where does the world of sights and sounds come from?" It seems to me that Chopra's view of materialism is rather glib. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it materialism that tells us from empirical observation exactly how seeing yellow works? Oh, wait. Deepak has the answer: it's some woo-woo mystical unsubstantiated hypothetical crap that doesn't tell us anything at all about HOW we see or hear or think. Good theory, Deepak. Utterly devoid of any substance. Talk about anti-materialistic.

According to Chopra, "Materialists cannot offer any reasonable explanation. The fact is that an enormous gap exists between any physical, measurable event and our perception. If I talk to you, all I am doing is vibrating air with my vocal cords. Every aspect of that event can be seen and measured. But turning those vibrating air molecules into meaningful words has never been seen or measured. It can't be." As before, he posits a God of the Gaps. Again, we can see the effects of the brain converting these vibrations into something meaningful, as much as one can understand Chopra's inanity. fMRI and PET can do exactly what he says "can't be". At least we can model consciousness, then experiment to verify and update our model. What Chopra offers is vacuous. And this is just a beginning in our understanding the mind. As PZ Meyers has observed, the next attack on theism will come from neuroscience.

What he says here is inexplicable: "When you get to the primal state of the universe, what is it? A universal field that encloses all matter and energy. This field is everywhere, but it also localizes itself. A molecule in the brain is one expression of the field, so is a thought. The field turns out to be the common ground of both the inner and outer world. When Einstein said that he wanted to know the mind of God, he was pointing us toward the field, which science continues to explore." This is just spiritual gobbledygook. And people wonder why I equate spirituality with flakiness? I'd like to know where in Physics this universal field is defined. Without any basis other than his own flaky prejudice he defines a thought as something that exists in the same way that a molecule does. He has just contradicted himself. In the same way that a molecule can be detected, it follows from his beliefs that an idea should similarly be observed. He is completely inconsistent. Inner and outer worlds? What are they? Einstein was not pointing toward some nonexistent field, he was trying to understand how the universe works! His was a wholly a materialistic position.

"Fortunately, as the two rivers begin to merge, we won't be plagued by either the superstition of religion or the superstition of materialism. We will begin to link brain and mind through new concepts that will explain how the color yellow exists in our brain as the same phenomenon as a yellow flower in the meadow. Both are experiences in consciousness." Oh, goodness. Talk about superstitious. The way in which we see a yellow flower in a meadow has nothing to do with how we envision a yellow flower in our mind. The first has to do with the interaction between matter and light. The pigment in the flower petal absorbs certain wavelengths and reflects those which form what we know as yellow. These are detected on the retina, converted to nerve impulses and transmitted to the brain. These impulses are stored until accessed. Thinking about a yellow flower accesses the memories that are stored; the color yellow in one place and the flower form in another. Interestingly, the regions that light up in fMRI images are the same for accessing a yellow flower memory as they are for viewing one. To invoke voodoo as Chopra does is unjustified. Indeed, his position is utterly destroyed by materialism and show to be one born purely from prejudice.

"That covers the basic and I think most convincing refutation of the anti-God argument. It doesn't prove God by any means, much less does it degrade science. The damage that anti-God rhetoric does is to cloud reality. In reality there is ample room for both God and science. Many forward-looking thinkers realize this; sadly, Richard Dawkins isn't among them." His arguments so far have not convinced me of anything. If anything, they have caused me to disrespect his position even more. He cherry picks what he wants from Science and twists it till it hardly resembles the idea it originated as. For instance, his use of quantum entanglement to support his position that there are things unexplained by materialism, even though it has been thoroughly explained. He is either a bald-faced liar or a deluded charlatan (or a little from column A and a little from column B). Either way his ideas shouldn't be given the time of day. I am in Dawkins' camp when it comes to Science and God. You can not be intellectually honest as a scientist and still believe in a deity. God, even in Chopra's nebulously defined version, is a result of unquestioned and unfalsifiable dogma. This is anathema to Science. Those that straddle the fence wind up intellectually emasculated.

Tomorrow's final installment is where he attempts to denounce Evolution. What a laugh.

Deepak Chopra on The God Delusion - Part IV

2007-03-12T12:53:00.000-07:00

To recap Deepak Chopra's objections to Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion:

In Part I Chopra claims that it is Dawkins' assertion that if Science can not explain the existence of something, that something does not exist. Hogwash. Apparently, Chopra does not understand Ockham's Razor: anything not required in an explanation is superfluous and must be cut from the final synthesis. God is not required to explain anything, and therefore has little chance of existing.
Part II is just a superfluous reiteration of his statement in Part I.
In Part III Chopra attempts to debunk materialism through the anthropic principle and the existence of Quantum Mechanics. The anthropic principle has taken a huge blow recently with the publication of the results of simulating the universe in the total absence of weak nuclear interactions. Quantum Mechanics is not only itself a part of materialism, it was BORN from materialism. In essence, Chopra debunks himself.

Time for Part IV, where Chopra asserts that Dawkins believes that:

The universe is neither intelligent nor conscious. Science doesn't need those ingredients to explain nature and its workings. Starting with atoms and molecules governed by strict physical laws, we will eventually explain everything.

Seeing as there is no evidence in support of an intelligent or conscious universe, I can not see how Chopra is able to refute this, and he doesn't disappoint. Instead, he makes an ad hoc attack: "This argument has to be made in a very loud voice with total conviction to sound plausible. Dawkins holds that humans are conscious because chemicals randomly collide in the brain to produce a phantom we ignorantly call the mind. This is a fashionable view and in fact is the logical outcome of arch materialism. Where else could mind come from if not molecules, assuming that molecules are the basis of the brain and therefore of reality itself?"

Where else indeed? "Common sense finds it hard to take this argument seriously, because it leads to nonsense. The brain contains an enormous amount of water and salt. Are we to assume that water is intelligent, or salt is conscious? If they aren't, then we must assume that throwing water and salt together--along with about six other basic building blocks of organic chemicals--suddenly makes them intelligent. The bald fact is that Dawkins defends an absurd position because he can't make the leap to a different set of assumptions." What is he saying? That a human body is composed of just carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, hydrogen and sulfur? It was once said that the human body is composed of about $6 of these chemicals. But this ignored that the synthesis of complex molecules is very expensive. The $6 figure was rather myopic. This is no different than Chopra's view. Consciousness comes from the enormously complex biochemistry and structure of the human brain, a result of evolutionary processes. The only assumption in Dawkins position is that consciousness is explainable via naturalism.

So what are Chopra's assumptions?

"--Consciousness is part of existence. It wasn't created by molecules.
--Intelligence is an aspect of consciousness.
--Intelligence grows as life grows. Both evolve from within. --The universe evolved along intelligent lines."

This is meaningless drivel. Is an amoeba conscious? It exists. Molecules exist, but are hardly conscious. Intelligence requires consciousness; it is not an aspect of it. Intelligence grows as life grows? I don't even know what that means. The universe evolved along intelligent lines? No. The universe is exactly as we would expect it to be in the absence of design. The big difference between Dawkins' and Chopra's positions is that in Dawkins' case, materialism is his starting point. He has no conclusion to influence his path. Chopra's on the other hand (and this is true of creationists as well) starts with his conclusion: the universe is conscious. It's his base assumption and his final answer, at which he arrives not from empirical evidence, but personal prejudice.

"If we remain sane and clear-headed, the reason to assume that consciousness exists is simple. There's no other way to account for it." This is just a God of the Gaps argument, or perhaps the Argument from Personal Incredulity. Either way it's bogus, weak and lazy. It says, "Oh, this is just too hard to understand. Let's chalk it up to some nebulous deity and go for a beer." This is a contemptible position. He claims that consciousness "isn't just plausible as part of nature, it's totally necessary." He poses a bizarre question to the reader: "Do you think you are conscious and intelligent, or are you being fooled by random chemical reactions inside your skull?" It's a total canard. Consciousness is, as I've said, a result of the brain's enormously complex biochemistry and structure. What he's done is reduced that to "random chemical reactions". This glib statement is another strawman: make a caricature of your opponent's position to make it sound ridiculous. But it's Chopra that comes across as ridiculous. I can't wait to trash the fifth installment.

Deepak on The God Delusion - Part III

2007-03-09T09:53:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago my wife and I (we were only at the dating part of our relationship at the time) were at a little soup and sandwich place near where I worked. This is one of those specialty places, not at all like Tim Horton's (My condolences to those that have never experienced Tim's coffee. Starbucks sucks.). I went to the washroom and while I was there my wife was listening to a conversation at the next table over. After I got back my wife was looking at me expectantly for what I could tell was no reason whatsoever. Then I started listening to the conversation going on behind me, and that's when my wife's amusement became apparent. These two elderly ladies were discussing Quantum Mechanics and 'planes of existence' in the same spiritualistic breath. Having had a number of university courses in Quantum Mechanics and even a graduate course in Relativistic Quantum Mechanics, this was to me what I imagine my bull-cat Omar feels when I rub his fur backwards. Why is it that places like this always seem to attract weirdoes like flypaper?

Why did I relate this anecdote? You'll see that it has a direct bearing on Deepak Chopra's third 'attack' on Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion:

The universe is a complex machine whose workings are steadily being demystified by science. Any other way of viewing the world is superstitious and reactionary.

Chopra writes: "What is so strange about this argument is that Dawkins himself is totally reactionary. His defense of a material universe revealing its secrets ignores the total overthrow of materialism in modern physics. There is no world of solid objects; space-time itself depends upon shaping forces beyond both space and time." Did I miss the memo? When has materialism been overthrown at all, even in modern Physics? Another commenter noticed this as well. I have a suspicion of what he means: Quantum Mechanics.

Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winner for his work in Quantum Electrodynamics, once said: "I think I can safely say that no one understands quantum mechanics." Why is that? Quantum rules apply only on very small dimensions. I am speaking about dimensions so small that we can't even imagine them, let alone experience quantum effects. We evolved in a world dominated by Classical Mechanics. When you throw a ball in a gravitational field you know from experience how to adjust the catching mitt in order to intercept its path. We don't need to know the mathematics behind the ball's motion; we just need to catch it. (Before it hits our head, right, Dale?) This has obvious implications for individual survival.

But in the quantum realm things are counter-intuitive. We do not have a grasp of quantum rules simply because our survival has never depended upon this understanding. We don't need to know about wave-particle duality of electrons unless you are applying for funding in Physics. Our brains evolved to understand what mattered for survival and an intuitive understanding of Classical Mechanics was much more important in this respect than Quantum Mechanics. We don't need to understand Quantum Mechanics to make incredibly precise and accurate predictions of experimental outcomes, which makes it one of the most successful Theories of all time. For an entertaining discussion of what would happen if, for instance the Planck's, gravitational or speed of light constants were altered to make quantum weirdness a part of our normal every day experience, see if you can find of copy of George Gamow's Mr. Tomkins in Wonderland. This book is unfortunately out of print, but for those interested see if you can find it on eBay.

Chopra claims materialism is a superstition and has glaring problems: "…arch materialism is just as superstitious as religion. Someone like Dawkins still believes there are solid objects randomly colliding to haphazardly form more and more complex objects, until over the course of billions of years the universe produced human DNA with its billions of genetic bits." Just out of curiosity, how can anything based on evidence (as materialism requires) be superstitious? That's just a non sequitor, but from Chopra it isn't surprising. Why does anyone buy his books?

"What's wrong with this argument is that if you trace DNA down to its individual atoms, each is more than 99.9999% empty space. If you take an individual electron, it has no fixed position in either time or space. Rather, ghostly vibrations wink in and out of the universe thousands of times per second, and what lies beyond the boundary of the five senses holds enormous mysteries." What I find enormously hilarious about this is that he is using materialistic positions to fight a strawman of materialism. Dawkins is fully aware and embraces Quantum Mechanics. It just has little bearing on his field of study. Chemistry is not about billiard balls bouncing off each other till they form some random molecule. Atoms come together directed by forces of interaction. If it was just random, Chemistry would not be a scientific discipline. It is anything but random. Some of his other points are just inanities. For instance, what does the fact that DNA is almost totally 'empty space' have anything to do with this? Again, DNA does not come together randomly; it is replicated in an ordered manner by proteins specific to the task, which are themselves coded in the DNA. There are many such non-random phenomena. Another good example is protein folding.

"Enough mysteries, in fact, to be consistent with God. I don't mean a personal God or a mythic one or any God with a human face. Set aside all images of God. What we observe once we get over the superstition of materialism (one that Dawkins defends to the last degree) is that random chance is one of the worst ways to explain how the universe evolved. Here are a few reasons why:
--The various constants in nature, such as gravity and the speed of light, are too precisely fitted with each other for this to happen by chance.
--If any one of six constants had been off by less than a millionth of 1 percent, the material universe couldn't exist." Let's look at the argument that if the universal constants aren't what they are there would be no universe, which is just another form of the Anthropic Principle. Is this true? Nope. I don't know where he read this (maybe the Discovery Institute website), but even large changes in fundamental constants would result in something amazing: the big bang, formation stars and galaxies, etc. Sound familiar? Vic Stenger has dealt with the cosmological argument in several of his books. For instance, one proponent of the Anthropic Principle has stated that if the mass of the neutrino were increased by a very small amount (it turns out to be a factor of 10), the gravitational force would cause the universe to collapse immediately after the Big Bang. But what really happened here? He's not only changed the mass of the neutrino, but changed the mass of the universe as well! There would simply have been fewer neutrinos with this increased mass and you'd still have the universe. Changing fundamental constants in a vacuum like that is simply a numbers game. Indeed, the Anthropic Principle has no empirical basis and is little more than the Argument from Personal Incredulity. Even if the universe was such that our type of life could not exist, that does not mean some other form could not develop. Stephen Hawking (a little name dropping here I admit) believes that there is very little special about our universe at all.
"--Events at opposite ends of the universe are paired with each other, so that a change in the spin of one electron immediately produces a twin effect in another electron. This ability to communicate instantly across millions of light years cannot be explained by materialism. It defies all notions of cause and effect. It defies chance. "This point brings us back to the subject of Quantum Mechanics. What Chopra is (badly) describing is something called quantum entanglement. He obviously doesn't understand that while entangled states appear to violate relativity, no meaningful information is transferred between the particles and thus causality is not violated. Seems it is explained in a materialistic manner to me.

"--Every electron in the universe exists as a wave function that is everywhere at once. When this wave function collapses, we observe a specific isolated electron. Before the wave collapses, however, matter is non-local." This last point (yet again) shows Chopra's miscomprehension. He naively states that matter is everywhere in the universe until measurement causes the wavefunction to collapse. But what the equations actually describe (and this depends on the interpretation of QM, but because I am familiar only with the Copenhagen interpretation I will use that) is that the wavefunction extends out infinitely, not the mass. The square of the wavefunction gives the probability distribution of finding the particle at any given point. These mathematical functions extend over all space, but that does not mean that the matter is non-local. The math just tells us the probability of finding the particle at any point in space. When you attempt to observe it the wavefunction collapses and you detect the particle.

What I find most amusing about this is that Quantum Mechanics wholly materialistic. It is has been verified by experiment many times over with a precision unheard of prior to its discovery. The inability of the human mind to understand it invites people like Chopra (or the two ladies in the café) to try to believe that it is in some way the woo-woo mystical crap and try to make it their own. While I do not suggest that Quantum Mechanics does not describe something deep and fundamental about our universe (indeed it does), there is nothing to suggest that it points to design or intelligence. Chopra seems mistakenly to think that Classical Mechanics is all there is to Science and somehow Quantum Mechanics is outside of this, in the woo-woo realm. Baloney. Yes, Quantum Mechanics changed Physics, but it was born out of materialism not spirituality.

"If the universe is self-aware, it would explain the formation of a self-replicating molecule like DNA far more elegantly than the clumsy, crude mechanism of random chance. As the astronomer Fred Hoyle declared (Hoyle was one of the first to seize on the notion of an expanding universe in the 1950s), the probability that random chance created life is roughly the same as the probability that a hurricane could blow through a junkyard and create a Boeing 707." Here we go again. When did any proponent of abiogenesis or Evolution ever claim that 'random chance' was the start of life? Life began very, very simply. We don't know the details, but it certainly did not resemble anything like a cell. The cell is a modern structure, the result many, many small changes over time. DNA is also a modern replicator. Of course they could not have spontaneously formed. But then, DNA and cells were not the first structures that we would label as Life.

The Strawman Army commeth....

Deepak on The God Delusion - Part Deux

2007-03-08T10:29:00.000-08:00

In part one, I showed that Deepak Chopra does not understand the difference between Science declaring something extremely unlikely via Ockham's Razor, where anything unnecessary to an explanation of observations is discarded. Rather, he sees Science as saying that anything that doesn't have a naturalistic explanation is non-existent. This is a ridiculous viewpoint, not the least in so far as it is false. Chopra is simply a sub-par thinker. Let's look at what he believes is Richard Dawkins second point against God:

God is unnecessary. Science can explain nature without any help from supernatural forces like God. There is no need for a Creator.

Deepak tries to hide by declaring that God is not a person:

"This assumption is false on several grounds. The most basic one is that God isn't a person. In a certain strain of fundamentalist Christianity God looks and acts human, and creating the world in six days is taken literally (Dawkins refers to such believers as "clowns," worthy of nothing but ridicule). But God isn't a person in any strain of Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Confucianism, the branch of Hinduism known as Vedanta, and many denominations of Christianity--he's not a person in the Gospel of John in the New Testament."

Deepak I think missed the whole point of The God Delusion. Like Sam Harris' Letter To A Christian Nation and The End of Faith, The God Delusion was written to address the clear and present danger of fundamentalism in the Abrahamic religions. These religions do indeed view God as a person. According to the Bible, we were created in His image. Such a god can not exist. Refuting Deepak's version of spirituality would require a whole new book.

Well, we've seen how Chopra defines God as not being, but what is God to him? "God, if he exists, is universal, existing at all times and places, pervading creation both inside the envelope of space-time and outside it. To use a word like "He" has no validity, in fact; we are forced into it by how language works. A better term would be "The All," which in Sanskrit is Brahman and Allah in Islam. Not every language is stuck with "He" or "She."" This sounds rather pantheist to me, until he posits that "The All" demonstrates intelligence. That's where I draw the line between something I can respect and something I deride.

To Chopra, it all comes down to a choice. "The real debate is between two world views:
1. The universe is random. It operates entirely through physical laws. There is no evidence of innate intelligence.
2. The universe contains design. Physical laws generate new forms that display intention. Intelligence is all-pervasive." Deepak seems to think that these two points of view can be united. Unfortunately, as Dawkins pointed out clearly in his book, these people are being intellectually dishonest. For a scientist to believe the second position, evidence for design and intent must be present. It is irrational to believe in something without at least some empirical evidence. The 'inner knowledge' thing just doesn't fly, since these are baseless perceptions masqueraded as undeniable evidence. This is simply a sham, a delusion in the truest sense. I direct anyone that thinks differently to read David Hume's work Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

"There is room for a new paradigm that preserves all the achievements of science--as upheld by the first worldview--while giving the universe meaning and significance." This is ludicrous anthropomorphizing. As humans, it is part of our behavior to see patterns, even when there are none. Our intellect has trouble believing that there is no meaning, no destiny for our species. As Vic Stenger points out in God: The Failed Hypothesis, the universe has a lot of waste if it has some kind of meaning that includes us. Our species has been around only a tiny fraction of the history of the universe; our species will likely never get beyond a few light years in exploring it, whereas it is billions of light years in size. Giving the universe meaning and significance where it has none is simply an Argument from Personal Incredulity. Not accepting that there is no purpose, no reason for existence is Deepak's failing, not the universe's. Instead he plays the fool and arbitrarily posits such meaning without evidence.

In part III of this series, Chopra makes an attempt to create a bridge between these two positions. You of course know that I already think this is impossible, since the second point above is false, merest illusion…..

Deepak, Deepak, Deepak..... sigh

2007-03-07T14:34:00.000-08:00

More Chopra voodoo....
Category: Religion and Philosophy

I'll admit it. I have absolutely no patience for any spiritual (in PZ's vernacular, 'woo-woo') crap. This incluces (maybe especially) the junk that Deepak Chopra spouts. This is a six part response to Deepak Chopra's 'debunking' of the Richard Dawkins' God Delusion. Chopra goes through each of what he feels are the main points (some of which he gets totally wrong) and attempts to refute each, sometimes seemingly without any logic at all. The first:

Science is the only valid way to gain knowledge. Nothing about God is needed to explain the world. Eventually science will uncover all mysteries. Those that it can't explain don't exist.

Chopra believes that non-empirical data is as valuable as empirical data and that Science is not the only path to Truth. He gives examples of non-empirical knowledge, such as "I know that my mother loved me all her life, as I love my own children. I feel genius in great works of art. I have seen medical cures that science can't explain, some seemingly triggered by faith." The last one I call bullshit on. Faith healing has been debunked so many times that any belief in its efficacy is simple lunacy. But let's look at the first one. (I'll take his word that his mother loved him.) Is this some kind of inner knowledge inaccessible by any logical means? No. He has simply never asked the right question: How do I know? If Deepak's mother acts in a caring manner towards him then such actions are evidence that his mother loves him. He may not have thought about it consciously, but somewhere in the background he made the connection. Certainly, this is not some 'inner knowledge'. There are many examples of such unconscious calculations, like morality and ethics described so well in Marc Hauser's "Moral Minds".

But remember, feelings evolved. They are a means for enhancing our social behavior, which in turn enhanced our survival as a species. They are constructs of Evolution, not undeniable truths. We feel what we call fear so that we may deal with danger, we feel lust so that we may pass on our genes, we feel what we call love so that we can rear a child to adulthood and so continue to pass on genetic material to the next generation. These facts do not in any way take from the experience of each. But feelings can never replace logic, reasoning and solid empirical evidence in explaining Nature. To use yesterday's David Hume quote, "When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." Amen.

"For thousands of years human beings have been obsessed with beauty, truth, love, honor, altruism, courage, social relationships, art, and God. They all go together as subjective experiences, and it's a straw man to set God up as the delusion. If he is, then so is truth itself or beauty itself. God stands for the perfection of both, and even if you think truth and beauty (along with love, justice, forgiveness, compassion, and other divine qualities) can never be perfect, to say that they are fantasies makes no sense." The universe does not care about beauty, truth, love, honor, altruism, courage, social relationships, art, and God. The universe just is. While these things are not delusions, they are all human constructs. They are byproducts of our higher brain functions. That they are not purposeful constructs is irrelevant. Deepak seems to think they are inherent properties of the universe. Bullocks.

"Science knows about objective reality, the mask of matter that our five senses detects. But the mind goes beyond the five senses, and it does Dawkins no good to lump the two worlds of inner and outer together. In fact, insofar as brain research can locate centers of activity that light up whenever a person feels love or pleasure or sexual arousal, these subjective states leave objective traces behind. That makes them more real, not less. In the same way, the brain lights up when a person feels inspired or close to God; therefore, we may be getting closer to the connection between inner and outer states, not further away." Inner and outer states? What the hell? The mind does NOT go beyond the five senses. There is no evidence that there is any other input than taste, smell, touch, sight and hearing. If a schizophrenic 'hears' voices, that is the schizophrenic's reality. Are these voices real? This is one of the reasons that so-called 'inner knowing' is meaningless without independent corroboration.

Deepak seems to think that materialists such as Dawkins try to break everything down to its smallest components; that if you can know where every atom is you know everything about a system. Such reductionism is silly and Richard Dawkins proposes no such thing. Consciousness is a prime example. We do not fully understand it yet, but we are beginning to build simple models of consciousness that have nothing to do with knowing where every molecule is situated.

Chopra looks, but does not see. How does Chopra explain changes in personality that result from brain injury? Instead, consciousness is some mystical entity. But this seems to be another form of the false dichotomy. Science hasn't explained consciousness fully therefore it must be something metaphysical. Not much of an argument. Without empirical evidence I will never be convinced, or even interested, in his position.

"A materialist could conceivably analyze the brain functions of a Mozart or Beethoven down to the last synaptic firing, but that would tell us nothing about why music exists, why it is beautiful, where great symphonies come from, why inspiration uplifts the listener, or in fact any relevant thing about the meaning of music." He's right. But again Chopra makes the mistake of thinking Science as totally reductionist. To paraphrase the old saying, if you want to study forest ecology you don't look just at the individual trees. I think that his myopic view of materialism stems from this misconception that by dissecting Nature Science removes the inherent beauty of it. Poppycock! Without Science how would any of us ever know the beauty of celestial objects that the Hubble Telescope brings us, the symmetry of the mathematics that rules the mechanics of the universe, or the amazing natural history of our planet? Scientists are not robots.

The last point that he makes, that if Science can't explain it then it doesn't exist, is a strawman. Materialism says no such thing. When we scientists can't explain something, we tell the truth: we don't know. There's no shame in that. The shame comes (or should) when we say something idiotic like "We don't know, therefore it must be magic." What Science does say is anything (like god) not required to explain a set of observations should be removed from our hypotheses. Otherwise its inclusion is arbitrary and superfluous. This is Ockham's Razor.

Chopra's position is a dangerous one. His mystical baloney relies heavily on Science never being able to explain fully the areas in which he makes his attacks. In this he posits nothing more than the God of the Gaps. What a rube.

Part II tomorrow....

Rantings of a true-blue atheist...

Never underestimate the ability of scientific inquiry...

In Search of the Protocell - The Work of Jack Szostak

A sad day in Calgary

Ontario Tories trounced by electorate on religious school funding

Dawkins reviews Hitchens' "God is Not Great"

The Biology of Sexual Orientation - Cristian C A Bodo

Experiment in Belief Origins - The Cargo Cults

The joys of demolishing bad religion....

Columbia - Bill O'Reilly's "Paradise on Earth"

Is Evolution the Drunken Man as Behe claims?

Stampede is over for another year....

Firearm violence and gun control

No atheists in foxholes? Give me a shovel and a gun...

Yet another nail in the coffin of ID

William Lane Craig's worthless apologetics

More comments....

A response to my blog on the importance of mechanism in explanations....

God vs Evo - Last Installment

God vs Evo - Part III

God vs. Evo Part II

My ongoing conversation with the religious at The Things That Matter Most...

Calgary succumbs to forces of nature

A new bundle of joy in our household....

My ongoing discussion with The Things That Matter Most...

They say a picture is worth 1000 words...

Hitchens on Falwell

A sad day in our household

Fun with MRI. Guess that produce...

New argument for God's existence?

Canada introduces new 'pocket change'...

Of the air for a while....

Faith and Science

Damn. Now why didn't I think of this?

Just 'beatiful'....

Paul Lauterbur, inventor of MRI, dies at 77

Got barbecue?

The Connection Between Religion and Morality is an Illusion!

The last of Chopra 'debunking' The God Delusion

Deepak Chopra 'debunks' The God Delusion - Part V

Deepak Chopra on The God Delusion - Part IV

Deepak on The God Delusion - Part III

Deepak on The God Delusion - Part Deux

Deepak, Deepak, Deepak..... *sigh*

Deepak, Deepak, Deepak..... sigh