Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Because there are so many more religious believers than atheists, even if the rates of conversion to and fro were equal you’d still get more believers becoming atheists than the other way round. (Eventually, though, the numbers would be equal.) But the rates aren’t really equal: it seems that the rate of loss of belief exceeds that of acquiring belief—at least if you accept the statistics about the secularization of the West.
That’s one reason it’s surprising to see an atheist regain belief in God. The other is that it makes more intellectual sense to give up belief than to acquire it, and that’s because there’s no evidence for Gods. Since most people live their lives in an evidence-based way, you might expect that despite the religious indoctrination of children, those who come to think for themselves would eventually give up faith. On the other hand, acquiring faith seems weirder, since it means you’re believing in spite of the evidence. (I consider the absence of God as evidence for his nonexistence, since any decent God would have given us that evidence, and would not have given different groups of people wildly different faiths.)
So I was disappointed when, according to several sources (including the Washington Post), Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that he is no longer an atheist (he’s previously mentioned his nonbelief on his site). It started with this post on his Facebook page:
And then a reader followup:
“Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah from Priscilla, Max, Beast and me,” he wrote, naming his wife, daughter and dog. Then a commenter asked him: Aren’t you an atheist?
Zuckerberg identified himself as an atheist for years, but on Facebook on Christmas he wrote back: “No. I was raised Jewish and then I went through a period where I questioned things, but now I believe religion is very important.”
Well, that’s a bit ambiguous because you can say that being religious is important without yourself being religious, but given the positive connotations of “important,” that’s unlikely. What’s unclear is whether Zuckerberg has reclaimed his Judaism, or adheres to another faith.
In fact,HuffPosuggests that Zuckerberg has been toying with the idea for a while:
He didn’t provide details about his faith. The title of his holiday greeting on Facebook was “celebrating Christmas.”
He and wife Priscilla Chan met with Pope Francis at the Vatican last summer and discussed how to bring communication technology to the world’s poor. Zuckerberg said at the time that he was impressed with the pope’s compassion.
“We told him how much we admire his message of mercy and tenderness, and how he’s found new ways to communicate with people of every faith around the world,” Zuckerberg posted. “It was a meeting we’ll never forget. You can feel his warmth and kindness, and how deeply he cares about helping people.”
So long as the helping doesn’t involve giving them contraception!
If Zuckerberg were an ordinary person, a return to faith would be an unimportant curiosity. It’s a bit more distressing since the guy is smart and creative. But, as head of Facebook, he does have some power, and part of that power is to defend faith and do down atheism. Facebook already has a tendency to censor criticism of Islam, though that might not be on Zuckerberg’s orders. Perhaps nothing will happen, and I hope so, but I sense that criticism of any faith will become more a part of Facebooks modus operandi.
UPDATE: I should have asked readers to answer the question for themselves, so I’m adding that here. Several people already have done that, and I encourage it.
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Every year, science-book agent John Brockman, who handles the “trade books” of every well known science writers, as well as running the online intellectual “salon” Edge, asks his stable of writers to give brief answers to a question that someone thought up. The answers are posted online and later compiled into a book. This year’s question is given in the title of the post, and the link to John’s introduction is in the previous sentence. Here it is, and note that John’s definition of science coincides with my notion of “science broadly construed”: a toolkit of ways of establishing provisional truth rather than a formal discipline or a body of knowledge (my emphasis below):
Of all the scientific terms or concepts that ought to be more widely known to help to clarify and inspire science-minded thinking in the general culture, none are more important than “science” itself.
Many people, even many scientists, have traditionally had a narrow view of science as controlled, replicated experiments performed in the laboratory—and as consisting quintessentially of physics, chemistry, and molecular biology. The essence of science is conveyed by its Latin etymology: scientia, meaning knowledge. The scientific method is simply that body of practices best suited for obtaining reliable knowledge. The practices vary among fields: the controlled laboratory experiment is possible in molecular biology, physics, and chemistry, but it is either impossible, immoral, or illegal in many other fields customarily considered sciences, including all of the historical sciences: astronomy, epidemiology, evolutionary biology, most of the earth sciences, and paleontology. If the scientific method can be defined as those practices best suited for obtaining knowledge in a particular field, then science itself is simply the body of knowledge obtained by those practices.
Science—that is, reliable methods for obtaining knowledge—is an essential part of psychology and the social sciences, especially economics, geography, history, and political science. Not just the broad observation-based and statistical methods of the historical sciences but also detailed techniques of the conventional sciences (such as genetics and molecular biology and animal behavior) are proving essential for tackling problems in the social sciences. Science is nothing more nor less than the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, whether it be the human spirit, the role of great figures in history, or the structure of DNA.
It is in this spirit of Scientia that Edge, on the occasion of its 20th anniversary, is pleased to present the Edge Annual Question 2017. Happy New Year!
Now there are dozens of answers, but I’d suggest you go to the full compilation of responses and pick out the ones that interest you. Here are but a few that intrigued me—and that I thought people should know about:
Frank Tipler, “Parallel universes of quantum mechanics“. Tipler asserts that most physicists accept Everett’s notion of an infinite number of parallel universes, and that this notion is indeed true (as he says, “So obvious is Everett’s proof for the existence of these parallel universes, that Steve Hawking once told me that he considered the existence of these parallel universes “trivially true”). Tipler then argues that the many-universe theory (or “truth”) gives us a form of free will:
The free will question arises because the equations of physics are deterministic. Everything that you do today was determined by the initial state of all the universes at the beginning of time. But the equations of quantum mechanics say that although the future behavior of all the universes are determined exactly, it is also determined that in the various universes, the identical yous will make different choices at each instant, and thus the universes will differentiate over time. Say you are in an ice cream shop, trying to choose between vanilla and strawberry. What is determined is that in one world you will choose vanilla and in another you will choose strawberry. But before the two yous make the choice, you two are exactly identical. The laws of physics assert it makes no sense to say which one of you will choose vanilla and which strawberry. So before the choice is made, which universe you will be in after the choice is unknowable in the sense that it is meaningless to ask.
To me, this analysis shows that we indeed have free will, even though the evolution of the universe is totally deterministic. Even if you think my analysis has been too facile—entire books can and have been written on the free will problem—nevertheless, my simple analysis shows that these books are themselves too facile, because they never consider the implications of the existence of the parallel universes for the free will question.
I’m not sure that the idea of parallel universes is as widely accepted as Tipler claims (after all, we need evidence to demonstrate its truth), but even if it is true, I’m not sure if it gives us free will in our own universe, which is the one we inhabit and care about.
Leo M. Chalupa, “Epigenetics“. This one is deeply misleading, implying that environmentally-induced epigenetic changes can affect our evolution, and dispose of the “nature vs. nurture controversy”. To wit:
What makes epigenetics important, and why is it so much in vogue these days? Its importance stems from the fact that it provides a means by which biological entities, from plants to humans, can be modified by altering gene activity without changes in the genetic sequence. This means that the age-old “nature versus nurture” controversy has been effectively obviated because experience (as well as a host of other agents) can alter gene activity, so the “either/or” thinking mode no longer applies. Moreover, there is now some tantalizing, but still preliminary evidence that changes in gene activity (induced in this case by an insecticide) can endure for a number of subsequent generations [JAC: not true!]. What happens to you today can affect your great, great, great grandchildren!
Barnaby Marsh, “Humility”Although listed as a “philanthropy executive” and visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, remember that Marsh used to be an executive vice-president at the John Templeton Foundation. That explains stuff like this:
As we advance in our scientific careers, it is all too easy to feel overconfident in what we know, and how much we know. The same pressures that face us in our everyday life wait to ensnare us in professional scientific life. The human mind looks for certainly, and finds comfort in parsimony. We see what we want to see, and we believe what makes intuitive sense. We avoid the complex and difficult, and the unknown. Just look across the sciences, from biochemistry to ecology, where multiple degrees of freedom make many problems seemingly intractable. But are they? Could new tools of computation and visualization enable better models of the behavior of individuals and systems? The future belongs to those brave enough to be humble about how little we know, and how much there is that is remaining to be discovered.
Scientific humility is the key that opens a whole new possibility space- a space where being unsure is the norm; where facts and logic are intertwined with imagination, intuition, and play. It is a dangerous and bewildering place where all sorts of untested and unjustified ideas lurk. What is life? What is consciousness? How can we understand the complex dynamics of cities? Or even my goldfish bowl? Go there are one can see quickly why when faced be uncertainty, most of us would rather quickly retreat. Don’t. This is the space where amazing things happen.
Yes, we scientists really need that lecture! I’m surprised he didn’t mention God—but then he wouldn’t be able to do that on this site.
My own contribution about what people should understand is the idea of “Determinism,” but this won’t be new to readers here.
There are many more contributions at the site, so pick out the ones that most interest you. It’s a good way to start 2017—by stretching your brain. And remember that these essays are intended for nonspecialists interested in science, the “educated layperson.”
John Brockman
I should add about John that his success is due largely to his “nose” for what kind of science the public wants, and a sense of timing that makes him urge authors to write about certain topics at the “proper” time. It was he, for example, who told Richard Dawkins that he needed to write a book about religion for 2006, ergo The God Delusion.
I found an old readers’ wildlife post from October, and can’t see that I actually posted it; I believe I was traveling when I prepared it. The photos are from Stephen Barnard, one of our most faithful contributors (and one of the best photographers), so it’s appropriate to start the new year with his work. His captions are indented. (If I’ve posted this before, forgive me.)
Some landscapes and a white-tailed doe (Odocoileus hemionus):
One of these three landscapes has a flock of Canada geese (Branta canadensis). Can you spot them?
Here’s a photo of a juvenile rabbit (a cottontail?) that I took two summers ago, and I may have already posted it. But something this cute is always worth seeing:
And a photo from Christopher Moss, who contributed a pheasant for the Christmas Cat parade:
Standing exactly where the pheasant was on Christmas Day, this young doe was photographed through a different window. She’s about 15 feet from me and kept a wary eye on me as I took pictures.
Well, here we are in 2017, and although of course the designation of a year’s beginning is arbitrary, we can’t help but take stock of the past year (not a great one!) and anticipate what will come (in U.S. politics, horrible things). Yes, it’s New Year’s Day, and has been declared National Bloody Mary Day and National Black Eyed Pea Day. Both, I believe, are New Year restoratives. In Scotland, it’s the second day of Hogmanay, and all around the world it’s International Nepali Dhoti and Nepali Topi Day. If you have those clothes, wear them today in honor of the wonderful but hard-pressed folk of Nepal.
On this day in 1773, Wikipedia tells us that “The hymn that became known as “Amazing Grace“, then titled “1 Chronicles 17:16–17,” [was] first used to accompany a sermon led by John Newton in the town of Olney, England.” In 1804, Haiti gained its independence from France, though how “independent” it’s been in recent decades is questionable. On this day in 1901, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and Western Australia, formerly British colonies, joined to become the Commonwealth of Australia. And the Euro was introduced on the first day of 1999.
I’m saddened to report a tragic beginning to this year. Last night, at about 1:30 a.m., a gunman attacked a nightclub in Istanbul, killing at least 35 people (including 15 foreigners) and leaving 69 wounded. The gunman, who seems to have acted alone, hasn’t yet been apprehended. It’s depressing to think that the wave of terrorist attacks we’ll see this year—for I suspect this was one of them—began on its very first day. Turkey, already groaning under the despotic Erdoğan, and rapidly becoming more Islamicized (a friend who visits regularly says that during his visit last month the number of hijabis had increased dramatically), is on the downhill slide. Atatürk would be horrified.
Notables born on this day include Paul Revere (1735), Betsy Ross (1752), E. M. Forster (1879), J. Edgar Hoover (1895), J. D. Salinger (1919), Larry King (1929) and Mary Beard (1955). Those who died on this day include Johann Bernoulli (1748), Heinrich Hertz (1894), Edward Weston (1958), Eugene Wigner (1995), and Patti Page (2013). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has gloomy prognostications for 2017—not surprising given the rightward tilt of Poland:
Cyrus: Come and see what the New Year looks like.
Hili: I’m not sure I want to know.
In Polish:
Cyrus: Chodź zobaczymy jak wygląda Nowy Rok.
Hili: Nie jestem pewna, czy chcę wiedzieć.
Finally, Gus got a present—a puppet. Staff member Taskin reports this:
Gus got a gift from a friend, and get this, it’s from Ikea!!! [JAC: that’s the source of the first box he nommed to shreds.] The other half of Gus’s staff thinks this video is a bit weird…
Finally, Douglas S. sent a Theology Meme; he tells me that he believes that the man on the right is Karl Barth and the other Emil Brunner. As I haven’t read much Barth, and no Brunner, readers will have to explain their opposition. If it’s about God, which it almost surely is, then it’s funny: it’s like two smart men arguing whether Superman’s cape is made of silk or polyester.
Final lagniappe: Douglas E. sent a “spot the . . ” photo; this one is called “Spot the Monarch.” Even if it were a butterfly it would be easy:
I want nothing to do with anyone who gratuitously allows animals to suffer, and much admire those who do their best to relieve that suffering. Not only were animals here before humans, but it’s palpably true that they suffer, and that alone gives us an onus to do something about it. Matthew Cobb sent me this tw**t that contains a nice 1½-minute video of people taking risks to help our mammalian cousins.
Were I religious, I’d say “God bless these people.” As it is, I’ll just say that they’re great folks and we should follow their lead. Go fill your bird feeder—and don’t forget some nuts and seeds for the squirrels. It’s cold, the beasts can’t come indoors, and they’re hungry.
In the past few months I’ve given two talks—one for the American Humanists and the other for the Freedom From Religion Foundation—on the relationship between atheism, humanism, and social good. I started both talks by asking the audience to raise their hands if they considered themselves humanists. Every hand went up. I then asked how many of those with their hands up also considered themselves atheists. I watched carefully, and not a hand went down. That makes sense: after all, humanists believe that we are in charge of our own and others’ welfare, and nearly everyone arrives at that view after rejecting gods. To me, then, it doesn’t make sense to seriously discuss humanism without at least mentioning its origins, and that involves rejecting any kind of theism.
Still, there are those who praise humanism but can’t resist the opportunity to have a whack at atheism. And that brings us to today’s article.
If you read “The evangelical scion who stopped believing,” an article about an “atheist preacher” in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, you might be a bit puzzled at some of the gratuitous atheist-bashing. After all, it’s about Bart Campolo, a 53-year-old former preacher who became an atheist after a bicycle accident, and who has taken up a new life as a humanist chaplain and head of the Secular Student Alliance at the University of Southern California (USC). Yet the article is larded with snark—the usual cracks about atheism, not missing a few swipes at Richard Dawkins.
The explanation is that the author is Mark Oppenheimer, whom we’ve encountered before in posts about Larry Alex Taunton’s book claiming that Christopher Hitchens was flirting with Christianity at the end of his life. It turns out that Oppenheimer hasn’t missed a chance to go after New Atheism, writing a piece in BuzzFeed about the rampant misogyny afflicting the atheist “movement.” And so, when you read about Campolo’s life, and how he lost his faith and wound up as the USC humanist chaplain—a position in which he seems to be doing a lot of good—you also have to see Oppenheimer’s gratuitous take on atheism. A few snippets (my emphasis):
In the United States, since World War II, atheist activism has been located mainly in local skeptics’ clubs, whose members also gravitated toward science fiction and other walks of geek life. [JAC: !!] The clubs developed a culture of conferences: hotel-ballroom events with lots of men attending mostly-male panels, followed by book signings.
Over the last 30 years or so, these conferences have grown in tandem with the rise of the Christian right and megachurch evangelicalism, as atheists sought comfort in a parallel world. Best-selling authors like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens drew huge crowds at these “cons.” In their books, lectures and television appearances, these atheists preach an uncompromising scientism, exalt Darwin and barely conceal a sentiment that believers deserve mockery or, if one is feeling generous, pity.
To this day, atheist gatherings remain overwhelmingly male, and public perception of the movement has been tainted by a steady drip of misogynistic episodes: harassment of female attendees at the conventions; online trolling of those who have spoken out against the sexism; and the notorious tweets of Dawkins, the British biologist whose 2006 book, “The God Delusion,” has become the bible of many young atheists. (One example, from 2014: “Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knife point is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think.”)
And this:
The energy now is not with the controversial author-celebrities but with start-up groups, many on college campuses, that have more gender balance and less strident rhetoric and are eager to do better than thumb their noses at believers. Crucially, these nonbelievers identify as humanist rather than atheist. That is, they’ve sided with a more welcoming version of nonbelief, focused on the joy and potential inherent in being human rather than on gainsaying others’ convictions. Their project is to talk about leading a good life without God.
Well pardon me, but I’m not aware of any Big Name Atheists who spend all their time simply going after religion—and really, do they all imply that believers deserve mockery and pity?—without also suggesting ways of living life without God. Hitchens, for instance, gave his moving final talk in Houston about not relying on scripture or authority, but learning to think for oneself. Sam Harris wrote a book on morality without God (yes, his latter-day utilitarianism has met with some pushback), Dan Dennett has never, to my knowledge, said that religion should be mocked or its adherents pitied, and even The God Delusion has a positive message about how one can be moral and fulfilled without relying on a God. While the main message of these books was indeed a rejection of theism, there is always a positive side about the advantages living a life without gods.
As for the “rampant misogyny” in atheism, I haven’t seen it. Yes, of course some male atheists are sexists, as are some males in any organization, but having gone to many meetings, scientific and otherwise, I simply can’t find myself able to label atheism as rotten with misogyny. Indeed, I see more positive attitudes about equality of women at atheist meetings than at other types of gatherings.
What Oppenheimer has done here, and which he didn’t have to do, is to undercut the philosophical basis of humanism by making gratuitous slurs against some well known atheists, and painting our gatherings as instantiations of rape culture. As for “exalting Darwin,” well, wasn’t it Darwin who struck a death blow at religion by showing that phenomena once explainable only by God had a purely naturalistic basis? The “scientism” accusation, of course, is just a canard.
I won’t go on, as this kind of atheist-bashing doesn’t deserve much consideration. It’s worth nothing, however, how it slips insidiously into articles where it doesn’t belong.
One of the readers acknowledged at the bottom, and I forgot which one (sorry!), sent me this video of a cat rapper, along with the notes below:
I don’t know if anyone has submitted this for Caturday material. Portland [OR] rapper Moshow specializes on videos of his cats — 3 Sphinx and a Rex, I believe. And lots of local Portland-hipsterism. He probably has about 20 videos up, mostly of his feline family, with recognizable PDX localities. Music ain’t great and lots of repetition, but he does have a niche!
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From BuzzFeed, we have Able, a 5-year old tabby cat cat with only two hind legs (and no tail), and how he’s adapted. He lost his two front legs and his tail after being electrocuted while chasing a bird on a roof and touching a power line. The vet had to amputate, and now Able is able to get around, though the article says he walks a bit like a T. rex.
He still watches birds, though he can’t catch them, and loves bird videos. He also hangs out a bit with his adopted sister Fifi. Here’s a video of how he gets around; he can even get up and down the stairs!
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Finally, even though the video below looks dead, you can click on it and see Timo the cat learning to use his hammock:
An end-of-the-year reminder: please keep sending in your good wildlife photos, as I can never have too many!
Since September I’ve been posting photos from reader Benjamin Taylor’s odyssey to Africa. Here’s the last batch, all of which were sent in September. His captions are indented:
Last month I went on a camping trip around southern Africa (Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia) and took quite a few photographs.
Grey heron (Ardea cinerea), Chobe National Park, Botswana:
Hippopotamus – probably the Cape hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius capensis), Chobe National Park, Botswana:
