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.
I didn’t go to the Reason Rally a week ago because I was in Boston, but I doubt I would have gone anyway, for I’m beginning to tire of many of these convocations (not all of them—some include science, psychology, and philosophy talks that go beyond personal deconversion tales or rah-rah calls for nonbelief). Richard Dawkins, one of the draws—but not a “self-appointed Atheist Leader”—had to make a video for the audience, as a recent stroke kept him from traveling to the U.S. Here’s his short video for the Rally, which concentrates on the incompatibility between science and faith. I especially like the bit where he goes after theologians for asserting that God is not complex but SIMPLE.
As you may recall, in The God Delusion Richard argued that the “First Cause” argument is intellectually bankrupt, for it doesn’t explain the “cause” of a complex God who could create everything. In response, the dimmer or more mendacious theologians say that God isn’t complex at all, but simple. (Some theologians, however, just punt and say that God is the One Thing that Doesn’t Need a Cause.) It is this “simple god” argument that Dawkins takes apart halfway through the video. And, of course, even if God were simple, his appearance in the cosmos still needs an explanation. It just won’t do to say that God is the one thing, among all other things, that doesn’t need a cause. If he was hanging around forever, pray tell us, O theologians, what he was doing before he created the Universe.
Finally, physics has dispensed with the idea of causation; the discipline has no such thing as “a law of cause and effect,” and some physical phenomena are simply uncaused.
We’ve pretty well established that Larry Alex Taunton’s book on Christopher Hitchens, based on two long road-trip conversations he had with the man, twisted Hitchens’s interest in religion into a misguided speculation that he was pondering becoming a Christian after diagnosed with terminal cancer. And Taunton’s views are completely different from those of Hitchens’s friends and loved ones, who knew the man far better than he did. (See here for the evidence.)
So it may be superfluous for me to call your attention to a new piece in The Atlantic by David Frum, “Betraying the faith of Christopher Hitchens“. While it adds to the chorus of opprobrium heaped on the hapless Taunton, it does so in damning detail—the most comprehensive takedown to date—and also proffers some juicy new tidbits. These include revealing why Mark Oppenheimer wrote a New York Times piece about Taunton’s book with the headline below (click on it to see the piece), as well as giving a number of quotes from the book in which Taunton seriously denigrates Hitchens’s character.
Frum also tells a moving anecdote about Hitchens’s generosity. Finally, Frum interviewed Taunton and got some pretty damning admissions.
I’ve read most of Taunton’s book, but I didn’t pay to do it. After reading Frum’s piece, which, by the way, is also very well written, I doubt that any of you will want to read the book. I’ll give just one excerpt, but do read the whole longish piece, as it gives you a thorough analysis of Taunton’s mendacity—or else the world’s most blatant case of cluelessness. He begins by quoting Taunton:
Taunton again:
“My private conversations with him revealed a man who was weighing the costs of conversion. His atheist friends and colleagues, sensing his flirtations with Christianity and fearing his all-out desertion to that hated enemy, rushed to keep him in the fold. To reassure them, Christopher, for his part, was more bombastic than ever. But the rhetoric was concealing the fact that even while he was railing about God from the rostrum, he was secretly negotiating with him. Fierce protestations of loyalty always precede a defection, and Christopher had to make them. At least he had to if he was to avoid the ridicule and ostracism he would surely suffer at the hands of the very same people who memorialized him. To cross the aisle politically was one thing. There was precedence for that. Churchill had very famously done it. But Christopher well knew that whatever criticisms and loss of friendships he had suffered then would pale in comparison to what would follow his religious conversion. Hatred of God was the central tenet of their faith, and there could be no redemption for those renouncing it.
And it is here that his courage failed him. In the end, however contrary our natures might be, there are always a few people whose approbation we desire and to whose standards we conform.”
What evidence does Taunton have for this claim that Christopher Hitchens believed one thing and said another in order to make money and to avoid “ridicule and ostracism”?
What evidence that Hitchens remained an atheist only because he “weighed the costs of conversion” and preferred to conform to the standards of others?
What evidence that Hitchens “was altering his opinions, while often pretending to himself and others that he was not doing so”?
What evidence is there that Hitchens’ was “secretly negotiating with God” but that in the end “his courage failed him?”
The answer to those questions is even more breathtaking than the accusation itself—and should have been glaringly apparent to anyone who gave Taunton’s book more than the most cursory skim.
In April I noted that a 2¢/ounce soda tax failed to come to a vote in the California state legislature. That’s an exorbitant tax, nearly doubling the price of a twelve-ounce can of soda. Other states are trying to pass such a tax, while Mexico and a few European countries have one already. In the meantime, only the People’s Republic of Berkeley, California, has such a tax in place: 1 cent per ounce. The San Jose Mercury-News reports that the Berkeley tax is showing “results,” but those results are simply a small rise in the retail price of soft drinks. There are no data on whether consumption has decreased (the goal of the initiative), or whether health has improved (for that it’s too early to tell). In Mexico, the one-peso-per-liter tax on sugared soft drinks has reduced consumption by about 12%.
I regard these taxes as unconscionable, as they’re simply ways for the government to regulate people’s diets, and get some money as well. I can barely countenance such taxes on cigarettes, but sodas aren’t that dangerous when drunk in moderation. Almost nobody smokes in moderation. More important, if we’re doing this to fight obesity, why not tax anything with added sugar, like cakes, cookies, or ice cream? Or why not red meat? Or, if you really want to get serious, why not levy an income tax on people by their weight: charging them $X yearly per pound over their ideal weight? That, of course, would be politically insupportable—a sort of fat-shaming—although it might do more for public health than a soda tax. What better incentive to lose weight than if you get taxed for being heavy? The obese may argue (incorrectly) that being overweight isn’t unhealthy, or that they are simply unable to lose weight, but one could also argue that not all people who drink Coke are endangering their health.
These “nanny taxes” are a slippery slope toward government standardization of diets, and they’re popular because they sound good. But wait until they come for your hamburger!
Now Philadelphia is on the verge of voting in a soda tax, which was sold not as a health measure, but a revenue measure—to fund kindergartens and other useful initiatives like libraries and parks. While the tax was originally 3¢ per ounce, the measure that passed the city council by voice vote this week halved that, to 1.5¢ per ounce. What makes this truly ridiculous, though, is that it includes diet sodas, which aren’t a health risk (well, there are some reports that enormous consumption may increase the risk of cancer):
The measure that passed Wednesday taxes not just sugary drinks but also diet drinks. It exempts juice drinks from the tax as long as they have 50 percent juice, even if they also have added sugar.
The city finance director also admitted during the hearing that the soda-tax revenue wouldn’t be used just to fund kindergartens parks, and the like, but would be used to fill in general lacunae in the city budget. In other words, the city lied when proposing it.
There can be no health justification for a tax on both sugared and diet sodas. It is either just a way to grab more taxes by piggybacking on a sugared-soda tax, or reflects people simply not liking others who drink diet sodas, just as some don’t like people “vaping” as a way to reduce the health effects of cigarettes. And if they’re going to tax diet soda, why not bottled water? Such a tax would have salutary ecological effects.
If Philadelphia is doing this just to raise revenue, and not for the health benefits, it would be more useful to raise (or institute) local income or sales taxes. The former could be progressive rather than regressive, for soda taxes put most of the burden on the poor. If it’s for the health benefits, why tax diet sodas instead of butter or red meat?
Pacific Union College is a Seventh-Day Adventist school in Angwin, California—the only four-year college in the Napa Valley. And, as a religious school, it’s been subject to considerable unrest over the past few years due to a renegade professor of psychology, Aubyn Fulton. As Insider Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education report, Fulton may be on the verge of being fired—for inviting an atheist speaker to address one of his classes. It wasn’t just an atheist, either, but Ryan Bell, a former Seventh-Day Adventist preacher who left the faith after spending “a year without God.” At Spectrum, Fulton explained why he invited Bell. Here’s part of the reason:
I did not invite Ryan to persuade my students to give up their faith (this should be obvious and go without saying, but I have seen that it is not). I invited Ryan to share his personal story (his journey from fundamentalist to atheist) and to talk about his newest project (“Life After God” – which I highly recommend to interested parties) which is aimed at supporting people who are struggling with religious doubts. Obviously, supporting people struggling with religious doubts is a big part of the mission of an Adventist Christian liberal arts college as well.
. . . I made the decision to invite Ryan to my class because in my judgment his story and current project was uniquely relevant to the specific learning objectives of the course, one of which is to help students better appreciate the tensions and the compatibilities of faith and learning. This has been a learning objective for our Department and this course for many years, and no administrator has ever challenged it. For any conversation about faith and learning to be honest, it must include the real option of arriving at an anti-faith position. To censor or ban that position is to invalidate the faith development of the majority of students. In the course I invited Ryan to speak to, we regularly schedule class periods devoted to the faith and learning conversation, almost always by people who have clear and unapologetic commitments to Adventist faith. My judgment was (and remains) that it is appropriate to occasionally invite someone to participate in this conversation that has different commitments. This is how students learn.
Sadly, that’s not how students at a religious school are supposed to learn. At Pacific Union, they’re apparently supposed to absorb the dictates of the faith, and never, ever challenge it. So, when the College president Heather Knight heard about the invitation to Bell, she simply rescinded it, ordering Fulton to disinvite his atheist speaker. Then, according to a post on Fulton’s Facebook page, Fulton was told he’d be fired:
This isn’t the first time Fulton has crossed swords with the college. In 2013, he was threatened with firing for supposedly teaching a class that questioned the Church’s ban on premarital sex. That caused two members of his department to resign (one was going to retire anyway), and the chairman of Psychology to step down.
Is it okay for Pacific Union to fire someone who shakes the faith of its students? Normally that’s seen as a prerogative of religious schools. You may remember a professor at Wheaton College who was recently asked to leave after she not only wore a hijab, but said that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Heresy!!!! Allah ≠ Christian God!
But, according to Fulton’s Spectrum piece, his College includes an academic freedom statement in both the faculty handbook and faculty contracts. I don’t know exactly what it says, but Fulton argues that it permits him to at least challenge his students’ beliefs. I agree.
The President, of course, denies that this is an abrogation of academic freedom—it’s simply an adherence to faith:
“My decision to ask to have Ryan Bell disinvited was not an infringement on Dr. Fulton’s academic-freedom rights, not an act of censorship, not even an attempt to overprotect our PUC students,” [President Knight] said. “It was a decision to honor the spiritual mission, goals, and aims of our faith-based institution. We are allowed to make those kinds of distinctions in terms of what kind of acts on campus further our religious aim and which do not.”
As the saying goes, that’s a distinction without a difference. But it is a difference between a liberal secular education and a liberal religious education: the former must challenge ideas; the latter must avoid such challenges.
Knight, however, denies that she’s already made a decision to terminate Fulton. For his part, Fulton maintains that he remains a believer, but that his College’s response shows the intellectual weakness of his religion, which simply cannot abide the challenge posed by a one-hour session with a former Adventist. As he said in Spectrum:
The censorship of my class and the banning of Ryan Bell strengthens the atheist argument that religious faith is incompatible with intellectual honesty and exposure to a wide spectrum of perspectives and evidence. I of course am not an atheist, and I dispute the claim that faith is incompatible with an open and honest search for truth. I wrote my doctoral dissertation in psychology on mature religious faith. My argument then, and my subsequent 28-year teaching career at PUC, has been based on the premise that religious maturity is undermined by attempts at indoctrination and censorship of alternative views, and is strengthened by exposure to and genuine exploration of a spectrum of viewpoints. Mature religious faith requires open and honest confrontation with all critical voices, and is best formed in what psychologist Gordon Allport called the “workshop of doubt”. As I told my class last week, if I thought it were true that exposure to contrary positions was damaging to faith, then I would be an atheist too. Fortunately, this is not true. Sadly, the censorship of Ryan Bell at PUC last week made it that much more difficult to argue that Adventist education is anything more than indoctrinating students to parrot back the beliefs and thoughts of their elders.
Shame on Pacific Union College. Fulton is too good for them.
We have two new videos today. The first is our old friend Maru, whom we haven’t seen for a while. He seems to have plumped up a bit, but is still trying to fit into too-small containers. Here he’s having a Zen moment in a mixing bowl:
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I haven’t been keeping up with Simon’s Cat, either, so this clip is a month old. We’ll catch up soon. In this video, “Field trip,” the cat fails miserably at being a predator:
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Bored Panda has a short piece, with lots of photographs, about a survey that involved tracking cats using GPS devices affixed to their collars. The survey, carried out by the Central Tablelands LLS at Lithgow in central-west New South Wales, showed that some cats, to their owners’ surprise, go 3.5 km away from home. Were they looking for food? For mates? Who knows? Nor can I find the original survey.
These are some of the movements recorded, and it looks as if the photos involve more than one cat.
Reader Bruce Lyon is busy documenting the lives of local peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus), and sent some nifty photos:
In 2014 I discovered a peregrine falcon nest on the California coast between Santa Cruz and San Francisco just as the chicks were fledging. Jerry posted a couple of the photos I got at the time. The birds returned and used the same nest site the next year (2015) and I was able to follow them through an entire nesting season, including for about a month after the chicks fledged.
The birds were very tame, and only got tamer over time—they basically ignored me and went about their business. Being able to watch falcons closely without affecting their behavior was really a unique experience for me, and I soon came to see their daily rhythms and patterns. Jerry previously provided a brief review of J.A. Baker’s book, The Peregrine, which some believe to be among the finest pieces of nature writing ever done. Baker’s powerful writing allows us to see the world through the eyes of a peregrine. Baker watched his birds in winter (his birds were winter migrants to England)—I was lucky enough to do something similar for the breeding season.
The female sitting on a favorite perch, staring out to sea. Perhaps she is scanning for passing shorebirds—both the male and female frequently use this perch to search for birds flying by over the ocean and then give chase:
The female launches from the perch. Note the size of the legs and claws: a dove’s worst nightmare:
The male landing at the same perch.
The happy couple perched on the cliff near the nest. The male (lower, left) is noticeably smaller than the female. This ‘reverse size dimophism’ is particularly common in raptors and is most extreme in bird-eating species. Many hypotheses have been suggested to explain this size pattern, including niche separation within the pair and division of labor during nesting (females are large to defend the nest, males are small for agile hunting):
The female with a Red-necked Phalarope (Phalaropus lobatus) she caught out over the ocean. Phalaropes were not on the diet very often but on this day both the male and female brought in a phalarope. Coincidentally, a local bird website reported particularly large movements of phalaropes on this same day—I suspect the falcons just could not pass up the opportunity for abundant easy prey:
A very damp male falcon. A.J. Baker reported that his falcons were fastidious about keeping clean and always took daily baths. The only time I ever saw a damp falcon was the male, on the day that he brought in a phalarope. Since phalaropes are caught at sea I suspect that he took a dunk while going after a phalarope:
The male drying out after his dunking. Note the pellet on the rock below him:
The female brings a Eurasian Collared-Dove (Streptopelia decaocto) to the nest. This non-native species is by far the favorite prey item taken by this pair—this year (2016) over half of the prey items I have been able to identify have been collared-doves.
Today is June 11, graduation day at the University of Chicago. On this day in 1776, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston were appointed by the Continental Congress to draft the U.S.’s Declaration of Independence; it was, of course, adopted on July 4 of that year. On this day in 1963, segregationist governor George Wallace of Alabama stood in front of a door at the University of Alabama to block registration of two black students (it was unsuccessful, as they registered later in the day). On the same day, President John F. Kennedy proposed the Civil Rights Act, the definitive legal end to segregated facilities in the U.S. It was to be guided through Congress and signed into law in 1964 by Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy’s successor after JFK’s assassination that November.
Notables born on this day include William Styron (1925), Gene Wilder (1933) and Hugh Laurie (1959). Those who died on June 11 include John Wayne (1979), Timothy McVeigh (executed in 2001), and Ruby Dee (2014). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s had a bit of a fright, and is all bushed up:
A: Did something frighten you?
Hili: No, I’m practising a “precautionary principle”.
In Polish:
Ja: Wystraszyłaś się czegoś?
Hili: Nie, ćwiczę “zasadę ostrożności”.
And, in nearby Wroclawek, Leon sees a black conspecific outside. It’s not clear if he wants to fight it or mate with it:
Leon: Let’s go! The black one is already running around on my lawn.
Tomorrow is graduation, and it might be a weather disaster given the 60% chance of thunderstorms predicted. The University of Chicago has no inside alternative: they just pass out plastic rain ponchos to keep you dry.
I couldn’t help but feel a twinge as I walked home by the empty venue, which tomorrow morning will fill up with happy graduates and their relieved parents.
I went to such a ceremony twice, and no matter how jaded you are, it’s a thrill. Feeling insouciant, I almost didn’t go to my Harvard graduation, but at the last minute two of my pals and I decided to rent caps and gowns. All that was left in the bookstore on graduation day were remainders—way too large. But I was glad I went, for Alexander Solzhenitsyn spoke, his famous address rebuking the laxity of Western societies. Here at Chicago, the tradition is to have only academics and intellectuals give the graduation address—no movie stars, authors, or entertainers. Solzhenitsyn would not have been invited.
When I remembered the “mission accomplished” feeling I had back then, I remembered that I am still fulfilling a vow I made when young. Observing how stimulating the University was, and the joy I got from a life of learning, I vowed that, as far as I could, I’d never leave college.
I’ve succeeded. 49 years after entering college, I’m still here. I’ve had only about two years of respite—when I worked in a hospital as a conscientious objector and then, after 13 months of that, traveled to Europe for ein halb Wanderjahr.
I’ve been at it nearly half a century—even rock stars can’t keep it up that long!
