Did someone make science and religion compatible?

April 9, 2018 • 9:00 am

Apparently so. This article, sent to me by reader Snowy Owl, appeared on Quartz (click on screenshot to read it):

And the first sentence notes that “bridging the gap” means making science and religion compatible:

Katharine Hayhoe is here to challenge the idea that science and faith are incompatible.

Okay, well, I’ll bite. How does she harmonize them?

The answer is that she doesn’t. All she does, according to the piece, is try to convince Christians (she’s one) that anthropogenic global warming is real:

An atmospheric science professor and the director of the Climate Science Center of Texas Tech University [JAC: she’s actually co-director], Hayhoe studies the impact of climate change at a local level, helping governments and organizations use climate data to adapt to the future. The Canadian scientist also happens to be an evangelical Christian—the US religious group that is least likely to believe climate change is the result of human activity.

“It’s a little like coming out of the closet admitting that you are a Christian and a scientist,” Hayhoe said in an interview with PBS. [JAC: there’s nothing at PBS that shows that religion and science are compatible.]

Hayhoe’s ability to bridge faith and science has made her one of the country’s most effective communicators when it comes to climate change. She gives scripture-based lectures to church groups and religious organizations that focus on the positive benefits of collective action—water for farmers, food for the poor, moral values for churchgoers—instead of bleak facts and dystopian pictures of the end of times. And she never talks down to her audience. “If you begin a conversation with, ‘You’re an idiot,’ that’s the end of the conversation, too,” she told the New York Times last year. [JAC: you won’t find anything about how she harmonizes science and faith in that article, either.]

I’m glad Hayhoe is able to reach fellow Christians, and I hope she has convinced some doubters among them that climate change is real—and dangerous. I’m still dubious that being a religionist is a big advantage in convincing people of facts they don’t like: after all, BioLogos has been a miserable failure at convincing evangelical Christians that evolution is a fact. But more power to her.

But there’s no way that she her activities show that science and faith are compatible. As I note in Faith Versus Fact—and I won’t dilate on this—despite the fact that both science and religion make claims about the nature of the universe, they’re incompatible in the way they investigate these claims: in methodology (reason and empirical study versus revelation and dogma), in outcome (what you find out), and in philosophy (science doesn’t take into account the supernatural; religion must). Nothing Hayhoe does addresses that incompatibility.

What we have here, then, is the least effective way of showing that science and religion are compatible: the claim that “there are religious scientists.” That’s like saying that science and belief in Santa Claus are compatible, or that science and belief in astrology are compatible. All it shows is that a person can simultaneously hold in their heads two disparate ways of investigating “truth”.

Readers’ wildlife photos

April 9, 2018 • 8:15 am

Shall we begin the week with a photographic bouquet of flowers sent by Jim Trice from Australia? His notes and IDs are indented:

I thought I’d send some plants for a change, old stuff from around 2011. The first three shots are from a “Naming Walk” in one of the Conservation Parks on Kangaroo Island, South Australia.

Pultenaea trifida, Kangaroo Island bush pea, Lathami Conservation Park:



Boronia coerulescens, Lathami Conservation Park. This shot suffers from some jpeg compression artefacts, but I still think it is a pretty flower.

A Calytrix or myrtle species, could be Calytrix glaberrima, the smooth fringe myrtle, Lathami Conservation Park. This one was labelled as the gland flower, Adenanthos macropodianus, which looks nothing like this.

Dianella revoluta: black anther flax lily. Very common in Eastern and Southern Australian sclerophyll, woodland and mallee forests. Sometimes grown as a garden plant. This is one of the specimens growing on the grounds of the cottage we stayed in at Vivonne Bay, KI.


The next shots are from, or near, the Belair National Park in the Mount Lofty Ranges, South Australia.

Caladenia leptochila: the bayonet or soldier’s orchid. One of the spider orchids, and one of my favourites. It is also sometimes known as the thin lipped spider orchid. This one was found in roadside vegetation near Belair National Park. As you can tell from the background, these blend in well with their surroundings, and can be hard to spot. If I remember rightly, this flower was about 25mm, or about an inch, across.  And about five minutes ago I discovered this is the shot that is used for the Wikipedia article on Caladenia leptochila, linking to my shot on Flickr. How ’bout that?

The next two are weed species in the Park.

Disa bracteata (syn. Monadenia bracteata), near the Lorikeet Loop Walk, Belair National Park. Each of those little flowers are about 3mm across. For some daft reason I used this as the background image for a bookmark, which explains the odd format. This plant is a nasty, invasive, pest.  That’s unusual for an orchid.

Blue pimpernel, Anagallis sp. (Ann Prescott gives Anagallis arvensis). A pretty, introduced pest. There is also (surprise, surprise) a scarlet version of this flower. It is toxic, and can poison livestock if too much of it gets into their pastures. This one was growing just inside the southern boundary of the Park. The flower is about 8mm in diameter. The shot was taken with extension tubes and two diffused flashes.

Monday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

April 9, 2018 • 7:15 am

It’s Monday, April 9, 2018, and National Chinese Almond Cookie Day. The word “national”, denoting the U.S., shows that once again we have an arrant case of cultural appropriation. It’s also Vimy Ridge Day in Canada.

It’s snowing lightly in Chicago this morning, and it’s opening day for the Chicago Cubs, who will be playing the Pittsburgh Pirates at 1:30 pm. (The game was moved ahead because of weather.)  It’s not unheard of to have snow this late, but I do worry about my ducks. Here’s their pond this morning:

On April 9, 1585, Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition to Roanoke Island to found the “Roanoke Colony” left England. The colony mysteriously disappeared in 1587, and nobody knows what happened.  On this day in 1860, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, using his “phonoautograph machine”, made the first known recording of an audible human voice.  Exactly five years later, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, ending the Civil War.  On this day in 1939, Marian Anderson, a black contralto, gave a concert at the Lincoln Memorial after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let her sing in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. That was a nasty and racist snub!  Here’s a newsreel showing some of her performance:

On April 9, 1945, the Nazis hanged Dietrich Bonhoeffer for anti-Nazi activity; he is one of the few theologians I really admire (not for his theology, but for his bravery). On this day in 1959, the “Mercury Seven”—America’s first seven astronauts—were chosen to go into space. I once could name them all, and can still name John Glenn, Deke Slayton, Alan Shepherd, Gus Grissom, and Wally Shirra. My father, who was in the Army then, got me a photo of the Seven with  their autographs, but I seem to have lost it over the years. All of them are gone now, with Glenn the last to go in 2016. On this day in 1965, the Houston Astrodome opened, allowing the first indoor baseball game.  On April 9, 1969, the British-built Concorde 002 made its maiden flight from Filton to RAF Fairford. Finally, on this day in 1992, Manuel Noriega was found guilty of drug and racketeering charges,and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. He died in jail after 25 years.

Notables born on this day include Charles Baudelaire (1821), Eadweard Muybridge (1830), Léon Blum (1872), Paul Robeson (1898), Photographer Art Kane (1925), Hugh Hefner (1926), Tom Lehrer (1928), Carl Perkins (1932), Sam Harris (1967), Leighton Meester (1986) and Krisetn Stewart (1990). Those who fell asleep on this day include François Rabelais (1553), Simon Fraser (1747), Dante Gabriel Rosettti (1882), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1945; see above), Frank Lloyd Wright (1959) and Phil Ochs (1976).

Here’s a photo by Kane: “A great day in Harlem”, photographed in 1958 and depicting 57 great jazz musicians. If you want to know their names, go here.  A note from Wikipedia:

Art Kane, a freelance photographer working for Esquire magazine, took the picture around 10 a.m. on August 12 in the summer of 1958. The musicians had gathered at 17 East 126th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues in Harlem. Esquire published the photo in its January 1959 issue. Kane calls it “the greatest picture of that era of musicians ever taken.”

As of August 2017, only two of the 57 musicians who participated are still living (Benny Golson and Sonny Rollins).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is in denial:

A: We have to face the truth.
Hili: Better not. It can be painful.
In Polish:
Ja: Trzeba spojrzeć prawdzie w oczy.
Hili: Lepiej nie, to może być bolesne.

And in nearby Wloclawek, Leon, who has no intention of working, is chewing the tuchas of his staff:

Leon: I declare the season of heavy spring work open!

In Polish: Leon: Sezon ciężkich prac wiosennych uważam za otwarty!

A photo sent by reader Randy Schenck:

It is the back cover of the magazine, Friends of Animals that comes out quarterly I think.  Donators are sent copies, so we just got it yesterday. A kind of humorous way to send a message, but then there is nothing very funny about the problem they address.  I did my best to photograph the picture from the magazine.

From Matthew: “Spot the lappet moth caterpillar”. This isn’t hard, but the thing is damn cryptic!

Check out the proboscis on this fly. As the link notes,

“May I introduce Lasia corvina, a small-headed fly (Acroceridae) which is endemic to Chile, where they are known to pollinate native lilies including Alstroemeria ligtu .”

Now here’s an interesting bit of history. As usual, Jackie was the best attired.

Maybe Edward Feser can answer this one. After all, he know that dogs don’t go to heaven!

Sunday DuckLog

April 8, 2018 • 2:45 pm

Thanks to readers’ suggestions, I now have a name for Honey’s drake. The winner (sorry, no prize this time) is “Sir Francis”, which I’ll shorten to “Francis” or “Frank” for short. “Frank and Honey” sounds good.

They’ve been at the pond constantly, and I’m hoping they’re there for good. The gestation time for an egg is about a month, so perhaps in a few weeks we’ll have ducklings. (I’ve seen no sign of a nest, but I never have.) Here are a few pictures from yesterday’s afternoon feeding.

Frank in a formal pose. Sharp-eyed reader Taskin noticed that Frank didn’t have a brown chest, which normal male mallards do (see here). He could be the offspring of a cross between a wild mallard and a domesticated white mallard, like the male in the fourth picture on this site.

Birders: is this a normal drake mallard, or is he carrying genes from domesticated ducks?

I never get over the beauty of his head feathers, with their combination of purple and green iridescent hues:

Postprandial preening:

Honey finding the last few mealworms on the edge of the pond:

The happy couple. They like to sit on the duck island. Since Physical Plant doesn’t ensure it remains above the water line, this means that their feet get wet. I wish I could get the University to lower the pond level about eight inches or so, which would give them a dry bit of land to sit on.

 

Only 2/3 of American Millennials believe that the Earth is round

April 8, 2018 • 1:45 pm

UPDATE: Reader Brian called my attention to an NPR article reporting that young people are much more likely to lie on polls than are their elders; perhaps that explains the result below. As he noted, “This does not explain the link between religion and flat earth that you observed, which is definitely interesting, but this may very well make us skeptical of the results of such polls.  I do not believe that this ‘mischievous responder; phenomenon will explain all of the recent rise in flat-earth conspiracy belief, but I at least hope this accounts for some of it.”

_____________

A first I thought this was an April Fools joke, but the date didn’t comport, and it was reported reported by CBS News, ” which led me to the YouGov poll site. CBS reports a sample size of 8,215 Americans.  The first graph shows the results for the entire sample, showing that only 84% of them have always believed in a round (well, “spherical” is more accurate) Earth, with 9% having some doubts or being flat-Earthers. 7% aren’t sure!  Don’t they know the data?

When you divide it up by age, the youngest group, 18-24 years of age, show only 2/3 accepting the world is round, with 18% having some doubts (or being flat-Earthers) and 16% being sure. The proportion of round-Earthers rises with age, with fully 94% of those over 55 saying they’ve always believed the world is round. What are they teaching the kids in school these days? Or haven’t they looked at the photos from space?

As one might expect, flat-Earthers tend to be more religious than “evidentialists”. After all, if you believe in the delusions of faith, you can believe anything. Since the YouGov supplementary page shows that there is a flat-earth control, these people are probably those who have always believe in Pancake Earth, though it’s not clear which of the four groups are included. It’s interesting that in the total sample, 42% of Americans consider themselves either “not very religious” or “not religious at all.”

h/t: Wendell

 

The anti-Semitism of Britain’s Labour Party

April 8, 2018 • 12:30 pm

Although I’ve read some stuff about the British Labour Party’s growing anti-Semitism, I didn’t really know how pervasive it was until reader BJ sent me some links. The first is from the Spectator, simply listing 50 instances of Labour Party anti-Semitism. While some of the bigots have been expelled or punished for their sentiments (that’s up to the party, not me), others have gotten off scot-free for expressions that, were they applied to blacks or Muslims, would have been grounds for expulsion. Here are just a few examples from “Labour’s pockets of anti-Semitism: The evidence“. Remember that Jeremy Corbyn is an MP from Islington and leader of the Labour Party. I’m just repeating the Spectator’s assertions and haven’t verified them for myself:

7. Jeremy Corbyn had a ten-year association with a group which denied the Holocaust. Mr Corbyn was a ‘stalwart’ supporter of Deir Yassin Remembered, attending events in 2013, with the group’s founder, Paul Eisen, a self-professed Holocaust denier.

11. A Labour councillor in Birmingham, Zafar Iqbal, shared a David Duke video on Facebook entitled ‘CNN Goldman Sachs and the Zio Matrix’. The Labour party accepted Mr Iqbal’s apology and claim that he had have no recollection of sharing this video’ – no disciplinary proceedings were enacted.

16. Ken Livingstone reportedly said a Jewish journalist was ‘just like a concentration camp guard’, that Jews vote Tory because they are rich and that Hitler supported Zionism. Despite his attempt to draw a parallel between those who fought for Jewish freedom and those who perpetrated a Jewish genocide, Livingstone was only given a temporary suspension from a party disciplinary panel – a decision Corbyn supported, despite 100 Labour MPs calling for Livingstone’s expulsion.

19. Labour Party member and Momentum Teesside activist Bob Campbell has shared an image of a rat marked with a Star of David and claimed Israel controls ISIS. Campbell denied to the press that he had been suspended by the party.

21. Labour Councillor and former Labour Mayor of Blackburn, Salim Mulla, called Zionist Jews a ‘disgrace to humanity’, endorsed a video which blamed Israel for school shootings in the USA, and said ‘Zionism’ was orchestrating ISIS. After an initial suspension he was reinstated as a Labour member.

27. Naz Shah, MP for Bradford West, was suspended from the party for sharing a post suggesting Israel should be ‘relocated’ to the United States and for saying that ‘the Jews are rallying’ to a Daily Mirror poll. She later apologised and was re-instated.

30. Jeremy Corbyn called antisemitic terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah ‘our friends’ when inviting them to speak in Parliament. He claimed the invitation to Hezbollah was ‘absolutely the right function of using parliamentary facilities’ and that the group was committed to ‘social justice and political justice’. Corbyn later said this was ‘inclusive language I used, which with hindsight I would rather not have used’.

35. Miqdad Al-Nuaimi, a Labour Councillor in Newport, was suspended after tweeting that ‘#Israel regime and army are increasingly assuming the arrogance and genocidal character of the #Nazis’ and that ‘ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi dies in Israeli hospital…If confirmed, the #Israeli connection is very interesting’. He was initially suspended, but then cleared by the Labour party.

37. Afzal Khan, then a Labour MEP and now the MP for Manchester Gorton, compared Israel to Nazis. No disciplinary action was taken.

40. Luke Cresswell, a Labour Councillor in Suffolk, tweeted an image of a blood-soaked Israeli flag, accused Israel of genocide and captioned the image ‘Moses must be proud of you’. Though initially suspended, he was then re-admitted, and subsequently selected as a councillor.

42. Max Tasker, a Labour Councillor in North Wales, posted Youtube videos to his facebook page with entitled: ‘Is ISIS good for the Jews?’, ‘The whole story of Zionist conspiracy: the filthy history of pedophilia, murder and bigotry’, ‘Not for the immature! Zionist Antichrist will rule the [New World Order]’ and ‘Ukraine’s anti-Russian stance is a Zionist masterplan’.

48. Jeremy Corbyn defended in 2012 an anti-Semitic mural in East London that depicted Jewish bankers playing a monopoly-style game on the backs of the poor. He has since apologised.

This is a small sample, but I found it appalling, though just another instance of the Left being anti-Semitic. But I’m not sure why this is the case in the UK, though in the US it’s because Jews are seen as white oppressors of brown Muslims. Is this the same in the UK?  I’m not the only one to be appalled by this, of course: journalist Nick Cohen has repeatedly called out Labour for its anti-Semitism; the latest example is here. But the leader of the party? Oy!

At any rate, the Guardian has published a letter signed by “more than forty senior academics” that is pure “whataboutery” with regards to Labour’s anti-Semitism. For example, it calls attention to anti-Semitism in Europe and Poland, the link between Conservatives and right-wing European parties, and accuses “dominant sections of the media” of claiming both that anti-Semitism is largely a problem of Labour and also that Corbyn hasn’t dealt with it. In other words, it uses whataboutery (while claiming it isn’t doing that) to defend Labour against anti-Semitism. But the issue, of course, is whether the party of inclusion is also bigoted, regardless of whether other countries are equally bigoted.

Notice that the signatories of the letters are largely from Goldsmiths at the University of London, the London School of Economics, and other universities that have a strong Authoritarian Leftist strain. No wonder their “senior academics” are defending Labour against bigotry!

In two pieces in the Spectator, conservative writer Douglas Murray examines whether those “senior academics” really are respected senior academics. Well, he finds some weirdos among them, including people whose scholarship is in Zombie and Star Wars studies, and one woman who’s not an academic at all. But that’s not really the point, which is the accusation of anti-Semitism. The academic credentials of the signatories isn’t that important, though the Guardian’s possible misrepresentation of them is. Still, you may want to look at Murray’s pieces, “The truth about the ‘senior academics’ defending Corbyn” and “The Guardian letter defending Jeremy Corbyn is a sham“. They’re more snark than light, but still fun.

What makes me sad is that were I a Brit, I’d be a Labour voter, and yet the party appears ridden with anti-Semitism. That’s not true of the American Democratic Party. Some of the problem may be because the Labour bigots appear to be Muslims, or at least have Arabic names, and therefore are enemies of the Jews from the outset. I don’t know, and ask British readers to explain this to me.