A genuine miracle, and you saw it here first!

August 17, 2015 • 1:30 pm

It totally IS! Look at the shadow of this plume moth! The creature (perhaps an angel?) was clearly sent by G*d as a harbinger of the End Times. Now you can go worship the wall at the House of Ron (the reader who sent this message), or you can worship this site. Either way, this is something big!

But Ron himself, the scalawag, is clearly a doubter, for his email said this:

My daughter spotted this insect on our house in Milwaukee and I took a photo to share with you. The shadow is something special and will amuse some of your readers if you decide to post the photo.

Amuse, indeed. But if this was on a hyper-Christian blog, I’d be inundated with vistors.

Jesus moth

p.s. This does not mean that Jesus is Batman.

A new criticism of science as an exclusive “way of knowing”

August 17, 2015 • 11:00 am

UPDATE: I left a comment after Kolossváry’s piece simply saying that I analyzed his argument in this post, and giving the link. That comment has been removed.

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By now I’m well familiar with arguments that science, like religion, is based on faith. That argument is often made by religionists to try to drag down science’s epistemology to the level of religion’s, and it’s bogus. It’s bogus because, as I’ve argued before, “faith” in science really means “confidence based on experience”—which is not at all the same thing as religion’s “faith” as “belief without evidence.”

Now, however, a religious blogger at Patheos—a guest poster on The Evangelical Pulpit site—has taken the reverse tack, claiming that in fact decisions about good art, good music, and good religion can be made scientifically, on a basis identical to that used to adjudicate scientific fact. He is, of course, wrong.

What makes this claim—that objective truth is equivalent to subjective opinion—so weird is that it’s being made by a scientist, István Kolossváry. Here’s how he’s described (complete with the advantages he sees to faith) at the site:

István Kolossváry is a scientist and professor working in the research field of computer simulations of chemical and biological systems. He holds multiple advanced degrees from the Budapest University of Technology and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. István has been a researcher at various universities and pharmaceutical research labs in Europe and in the United States including Columbia University and most recently a New York based private research organization. He won the 2006 Hungarian Academy of Sciences Book Award in Chemistry for co-authoring Introduction to Computer Aided Drug Design. Over 25 years in his career as a scientist, István has privately grappled with the chasm between science and theology, two disciplines he holds dear. In his debut work The Fabric of Eternity, István shares results from years of scientific inquiry into the works of divine providence and concludes there is solid scientific evidence to suggest that rejecting God and His loving care is against human nature. www.istvankolossvary.com

And here are some arguments from his piece, “Is the scientific method exclusive to science?” It is an attack on some of the arguments in my latest book, Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible. I’ll try not to spend a lot of time on this; I’m bringing it up only because Kolossváry makes claims one doesn’t see very often. Here’s his thesis:

. . . In this blog post I am not going to argue pro or con [whether “science is based on verifiable facts whereas religion is based on unprovable faith”], I simply want to advocate a straightforward generalization of the scientific method and suggest that it can be used beyond the scope of science, including the arts and religion. The way the scientific method works is quite simple, and it has been amazingly successful for the past five hundred years. Observation of natural phenomena and/or pure theoretical thinking (nowadays aided by computer simulation) lead to ideas that will crystallize in a scientific theory.

Jerry Coyne and the new atheists dismiss religion, because religion is based on faith and not fact. Interestingly, the new atheists, or nobody for that matter dismisses the arts, though. So, how is art tested? What works of art are refuted and what works of art are here to stay? I argue that art is tested by the same scientific method—with people replacing the apparatus in the experiment.

So how does this work? It’s by a consensus of subjective opinion!:

Some would say that the most sensitive experimental device is a pencil standing on its tip; the tiniest push would make it tip over. I would argue, however, that the human person is infinitely more sensitive and is an ideal instrument to experimentally verify artwork. Why do we listen to Mozart and not Salieri, what crystallizes the collection of pieces displayed in the great art museums of the world over time, and what works are delegated to the dungeons of underground storage, once acquired by museum curators as prospective works of art? The masterpieces of art are selected by the same scientific method, by how much they touch the souls of people and the selection  process takes a long time, all too often beyond the years of the artist so he or she can enjoy success. The exact same thing in literature, what will determine which novels or poems people read a hundred years after they had been written? Bad literature, bad music, bad paintings are repudiated by the scientific method using people as the experimental apparatus.

Well, there are a lot of people who prefer Hemingway to Fitzgerald, and vice versa, and few people agree with my opinion that Thomas Wolfe was certainly in that 20th century pantheon as well. (In fact, English professors have told me that Wolfe was simply a bad writer, which I contest strongly!). I and some others thought the movie Tree of Life was pompous and execrable, but many critics deemed it a masterpiece. Who is right? How can we tell?

In truth, there is no consensus of opinion about art nearly as solid as the consensus that a normal water molecule has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atoms, or that the earth is 4.5 billion years old. And how do you objectively resolve the question of whether Andy Warhol’s paintings were masterpieces, or that Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” was also one? Public opinion on many of these issues vacillates (remember that many of Sinclair Lewis’s novels were once seen as masterpieces, but many find them hackneyed today, though he won a Nobel Prize for Literature). In contrast, many scientific “facts” are unlikely to change: they are as close to absolute truths as we can get. And when scientific consensus does change, it’s not just a shift in opinion, but a shift in opinion that reflects new data, as when we learned, from various methods, that the continents were actually drifting after all. What new data has led to Thomas Wolfe falling out of favor?

Now it is true—even likely—that some things appeal to people aesthetically because they evoke a neuronal reaction based on culture or evolution. E. O. Wilson, for example, has suggested that we prefer grassy landscapes with trees (and a view from a hill) because that was the landscape on which we evolved in Africa (and being on a hill has adaptive advantages). But does this mean that someone who prefers a desert landscape is wrong? We may find that preference for one type of painting versus another, say Rembrandt versus Jackson Pollock, rests on consistent ways the human brain is organized.

This may explain a consensus of opinion about art, but does it make Rembrandt objectively better than Pollock? What about the person who prefers Pollock? Can you say she’s just wrong? Surely not in the sense that the person who says that the Earth is 10,000 years old is wrong! And that is Kolossváry’s error. While subjective opinion may, at bottom, be grounded on objective facts about the brain, this does not mean that, in the absence of that information, we can accept the vagaries of human opinion about art as “true.” For brains differ, and opinions differ, and we all know that even are evolved preferences don’t make those preferences “right.” We may have evolved to be xenophobic, but in today’s world that doesn’t work so well.

Kolossváry then extends the “truth” argument to politics and religion:

Similar in political systems. The ones that people tolerate stay longer and the ones that oppress people will be thrown over, sooner or later. I believe that the same scientific method can be applied to religion. The new atheists don’t seem to understand the difference between God and religion and between faith and religion. We are talking about religion here, the main branches Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism with all their factions, and hundreds of other religions. Religion is a shared human response to God’s calling and it is a unique and precious human experience.

In this sense politics is like morality, which I believe at bottom rests on subjective preferences for what kind of society you want. If you favor democracy (or utilitarianism) because you think it has certain salutary effects, you can certainly test whether those effects really obtain, at least in principle. But in the end your preference for one political system (e.g., a Republican versus a Democratic administration) is based on preferences that cannot be objectively justified.

Religion is even worse, for one’s “preference” is, by and large, based on where you lived, and who your parents were. Which religion is “right” is an unresolvable question, at least by “scientific” methods, and Kolossváry makes it even worse by asserting, without any “scientific” evidence, that “God’s calling” really exists!

So if Kolossváry really thinks that a choice among religions—which one is better or “truer”—can be made on scientific grounds, let him justify that. For his method for “verifying” religions, which seems to mean which ones are “true” in a scientific sense (remember, he’s claiming here that one can “test” the verify of religions in the same way science tests its propositions) is ludicrous:

Religions are in large part man made, especially in their every day manifestations at temples, churches, mosques, congregations, assemblies, etc., and they change over time. What if not people would be best suited to test them? The scientific method can be applied to religions similar to the arts; the more they touch the human soul and the more they make people agents of good the more they are verified but when they do harm, they are repudiated. It is people who test religion through their ultra sensitive souls far more advanced than any man made instrument. The statement so loudly voiced by the new atheists that religions are irrational, simply does not stand to reason.

Well, if you claim—and this again is based on subjective preferences—that the effects of religion on human behavior should be X and Y, then that can n principle be tested as well. But defining what “agents of good” really do may be very different for a Quaker and for a radical Muslim! Many Muslims feel, for instance, that Islam, as the “final” revelation from God, is the right religion, and so it’s okay to call for the execution of gays and apostates.

Well, religion has been “tested” à la Kolossváry , and here are the results (again largely reflecting not people’s cogitation about different faiths and then choice of the “best” one, but simply the vagaries of history and geography). Religion has never been a matter of voting with your feet, but simply where your feet first touched the ground when you were a child.

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Which religions have been “verified”, and which “repudiated”? I would claim that Islam is, at present, more harmful than Buddhism, but neither has been repudiated. Since there are more Muslims than Buddhists, does that mean Islam is a “better” or “truer” religion?

In truth, Kolossváry doesn’t even seem to know the difference between judging something by its effects and judging something as objectively true. His last sentence, saying that religions can’t be irrational, is confused in just that way: it mistakes the actions motivated by religion with whether their epistemic claims have any basis in reality.

h/t: Jeff G.

The Onion gets it right on the money

August 17, 2015 • 10:15 am

Here’s a short piece that just appeared in The Onion; click on the headline to go to it, but I’ll reproduce it in its entirety:

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THE HEAVENS—Saying that the various belief systems had a “good run” over the last few millennia but that it was probably time for humans to get by on their own, the Lord Our God, He Who Is Seen And Unseen, proclaimed Monday that He would begin slowly weaning humanity off religion. “Religion was definitely helpful for humans when they first started out, but now it seems like it’s pretty much served its purpose—time to take the training wheels off,” said God, who argued that while the transition from religion might be difficult for a large segment of the population, ultimately humankind would be better off without it in the long run. “It’s not like I’m going to get rid of religion all in one go or anything; I’ll wind it down gradually over the next 500 years or so. Really, when you take a good look at it, the negatives are starting to outweigh the positives anyway.” At press time, God was implementing the first stage of His plan by effecting the opposite outcome of every prayer He received.

Need I say more? I’ll just quote 1 Corinthians 13:11:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

It’s in the Bible!

Texas textbooks attempt to hide the history of slavery, but are exposed in Doonesbury

August 17, 2015 • 8:15 am

This report from the Washington Post is from July 5, so it’s not new, but I wasn’t aware of the issue until I saw yesterday’s Doonesbury cartoon by Garry Trudeau (below). The words in Trudeau’s strip are taken directly from new Texas school standards that will begin this fall.

Most of us know that Texas is constantly trying to revise public-school textbooks to reflect a conservative Republican viewpoint. They did it earlier to evolution, trying to sneak creationism into the biology curriculum, but ultimately failed. (Creationist dentist Don McLeroy, the head of the Texas Board of Education during those dark days, will be reading this piece and will try to leave a comment!)

But conservatives’ efforts are also directed at history and social studies, and here they’ve succeeded. Texas has in fact severely redacted the history of slavery and Southern secession in its new textbooks. As the Post reports:

Five million public school students in Texas will begin using new social studies textbooks this fall based on state academic standards that barely address racial segregation. The state’s guidelines for teaching American history also do not mention the Ku Klux Klan or Jim Crow laws.

And when it comes to the Civil War, children are supposed to learn that the conflict was caused by “sectionalism, states’ rights and slavery” — written deliberately in that order to telegraph slavery’s secondary role in driving the conflict, according to some members of the state board of education.

Slavery was a “side issue to the Civil War,” said Pat Hardy, a Republican board member, when the board adopted the standards in 2010. “There would be those who would say the reason for the Civil War was over slavery. No. It was over states’ rights.”

That’s bogus. And so what the students get to read is slanted, which, of course, will condition many of them for life. After all, the teacher said it!

Nowhere is the rejection of slavery’s central role more apparent than in Texas, where elected members of the state board of education revised state social studies standards in 2010 to correct for what they said was a liberal slant.

Students in Texas are required to read the speech Jefferson Davis gave when he was inaugurated president of the Confederate States of America, an address that does not mention slavery. But students are not required to read a famous speech by Alexander Stephens, Davis’s vice president, in which he explained that the South’s desire to preserve slavery was the cornerstone of its new government and “the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.”

Professional historians have decried this form of right-wing bowdlerizing, but it’s been fruitless:

Southern states made that clear in their declarations of independence from the union, said James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association. Slavery’s primary role in driving the Civil War is a matter of scholarly consensus, he said.

“The War happened only because of the determination of the leadership of eleven states to defend the right of their residents to own other human beings,” Grossman wrote in an e-mail. “The Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery.”

. . . Texas’s social studies standards are more politicized than any other state, said Jeremy A. Stern, a historian who reviewed state standards for the conservative-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute in 2011. He gave Texas’s standards a D and wrote that the board was “molding the telling of the past to justify its current views.”

The use of “states’ rights” as a euphemism for both slavery and segregation is something I’ve seen repeatedly in my lifetime. It was the mantra used by racists like George Wallace of Alabama and Lester Maddox of Georgia when opposing the Civil Rights Acts of the Sixties, and when trying to prevent blacks from attending state universities. But everybody knew then—and knows now—what it really means. It’s the most odious of euphemisms, for it recasts racism as a noble cause.

James W. Loewen , a sociologist who wrote the best-selling book “Lies My Teacher Told Me ,” says textbooks perpetuate myths about the Civil War in order to avoid offending state textbook-adoption panels. Nineteen states, including almost all of those in the South, adopt textbooks at the state level, according to the Association of American Publishers.

“I think we are at last seeing the de-Confederatization of America,” Loewen said. “And I’m hoping that we will see some action towards de-Confederatizing our textbooks.”

Loewen, who has reviewed many textbooks, said he has found many errors and omissions that help de-emphasize the role slavery played in causing the war. Among the biggest and most common problems, he said, is textbooks’ failure to quote from key primary sources [JAC: see below—Trudeau is up on this issue]: the Southern states’ declarations of secession, which made clear that they were leaving the union to protect white citizens’ right to own slaves.

Now some scholars (surprisingly, one is David. M. Kennedy, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian, argue that the Texas textbooks’ take on slavery is fine, and some Texas teachers (one is quoted) do emphasize the role of slavery in the Civil War. But we can’t count on Texas teachers to correct there textbooks. You can see that in this scathing Doonesbury cartoon that led me to read about the stuff given above:

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I should add that the Post hosts a website that collects all Doonesbury cartoons and is updated daily. I suspect Trudeau will do more on the Texas controversy.

UPDATE: As expected, creationist McLeroy tried to leave a comment here, and I reproduce it below:

Yes, Dr. Coyne, your are correct; I would like to comment.

First, we did not wish to sneak creationism into the biology curriculum; what we wished to do we accomplished. According to “Science” magazine, we struck “a major blow to the teaching of evolution” by just having Texas students look into evolutionary explanations for stasis in the fossil record and the complexity in the cell. As predicted, the explanations in our textbooks are incredibly weak. This is why I was in favored the adoption of the new textbooks two years ago.

Second, Emma Brown’s story in the Washington Post takes the situation of the horrible shooting of parishioners in Charleston to throw gasoline on the fire. The major premise of her story is absolutely false. Texas has not downplayed slavery – not in our standards or in the textbooks. Slavery is abominable as is abortion is today. Yes, Pat Hardy said what she said. But the key point, it was Texas’ social studies curriculum experts of whom Pat Hardy is one, that wrote the standards under attack. It was not the board’s conservative Republicans.

h/t: Stash Krod

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 17, 2015 • 7:15 am

Reader John O’Neall sent some splendid pictures of African birds along with his notes (indented):

 You asked for animal pix and I have some. They were taken in October 2012 in Tanzania. Folks usually go ape over big mammals in Africa, and with good reason. But I found the birds to be more fascinating because they were unexpected, at least to my wife and me. The first three were in Tarangire National Park.

Superb starling (Lamprotornis superbus):

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Hamerkop (“Hammerhead”; Scopus umbretta):

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Lilac-breasted roller (Coracias caudatus): I have never seen such amazing colors on any bird.

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The next three were in Serengeti NP.

Shelley’s starling (Lamprotornis shelleyi). These starlings are far more colorful than the ones we have known before in the USA or Europe.

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A closeup of a yellow-billed oxpecker (Buphagus africanus). In this photo, he is pecking a giraffe, whose spots are easily recognizable.

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African hoopoe (JAC: Upupa epops, a great name!). You can recognize him easily by his crown and his stripes and colors. Quite unique, I think. We have seen three of them: This one in Tanzania, one at Khajuraho, in India; and one in our own back yard, outside of Lyon, France. So this bird gets around. We also saw a poster on a wall at a small museum on Elephantine Island (Aswan) saying that the hoopoe was the messenger between King Soleman [sic] and the Queen of Shepa [sic]!

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The last three were in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

Secretary bird (Sagittarius serpentarius), certainly the oddest named of the bunch and one of the biggest. Its name may be due to its looking like it has stuck quills behind its ears the way we do pencils. Wikipedia tells me the earliest fossils of this bird were found not in Africa but in France, a fact that I find interesting because that is where I now live.

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Grey-crowned crane (Balearica regulorum), easily the most regal bird we saw.

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Kori bustard (Ardeotis kori):

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We have a lot more on our site (here—or here for bigger pix).

Monday: Hili dialogue and Leon lagnaippe

August 17, 2015 • 6:20 am

It’s Monday again, and I hope everyone had a good weekend. It was wicked hot in Chicago—in the nineties—but otherwise clear and sunny. The big news, which comes from Dobrzyn, is that Hili is throwing her metaphorical hat in the ring. Today’s dialogue, in fact, is so important that it has a title: “Out of a Sense of Responsibility”:

A: What are you thinking about?
Hili: I’m considering running in the next presidential election.
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In Polish:
Ja: Nad czym się zastanawiasz?
Hili: Nad startem w następnych wyborach prezydenckich.
Although Hili is far superior to any Republican candidate in the U.S., Malgorzata explained to me that Hili is referring to the Polish presidency:
As conceited as she is, she doesn’t have any ambition to become a president of U.S. And she is a smart cat – she knows that as a mammal born in Dobrzyn (and not on the U.S. soil) she cannot run for your president 🙂 The only slight problem is that the next presidential election in Poland is in five years time.
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Meanwile, Leon continues his hiking adventures in the Polish mountains:

Leon: I will presently make plans for today’s expedition.

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More woo from HuffPo: Reiki

August 16, 2015 • 1:00 pm

The therapy of reiki (pronounced “ray-kee”) is based on the nonsensical notion of qi, or life force, and of chakras, or centers of energy, which must be balanced. It’s all pure woo. There’s been no scientific evidence that it works; it’s been decried by most reputable medical associations; and it appears to be no more effective than is homeopathy.

Nevertheless, it’s being strongly promoted by PuffHo in a podcast called “The reality of reiki.” If you can stand it, listen to the 27-minute dump of craziness by one “Christy” (last name not given)  and Michele Kennedy, described as “a Yoga teacher and head of ShantiBabyYoga, and a level III Reiki Master and head of Purple Reiki in Brooklyn, New York.” After balancing her chakras, Christy managed to get some messages from her dead mother via Michele, so this whole scam blends into the idiocy of seances.  It made me almost ill to hear Christy and Michele buttress each other’s enthusiasm for this kind of nonsense.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about reiki, and believe me, this would have been criticized and vetted by advocates of reiki:

Basis and effectiveness

The existence of the proposed mechanism for Reiki – qi or “life force” energy – has not been established.[3] Most research on Reiki is poorly designed and prone to bias. There is no reliable empirical evidence that Reiki is helpful for treating any medical condition,[3][4][5] although some physicians have said it might help promote general wellbeing.[5] In 2011, William T. Jarvis of The National Council Against Health Fraud stated that there “is no evidence that clinical reiki’s effects are due to anything other than suggestion” or the placebo effect.[21]

Reiki’s teachings and adherents claim that qi is physiological and can be manipulated to treat a disease or condition. The existence of qi has not been established by medical research.[3] As a result, some consider Reiki to be a pseudoscientific theory based on metaphysical concepts.[1]

Scholarly evaluation

Reiki is used as an illustrative example of pseudoscience in scholarly texts and academic journal articles.[1][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] Rhonda McClenton states, “The reality is that Reiki, under the auspices of pseudo-science, has begun the process of becoming institutionalized in settings where people are already very vulnerable.”[24] In criticizing the State University of New York for offering a continuing education course on Reiki, Lilienfeld et al. (in Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology) state, “Reiki postulates the existence of a universal energy unknown to science and thus far undetectable surrounding the human body, which practitioners can learn to manipulate using their hands.”[32] Ferraresi et al. state, “In spite of its [Reiki] diffusion, the baseline mechanism of action has not been demonstrated…”[33] Wendy Reiboldt states about Reiki, “Neither the forces involved nor the alleged therapeutic benefits have been demonstrated by scientific testing.”[34] Several authors have pointed to the vitalistic energy which Reiki is claimed to treat.[35][36][37] Larry Sarner states (in The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience), “Ironically, the only thing that distinguishes Reiki from Therapeutic Touch is that it involves actual touch.”[37]Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry state (in Philosophy of Pseudoscience) that the International Center for Reiki Training “mimic[s] the institutional aspects of science” seeking legitimacy but holds no more promise than an alchemy society.[38] An evidence based guideline published by the American Academy of Neurology, the American Association of Neuromuscular & Electrodiagnostic Medicine, and the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation states, “Reiki therapy should probably not be considered for the treatment of PDN [painful diabetic neuropathy].”[39] Susan Palmer lists Reiki as among the pseudoscientific healing methods used by cults in France to attract members.[40] David Gorski and Steven Novella have commented on the absurdity of clinical testing of implausible treatments.[31]

Just as PBS television promotes the woo of Deepak Chopra, so PuffHo has a weakness for reiki, which they describe as part of the site’s podcast center for “ethics, religion, and spirituality in everyday life,” All Together. Remember, PuffHo and PBS are read and watched by seemingly intelligent human beings.