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.
Professor Ceiling Cat here; I’m heading home at last from Louisiana but visiting old friends along the way, so posting will light for just a few more days. As always, I will do my best. Greg has another post on snakes to put up (make sure you read his terrific post on the four-legged fossil snake); I hope Grania will pitch in; and perhaps Matthew as well. And I still have trip posts in the offing.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the cherry harvest is copious, but has been interrupted by rain. I am informed that there will be no dearth of pies for me when I next visit. My goal is to have cherry pie EVERY DAY when I go to Poland in late September/early October. And Hili is up her usual vertical peregrinations:
Hili: How did the Roman Empire fall?
A: More because of the bureaucracy than because the might of the Vandals.
Hili: I will be careful then.
In Polish:
Hili: Jak upadło cesarstwo rzymskie?
Ja: Raczej z powodu biurokracji niż z powodu potęgi wandali.
Hili: To ja będę ostrożna.
Here’s the first of two posts of my visit to Austin (the second will be the documentation of my getting measured for and ordering custom cowboy boots. On the drive from San Angelo to Austin, which was largely on back roads, I got a good view of Texas country life. Many of the small towns are clearly dying, with their stores shuttered up, but Llano (home of KITY radio!), not far from Austin, retains the charm of small-town Texas life. It appears to be thriving, and has the classic central city hall of Texas, and the row of small stores surrounding its plaza:
This is right out of the movie “The Last Picture Show” (filmed in Archer City, Texas):
I arrived at the home of Matt Dillahunty and Beth Presswood in the early afternoon. Both are atheist activists: Matt co-hosts the the well-known Atheist Experience t.v. show and also does dozens of debates with theists, while Beth is co-host of the Godless Bitches podcast. Austin, being the exceptional Texas city that it is (it’s full of signs and bumper stickers saying, “Keep Austin Weird”, attesting to its non-Republican nature), has a thriving atheist community.
Matt loves reptiles, and has had several in his life, including a rattlesnake. Now he keeps two small ball pythons (Python regius):
For lunch on the day I arrived, we drove the 25 minutes or so to one of my favorite BBQ places, Black’s (established 1932), located in the BBQ Capital of Texas, Lockhart. (They have three famous joints in that small town.)
Here’s a video of Texas’s oldest family-run BBQ:
First you go through the “fixins” line to get potato salad, beans, mac and cheese, biscuits, cornbread, and desserts (including a fantastic warm peach cobbler):
Then you go to the meat section and specify whether you want, ribs, a giant beef rib (which looks like something Fred Flintstone would have eaten), smoked homemade sausage, and—my favorite—brisket. I got about a quarter-pound of brisket.
A lovely lunch (mine): brisket, potato salad, beans, jalapeno cornbread, and, of course, sweet tea. I had peach cobbler for dessert.
Beth and Matt are the staff for four cats. This is Dax, their orange tabby. He has a few stripes but looks a lot like an Abyssinian:
Matt loves his kitties. He claims that he was once a d*g man, but that cats are “growing on him.” Beth is clearly the motivating force behind the feline melange:
This is Hana, a beautiful green-eyed tabby:
Bonsai, the tortoiseshell cat:
There is also a calico named Miso, but she’s shy. I snapped them all at feeding time:
Matt is an accomplished magician, and often performs at atheist conventions when he’s not arguing against theism. He was kind enough to set up his magic table and show me a full hour of close-up magic. It was amazing. He did card tricks, coin tricks, and other tricks, and I had no idea how he did them although he was sitting only a few feet from me.
Here I asked him to set out four “perfect” bridge hands in order, and then shuffle them. He did so repeatedly, cutting and shuffling, and continued until I asked him to stop. Then he fanned out the cards and, mirabile dictu, the suits were still in order. (Clearly he was only pretending to shuffle, but it sure as hell looked real to me. This takes skill acquired from years of practice!)
After I spent 2.5 hours ordering boots (Matt came along because he was interested in boots and owns two pair), we had a nice sushi lunch, Texas style. One of the rolls was called “Texas roadkill roll” and others had jalapenos in them.
And that evening for dinner we went to a famous Austin chain of taco restaurants (now found throughout Texas), Torchy’s Tacos. (Note to Colorado readers: there’s one in Denver, too! Don’t miss it.) Beth favors striking clothes, and here she was a vision in orange:
The food was fantastic. We started with a bowl of molten queso and chips to whet our appetite. I had a lemonade that was pink as it was flavored with red opuntia cactus fruit.
My dinner: a pork and green chile taco and a chicken taco. They were superb: the ingredients were fresh and homemade: the signature of Torchy’s. Two of them (for about six bucks) is an ample meal. Torchy’s is always crowded.
In between boot ordering and eating, Matt and I had lots of conversations about religion, atheism, debating, and so on. I wish I had consulted him when I wrote my latest book: he’s immensely knowledgeable. At any rate, he taped one of our conversations for a video for his Patreon patrons (join the others if you can spare some dosh; it’s a great cause), and I’ll put it up when it’s edited and available.
Thanks to Matt and Beth for their hospitality in Austin!
I suppose the “fair use” policy allows magazines and newspapers to quote this website without permission, but it would have been nice had the New York Times asked me before quoting part of my post about Susan Dominus’s wonderful NYT Sunday Magazine piece on the mixed-up twins of Bogotá. (Do read her piece if you get a chance; it’s a fantastic story.)
At any rate, my quote is in the magazine’s letter’s section that appeared yesterday, with the excerpt running first. I’m of course pleased at that, but editors normally ask permission and seek verification before publishing letters. Here’s what they quote.
Ethics dictates that we can’t do the kind of experiments on humans that we can on flies and cows: separating individuals at birth and seeing how much difference in behavior and appearance can be created by rearing siblings (identical or fraternal) in different environments. Data so far show that a surprisingly large amount of variation in human behavior rests on variation in genes, but these studies aren’t perfect. Still, they should give pause to those who believe (often based on political ideology) that genes don’t play much of a role in the diversity of behavior among individuals in the human population. Jerry A. Coyne, in a post on his blog, Why Evolution Is True
I like the fact that they include my words on ideological opposition on genetic determination of human behaviors—as some keyboard-warrior atheists have adopted this misguided stand on political grounds—but Earth to NYT: it’s not a blog!
There are several other letters, but only one is of interest:
What’s not often considered in studies of identical twins reared apart is whether identical twins reared together actually grow up to have more differences from each other than they might have had if they had been reared apart but in very similar circumstances or as an only child. Twins raised together need to find some interests or achievements that are unique to them and that distinguish them from their twin. Twins raised apart or alone would have much less motivation to be different from ‘‘themselves’’ in order to be noticed and praised, and thus they would be less driven to pick interests or modes of expression that differ from their twin’s and perhaps from their own genetically driven inclinations. You could speculate that epigenetic effects may also influence or even develop from these differing behaviors and the natural desire of an identical twin to be somewhat less than completely identical in the eyes of the rest of the world.raflei00, posted on nytimes.com
I’m not aware of any evidence that identical twins raised together are actually more different than such twins raised apart; I suspect that evidence exists, but hasn’t been examined because the more important issue is that the similarity of identical twins raised apart (compared to fraternal twins raised together or apart) gives us important information about the genetics of behavior, “IQ” (whatever that may be), and physiological and morphological traits.
Granted, identical twins raised apart may sometimes be put in more similar environments than are normal siblings separated at birth (I’m not sure if this is the case, but the issue has been bruited about), so that environmental similarities may be conflated with genetic ones. But one fact stands: if identical twins raised apart are substantially more similar than are fraternal twins raised together, that suggests a big genetic component to variations in human behavior. After all, it would be a misguided scientist (or an ideologue) who would claim that the environments of identical twins raised apart were more similar than that of fraternal twins raised together!
Finally, as far as I know, identical twins raised together often seem to seek to be similar: dressing alike when they’re old enough to have a choice, and hanging around together. These issues wouldn’t apply for twins raised apart, and would militate against the thesis of the letter-writer above.
As for the speculations on “epigenetic effects”, well, that’s irrelevant to the author’s otherwise interesting speculation, for it involves the effects of different environments on the twins’ DNA—something that probably doesn’t happen, and—as it would disappear in their children—would be of minimal interest.
But Corey Bradshaw (@conservbytes) who is currently curating the @realscientists account (it’s what’s called a ‘rocur’ account – that’s ‘rotationally curated’ – a different scientist runs it each week) responded with a rather more interesting challenge:
@matthewcobb@laura193laura Can you picture a better scenario too? One where we choose a smarter path. Or is that unrealistic?
— RealScientists | #BlackInMarineScience | Symone (@realscientists) July 27, 2015
So, the challenge to readers is this: what do you think a GOOD 2100 would look like? Apart from stopping getting more CO2 into the atmosphere, how can we get to a good place in the 21st century, and what would that look like? Shoot my ideas down if you want, but I’m more interested in what you think the world should look like in 85 years when we’re all dead and gone, and how we can get there.
Check out both @laura193laura and @realscientists for further thoughts, then post your answers below.
An article in The NewsNerd notes that the American Psychological Association is about to classify extreme religiosity as a mental illness. A true God Delusion!:
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), a strong and passionate belief in a deity or higher power, to the point where it impairs one’s ability to make conscientious decisions about common sense matters, will now be classified as a mental illness.
The controversial ruling comes after a 5-year study by the APA showed devoutly religious people often suffered from anxiety, emotional distress, hallucinations, and paranoia. The study stated that those who perceived God as punitive was directly related to their poorer health, while those who viewed God as benevolent did not suffer as many mental problems. The religious views of both groups often resulted in them being disconnected from reality.
Dr. Lillian Andrews, professor of psychology, stated, “Every year thousands of people die after refusing life-saving treatment on religious grounds. Even when being told ‘you will die without this treatment’ patients reject the idea and believe that their God will still save them. Those lives could be saved simply by classifying those people as mentally unfit for decision making.”
. . . With the new classification, the APA will lobby to introduce legislation which would allow doctors the right to force life-saving treatment on those who refuse it for spiritual reasons on the grounds that they are mentally incapable of making decisions about their health.
I’ve written at length about this very problem (in Slate, for example), especially the the United States’s shameful coddling of parents who withhold medical care from their children on religious grounds. Those parents are given a legal break in 43 of the 50 U.S. states, and it’s reprehensible and unconscionable.(47 of the 50 states also permit religious exemptions from vaccination for children attending public school.) The last chapter of Faith versus Fact, for example, discusses this issue in detail, for it’s a palpable example of severe harm caused by faith—and the onus to fix it is on all of us.
So the largely free license that religious parents have to hurt their children via faith-healing remains untrammeled. (Tayler even pays me a nice parenthetical compliment for my discussion of the issue: “For a shocking, even heartbreaking exploration of this issue and much more, check out Jerry Coyne’s ‘Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible’, which could be a primer for all rationalists wishing to argue the case for nonbelief.”)
Tayler goes on to insist, as he has before, that extreme religiosity is a form of mental illness. Some readers may disagree, but let those who do remember that if people behaved the same way about Bigfoot as they did about Jesus, they’d be seen as delusional. Tayler:
. . . the satire in the News Nerd’s piece derives its efficacy from an obvious truth: belief in a deity motivates people to behave in all sorts of ways — some childish and pathetic, others harmful, a few outright criminal — most of which, to the nonbeliever at least, mimic symptoms of an all-encompassing mental illness, if of widely varying severity.
Why childish? A majority of adults in one of the most developed countries on Earth believe, in all seriousness, that an invisible, inaudible, undetectable “father” exercises parental supervision over them, protecting them from evil (except when he doesn’t), and, for the mere price of surrendering their faculty of reason and behaving in ways spelled out in various magic books, will ensure their postmortem survival. Wishful thinking characterizes childhood, yes, but, where the religious are concerned, not only. That is childish.
Tayler goes on to recount the palpable harms of faith: not only the death of innocent and brainwashed children, but the oppression of women, the “scarred psyches” of many of those brainwashed kids, Jesus Camp, ISIS, and so on. The list is familiar, but Tayler’s remedy is pure New Atheist:
Yet all is not lost! If the News Nerd’s APA story was a hoax, professionals are, nonetheless, taking note of the danger it was parodying. A San-Franciscan human development consultant named Dr. Marlene Winell, herself a survivor of a Pentecostal upbringing, has bruited the idea of “religious trauma syndrome” and established its symptoms as “anxiety . . . depression, cognitive difficulties, and problems with social functioning.” Kathleen Taylor, an Oxford neuroscientist, has proposed treating religious fundamentalism itself as a “mental disturbance.”
The cure, in my view? Talk therapy, otherwise known as free speech, focusing relentlessly on religion and its multitudinous, multiplying ills, to be administered by us to the faith-deranged. Treatment might begin in language they can readily understand. The best, most succinct notion to be transmitted to the patients: “The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.” The nineteenth-century British biologist Thomas H. Huxley, “Darwin’s Bulldog,” said that.
It’s up to us. For the sake of humanity’s future, for the sake of our children, rationalists need to be unabashedly “bull-doggish.”
The time has arrived to bark, and even to bite.
I’ll bite! What say you: should we treat this extreme form of religiosity as a mental illness, when we know it really is one, albeit one that’s widespread? Should we even call it a mental illness, knowing that it will alienate many of the faithful?
Mark Sturtevant has sent us on some more great photographs and commentary to go along with them.
Here is yet another installment of budget close-up photography of local arthropods. I am having a wonderful summer doing this, and I think I am slowly getting better at my hobby. The pictures are numbered in the order of my comments here.
A stink bug nymph, possibly in the genus Apoecilus, feeding on an eastern tent caterpillar (Malacosoma americanum). In this picture you can see something of how a piercing-sucking proboscis works in insects. The proboscis is really homologous to the generalized chewing mouth parts of other insects. The thick, jointed part under the head that is bent aside is the labium (which is like a lower lip), while the thin whitish line seen entering the labium is really a bundle of piercing, needle-like mouth parts that are the mandibles and maxillae. The labium guides the piercing mouth parts into the prey, and those piercing mouth parts alternately pump up and down to scissor their way deeper into flesh. Digestive juices are pumped in, and the insect slurps up a liquid meal. The design is seen here:
Interestingly, the piercing mouth parts of some other insects like mosquitoes are very similar, and so this should be a good example of convergent evolution.
Marsh fly (Tetanocera). I do not have a lot to say about this one except that I am finding that many largish flies do not mind if a big camera lens draws in close to take pictures. I also like all the hairs since that makes ‘em interesting.
Six spotted orbweaver, Araniella displicata. This pretty little spider is so-named because it has six spots on the dorsal side of its abdomen. According to Bug Eric in this post: it is actually very common for this spider to spin a small orb web within the curl of a single leaf, as this one has done here.
Male harvestman (Phalangium opilio). One can recognize this to be a male by its elongated pedipalps. This widespread species is described as the most widely distributed harvestman in the world, and so possibly every reader of WEIT on every continent has seen this small, harmless species of harvestman. Well, harmless to humans. I have seen these animals eating surprisingly large insects.
However bad today may seem for you, it was a worse day for Nixon, for today was the day back in 1974 that the House Judiciary Committee recommended that he be impeached and removed from office.
Apparently Stalin also outlawed “cowards” on this day in 1943. Govern yourselves accordingly.
On the science side, there was an amazing breakthrough in Canada in 1921 when insulin was isolated by Frederick Banting and Charles Best in an effort to prevent and treat diabetes.
Over in Poland, the furry Princess may or may not be thinking of higher things.
Olaf: What do cats most enjoy talking about?
Hili: Allow me to ponder that question for a moment.
In Polish:
Olaf: O czym najchętniej rozmawiają koty?
Hili: Pozwól, że się zastanowię.
