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.
There was supposed to be a wicked blizzard in the northeast U.S. starting last night, with some predicting it would be the most severe in recorded history. Public transportation, including subways, have been shut down in Boston and New York. For those readers in the NE, let us know how you’re doing. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, there’s not too much snow, but it’s still cold. Hili sits on her jars and pretends to be Prince Hamlet:
Hili: To sleep or to hunt, that is the question.
A: I’m going to sleep.
Hili: In your bed? Under a warm duvet? I will cuddle up to you.
Polish:
Hili: Spać czy polować, oto jest pytanie?
Ja: Ja idę spać.
Hili: Do łóżka? Pod ciepłą kołdrę? To ja się do ciebie przytulę.
You could have knocked me over with a feather. The new Greek prime minister is an out atheist, and has refused any religious accoutrements at his swearing-in ceremony. Having lived in Greece as a child and visited several times since, I know what a religious country it is. Nevertheless, as The Economistreports:
GREECE’S new prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, made history within hours of his victory by informing the Archbishop of Athens, very politely, that clerical services would not be required for his swearing-in ceremony. An avowed atheist who has nonetheless made a point of dealing courteously with senior clergy, Mr Tsipras lost no time in making known that his oath of office would be a secular procedure. It was also explained that when the whole cabinet was sworn in, a more junior cleric (but not the archbishop) would be invited to assist those who wished to take a religious oath.
Here’s Tsipras, who reminds me of a young Al Franken. He’s a leftie, too, and has a partner and kids but isn’t even married. You go, Greece!
Here’s a total wuss freaking out about a hungry, one-eyed emu in a safari park in Tennessee. She even calls it “dude,” an offense for which she should be roundly pecked.
Why didn’t she just roll up the window?
Here’s a cat with its head stuck in a plastic cup. A d*g comes by and apparently rescues the moggie from its predicament. Question: was the dog really trying to help? Nearly 500,000 YouTube views in the last two days suggest “yes.”
As a extra special treat, here are baby opossums eating watermelon:
I was led to this video through a tw**t by Sam Harris (yes, I do occasionally look at tw**ts):
The religion link goes here—a list of empirical claims about Christianity.
The science link goes to this stunning video of Andromeda (make sure you’ve put it on full screen). You may have seen it given that it’s received over 8 million views since it was posted on January 6.
This image, captured with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is the largest and sharpest image ever taken of the Andromeda galaxy — otherwise known as M31.
This is a cropped version of the full image and has 1.5 billion pixels. You would need more than 600 HD television screens to display the whole image.
It is the biggest Hubble image ever released and shows over 100 million stars and thousands of star clusters embedded in a section of the galaxy’s pancake-shaped disc stretching across over 40 000 light-years.
This image is too large to be easily displayed at full resolution and is best appreciated using the zoom tool.
If you have half an hour (or more) to spare, go to the Hubble’s Image page and just click around for fun. You’ll have all these choices of things to see:
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope picture may trick you into thinking that the galaxy in it — known as UZC J224030.2+032131 — has not one but five different nuclei. In fact, the core of the galaxy is only the faint and diffuse object seen at the centre of the cross-like structure formed by the other four dots, which are images of a distant quasar located in the background of the galaxy.
The picture shows a famous cosmic mirage known as the Einstein Cross, and is a direct visual confirmation of the theory of general relativity. It is one of the best examples of the phenomenon of gravitational lensing — the bending of light by gravity as predicted by Einstein in the early 20th century. In this case, the galaxy’s powerful gravity acts as a lens that bends and amplifies the light from the quasar behind it, producing four images of the distant object.
The quasar is seen as it was around 11 billion light-years ago, in the direction of the constellation of Pegasus, while the galaxy that works as a lens is some ten times closer. The alignment between the two objects is remarkable (within 0.05 arcseconds), which is in part why such a special type of gravitational lensing is observed.
This image is likely the sharpest image of the Einstein Cross ever made, and was produced by Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, and has a field of view of 26 by 26 arcseconds.
Late 2009, in the run-up to the international climate conference in Copenhagen, PBL climate researcher Bart Strengers had an online discussion with climate sceptic Hans Labohm on the website of the Dutch news station NOS (in Dutch). This discussion, which was later also published as a PBL report, ended in a wager. Strengers wagered that the mean global temperature over the 2010–2014 period would be higher than the mean over 2000 to 2009. Hans Labohm believed there would be no warming and perhaps even a cooling; for example due to reduced solar activity.
The denialist even specified which data should be used: satellite data from the lower 5 km of the atmosphere, collected by the University of Alabama at Huntsville.
Labohm lost. Here are the data from the University of Alabama, with the horizontal gray line at 0.0 representing the mean since 1979, the means for each ten year-period up to 2009 represented by horizontal green lines, and the mean from 2010-2014 (the mean that, according to Labohm, was supposed to be either lower or unchanged. It isn’t. The difference is small—an increase of only 0.1°C—but the 35-year trend is pretty clear as well.
Sadly, the prize was just “a good bottle of wine.” Had it been my bet, I would have been more specific and asked for a bottle of 2005 Chateau Petrus. Never bet something like “a good bottle of wine” unless you know the person you’re betting with is an honest oenophile rather than a guzzler of Two-Buck Chuck.
Dan Brown, author of the Dan Vinci Code (a book I read during a week’s vacation in Devon since it was the only literature available in the rental home), seems to be a pretty smart guy, even though I wasn’t keen on that book. His intelligence is palpable in the video below, which shows about half of his Penguin Lecture from last winter in India, and a Q&A (beginning at 17:10) with Rajdeep Sardesai. You needn’t watch it all: perhaps the five minutes beginning at 3:50 and about five minutes of the Q&A. There’s a report on this talk on PuffHo and at The Hindu.
Sadly, Brown espouses, in much of the talk, an accommodationism between science and religion. Clearly a believer, he points out the contradictions he noticed when young between scripture and science, and asked himself the question—as he asks the audience here—”How do we become modern science-minded people without losing our faith?” That, of course, presupposes the conclusion that he must hold onto his faith no matter what he finds. It becomes more difficult to grasp that given his statement (my emphasis) that “For one’s own survival, it is critical that we live without malice that we educate ourselves and that we ask difficult questions and above all we engage in dialogue especially with those whose ideas are not own own.”
Brown also notes in passing that we inherit our religions culturally: “We worship the Gods of our parents—it truly is that simple.” That’s a short statement of the observation motivating John Loftus’s “Outsider Test for Faith“, which I’ve discussed before. If everyone gets their faith from their parents, how come, if there really is a God, all those faiths conflict?
Brown has the answer.
The the conflict-between-faith observation, he says is a delusion, for “religions aren’t all that different; those differences arise only when we start using language” They are, in effect, not real differences in beliefs, but only differences in “vocabulary and semantics”. In essence, he claims, “All of our world religions have at their core the same basic human truths. Kindness is better than cruelty, creation is better than desctruction, and love is better than hate.” In the Q&A he adds that scripture is only a metaphor, and should never be taken literally.
The questions raised by this “solution” are obvious, and I needn’t dwell on them. The differences in religions are not a matter of semantics; they are real differences in what scripture claims and in what religionists have come to believe (unless Brown thinks that Islam’s call to kill apostates, or Catholics’ demonization of gays, are only metaphorical) And who is Brown to determine what religions have at their core, as opposed to what’s in the peel that can be discarded? And isn’t it odd that the same “core” values of religion are also the core values of humanism, values promulgated even by secular philosophers of ancient Greece, and by atheist/humanists ever since then. Why do you even need religion for that?
The answer is that you don’t. We can have all those moral teachings without the veneer of superstition, for it’s that veneer of empirical claims that is divisive. What’s at the core of every religion is in fact a worm: a worm of delusion gnawing away at rationality. Brown, like Karen Armstrong and other smart people who can’t let go of their delusions, arrogates to himself the true meaning of religion, and the ability to winnow the moral truths from the supernatural chaff. Pity that most of the world’s believers don’t agree with him.
Finally, how does Brown reconcile science and religion? In two ways. First he write off religious claims about nature as mere metaphor, not realizing that this raises the problems of what, exactly, is true in scripture. Are God and Jesus and Muhammad also metaphors? Further, he simply raises a version of Steve Gould’s NOMA hypothesis:
“Science and religion are partners. They are two different languages telling the same story . . . While science dwells on the answers, religion savors the questions.”
Notice that he says “savors” instead of “answers”. Science answers questions; religion “addresses” them. Pity that religion has never answered any question, at least about what’s real.
It’s also a pity that Brown’s interrogator Sardesai throws him only softball questions, but I guess that’s to be expected at a literary event like this. But Lord, just let me sit down with this man for an hour and ask him hard questions, like why he’s so sure there’s a God to begin with, and how he can tell when something in scripture is merely a metaphor.
But the greatest pity of all is that Hitchens is no longer alive to debate Dan Brown.
Sometimes I think I could make a good living by just parroting the warm, comfortable bromides of people like Brown. It still amazes me, though, even after all these years, that smart people can say such dumb things. I’d paraphrase Steven Weinberg by saying, “With or without religion, smart people will say smart things and dumb people will say dumb things. But for a smart person to say a dumb thing—that takes religion.”
Although I’ve posted several times about Ben Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon, and a practicing Seventh-Day Adventist and looney creationist (see here, here, and here), I’ve tried not to write much about him over the last few years. That’s because he’s shown political aspirations (as a Republican, of course), but I always thought those were futile. After all, he’s an extreme right-winger and an explicit creationist; most Republicans will doubt evolution only when pressed by reporters. When interviewed by his church, however, he’s very explicit, and has a long paper trail. These statements, for instance, are from a 2004 interview with Carson in the Adventist Review, where he’s often featured:
How does this happen? What are the consequences of accepting evolutionary views of human origins? How does this affect society and the way we see ourselves?
By believing we are the product of random acts, we eliminate morality and the basis of ethical behavior. For if there is no such thing as moral authority, you can do anything you want. You make everything relative, and there’s no reason for any of our higher values.
. . . A few closing thoughts?
Ultimately, if you accept the evolutionary theory, you dismiss ethics, you don’t have to abide by a set of moral codes, you determine your own conscience based on your own desires. You have no reason for things such as selfless love, when a father dives in to save his son from drowning. You can trash the Bible as irrelevant, just silly fables, since you believe that it does not conform to scientific thought. You can be like Lucifer, who said, “I will make myself like the Most High.”
“Let me just at the outset say that I know that there was some controversy about my views on creation and somebody thought that I said that evolutionists are not ethical people. Of course I would never say such a thing and would never believe such a thing nor would anybody with any common sense; so, you know, that’s pretty ridiculous. But any rate, enough said about that.”
Can you prove evolution? No. Can you prove creation? No. Can you use the intellect God has given you to decide whether something is logical or illogical? Yes, absolutely. It all comes down to “faith”–and I don’t have enough to believe in evolution. I’m too logical!
Carson endorses nonreligious woo as well, which is shameful for a physician. According to the National Review(a conservative magazine), Carson has long been affiliated with Mannatech, a dubious nutritional-supplement company. The video below, an endorsement of their products, shows Carson saying this:
“The wonderful thing about a company like Mannatech is that they recognize that when God made us, He gave us the right fuel. And that fuel was the right kind of healthy food. You know we live in a society that is very sophisticated, and sometimes we’re not able to achieve the original diet. And we have to alter our diet to fit our lifestyle. Many of the natural things are not included in our diet. Basically what the company is doing is trying to find a way to restore natural diet as a medicine or as a mechanism for maintaining health.”
The National Review also quotes Armstrong Williams, Carson’s business manager, when he was asked about his client’s association with the company:
Williams adds that Carson won’t personally be answering any questions about his interactions with the company, “because that is the decision that has been made.”
That is, “because of reasons.” The NR piece gives more details about Mannatech, including its carefully guarded claims that its supplements are useful in helping AIDS, cancer, toxic shock syndrome, heart failure, asthma, arthritis, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, Attention Deficit Disorder, and lung inflammation. Way to go, Dr. Carson!
But now, it seems, Carson is post-worthy because he has a viable candidacy in the Republican party, and may be a contender for the Presidential nomination in 2016. He’s a Republican’s dream: a Bible-spouting but accomplished black conservative of the Clarence Thomas stripe. George W. Bush, in fact, gave Carson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008.
I still think this country isn’t crazy enough to nominate him, much less elect him, but I see him on the evening news quite often. And we should never underestimate the faith-fueled political lunacy of the U.S.
Carson’s candidacy may, however, ultimately be deep-sixed by his propensity to say what he really believes, which is odious nonsense, even to many Republicans. As The Hill reports, Carson got a standing ovation after his speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit for saying stuff that Republicans love, including this:
“Do we have an illegal immigration problem?” he asked a minute later, as the crowd yelled back “yes.”
“Can we fix it?”
“Yes!” the crowd roared.
“Of course we can,” he said. “There wouldn’t be people coming here if there wasn’t a magnet… you have to reverse the polarity of that magnet.”
Well, how exactly do you reverse that polarity? You can either make the U.S. less attractive to everyone who might want to live here, but that would involve dialing back things like democracy, relatively open opportunity, and a high standard of living. Alternatively, you can simply repel the immigrants, which I suspect is Carson’s plan.
That kind of stuff may be music to the wackaloon ear, but this is a bit more dicey:
Carson struggled at times through a post-speech press availability, offering vague answers on a number of topics and refusing to answer how he thinks abortion should be criminalized.
Carson also criticized political correctness as he answered a question about gay marriage — and followed up by flaunting decorum with the type of comment that endears him with the base but could hurt his cross-party appeal.
“What I have a problem with is when people try to force people to act against their beliefs because they say ‘they’re discriminating against me.’ So they can go right down the street and buy a cake, but no, let’s bring a suit against this person because I want them to make my cake even though they don’t believe in it. Which is really not all that smart because they might put poison in that cake,” he said to chuckles from some of his staff and dead silence from the journalists in the room.
These comments haven’t been reported in the mainstream press—or at least I haven’t seen them—but making jokes about poisoning gays is something that hasn’t been promulgated by those “journalists in the room”. It has, however, been featured in the gay press. Pink News reports another case where Carson put his foot in it:
He said in 2013: “My thoughts are that marriage is between a man and a woman. It’s a well-established, fundamental pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they [paedophile support group] NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality–it doesn’t matter what they are–they don’t get to change the definition.”
Umm. . . comparing gays to pedophiles and those who practice bestiality isn’t the most astute political strategy. Most Americans now favor legalizing gay marriage, and Carson’s views aren’t going to endear him to all Republican voters (just a lot of them!). What puzzles me, though, is how little coverage this kind of vile- and hate-filled rhetoric, as well as Carson’s insupportable views on evolution, makes it into the mainstream press.
But if Carson becomes a candidate (Ceiling Cat help us), I’ll be glad. For almost any Democratic candidate will slaughter him. Or so I hope. Americans may be politically cockeyed, but they’ll never elect a creationist quack for President:
I’m pleased to say that we have a new contributor, Colin Franks of Colin Franks Photography (website here, Facebook page here; don’t miss his photos of Cuba). He’s sent in a bunch of lovely bird photos, and I’ll feature a sample this morning; we’ll have more later.
