Something Christmassy

December 22, 2014 • 1:00 pm

by Grania

Here’s a little something from my favorite a capella group Pentatonix, a young group of talented singers from the States who not only arrange compositions in delightfully creative ways, but also do incredibly inventive things with very modern, nightclub-sounding tracks.

Here’s the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies

and Carol of the Bells

but do search their playlist on Youtube for more their Christmas fare, or if you prefer more modern music check 0ut tracks like their Daft Punk medley; or their cover of Belgium’s artist Stromae’s  Papaoutai or their original track Love again.

Oh, and please share your favorite Solstice songs with us.

Bad reasons for believing

December 22, 2014 • 12:01 pm

by Grania

Yesterday we were discussing whether religion was likely to disappear, even as the world slowly moves towards secularism, particularly the point that religion provided easier answers than science. I was interested to read an article by John Messerly Religion’s smart-people problem. Most of the ground he covers is not new to readers of this website:

  • Percentage of believers among the most educated prestige level academic is exceptionally low.
  • Social dysfunction has a high correlation with religiosity.

Messerly also looks at why some highly educated and intelligent people claim to believe what they do and comes up with a list we are equally familiar with:

  • Smart people are very good at coming up with rationalizations for what they believe.
  • they often don’t actually believe the claims of their religion, but support them because they believe in belief
  • the beliefs of “Sophisticated Believers” (™) are often far removed from what their religion actually claims.

He points out sagely that while science or rationalism doesn’t always provide all the answers immediately, nevertheless “if reason can’t resolve our questions then agnosticism, not faith, is required.”

What fascinates me is the level of the responses from believers. They underline exactly the points made both yesterday and in this new article without intending to.

Religious answers are easy:

one

 

Social dysfunction:

two

 

Scientific illiteracy:

three

 

And the plain old facepalm:

four

 

Europe: not quite the secular paradise you’d think

December 22, 2014 • 8:00 am

by Grania

There is a tendency in atheist circles for Europe to be held up as a place where religion has been all but relegated to the bin, and secularism reigns supreme. It’s true that in comparison to the USA, there is a difference. People on the whole do not make public displays of religiosity or piety, even those who self-identify as religious view it as a private matter and proselytizing is rare, and viewed with a mixture of embarrassment, pity and faint amusement.

However, Europe still has the relics of religious influence in its legislation and in fact many countries have laws enforcing things that would be regarded as unthinkable.

Germany requires its residents to officially declare their religion and pay a church tax. You can opt out, but the government collects taxes on behalf of religion.

Italy has compulsory crucifixes in school classrooms, and the European court of human rights actually overturned a 2009 court ruling to ban on them as they violated Italy’s secular constitution.

The Republic of Ireland still has regressive anti-abortion laws, the Catholic church still own about 90% of the tax-payer funded schools and it introduced blasphemy legislation as recently as 2009.

France finally signed same-sex marriage into law in 2013, but also put in an exemption for nationals of 11 countries that prohibits them from marrying in France, to “respect the religious identity of the countries”.

Northern Ireland is trying to introduce a “conscience clause” into law, that would allow business owners to refuse service to customers (read, gay people) on the basis of “strongly held religious convictions”.

Unfortunately, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that increased secularism results in saner legislation. Religion is still afforded a disproportionate deference, even when it results in the trampling of rights of those country’s inhabitants.

Monday: Hili dialogue

December 22, 2014 • 5:33 am

So, here we are at another start to another week, but a shortish one, at least for those of us who aren’t on holiday already. If you still have presents to buy and things to do, you need to get out there right away, and may the Force be with you.

Over in Dobrzyń, Hili is investigating, although she does not tell us what. Possibly it is one of those ineffable mysteries.

Hili: Could you please take out the fourth volume of the encyclopedia and put it here on the shelf?
A: Why?
Hili: So that I can go and see what’s behind it.

P1020125

In Polish:

Hili: Czy mógłbyś wyjąć czwarty tom encyklopedii i położyć go tu na półce.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Bo wtedy będę mogła tam wejść i zobaczyć co jest z tyłu.

Who’s the boss?

December 21, 2014 • 3:30 pm

We’ll close out the weekend with two funny cat videos.

Some cats behave not just like royalty, but very entitled royalty who view humans as mere utilities.

And yet they are bashful when faced down by critters a quarter of their size.

Perhaps they are firm believers in “Four legs good, two legs servant”

h/t: Dom

Cat Fancy to cease publication

December 21, 2014 • 12:01 pm

by Greg Mayer

Cat Fancy, after nearly 50 years, is about to cease publication. The December 2014 issue, out now, seems to be the last, so you may want to get a copy. Cat Fancy has been for decades the “serious” magazine about cats– cat breeding, cat welfare, and, well, cat fancy. It is going the way of many print magazines (i.e. extinct), but Abraham Riesman of New York magazine also attributes its demise to changing tastes in what people like about cats: once it was grace and breeding, now it’s viral videos of funny things cats do; once people wanted to know how to pick the right flea collar, now it’s how to pick a cat person for dating. The I Can Has Cheezburger and lol cats approach has done in the more more staid point of view of the older magazine.

Cat Fancy
Cat Fancy, January 2012

The publishing company that owns Cat Fancy is going to publish an alternative cat magazine called Catster, which is supposed to appeal to the more modern cat lover. The picture below has appeared widely on the internet as a cover of the new magazine, but it is such an obvious, over-the-top parody of Buzzfeed-style clickbait, that I cannot credit the claim that this is an actual magazine cover, and I assume it’s a mocking knockoff by someone who preferred the old Cat Fancy.

"Catster, May/June 2015"
“Catster, May/June 2015”

A quick look on the internets shows that there are a number of British cat magazines: Catworld, Your Cat, and The Cat.  I cannot really say anything about the content of these, but at least there will be some English-language cat magazines still in existence come the new year.

h/t The Dish

Will religion ever disappear?

December 21, 2014 • 11:24 am

by Grania

If somebody were to ask me this question, my short-hand, non-researched reply would be: probably not.

I think that humanity currently seems set to become more and more secular as religiosity drops in the newer, younger generations; global birth rates start to show signs of coming under control and even slowing, which we know tends to have a positive effect on poverty; and as poverty decreases, so does religiosity. All these indications are pretty positive.

But humans are pattern-seeking mammals, and we have a tendency to believe the strangest things for very bad reasons, even if they are fairly smart and well educated; so I tend  to think that religion will stick around for a number of reasons.

Over at BBC Future, Rachel Nuwer takes a look at the question referring to what various books and papers have to say on the subject, and they tend to bear this out in their research.

The main points they make are are:

Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life: “Humans need comfort in the face of pain and suffering, and many need to think that there’s something more after this life, that they’re loved by an invisible being, there will always be people who believe, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they remain the majority.”

Robert McCauley, Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not: Robert argues that religious explanations for how the world works “make sense” intuitively to people, whereas the scientific ones are sometimes difficult to understand, or difficult to accept.

Joseph Bulbulia, The Ecology of Religious Beliefs: Joseph points out that insecurity and suffering in a population gives them a reason for wanting to believe that religion is worthwhile and even positive for them.

Ara Norenzayan, Big Gods: the more religious people are, the higher the fertility rate, and even inside religion, the more fundamentalist sects tend to have higher fertility than liberal ones.

Jonathan Lanman, The Importance of Religious Displays for Belief Acquisition and Secularization: younger generations tend to follow the lead of the previous generations.

The general theme seems to be that religion is not going to go away, but I can only hope that future versions are de-clawed and denatured so that they no longer can be used to inflict suffering on fellow humans.

 

What science achieved in 2014

December 21, 2014 • 8:04 am

by Grania

Writers at io9 have collected some of the big breakthroughs in science this year.

Among their picks were Enceladus’ hidden ocean, the artificially expanded genetic alphabet, new burial mounds found at Stonehenge, a really big dinosaur named Dreadnoughtus Schrani,  womb transplants (oh, thank goodness!) and the supercluster Laniakea, although you should also read Ethan Siegel’s article about this story over at Starts With A Bang.

This is the one that made me snicker the most, if only because of the caption:

Harvard University's Self-Organizing Systems Research Group
http://io9.com/watch-the-largest-robotic-swarm-in-history-take-shape-1621759775

Very impressive and full of potential, these are tiny robots that self-assemble 2-D shapes in slow-moving swarms. Ed Yong wrote a great piece on how it works here.

Not a bad year for science. What science stories caught your eye this year?