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.
We had a spectacular sunset on Saturday after a driving thunderstorm a few hours earlier. Two photos of Chicago: downtown and toward the University:
A sky of flames. The two buildings are the University’s business school (left) and a new under-construction building for the Laboratory School (a university-affiliated school with students from nursery school through high school):
Hili: Who invented Mondays?
A: I suspect Persians.
Hili: Why?
A: I think that the authors of the Bible stole more from the Persians than from Egyptians, but I could be mistaken.
Hili: Kto wymyślił poniedziałki?
Ja: Podejrzewam Persów.
Hili: Dlaczego.
Ja: Mam wrażenie, że autorzy Biblii więcej ukradli od Persów niż od Egipcjan, ale mogę się mylić.
The latest strip from Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller, will appeal to the many atheists who—for reasons that elude me—are into fantasy and science fiction. But it also appeals to me.
h/t: jsp, Marella
The Albatross is now coming along nicely, with the first molt, which will give it bright new feathers, scheduled for late October. However, I am having trouble tracking down one quote: the famous quote by science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke that has become known as”Clarke’s Third Law.” Clarke is supposed to have said this:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
The one above is the most famous of the three “laws,” and you’ve probably seen it used as arguments against the coherence of any “god” concept. If, for example, Jesus returned to Chicago on the wings of supportive angels, walked over to the University hospital and proceeded to cure all the patients, including the eyeless and limbless, and then ascended to heaven as the skies opened and trumpets sounded, the petulant atheist would claim, “Well, that could only be a magic trick played on us by space aliens with unfathomable technological abilities.” Any supposed evidence for god can always be dismissed in this way using Clarke’s Third Law. I deal with this issue in The Albatross, but you’ll have to wait until it comes out. Right now I need help.
I’m sure you know the quote, and perhaps also that it’s one of Clarke’s three laws, with the other two given here. That’s Wikipedia, which gives the source of the quote, one that coincides with other reports. And that source is supposed to be a chapter called “Hazards of prophecy: the failure of imagination”, pp. 12-21 in the 1962 edition of Clarke’s science book Profiles of the Future: An Enquiry into the Limits of the Possible (Harper and Row, New York). Well, I did what all good researchers do: tried to verify the quote.
I schlepped over to the library in 90• (F) heat, and got the book. Reading quickly through that chapter, I didn’t find the quote. True, the chapter was about exactly that topic: how some advances in technology would have completely mystified earlier scientists, who would regard them as almost magical (nuclear fusion reactors are one example). But the quote wasn’t there. Another source says it’s in the 1973 revised edition, but the library doesn’t have that one.
So, if you have that book, or can absolutely give the source of the quote, please post it below or drop me a line. Remember, I need accuracy (including complete chapter pagination and the page containing the quote), for the faithful will be gunning for me, and they will glom on to any mistake in an attempt to discredit a nonbeliever.
I’ve been meaning to put these up for a while, but finally got around to it. I haven’t yet watched either debate yet (one is actually supposed a “discussion”), but now I will. Be aware: each debate is about two hours long. They’re worth watching, I hear, because although Craig is an accomplished debater and rhetorically skillful, the scientist on the other side supposedly got the best of him. Watch and judge for yourself.
First, Sean Carroll vs. William Lane Craig on “God and Cosmology”, Greer-Heard Forum of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, February 9, 2014:
I’m especially proud of Sean for this, as everyone said he mopped the floor with Craig and, after all, Carroll is the Official Website Physicist™. You can see his post-debate reflections, posted on his website, here.
Second, a “discussion” between Lawrence Krauss and William Lane Craig at Adelaide’s City Bible forum, which took place on August 20 of last year. The topic given on the website is “the big questions of Life, the Universe and Nothing.”
We go around and around on this topic, and right now I’m just looking for examples of how philosophy—not philosophy broadly construed as “people thinking”, but more or less the academic discipline of philosophy—has helped science.
Now I know that philosophers can correct some bad arguments of scientists, and, if educated in science, can make critiques every bit as good as professional scientists. I’m thinking, for example, of Philip Kitcher’s book on sociobiology, Vaulting Ambition, and Rob Pennock’s wonderful critique of Intelligent Design, Tower of Babel. Those are both science-friendly philosophers, and that kind of work, which infuses scientific thinking with rigor thinking, as well as sweeping away the dross, count as a definite contribution to science.
But I’m hard pressed to think of many such examples (Dennett’s Consciousness Explained is another), and almost none in which a positive advance in science was prompted, or only made possible, by philosophy. This is not a dissing of philosophy (after all, Massimo Pigluicci likes to repeatedly point out my lack of philosophical street cred), but may simply reflect my own ignorance. If you think there is no contribution of philosophy to science, you can explain why, but try to avoid simple statements of negativity. That adds nothing to the discussion.
Now I’m more certain that philosophy has helped secularism and atheism. There are many examples, beginning with the Euthyphro Argument, which dispels the notion that morality must come from God’s dictates, and going through the analyses of people like Hume, Walter Kaufmann, and Herman Philipse, not to mention the work of young whippersnappers like Yonatan Fishman and Maartin Boudry. But we’re talking about science here. In what ways would science be less advanced without the infusion of ideas from professional philosophers?
As always, tangible examples and stories will be much more convincing than nebulous and generalized discussion.
I didn’t realize how zealous the Catholic Church was in guarding its crackers. I guess that communion wafers, before they’re blessed, are just crackers, but once they’re blessed all bets are off. (By the way, a judicious bit of Googling reveals that the consecration of the wafers, and their transubstantiation into the body of Jesus, occurs during the mass, when the priest holds up the crackers and says, “Hoc est corpus” [“this is my body’}. One story goes, though it may be aprocryphal, that this is the source of the magician’s phrase, “Hocus pocus.”)
Anyway, according to Thursday’s issue of The Oklahoman, Catholics regard their Jesus-body wafers so highly that when one was taken to be used in a Satanic black mass, the Church filed a lawsuit to get it back (my emphasis):
The Catholic Church on Thursday retrieved a communion wafer that a satanist planned to use in a “black Mass” next month at Civic Center Music Hall.
The wafer was turned over a day after Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul S. Coakley filed a lawsuit seeking its protection and restoration to the Church.
“I am relieved that we have been able to secure the return of the sacred Host, and that we have prevented its desecration as part of a planned satanic ritual,” Coakley said in a statement issued by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.
. . . The leader of an Oklahoma City satanist group, Adam Daniels, plans to stage a black Mass on Sept. 21 in a small basement theater at the Civic Center.
The event is to include live music and the “exorcism” of Christ’s spirit from an individual.
Daniels had said he possessed a consecrated wafer, prompting the archbishop to ask an Oklahoma County judge to issue orders to prevent its use in the ceremony.
Daniels said he turned the wafer over to an attorney in Norman, and the archdiocese said a priest picked it up Thursday afternoon.
Daniels also promised in writing not to use consecrated communion bread in his event. In exchange, the archdiocese agreed to drop the lawsuit.
“We couldn’t be happier,” said Mike Caspino, the lead attorney for the Catholic Church. “This is a victory for decency, a victory for all people of faith.”
That makes me laugh. A victory! (And, of course, some extra dosh for Mike Caspino.) When are we going to start regarding the term “people of faith” as an insult rather than a virtue? After all, “people of faith” is equivalent to “people of superstition.”
Question for readers: although it’s not illegal to steal a wafer once it’s been given away, was taking it for use in a Black Mass a rotten thing to do? I go back and forth on this, but, given that burning an American flag is for many people the equivalent act, and yet is meaningful and protected speech, I can’t criticize the purloined wafer too strongly. After all, one could consider this protected criticism of religion, since Black Masses are parodies of Catholic masses.
h/t: Pinkagendist, Grania
Reader Stephen Barnard in Idaho continues his quest for the perfect picture of a rufous hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus), one so good it could be an illustration in a bird guide. I think he’s close enough.
Every time I look at one of these things, I marvel at what natural selection can do, and I think of how, if we were there at the beginning of life, we’d never predict that a creature like this could evolve, much less be adapted to any lifestyle.
But I digress. Here are two more from Stephen:
A herd of elk [Cervus canadensis] on one of my alfalfa fields. In the first photo a Red-Tailed Hawk [Buteo jamaicensis] is in the background, and in the second a Black-billed Magpie [Pica hudsonia].
Finally, reader Mark Sturtevant continues his experiments in growing the Frankenstein of arthropods:
You may recall that I had photographed a cecropia larva that had molted from the 4th to the 5th instar. [JAC: see earlier post here.] They have now grown to a huge size (with some over 5 inches), and most are in cocoons. My time with these insects is almost over this summer. They will soon no longer need me until next year!
I had set about photographing the process of cocooning, but I had an amusing mishap. When I was just about done documenting the cocooning of this larva, another larva (who I thought was spinning a cocoon elsewhere on the branch) decided to barge in, sit on the cocoon, and start eating leaves again! They do not always commit to making a cocoon once they start, I guess.
Anyway, on a whim I stuck a mature larva of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster on it, and kept on shooting. I use some mutant stocks of Drosophila for a class that I teach. So, can you spot the ‘maggot’? I think this picture provides some sense of scale of different insects. The fruit fly larva is probably not more than 3 mm long.
Well? Can you spot the maggot?
