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.
Hili had some young admirers visit the other day. It was only a partial success.
Zosia: We girls have to stick together.
Hili: I’m not so sure. Your little brother is squealing so loudly I have to go and hide under the bed.
Zosia: My, dziewczyny, musimy się trzymać razem.
Hili: Nie jestem pewna, twój brat tak piszczy, że się raczej schowam pod łóżkiem.
. . . all sorts of musicians are weighing in on Gerry Goffin’s death. I didn’t know some of them even had Twi**er accounts. And the messages are saddening:
And she put up this:
Goffin and King’s second-best song. Can you recognize the other singers?
I’ve been to a fair few meetings of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), but I’ve never heard of any creationists hovering around them and proselytizing for God. But that’s changed, for this year the meetings are in Raleigh, North Carolina. For you non-Americans, that’s in the religious South.
My second student, Mohamed Noor (the President of the SSE), tw**ted this message and photo from the meetings:
That’s Mohamed in the photo, and he told me that the guy holding the book (a Bible, of course) was preaching on the corner, and the bananas had Bible verses on them!
Noor, who is credulous, ate the banana. I would have worried that they contained poison. After all, the guy was a Christian!
If you’re at the meetings, be sure to catch the talk of my last (in both senses: latest and final) student, Daniel Matute. He won the SSE’s Dobzhansky Prize this year for being, in the Society’s judgment, the most promising young evolutionary biologist. I’m immensely proud of him, and of Mohamed of course, who will be giving the Presidential Address.
h/t: Lynn
Here’s a question: If Chopra were put in a box, could he pass the Turing test? After all, we do know he love boxes!
At any rate, he’s supposed to be on a safari in Africa but he’s tw**ting as furiously as ever. The first tw**ts below weren’t generated by the automatic Deepak Quote Generator, but they could have been. If I had a million bucks, I’d offer it to anyone who could explain them to me. At any rate, it shows how you can’t distinguish between Chopra and the computer.
This morning, though, Matthew Cobb (who sometimes works with physicist Brian Cox on his broadcasts), emailed me that Chopra had a flare-up of Maru’s Syndrome, and got into a box with Cox. I love the fifth tw**t below, by Cox.
That’s gotta sting! Poor Chopra—he just can’t win. But he tried:
There’s that passive-aggressive behavior again: stroke with one hand and slap with the other. I’m not quite sure what a “naive realist” is, but I suspect, from Chopra’s history of deepities that it’s someone who’s simply too wedded to the naturalistic worldview of science to realize that there is no reality independent of consciousness. Chopra is, after all, a man who said that the Moon simply isn’t there unless we look at it. It would help Deepak a great deal if he could tell us what he means by claiming that the Universe is conscious, and that consciousness and that, “top down” gave rise to all reality. For surely Chopra’s definition of a conscious Universe is not a universe that experiences “qualia,” or subjective sensations. Yet that is what he means by consciousness when applied to humans.
I’m torn between advising Brian Cox to not to catch his own case of Maru’s Syndrome, for there is no way that Chopra will ever change his mind. So what’s the point, except to either engage in Chopra-baiting (which has its own small joys), or to hope that the people on the sidelines see what a charlatan the man is?
Nevertheless, after the fifth tw**t in the second conversation above, I score Chopra 0, Cox 1.
UPDATE: (h/t to reader Alex): This is like a soap opera. After having insulted Cox, Chopra goes into Groveling Mode and begs Cox to come to his “Sages and Scientists” meeting—the same one I refused to attend. Notice his prominent mention of “honorarium”!
I believe it was H. L. Mencken who used the term “vertebrate without substance” to describe the beliefs of Christians about God; the term, of course, was meant to mock the superstitions for what they are, shorn of numinous language. Mencken was a true strident atheist, as good with mockery as was his successor Hitchens.
But my point is that this is, in fact, how many Christians (and add to that Jews and Muslims) think of their god: as a person without a body. And that person has humanlike thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
This was brought home to me today when I went shopping, as is my wont on Saturday mornings. There was no good rock music on (they don’t produce it any longer), so I decided to listen to Christian radio in the car, which I did for about an hour. I listened to two stations, and both of them constantly promoted the idea of God as a gaseous vertebrate—just like us, but more powerful.
One show, for children, was about a girl who wanted to become a personal trainer, but had shown little talent for the job, and was frustrated because she didn’t know what to do with her life. “I want to be somebody,” she wailed. Her father, who tried to soothe her, had his own problem: he was overweight and was on a diet. Eventually he told her that God would show her the way, but it would take a while, just like the long while he’d have to wait to shed his extra pounds. Then a voice-over came on and gave the lesson: God has plans for all of us, and listens to our needs, but he will effect his plans for us in his own time. We must wait. But we should be reassured that he knows what is good for us, loves us, and will, in time, show us the way.
This God, of course, was humanoid: the emotions he evinced were love, understanding, empathy, and the desire to interfere in our lives so we could be fulfilled. And, of course, he was touted as actually listening to prayer, for the child was told to consider her options “prayerfully”.
Those gaseous theologians like David Bentley Hart and Karen Armstrong, of course, decry the concept of such a humanlike God. That’s not the real God, says Hart, and those atheists who argue against it are wasting their time. The real god is ineffable (though somehow Hart knows that He/She/Hir/It loves us); it is a Ground of Being.
What I want to know is this. If Hart and his ilk think that 99% of Christians have the wrong concept of God, why aren’t they trying to correct it? Why are they writing books aimed at fellow scholars instead of, say, the average Christian, or the average Christian child? Why are they wasting time bashing atheists instead of telling their coreligionists—or all religionists—the truth about God? It would seem to me far more important for them to do that rather than argue with atheists that we’re Getting it Rong.
The reason, of course, is that theologians don’t really care what the average person believes, for their palaver is aimed at other theologians. As Dan Barker told me, “Theology is a subject without an object. The only thing theologians study is other theologians.”
And that’s the truth. Perhaps if someone like Hart got out more, and if he really cared about how religion is perceived by people, he wouldn’t be aiming his tortuous and torturous verbiage at atheists and other religious scholars. He’d be writing popular books telling everyone that he’s right and they’re wrong about God.
Finally, when I tried to find the name of the radio station and the show (without luck), I did find this on the website of a local Christian station, Shine FM. Presumably Hart would tell us that this isn’t the real Heaven!
OMG, Costa Rica beat Italy! This is a topsy-turvy World Cup, and my favorite team, Spain, is out of the running. Here’s today’s schedule. I’ll try to catch part of the Argentina/Iran game, just to see Messi. My interest in Nigeria/Bosnia Herzegovina is minimal.
By the way, I’d strongly suggest that you read (or reread) my old interview with football announcer Seamus Malin, who’s doing part of the broadcasting in English from Brazil this month. I’m quite proud of that piece, for I got Seamus, who’s been broadcasting footie for 40 years—and has seen in person every player from Pelé to Messi—to give me his lists of the greatest retired players, the greatest active players, the greatest team, the greatest games he’d ever seen (three, actually: as a broadcaster, live as a fan, and on television), the greatest individual performance in a single game, and the greatest performance by a duo in a game. It’s the best football post ever! Oh, and Malin claimed that Messi is the greatest player he’s ever seen.
Here are the highlights, such as they are, from the Italy/Costa Rica game. The video is only 37 seconds long, but Costa Rica’s goal on a header is lovely:
Finally, today’s Google doodle (click to see the animation), which, for once, is a bit humorous about football:
Several readers—thanks, all!—called my attention to the recent birth of a litter of black-footed kittens. (Is that what you call baby black-footed cats?) In March of 2011, as part of my series on “wild cats of the world,” I posted about the biology of the black-footed cat (Felis nigripes), and you should read that first. The species is one of the smallest wild cats (2-5 pounds, or 0.9-2.3 kg), is endangered, and lives in southwest Africa.
According to HuffPo, the source of this video, a pair of black-footed cats at the Philadelphia Zoo (Ascari and Aza) gave birth to three kittens on April 8. This video shows their introduction to the public in May. As usual, there’s cutesy and obtrusive music:
*****
And. . . my lovely cat shirt, embroidered with the Feline Princess of Poland, arrived on Thursday. It was beautifully wrapped in cellophane, and also sports a small red tag on the pocket tag saying “GoGo5,” the name of the Etsy shop of the embroidery artist, Hiroko Kobota. She also made the shirt to my measurements, adding a button-down collar (not the norm in Japan).
Here’s the package, and she thoughtfully added a linen swatch with an embroidered flower-—this is intended for Hili, Andrzej, and Malgorzata:
And a selfie of me in the shirt. Isn’t it beautiful? (See the tail?). It fit perfectly. (You can see a close-up of the embroidery here.)
You can see Hiroko’s Flickr page, showing much of her embroidery, here. Notice that Hili is the latest addition after Grumpy Cat and some other bizarre moggie; and, I must that Hili is the finest-looking of all the cats (Hiroko also does d*gs, but you needn’t look at those.)
Hili has lost her nomz:
A: Why are you looking like a disappointed owl?
Hili: Because the meadow mouse that was here has gone back to its burrow.
Ja: Czemu wyglądasz jak zawiedziona sowa?
Hili: Bo ta myszka, która tu była schowała się w norce.