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.
Stephen Barnard has again provided some lovely bird photos to start the week (my week, as I’m just back).
First, a Northern Harrier (marsh hawk; Circus cyaneus):
And some quarrelsome house finches (Haemorhous mexicanus):
Hili: “Ask a Pompous Truth: How do you know?”. Okay, but how do I catch it?
A: Try in the garden.
In Polish:
Hili: “Napuszonej prawdzie zadaj pytanie: skąd to wiesz?” No dobrze, ale jak ją złapać?
Ja: Spróbuj w ogrodzie.
As always, I’ll let you know when The New Republic re-published a piece that’s appeared here first. My post this morning on the Ham/Nye debate, and how Ken Ham is crowing that it revitalized the fund-raising for his Ark Park, has appeared without alteration in The New Republic as “Thanks to Bill Nye, creationists raised enough money to build an anti-science theme park. The science guy won a debate—and subsidized the enemy.”
You might have already read this, but do go over to the site if you can just to give them some traffic, for I’d like to be able to keep purveying a secularist/evolutionist message to a new audience.
I am back from Boston, with more tales and holidays snaps, but those must wait. I have to share one experience, though: shortly after I landed at Midway Airport, a group of people with balloons and American flags were waiting outside the security barrier—waiting for someone who shared my name:
Quite a coincidence! It turns out that Kendall Coyne was a forward on the U.S. National women’s hockey team that won a silver medal in Sochi, and was also on the team that won the world championship in Switzerland in 2011.
I waited around to see who he/she was (I had no idea until I just looked up the name), and she finally showed up to loud applause and a local news team:
The star forward was tiny, and looked about 12 years old, but she’s really 21 (still so young!) According to Wikipedia, she’s 5’2″ (1.57 m) and weighs 130 pounds (59 kg). At least I got to see what is probably the only Coyne to ever win an Olympic medal. Congrats to her and her team!
Andrew Sullivan notes that his Dish website is “biased as a dog blog,” and, indeed, the masthead features what looks like a snooty beagle:
But Sullivan took a break this week with a post called “Your moment of cat.” It features touching stories and photos of his readers’ cats, with nearly every tale recounting a heartbreaking moment when the cats, terminally ill, were euthanized.
One reader draws a lesson from the assisted dying of his/her cat Roscoe:
Fortunately, I also take comfort from the fact that when my moment arrives, it’ll likely happen fast, and I probably won’t even see it coming. You know the phrase, “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.”? You can apply that to our entire existence.
That is, life is short: a lesson often emphasized (and then quickly forgotten) when one survives a serious illness or witnesses the death of a loved one.
But Sullivan doesn’t draw the obvious conclusion from all of these stories: sometimes life is too long, and terminally ill people want a dignified exit at a time of their choosing. Sullivan’s readers were grateful that they could be there to say goodbye to their cat and relieve its suffering. But Sullivan’s own Catholic church vehemently opposes assisted dying for humans. I’m surprised that, given the content of most of the stories, Sullivan doesn’t comment.
h/t: Greg Mayer
I’ve decided, thanks to a reader’s suggestion, that the strategy of suggesting that one book after another gives the “best argument” for God (if you find one deficient, another one pops up), should be called The Argument from Whack-A-Mole.
The last mole was David Bentley Hart’s book, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, which Sophisticated Theologians™ everywhere touted at the Best Argument for God. My copy has not yet arrived, but based on readers’ comments I’m not sure I’ll be headed for the pews after I read it. In point of fact, I’m unlikely to be convinced by any argument for God that doesn’t adduce some kind of “evidence” beyond revelation.
But a new mole has appeared—even before the last one was whacked. Reader Cameron informs me of this book, by the author of the popular Fermat’s Last Theorem, that will appear April 15 (tax day in the U.S.):
Here’s the Amazon blurb:
The renowned science writer, mathematician, and bestselling author of Fermat’s Last Theorem masterfully refutes the overreaching claims the “New Atheists,” providing millions of educated believers with a clear, engaging explanation of what science really says, how there’s still much space for the Divine in the universe, and why faith in both God and empirical science are not mutually exclusive.
A highly publicized coterie of scientists and thinkers, including Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, and Lawrence Krauss, have vehemently contended that breakthroughs in modern science have disproven the existence of God, asserting that we must accept that the creation of the universe came out of nothing, that religion is evil, that evolution fully explains the dazzling complexity of life, and more. In this much-needed book, science journalist Amir Aczel profoundly disagrees and conclusively demonstrates that science has not, as yet, provided any definitive proof refuting the existence of God.
Why Science Does Not Disprove God is his brilliant and incisive analyses of the theories and findings of such titans as Albert Einstein, Roger Penrose, Alan Guth, and Charles Darwin, all of whose major breakthroughs leave open the possibility— and even the strong likelihood—of a Creator. Bolstering his argument, Aczel lucidly discourses on arcane aspects of physics to reveal how quantum theory, the anthropic principle, the fine-tuned dance of protons and quarks, the existence of anti-matter and the theory of parallel universes, also fail to disprove God.
Do we really need to read all these books, which are appearing at an alarming rate? Is there really going to be new arguments for God in them? It appears that Aczel’s book, based on the statement that it shows “that there’s still much space for the Divine in the universe,” is merely a reiteration of God-of-the-Gaps arguments. To quote Ingersoll, what we understand is science; what we don’t understand is God.
Of course science can’t completely disprove God in either a logical or absolutist sense: that’s not the way science works. And of course we’ll never understand everything. Dick Lewontin (my Ph.D. advisor) told me the other day that the human race would go extinct before we finally learned how our brains work, and he may be right. So if you want to find God in consciousness, for instance, then there’s plenty of time to do that. But it’s a losing strategy, and one that doesn’t even convince many theologians.
But we have disproven God in the same sense we’ve disproven Santa Claus, the Loch Ness monster, and Bigfoot. Extensive observation of the world looking for evidence of the divine has not, as with these other cases, turned up any evidence. That is “proof” in the vernacular (though not mathematical) sense. It’s “proof” in the sense that Anthony Grayling uses it: “Would you bet your house on the truth of a proposition?” If so, consider it proven.
I will read David Bentley Hart’s book, but this one I may skip. All such books should be required to contain a “warning label” saying something like “Note: this book contains NEW evidence for God of the following sort. . . .” If you don’t see that, don’t buy it. Otherwise, we could see a spate of books showing that science hasn’t “definitively disproven” ESP, Nessie, or homeopathy.
Or maybe we should turn the tables, asking theologians if they’ve read the complete essays of Mencken, Ingersoll, and the atheist writings of Mark Twain, Spinoza, and other authors represented in Hitchens’s The Portable Atheist (buy it if you haven’t yet). Then we’ll tell them that they can’t talk to us about God until they’ve read all that stuff.
I’m not saying “I told you so” (in fact I am, of course), but the main upshot of the Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate appears to have tipped the final balance in favor of Ham.
The debate, as you’ll recall, was held in Kentucky’s Creation Museum, was on the validity of creationism as a model of biological origins and diversity, and the proceeds from the DVDs went to Ham and other creationists.
Now, according to the Guardian and other venues, Ham has announced that proceeds from the debate have apparently revived the dormant “Ark Park” project, which will contain a “life-sized” replica of Noah’s Ark.
This is precisely what I predicted in a pre-debate post on January 5, “Ark Park near collapse; will Bill Nye help finance it?” At the time I wrote this:
What outweighs everything, though, is the possibility that Nye will lose by simply showing up, and thereby raising big bucks for the Creation Museum or the troubled Ark Park. And no matter what he says, or how good he is, if he is raising money that helps promulgate lies to the children he loves, Nye is making a very serious mistake.
The Ark Park had been in financial trouble because people weren’t buying its bonds, but if Ham isn’t lying—and one has to worry about that given his creationist mission—the debate got the needed interest to revive the park. As the Guardian reports:
Creation Museum founder Ken Ham announced Thursday that a municipal bond offering has raised enough money to begin construction on the Ark Encounter project, estimated to cost about $73m. Groundbreaking is planned for May and the ark is expected to be finished by the summer of 2016.
Ham said a high-profile evolution debate he had with “Science Guy” Bill Nye on 4 February helped boost support for the project.
And Nye’s reponse:
Nye said he was “heartbroken and sickened for the Commonwealth of Kentucky” after learning that the project would move forward. He said the ark would eventually draw more attention to the beliefs of Ham’s ministry, which preaches that the Bible’s creation story is a true account, and as a result, “voters and taxpayers in Kentucky will eventually see that this is not in their best interest.”
Well, he’s heartbroken and sickened because of his own actions. By agreeing to show up and debate Ham—something I suspect Nye did (at least in part) to keep himself in the media spotlight—he’s allowed Ham to further his project. The result, even if you think Nye gained a transitory victory in the debate, is that Ham will build yet another popular tourist attraction, one designed to promulgate lies to kids. Nye, of course, devoted his career as The Science Guy to precisely the opposite: teaching and exciting kids about science. In other words, Nye scuppered himself.
This is why evolutionists should not debate creationists. It looks good on Ham’s c.v.; not so good on Nye’s. And now it looks great on Ham’s balance sheet as well.
Nye lost—big time.
This afternoon I wend my way back to Chicago—presuming, of course, that the weather permits (which it should).
Hili: I wonder which burns calories faster: intellectual work or sleep?A: It depends on what you’re thinking about.
Hili: Zastanawiam się, co szybciej spala kalorie, praca intelektualna czy sen?
Ja: To zależy o czym mylisz.