Martin Nowak, evolution, and God

January 25, 2014 • 1:48 pm

Sorry, folks; I published this prematurely (hitting “publish” rather than “save draft”), so all 11 comments have been lost. I apologize, but feel free—if you remember what you said—to repost your comments.

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Martin Nowak is a well-known professor of evolutionary biology at Harvard, specializing in theoretical models for the evolution of cooperation. His work has been funded by one of the largest Templeton Foundation grants I know of: 10.5 million dollars!

Nowak’s latest notion is to discard an idea that’s been immensely productive in evolutionary biology, the idea of inclusive fitness—that the “replicability” of a gene has to take into account the effects of the gene’s fitness not only on its carrier, but on related carriers who also carry copies of the gene. (Selection based on this kind of relatedness is called “kin selection”.) Selection for parental care is one example, as is selection on any genetic variants producing behaviors that favor relatives.

I’ve written extensively on my differences with Nowak and his co-authors Coina Tarnita and E. O. Wilson about this issue; I, along with many others, think that inclusive fitness has been a seminal idea in evolutionary biology and has led to a lot of new understanding (just search for “Nowak” on this site if you want to see this discussion).

I see that Nowak is still crusading against kin selection and inclusive fitness (he, Wilson and Tarnita favor “group selection”): Nowak’s answer to the latest Edge question: “What scientific idea is ready for retirement?” was “inclusive fitness.”

But I don’t want to talk about inclusive fitness today. I’d rather talk about accommodationism, or rather the failure of trying to accommodate science and religion.  Those failures are evident in a new article also published by Nowak, one that appeared in the  January 13 edition of Big Questions Online, the “popular science” outlet of the John Templeton Foundation.  Templeton, as you know if you’re a regular, is an organization devoted to blurring the boundaries between science and religion, and doing that by co-opting scientists congenial to their message by giving them big grants and lots of money for their writing (I hear that Big Questions Online pays quite a lot for articles).

Nowak’s article, “How might cooperation play a role in evolution?“, perfectly exemplifies the problems with accommodationism.  The meat of it is decent, straightforward science: a recounting of what Nowak sees as the major steps in evolution (e.g., the evolution of multicellular organisms, the origin of human language), a discussion of the various ways cooperation might evolve, and a list of the “open questions” in evolution (e.g., how did life begin?). But then Nowak, an observant Catholic (one reason Templeton likes him), drags in God, and the whole article goes down the tubes. God first sticks in His nose in the first paragraph:

Evolution is a powerful and correct scientific approach. Yet our current understanding of evolution is incomplete. We are confronted with many open questions. I will discuss some of them in this article. I will also argue that a purely scientific interpretation of evolution does not constitute an argument against Christian theology, which holds that God is creator and sustainer of the universe. Science and religion are fundamental components in the search for truth. They should work together to solve the challenging problems that mankind is facing.

Well, there you go. What is this doing in a piece on evolution? (The answer, of course, is that the piece was commissioned by Templeton.) The evolutionary questions raised by Nowak have answers, at least in principle, but how does he know that there is a God, much less that said God is creator and sustainer of the universe?

Nowak doesn’t; he’s just assuming it’s true because that’s what his Church teaches. It’s superstitious nonsense. And as far as science and religion being complementary ways to find the truth, that’s also wrong, for religion cannot and has never been able to find truth. If it had, all religions would have produced the same truths.  If we want to solve the problems that face mankind, science had best stay as far away from religion as possible, except, perhaps to enlist the faithful in helping us implement empirical solutions. What was Nowak’s church’s solution to AIDS in Africa? Don’t use condoms!

But the end of the article is where Nowak really goes off the rails.  Imagine, after reading a fairly solid article about the major steps in evolution and the evolution of cooperation, seeing this:

God and Evolution

In Christian theology, God is the creator and sustainer of the universe. According to St. Augustine, God is atemporal and created the world ex nihilo (out of nothing). According to St. Thomas, God is the ultimate cause for everything that exists.

God has chosen to unfold his creation in time according to laws of nature. Humans, created in the image of God, have begun to understand some aspects of these laws of nature. Evolution is an organizing principle of the living world. God uses evolution to unfold life on earth. The creative power of God and the laws of evolution are not in conflict with each other. God acts through evolution. God is the ultimate cause for evolution. In this world view, without God there would be no evolution at all.

Similarly, God uses gravity to organize the structure of the universe on a large scale. Without God there would be no gravity. Neither gravity nor evolution constitute challenges for Christian faith.

A purely scientific interpretation of evolution does not lead to an argument against the existence of God. Scientific atheism is a metaphysical position, which goes beyond a scientific interpretation of the available evidence.

God is not only creator, but also sustainer. God’s creative power and love is needed to will every moment into existence. God is atemporal. In my opinion, an atemporal Creator and Sustainer lifts the entire trajectory of the world into existence.  For the atemporal God, who is the creator and sustainer of the universe, the evolutionary trajectory is not unpredictable but fully known.

This just deflates me immensely. And the God stuff sticks out like a sore thumb.  As a whole, though, I think the piece is about the best demonstration one could have of the incompatibility of science and faith. Here’s a smart guy, a Harvard professor who does hard and respected science, and then he tacks on a bunch of medieval superstition, with no evidentiary basis, at the end of a science piece.  And it’s a glaring addition, for none of the stuff in the paragraphs above is supported by the merest scrap of evidence. How does Nowak know that God is using gravity to control the universe, or that God is required for gravity? How could you falsify that? And how does he know that Augustine was right and God is “atemporal”? God could, after all, be temporal. How does Nowak know that God is loving? There’s a lot of evidence against that supposition.

In fact, a lot of what Nowak writes here doesn’t even make sense—and is in complete opposition to what he says about science. His ideas about kin selection (not on display in this piece) might be wrong, but at least you can test them. You can’t test all this palaver about God’s love and atemporality and status as the Giver of Gravitation.

And there you have the great breach between science and religion.  In half of his article Nowak relies on evidence and reason, but at the end abandons all that rationality in favor of medieval superstition that happens to make him feel good.  It’s a mystery to me how any scientist trained to value reason, logic, and evidence can produce such a bunch of babble about God.

And, by the way, scientific atheism is not a metaphysical position that “goes beyond the evidence”.  Scientific atheism is simply the view that there is no evidence—scientific or otherwise—for a God, and therefore no reason to believe in one. If that’s a metaphysical position, then so is our provisional refusal to accept the existence of Santa Claus, Bigfoot, aliens in flying saucers, and the Loch Ness monster.

Lay off the nip

January 25, 2014 • 12:10 pm

This week President Obama pronounced marijuana no more dangerous than alcohol (it’s actually less dangerous), but added that he’d advised his daughters against its use, saying it was “unhealthy” and a “bad idea”.

Well, its equivalent in cats—catnip—is also unhealthy, but for d*gs:

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Just say no.

h/t: Miranda

Why there probably isn’t a ghost ship full of cannibal rats headed for the British Isles

January 25, 2014 • 10:24 am

by Greg Mayer

There’s been a lot of media attention the last few days about the prospect of a derelict Russian passenger ship, the Lyubov Orlova, crossing the Atlantic from Canada (where it was last berthed) and crashing into Ireland or Britain, spilling disease-ridden, inbred, cannibal rats on their shores. The ship was being towed to the Dominican Republic when it broke away and floated off last year. The Sun has had perhaps the most dire take on the story, headlining their piece “Ship of Ghouls“.

LYUBOV_ORLOVA The Sun
A scary picture from the Sun.

That the ship, laden with cannibal rats, might fetch up on shore, however, seems very unlikely. As the Guardian reports, both the Irish and British coastguards downplay the possibility. In particular, Irish officials note that they have looked for it, can’t find it, and suspect that it may have sunk.

But there’s another reason that it is highly unlikely, having nothing to do with whether or not the ship is still afloat, and because it reveals an important biological principle, it’s worth a mention here at WEIT: an ecosystem without primary producers cannot be sustained except for very brief periods of time. Unless those rats have been raising crops on the ship, the last one, cannibal or not, died some time ago.

There are very few “laws” in biology in the strong sense with which the term “law” is used in physics. Mendel’s “laws” of heredity, for example, have numerous exceptions and limiting conditions. When I teach genetics, I refer to them not as “laws”, but as Mendel’s “useful generalizations”. But one of the biological principles that does have law-like status is that primary producers must be at the base of every food web, and that energy is lost at every step in the food chain. Perhaps the reason these principles are law-like is because they derive so directly from the laws of thermodynamics: energy must be put in to a system to avoid entropy increase (so we must have producers to capture energy) and no energy transfer is 100% efficient (so there’s less energy available further up the food chain than at the bottom).

These ecological principles are often expressed in terms of a “trophic pyramid“, a visual representation of the fact that primary producers (usually green plants that capture energy by photosynthesis, but also photosynthetic and chemosynthetic bacteria) outnumber herbivores (primary consumers), who outnumber carnivores (secondary consumers), who outnumber top carnivores (tertiary consumers; there are rarely more than four or five levels in a food chain).

Trophic pyramid.
Trophic pyramid.

The exact shape of the pyramids depends on the efficiency of energy transfer between levels, and whether the pyramid is based on number of individuals, biomass, or energy flow units. As a rough guideline, efficiency of transfer between levels is often estimated at about 10%; the efficiency of capture of solar radiation is much lower. These important details can be investigated here and here, for example, but they do not alter the fundamental principles.

Viewing ecosystems in this manner owes much to an extremely influential paper, “The trophic-dynamic aspect of ecology“, by the young limnologist Raymond Lindeman, who tragically died of an obscure form of hepatitis a few months before the paper was published. The very interesting story of how the paper was almost not published, first being rejected by Ecology for being too theoretical, but finally accepted, has been told by Bob Cook.

Raymond Lindeman (1915-1942). He could have told you why there are no cannibal rats threatening Ireland and the UK.
Raymond Lindeman (1915-1942). He could have told you why there are no cannibal rats threatening Ireland and the UK.

So, what does this all mean for the people of Ireland and Britain? You can relax. Although rodents will resort to cannibalism when food supplies run low (though I’ve never seen it in rats myself, which, by the way, are much friendlier and make better pets than mice), an ecosystem based on cannibalism cannot persist, because there is no energy input to the system, and there cannot be a 100% efficient transfer, so the rat-level in the “food chain” will continually decrease in number and biomass. How long a bunch of rats resorting to cannibalism would last depend on details such as the number of rats, their caloric needs, etc., but suffice it to say that no reasonable numbers for those details could get the rats to last nearly a year. The caloric needs of mammals are quite high, and they need to eat a lot. (This may not be a comforting thought, but a ship full of anacondas and reticulated pythons could last a year or more at sea, without even having to eat one another, because of their low caloric needs. They would come ashore hungry, though.) The reason I say “probably”, rather than “definitely”, is because it is conceivable that large stores of food were left behind, and depending on the quantity, these could support a rat population for some time (recall that in most zombie movies the survivors rely on canned goods for survival, although in the last season of the Walking Dead they did begin farming). But since the ship was being towed for salvage, I doubt the kitchens and larders were full.

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Cook, R.E. 1977. Raymond Lindeman and the trophic-dynamic concept in ecology. Science 198:22-26. pdf

Lindeman, R.L. 1942. The trophic-dynamic aspect of ecology. Ecology 23:399-418. pdf

Sterner, R.W. 2012. Raymond Laurel Lindeman and the trophic dynamic viewpoint. Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin 21:38-50. pdf

Pope calls the internet “a gift from God,” implying that Al Gore is God

January 25, 2014 • 8:51 am

As soon as Francis became Pope and started doing all the humble stuff like wearing regular shoes and living in a small apartment—and making statements that maybe gays and atheists weren’t going to hell after all—there were two reactions. The first was that of atheist bloggers, who immediately pointed out that the man had a record of opposing homosexuality and abortion, and that his humility was just public relations. The other was that of “faitheists,” who saw the new Pope as their BFF.  My reaction is intermediate: the guy did compile a bad record in Argentina, but I think his desire to help the poor and to avoid the trappings of luxury is sincere. That said, he’s still the head of the most retrograde and repressive of major non-Islamic faiths, and he’s not going to change the tenets of his Church. So I largely ignore him.

Sometimes it’s hard, though, because although the guy is highly educated (he has a degree in philosophy as well as having gone to Pope School), he tends to produce bromides and feel-good but meaningless verbiage, as you can see on his Twi**er feed at Pontifex. Here’s the latest utterances of His Holiness:

Picture 1
Pretty boring, eh? I think he screwed up with the earliest tw**t, because non-Catholics can easily construe another meaning for “children robbed of their childhood.” Otherwise, the Pope’s tw**ts are devoid of substance, but I guess that’s to be expected.

The Pope’s latest bromide was his statement this week about the Internet. As the Independent reports:

Boosting his credentials as a moderniser, Pope Francis has called the internet a “gift from God” in a statement released on Thursday.

In a message on Catholic Church communications, the pontiff wrote of the pros and cons of the digital age, and its implications for Catholics when interacting with people from different faiths and backgrounds.

While praising the internet for the “immense possibilities” it offers to encounter people from different backgrounds, he also warned that the obsessive desire to stay connected can actually isolate people from their friends and family.

“This is something truly good, a gift from God,” he wrote. But he warned: “The desire for digital connectivity can have the effect of isolating us from our neighbours, from those closest to us.”

He said communications in the digital era had the potential to be like “a balm which relieves pain and a fine wine which gladdens hearts.”

Well, that says pretty much nothing. It’s like saying that cheese is good, but if you eat too much you could get gas. At any rate, I’m just going to ignore Francis unless he effects some real and substantial reform in his Church, and I don’t see that happening.

And, as the person who sent me this news item noted, it’s just dumb to say that God had anything do with the Internet. The exact words were, “One day the Church is going to claim credit for gay marriage.”

In the meantime, Stephen Colbert, who I believe is a Catholic, tw**ted himself about the Pope’s new “credentials as a moderniser”:

Colbert on Pope

Caturday felid: Habitats and furniture for the well-appointed cat

January 25, 2014 • 5:27 am

Due to a serious backlog of felid-related material, I’ve been slow to post about a German company that designs “cat furniture” for the well-heeled ailurophile. At least a dozen readers have called my attention to the links to the company “Goldtatze” (“Golden Paw), which has a site in German detailing all the amazing devices for the climbing and sleeping pleasure of your cat.

To see their furniture, click on any item in the right column labeled “Was Ihre Katze lieben wird” (“what your cat will love”), or go to Hauspanther (“house panther”), Oh Gizmo!, or quickmeme, sites in English that show Goldtatze furniture. 

Here are a few of the items you can buy, though they’re not cheap:

Hanging cat bed:

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Top view of above:

ceiling-furniture-for-cats-by-goldatze-gold-paw-17-740x555

Goldtatze1

Goldtatze6

Goldtatze8

I love these walkways:

Screen shot 2014-01-25 at 6.01.29 AM

ceiling-furniture-for-cats-by-goldatze-gold-paw-7

Now really, don’t you think your cat deserves some of this? You have tons of furniture for yourself, but what does your cat have? Probably just a stupid old basket or a cardboard box. Wouldn’t your King or Queen love a plank walkway to circumambulate your living room? Baihu, Butter, Kink: talk to your staff!

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The Style section of the December 18 New York Times has a piece “Cool for cats” that tells the story of Kate Benjamin, a true “cat lady” who has furnished her house with fancy felid furniture and other items for the active or recumbent cat.  She designs cat furniture and runs the Hauspanther website, and she’s trying to refurbish the image of “cat lady”:

“The idea is to influence the mass cat-product industry to step up their game,” said Ms. Benjamin, who has teamed up with Jackson Galaxy, the cat behaviorist from the television show “My Cat From Hell,”for this effort. “We just want to be the go-to source for anyone who wants to live stylishly with cats.”

As the tattoo on her arm announces, Ms. Benjamin is positioning herself as a cat lady for a new generation. A vegan with Bettie Page bangs, she has upended the old stereotype of the frumpy, middle-aged woman surrounded by cats. And her two-bedroom townhouse here is a showcase of the latest in feline interior design.

The living room is filled with all manner of cat beds, scratchers, hiding spots and perches, including a miniature sun bed attached to sliding glass doors that open to a catio (a patio enclosed for the protection of her cats). The centerpiece on the dining table is not a flower arrangement or a fruit bowl, but a white porcelain cat bed designed to look like a sink. On the coffee table is a thronelike cat lounge that doubles as a scratcher. And a huge basket of cat toys is stationed next to the sofa.

There’s a lot more to the story, which is two pages long.

Since you asked, Benjamin has 12 cats, and here are some photos from the accompanying slideshow,“A cat woman’s lair“:

(All photos below by John Burcham for The New York Times).
Kate Benjamin:
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h/t: Ginger K.

Didga the cat on a remote-controlled skateboard—and a cat contest reminder

January 24, 2014 • 3:02 pm

Business first: remember that the Cat Confession Contest closes this Sunday (Jan. 26) at 5 p.m. Chicago time. Email your entries to me; and remember—the confession must be honest. We have several dozen entries already, and I have to say that nearly all of them are hilarious.

Now for the pleasure: your end-of-the-week Felid Reward, in this case Didga, the Skateboarding Cat. Didga, an Australian cat (is that feline abuse?) rides around his neck of Australia on a remote-controlled skateboard. As The Laughing Squid notes:

Didga the cat pulls off some sick tricks while riding around the streets Coolangatta, Australia on “Ollie”, a remote-controlled skateboard.

The Action starts when Ollie, a skateboard, takes his friend Didga, a CAT, for a ride around a beautiful beach town. On the way Didga “shows off” by jumping on, off, up and even over obstacles. One of those obstacles happens to be a large Rottweiler dog.

video & photo via CATMANTOO

This really is one of the best cat videos I’ve seen, and Didga rides that board like a champ. (Notice, too, his resemblance to Hili!) It is not a fake video, though clearly many takes were shot.

Didga-the-Skateboarding-Cat
The Great Didga

h/t Lori Anne

Rampant creationism in Louisiana public school; Buddhist student told to avoid the hassle by converting

January 24, 2014 • 1:40 pm

Well, there’s more creationist lunacy in Loonisiana, and this is a doozy. It all took place at Negreet High, a public school.  A piece in yesterday’s Raw Story tells the tale:

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Louisiana on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit against Negreet High School in Sabine Parish on behalf of two parents, Scott and Sharon Lane, and their son, “C.C.” The lawsuit claims the school has “a longstanding custom, policy, and practice of promoting and inculcating Christian beliefs,” including the teaching of creationism.

Sixth-grade teacher Rita Roark has told her students that the universe was created by God about 6,000 years ago, and taught that both the Big Bang theory and evolution are false, according to the lawsuit. She told her students that “if evolution was real, it would still be happening: Apes would be turning into humans today.”

One test she gave to students asked: “ISN’T IT AMAZING WHAT THE _____________ HAS MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” The correct answer was “Lord,” but C.C. wrote in something else. Roark responded by scolding the boy in front of the entire class.

When informed that C.C. was a Buddhist and therefore didn’t believe in God, Roark allegedly responded, “you’re stupid if you don’t believe in God.”

On another accusation, she allegedly described both Buddhism and Hinduism as “stupid.”

When the outraged parents confronted Sabine Parish Superintendent Sara Ebarb about the incidents, she allegedly told them “this is the Bible belt” and that they “shouldn’t be offended” to “see God here.” Ebarb advised that C.C. should either change his faith or be transferred to another District school where “there are more Asians.”

I know non-Americans (except for Canadians) will be astounded at this tale, but if you’ve traveled in the American south it’s no surprise. In fact, the parents moved “C.C.” to another school to preserve his mental health and his freedom from religious abuse.

Negreet High is apparently a hotbed of this stuff:

The lawsuit claims that other teachers and faculty members also push Christian beliefs on their students. Prayer is often lead by teachers in classrooms and during school events. Religious literature that denounces evolution and homosexuality has been distributed by faculty members to students. The school’s hallways are filled with Christian iconography and electronic marquee in front of the school scrolls Bible verses.

Remember this is a public high school.

As in so many places, this kind of intrusion of religion into public schools—a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution—simply goes unnoticed unless someone complains. After all, most of southern children are brainwashed devout Christians, and will take creationism not only in stride, but will welcome it.  There’s no way for us to know how frequent this kind of lunacy is (“Isn’t it amazing what the Lord has made!!!!!!!!!!”) unless a student complains and thereby becomes, as did C.C., a pariah.

And so the poisoning continues.

h/t: Steve