Darwin for Congress!

November 9, 2012 • 9:32 am

by Greg Mayer

You’ll remember Congressman Paul Broun (R-Georgia), who infamously called embryology, the big bang, and evolution “lies from the pit of hell.” He was re-elected on Tuesday, running unopposed, but his statements did inspire a write-in campaign for an unlikely opponent: an Englishman, and a dead one at that– Charles Darwin! According to Athens Online, Jim Leebens-Mack of the University of Georgia started a “Darwin for Congress” Facebook page in response to Broun’s comments. Blake Aued at flagpole notes that it wasn’t just a Facebook page–  Charlie himself hit the streets to campaign.

Charles Darwin, AKA Tim Denson, campaigns near the Arch with his wife, Jenny. Photo by Blake Aued, Flagpole.

And he got nearly 4000 votes! That’s nearly 2%– an enormous number for a write-in, and an unprecedented number for a dead Englishman running for Congress in northern Georgia in a presidential election year. Bill Nye, the Science Guy, who slammed Broun, a member of the House Science Committee, as “by any measure, unqualified to make decisions about science, space, and technology”, also received write-in votes. Charlie’s showing has inspired local politicians to commit to fielding a real candidate against Broun in 2014. According to Aued:

Neither Democrats nor more moderate Republicans have had any success against Broun, losing by 20-40 points in past elections. But Clarke County Democratic Committee Chairman Joe Wisenbaker says the party will “absolutely” field a candidate in 2014. “What we’re talking about doing is finding a well-qualified candidate who’s willing to change their name to Charles Darwin,” he joked.

Someone needs to run, so this national disgrace can be brought to an end.

h/t Taegan Goddard

Even more reason why it’s good that Obama won

November 9, 2012 • 7:33 am

From Alternet via an alert reader, here’s Mittens talking about his Mormon faith—after he declared his candidacy for President—to Jan Mikelson of WHO radio in Des Moines, Iowa. Mittens thinks that Jesus will return in Missouri! But that’s what Mormons believe. (I note here that I was born in St. Louis.)

The reader who sent me this noted:

This is THE ONLY TIME I have seen Romney act  like a live human who believes in something…

Sadly, Mittens believes in stuff that’s insane. Alternet quotes a Mormon site:

Background from Prisoner Minister: “Mormons believe Jesus will return to earth in Independence, Missouri to begin a 1,000 year reign.  They think Mormons will at that time become gods.  But before the return of Jesus, they believe the United States will come to a constitutional crisis, on the verge of collapse.  They believe America will be saved by a Mormon leader. The founder of the Mormon religion, Joseph Smith, said, “The time will come when the destiny of the nation (USA) will hang upon a single thread.  At that critical juncture, this people (Mormons) will save it from destruction.”  Their prophet Brigham Young said, “When the Kingdom of God bears rule, the flag of the United States will proudly flutter.” Mormons, also called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), believe the Kingdom of God will arise from the rule of one man on earth, a political figure who will also be their spiritual leader.  They believe there will be a one-world government ruled by this god-king. He will be a prophet and high priest of the Mormon faith, ruling the world from America.”

Not to mention the crazy underwear.

Mittens also endorses a book, The Making of America, which is dubious to say the least. From Alternet:

Bruce Wilson for Talk2Action writes  about the interview:
 “…The former Massachusetts governor endorsed The Making of America, by fringe New World Order conspiracy theorist  Cleon Skousen , a former Brigham Young University professor of Romney’s, and also cited Skousen’s opinions concerning the question of the Second Coming. Here’s video of the interchange [above]–which Mitt Romney may have difficulty explaining, especially in context of his carefully coiffed persona as a moderate Republican.
As covered by Media Matters , in The Making of America Skousen claimed that slave owners were the true “victims” of the institution of slavery:

“Skousen is the author of several controversial works, including The Making of America: The Substance and Meaning of the Constitution, which presented as ‘the story of slavery in America’ a passage from a book that attacked abolitionists for delaying emancipation; cast slave owners as ‘the worst victims of the system’; claimed white schoolchildren ‘were likely to envy the freedom of their colored playmates’; and claimed that ‘[s]lavery did not make white labor unrespectable, but merely inefficient,’ because ‘the slave had a deliberateness of motion which no amount of supervision could quicken.'”

Although I’m a bit wary of saying that one shouldn’t vote against a candidate solely because of his/her religion, note that Mittens argues that his religious opposition to abortion should become public policy. THAT is the danger of religion, and why religious “truth” differs from scientific truth. In the case of the former, because one thinks he has the handle on what God absolutely decrees, it’s incumbent to try to impose that on everyone else, regardless of their faith.

At least Christopher Hitchens could make the distinction between his personal opposition to abortion and his view that, as a matter of public policy, women should have the right to choose.

Editing your comments

November 9, 2012 • 7:08 am

People are always kvetching that they can’t edit their comments after they’re posted, and asking me why there is no editing feature.  The reason is simple: WordPress doesn’t provide one for my website.  So please reread your comments carefully before you press the “post” button.

And, if you’ve really screwed up, put in the wrong html command so that everything in the thread turns into italics, or something equally dire, just send me a personal email* asking me to do an edit.  I can go into comments and fix them, though I never do except at a reader’s request.

That said, please make such requests sparingly.

_______

*To find the email, just Google “Jerry Coyne University of Chicago”

kthxbye

Don Prothero recounts his experience with the creationist road trip

November 9, 2012 • 6:12 am

Last summer a British film company, Renegade pictures, flew me to Arizona to engage in a dialogue with five British creationists.  They, and comedian Andrew Maxwell, were touring the western U.S. and meeting with evolutionary biologists. The conceit was that the five of us (including paleontologists Don Prothero and Tim White), would try to change their minds and dissuade them from Biblical literalism about creationism.  Of course it didn’t work (and I told them that it wouldn’t), but it made for an entertaining program that was aired on BBC3 (and is now on YouTube), “Conspiracy road trip: creationism” (BBC3). I wrote a post about it and embedded the video.

Despite the fact that each scientist spent several hours with the creationists—all in vain except, perhaps, for the slightly open-minded JoJo—our participation was edited down to only a few minutes, as I knew it would be. What I didn’t expect was that the program would be mostly about the sociology of the creationist group, including a double schism between Christians/the Muslim and gay-friendly Christians/homophobic Christians.  But that drama makes for good t.v., I guess, and I thought the final program was pretty good, if not so enlightening about science.

You can find a 1.25 minute clip of my spiel on Noah’s ark at the BBC Three site (apparently not viewable in the U.S); here’s a screenshot of an amiable Dr. Coyne (soon to be less amiable) trying to explain why Noah’s Ark is implausible. Andrew Maxwell looks on; we’re on a houseboat in the middle of Lake Powell.

Now another scientist has described his experience. Over at Skepticblog, paleontologist Don Prothero details his day with the literalists in the post “A surreal journey among the creationists.” His take is pretty much the same as mine, though he did a bit of water-trickery at the Grand Canyon that flummoxed Phil, the most vociferous and defensive creationist.

The creationists: left to right, Phil, JoJo, Abdul, Branwen, and Sam. Photo by Don Prothero (I think).

I agree with Don that the most difficult part for the creationist was their encounter with Tim White at Berkeley:

The most effective segment of all was with paleoanthropologist Tim White at U.C. Berkeley, who laid out casts of a bunch of hominid skulls and had them sort them by their anatomy. Once they had done so, he pointed out that this was the exact sequence that these skulls were found in a single place in Ethiopia, and that primitive ones were never found on the level with the advanced ones, and vice versa. It was a remarkable bit of scientific theater, and they were unable to respond coherently to it, since there IS no creationist response. The most primitive skulls look like “apes” to them, the most advanced ones are clearly “human”—and there are all the intermediates in between.

Creationist responses to the hominin fossil record are never convincing, since they must arbitrarily draw a line between “ape” and “human” (there can be no intermediates), and the earlier “human” skulls are written off as individuals afflicted with diseases.

Don, like me, didn’t expect any changed minds, but did seem to think the show was effective in making at least one point: creationists are irrational.

. . . evidence doesn’t matter to creationists. They have an entire worldview which is wrapped about the salvation of their immortal soul and the fear of rejecting the literal interpretation of the Bible, so that comes first and everything else is unimportant. They reject evolution only because they’ve been told to do so by religious leaders, even though they have no clue what it’s about; what they think they know about it is wrong. Indeed, they showed the classic response of a true believer: when something threatens your worldview, you cling to it even more strongly and find any way you can to dismiss or ignore contrary evidence. That, apparently, is the point of the entire show, since the 9/11 truthers and the UFO nuts act the same way. But given the way the show was framed, it’s clear that the producers want to put these creationists on camera as object lessons on how irrational and dogmatic and impervious to evidence they really are, even while showing less dogmatic viewers that scientists can be friendly and reasonable and have all the evidence.

Although Don took the creationist aback by showing how river “meanders” at the Grand Canyon (the horseshoe bends that the Colorado River makes) are completely inconsistent with flood geology, some creationists later came back with a totally unconvincing response.  I’ll let you read Don’s description of that response on his website.  But all that shows, as did the entire program, is that creationists have a pre-existing worldview that cannot be changed by evidence.  And if you can convey that in an hour, then you’ve been successful.

Appropriately, yesterday’s Non Sequitur comic is relevant here:

h/t: Linda Grilli

My doctor has a book

November 8, 2012 • 11:14 am

My physician, Alex Lickerman, is a terrific doctor, one who spends a lot of time with his patients and treats the whole person rather than the disease. I’ve been enormously impressed with him. He also has a website, “Happiness in this world,” where he posts once a week, covering medical topics with psychological implications (click the first page to see the variety of subjects). He also writes about his own life and how he’s dealt with various obstacles.

Alex is an atheistic Buddhist (we call such culturally Jewish Buddhists “Bu-Jews”) who, though not accepting the supernatural or things like reincarnation, feels that Nichiren Buddhism (his species of the philosophy) has a lot to teach people about how to deal with adversity.  Based on his personal example, I’d have to say his views have merit. I’ve flirted with secular Buddhism from time to time—not as seriously as has, say, Sam Harris, but I do think there’s a core of wisdom in some Buddhist tenets.

That core, as Alex sees it, is presented in a very nice new book that I’d like to plug here: The Undefeated Mind: On the Science of Constructing an Indestructible Self.  It not only explains how Buddhist precepts helped him become a more resilient person, but also shows how he’s applied those lessons to his patients, some of them in very serious medical situations.  There’s simply no doubt that his immersion in Buddhism has made him a better and more caring doctor.

I suppose I’d put this in the category of “self-help” books, but to call it that denigrates what I think can be a very useful guide for some folks.

Here’s the blurb I wrote for the book:

“Buddhism and Western medicine would seem an incongruous mixture, but in the hands of Alex Lickerman they meld seamlessly into a recipe for overcoming life’s hardships—indeed, for turning them into advantages.  An accomplished physician, Lickerman has no truck for the supernatural, but recognizes that the tenets of Nichiren Buddhism have been honed over centuries to help alleviate life’s inevitable sufferings. The Undefeated Mind is a deeply engaging story of how Lickerman has fused modern medicine with ancient wisdom to heal his patients both physically and psychologically—lessons that apply to all of us.”

Shermer and I disagree on the “supernatural”

November 8, 2012 • 8:09 am

Five days ago I posted an account of Michael Shermer’s talk at the atheist meeting in Mexico City, noting that he denied the possibility of the supernatural and therefore ruled out the existence of God on first principles.  I disagreed with him, arguing that the presence of a divine being, one able to either obviate or manipulate the laws of nature, was at least a hypothetical possibility.  The proper scientific attitude, I claimed, is to say that based on a lack of evidence for a god (and the presence of evidence arguing against the existence of an intrusive and beneficent being), we can therefore ignore a god hypothesis.

There was a time, however, when the hypothesis of God was not incoherent, but viable. I refer not only to pre-Newtonian physics, but also to biology before Darwin: creation by a supernatural being was the only going theory before the 19th century, but Darwin put paid to that. It is the juxtaposition of scientific evidence with a creationist, supernatural theory making unsubstantiated claims that made Darwin’s Origin so convincing.

Michael emailed me promising to respond to my post and to defend his original view that there can be no such thing as the supernatural. He has now done so in his column over at Skepticblog, in a post called “God, ET, and the supernatural“.

Shermer’s argument is simple: we can’t distinguish between a supernatural being and an advanced civilization of, say, extraterrestrials that could perform all the “signs and wonders” that would convince most of us that God exists. As he notes,

My argument is that the most any natural science could ever discover in the way of a deity would be a natural intelligence sufficiently advanced to be god-like but still within the realm of the natural world. As I wrote in Scientific American:

“God is typically described by Western religions as omniscient and omnipotent. Since we are far from the mark on these traits, how could we possibly distinguish a God who has them absolutely, from an ETI [extraterrestrial intelligence] who has them in relatively (to us) copious amounts? Thus, we would be unable to distinguish between absolute and relative omniscience and omnipotence. But if God were only relatively more knowing and powerful than us, then by definition it would be an ETI!”

Well, yes, we wouldn’t know whether a divine being was absolutely omniscient and omnipotent, or relatively more omniscient or omnipotent than us.  But if the degree of, say, omnipotence and omniscience is sufficiently large (i.e, any miracle can be worked, all things can be foretold), then I think we can say provisionally that there is a God.  I’ve previously described the kind of evidence that I’d provisionally accept for a divine being, including messages written in our DNA or in a pattern of stars, the reappearance of Jesus on earth in a way that is well documented and convincing to scientists, along with the ability of this returned Jesus to do things like heal amputees.  Alternatively, maybe only the prayers of Catholics get answered, and the prayers of Muslims, Jews, and other Christians, don’t.

Yes, maybe aliens could do that, and maybe it would be an alien trick to imitate Jesus (combined with an advanced technology that could regrow limbs), but so what?  I see no problem with provisionally calling such a being “God”—particularly if it comports with traditional religious belief—until proven otherwise.  What I can say is “this looks like God, but we should try to find out more. In the meantime, I’ll provisionally accept it.”  That, of course, depends on there being a plethora of evidence. As we all know, there isn’t.

My sharpest disagreement with Shermer is his denial that there could even be the possibility of a divine being.  Even if aliens could imitate one, to me that doesn’t rule out the possibility of a god, though we might be unable to distinguish that god from advanced ETIs.  Where Shermer and I differ, then, is in how we regard “evidence” for a God.  At some point I would just say, “Okay, I’ll tentatively say there’s a God,” while Shermer would always say, “We can’t tell if it’s God or an ETI,” even if we have no independent evidence for ETIs.  He considers his hypothesis more parsimonious because he believes evolution could produce advanced beings with “godlike” powers, given the immensity of the universe and the immensity of time.  Well, maybe, but the universe is only 14 billion years old and habitable planets are much younger than that.  Evolution can only do so much in a few billion years.

Shermer’s whole argument rests on the fallacy that scientists are committed to methodological naturalism: we can accept only natural explanations for natural phenomena:

On the matter of the supernatural, Jerry Coyne continues in his blog:

“As always, I find the natural/supernatural distinction confusing, and see that it is possible in principle for some divine being who operates outside the laws of physics to exist.  To say there is no possibility of such a thing is an essentially unscientific claim, since there is nothing that science can rule out on first principles.  We rule out things based on evidence and experience, that is, we consider the possibilities of gods extremely unlikely since we have no good evidence for them. But it is close-minded to say that nothing would convince us otherwise.”

I disagree. It is simply a matter of what philosophers of science call methodological naturalism, or the process of employing only natural explanations for natural phenomena. Science operates in the natural, not the supernatural. In fact, I go so far as to say that there is no such thing as the supernatural. There is just the natural and mysteries we have yet to explain by natural causes. Invoking such words as “supernatural” (and, in other realms, the “paranormal”) just provides a linguistic place-holder until we find natural causes (or we do not find them and discontinue the search out of lack of interest).

. . . A supernatural entity or force (something like the God of Abraham) that exists outside of nature is, by definition, unknowable to science. By contrast, if a supernatural being reaches into our natural world in order to act on it, He must stir the particles in some way (to, say, answer prayers for healing a cancerous tumor by reconfiguring the DNA of the cancerous cells, or to help one nation win a war over another by redirecting bullets and bombs, or to aid one football team defeat another in the Superbowl by deflecting a touchdown pass), and that action must in principle be measurable by science. If it is not measurable even in principle, then it is not knowable by science.

Like Michael, I think the word “supernatural” is a bit ambiguous, for “supernatural” beings—one who can obviate or manipulate the laws of physics—can create natural phenomena.  The being might not be demonstrable, but the actions of that being might well be. In that sense there can be natural evidence for a supernatural god.  We can’t see electrons, either, but we can see their actions, and hence infer that they exist.

Shermer thinks that a “supernatural” being must do things that obey the laws of physics, but I claim otherwise. (And how, by the way, do we know when the laws of physics or chemistry have been violated?  After all, they have been reliable generalizations, but maybe we don’t know everything about them.)  A real god could obviate the laws of physics in such a way that we could never understand godly phenomena (like answered prayers) except as something inexplicable under current knowledge. At that point Shermer defaults to aliens, while I start thinking about the supernatural.

I don’t see science as committed to methodological naturalism—at least in terms of accepting only natural explanations for natural phenomena. Science is committed to a) finding out what phenomena are real, and b) coming up with the best explanations for those real, natural phenomena. Methodological naturalism is not an a priori commitment, but a strategy that has repeatedly worked in science, and so has been adopted by all working scientists.

As for me, I am committed only to finding out what phenomena really occur, and then making a hypothesis to explain them, whether that hypothesis be “supernatural” or not.  In principle we could demonstrate ESP or telekinesis, both of which violate the laws of physics, and my conclusion would be, for the former, “some people can read the thoughts of others at a distance, though I don’t know how that is done.”  If only Christian prayers were answered, and Jesus appeared doing miracles left and right, documented by all kinds of evidence, I would say, “It looks as if some entity that comports with the Christian God is working ‘miracles,’ though I don’t know how she does it.”

My view on Shermer’s naturalistic “commitment” was expressed by one of his commenters:

Explicit Atheist says:

Michael Shermer argues “It is simply a matter of what philosophers of science call methodological naturalism, or the process of employing only natural explanations for natural phenomena.”

I completely disagree. Science is about discovering what is true about how our universe works. If divine revelation given to those who worship a particular deity in a particular way was the method that worked then science would adopt methodological supernaturalism and scientists would be people who devote themselves to obtaining revelations about how the world works by worshipping that deity that way. Mr. Coyne, Stenger, and Dawkins are correct, science a- priori presumes nothing and rules nothing in or out. Science is completely pragmatic and will adopt any methodologies and any conclusions that are successful. Success is the only criteria that defines what is scientific and what is not, both up-front with methodologies and down-back with conclusions.

In the end, the difference between Shermer and I comes down to this: if evidence were really pervasive for an immensely knowledgeable and powerful being, I would tentatively accept God, while Shermer would tentatively accept an ETI that that works in unknown (but natural) ways.  He is unwilling to say that there can be anything other than the natural world; I claim that this is a good working hypothesis but one that can never be verified with absolute certainty.

Science can never prove anything.  If you accept that, then we can never absolutely prove the absence of a “supernatural” god—or the presence of one.  We can only find evidence that supports or weakens a given hypothesis.  There is not an iota of evidence for The God Hypothesis, but I claim that there could be.

A few photos for the road

November 8, 2012 • 6:07 am

I have returned from Mexico, and I have elebenty gazillion photos. I hope to do separate posts on Trotsky’s house, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Mexican woo, pre-Columbian stuff, and food, but all that will take a while. (I haven’t even posted some nice snaps I took in Portugal). In the meantime, here’s a sampling from Tuesday.

This is Trotsky’s desk, exactly as it was, down to the papers he was working on, when he was murdered with an icepick in Mexico City on August 20, 1940.

Where Lev Davidovich did his business: Trotsky’s toilet:

I’ll have many more pictures of his house later.

Only a couple of blocks from Trotsky’s house is the house where Frida Kahlo was born and lived with Diego Rivera for many years (she had an affair with Trotsky as well). Here is her studio, bathed in light. Note her wheelchair next to her easel, and the decorated plaster corset on the wall to the left.

A ceramic clock painted (and possibly made) by Frida. The caption under it said this:

“On the shelves next to the exit are two clocks. One of them bears the date on which Frida decided to divorce Diego, after discovering his affair with her sister Cristina: ‘1939, September, the hours were broken.'”

The market in Coyoacán:

The only cat in Mexico: Lola, a lovely animal in the Mercado Coyoacán. I’m afraid I petted her before I saw the sign reading, “No tocar el gato.”

Lunch: two “beefsteak” tacos with all the trimmings and a bottle of Fanta. Price: 30 pesos ($2.30 U.S.):

 A nearby bakery. I bought some Mexican cheesecake (drier than the U.S. version, but delicious) and a fig tart:

One of many Diego Rivera murals in the Secretary of Education building in Mexico City. They are quite revolutionary. In this one, “Distributing the arms,” the person handing out the rifles is quite clearly Frida Kahlo.

Finally, on my walk back, I went through an arcade behind the Cathedral. It was full of stores selling Catholic accountrements and herbal medicines. Here some lucky fellow buys himself a Jebus: