A first-time comment: why are we obsessed with religion?

October 25, 2012 • 3:42 am

Here’s a new comment I received and didn’t publish, but decided to put above the fold.

Casey commented on David Lose tells us how to interpret the Adam and Eve Story

I find this website very strange. If you don’t believe in God, if you don’t believe in the Bible, if you don’t believe in Jesus…. then why do you spend so much time talking about it, looking up articles about it, doing research on it? I don’t believe in ghosts, and in an average day, they never cross my mind and I don’t search for groups of like-minded people to bash ghost believers with. Whatever you believe, this whole discussion is hateful.

A few obvious reasons:  ghost-believers don’t kill or oppress people who are aghosteists, nor base a system of morality or approved sexual behavior on ghosts, nor make women second-class citizens in practicing Ghostianity, or tell their children that they will burn for eternity if they don’t share their beliefs, and so on, and so on, and so on. . . .

Homosexuality will lead to enslavement of humanity by ducks

October 25, 2012 • 3:33 am

UPDATE: The letter is real. As reader “Beanfeast” points out in the comments, stuff.co.nz talked to Jasmin and her mom, who verified the letter’s authenticity. So I retract my claim below that it’s fake. That, of course, makes the letter even worse.  And it’s a lesson to all of us not to be so quick to assume that letters or photos that seem too good to be true aren’t true! When it comes to religion, it’s hard to tell a Poe from the real thing.

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Someone once asked H. L. Mencken why, if he disliked the United States so much, he continued to live here. His answer was “Why do people go to zoos?”  Well, I suppose the same holds for much of the world—certainly New Zealand.

The title of this post comes from a piece on Gawker.  It’s unbelievable. A 14-year-old homeschooled girl in New Zealand purportedly wrote the following letter to the editor of a local newspaper. The letter, as a commenter points out below, is almost certainly a fake.

Note that she invokes evolution even though she doesn’t accept it.

Although the letter almost certainly isn’t real, there are two important points:

1. A newspaper published it. Did they check on who “Jasmin” was before they did? Every time I get a letter to the editor printed, someone at the paper checks to verify that I really did write it. And why would they publish this thing? Is it a mockery of creationism? It’s not sarcastic enough to be clear.

2. THEY GOT THE BIOLOGY WRONG. Someone should tell “Jasmin” that ducks not only display homosexuality, but homosexual necrophilia (see this article and the scientific paper behind it).

On 5 June 1995, while he was sitting in his office at the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam, [C. W.] Moeliker heard the distinctive thud of a bird hitting the glass facade of the building. Upon inspection, he discovered a drake mallard lying dead about two meters from the building. An adult male mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) had collided with the glass façade of the Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam and died.

Next to the downed bird there was a second drake mallard standing close by. As he observed the odd couple, the living drake picked at the corpse of the dead one for a few minutes and then, without provocation, it mounted the corpse and began copulating with it. This other drake mallard raped the corpse almost continuously for 75 minutes, in which time, according to Moeliker, the living drake took two short breaks before resuming with copulating behavior. Then the author disturbed the scene and secured the dead duck. Dissection showed that the rape-victim indeed was of the male sex.

Moeliker surmised that at the time of the collision with the window the two mallards were engaged in a common motif in duck behavior which is called rape flight. “When one died the other one just went for it and didn’t get any negative feedback—well, didn’t get any feedback,” according to Moeliker.

After the live bird was shooed away, inspection of the dead mallard revealed that it was male, thus making this the first observed case of homosexual necrophilia in mallards. The case was reported scientifically in Deinsea 8-2001, along with photos. The paper also netted Moeliker an Ig Nobel Prize in biology awarded for improbable research.

The paper also notes this:

Bagemihl (1999) in his well-researched and exhaustive overview of animal homosexuality, showed that in the mallard ‘the proportion of male homosexual pairs varies between populations, anywhere from 2-19 percent of all pairs’. So, male homosexuality can be regarded as a common phenomenon among mallards. According to Bagemihl, drake pairs, however, do not exhibit overt sexual activity: they normally only show behaviour that preludes copulation but neither partner mounts the other. Interestingly, Bagemihl (1999) noted that ‘some males in homosexual pairs have been observed attempting to rape or forcibly copulate with males outside their pairbond’. Initially, this may have been the case on 5 June 1995: the drake attempted to rape NMR 9997-00232 who fled, and the two got engaged in a true homosexual ARF.

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Moeliker, C. W. 2001.  The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae).  Deinsia 8:243-247


h/t: Shuggy

Autographed books, etc.

October 24, 2012 • 2:27 pm

Some people who got their autographed and cat-pictured copies of WEIT have responded with pictoral thanks: this is from Todd and Stephanie, showing their moggie Troy:

The rest of you hold on; books will be shipped out when I return from the UK in late November. And then there will be a chance to bid on a single book autographed by A PASSEL OF AWESOME INTELLECTUALS AND HUMANISTS, as well as by me (with a Coyne cat drawing included). But wait—there’s more!: the inked pawprint of a famous cat.. All proceeds will go to Doctors without Borders.

UPDATE: Another photo arrived, making this the start of an Infinite Cat Project. Note the swell drawing of a cat along with the autograph.  You, too, could have had one of these had you donated but $100 to Doctors Without Borders. But you’ll have the chance to bid on a single unique autographed volume that is FAR more awesome.

And the third and final Infinite Cat photo:

First (and second) episode of Dawkins’s new television series

October 24, 2012 • 1:07 pm

Embedding of this video has been disabled, so I’ll just post the link to the first episode of Richard’s new 45-minute series on UK Channel 4, “Sex, death, and the meaning of life.” (Episode 2 continues immediately thereafter, just don’t stop the YouTube video. But I haven’t watched that second episode.)

The blurb for this segment:

In this thought-provoking series, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explores how life might look without religion. First, he examines issues surrounding sex and the notion of sin.

The purpose of the series is precisely what I discussed earlier today: to show how a secular and humanistic view of life can be constructed to meet the needs that are supposedly ingrained in humans and heretofore met by religion. A few of the questions that Richard addresses and answers, as well as highlights of the piece.

  • Is religion required for morality or a sense of purpose?
  • Are religious people really more moral than nonbelievers? Do they feel more guilt when they stray?
  • Where did the human sense of morality come from? Are there evolutionary roots? Is there a difference between human morality and the evolved “rules” that enables social mammals to get along?
  • Profile of a French surgeon who “revirginizes” women by reconstructing hymens. (Most of the women are Muslims, of course.) This is a particularly poignant part of the show.
  • Did the “free love” culture of the Sixties fail because of evolutionary constraints?
  • How does neuroscience help us understand empathy?
  • Is the world getting better and people more moral?

It’s a pretty good show, which includes interviews with other scientists and with religious people, and its tone is gentle:  well-aimed at a religously-oriented audience. There is not a sign of stridency or militancy here, though Dawkins’s beliefs are firm. He may go a wee bit too far in showing the innate goodness of humans in response to the misunderstanding that accompanied his book The Selfish Gene (i.e., selfish genes make selfish people).

Steve Pinker makes a guest appearance at the end, and you even get to see Richard’s dog, a little fluffy white thing. (I’d write more if he had a cat.)

The blurb for the second episode is this, and if any reader has seen it, weigh in below:
Episode Two Monday 22 October 2012. Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life.
Richard Dawkins explores what science can tell us about death.
It’s a journey that takes him from Hindu funeral pyres in India to genetics labs in New York.
Dawkins brings together the latest neuroscience, evolutionary and genetic theory to examine why we crave life after death, why we evolved to age and how the human genome is something like real immortality – traits inherited from our distant ancestors that we pass on to future generations.He meets a Christian dying of motor neurone disease, reminisces about the Wall Street Crash with a 105-year-old stockbroker, and interviews James Watson, the geneticist who co-discovered the structure of DNA.Dawkins admits to sentimentality in imagining his own church funeral, but he argues we must embrace the truth, however hard that is.In a television first, he has his entire genome sequenced to reveal the genetic indicators of how he himself may die.

An echidna puggle called Beau

October 24, 2012 • 5:50 am

by Matthew Cobb

The great baby animal site Zooborns has this account of an echidna puggle (ie baby) which was found in the countryside near Sydney. Echidnas are spiny monotreme mammals, so they spend much of their early life in their mother’s pouch. Beau may have fallen out. He was picked up and taken to Taronga Zoo, where they are looking after him.

Echidna_puggle_2

He’s a cute looking feller:

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He’s drinking milk from a dropper at the moment – he only needs to be fed every day or so!

Echidna_puggle_1

(All photos:  Ben Gibson / Taronga Zoo)

They also posted this video:

And when he’s grown up, he will be displaying his four-headed penis (oh yes). Here’s a video of a zoologist doing the necessary. NSFW, or anywhere else,  I reckon:

h/t @samjamespearson

Why New Atheism is supposedly worse than the Old

October 24, 2012 • 4:47 am

UPDATE: Over at No Cross No Crescent (a website on the new Skeptic Ink network), the author further takes apart the claim that atheists must offer a substitute for religion. One of the interesting statistics on offer is that 88% of those who identify with no religion in particular are NOT looking for a religion that would be right for them.  In other words, they’re satisfied with being a “none.” Only 10% are looking for a “right” religion.

________________

The other evening I was having dinner with a friend, who is an atheist but bears some sympathy for religion. (He admitted, though, that thanks in part to this website, his sympathy was waning, especially with respect to religion’s compatibility with science.)

But he had one complaint about New Atheism, a complaint that we hear often. It goes something like this:

“Yes, yes, New Atheists attack the evidence supporting religious belief, but of course atheists have been doing that for centuries. The real problem with New Atheism is that while it attacks religion, it fails to provide a substitute. Religion fulfills fundamental needs in people, and unless New Atheists can suggest other, non-theistic ways to meet those needs, it will not be successful.”

I’m putting this up to gather reader response to this common criticism, but I have four responses of my own.

1. Who says New Atheism isn’t successful? The category of “nones” (people who profess no religious belief) is increasing faster, proportionately, than any established religion, and it is indisputable that people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, through their speeches and writings, have diverted many people from their paths of faith.  The claim that “Old Atheism” was successful but “New Atheism” is not is simply unsubstantiated.

2.  Dispelling false beliefs is in itself a good regardless of whether one suggests other ways to meet the needs buttressed by those beliefs. I recall that Steve Gould once said—perhaps with about what he saw as pervasive gradualism in the paleontology community—that getting rid of false but widely-accepted views represents progress in itself, for such views impede progress toward truth.

3.  Some atheists do indeed concern themselves with the problem of replacing the needs of faith with secular alternatives. Alain de Botton has famously done this, though his solutions (secular cathedrals and the like) seem fatuous.  A more successful approach has been suggested by philosopher Philip Kitcher, who sees the sense of community engendered by faith as something essential. He argues that secular “alternative” communities are more common in Europe than in America, and suggests that this is why America remains far more religious than Europe.

4.  While Kitcher is on the right path, I think that there’s a more important reason why religion remains strong in many places, and this involves more than the need for a sense of community. It involves personal insecurity fostered by the nature of one’s society. As I’ve written in many places, including a paper published in Evolution (free online here), sociological studies increasingly show that religion is stronger in societies that are more dysfunctional—that is, societies in which people are subject to poor medical care, high crime rates, high drug use, high infant morality, corruption in the government, and substantial income inequality.

And the evidence is that this correlation is causal: social dysfunction makes people more religious simply because they turn to sky fathers when they can’t get security in their lives from their governments or societies.

For a reference to the newest studies supporting this thesis, see Nigel Barber’s essay in PuffHo: “Why atheism will replace religion.” In it he refers to two recent papers (references below, one study unpublished) supporting the “social insecurity” hypothesis for religion. I’ll be writing about the first in the near future.

So the substitute for religion may not be “atheist cathedrals” or places where we can meet and discuss Hume every Sunday, but simply societies that make people more secure. Granted, that solution is much harder to implement.

At any rate, how many of you have heard this criticism of New Atheism? And, if so, how do you meet the complaint that “we’re ineffective because we don’t provide substitutes for religion.”

Apropos, my attention was just called to a new BBC program by Richard Dawkins that addresses this very complaint. I’ll post about it in a few hours.

_________________

Barber, N. (2011). A cross-national test of the uncertainty hypothesis of religious belief. Cross-Cultural Research, 45, 318-333.

Barber, N. (under review). Country religiosity declines as material security increases. International Perspectives in Psychology.

Winners: Nikon “small world” photography contest

October 24, 2012 • 4:00 am

Alert reader “P” called my attention to a Guardian piece that presents the annual winners of the Nikon Small World Photomicrography competition. While I usually show contest winners involving animals or nature on a large scale, this contest celebrates the beauty of the small, inconspicuous, and invisible. Here are some of the lovely winning shots (note: there are a lot of others, with several involving Drosophila!):

Click to enlarge:

2nd Place, Walter Piorkowski, South Beloit, Illinois. Live newborn lynx spiderlings
4th Place, Dr W Ryan Williamson, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, Virginia. Drosophila melanogaster visual system halfway through pupal development, showing retina (gold), photoreceptor axons (blue), and brain (green)
9th Place, Geir Drange, Asker, Norway. Myrmica sp. (ant) carrying its larva
16th Place, Douglas Moore, University Relations & Communications/Geology University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, Wisconsin. Fossilized Turitella agate containing Elimia tenera (freshwater snails) and ostracods (seed shrimp)
17th Place, Charles Krebs Issaquah, Washington. Stinging nettle trichome on leaf vein.
18th Place, Dr David Maitland, Feltwell, UK, Coral sand.

The one above is my favorite. Talk about art imitating life: to me it resembles a painting by Paul Klee.

19th Place, Dr Somayeh Naghiloo, Department of Plant Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences , University of Tabriz, Iran. Floral primordia of Allium sativum (garlic).
20th Place, Dorit Hockman, Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, Cambridge University, UK/ Embryos of the species Molossus rufus (black mastiff bat).

h/t: P