Dr. Coyne gets religious pushback

December 7, 2011 • 11:52 am

I am dispirited. I’ve just returned from a two-hour lecture and Q&A session at the Woodlawn Charter School, a public school run by the University of Chicago on the South Side of the city.  Some of the high-school biology students are reading Why Evolution is True, and I gave a presentation on the evidence for evolution—with a tiny bit about why religion prevents Americans from accepting evolution, for I was asked to mention that topic—followed by an hour of questions.

Some of the questions were good, and some of the students really interested, but there was also a lot of religious pushback.  One student, I was told, sat through the entire lecture muttering about how she shouldn’t be forced to listen to this stuff since it went against her faith.  Another student’s “question” was to inform me that she was offended that I said that Adam and Eve never existed (I talked about the human bottleneck of 1200 people), and asked me how I knew that.

And the teacher who invited me told me she encountered stiff resistance from many of her kids about evolution—resistance based solely on their religious upbringing.

It’s all a bit depressing.  These kids are not southern fundamentalist Bible-thumpers: they are disadvantaged black kids who were simply brought up in religious homes or among religious peers.  And there’s no doubt that that upbringing is rendering many of them resistant to the idea of evolution.  I spent an hour showing them the evidence for evolution, and some of them were simply impervious.

The problem with America and evolution is not the lack of instruction. We have more evolution education than ever (after all, these kids are reading my book), and we tons of books and eminent scientists lecturing about evolution.  We have Dawkins, and the works of Sagan and Gould, the shows of Attenborough, and high-school textbooks that deal in depth with evolution.  But statistics show that acceptance of evolution in America has hardly changed since 1982.

The problem is religion.  Until America becomes less religious, we have no hope of educating people about the wonders of evolution.  Remember this from the Pew Forum website:

When asked what they [Americans] would do if scientists were to disprove a particular religious belief, nearly two-thirds (64%) of people say they would continue to hold to what their religion teaches rather than accept the contrary scientific finding, according to the results of an October 2006 Time magazine poll. Indeed, in a May 2007 Gallup poll, only 14% of those who say they do not believe in evolution cite lack of evidence as the main reason underpinning their views; more people cite their belief in Jesus (19%), God (16%) or religion generally (16%) as their reason for rejecting Darwin’s theory.

Religion poisons everything.  The National Center for Science Education can put out the fires in school boards and courtrooms, and the rest of us can teach ourselves silly, but not much will change until we weaken religion’s death grip on America.

Rosenhouse does it again

December 7, 2011 • 8:21 am

Jason “Hot Dog” Rosenhouse is still on a roll, posting a trenchant essay nearly every day.  Yesterday, in a piece called “Politics and nonbelief,” Jason takes after two especially annoying “atheists,” R. Joseph Hoffman and his acolyte Jacques Berlinerbrau.  I put “atheists” in quotes because although these fellows profess nonbelief, they’re always tut-tutting around the edges of New Atheism, criticizing us because we don’t do things right, because we’re politicially unsophisticated, and especially because we’re abysmally ignorant of the history of atheism, so that the glorious lucubrations of Bertrand Russell et al. have descended to the unproductive rantings of Dawkins and Hitchens.

The real reason for their ire is, I think, is that Hoffmann and Berlinerbrau are jealous of the success of the New Atheists.  Their turgid and scholarly prose leaves no imprint on society, much less academia, and so they’re reduced to lecturing those folks who do get attention, who actually accomplish something.  Jason’s essay handily dismantles their pretensions.

I read Hoffman’s essay, “Atheism’s little idea,” last week, but found it too infuriating to write about.  Jason calls it “stunningly idiotic.”  That’s strong words for Rosenhouse, but he’s right.  Yet he reserves most of his ire for an equally infuriating essay by Jacques Berlinerbrau at The Chronicle of Higher Education, “The political future of atheism in America: Don’t go it alone.”  (Berlinerbrau’s moronic essays always fall hard on the heels of ones by Hoffman.) Although Berlinerbrau’s piece is surprisingly incoherent, when it does make sense it’s simply stupid, as when he asserts that New Atheists want to “abolish religion.”  And he offers no guidance about how we’re really supposed to effect change: all he says is that we’re doing it rong.  It’s a form of academic preening.  Go see Jason’s analysis, which is spot on:

It is when I read essays like Berlinerblau’s that I understand why academics are thought to live in ivory towers. I catch a glimpse of what anti-intellectualism is all about. Atheists were politically irrelevant and reviled long before Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris came along. They had nothing to do with creating the political difficulties atheists face, and there is not a shred of evidence that anything has gotten worse for atheists because of their work.

What has changed as a result of their efforts is that atheists are now far more visible than ever before. By writing a few books, and standing tall in the face of extraordinary vituperation from outraged religious folks, they have shown that there is a surprisingly large market for atheism in this country. No one predicted that their books would be hugely successful, but people are still talking vigorously about them years after they were published. Aided by bloggers, and by numerous unheralded organizers on the ground, we now have a vibrant community of nonbelievers, both online and real world. The numerous well-attended conferences, and, yes, the billboards and merchandise, are all positive developments. Considering how deep in its own endzone atheism was starting, I’d say the New Atheists have accomplished something pretty impressive.

Then here come the Berlinerblau’s of the world to tut-tut and to criticize. It’s all so vulgar and low brow and not at all the sort of thing that scholars investigating the roots of nonbelief in fifteenth-century France care about. Those people on the ground who actually built something are doing it all wrong. He has it all figured out if only people would ask him. He thinks seriously about these issues, you know.

But when it comes time to offer anything concrete we get only talking points and empty rhetoric. Despite how he frames his essay, he never actually tells us what he would do if he were in charge of American atheism. He just criticizes what others are doing. One suspects that he, like so many critics of the New Atheists, don’t actually have any constructive political strategy. To judge from their writing their main agenda has more to do with preserving their own self-rightousness and feelings of superiority.

Discovery Channel backs down; will show global-warming episode after all

December 7, 2011 • 5:46 am

About two weeks ago I noted that the American Discovery Channel had purchased six of the seven segments of David Attenborough’s wonderful BBC One documentary, “Frozen Planet.” Tellingly, the unbought episode dealt with anthropogenic global warming and its devastating effect on polar life.  When I and other readers complained about this, the Discovery Channel dissimulated, saying that “the stories, messages and essence of all of the BBC’s seven episodes will be represented throughout the truly landmark series.”

Well, we weren’t the only ones to complain.  According to various sources, including Britain’s Telegraph and the American site MediaMatters, Discovery has backed down and will show the last episode after all.  Undoubtedly viewer complaints are the reason, particularly a petition by change.org that garnered nearly 84,000 signatures.  But our little bit may have helped, too.

A lot of people are going to watch this show, which airs in the U.S. in March. I only hope that the Telegraph’s assessment of this episode proves correct:

The airing of the final episode of Frozen Planet will have a huge impact on the ongoing debate about global warming.

Attenborough, after all, is seen as a reliable, trustworthy, and avuncular figure, not a tree-hugging firebrand. His opinion on this may do for global warming what Walter Cronkite’s opposition to the Vietnam war did to American feelings about our futile involvement in that conflict.

Discovery still seems to be spin-doctoring a bit, though.  MediaMatters reports:

Discovery had previously said they would make sure to include some discussion of climate change in the other episodes, which trace the exceptional seasonal cycle in the Arctic and Antarctica. But Dr. Mark Brandon, who served as an academic consultant on the series, said that  it’s important to put climate change information in a separate installment to make clear “the difference between the largest seasonal change on the planet and the observations of longer term change.”

Expect a cautious treatment of climate change in the episode. In a May hearing of the House of Lords, Attenborough — previously a skeptic of manmade climate change — said of Frozen Planet:

“I don’t believe it’s controversial, the only controversial element in climate change is to what degree it’s anthropocentric, what degree humans have been responsible, but the facts of climate change are scientifically established facts and I don’t think we go beyond that.”

Dr. Brandon has also indicated that the episode will not focus on the human influence on climate:

“If you were to imagine an episode where people just talked about, you know, humans are doing this, humans are doing that, that wouldn’t fit in with the rest of the story. What would make perfect sense if you’re telling the story of the polar regions is to talk about how they’re changing in the context of the animals and the environments that you’ve shown through the previous six hours of episodes.”

Brandon’s last sentence is pure weaselling. He sounds not like a scientist, but a politician—his incoherence resembles that of Sarah Palin. (Brandon is a lecturer in environmental science at the Open University.)

The “controversial” last episode, “On thin ice,” will air in the UK at 9 pm on BBC One today (and will be repeated on Sunday), so you Brits be sure to see it and report back.

h/t: Nick, Grania

Why Don’t You Do Right?

December 7, 2011 • 4:14 am

“Why don’t you do right?” a pop standard with blues overtones, was written in 1936 by the black bluesman Kansas Joe McCoy. Curiously, it was first recorded as “The Weed Smoker’s Dream” by McCoy’s band, the Harlem Hamfats.

The classic version is by Peggy Lee, which she performs here with Benny Goodman and his band.  She doesn’t get to sing the whole song (go here for a full performance), but Goodman, as usual, wails on the clarinet.

The Wikipedia description of the song is pretty funny, as it’s absolutely straightfaced:

The song tells the narrative of a woman who is complaining about her partner’s apparent financial insolvency. She states that he was financially well off in 1922, but now has nothing. She claims it is because he wasted it on other women, and that these lovers will no longer show any interest in him now that he’s poor. She claims that he tricked her into a relationship where all he has to offer her is ‘a drink of gin’. She ends each verse asking why the man doesn’t ‘do right’ by her, and then throws him out, insisting that he go earn a living in order to support her.

You might remember that Jessica Rabbit did a steaming animated version of the song in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” Hard to believe that pathbreaking movie is now 23 years old!

Some dinosaurs ate birds

December 6, 2011 • 12:53 pm

Hot off the presses from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we have a paper in which a theropod dinosur, Microraptor gui (a feathered dino closely related to the ancestor of modern birds) was found with a bird in its stomach.  M. gui is famous for being a “four-winged” dino that had all four limbs feathered but probably didn’t fly.

I’ll present the results without comment, except for a brief note at the end.

The fossil and schematic diagram (click to enlarge):

Fig. 1. Photograph (A) and line drawing (B) of IVPP V17972A. Anatomical abbreviations: ald, alular digit; cav, caudal vertebrae; cev, cervical vertebrae; den, dentary; fe, femur; fur, furcula; hum, humerus; hy, hyoid bones; ili, ilium; int, integument; isc, ischium; mad, major digit; mid, minor digit; mt, metatarsals; pb, pubis; rad, radius; tb, tibia; thv, thoracic vertebrae; ul, ulna.
Fig. 2. Detail line drawing of stomach contents preserved in IVPP V17972A. Anatomical abbreviation not listed in Fig. 1: tmt, tarsometatarsus. (Scale bar, 10 mm.)

What does it mean?  M. gui probably couldn’t fly (but might have glided), yet it clearly spent time in the trees preying at least partly on flying birds.  This lends some support to the “arboreal” (top-down) scenario for the origin of flight, whereby flight originated from tree-dwelling theropod dinosaurs as a modification of wings used for gliding and controlling descent.  The other hypothesis, the “cursorial” (bottom-up) hypothesis, whereby flight evolved from feathered dinos running on the ground and flapping their proto-wings, perhaps to aid running, jumping and gathering food, isn’t really supported by this paper, but it isn’t ruled out, either.

For more, see the paper here.

Sean Carroll on free will

December 6, 2011 • 9:35 am

Physicist Sean Carroll has picked up the gauntlet dropped by Massimo and me, and has a nice post up on Cosmic Variance about determinism and its connection with free will: “On determinism.”  Sean, of course, knows a ton more about physics than either of us, and his take is well worth reading.  Here are some of the points he makes:

  • All of our actions must obey the laws of physics.  All of us agree with that, of course, but he realizes that this raises a question, “What room, then, for free choice?”
  • Some people assert that classical mechanics may not be deterministic, though Sean says, “I personally don’t find the examples that impressive.”
  • Conversely, quantum mechanics (QM) may be deterministic. It’s not deterministic under the bizarre Copenhagen interpretation, but is deterministic under the even more bizarre many-worlds hypothesis, in which all possible outcomes of quantum “indeterminacy” are actually realized in different universes (so there may be an infinite number of universes!).  I was surprised to learn that Carroll adheres to the many-worlds interpretation of QM, which is a form of physical determinism.
  • Carroll isn’t clear about whether “the lack of determinism in QM [if it’s indeed probabilistic] plays any role at all in our everyday lives.”  I, too, was dubious about that, although I can see how, as some readers have suggested, indeterminacy could have real effects on us, for example in creating mutations that affect our heredity or, somatically, causing cancer.
  • The idea of chaos is irrelevant to this discussion, because, as I’ve pointed out as well, chaos theory is not probabilistic but deterministic. It affects predictability, since we can’t know things to such a precise level, but still allows results to be completely predetermined by initial conditions.

Of course, whether the laws of physics are deterministic or probabilistic is, to me, irrelevant to whether there’s free will, which in my take means that we can override the laws of physics with some intangible “will” that allows us to make different decisions given identical configurations of the molecules of the universe. That kind of dualism is palpable nonsense, of course, which is why I think the commonsense notion of free will is wrong.  As Carroll notes:

We can imagine four different possibilities: determinism + free will, indeterminism + free will, determinism + no free will, and indeterminism + no free will. All of these are logically possible, and in fact beliefs that some people actually hold! Bringing determinism into discussions of free will is a red herring . . .

A better question is, if we choose to think of human beings as collections of atoms and particles evolving according to the laws of physics, is such a description accurate and complete? Or is there something about human consciousness — some strong sense of “free will” — that allows us to deviate from the predictions that such a purely mechanistic model would make?

If that’s your definition of free will, then it doesn’t matter whether the laws of physics are deterministic or not — all that matters is that there are laws. If the atoms and particles that make up human beings obey those laws, there is no free will in this strong sense; if there is such a notion of free will, the laws are violated. In particular, if you want to use the lack of determinism in quantum mechanics to make room for supra-physical human volition (or, for that matter, occasional interventions by God in the course of biological evolution, as Francis Collins believes), then let’s be clear: you are not making use of the rules of quantum mechanics, you are simply violating them. Quantum mechanics doesn’t say “we don’t know what’s going to happen, but maybe our ineffable spirit energies are secretly making the choices”; it says “the probability of an outcome is the modulus squared of the quantum amplitude,” full stop. Just because there are probabilities doesn’t mean there is room for free will in that sense.

But Carroll himself doesn’t adhere to this form of incompatibilism.  He opts instead to redefine free will so it’s compatible with the laws of physics:

On the other hand, if you use a weak sense of free will, along the lines of “a useful theory of macroscopic human behavior models people as rational agents capable of making choices,” then free will is completely compatible with the underlying laws of physics, whether they are deterministic or not. That is the (fairly standard) compatibilist position, as defended by me in Free Will is as Real as Baseball. I would argue that this is the most useful notion of free will, the one people have in mind as they contemplate whether to go right to law school or spend a year hiking through Europe. It is not so weak as to be tautological: we could imagine a universe in which there were simple robust future boundary conditions, such that a model of rational agents would not be sufficient to describe the world. E.g. a world in which there were accurate prophesies of the future: “You will grow up to marry a handsome prince.” (Like it or not.) For better or for worse, that’s not the world we live in. What happens to you in the future is a combination of choices you make and forces well beyond your control — make the best of it!

With all due respect to Sean, whom I like a lot, I think this is a bit of a cop-out.  What he seems to mean here is that “we can act as if we and others have choices, though we really don’t, because what we ‘choose’ is determined not by our will but by the laws of physics.”  Yes, that’s useful, I suppose, but I think he’s wrong in saying that “a model of rational agents” accurately describes our world.  What does that mean?  Do people always act rationally?  That depends on your definition of “rational,” I think, and he doesn’t define it.  If by “rational,” Sean means “according to the laws of physics,” then his conception does become tautological.  But of course one can make useful models, as do economists, assuming that most people act rationally—given that you specify the meaning of “rational.”

Finally, it may be irrelevant whether or not determinism affects our conception of “free will,” for we—as did Carroll—can always define free will so that it’s independent of determinism.  But the question of how deterministic our actions really are remains vitally important.  It’s important in our conception of how we dispense justice and hold people responsible for their actions.  It’s important for many religious people as well, for whom the absence of determinism is pivotal for issues about salvation.  Maybe philosophers and scientists know that there’s no dualism, but it’s important for us to get that message out to the general public, if for no other reason than it dispels the idea that there are supernatural forces like ESP and “souls” that can affect our fate.

In the end, everything must obey the laws of physics, whether they be deterministic or probabilistic.  All else is commentary.

Reader discovers world’s first night-blooming orchid (and other cool species)

December 6, 2011 • 7:38 am

Reader André Schuiteman, who works at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, is part of a team that has discovered and described the world’s first night-blooming orchid.  The species, Bulbophyllum nocturnum from New Guinea, is described (along with other species) in a new paper in The Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society (reference below). André wrote me:

I think the plants I study (mainly orchids from Southeast Asia) qualify for coolness, and I’m also a faithful, no, make that loyal, reader of your pseudoblog. Recently, I was involved in the description of the first night-flowering orchid known to science, which has generated quite a bit of publicity in recent days.

Please google ‘Bulbophyllum nocturnum‘ in case you missed it, or check out one of these links (here and here).

Now orchids are known that flower over long periods, including during the night.  The famous Angraecum sesquipedale of Madagascar, also known as “Darwin’s orchid,” is pollinated at night by a moth. Readers may know the story of this species: it has an extraordinarily long nectar spur—27-43 cm (10.6-17 inches). Allow me a brief digression to describe it.

The spur contains nectar at the bottom, which attracts pollinators. But to pollinate the orchid, those pollinators must have a tongue long enough to extend the whole length of the spur, allowing the orchid’s pollen sacs (pollinia) to touch the pollinator’s head or body and be detached from the flower.  Early biologists theorized that the complexity of this orchid required a divine creator (an early instance of ID!), but Darwin theorized in his orchid book that the long nectar spurs suggested an unknown pollinator with a long tongue.  Here’s the flower:

Photo courtesy Hawaiian Tropical Botanical Garden

And indeed, a pollinator, the moth Xanthopan morgani, was discovered in 1903. As Wikipedia notes: “The moth approaches the flower to ascertain by scent whether or not it is the correct orchid species. Then the moth backs up over a foot and unrolls its proboscis, then flies forward, inserting it into the orchid’s spur.”

The flower’s strong scent is produced only at night, and that is when the flower is pollinated.  But the flowers last several days, blooming during the day as well. Here’s the moth, with that long proboscis unrolled:

The new orchid described by Schuiteman et al., however, blooms only at night, at least as judged from its behavior in the Leiden University greenhouses, where the flowers open at about 10 p.m. but wither and die by 10 the next morning (no blooming has been observed in the wild).  Here’s the new night-bloomer:

Bulbophyllum nocturnum Credit Andre Schuiteman

Note the long appendages that dangle from the flower and move freely even in the slightest breeze; here’s a closeup:

Bulbophyllum nocturnum detail Credit Andre Schuiteman

Schuiteman et al. don’t know what these structures are for, but raise the intriguing possibility that they mimic the fruiting bodies of slime molds.  The dangly bits of B. nocturnum, for example, look like the fruiting bodies of Stemonitis pallida:

Stemonitis pallida

It’s possible, though of course highly speculative, that these appendages attract flies that feed on slime mold fruiting bodies (there are old reports that the flowers of related species have a fungus-like smell), and deceive the flies into pollinating them. This idea isn’t too far-fetched, as of course lots of deceptive flower morphologies are known in orchids (some mimic bees, fooling the males into trying to copulate with the flowers as a way to get the flower pollinated).

André also sent me pictures of many other new species in the genus. He adds:

This species belongs to a group of generally rare and bizarre species known as the section Epicrianthes of the genus Bulbophyllum (the largest orchid genus, with about 2000 species). These are little known even to orchid specialists, so I thought you might be interested to show some of them on your website. I attach pictures of 8 species, 5 of which were only described during the last 6 years, and only one more than 30 years ago. In my opinion these orchids are fascinating and deserve to be better known.

Here are some of them.

Bulbophyllum cimicinum Credit Andre Schuiteman

This species, too, has dangly bits that look like fruiting slime molds. Here’s one fungus that B. cimicinum may be mimicking:

Acyria nutans
Bulbophyllum macneiceae Credit Peter Jongejan
Bulbophyllum macrorhopalon Credit Andre Schuiteman
Bulbophyllum tarantula Credit Ed de Vogel
Bulbophyllum tindemansianum Credit Andre Schuiteman
Bulbophyllum johannuli Credit Peter Jongejan

The weird shape of many of these flowers remains to be explained. Perhaps some of them mimic other species, or are devices to release scent.

Many thanks to André for corresponding with me and sending the photos.

___________

Schuiteman, A., J. Jan Vermeulen, E. De Vogel and A. Vogel. 2011.Nocturne for an unknown pollinator:  first-description of a night-flowering orchid (Bulbophyllum nocturnum). Botanical J. Linn. Soc. 167:344-350.

Beyond the sea

December 6, 2011 • 5:00 am

I feel like posting a few pieces of music this week.

To my mind, Bobby Darin was one of the most underrated talents in the pop music business. He not only had a unique singing style (remember “Mack the Knife”?), but was also a great songwriter during the Brill Building years of rock and roll.  And he was a creditable actor, too, winning a Golden Globe for his performance in the movie “Come September“.

Darin’s biography on Wikipedia is of great interest to those who remember him. I didn’t know, for instance, that his romance with fellow singer Connie Francis was busted up by Francis’s Italian father wielding a shotgun (Darin later married Sandra Dee of “Gidget” fame). He died from heart problems at only 37, a great loss to popular music.

Here’s Darin doing a live performance of one of my favorite pop songs (the excuse for this post), “Beyond the Sea” (the tune is taken from a French song, “La Mer,” which had completely different words). You’ll like the music, but you may dislike his patter (I love it). He was a consummate entertainer.

Listen carefully to the arrangement of this song (and the Spacey version below): it’s terrific, with an almost Basie-like interposition of the horns. Note the bit from the old Cab Calloway song, “Blue Serge Suit.”  At 5:17 Darin notes that he’s 37 years old. I believe this performance was recorded on April 27, 1973; Darin died on December 20 of that year.

Kevin Spacey played Darin in a forgettable movie also called “Beyond the Sea.” But Spacey’s physical resemblance to Darin is astonishing, and what you might not know is that Spacey is a damn good singer, too.  Both qualities are on display in this live performance of the eponymous song.  Note that Spacey is introduced by Katie Couric, who does a twirl with him halfway through the song.

If you want to see a younger Darin singing this song live, go here.