A murmuration of starlings

November 4, 2011 • 2:18 pm

Finally something nice from PuffHo: a murmuration of starlings, an example of animal behavior that always leaves me breathless. (I’ve seen this, albeit in less spectacular form, in Scotland.)

Starlings engage in this group flight when getting ready to roost at night (they do so collectively). You can read more about the biology of this behavior in an article in Audubon noted by reader Julien Rousseau.

From the PuffHo post:

In the video below, Vimeo user Sophie Windsor Clive captured an incredible example of the event on the River Shannon in Ireland. Clive and her companion,Liberty Smith, just seem to happen on the event as they were canoeing across. It was an amazing treat neither of them ever expected to see.

There are lots of videos of this phenomenon on YouTube: here are three good ones.  And of course this kind of flocking has evolved convergently in other species. Here’s a video of a very similar behavior in fish.

Q&A added to “The Video”

November 4, 2011 • 9:12 am

The debate video between John Haught and me in Kentucky has now been supplemented with the question-and-answer session. This is a stand-alone video of about 28 minutes, and I’ve embedded it below.

My favorite bit is between 24:30 and the end.

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UPDATE (and a note): Over at Sandwalk, Larry Moran highlights some of Haught’s testimony during the Dover Trial, in particular his characterization of some evolutionary biologists he considers undesirable “materialists,” and of the place of science in understanding the universe.

Larry asks his readers whether people like me should refrain from going after Haught’s theology because he was on our side at the Dover trial. My response is that my distaste for creationism in public schools doesn’t force me to bite my tongue when I hear pernicious and unsupported religious doctrine.  After all, religion—with Catholicism one of its most dangerous forms—does far more damage as a fulmnating illness than does its single symptom of creationism.  With the Catholic Church complicit in the spread of AIDS in Africa, in the sexual abuse of children, and in the torturing of adherents with thoughts of hell, we’re supposed to forget all that and give praise for Dover?

In his testimony, Ceiling Cat help us, Haught talks about the damn teapot and “explanatory pluralism” again (the man’s mind is apparently able to hold only one metaphor), and about the layers of explanations that include God.

I hadn’t read Haught’s testimony at Dover before, and I have to say that I find some of the things he says in Larry’s excerpt rather disturbing. I see Haught’s testimony as vindicating superstition. Go see for yourself.

Texas reporter gets flak for interviewing 9-year-old freethinker

November 4, 2011 • 4:41 am

Six days ago I put up the transcript of an interview of Mason Crumpacker (the 9-year-old freethinker who had a felicitious meeting in Texas with Christopher Hitchens) conducted by Dallas Morning News reporter Todd Robberson.  While Robberson got some criticism for this, there was also lots of support, something that’s heartening in a religious state like Texas. But some of the readers here, too, doubted that Mason could really have said the things she did, or suspected that she’d really been indoctrinated by her parents.

In a followup piece,”What’s the harm in interviewing a 9-year-old?” Robberson (who, by the way, won a Pulitzer Prize last year), explains why he wrote the piece (ten to one he’s gotten flak from the editors) and asserts that Mason’s statements were real and unprompted. Here’s an excerpt:

 Some think she has been indoctrinated by her parents and that she’s simply mouthing everything that they’ve told her to say. Every child is influenced by his or her parents. That’s natural and unavoidable. But being allowed to figure things out, without being immersed in religious doctrine at an early age, strikes me as a healthy approach. Mason doesn’t reject all religious thought. She says she wants to think about it before she decides. What’s wrong with that?

I promise you, everything she said in that interview was the result of her own impromptu thinking. I deliberately tried to throw her curveball questions just to see if she could handle them, and she handled the questions amazingly. Her parents did not intervene except for the few times when Mason seemed overwhelmed and buried her face in her hands out of apparent frustration that she couldn’t express herself the way she wanted to. Her parents told her she was doing fine and to keep going. I did the same. But nobody prompted her to say anything.

My father in law and one other reader asked if this was a spoof of some kind. They just couldn’t believe that a 9-year-old could recount the various stages of evolution in such intricate scientific detail, then translate it all into French. I assure everyone, this was no spoof. It was the real deal.

For those of you who were outraged at what Mason had to say, please remember the venue of this interview. We didn’t publish it in Neighbors.go. We published it in Points. The whole idea behind Points is to present unusual points of view and out-of-the-box thinking. We want to stimulate discussion and offer new perspectives. Maybe Mason isn’t the first person on the planet to question religion or the existence of God, but she’s pretty rare among 9-year-olds for her ability to do it so eloquently. She absolutely belonged in Points.

I like this guy.  He’s been at the paper for five years, but I wonder how long he’ll stay in Texas.

Oh, and one byproduct: actress Martha Plimpton put this up on Twitter:

 

What good is theology?

November 4, 2011 • 4:23 am

I’ve always thought that theology was unique because the number of people engaged in the discipline outnumbers the subject of study by N – 1, where N is the number of people engaged in the discipline.  Richard Dawkins, however, makes the point (and I agree) that theology isn’t a discipline.  Yes, Biblical scholarship is, but not theology.

This is five years old but still relevant; it’s from Dawkins’s 2006 piece, “The Emptiness of Theology” in Free Inquiry.

What has theology ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has theology ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? I have listened to theologians, read them, debated against them. I have never heard any of them ever say anything of the smallest use, anything that was not either platitudinously obvious or downright false. If all the achievements of scientists were wiped out tomorrow, there would be no doctors but witch doctors, no transport faster than horses, no computers, no printed books, no agriculture beyond subsistence peasant farming. If all the achievements of theologians were wiped out tomorrow, would anyone notice the smallest difference? Even the bad achievements of scientists, the bombs, and sonar-guided whaling vessels work! The achievements of theologians don’t do anything, don’t affect anything, don’t mean anything. What makes anyone think that “theology” is a subject at all?

I wish I had written that. If that, along with the constant demand for evidence, isn’t one of the unifying tenets of New Atheism, it should be.

And expect to see a number of theologians—and secular philosophers like Michel Ruse—rushing frantically to inform us of the many contributions of theology.

Teh critics

November 3, 2011 • 12:31 pm

Given my day job and the time I spend dealing with matters at this WEBSITE, I’m no longer able to keep up with, much less answer, everyone who wants to pwn me.  For the record, , and so you can keep up with other folks’ criticisms of what I write, here’s what’s gone up in the past fewdays:

Larry Tanner at Textuality, an atheist, takes issue with my criticism of the Jersey Shore conference.

I don’t see why Coyne judges these topics to be “shallow.” I have some sympathy with the rest of his complaint, that academic pop-culture studies are “too infested with postmodern obscurantism, and … replace more substantive material that can actually make students think deeply about things”–but focusing on Jersey Shore and the like can indeed generate substantive material that helps students think deeply about lots of things, not least about the things all around them on campus, in the clubs, and on their computers.

It could, but I doubt that it does.  But of one thing I’m sure: reading The Brothers Karamazov will make them think even more deeply. 

And, like a dog returning to its vomit, Michel Ruse is back again. Over at the Chronicle of Higher Education, he acccuses me, and other scientists, of being shallow about philosophy. 

Let me say that I don’t mind scientists talking about philosophy. I am glad that they do. I just wish that they would do us the courtesy of taking seriously what we are trying to say. It is not a subject that can be done over a few drinks in the faculty club at the end of a hard day in the lab. The questions are important and they are tough. I think science has much to say to philosophy. I showed that in my recent discussion of the foundations of ethics. But it doesn’t have everything to say to philosophy and the questions science doesn’t tackle need tackling.

Take just one example in which I have been much involved, the teaching of evolution in state schools in the U.S. It needs knowledge of science. It needs knowledge of the law. It needs knowledge of theology. It also needs knowledge of philosophy. What is science and is evolutionary theory science? What is religion and is Creation Science religion? Do the two overlap? Is Intelligent Design Theory science or religion? Should parents have the right in a democracy to decide on curriculum content? And so the philosophical questions continue.

It is bad enough that so many American politicians are philistines when it comes to the humanities. Do scientists have to follow suit?

I’ve managed to teach evolution for nearly thirty years, and yes, you do need to know science, but philosophy and theology?  Not so much.  The other stuff he talks about is more relevant to fighting creationism than teaching evolution.  But Ruse will be Ruse.

David Klinghoffer of The Discovery Institute “analyzes” the debate in “Haught v. Coyne: The deebate of the century (not).”  He’s got a tough job: he has to simultaneously dismiss both me and a notable theologian (the latter because Haught went after Intelligent Design at the Dover trial).  Though Klinghoffer appears to be Jewish, his criticism seems suffused with a bit of anti-Semitism:

 I don’t know what Haught — who I noticed stands about a head taller than Coyne — is so bent out of shape about. Coyne is a little cartoon Jewish atheist who makes Woody Allen look deep. At one point he calls himself an “apostate Hebrew.” Oh please. Everything he says is vulgar — not in the sense of potty talk but just so simpleminded and crude.

  • Science, he says, “codifies common sense” in contrast to religion, which tells you “what you want to be true.”
  • “If you’re smart you know that there’s no such thing as angels, but there is such a thing as evolution.”
  • “The Bible could have told us about electrons and evolution and quantum mechanics but it didn’t.”
  • On Adam and Eve: “These people ate a fruit from a talking snake.”
  • On Haught’s theology which Coyne describes as holding that God did whatever he did with regard to life and the universe — and that’s unclear from Haught’s own characterization — so as to have a drama to watch and while away the time: “I don’t know why any omnipotent being would ever be bored. Ha ha!”

And more of this nature. But who would have expected anything better, given Coyne’s blogging on religion? He illustrates the point that only the quite rare and special self-described atheist — someone who’s got a genuine feel for the faith he rejects — deserves to be called an atheist, rather than our simply dismissing him as an ignoramus.

I stand by what I said.  What Klinghoffer singles out as jokes are really lighthearted ways of conveying deadly serious points: the Bible is a man-made work of its time, the Genesis story is patently ludicrous, and Haught’s story of God’s creation as a great “drama” is laughable.  And does Klinghoffer really think there are angels?

It’s very strange that all this criticism is levelled at a talk in which I think I bested a sophisticated theologian. If I can do that with the “Woody Allen”-like statements above, then all it shows is that sophisticated theology ain’t so sophisticated.  Is Klinghoffer’s theology any better? Does he believe in talking snakes and angels?

So, according to Klinghoffer, what did Haught do wrong? Not much, really, except that he erred in expecting that I’d respect his religious views—even more so because he was an ally in our battle against intelligent design.

The episode, I think, shows us the pain that many theistic evolutionists must feel. Here they are, loyally denouncing ideas like intelligent design that confront Darwinian materialism on the latter’s own scientific turf. What a wonderful bargain that must have seemed to them at one time. Simply surrendering to Darwin and the most prestigious ideas in the culture was supposed to win them the benefit of not having to spend time weighing the scientific evidence on evolution for themselves, a project that also entailed the risk that they might arrive at an inconvenient conclusion on the question. Someone like Haught thereby freed himself up to spend that much more time on the subject that really interested him, his theological study and writing.

However the other party in the bargain didn’t keep what the TEs assumed was a promise: to accord them respect and honor in exchange for their not questioning evolutionary theory. In Haught’s “Open Letter” to Coyne you sense the grief of someone who, after selling something of himself, believes he got gypped.

There’s probably some truth in this, but Klinghoffer is merely gloating about Haught’s fate.  And that gloating (which the DI has perfected to an art) doesn’t give intelligent design one more shred of credibility than it had before.  What the Discovery Institute doesn’t seem to have realized is that they’re not going to get intelligent design accepted simply by carping at its critics.  They have to produce some credible science, and they haven’t.  They’re paid just to sneer.

Chopra and Bill O’Reilly join forces, go after atheism and evolution

November 3, 2011 • 7:38 am

This is a good chance to see two completely different species of nutjob unite against a common enemy: Richard Dawkins.  It’s WooMeister Deepak and Bill O’Reilly, a match made in hell, joining forces to attack the character of a man of impeccable character.  They also manage to get in a few licks against evolution.

Last month Bill O’Reilly went after Richard Dawkins, arguing that Dawkins’s children’s book, The Magic of Reality, was mere atheistic propaganda designed to brainwash tots. Now O’Reilly has brought Deepak on his show for a show of anti-Dawkins support:

Chopra, who has made the subject spirituality his life’s work, has a new book out called War of the Worldviews: Science vs. Spirituality. “So what do you say to a guy like Dawkins?” O’Reilly wanted to know, before asking if Chopra had ever spoken with Dawkins face-to-face. “Oh, yes,” Chopra replied. “He ambushed me when I was at Oxford. He used a subterfuge. Channel 4 called me, said ‘We want to do an interview,’ I went to the interview… and it was him!”

O’Reilly had one question: “Why didn’t you kick his butt?”

I am so looking forward to Chopra’s book (not!).

You can watch O’Reilly’s five-minute interview of Chopra here (I can’t embed it).

On it, Deepak says, “He [Dawkins] uses his scientific credentials to camouflage his bigotry.”  O’Reilly is shocked that Dawkins sees both O’Reilly and Deepak as “idiots,” and points out that many fine scientists are religious.

O’Reilly asks Chopra whether he believes in a deity, and Chopra gives a hilarious answer, asserting that science has shown that “the laws of physics themselves preclude us from intellectually getting in touch with The Source.  You have to go beyond the intellect—you have to listen to the heart. The heart has reasons that reason doesn’t know.”  A deepity!

I guess the laws of physics don’t apply to the heart.

Chopra hedges on God a bit, but affirms that “I think there is an active source —an intelligent source—that is omnipresent. omnipotent, omniscient. . . and that we have a connection to that, and that we have free will, too.”

The topic turns briefly to evolution, and O’Reilly argues that “intelligent design does not contradict science, and science has never been to manufacture one single human cell, have they?” Deepak seems to agree that this is evidence against evolution, and says “whatever has been created comes from intelligence that is connected to the source of intelligence.”

I really have avoided learning anything about Chopra, so unctuous has he been in the snippets I’ve seen. I can’t believe he’s gotten rich on such pap, but such is my country.  If Kim Kardashian can make $18 million for a fake wedding, why can’t Chopra get rich by actually doing something, odious as it is?

The video!

November 2, 2011 • 1:58 pm

UPDATE 3: The people at Kentucky have informed me that the Q&A stuff will be added to the video tonight. They’re working hard on getting together a high-quality and complete video, and my thanks to those hard-working folks. Meanwhile, just today the Vimeo link had gotten 16,400 hits by 3 pm EST.

And over at Choice in Dying, Eric MacDonald has a long and wonderfully thoughtful analysis of both the debate and Haught’s “explanation”: “The tempest in John Haught’s teapot.”

 

UPDATE 2:  I’ve been told that the question and answer session will also be added to the video. Praise Ceiling Cat!  I’ll keep you informed.

 

UPDATE:  The Powerpoint slides have been added to the video site, which has now been moved to the Gaines Center website. You’ll have to download the Powerpoints separately, but I recommend doing that and following them along with the talks.

I’ve updated the link below to reflect the new location. But there are several interesting additions to the Gaines site. Not only is there a link to my own website, but to Haught’s letter to me as well.  Best of all, there’s a statement from the Provost of the University of Kentucky, an estimable man whom I met at dinner:

“The Bale-Boone Symposium series has a rich tradition of providing an open and frank forum for a broad range of compelling issues, ranging from legal and medical ethics to the place of poetry in our culture. This year’s session regarding the compatibility of religion and science was no exception. It led to not only a robust –and even contentious — debate between two distinguished scholars, but a conversation that continued long afterward among the participants and those who attended. That speaks to the heart of what both The Gaines Center and the University of Kentucky hope to foster – a deep dialogue regarding issues past, present and future that impact us all. With that commitment to open and ongoing dialogue in mind, the attached link contains the video of the session, along with continued communication between the two participants afterward.”

– Kumble Subbaswamy, provost

Now where did that come from?  Could it reflect the fact that several of my readers—and I as well—wrote to the Provost, asking him to help release the video?

Good for you, Dr. Subbaswamy! If Drs. Haught and Rabel had only adhered to the principles of open discourse you set forth, this whole mess wouldn’t have happened.

_______________

The Gaines Center sure didn’t waste any time: the talks that John Haught and I gave in Lexington on the compatibility of science and faith are now online.

They’re here. John goes first, then I speak, and there is an audience Q&A, most of which seems to be missing from the video.

Judge for yourself whether Haught’s contentions hold water.

Sadly, the Powerpoint slides that accompanied both of our talks aren’t shown, but the organizers are working on a professional version with the slides. I’ll put that up when it’s done. But if you really must have the slides, just shoot me an email (I can provide only my set, of course).

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you sophisticated theology.