Three astronomers nab Nobels

October 4, 2011 • 6:15 am

According to the New York Times, three astronomers were awarded the Nobel Prize for physics this morning:

 Three astronomers won the Nobel prize on Tuesday for discovering that the universe is apparently being blown apart by a mysterious force that cosmologists now call dark energy. They are Saul Perlmutter of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., Brian P. Schmidt of the Australian National University in Weston Creek, Australia, and Adam G. Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

They were the leaders of two competing teams of astronomers who were trying to use the exploding stars known as Type 1a supernovae as cosmic lighthouses to measure the expansion of the universe. They were hoping to measure how fast the universe, which has been expanding since its fiery birth in the Big Bang 14 billion years ago, was slowing down, and thus to find out if its ultimate fate was to fall back together in what is called a Big Crunch or not. Instead, they reported in 1998, it was inexplicably speeding up, a conclusion that nobody would have accepted if not for the fact that both groups wound up with the same answer.

I always thought the prizes were divided evenly between multiple recipients, but I see that they’re divided evenly between projects.

Tomorrow comes the chemistry award, on Thursday the literature prize, and the peace prize on Friday.  Be sure to enter our annual guess-the-literature-winner contest (an autographed copy of WEIT is my prize), by posting your guess here.

Templeton continues to conflate science and religion

October 4, 2011 • 5:36 am

After the John Templeton foundation awarded the million-pound Templeton Prize to two respectable scientists in successive years (Francisco Ayala and Martin Rees), many people were fooled into thinking that the organization had abandoned—or at least muted—its penchant for fusing science and faith.

Not a chance.  They’re still up to their woo-ish activities. The only difference is that they’re a bit more surreptitious about it.  Here are three recent instances:

1.  The most egregious is the “Test of Faith” project, sponsored by the reprehensible Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. Faraday is affiliated with Cambridge University in England, was founded in 2006 by a $2,000,000 grant from the Templeton Foundation, and seems to spend most of its time and money reconciling science and faith. Templeton continues to give it money.

On October 29, for example, Faraday is hosting a panel discussion on “Science and religion: friends or foes“?  (Guess what answer they’ll come up with!), and on the same page you’ll see an announcement of a conference in November on “Science and religion in the XXI century: dialogue or confrontation?”.   Faraday published accommodationist papers and funds projects that are largely about theology rather than science.  It’s to the eternal discredit of Cambridge University that they’re affiliated with this group.

At any rate, Faraday’s “Test of Faith” project was separately funded by Templeton.  What is it? It appears to be a full-court press—books, movies, and lectures—on how science is completely compatible with faith. Their aim is to fill what they see as “a huge need for accessible materials on science and Christianity for everyone who is interested in these issues.”

Test of Faith tours around America giving talks at various churches and religious colleges.  (If you’re in Fairfax, Virginia, you can catch the act tonight!) They have an edited book, Test of Faith, with chapters from various accommodationists, including Francis Collins. (You can download Collins’s chapter here, which is pretty much a precis of his book The Language of God, showing how and why he came to Jesus. Collins was supposed to stop writing this kind of stuff when he became director of the National Institutes of Health, but persists.)  The book comes with study materials so you can have an entire course on why science and faith are pals.

And they have an eponymous movie, described like this:

Test of FAITH: Does Science threaten belief in God?

The relationship between science and faith is often represented as a battleground.  The claim is that science has pushed God into the margins.  But is the truth more complex?  Talking to leading scientist-believers, we probe the issues at the heart of this debate.  Has science really murdered God?  Or is the God question being redefined in new ways by science?  Does the possibility of a Creator remain an ineradicable challenge?

3 x 30 minute episodes:

Beyond Reason? (Science, faith and the universe)

An Accident in the Making? (Creation, evolution and the environment)

Is there anybody there? (The brain, freewill and ethics)

Science blogger Brian Switek from Laelaps reviewed the film when it came out two years ago, and wasn’t impressed:

After watching the three-part series I became convinced that the Faraday Institute is not so much concerned with reconciling science and religion as finding a refuge for God in the moments before the Big Bang, the machinations of evolution, and inside our own brains. Even though the film explicitly criticizes advocates of intelligent design for using “God of the Gaps” thinking, or trying to make room for a deity in natural phenomena that are not yet well-understood, the series frequently employs the same technique to give hope to believers that God truly is out there somewhere. If there is something we do know, God is behind it, and if there is something we don’t know then that might be a sign of direct action by Providence.

I’m often criticized for not joining the ranks of scientists who speak at—and are paid to attend—Templeton-sponsored events like the World Science Festival.  If you want to know why, just have a gander at the Test of Faith website.  I won’t take money from, or participate in, ventures that are in any way connected with such an odious project.  Science and faith are as incompatible as cats and dogs, and you won’t turn them into friends by locking them together in a room.

2.  Templeton continues to sponsor faith-and-religion initiatives advertised in major venues. Here’s an ad for full year theologians-and-scientists-are-friends fellowships at Princeton, advertised in the latest Times Literary Supplement (note the participation of Cambridge paleontologist Simon Conway Morris):

Here’s another from the same issue of the TLS, advertising 1.5 million dollars in Templeton Grants (disguised under the aegis of  “The Historical Society”) for projects showing what a beneficial effect religion has had on human society:

And perhaps the most insidious: a combination of grants and essay projects on “The uses and abuses of biology,” also funded by Templeton. Its aims?

The aim of the interdisciplinary Programme is to investigate contemporary non-scientific uses and abuses of biological thought (beneficial, benign or negative) in the domains of philosophy, the social sciences, the media, religion and politics. Collaborative projects between those engaged in the biological sciences and investigators from other disciplines are particularly welcomed.

True, biologists aren’t perfect, and biology has sometimes been abused (for example, in support of eugenics), but this project seems like nothing more than a religiously-based attempt to promote religion by denigrating science—an increasingly common tactic of accommodationists.

You scientists who take Templeton money:  please be aware that when one of the Templeton Octopus’s tentacles hands you a generous stipend, the other tentacles are giving even more money to religion.

3.  Finally, an example of the “sing for your supper” aspect of Templeton.  When you take money from them, you are automatically installed in their stable of prize horses, and they can use your good name (if you’re a reputable academic) to lend credence to their more disreputable projects.  Over at their Big Questions website, Templeton has an interview with sociologist Elaine Ecklund, who has gotten tremendous mileage out of her Templeton-funded grant to investigation religion and spirituality among American scientists. Her interview is the required postprandial litany for Templeton-funded academics.

Ecklund again touts how amazingly “spiritual” scientists are—a finding that Templeton, of course, considers most congenial—and argues that her findings foster comity between science and faith:

If you do care about dialogue, I do think of these kinds of findings—that there is spirituality present in the groups that you would least expect it to be present in—as a way of fostering that dialogue. So religious people who are spiritual can say to scientists who are atheists who are spiritual, “Let’s talk about the differences and the commonalities in how we see spirituality.” It gives some kind of initial common ground rather than starting out a dialogue by focusing just on differences.

As always, Ecklund is disingenuous.  In a guest post on this site last month, reader Sigmund took apart Ecklund’s claims that scientists themselves brought up their spirituality, something she implies in her Big Questions inteview.  It turns out, though, that Ecklund herself introduced the term to the interviewed scientists.  As Sigmund noted in an email to me, “It’s no wonder the scientists spend so much of their time with her telling her that they don’t believe in traditional spirituality when she seems to have spent the entire interview trying to ram it down their throats.”

And so the Templeton juggernaut lumbers on, fueled by its enormous cash reserves and dispensing $70 million dollars in grants each year.  Most of those grants are designed to meet Templeton’s goals: reconciling science and faith.

Those scientists who take money from Templeton, using as an excuse that “well, my project is simply good, straight science” should be aware of what Templeton is doing with its other hand.  They should also realize that even if they’re doing good, pure science, Templeton will use their names to promote their other religious activities.

Templeton is a Janus organiation, with one face turned toward science and the other having its gaze firmly fixed on God.

h/t: Matthew Cobb

Uncle Karl continues his transit to the Dark Side

October 3, 2011 • 11:22 am

Now safely out of BioLogos and Eastern Nazarene College, Karl Giberson is slowly starting to go after evangelical Christianity, its stupidity, and its unholy alliance with politics.  In a piece in today’s Guardian (“Growing up in Michele Bachmann’s world“), Karl bemoans the anti-science culture of Christianity exemplified by Michele Bachmann and Ken Ham, though Giberson still touts people like Francis Collins as examplars of rationality:

There are, fortunately, many evangelical scholars – National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis Collins and historian Mark Noll come to mind – who are quietly raising alarms about all this dangerous anti-intellectualism, warning us about populist gurus who are marketing a “Christianised” version of knowledge that, on closer examination, turns out to be neither Christian nor knowledge.

Unfortunately, millions of evangelicals – and this would include much of the political base being courted by the GOP presidential candidates as well as the candidates themselves – are trapped in an alternative “parallel culture” with its own standards of truth. The intellectual authorities mentioned above – with the exception of Schaeffer who died in 1984 – all have media empires that spread their particular version of the gospel. Millions of dollars every year support the production of books, DVDs, radio shows, school curricula, and other educational materials. Very few evangelicals grow up without hearing some trusted authority – perhaps even with a PhD – tell them that the age of the Earth is an “open question”. Or that scientists are questioning evolution. Or that gays are getting spiritual help and becoming straight. Or that secular historians are taking religion out of US history.

Historian Randall Stephens and I have been interested in this alternative knowledge world for years. We grew up in it and emerged from it unscathed – as near as we can tell – but many of our evangelical students over the years have arrived at college with “truths” from this alternative knowledge world written on their hearts. Harvard University Press has just published our sympathetic insiders’ analysis of the parallel culture of American evangelicalism. Titled The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age, we look at how evangelical knowledge structures are exploited by media savvy authorities like those mentioned above.

And, as we watch the GOP candidates enthusiastically promote discredited ideas from this alternative knowledge world, we worry.

Oh, Karl!  If you could only go just a few “discredited ideas from this alternative knowledge world” farther!  Two of these are God and Jesus.

And do realize that Collins himself purveys a “dangerous form of anti-intellectualism.” Recall that he finds evidence in science for God, and one bit of that evidence is the “Moral Law”: the fact that humans show a sense of right and wrong.  Science is making inroads on that, and Collins should simply stop going around proclaiming that morality (whose rudiments we see in our primate relatives) constitutes evidence for God. Yes, our refined moral sense is unique, but so is our ability to write. Is that evidence for God, too?

And recall as well that Collins saw the rape of his daughter as a tool that God gave him to learn forgiveness.  Let me recount how, in his book The Language of God, Collins rationalized this horrible act as a gift from above:

As much as we would like to avoid those experiences, without them would we not be shallow, self-centered creatures who would ultimately lose all sense of nobility or striving for the betterment of others?

.  . . In my case, I can see, albeit dimly, that my daughter’s rape was a challenge for me to try to learn the real meaning of forgiveness in a terribly wrenching circumstance. In complete honesty, I am still working on that.

The notion that God can work through adversity is not an easy concept, and can find firm anchor only in a worldview that embraces a spiritual perspective. The principle of growth through suffering is, in fact, nearly universal in the world’s great faiths.

Nothing more need be said except that Collins’s faith has led him into the most disgusting of post facto rationalizations.  His God is truly a odious one, and he has no business foisting it on the world.

Perhaps you readers can help persuade Karl to become a full apostate instead of straddling the fence.

Dowd on the evils of a Catholic Supreme Court

October 3, 2011 • 8:45 am

Maureen Dowd’s columns are usually too twee and cutesy  for my taste, but her piece in yesterday’s New York Times, “Cooperation in Evil” is serious: it’s about the Catholic-ization of the United States Supreme Court and all the ill it bodes for our country.

The problem of course, is that religion poisons everything it touches, for the faithful think they not only have a handle on truth, but that they get that truth straight from God. This makes them more assured, and hence more dangerous, than those who get their opinions from secular reason.

At any rate, the odious Antonin Scalia, who seems to show no shame about parading his pro-religion prejudices in public, said this at a speech at Duquesne University:

“Our educational establishment these days, while so tolerant of and even insistent on diversity in all other aspects of life, seems bent on eliminating the diversity of moral judgment, particularly moral judgment based on religious views,” the devout Catholic said.

I didn’t realize that not only six of the nine Justices are Catholics, but they go together to a traditional Mass at a nearby Cathedral.  Well, going to Mass is their right, but going together makes a statement about religion that, to a country ruled by the First Amendment (freedom of religion), is pretty clear.

As the Supreme Court gets ready to go into session on Monday, its six Catholic justices were set to merge church and state by attending the traditional first-Sunday-in-October Red Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. (It’s hard to believe there’s no Protestant on the Supreme Court.) Through the years, the presiding clergy have aimed their homilies against abortion, gay marriage and “humanism.” Justices of other faiths have attended; but as Dahlia Lithwick wrote in Slate, “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stopped attending the Red Mass altogether after hearing her very first homily, which she has described as ‘outrageously anti-abortion.’ ”

As Dowd relates, Pope John Paul II was opposed to the death penalty, and even Pope Ratzi sent a letter to the state of Georgia asking, unsuccessfully, for a stay of execution of Troy Davis.  So maybe the Church has it right on this one, but Scalia dissents:

In his Duquesne speech, Scalia said: “If I thought that Catholic doctrine held the death penalty to be immoral, I would resign. I could not be a part of a system that imposes it.”

Well the Church sort of has, and Scalia’s butt is still on the bench.  Dowd wonders, rhetorically, whether Scalia is “cooperating in evil.”  The answer is yes, and it’s a sad situation when on some issues the American Supreme Court is even less moral than the Catholic Church.

One of this year’s Nobel Laureates died Friday

October 3, 2011 • 6:52 am

This is really sad: according to Nature and Rockefeller University, one of this year’s Nobel Laureates in Medicine and Physiology, Ralph Steinman, whose prize was announced this morning, actually died of pancreatic cancer on Friday. I’m not aware of anything like this happening before.

Steinman was only 68.  It’s not just sad that the man would have gotten such great news had he lived only three more days, but it also creates a bit of a conundrum: Nobels are not awarded posthumously. I suspect, however, that because he was alive when he was chosen, he’ll still get the formal award and that someone else will accept it in his place.  It would be churlish to deny the man, his family, and his collaborators this honor.

h/t: Dom

The best rock climber on Earth

October 3, 2011 • 5:22 am

I have to admire free-solo climbers: those courageous (some would say foolhardy) souls who tackle huge rock faces without ropes or protection. Last night’s 60 Minutes, the only television show I watch regularly, featured a segment on the best of the free climbers: Alex Honnold, a 27 year old wunderkind from California who lives in a van.

Honnold has set many free-climbing records, both first ascents and speed records. For example, he soloed the Nose of El Capitan, also in Yosemite, in a bit under six hours; it takes regular rock climbers two to four days to do the same route. There is absolutely no room for error in this endeavor: if you fall, you die.

You should definitely watch the 13-minute 60 Minutes segment, featuring the first free-solo climb of the 1600-foot north face of Sentinel Rock in Yosemite, here. Even if you don’t like rock climbing, this video will make you gasp.  The show set up several cameras, including several affixed to the rock itself, to record Honnold’s ascent.

This is Sentinel Rock:

Here’s a video of Honnold free-soloing El Capitan.  He climbed this and Half Dome on the same day.

I suppose if I had my life to live over again, I’d climb big mountains as an avocation; it will be one of my unrealized life’s dreams to summit Everest (I’ve stood at its base twice and had that regret).  But I’d never do anything like this.

Live near Chicago and want a cat?

October 3, 2011 • 4:28 am

Here’s a lovely cat that’s up for adoption in this area:

The ex-owner says:

Hi Dr. Coyne,

I love your website (not blog), especially the cats.  Sadly, we had to return our 1-year old female tortie-tabby to the Animal Welfare League Shelter in Chicago Ridge due to a health issue in the family.  My daughter is heart-broken and I would pay the adoption fee and be forever grateful for someone to adopt her and let my daughter know that she is going to be ok.  She is spayed, and is very sociable.  Her name is Terra.

Thank you,

Mary Ellen

cell: 708-289-4447

I’ll provide a bookish reward if you successfully adopt this lovely animal.

First Nobel of the year goes to three for work on immunology (and a contest)

October 3, 2011 • 3:01 am

Damn, didn’t get it again this year!  It’s Nobel season, and half an hour ago the Medicine and Physiology prize was announced: it will be shared by three scientists, the maximum number allowed, for work on both innate and adaptive immunity.  According to the New York Times:

Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries about the immune system that opened new avenues for the treatment and prevention of infectious illnesses and cancer.

American Bruce Beutler and French scientist Jules Hoffmann shared the 10 million-kronor ($1.5 million) award with Canadian-born Ralph Steinman, the Nobel committee at Stockholm’s Karolinska institute said.

Beutler and Hoffmann were cited for their discoveries in the 1990s of receptor proteins that can recognize bacteria and other microorganisms as they enter the body, and activate the first line of defense in the immune system, known as innate immunity.

Steinman was honored for the discovery two decades earlier of dendritic cells, which help regulate adaptive immunity, the next stage of the immune system’s response, when the invading microorganisms are purged from the body.

For more on Steinman and what he got his Prize for, see the Planet of the Apes blog at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The prizes for physics will be announced tomorrow, chemistry on Wednesday, literature on Thursday, and the peace prize on Friday.  The greatly debased economics “award” (not a real Nobel) will be announced Oct. 10.

Last year we had a contest for this, and we’ll do it again this year.

Guess who will win the Nobel for literature and win an autographed paperback of WEIT.  Just be the first person posting below with the correct winner, and you’ll nab a book.  Contest closes midnight Eastern Standard Time (US) on Wednesday.  Only one guess per person, please.