Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
This is the perfect song for a lazy Sunday just-finished-a-book-proposal afternoon. It’s the incomparable Nina Simone (1933-2003) singing “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” one of the mellowest of jazz ballads. You may remember this song from a Chanel No. 5 commercial featuring Carole Bouquet.
For a lolzy Claymation version with cats, go here.
One of the hallmarks of New Atheism is its repeated demand for the faithful to pony up evidence for their beliefs. Since they don’t have any, even the “sophisticated” believers are starting to openly reject the need for such evidence, which makes them look pretty dumb. The proper stance is pithily summarized by Christopher Hitchens: “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
Two articles just appeared that clearly show this “evidence-is-overrated” stand.
1. I’ve just received an advance copy of Richard’s new book, The Magic of Reality (it’s released in the U.S. October 4) and am looking forward to reading it (it’s meaty!). It’s being sold as a children’s book but is really, I think, for joint reading by parent and child, or if by children alone, by those who are at least 12. At any rate, this book is the launching pad for a conversation (moderated by Susanna Rustin) between Dawkins and Catholic writer Christine Odone at the “Comment is Free” section of the Guardian.
In a piece called “So you believe in hell?“, Susanna Rustin asks the questions and Dawkins and Odone thrash out the issues of whether and how children should be taught religion. (I didn’t previously know much about Odone, but articles like this and this convince me that she’s the British Ann Coulter.) In the piece, Odone, a Catholic, asserts her belief in transubstantiation and in reward and punishment in the afterlife. She also claims that faith isn’t dogmatic, asserting this:
You musn’t think that religion is stuck in its inquisitorial phase; religion is capable of evolution and many people of faith are filled with doubts.
But there are only two things that make religion “evolve”: scientific advances that show religious dogma to be nonsense, and advances in secular morality that force religion to play catch-up, as it has done with gay rights and gender equality. And as for those “doubts,” well many people of faith are not filled with doubts, because if Catholics were so doubtful, for example, the Church wouldn’t enforce its odious dogmas about homosexuality, contraception, divorce, and sexual behavior on its adherents.
The exchange of note is this, when they’re discussing religious assertions as metaphors:
RD: But how do you decide which bits to doubt and which bits to accept? As scientists, we do it by evidence.
CO: You can’t boil everything down to evidence!
Well, not everything, perhaps, but certainly assertions about the afterlife and whether a cracker and wine become body and blood. How can you teach that stuff to kids if there’s no stinking evidence?
2. Andrew Brown has a very confused piece at the Guardian called “Creationism explained” (an obvious riff on Pascal Boyer’s book, Religion Explained) about how the purpose of life or the universe can’t be explained by science. But of course, as one of the world’s leading faitheists, Brown claims that purpose and meaning can be detected by religious rumination, and that this is absolutely compatible with science:
But the mainstream, orthodox, Christian position is not in fact Paleyite. It doesn’t claim that the purpose of life can be discovered or shown by scientific enquiry; only that this purpose, discovered or known by revelation, is perfectly compatible with the results of science.
This is also a position which can be described as “creationist”, but I would never do so, because that muddles an enormously useful and important distinction. The orthodox Christian view cannot be refuted scientifically. It is therefore irrelevant to science classes, unlike the first sort of “creationism” which is actively hostile to science teaching.
Discovered or known by revelation? Can religious revelation really discover or know anything that is true? And are such “discoveries”, such as they are, always incompatible with science? After all, if one decides by revelation that God’s purpose is to answer supplications and prayers, then that’s something that can be tested (and has been refuted) by science. There are certain empirical consequences one expects in universes supposedly constructed for some purposes, and those consequences can be tested. Nothing that is true, except for one’s subjective feelings, can be discovered or known by revelation. One always needs stinking evidence.
Brown’s last sentences, though, takes the cake for incomprehensibility:
(My own point of view is that the question of whether the universe has a purpose is not only one we can’t answer, but one we can’t even properly frame. How on earth could we emerge from a game whose rules were comprehensible to us?)
If you can’t even frame the idea of a purpose, does religion make any sense at all? And what the deuce does he mean by the last sentence?
An old Jewish joke, which I’m allowed to relate because I’m a Jew, is this: “What’s a Jewish dilemma? Free ham.” But here’s another dilemma for many of us: praying cats.
Yes, in case you didn’t know it, when your cat is off staring into space, she’s not just chilling, or contemplating an impending nap or meal: she’s praying! Or so says Dr. Pamela Gerloff, Ed.D, woomeister, and columnist at Psychology Today. I haven’t read that magazine for years, but it seems to be going the Deepakian route, with Gerloff’s columns (she’s nicknamed “Possibility Pamela” in her profile) doing everything they can to justify a supernatural world beyond our own. I deal with that on a daily basis, but the idea of praying cats, which Gerloff floats in a piece called “When cats pray: how our feline friends uplift the world,” is simply too much (my emphasis):
The other day, as I was dusting off a little glass shelf that had been my mother’s, I inadvertently bumped one of the tiny figurines on it–one of a set of blue and white china elephants she had once given me. The disturbance sent all the beloved creatures toppling. As I juggled to keep the whole shelf from falling, I felt a flash of frustration move through me; I might have been tempted to utter a censorable word, except that just at that instant my eyes caught Miss Kitty’s. Sitting motionless on the footstool next to me, her inward gaze shifted outward ever so slightly, just enough to neutrally observe my agitated state.
Instantly, the contrast in our inner experiences became palpable to me and I had a sudden insight. “Why, she’s praying,” I thought, as my mind fell into the calm oasis of her silent meditation. In that moment I recalled something my mother had once said many years ago. It was a musing-aloud about how maybe the world seemed to be in increasingly bad shape because there were fewer and fewer monks and nuns spending time in seclusion praying.
. . . Prayer, contemplation, and meditation done for extended periods of time naturally result in increased inner peace, which then radiates outward, positively affecting the entire environment. This is what I felt in Miss Kitty. As I paused to experience the stillness in which she was immersed, an image entered my mind–an image of a global feline force that daily nourishes and sustains us all. Millions of cats throughout the world quietly doing their spiritual duty, emanating peace and contentment.
. . . Humans of the 21st century have lost much of what comes more naturally in indigenous societies that live closer to nature. As a species, we seem to have forgotten the essential spiritual practice of being, which is perhaps the highest form of prayer. Fortunately, cats haven’t forgotten, even after thousands of years of domestication. If we want to know how a “culture of being” vs. a “culture of doing” might change us, we have only to hang out with our feline friends. What happens to us when we absorb their state?
What happens when we absorb their state? We start napping 18 hours a day and demanding that others serve our needs—bringing us food and cleaning our toilets.
I look forward to Gerloff’s next piece on Feline Woo: “When cats spray: how our feline friends teach us to leave our mark on the world.”
If you want other specimens of Possibility Pamela’s ridiculous arguments at Psychology Today, try her argument against atheism in another piece:
When you have the direct experience of Oneness with all beings and all so-called “external reality”–as I and many others have had–you cannot, strictly speaking, be atheist. You know from a different way of knowing that there is something more than what can be perceived with the limited sense organs of the body and left-brain mind.
I love the “so-called ‘external reality'” bit.
Taken September 6 from my crib on the eleventh floor (click to enlarge):
Dennis Overbye has a report on the faster-than-light neutrinos in today’s New York Times. Aside from the dreadful leaden “lede” (“Once upon a time, the only thing that traveled faster than the speed of light was gossip.”*), it gives a bunch of detail not described in my previous post. Dario Autiero, team leader, gave a talk on the results (link is below) and seemed to imply that the results were pretty solid: neutrinos sent from Switzerland to Italy appeared to travel faster than light:
According to Dr. Autiero’s team, neutrinos emanating from a particle accelerator at CERN, outside Geneva, had raced to a cavern underneath Gran Sasso in Italy — a distance of 454 miles — about 60 nanoseconds faster than it would take a light beam. That amounts to a speed greater than light by about 25 parts in a million. “We cannot explain the observed effect in terms of systematic uncertainties,” Dr. Autiero told the physicists at CERN, the European organization for nuclear research. “Therefore, the measurement indicates a neutrino velocity higher than the speed of light.”
And, oh, the sweet litany of scientific doubt that accompanies such a finding (my emphasis):
“This is quite a shake-up,” said Alvaro de Rujula, a theorist at CERN. “The correct attitude is to ask oneself what went wrong.” And the assembled CERN physicists were only too happy to oblige, diving in, after Samuel C. C. Ting, an M.I.T. Nobelist in the audience, offered his congratulations for work “very carefully done.” They asked detailed questions about, among other things, how the scientists had measured the distance from CERN to Gran Sasso to what is claimed to be an accuracy of 20 centimeters, extending GPS measurements underground. Had they, for example taken into account the location of the Moon and tidal bulges in the Earth’s crust?
That reminds me of Feynman’s famous quotation about why science is like it is:
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
The article goes on to describe the experiment in detail (I haven’t checked the physics blogs, but I’m sure they do a good job, too), and reports that the purpose of the experiment was not to measure the speed of the neutrinos, but to see them change form in flight (there are three types of neutrinos):
Measuring the speed of the neutrinos was only a side ambition, explained Antonio Ereditato of the University of Bern, the head of the Opera collaboration. “Now it is becoming a main issue,” he said, adding, “we would like to see some tau neutrinos,” to appreciative laughter from the audience.
Oh, those wacky physicists! There was further criticism of the brouhaha and press-conferency nature of the announcement:
In the old days, when scientists sent around copies of journal articles and wrote letters to one another, the process of scrutiny of a controversial measurement could have happened quietly, but the Web has changed all that. Dr. Autiero’s talk at CERN and the appearance of a paper by the Opera group on the Internet Thursday night came at the end of a drumbeat of rumors and blog postings. One blog called it “Rumour of the Century.” Some physicists, inside and outside of CERN, were critical of this process, saying the laboratory was giving too much weight to a premature result by a group that was not even part of CERN. Nima Arkani-Hamed, a particle theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, said in an e-mail, “There was no need for a press release or indeed even for a scientific paper, till much more work was done. They claim that they wanted the community to scrutinize their result — well, they could have accomplished that by going around and giving talks about it.” Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director general of CERN, said in an e-mail from Spain, “I agreed to the seminar at CERN because it is the duty of a lab like CERN to give the collaboration the possibility to ask the community for scrutiny of their findings.”
Bells and whistles aside, we may be on the verge of a dramatic new era in physics, akin to Planck’s study of black-body radiation. My guess is that the faster-than-light observation is still in error, but I’d be delighted to be proven wrong (see the cartoon below).
Two other items:
1. Alert correspondent “Llwddythiw” found the webcast of the CERN talk. I haven’t yet listened to it, but here’s his report:
I came across this webcast from CERN. It’s long, nearly 2 hours, of which roughly the second half is given over to Q&A. I think it’s excellent, not only for the probing questions and good answers but simply as a clear model of the way in which the scientific investigation is being pursued
2. xkcd didn’t lose any time producing a pretty funny cartoon about the new discovery:
* This statement reminds me of an incident that happened when I was about twelve. My dad, a career Army officer in the Finance Corps (that’s where they put the Jews in those days!), collaborated on a project involving the rapid destruction of American currency. The idea was that, in those Cold War days, the Treasury should develop a way to rapidly destroy stocks of currency should the Russians invade, for the enemy could use our banknotes for their own nefarious purposes. But you can’t simply burn a tight stack of bills; it’s like trying to burn a telephone book (remember them?). Finally, a combination of chemicals and fire did the trick, reducing bills and coins to hard, gray lumps resembling cement.
The Washington Post wrote an article about it, and quoted my dad on how fast they’d managed to destroy currency: “‘The only faster way I know to get rid of money,’ said Coyne, ‘is to give it to my wife.'” My mother, needless to say, wasn’t pleased.
From Astronomy Picture of the Day comes this beautiful and prizewinning shot taken on one of the Cook Islands (be sure to click to enlarge) by Tunç Tezel (TWAN), with the following description:
From Sagittarius to Carina, the Milky Way Galaxy shines in this dark night sky above planet Earth’s lush island paradise of Mangaia. Familiar to denizens of the southern hemisphere, the gorgeous skyscape includes the bulging galactic center at the upper left and bright stars Alpha and Beta Centauri just right of center. About 10 kilometers wide, volcanic Mangaia is the southern most of the Cook Islands. Geologist estimate that at 18 million years old it is the oldest island in the Pacific Ocean. Of course, the Milky Way is somewhat older, with the galaxy’s oldest stars estimated to be over 13 billion years old. (Editors note: This image holds the distinction of being selected as winner in the Royal Greenwich Observatory’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition in the Earth and Space category.)
h/t: Diane G
Attention Melbourne residents (and that means you, Brother Blackford!): you have a chance to witness an amazing and rare feat of feline fealty. The Herald Sun reports that Graeme, a male moggie, accompanies his owner to the train station each morning and then goes back in the evening to escort her back home.
GRAEME the trainspotting cat has attained rock star status among commuters at his station.
Every morning the laid-back feline leaves home and saunters down to the platform on the Hurstbridge line to mix with travellers heading off to work
The pampered cat cannot get enough of attention, with scores of regulars calling him by name as they stop for a chat and give him a pat on the head.
Safety conscious, the sociable moggie is meticulous about using the subway to cross to the city-bound platform, rather than take a dangerous short cut across the tracks.
When the evening peak comes around, Graeme puts on an encore performance, arriving at the opposite platform in time to greet owner Nicole Weinrich as she returns home from work.“He always seems to know which train carriage I am on and will be sitting there behind the yellow line when the doors open, because he is all about safety,” Ms Weinrich said.
“He is an amazing cat.”
Here’s the video (thanks, Michael):
Read more at the link.
Now stories like these always seem dubious to me, especially when they involve faithful cats. If you live in Melbourne, and can verify this story yourself with picture or a video, I’ll send you an autographed copy of WEIT. And any ailurophile in Melbourne would want to see this in person anyway.
h/t: Rafael
A grand show indeed (click to enlarge, click again to make huge and gorgeous). The photo is by Dan Ransom (reproduced with permission), and see the comment by Michael Fisher below to see how it was made.
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ht/Favidat via Matthew Cobb
