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.
I didn’t realize how zealous the Catholic Church was in guarding its crackers. I guess that communion wafers, before they’re blessed, are just crackers, but once they’re blessed all bets are off. (By the way, a judicious bit of Googling reveals that the consecration of the wafers, and their transubstantiation into the body of Jesus, occurs during the mass, when the priest holds up the crackers and says, “Hoc est corpus” [“this is my body’}. One story goes, though it may be aprocryphal, that this is the source of the magician’s phrase, “Hocus pocus.”)
Anyway, according to Thursday’s issue of The Oklahoman, Catholics regard their Jesus-body wafers so highly that when one was taken to be used in a Satanic black mass, the Church filed a lawsuit to get it back (my emphasis):
The Catholic Church on Thursday retrieved a communion wafer that a satanist planned to use in a “black Mass” next month at Civic Center Music Hall.
The wafer was turned over a day after Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul S. Coakley filed a lawsuit seeking its protection and restoration to the Church.
“I am relieved that we have been able to secure the return of the sacred Host, and that we have prevented its desecration as part of a planned satanic ritual,” Coakley said in a statement issued by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.
. . . The leader of an Oklahoma City satanist group, Adam Daniels, plans to stage a black Mass on Sept. 21 in a small basement theater at the Civic Center.
The event is to include live music and the “exorcism” of Christ’s spirit from an individual.
Daniels had said he possessed a consecrated wafer, prompting the archbishop to ask an Oklahoma County judge to issue orders to prevent its use in the ceremony.
Daniels said he turned the wafer over to an attorney in Norman, and the archdiocese said a priest picked it up Thursday afternoon.
Daniels also promised in writing not to use consecrated communion bread in his event. In exchange, the archdiocese agreed to drop the lawsuit.
“We couldn’t be happier,” said Mike Caspino, the lead attorney for the Catholic Church. “This is a victory for decency, a victory for all people of faith.”
That makes me laugh. A victory! (And, of course, some extra dosh for Mike Caspino.) When are we going to start regarding the term “people of faith” as an insult rather than a virtue? After all, “people of faith” is equivalent to “people of superstition.”
Question for readers: although it’s not illegal to steal a wafer once it’s been given away, was taking it for use in a Black Mass a rotten thing to do? I go back and forth on this, but, given that burning an American flag is for many people the equivalent act, and yet is meaningful and protected speech, I can’t criticize the purloined wafer too strongly. After all, one could consider this protected criticism of religion, since Black Masses are parodies of Catholic masses.
Reader Stephen Barnard in Idaho continues his quest for the perfect picture of a rufous hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus), one so good it could be an illustration in a bird guide. I think he’s close enough.
Every time I look at one of these things, I marvel at what natural selection can do, and I think of how, if we were there at the beginning of life, we’d never predict that a creature like this could evolve, much less be adapted to any lifestyle.
But I digress. Here are two more from Stephen:
A herd of elk [Cervus canadensis] on one of my alfalfa fields. In the first photo a Red-Tailed Hawk [Buteo jamaicensis] is in the background, and in the second a Black-billed Magpie [Pica hudsonia].
Finally, reader Mark Sturtevant continues his experiments in growing the Frankenstein of arthropods:
You may recall that I had photographed a cecropia larva that had molted from the 4th to the 5th instar. [JAC: see earlier post here.] They have now grown to a huge size (with some over 5 inches), and most are in cocoons. My time with these insects is almost over this summer. They will soon no longer need me until next year!
I had set about photographing the process of cocooning, but I had an amusing mishap. When I was just about done documenting the cocooning of this larva, another larva (who I thought was spinning a cocoon elsewhere on the branch) decided to barge in, sit on the cocoon, and start eating leaves again! They do not always commit to making a cocoon once they start, I guess.
Anyway, on a whim I stuck a mature larva of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster on it, and kept on shooting. I use some mutant stocks of Drosophila for a class that I teach. So, can you spot the ‘maggot’? I think this picture provides some sense of scale of different insects. The fruit fly larva is probably not more than 3 mm long.
Hili is showing some uncharacteristic intellectual curiosity (and Andrzej makes a pun). At any rate, do read about the Phaistos Disc (here, and here, for example), as 1) you won’t know what Hili is talking about otherwise, and 2) it’s a really cool archaeological mystery.
Hili: I’m looking at a copy of the Phaistos Disc, and I wonder how people started to write.
A. It was possibly a forgery, but it says that people started to write because they wanted to know what they could count on.
In Polish:
Hili: Patrzę na tę kopię Dysku z Fajstos i zastanawiam się jak ludzie zaczęli pisać?
Ja: To była prawdopodobnie fałszywka, ale dobrze opowiada o tym, że ludzie zaczęli pisać, bo chcieli wiedzieć na co liczyć.
Via reader Barry and a story in PuffHo, we learn that baby deer also appreciate the gastric massage. The YouTube notes tell the tale:
My buddy and I were clearing a right of way for the electric lines and came across this fawn trapped in the fall path of the tree we were about to trim. He was tangled in some thorns and was pretty shaken up after we cut him loose, so we started rubbing his belly to calm him down…. which worked a little too well, as you can see.
He followed us around the job site like a lost puppy for about an hour until I noticed a doe watching us from the hillside. Assuming this was his mother, I carried him about halfway up the hill while she watched attentively. I sat him down, he ran straight to her, and they walked off together.
On his Scientific American website Cross-Check, John Horgan interviews Carlo Rovelli, a physicist well known for his work on quantum gravity. They cover a number of topics, including whether there will soon be a “theory of everything” (Rovelli says no), the role of philosophy in physics, and the compatibility of science and religion. You can read the whole thing for yourself, but I want to highlight Rovelli’s answers in three areas.
On philosophy and physics:
Horgan: What’s your opinion of the recent philosophy-bashing by Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss and Neil deGrasse Tyson?
Rovelli: Seriously: I think they are stupid in this. I have admiration for them in other things, but here they have gone really wrong. Look: Einstein, Heisenberg, Newton, Bohr…. and many many others of the greatest scientists of all times, much greater than the names you mention, of course, read philosophy, learned from philosophy, and could have never done the great science they did without the input they got from philosophy, as they claimed repeatedly. You see: the scientists that talk philosophy down are simply superficial: they have a philosophy (usually some ill-digested mixture of Popper and Kuhn) and think that this is the “true” philosophy, and do not realize that this has limitations.
Here is an example: theoretical physics has not done great in the last decades. Why? Well, one of the reasons, I think, is that it got trapped in a wrong philosophy: the idea that you can make progress by guessing new theory and disregarding the qualitative content of previous theories. This is the physics of the “why not?” Why not studying this theory, or the other? Why not another dimension, another field, another universe? Science has never advanced in this manner in the past. Science does not advance by guessing. It advances by new data or by a deep investigation of the content and the apparent contradictions of previous empirically successful theories. Quite remarkably, the best piece of physics done by the three people you mention is Hawking’s black-hole radiation, which is exactly this. But most of current theoretical physics is not of this sort. Why? Largely because of the philosophical superficiality of the current bunch of scientists.
Like Rovelli, Sean Carroll, and (I’m forced to admit) Massimo Pigliucci, I agree that dissing philosophy in general is dumb, and that philosophy has a lot to offer science, most importantly in enforcing the rigor of our thinking. Philosophers are experts in picking out bad arguments and logical flaws, and we’d be silly not to benefit from that. They’re also good at clarifying problems. On the other hand, many things can be construed as philosophy, including lucubrations like the back-and-forth Gedankenexperiments that Einstein and Bohr had about quantum mechanics. At its boundaries, the disciplines are continuous, though philosophy by itself cannot tell us what’s true about the universe.
What I’m not sure about is whether, as Rovelli seems to hold, formal academic philosophy is crucial to physics. He certainly doesn’t give an example of that. Give me a little time, and I could construe almost any form of science, including evolutionary biology, as depending critically on philosophy, but you have to stretch the definition of “philosophy” to maintain that.
This is not, of course, to denigrate the real contributions that philosophy has made in non-scientific areas, particularly in thinking about morality. But it’s not clear to me how Hawkin’s black-hole radiation is deeply dependent on philosophy. Perhaps a reader can enlighten me. All I know is that most scientists, including those in biology, never read formal philosophy.
Rovelli: No. When we do not understand something, people are tempted to think that “some new paradigm” is needed, or a “great mystery” is there. Then we understand it, and all fog dissolves.
That’s a great answer. Nagel’s book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False—a book that provided great succor to creationists and woo-lovers—was simply dreadful: a claim that something was clearly missing from evolutionary biology, and that “something” was an unspecified teleological element (see my post on three devastating reviews of that book). There’s a lot that we don’t understand about evolution (i.e., what form of sexual selection explains sexual dimorphism in birds?), but, contra Rovelli, there’s nothing to suggest that major elements are missing evolutionary biology that have us all flummoxed.
On the existence of God:
Horgan: Do you believe in God?
Rovelli: No. But perhaps I should qualify the answer, because like this it is bit too rude and simplistic. I do not understand what “to believe in God” means. The people that “believe in God” seem like Martians to me. I do not understand them. I suppose this means that I “do not believe in God”. If the question is whether I think that there is a person who has created Heavens and Earth, and responds to our prayers, then definitely my answer is no, with much certainty.
If the question is whether I believe that “God” is a powerful something in the people, which causes a lot of disasters but also a lot of good, then of course I believe it. In fact, I am extremely curious about religion. I think that we should study what is religion much more than what is done. There is a sort of taboo in this, a sort of respect towards people who “believe in God”, which makes it difficult to understand better.
I think that viewing the “belief in God” just as a bunch of silly superstitions is wrong. The “belief in God” is one form of human religious attitude, and human religious attitude is something very general and universal about our functioning. Something which is important for man, and we have not yet understood.
This seems a bit disingenuous. It’s pretty clear what Horgan’s question meant: did Rovelli believe that some supernatural being existed, one who probably interacted with the universe? Rovelli says that he doesn’t understand what “to believe in God means,” but then he answer the question with a definitive “no.” He then moves the goalposts and says that it’s still an interesting question why people are religious. Here he conflates “belief in God” with “understanding why people are religious.” The former is indeed a bunch of silly superstitions; the latter is a perfectly valid historical and psychological endeavor. To imply that nonbelievers see the phenomenon and practice of religion as unimportant, or not worth studying as a psychological and historical curiosity, is simply misguided.
On the compatibility of science and faith:
Horgan: Are science and religion compatible?
Rovelli: Of course yes: you can be great in solving Maxwell’s equations and pray to God in the evening. But there is an unavoidable clash between science and certain religions, especially some forms of Christianity and Islam, those that pretend to be repositories of “absolute Truths.” The problem is not that scientists think they know everything. It is the opposite: scientists know that there are things we simply do not know, and naturally question those who pretend to know. Many religious people are disturbed by this, and have difficulty in coping with it. The religious person says, “I know that God has created light saying, ‘Fiat Lux.’” The scientist does not believe the story. The religious people feel threatened. And here the clash develops. But not all religions are like that. Many forms of Buddhism, for instance, have no difficulty with the continual critical attitude of science. Monotheistic religions, and in particular Islam and Christianity, are sometimes less intelligent.
I have an idea about the source of the conflict: there is beautiful research by anthropologists in Australia which shows that religious beliefs are often considered a-temporal but in reality change continuously and adapt to new conditions, new knowledge and so on. This was discovered by comparing religious beliefs held by native Australians studied by anthropologists in the thirties and, much later, in the seventies. So, in a natural situation, religious beliefs adapt to the change in man’s culture and knowledge. The problem with Islam and Christianity is that many centuries ago somebody had the idea of writing down beliefs. So now some religious people are stuck with the culture and knowledge of centuries ago. They are fish trapped in a pond of old water.
Well, if you see compatibility as the ability of human minds to do science and believe in fairy tales, then Rovelli’s right. But in those lights, science and creationism are compatible, because you can find some scientists (engineers, chemists, and so on) who are creationists. Further, the incompatibilites extend deeper than just “provisional vs. absolute” truth. Religion has no way to find truth: no way to check whether its claims, as opposed to those of other faiths, are right or wrong.
Most of the rest of the first paragraph is good; it’s useful to realize that religious people dislike science because it forces us to live with doubt, and many believers aren’t comfortable with that. (Richard Feynman particularly emphasized that difference, as in the video below) HOWEVER, although some forms of Buddhism don’t believe in a god, even some liberal sects accept the supernatural. The Dalai Lama, for instance, is always cited as being down with science, and he says in one of his books that if science disproved a tenet of Buddhism, Buddhism would have to give up that tenet. Yet Gyatso himself accepts not only reincarnation but also the “law of karma,” both of which are instances of pure, supernatural woo. And surely some polytheistic religions, like Hinduism, are just as ridden with superstition and false certainty as the monotheistic ones.
As for the continual change of some religions, that’s fine, and I didn’t know about that work in Australia. But one must realize that if religions change in such a way as to accept the findings of science, eventually they will no longer be religions, but will morph into secular humanism. Rovelli’s point about scripture forcing people to adhere to changing dogma is, however, a good one.
If you haven’t watched this wonderful clip of Feynman, one of my favorites, do so immediately:
what the hell how can a creature so beautiful can be part of evoloution have u seen how complicated these beautiful animals r so how can you think that white lions are from evolution they r made from the lord God Jesus Christ…
Well, white lions aren’t any more complicated than normal lions, or mice, for that matter. But someone this blinkered is immune to reason.
Get a restaurant to give discounts to anyone who says “god is not real” or anything blasphemous and mind your own business.
We are minding our own business, unlike those who give discounts to those who pray. People like the owner of Mary’s Diner in Winston-Salem are enforcing their religious sentiments on others. That’s against the law, by the way, “td.” And of course giving discounts to atheists is just as illegal as giving them to those who pray.
*****
Reader “Josephine Richardson,” who apparently runs the website evolutioniswrong.org, had her own theory for a biological observation I used in WEIT as evidence for evolution: the development of the vertebrate kidney. Her theory is quite amusing.
The kidneys of mammals like ourselves actually go through three stages during embryogenesis (these three stages are also seen in reptiles and birds). We begin with a pronephric kidney, which takes wastes out of the body cavity (coelom) and excretes them to the outside. In primitive fish like lampreys and hagfish, this is also the first kidney to form in embryos, and then continues on to form the adult kidney. In mammals, this kidney is, however, nonfunctional. So why does it form?
After another two weeks or so, the pronephric kidney is replaced by the embryonic mesonephric kidney, which takes wastes from the blood and excretes them to the outside through a pair of “Wolffian ducts.” This continues on to form the adult kidney in fish and amphibians, but is replaced in the bird, reptile, and mammalian embryo by yet a third kidney: the metanephric kidney, a revamped organ that also removes wastes from the blood and exxretes them through a pair of ureters.
This known to pre-Darwinian embryologists, but was explainable only by evolution: mammals, reptiles, and birds evolved from earlier animals that had different kinds of kidneys. Those kidneys still form in utero as vestigial remnants of the creatures’ ancestry (the mesonephros may have some excretory function in mammals, but the pronephros does not). Why would the creator operate this way, giving us three successive kidneys, one of which is of no use at all? The best explanation is simply that the succession of developmental stages reprises, transitorily, the genetic information of our ancestors, and in the temporal order in which that genetic information accumulated. (This is one example of “ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny,” a misunderstood concept that doesn’t always work—some stages simply don’t show up in embryos—but is sometimes seen, as in the development of kidneys.)
Another example I like to use of an embryological feature that is functionless, but serves as a marker of our ancestry, is the lanugo, a coat of hair that develops about 6 months into gestation in the human embryo, and then is shed before birth. There is of course no function for a hairy human fetus, as it’s already floating in warm fluid, and hair is useless in keeping us warm when we’re wet. The lanugo is simply a remnant of the coat of hair that our ancestors had when they were hairier primates. (Remember, we’re the only “naked ape.”) Other apes also develop that coat of hair in utero, but they keep it: young chimps, for example, are born hairy as hell. (Premature infants are sometimes covered with the lanugo, to the horror of their parents, but they quickly lose it.)
Well, this long introduction is by way of explaining Josephine Richardson’s alternative explanation. She sent a comment with her own divine explanation for bizarre features like the development of the vertebrate kidney, and tried to post it, curiously, on a “Readers’ wildlife photos” post.
Regarding your question in one of your posts as to why a creator would in human embryonic development give us three kidneys, the answer could go like this (to make a long story short, it makes more sense than yours): Since man (humans) are the crown of His creation, God mapped out his body plan or how he would function first. He subsequently proceeded to create everything else. This would mean fish, frogs, and all other living things were an after thought (they were created before man, but using the same ideas as the body plan of man). To be more clear, God created man first(by drawing him up like a dress designer or an architect), put him aside, and proceeded to create all other life forms which he presented as gifts for scientists as yourself to muse about (perhaps to keep you from being bored).
Yeah, that really makes sense! It sure explains why we have a transitory, nonfunctional prophepric kidney, and then another one, that just happens to resemble the kidney of embryonic fish and amphibians that becomes the adult kidney—before we wind up with the final kidney God gave us. Is her plan, which simply posits an unevidenced God, and then twiddles with Genesis to claim that God designed humans, but then created other stuff first before actuating our species, really parsimonious? And why would other things be designed on the ground plan of man? It’s just a mess, and it’s a testimony to the mental contortions that religious creationists go through that they see this kind of explanation as superior to that of evolution.
But wait! Ms. Richardson says she’s not a creationist! Not seeing her comment appear, she tried to post another one.
Did you get my comment on the why the Creator made our kidneys the way He did? I am not a creationist. I am a Jehovah’s Witness. Wonderful science articles can be found at http://www.jw.org. Please also read my personal website athttp://www.evolutioniswrong.org
I am currently working on new articles. Also, give me your opinion of my comments via facebook or email.My name is Josephine Richardson.
Not a creationist? Jehovah’s Witnesses are creationists! And if she’s not a creationist, what is all this business about God creating humans and designing other animals on our ground plan. Ms. Richardson is deeply, deeply confused.
If man would start with the truth of the Biblical account of creation they would be many billions of light years ahead so they can really explore the amazing truths of nature in this world!
