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.
Over at the Browser‘s Five Books, site, Richard Wiseman, a professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, is interviewed about the paranormal and recommends five books (as well as his own) debunking that species of woo:
How important is it to debunk this stuff? Why not humour the people who believe in ghosts and UFOs?
Well it’s up to people what they believe. My feeling is that they’re bombarded with pro-paranormal information, whether it’s from psychic hotlines or broadcasters putting out ghost shows, or in magazines and newspapers. The books we’re talking about and my book Paranormality really just say to people, “Here’s the other side of the equation – at least give it a try before you decide this stuff definitely exists.” I think that’s really important, because certainly when it comes to psychics and mediums people allow them to have a massive influence over their lives. They don’t understand the tricks of the trade. It’s very important to be an informed consumer.
He also refuses to distinguish religious claims from other brands of the paranormal:
Randi also puts religious miracles – the virgin birth, the parting of the Red Sea – in more or less the same basket. Should miracles be treated in the same way that the paranormal is?
Good question. If there’s some evidential side to it. If someone is just saying “I believe in God and can’t offer evidence for that”, it is faith and that’s fine. There’s nothing science or psychology can do with that. But as soon as they say “I’ve produced this twinket from the Gods” or “I can part the seas” or “I can cure illness” – as soon as there’s some sort of physical manifestation of that belief – then scientists and psychologists can do some business. Again the results will be the same as the other kind of psychic testing – that people don’t have these abilities.
I’d add “priests” to the list of people who claim that they have paranormal abilities: after all, they claim to be able to forgive you of your sins, and to tell you what you need to do to avoid hell and get to heaven.
I’ve read only two of the books Wiseman recommends, but it looks like a good list for those skeptics (and I think they’re somewhat misguided) who prefer to fight against spoon-bending, ESP, and homeopathy instead of religion.
In March, reader Linda Grilli Calhoun sent us a largesse of kittehs: four of them, all from a single litter, and all black. Linda raises goats, and the cats get their milk.
I got these kittens at five weeks old. They were orphaned at ten days, and bottle-raised on goat milk from my dairy. This photo was taken at six months old. They arranged themselves on my tack box one morning while I was milking, and stayed in this position long enough for my husband to get a camera and catch them sitting there. I think the odds of trying to pose them like this are roughly the same as winning the lottery.
They are now eleven months old, and bring a dollop of joy to every day.
Left to right: Barney, Bibiana, Ebony, Bailey. “The Fearsome Foursome” [JAC: all but Barney are female]
At my request, she added a bit more information and a few recent pictures:
They were a year old 06/01/2011.
The girls have all done very well. Barney had a brush with death the first week in June, but he survived and recovered, thanks to one of my vets who jumped in and saved him. He brought in a dead baby squirrel, and a few days later came down with tularemia – fever, vomiting, dehydration. Fortunately we got it before it spread to his lungs. He spent a night in the clinic, and then had to be isolated for a week here before he was allowed back in with his sisters. He lost a bunch of weight, but has gained it back, and then some. It was pretty scary.
The Fearsome Foursome are, of course, loving being dairy cats. They get milk on their crackers every day, and always want more. My husband put in a cat door between the heated and unheated areas of the barn, so they are able to come in and get warm whenever they want.
Here they are getting their goat milk and “crackers”:
Linda also sent a picture of one of her goats, a very short-eared type called the LaMancha breed. She has 31 of them, and their relationship with the Fearsome Foursome is amiable:
My market is primarily animal consumption. I sell milk to a grade A dairy for them to feed to their kids instead of replacer so that they can use their milk for product. There are also a couple of local zoos that use my milk to feed orphans. The local vets have my number, too, so if something is orphaned or rejected I can supply milk for those babies.
My kids are all hand-raised. They don’t nurse their dams, but are fed pasteurized milk out of feeder buckets. This makes them very tame and tractable and easy to work with, so that if you go up to the fence they will all come running. They know their names, too. If I go to the gate and call, the right one comes.
The goats and the cats get along with each other pretty well. I told you about my cat that lived to be 23 years old. She was completely bonded with the goats. She would sit with them in the kidding pens when they were in labor, and more than once I mistook her for a newborn kid. Once I came home on a cold November day to find two of my milkers in the yard lying back-to-back with the cat lying on top of them. All three were sound asleep.
Today’s New York Times has a “name that scientist” quiz, with ten faces and a choice of four names to go with each face. I got nine of the ten, and I kicked myself for missing one. I expect you to get at least eight of them, for nearly all are very well known.
And here are two harder ones from me—who are they and why are they famous? Don’t look at the comments till you’ve given it the old college try.
I have to say that the photo of scientist #2 above reminds me of Harry Houdini:
Here are the four parts of the Stephen Hawking Episode of “Curiosity: the Questions of Life,” shown last night on the Discovery Channel. The title is “Did God create the universe?” Now if that were the only question, it would be the world’s shortest program, consisting of Hawking uttering one two-letter word.
I haven’t yet watched this, nor have I seen the post-show “curiosity conversation” with Sean Carroll, John Haught and Paul Davies, which isn’t yet online. I’ll put it up when it appears (see Carroll’s post-production remarks here).
If I had to defend myself against all the religious loons who go after me on the internet, I’d never get my day job done. And one of the most prominent wackos, Denyse O’Leary of Uncommon Descent, has just gone after me for criticizing Texas Governor Rick Perry’s big prayer rally. Fortunately, I have good allies like Ed Brayton, who saves me trouble by defending me against O’Leary’s nonsense.
In his latest post at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Brayton points out that O’Leary uses counterevidence from the wrong country (Canada), wrongly claims that Muslims are turning America’s schools into sharia schools, and then gets the First Amendment completely wrong.
I appreciate Ed’s support, but wonder if someone as inconsequential and mush-brained as O’Leary is really worth bothering with.
In yesterday’s New York Times, columnist Frank Bruni bemoans the ubiquity of unfounded belief in a piece called “True believers, all of us.” Criticizing Rick Perry’s Christian Prayerfest for its reliance on magical thinking, he adds that that thinking isn’t limited to religion:
Seeking relief from the country’s woes through a louder, more ardent appeal to God strikes us as too much hope invested in too magical a solution. It suspends disbelief and defies rigorous reason.
But if we stick with this honesty thing, don’t we also have to admit that to varying degrees and with varying stakes, there’s magical thinking in secular life, and that it springs from a similar yearning for easy, all-encompassing answers? Didn’t the debt-ceiling showdown show us that? . . .
Faith-based is right. We all have our religions, all of which exert a special pull — and draw special fervor — when apprehension runs high and confusion deep, as they do now. And if yours isn’t a balanced-budget amendment and a government as lean as Christian Bale in one of his extreme-acting roles, it might well be a big fat binge of Keynesian stimulus spending. Liberals think magically, too, becoming so attached to a certain approach that they wind up advocating it less as option than as panacea.
He goes on to criticize the Head Start project (which according to a recent study produced few benefits for its participants), the policies of corporations, and even the reliance of baseball on statistics—the new “sabermetrics” approach.
Bruni’s right to decry policies enacted without supporting evidence, as well as their persistence in the face of counterevidence. Those are, of course, aspects of religion. But one can’t claim that every government policy is a complete shot in the dark. Medicare, of course, was enacted that way, as well as Obamacare, but in such cases we rely on reasoned judgment, and the odds are that giving medical care to people who lack it will help them. Whether alternative policies might provide better care is, of course, another question, but we can’t simply enact one big policy after another and then judge their results post facto.
But at least Bruni admits that religion is useless in the financial crisis we face now:
To get us out of this mess, we need a full range of extant remedies, a tireless search for new ones and the nimbleness and open-mindedness to evaluate progress dispassionately and adapt our strategy accordingly. Faith and prayer just won’t cut it. In fact, they’ll get in the way.
Neurosurgeon Jonathan T. Pararajasingham has put up a great resource: two videos of 100 renowned academics explaining why they don’t believe in a god or an afterlife. Most are scientists; many are Nobel Laureates.
Each video is a bit longer than half an hour. I’ve put in bold the names of those people whose statements I found most interesting. It’s worth spending an hour on this, if for no other reason than to feel good about being in such smart and articulate company. One bizarre and unconscionable aspect: only five of the respondents—Rebecca Goldstein, Mahzarin Banaji, Dame Carolyn Humphrey, Patricia Churchland, and Carolyn Porco—are women.
Part 1:
Speakers in order of appearance:
1. Lawrence Krauss, World-Renowned Physicist
2. Robert Coleman Richardson, Nobel Laureate in Physics 3. Richard Feynman, World-Renowned Physicist, Nobel Laureate in Physics
4. Simon Blackburn, Cambridge Professor of Philosophy 5. Colin Blakemore, World-Renowned Oxford Professor of Neuroscience
6. Steven Pinker, World-Renowned Harvard Professor of Psychology
7. Alan Guth, World-Renowned MIT Professor of Physics
8. Noam Chomsky, World-Renowned MIT Professor of Linguistics
9. Nicolaas Bloembergen, Nobel Laureate in Physics 10. Peter Atkins, World-Renowned Oxford Professor of Chemistry 11. Oliver Sacks, World-Renowned Neurologist, Columbia University
12. Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal
13. Sir John Gurdon, Pioneering Developmental Biologist, Cambridge 14. Sir Bertrand Russell, World-Renowned Philosopher, Nobel Laureate
15. Stephen Hawking, World-Renowned Cambridge Theoretical Physicist
16. Riccardo Giacconi, Nobel Laureate in Physics
17. Ned Block, NYU Professor of Philosophy
18. Gerard ‘t Hooft, Nobel Laureate in Physics
19. Marcus du Sautoy, Oxford Professor of Mathematics
20. James Watson, Co-discoverer of DNA, Nobel Laureate 21. Colin McGinn, Professor of Philosophy, Miami University
22. Sir Patrick Bateson, Cambridge Professor of Ethology 23. Sir David Attenborough, World-Renowned Broadcaster and Naturalist 24. Martinus Veltman, Nobel Laureate in Physics
25. Pascal Boyer, Professor of Anthropology
26. Partha Dasgupta, Cambridge Professor of Economics
27. AC Grayling, Birkbeck Professor of Philosophy
28. Ivar Giaever, Nobel Laureate in Physics 29. John Searle, Berkeley Professor of Philosophy
30. Brian Cox, Particle Physicist (Large Hadron Collider, CERN)
31. Herbert Kroemer, Nobel Laureate in Physics
32. Rebecca Goldstein, Professor of Philosophy
33. Michael Tooley, Professor of Philosophy, Colorado 34. Sir Harold Kroto, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
35. Leonard Susskind, Stanford Professor of Theoretical Physics 36. Quentin Skinner, Professor of History (Cambridge)
37. Theodor W. Hänsch, Nobel Laureate in Physics 38. Mark Balaguer, CSU Professor of Philosophy
39. Richard Ernst, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
40. Alan Macfarlane, Cambridge Professor of Anthropology 41. Professor Neil deGrasse Tyson, Princeton Research Scientist
42. Douglas Osheroff, Nobel Laureate in Physics
43. Hubert Dreyfus, Berkeley Professor of Philosophy
44. Lord Colin Renfrew, World-Renowned Archaeologist, Cambridge 45. Carl Sagan, World-Renowned Astronomer 46. Peter Singer, World-Renowned Bioethicist, Princeton
47. Rudolph Marcus, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
48. Robert Foley, Cambridge Professor of Human Evolution 49. Daniel Dennett, Tufts Professor of Philosophy 50. Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in Physics
Part 2:
51. Frank Wilczek, Nobel Laureate in Physics, MIT
52. VS Ramachandran, World-Renowned Neuroscientist, UC San Diego
53. Bruce C. Murray, Caltech Professor Emeritus of Planetary Science
54. Sir Raymond Firth, World-Renowned Anthropologist, LSE
55. Alva Noë, Berkeley Professor of Philosophy 56. Alan Dundes, World Expert in Folklore, Berkeley 57. Massimo Pigliucci, Professor of Philosophy, CUNY
58. Bede Rundle, Oxford Professor of Philosophy
59. Sir Richard Friend, Cambridge Professor of Physics 60. George Lakoff, Berkeley Professor of Linguistics
61. Sir John Sulston, Nobel Laureate in Physiology/Medicine
62. Shelley Kagan, Yale Professor of Philosophy
63. Roy J. Glauber, Nobel Laureate in Physics
64. Lewis Wolpert, Emeritus Professor of Biology, UCL
65. Mahzarin Banaji, Harvard Professor of Social Ethics
66. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Professor of Practical Ethics, Duke University
67. Richard Dawkins, Oxford Evolutionary Biologist 68. Bruce Hood, Professor of Experimental Psychology, Bristol
69. Marvin Minsky, Artificial Intelligence Research Pioneer, MIT
70. Herman Philipse, Professor of Philosophy, Utrecht University
71. Michio Kaku, CUNY Professor of Theoretical Physics
72. Dame Caroline Humphrey, Cambridge Professor of Anthropology
73. Max Tegmark, World-Renowned Cosmologist, MIT
74. David Parkin, Oxford Professor of Anthropology 75. Robert Price, Professor of Theology and Biblical Criticism
76. Jonathan Haidt, Professor of Psychology, Virginia
77. Max Perutz, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
78. Rodolfo Llinas, Professor of Neuroscience, New York
79. Dan McKenzie, World-Renowned Geophysicist, Cambridge 80. Patricia Churchland, Professor of Philosophy, UC San Diego 81. Sean Carroll, Caltech Theoretical Cosmologist
82. Alexander Vilenkin, World-Renowned Theoretical Physicist
83. PZ Myers, Professor of Biology, Minnesota
84. Haroon Ahmed, Prominent Cambridge Scientist (Microelectronics)
85. David Sloan Wilson, Professor of Biology and Anthropology, SUNY 86. Bart Ehrman, Professor of Religious Studies, UNC
87. Seth Lloyd, Pioneer of Quantum Computing, MIT
88. Dan Brown, Fellow in Organic Chemistry, Cambridge 89. Victor Stenger, Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Hawaii
90. Simon Schaffer, Cambridge Professor of the History of Science
91. Saul Perlmutter World-Renowned Astrophysicist, Berkeley
92. Lee Silver, Princeton Professor of Molecular Biology
93. Barry Supple, Emeritus Professor of Economic History, Cambridge 94. Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Professor of Law
95. John Raymond Smythies, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatric Research
96. Chris Hann, Max Planck Institute For Social Anthropology
97. David Gross, Nobel Laureate in Physics 98. Ronald de Sousa, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Toronto
99. Robert Hinde, Emeritus Professor of Zoology, Cambridge
100. Carolyn Porco, NASA Planetary Scientist
h/t: The post’s title is purloined from Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk’s excellent book, 50 Voices of Disbelief
One of my favorite songs by Benny Goodman’s small groups, this one features Charlie Christian on the electric guitar, Lionel Hampton on vibes, and the great Fletcher Henderson on piano.
