Da roolz

April 22, 2011 • 7:27 am

Just a few notes to refresh people about policies at this website:

  1. If you’re a first-time poster, I have to approve your initial comment. This won’t necessarily be immediate, as it depends on my checking email.  After that, posting is automatic.
  2. If you have your own website, by all means give it in your comment, but not if it’s anonymous. (By this I mean don’t link to it through your name. It’s okay to link to anonymous websites in your text if they have something interesting to say.)  I don’t approve of people running “blogs” anonymously, so if you do so, please don’t link to your site.
  3. If you are religious, and profess that strongly in your post, it’s often my habit to ask you for evidence for what you believe.  (After all, I wrote a book on the evidence for evolution.)  Do not be offended at this; simply give a short list of the reasons why you’re so certain there’s a god.  And be prepared for others to dispute the evidence.
  4. Please do not tell me how to run the site.  That is, comments about “too many cats,” “too many boots,” “not enough biology,” “too much religion,” etc., are not welcome.  If you don’t like the mix of posts, simply go elsewhere.  By all means take issue with what I say, but don’t diss the mix.
  5. Please try to refrain from insulting other posters, no matter how misguided you think they are.  I don’t like name-calling, as it reduces whatever class this site has.  And while I don’t always catch it, I often send private emails to people asking them to refrain from personal insults, or reprove them on the site.
  6. If you find something that you think would interest readers, by all means send it to me.  My email is easily available via elementary Googling.  I can’t, of course, promise to use everything, but I do look at what people send me.
  7. Sometimes I miss posts, particularly ones that contain links, since those are held by WordPress.  I don’t always read every email that accompanies a post, so posts sometimes slip through the cracks.  Please don’t assume that your post was trashed, as I rarely do that (except from those sent by religious loonies or well known trolls). You might send me an email if you’re concerned.
  8. Be judicious about posting videos and very long comments.  I like good discussion, but essays are not on, particularly if you have your own website where you can post it.  Embedded videos are okay, but please think before posting: do they add to the discussion?
  9. UPDATE:  It’s a website, not a “blog”!
  10. UPDATE 2:  Due to a popular uprising, I’ve rescinded Rule 2.  For the record, though, I usually don’t approve of pseudonymous or anonymous blogging, as I think it reduces accountability for one’s views.

Finally, thanks for reading and contributing!

Why scientists believe: morality

April 22, 2011 • 5:35 am

Let’s finish up this short series with statements of faith by a few more scientists.  These come from Andrew Zak Williams’s article in the New Statesman, in which he asked public figures and scientists to explain why they believe in God.  The emphases in bold are mine.

First, Mike Hulme, professor of climate change at The University of East Anglia:

There are many reasons—lines of evidence, if you will—all of which weave together to point me in a certain direction (much as a scientist or a jury might do before reaching a considered judgement), which we call a belief.

[I believe] because there is non-trivial historical evidence that a person called Jesus of Naza­reth rose from the dead 2,000 years ago, and it just so happens that He predicted that He would . . . I believe because of the testimony of billions of believers, just a few of whom are known to me and in whom I trust (and hence trust their testimony).

I believe because of my ineradicable sense that certain things I see and hear about in the world warrant the non-arbitrary categories of “good” or “evil”. I believe because I have not discovered a better explanation of beauty, truth and love than that they emerge in a world created—willed into being—by a God who personifies beauty, truth and love.

David Myers, professor of psychology, Hope College, Michigan:

[Our] spirituality, rooted in the developing biblical wisdom and in a faith tradition that crosses the centuries, helps make sense of the universe, gives meaning to life, opens us to the transcendent, connects us in supportive communities, provides a mandate for morality and selflessness and offers hope in the face of adversity and death.

Douglas Hedley, reader in metaphysics, Clare College, Cambridge (he’s a philosopher/theologian, but we’ll dub him an honorary scientist for this post):

Do values such as truth, beauty and goodness emerge out of a contingent and meaningless substrate? Or do these values reflect a transcendent domain from which this world has emerged? I incline to the latter, and this is a major reason for my belief in God.

The common theme of these three is morality: morality must come from a “transcendent domain” of religion.  Religion gives us a “mandate for morality,” and those “non-arbitrary” distinctions between “good” and “evil” are strong arguments for God.

I’m starting to realize that for many the presence of human morality is the most powerful argument for a god.  Certainly Francis Collins, National Institutes of Health director, thinks so: he claims that there is no explanation other than God for what he calls the “Moral Law”:  the internal feeling of right and wrong we have about many acts.

Yet none of these people seem to even consider the alternative arguments for morality.  For one, many moral sentiments may have been instilled in our ancestors by natural selection (Frans de Waal has almost made a career of showing the building blocks of morality in our primate relatives), so that of course they’d feel instinctive.  Too, the faculty of reasoning about our behavior, unique among animals, combined with instruction from parents and peers, could produce equally innate feelings. After all, religion comes from instruction and tradition, not God, and yet people feel innate religious drives.  Innateness is no evidence for divinity.

There are many other counterarguments, which I’m taking up in a newspaper piece I’m writing.  If you derive morality from God, how come atheists and religious people give similar answers to moral dilemmas (the work of Marc Hauser and colleagues)?  And if morality comes from God, why has what we view as “moral” changed so much in modern times?  Most of us now feel that slavery and the subjugation of women, racial minorities and gays are immoral, but they weren’t seen that way a few centuries ago. Did God’s orders change?

And what about the “morality” of scripture? Clearly God once ordered all kinds of genocide and murder, including rape and (my favorite story) inducing a bear to murder forty-two youths for simply making fun of Elisha’s bald head (2 Kings 2:23-24).  Believers don’t really see that kind of morality (death for insulting a man of God) as mandated by scripture: we all know that they pick and choose what they see as moral from their scripture.  (It’s also obvious that different scriptures give different moralities: Muslim “morality” differs from Christian “morality”).

This picking and choosing is symptomatic of the real basis of morality: innate feelings or reasons that are logically prior to religion.  Religious people have yet to come to grips with Plato’s Euthyphro argument (originally couched in terms of piety rather than morality, but the principle is the same): we would not follow God’s “morality” if God decreed that we perform acts like taking slaves or killing the wives and children of our enemies.  That’s because we don’t really think that morality is equivalent to the dictates of God. Rather, we have an prior notion of what is moral. If you respond that God is good, and would never ask people to commit immoral acts, that too shows that you have a notion of morality that’s prior to God.  (It also shows that you haven’t read the Bible.)

This is absolutely supported by changes in morality over the centuries—changes that have not come from religious dogma or scripture, but from either science or secular morality dragging religious “morality” kicking and screaming into the modern era. (This drastic temporal change in what we feel is right and wrong is perhaps the strongest evidence that morality is not divinely decreed, but largely man-made—perhaps a social coating around a Darwinian core.)

I don’t see any way around this argument, though I’m sure clever theologians have found a way to circumvent it.  But, based on experience, I’m pretty sure their circumambulations won’t be convincing.

Now many of my readers have read far more theology than I.  So how do theologians deal with the Euthyphro argument that morality cannot come from God?

It’s incumbent on us to learn about these arguments, for the morality card is fast becoming the most popular rationale for faith.

Why scientists believe

April 21, 2011 • 9:50 am

Here’s an interesting answer to the New Statesman‘s recent query about why public figures and scientists believe in god. This answer comes from Nick Brewin, a molecular biologist at Britain’s John Innis Centre (my emphasis):

A crucial component of the question depends on the definition of “God”. As a scientist, the “God” that I believe in is not the same God(s) that I used to believe in. It is not the same God that my wife believes in; nor is it the same God that my six-year-old granddaughter believes in; nor is it the God that my brain-damaged and physically disabled brother believes in. Each person has their own concept of what gives value and purpose to their life. This concept of “God” is based on a combination of direct and indirect experience.

Humankind has become Godlike, in the sense that it has acquired the power to store and manipulate information. Language, books, computers and DNA genomics provide just a few illustrations of the amazing range of technologies at our fingertips. Was this all merely chance? Or should we try to make sense of the signs and wonders that are embedded in a “revealed religion”?

Perhaps by returning to the “faith” position of children or disabled adults, scientists can extend their own appreciation of the value and purpose of individual human existence. Science and religion are mutually complementary.

In other words, to grasp the truth of religion, you need to have an infantile or poorly functioning brain.

Another Tom Johnson: Did Dawkins call religious people “Nazis”?

April 21, 2011 • 6:56 am

There is a certain kind of atheist who never misses a chance to slander the Gnu Atheists, and the usual charges are about tone—we’re strident, arrogant, not respectful, and shout forced laughter into the faces of the faithful.

We’ve seen several of these tone trolls, including Phil Plait and Jeremy Stangroom, go after their fellow atheists on these grounds.  Invariably the instances of “stridency” turn out to be either false (as in the case of Walter Smith—the real “Tom Johnson“), or of strong criticism that barely reaches the level of invective (as in Stangroom’s pathetic—and now abandoned—attempts to show us up as evil).

We have another case.  This time the role of Tom Johnson is played by Nick Matzke, former employee of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) and now a graduate student at Berkeley.  Over at Panda’s Thumb, there’s been some discussion of a new essay that is supposed to demonstrate (it doesn’t) that Gnu Atheist invective will turn people away from science.  The original post was by Matzke, who quickly showed that he’s a nasty piece of work.  He first links to the article, which is by Chris M**ney, and then, when the predictable criticism begins, Matzke shows his true colors. (Isn’t it the case that these guys are even more uncivil than the Gnus they decry?)

First of all, please react to what Mooney is saying here, not some generalized reaction to whatever ridiculous grudge the Gnus have built up against Mooney over the years. Tell us what, specifically, you disagree with in what he wrote, and please back it up with science, like science defenders ™ are supposed to do.

I never understand the hot death people rain down on Chris Mooney for this kind of thing (*). They tend to be the same people that rain hot death on all opponents, real or imagined, all the time. You’ve got to realize, the vast majority of people out there are not committed, deliberate creationists (or climate deniers, or whatever). The vast majority of people have very vague ideas about these topics, whatever their opinions. They can be reached, but not if you lead with you are stupid liers [sic] whose religion is also a lie and by the way there’s no God, no objective meaning to life, and if you think otherwise then science is against you, it’s a package deal and you have to accept all that if you accept evolution/global warming.

I’ve done a lot of speaking to general audiences – students, civil rights groups, church groups, etc. Not once has it seemed even mildly likely that provoking a defensive reaction was a good idea. It’s only good, maybe, when you are in a shouting match on a blog or on Fox News, and even in those venues it’s extremely debatable if it does anything other than get people mad and shut down and repel the very people you would like to reach.

Reader Jolo then asks Nick about the Tom Johnson-ish church group business:

Nick, who does this? Who are these people that go into church groups and provoke defensive reactions? You would be willing to back this up with more than a general comment I assume?

Matzke responds with a pretty serious claim:

Well, I have seen Richard Dawkins address large general audiences and quite deliberately, but ridiculously, play the Nazi card against religion. It’s an instance of Godwin’s Law, and it’s no better when Dawkins does it than when anyone else does it.

Reader Chris Lawson, who’s familiar with this accusation, attacks it immediately:

Are you sure you saw that, Nick? Or did you read the news post by Barney Zwartz covering the atheist conference in Melbourne that turned out to be an egregious misquote for which Zwartz subsequently apologised but not in time to prevent it being reposted in newspapers around the world (none of which bothered to report Zwartz’s apology).

I would be impressed if you could show me a single trustworthy reference to Dawkins equating religious belief with Nazism.

Other people ask for details as as well.  What happens? The rest is silence: Nick doesn’t answer.  I suspect it’s because there was no such event (or it’s merely the one that Chris Lawson mentions), and Matzke hopes that this will blow over if he just keeps his head down and shuts up.

I won’t let him, though. Like Woody Allen with Marshall McLuhan, I happen to have Richard Dawkins right behind this sign.  I wrote to Richard and asked him if he’d ever compared religious people to Nazis. Sure enough, the only time he’s been accused of that was the incident mentioned by Chris Lawson.  And Dawkins didn’t compare religious people to Nazis—he simply used the word “Pope Nazi” to refer to Pope Pius XII, a Nazi sympathizer, since Pius’s name had temporarily slipped Richard’s memory.  With Dawkins’s permission I post his reply.

[For a full account of the incident, first read this post on the Thinkers Podium website]

The above account correctly states that I was referring to Pope Pius XII, NOT Benedict XVI. I was answering a question about the absurd Roman Catholic practice of looking for ‘miracles’ performed by dead people as evidence that they should be made saints. The question was about the Australian candidate, Mary McKillop. In addition to her I mentioned another candidate for sainthood, Pope Pius XII, except that I forgot his name and referred to him as ‘Pope Nazi’. A Catholic apologist might object that Pius XII’s Nazi sympathies can be excused on grounds of political expediency, and that therefore I was being unduly harsh in calling him ‘Pope Nazi’. It was my shorthand for  “Pope . . . I’m blocking on his name, but you know who I mean, the wartime Pope who was accused of collaboration with the nazis.”

But what is absolutely certain is that

1. I DEFINITELY meant Pius XII, not Benedict XVI. This should have been obvious to everyone who heard my speech, since Benedict XVI, being still alive, cannot be a candidate for sainthood

2. I DEFINITELY didn’t come anywhere close to equating any religion with nazism

My whole Australian speech is just posted on my website, if you want to listen to the incident. Link here. (The RD site is temporarily down, but you can also see the video here.)

So, I challenge Matzke to break his silence and either apologize, correct himself, or name any other incidents involving Nazis (since he says he’s seen Dawkins do this at “large general audiences,” which is plural).

It’s curious that these New Accommodationists are so quick to criticize us for our tone, but then adopt exactly the same tone (“hot death rain,” “ridiculous grudge”, etc.) in their criticism.  Further, they’re always weak on the facts, unable or unwilling to give specific instances of Gnu Bad Behavior.  And it’s happened again.  Like Tom Johnson, Matzke has apparently made stuff up to support his accusation. I’m starting to realize that people like him actually despise Gnu Atheists more than they do creationists.

And by their own meanness, invective, and even fabrication or gross exaggeration of incidents, these accommodationists—many who work or worked for the NCSE—have alienated a whole group of potential supporters: those who are both vocal atheists and strong supporters of evolution.  In fact, these accommodationists are even worse than Gnus, because they make up stuff.  And why behold you the mote that is in your brother’s eye, but consider not the beam that is in your own eye?

The tale of the fugitive cat

April 21, 2011 • 5:15 am

Yesterday I posted this photo, sent to us by ailurophile Richard Dawkins (I don’t know if he took it himself or found it on the internet). Note that there’s a phone number.  I asked readers if someone wouldn’t call that number and get the skinny on the fugitive cat who’s been brought to justice.

I love my readers!  One “Illinoisjoe” actually called the number and found out the story—and it’s cool, because Walter the Cat was on the lam for fourteen months! Since Illinoisjoe posted his information on the photo page itself, where nobody will see it, I’ll present it here:

I just called the number and got the dirt. Here’s what I managed to jot down:
Walter Oswald the cat was a stray adopted by Jenny. He was loved and trained by her to the point where he was even doing circus tricks. One night, when Jenny’s boyfriend Ian (the owner of the phone number and hence the interviewee) was helping a drunk friend in through the door, Walter decided to bolt despite the love and tutelage he had received there. Ian checked under the porch to no avail. It was not until a year and 2 months later that Walter was spotted hanging out with a black cat by the side of the road. Ian claims he was then going by the alias “McGyver” but I believe the name Walter has been re-instituted since he was captured three months ago. Ian (and Jenny) had no idea this picture was on the internet, but he did point me to a Youtube iphone video entitled “the last we ever saw of walter”, which definitely corroborates the “drunk friend” aspect of the story.  I promised to text Ian the link to this page, so he may be posting here soon himself!

Eaglets banded today

April 21, 2011 • 4:20 am

Remember that at 9 a.m. Eastern Time (US), which is 3 pm London time, the banding of the eagles at EagleCam will begin.  An expert climber will ascend to the nest, purloin the eaglets, and take them to the ground for banding.  They will then be returned. This should all be seen live on the site.

If you can’t get on at first, don’t despair: keep trying.  It took me about ten “refresh” clicks before I finally got on.

Big fun! I wonder what the parents will do?

UPDATE 1:  The process has begun.  They’ve set up a table below for banding the eaglets. The camera has zoomed in on it.  I suspect tree climbing will begin shortly.

UPDATE 2:   (9:25 a.m.) Someone is climbing the tree to fetch the eaglets.

UPDATE 3 (9:28 a.m.) Climber is at the nest.

UPDATE 4: (9:32 a.m.) They’re sending up a bag to put the eaglets in; they’ll be lowered to the ground for banding.

UPDATE 5: (9:47 p.m.) Julian (the eagle-grabber) is GOOD.  He’s lowered all the eaglets to the ground in bags, and now they’ll be banded.

UPDATE 6:  (10:07 a.m) The eagles are being banded, weighed, and a blood sample taken.  The others sit ignominiously on the ground like chickens.  They have no dignity.

Sin of the day: fornication

April 20, 2011 • 10:15 am

For Holy Week we have more official policy of the Catholic Church, from the Catholic Catechism:

2353. Fornication is carnal union between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman. It is gravely contrary to the dignity of persons and of human sexuality which is naturally ordered to the good of spouses and the generation and education of children. Moreover, it is a grave scandal when there is corruption of the young.

2396. Among the sins gravely contrary to chastity are masturbation, fornication, pornography, and homosexual practices.

Now we all agree that sex with very young people is indeed immoral, and it’s recognized as such by laws in many places.  But unmarried sex?  That’s not a sin, but a great blessing.  And granted, it’s doesn’t always have happy consequences, but neither does drinking wine—another great “blessing” of the world.  The sexual conjunction of two human bodies can be one of the most pleasurable and fulfilling activities of our existence, and we can thank evolution for associating it with the orgasm, a evolved neurological reaction that, to many, is the acme of human pleasure.

The Catholic Church uses sex—or rather its absence—as a way to control people, to keep them in a constant state of guilt, and to keep them coming back to the church for absolution and penance.  What better way to keep people in line than by grasping the levers of our most powerful psychological drive: sex.  By not letting people be about their sex lives, and attempting to burden sex between consenting adults with all kinds of religious freight and guilt, the Catholic church is immoral.

Remember, Catholicism’s official policy remains that you can go to hell for having unmarried and unconfessed sex.  The word “grave” is, of course, associated with mortal sin.

Some liberal church.

Scientists and public figures explain their belief

April 20, 2011 • 7:10 am

Last Sunday’s magazine in The New Statesman was about religion, and contained a long piece in which Andrew Zak Williams asked 25 prominent people to explain why they believed in God (or a spiritual God-equivalent).  I’ve been waiting patiently for the piece to come online, but I don’t think it will.  (UPDATE: Alert reader Egbert has found the responses online here; Andrew Zak Williams’s analysis of the responses is here.) Fortunately, I have a transcript of the article (some of us are participating in a future counter-piece explaining why we are atheists), which looks like this:


You can see in the picture some of the notables interviewed, but I was particularly interested in the eight scientists.  I’m always curious why someone would devote their working lives to accepting only things supported by evidence, but then reject that stance in their “spiritual” lives.  I’ve gone through all the 25 answers, and found that their reasons for belief fall into seven categories:

  1. The design in the world (including the “fine tuning” of physics) testifies to a god
  2. I was taught there was a god
  3. I had a revelation that there was a god
  4. Christ’s life proves that there was a god
  5. Religion gives me tremendous consolation
  6. Morals and purpose testify to a god
  7. The world makes sense to me only if there was a god

The two most common answers are #4 and #7.  I can at least sympathize with the “it makes sense of the world” explanation, but not so much with the “Christ’s life” explanation.  After all, there were also Mohamed, Joseph Smith, and L. Ron Hubbard.

Here’s Denis Alexander, biochemist and director of the Farady Institute for Science and Religion at Cambridge (also a member of the John Templeton Foundation’s board of trustees), deploying answers 3, 4, and 7:

I believe that the existence of a personal God. Viewing the universe as a creation renders it more coherent than viewing its existence as without cause. It is the intelligibility of the world which requires explanation.

Second, I am intellectually persuaded by the historical life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, that He is indeed the one He claimed to be, the Son of God. Jesus is most readily explicable by understanding Him as the Son of God.

Third, having been a Christian for more than five decades, I have experienced God through Christ personally over this period in worship, answered prayer, and the personal experience of His love. These experiences are more coherent based on the assumption that God does in fact exist.

He doesn’t pull any punches.  But several of the other scientists are more cagey, trying to circumvent the obvious contradiction between their evidence-based science and their faith-based religion.  Kenneth Miller, a cell biologist at Brown University and well known opponent of creationism, had the longest response, adducing reasons 4, 6, and 7.

I regard scientific rationality as the key to understanding the material basis of our existence as well as our history as a species.  That’s the reason why I’ve fought so hard against the “creationists” and those who advocate “intelligent design”. They deny science, and oppose scientific rationality, and I regard their ideas as a genuine threat to a society such as ours that has been so hospitable to the scientific enterprise.

There are, however, certain questions that science cannot answer — not because we haven’t figured them out yet (there are lots of those), but because they are not scientific questions at all. As Greek philosophers used to ask, what is the good life?  What is the nature of good and evil?  What is the purpose to existence?  My friend Richard Dawkins would ask, in response, why we should think that such questions are even important.  But to most of us, I would respond, these are the most important questions of all.

What I can tell you is that the world I see, including the world I know about from science, makes more sense to me in light of a spiritual understanding of existence and the hypothesis of God. Specifically, I see a moral polarity to life, a sense that “good” and “evil” are genuine qualities, not social constructions, and that choosing the good life (as the Greeks meant it) is the central question of existence. Given that, the hypothesis of God conforms to what I know about the material world from science, and gives that world a depth of meaning that I would find impossible without it.

Now, I certainly do not “know” that the spirit is real in the sense that you and I can agree on the evidence that DNA is real and that it is the chemical basis of genetic information.  There is, after all, a reason why religious belief is called “faith,” and not “certainty.”  But it is a faith that fits, a faith that is congruent with science, and even provides a reason why science works and is of such value — because science explores that rationality of existence, a rationality that itself derives from the source of that existence.

In any case, I am happy to confess that I am a believer, and that for me, the Christian faith is the one that resonates.  What I do not claim is that my religious belief, or anyone’s, can meet a scientific test.

By now we know what to make of this.  The “there are some questions that science cannot answer” tactic has several responses, including a) there is no externally imposed purpose to existence, b) some questions are amenable to rational and empirical exploration, like “what is the nature of good and evil?”, and c) finding some questions that aren’t amenable to scientifically-based answers does not show that religious answers are correct. (By the way, I seriously doubt that Dawkins would consider questions like “What is the good life?” unimportant.)

Note that Miller starts off by establishing his bona fides as a scientist and creationism-battler (and indeed, he’s been great in the latter role), but then admits the disparity between evidence-based science and revelation-based faith: “Now, I certainly do not ‘know’ that the spirit is real in the sense that you and I can agree on the evidence that DNA is real and that it is the chemical basis of genetic information.  There is, after all, a reason why religious belief is called ‘faith,’ and not ‘certainty.'”  But yet Miller acts as if he does know that the spirit is real: he’s described himself as an “observant Catholic”,  presumably agrees with some of the Church’s doctrines, like the Resurrection, and has based his life on the assumption that these notions are true. After all, if you’re doing things to assure that you’ll spend afterlife in Heaven, you can’t be in grave doubt about them.  No, it’s not the firmness of belief that’s at issue here, but the basis for that firmness of belief.

The other reasons are familiar: morality has no explanation except for God (Miller sees morality as an objective phenomenon, presumably easily discerned from faith), and that God explains why science works (but if science did not work, that is, if there were no regularities to existence, we wouldn’t be here, for our bodies couldn’t evolve and function).  Let us also note that if science did not work—that is, if “laws” were sporadically interrupted by miracles, so that, for example, a few people could raise the dead or cure the blind with a glob of spittle—that would also be evidence for God.

Finally, the idea that religious ideas are true because they “resonate” or “give the world a depth of meaning that one finds impossible without them”, are quite common among believers, but of course aren’t good reasons to believe in anything.  The idea that Jodie Foster was his soulmate really resonated with John Hinckley, Jr., and presumably gave his life a new depth of meaning, but of course the man was delusional.  The Manson Family found deep meaning in accepting Charlie as a guru—indeed, as a sort of deity.  All manner of things resonate with people and give their world deep meaning, but what those things have to do with truth?

Miller demonstrates here the real difference—and incongruity—between faith and science.  The former is based on wish-thinking, the latter not only explicitly rejects wish-thinking, but is structured to prevent it. (Double-blind experiments are one of the best things ever invented.) Why? Because science recognizes the strong human motivation to believe what we want to be true, and that that drive is a serious impediment in finding out what really is true.

More scientists tomorrow.