So close and yet so far . . .

March 23, 2011 • 5:45 am

The Canadians are not only beating Americans in the crucial arena of genitalic dimensions, but they’re also, according to recent polls, far more sensible about evolution.

Monday’s Toronto Globe and Mail commisioned Ekos to survey Canadians for their attitudes about a diverse range of issues, including education, politics, leadership, decision making—and evolution.  The specific question asked, about the origin of humans, is given in the chart below (taken from page 16 of the Ekos pdf), with the Canadian answers shown in red and, shown in blue for comparison, the answers of Americans to a similar question from a Gallup poll taken in December of 2010.

The Canadians have us licked seven ways from Sunday, with a whopping 58% accepting natural selection as the “cause” of humans, and only 33% accepting either the young-earth creationist or theistic evolution explanations.  For Americans those figures are, respectively, 16% and 78%.  In other words, Canadians are 3.6 times savvier than Americans about evolution.

These results are, of course, provisional, for the Canadian sample gives no standard errors, and is based on a sample of 984 people (the Gallup poll, however, has a similar sample size: 1,019).

In its report on these results, the National Center for Science Education gives this caveat:

As the political scientist and polling expert George Bishop observed, however, minor changes in the wording of poll questions about creationism and evolution can make a substantial difference in poll results.

But the Gallup question was nearly identical:

“Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings:

1) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process;

2) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process; or

3) God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.”

I’m also heartened by this result from the Ekos poll:

I don’t have the data, but I’d bet a fancy meal that Americans would fall into the “religious leader” column a lot more often.

_________

UPDATE:  A Harris Poll from 2005 gives the following data from the U.S., with the question asked in a different way:

“Which of the following do you believe about how human beings came to be? Human beings evolved from earlier species. Human beings were created directly by God. Human beings are so complex that they required a powerful force or intelligent being to help create them.”

The answers

  • Evolved from earlier species:  22%
  • Created directly by God:  64%
  • Powerful force/intelligent being:  10%
  • Unsure:  4%

The proportion of Americans accepting evolution, even when there’s no mention of “God not having a role in this process” is still about the same as in the Gallup poll, so there’s not much influence of that phrase on evolution-acceptance.

Website back up

March 22, 2011 • 6:12 pm

Because of problems at WordPress, this site was down (at least for my administration) for about four hours today. I think, but don’t know, whether commenting was also disabled.  Things appear to be fixed for now.

If in the future you’re a regular commenter and can’t get a comment to appear, do email me privately and let me know.

Why do atheists do theology?

March 22, 2011 • 9:50 am

I’m still baffled why atheists like Josh Rosenau and Michael Ruse want to help believers improve their notions of a being who doesn’t exist.  Rosenau continues to engage in atheistic theodicy, explaining his mission thusly:

There’s been some ignorant speculation about why a nontheist might try to explore these ideas, so I figured I’d spell it out: You can’t engage an idea without engaging its best presentation, and you can’t engage an idea seriously without accepting arguendo the basic premises.

Yep, that’s me—the ignorant speculator (though I do love the euphemism “nontheist”). But rather than debate the issue at boring length, let me just highlight a LOLzy comment on Rosenau’s post by Larry Moran:

Joshua says,

“You can’t engage an idea without engaging its best presentation, and you can’t engage an idea seriously without accepting arguendo the basic premises.”

Let me introduce you to the problem of “naughty and nice.”

One of the arguments against Santa Claus is that he can’t possibly figure out which children are naughty and which ones are nice because there are about one billion children in the world. Some of them are in remote areas without Facebook or cell phones.

I don’t know why you and your philosopher friends aren’t trying to solve this huge problem. All you have to do is assume that Santa exists and you’re off and running.

And have you heard about the problem of how many fairies can dance on the head of a pin? You start with fairies ….

Someone named Alvin responds:

Larry,

nobody argued of whether Mr. Claus and the fairies were really historically [sic] personages. Perhaps caricatures of the real deal? Dunno? But it would be assinine [sic] to lump coca cola’s fat santa and the faeries with Jesus, whos [sic] historical existence has been pretty much agreed upon by scholars including the godless bunch (e.g. James Randi)

Oh Gawd, no more sound bites like these please

And Larry delivers the roundhouse:

Alvin says,

“nobody argued of whether Mr. Claus and the fairies were really historically personages. Perhaps caricatures of the real deal? Dunno? But it would be assinine to lump coca cola’s fat santa and the faeries with Jesus, whos historical existence has been pretty much agreed upon by scholars including the godless bunch (e.g. James Randi)”

We’re not talking about an historical Jesus. We’re talking about the problem of evil. The only possible reason for debating the problem of evil is if you accept the initial premises; namely that an omnipotent God exists and He is good.

If atheists are prepared to do that in order to have a fun debate then why not debate some other, equally ridiculous, issues like those involving Santa Claus and tooth fairies?

We all know the answer. It’s because belief in the Christian God merits some sort of special accommodation even if you don’t believe in such a god.

Why? Why do atheist philosophers spend any time at all on arguments with premises they reject?

Why indeed? What’s the point?  It’s like evolutionists telling the creationists where they might search in South America and Africa for all those still-existing dinosaurs.

It’s one thing to show believers that their arguments for god are ludicrous.  It’s another to actually help them make those arguments.

Dad, are we there yet?

March 22, 2011 • 7:38 am

Over at EagleCam, the bobbleheads can no longer be contained beneath the parents.  Here’s a screenshot from an hour ago.

Keep watching, because those cute and fluffy babies won’t be cute for long.  Check out these pictures of other chicks in Virginia (you can see more here), brought to my attention by eagle-eyed reader Diane G.  In about a week they’ll look like this 16-day-old chick getting banded.  Look at those talons already!

A chick at 20 days, stretching its wings:

Two chicks at a month old, starting to look like eagles:

Banding these babies is no mean task.  You have to climb to the nest (avoiding, I suppose, attacks by parents). Here’s Craig Koppie making the ascent.  Look at the size of the nest!

Kitteh contest: Rousseau

March 22, 2011 • 4:17 am

This week we have an entirely black cat entered by reader Michael Bouchard, to wit:

Rousseau is a cat of Parisian temperament. A traveler and tramp, born in a humane society in Chicago, he left there to venture around California and Colorado and is currently settled in Denver. Rou is a cat who has foregone the vulgar meow for a refined chirp and has never met a hand to pet him that he didn’t find pleasure in. He knows his claws are too good for furniture. He also happens to follow the rule “black matches everything” and hasn’t a spot of fur on him a shade lighter than pitch. However, he’s not all fluff and relaxation. He proved himself a master mouser in some drafty Chicago apartments and dominated not just cats but has also cowed dogs from Poodles to Irish Wolfhounds all without a single hiss. They readily defer to his quiet confidence. (Which is good, because there was a time when I thought a border collie might eat him. Thankfully, the collie thought better of it after Rousseau simply stared it down.)

Rou is a part of the pack. He makes sure he knows where his humans are. He sleeps at the foot of the bed when my wife and I finally retire and rests at my feet as I type this now. Best of all, he is as old as my relationship with my wife. His birthday, being a reminder of when we met, creates a double happiness. With his style, his travel, his temperament and composure, he truly is our noble savage.

Guess the Templeton Prize winner

March 21, 2011 • 7:01 pm

Around this time last year (March 25 to be exact), Francisco Ayala, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of California at Irvine, was awarded the Templeton Prize, characterized by Richard Dawkins as “a very large sum of money given…usually to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion.”

Let’s guess who’s gonna nab it this year!  Nobody won last year’s contest, but maybe we can do better now.  I will list three contenders in what I consider decreasing order of likelihood.

1.  Simon Conway Morris.  A Templeton flak for a long time, this prominent paleontologist is devoting his dotage to buttressing his Christianity by arguing that the evolution of humans was inevitable.  Weirdly, though, he supports the inevitability of this one-off primate by citing all the cases in which different species of animals and plants have converged to similar phenotypes, that is, he cites more-than-one-off adaptations. (See his Templeton-funded “Map of Life” project, which collects cases of convergent evolution.) Nevertheless, he is a well known scientist who has done important work and who keeps his faith within “reasonable” bounds.

2.  Francis Collins.  This was my guess last year, but maybe I wasn’t thinking hard enough.  It might be unseemly for America’s most prominent scientist to pull in an award reeking of religion.  Collins was, after all, advised to soft-pedal his faith upon becoming director of the National Institutes of Health, though he hasn’t adhered to that stricture very well.  I consider him a good second choice.

3.  Martin Nowak. This young Harvard evolutionist isn’t ready for Templetonian prime time, but he’s on his way.  Having hauled in more than twelve million dollars in Templeton grants, and having served as a member of Templeton’s advisory board, he’s also published a new book on the evolution of cooperation and is touting it as showing a consilience between evolution and the teachings of Jebus. This kind of stuff is right up Templeton’s alley, and the Harvard connection adds respectability.  Look for him to win it in the next decade.

And as for Michael Ruse, who would dearly love the Prize and the million pounds in cash that goes with it, he doesn’t have a bleeding chance.  He’s a boorish man—the kind of loudmouth that Templeton would never dignify with the award.

If you have another choice, by all means post it below, and give the reasons. Put yourself in the shoes of Templeton, an organization that deeply wants respectability with both the religious and scientific communities. And remember the avowed purpose of the prize:

The Templeton Prize honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works.

There are no free books for guessing correctly, but I’ll highlight the winner above the fold.

Geographic variation in human penis size

March 21, 2011 • 9:19 am

Can we look at this as simply another study in geographic variation of the human species?  Probably not, for males who see this map will undoubtedly find their hands reaching for a ruler.

It’s a world map of penis sizes (erect). Note that the tumescent lengths are in centimeters; divide by 2.54 to get inches. If you go to the link and click on the map there, you’ll also see an extensive list of country-by country-values measured in both inches and centimeters, as well as some sources of the data, which were apparently collected and collated from various other sources by Dr. Eduardo Gomez de Diego.  Gomez de Diego has made something of a career out of measuring schlongs.

I’m not going to put my reputation behind these data, but present them for your salacious delectation.

Dare I say “click to enlarge”?

Some thoughts, assuming that the data are accurate:

  • If you want to pursue this further, Wikipedia (naturally) has a big article on penis size, full of intriguing tidbits like this: “Results vary, with studies that rely on self-measurement reporting a significantly higher average than those with staff measuring, but a mean erect human penis is approximately 12.9–15.0 cm (5.1–5.9 in) in length. Flaccid penis length is a poor estimate of erect length.”  And this: “several scientific studies have been performed on the erect length of the adult penis. Studies which have relied on self-measurement, including those from Internet surveys, consistently reported a higher average length than those which used medical or scientific methods to obtain measurements”
  • The data from the chart show that the least endowed males are those from Thailand (10.16 cm or 4 inches) and India (10.24 cm, also 4 inches), while the length champions hail from the Congo at 17.93 cm (7.1 inches).
  • These data are not normalized for body size.  If there is a correlation within populations between body size (measured as length of other parts, like legs) and erect penis size—and Wikipedia is ambiguous on this—then perhaps penis-length values should be relative (i.e. erect penis length/leg length) rather than absolute ones.  It’s possible, for example, that some of the large schlong values from the Congo are due to its inhabitants simply being bigger than Indians.
  • If these data reflect genetic differences (and that could be verified by measuring the offspring of people who have moved to other locations), and don’t normalize to equal sizes (which I suspect they won’t), then one can speculate about their evolutionary origins.   I could make up stories about mate competition or sexual selection, but I’ll spare you.  Evolutionary psychologists are much better at this than I.  Larry Moran, however, might say that the population differences simply reflect genetic drift.
  • The biggest penises are found in populations between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn.  According to Allen’s Rule, which specifies that protruding body parts tend to be larger in populations inhabiting warmer climes (they serve as useful heat radiators, like the huge ears of desert rabbits), perhaps penises helped cool our ancestors.  Note: I’m kidding—although there is an Allen’s Rule for animal body parts like ears, limbs, and tails.

It has not escaped my notice that Dr. Gomez de Diego is also CEO of a company called Andromedical, which, according to his blurb, has developed a device to stretch the penis:

Dr. Gomez de Diego, developer of the Andro-Penis®, the top sold penile extender in the world, explained, “with a penile extender the size of the penis can increase 1.2 to 2.0 inches (3-5 cm), with a 97.5 percent rate of efficiency. All this is achieved without an expensive operation, without pain and it is permanent.”

I don’t think so!  And others are equally dubious.

You can see pictures of the Andro Penis Extender here and here (I used to have them up, but the vindictive doctor has threatened me for reproducing his photos without permission, although WordPress says that it’s fair usage.) Nevertheless, go see the stupid quack’s devices that promise to stretch your willy.

Three little eaglets

March 21, 2011 • 7:51 am

I was remiss in not announcing that, over at EagleCam, the third chick hatched.  All three bobbleheads are doing well, and you can often see them being fed. It’s an awesome sight. You can even see tandem feeding, in which pop tears off a piece of fish and passes it over to mom, who then gives it to the chicks.

Here’s a screenshot showing all three getting fish noms: