Rules for life

February 4, 2011 • 11:36 am

When I was about ten years old, I, in my youthful hubris, decided to write a book on “Rules for Living,” telling people how to best improve their lives.  Fortunately, it stopped after only two rules, which I still remember:

1.  When you run a bath, put the cold water on first and then the hot.  Otherwise you might burn yourself.

2.  When you button your shirt, start at the bottom.  That way you won’t wind up with buttons in the wrong holes.

About ten years later, having a bit more experience of life, I came up with two more “rules”—which were really observations:

1.  Everyone thinks that “they’re a little bit nuts”—in a good way.

2.  Nobody thinks that they’re a complete jerk, as people with such a self-image could not live with themselves.  But since some people are complete jerks, that means that lots of people don’t have an accurate self-image.

Well, take that for the “wisdom” of a twenty year old.

Driving back from the grocery store last weekend, I suddenly remembered my dumb “rules for life” book, which I hadn’t thought of in at least two decades.  And immediately a new “rule” struck me, something that I’d been subconsciously chewing on for a while:

A large number of the people who call themselves “geeks” and “nerds” don’t use the term in a winsome, self-deprecating way.  Rather, they use it to imply that “I’m smarter than you are.”

Let me hasten to add that I don’t think everyone who calls themselves geeks or nerds are intellectually arrogant. Just some of them—but not an insignificant number.  When I was young, people who fit the “geek” stereotype of somebody interested in things scientific, and also socially inept, would rarely apply these terms to themselves.  “Geek” and “nerd” were derogatory terms applied to you by others.  But increasingly I see them used as self-branding signs of intellectual superiority.  And when people apply these terms to themselves, the words grate on me, precisely as the word “brights”—meaning “atheists”—grates on me.

Agree or disagree, but add, if you will, your own “rules for life”.  Oh, I just thought of one more:

If two friends tell you the same thing about yourself, it’s probably true.

__________

p.s. It’s still a good idea to button your shirt from the bottom up.

A mushbrained attack on the Gnus

February 4, 2011 • 7:19 am

UPDATE: Rob Knop has found us and left a provocative comment below.  Readers may wish to address it!

_______________________

The blog network Scientopia was started, as I recall, when people from ScienceBlogs wanted an alternative site free from administrative hassle.  I don’t look at their sites, but an alert reader called my attention to a post at a site called Galactic Interactions.  It’s run by one Rob Knop, an astrophysicist at Quest University in Canada who describes himself as a “Christian.”  The post is notable not because its author is a big presence on the internet, but because it’s an attack on atheism by a credentialled scientist: “Why I don’t like the term ‘Gnu atheism’.”

The piece is the usual tiresome tirade about the stridency of Gnus.  The words and arguments fall into place like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle:

However, most of those in the movement formerly known as “New Atheism” seem to share the following characteristics. They are atheists. They believe the world would be a better place if religion would go away, becoming nothing more than cultural history and cultural tradition. They think that any religion that claims to be anything other than just cultural tradition is incompatible with science and the scientific world view. They believe that if somebody aims to accept science and is intellectually honest and consistent, the success of modern science must necessarily lead that person to accept philosophical materialism. They use the word “reason” as a synonym for “application of scientific reasoning”, thereby making anybody who is religious by definition guilty of thinking without reason. . . .

. . . Beyond that, a subset of [the Gnus] are strident and combative. They think that any religion at all is a threat to science. They do not hesitate to call non-atheists idiots or childish. They will crap the comment threads of posts like this one with all sorts of (frankly) bigotry hiding under the clothing of assumed “reason”, citing the names of logical fallacies the way fundamentalists cite scripture. They will assert that they know the Truth and that therefore it’s perfectly justified for them to say frankly insulting things, and then say that others shouldn’t be offended by the Truth. They seem to think that non-fundamentalist theists are prevaricators who “pick and choose” from their religion, and thus are somehow misrepresenting their own religious beliefs. I generally think that this is because they’d prefer to argue against fundamentalists, for it’s extremely easy to show how fundamentalists are at odds with science. But, it’s very disheartening to see somebody who wants people to accept science then criticizing a theist for not being a fundamentalist. It is the behavior of this subset that leads me to the conclusion that “fundamentalist atheist” is the best term for this sort of atheist. Most atheists, thankfully, are not like this, but there is the subset that argues that their philosophy is the only philosophy that can be accepted by reasonable people who accept science— much as fundamentalist Christians argue that their philosophy is the only philosophy that can be accepted by people who are good and “saved”.

And while Knop spends most of his longish piece attacking a subset of Gnus, does he name any? Nope, he just names the victims of their attacks, linking to sites like The Intersection, Phil Plait’s blog, Josh Rosenau’s blog, and even the “science and religion” section of the National Center for Science Education’s website.  Once again we hear a strong critique of Gnu Atheists, listing our horrible traits and behaviors, but without the presence of a single example. Shades of Plait’s DBAD speech! Is it that Plait and Knop don’t have many examples—except, perhaps, from the comments section of Pharyngula? Or could they simply be protecting those Gnefarious Gnus by not naming them? At least when scientist-Gnus go after religious people or accommodationists, we name them and give examples.  After all, we’re wedded to data and evidence, not empty assertions.

Knop also asserts that we’re not halping:

In other words, I’m annoyed at the “gnu atheists” in the first place; not just because many are so blinded by their love for their own philosophy that they can’t see that it isn’t necessarily objective truth, and not just because many are frankly rude and insulting while thinking there must be something wrong with me if I find them rude and insulting. I’m annoyed at them also because they’re getting in the way of a cause I care about, mainstream acceptance of good science and scientific reasoning. There are a lot of religious people out there who have no problem with evolution or the Big Bang, and there are a lot more who wouldn’t have any problem with it if they really learned about it and learned how Christians like myself are still Christian while accepting all of science. Those people are people we should reach out to. Telling them that religion is idiotic, or intellectually dishonest, and that the real people who accept science must all be atheists, isn’t going to help.

The problem is that people like Knop are getting in the way of a cause that we care about: the inimical effects of religion.  I deplore the effects of creationists on diluting biology education in America.  But I deplore far more the effects of religion in making the world a worse place to live.  A kid in Alabama who doesn’t hear about human evolution is small potatoes next to a Muslim woman who gets her genitals mutilated, an African who gets AIDS because his priest wouldn’t let him use condoms, or an Afghan girl who, seeking an education, gets her face permanently mutilated with acid.  Some day people like Knop will realize that The Gnus Have Two Causes (that sounds like the title of a children’s book). Or rather, we have just one cause—the promotion of rationality—that has two facets. One is promoting science; the other is pushing back irrationality, whose most prominent incarnation is religion.

Besides the absence of data, Knop’s piece is notable for his LOLzy attack on the name “Gnu Atheists,” an attack derived solely from his misconception that the name came from the Gnu software project.   He sees a dark conspiracy here:

Put it together. You have this movement out there, the subset of atheists whose stated goal is to destroy religion and who assert that complete and intellectual consistent acceptance of science requires a rejection of religion. That is a movement that people who aren’t already atheists are likely to view with suspicion. Now, they’ve taken a name that seems to link them to something that is completely separate, open source and free software. It bugs me already for aesthetic that these guys have hijacked the term “Gnu”. But it can’t help but create a link in some folks’ minds between this crazy hippy dubious philosophy about sharing software you’ve written to attacks on religion. In sort, free software may now be perceived as having something to do with yet another cultural assault that, frankly, has nothing whatsoever to do with free software. “GNU public licence?

LOL!  What mushbrainery!  We are called “Gnu” atheists not because of the software connection, but because it’s a funny term showing that we don’t take the words “New Atheism” too seriously.  I believe Hamilton Jacobi, who coined the term, will vouch for this.  Knop would be better off if, as a scientist, he tied his critiques to real data.

Video: Laying the egg

February 3, 2011 • 4:31 pm

In a comment on the last post about EagleCam, Diane G. reports a video of our female eagle laying her first egg.  Watch it: it’s only six minutes long, and I think the action happens at about 3:45. The egg seems remarkably small for so large a bird.

The site harboring this video also has clips of other eagle highlights, including one mating and the moment when dad first sees this egg (he doesn’t seem very thrilled).

Houston, the eagle has zygotes!

February 3, 2011 • 1:06 pm

Over at EagleCam, the female has laid an egg (ca. 2:50 EST), and a bird is currently sitting on it.  Way cool!  With any luck, we’ll have at least one chick in about five weeks.  Here’s a screenshot I took:

Remember that everything the eagle does in its life—feeding, flying, nesting, grooming, and so on—has, as its evolved “goal”, the production and tending of that egg.  There are lots more screenshots here.


I’m pretty sure that’s the female on top of the egg.  According to Defenders of Wildlife, both sexes incubate the eggs, but the female (as usual) does most of the work.

If you’ve followed this pair, you’ve seen a lot of twig arranging.  Now you’re gonna see a lot of sitting.

h/t: Hempenstein, who spotted the egg first, and Peter, for finding the screenshots.

Another tool-using bird

February 3, 2011 • 7:38 am

It’s the green heron (Butorides virescens), a denizen of North and Central American wetlands and an accomplished fisherman. They are sit-and-wait predators, perching motionless on the bank or on a tree, ready to grab a fish by striking out with their amazingly long necks. (You can see this in the video below.)  The neck strike could be considered convergent with a snake strike!  Here’s a green heron in a normal position (photos from 10,000 Birds):

And the same bird at full stretch:

Here’s one fishing upside down from a branch:

Such lovely birds.  But the most amazing thing is that they use tools.  Some of them fish with bait, putting a piece of food or an object in the water and then snatching the fish that are attracted to it. Here’s a video of that behavior (ignore the cloying and patronizing narration—”Oh, what a clever bird!”).  Notice how the bird keeps repositioning his bait, like a fisherman casting his line over and over again:

That strike is fast!  You can see a different video and a different bird here; in this case the bird goes into the water for the catch, and gets a bigger fish.

Is the fishing behavior innate or learned?  The Animal Cognition site from Tufts University says this:

The practice of bait-fishing is rare among green herons.  The fact that few herons use bait-fishing indicates that it is not an innate behavior. [JAC note: I don’t agree; rarity doesn’t militate against innate-ness.] Moreover, the infrequency of bait-fishing suggests that the behavior is not culturally transmitted.  The roots of using objects to attract fish are unclear.  One theory suggests that herons are imitating human behavior when they use bait for fishing.  However, the fact that attempts to teach herons to use bait for fishing have failed suggest otherwise.

Another possibility is that herons learn to use bait for fishing through experience, i.e. the heron accidentally drops an object in the water and sees the object’s attraction to fish.  Some researchers believe that making the connection between dropping something on the water and seeing the crowd of fish that results and intentionally dropping bait into the water is very difficult.  According to these researchers, only the exceptionally intelligent herons acquire the skill of bait fishing.  The intelligence requirement accounts for the small percentage of green herons who engage in bait-fishing.  Other researchers argue that the reason for the infrequency of the behavior is that few herons actually have the opportunity to observe the results of dropping an object into the water.

OMG

February 3, 2011 • 6:14 am

Well, the snow has abated, but it was the third largest storm in the hundred-year history of weather records in Chicago.  Some places got nearly two feet of snow:

When I walked into my building at about 6:30 a.m., there was a guy in orange coveralls lying supine on the floor.  At first I thought he was dead, and was just about to call 911, but then realized that he had his sock-clad feet up against the radiator, warming them.  He (and a group of guys sitting on the stairs) told me, “We’ve been shovelling since 3 a.m., and we’re cold!”  Thanks to them, though, I didn’t have to struggle to work through snowdrifts.

And, OMG, my car!


I ain’t going anywhere for a while.  I haz no shovel, and my philosophy in this situation is “let it melt.”

All over the city, people who have shovelled out their cars are trying to reserve the empty space by putting things like chairs and purloined traffic cones in it.  This is illegal, but is it ethical? What would Sam Harris say?

Moar on gnus being gnice

February 2, 2011 • 7:03 pm

From a new post by Brother Blackford:

What we do say is that it’s hopelessly misleading to go around saying “Science and religion are compatible.” It would be more true to say that science tends to undermine all or most traditional forms of religion, making them less plausible, putting pressure on the religious to thin out their supernaturalist, providentialist views of the world, and so on. The result is that much in the way of actual religion really is threatened by the advance of science. Claiming otherwise is, we say, likely to be disingenuous (or, to be fair, simply mistaken).

We then have a great deal to say about the various ways in which science does this. In particular, we tend to criticise ideas such as NOMA, which seem to us to be full of problems. For example, NOMA gives a characterisation of religion that is totally untrue to the historical experience of the phenomenon.

None of this is about acting in ways that are uncivil.

The idea that in-your-face mockery is an inherent and inevitable part of Gnu Atheism comes, pure and simple, from accommodationists who—desperately avoiding arguments about substance—concentrate on tone.  It’s all about framing, and it’s been somewhat successful.

An alarm bell should go off when you see fellow atheists chastising us for being “dicks.”  As often as not, those very critics behave in exactly the way they deplore. That, after all, is the lesson of the Tom Johnson affair.