Ricky Gervais: why I’m an atheist

December 19, 2010 • 7:17 pm

Gervais’s Christmas message on the Wall Street Journal website Speakeasy. Excerpt:

Why don’t I believe in God? No, no no, why do YOU believe in God? Surely the burden of proof is on the believer. You started all this. If I came up to you and said, “Why don’t you believe I can fly?” You’d say, “Why would I?” I’d reply, “Because it’s a matter of faith”. If I then said, “Prove I can’t fly. Prove I can’t fly see, see, you can’t prove it can you?” You’d probably either walk away, call security or throw me out of the window and shout, ‘’F—ing fly then you lunatic.”

And lots more.

The “don’t ask, don’t tell” vote

December 19, 2010 • 11:34 am

In a victory for not only Obama, but, more important, for civil rights, the Senate repealed the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy yesterday by a vote of 65 to 31.  Since it already passed the House, the bill goes to Obama, who will certainly sign it.  And about time!

Here’s the official breakdown by party (“yes” is a vote to repeal the policy):

Democrats

Yes  55

No  0

Not voting  1 (Manchin, WV)

Republicans

Yes  8 (Brown, MA; Burr, NC; Collins, ME; Ensign, NV; Kirk, IL; Snow, ME; Voinovich, OH; Murkowski, AK)

No  31

Not voting  3 (Bunning, KY; Gregg, NH; Hatch, UT)

Independents and other

Yes  2 (Sanders, VT; Lieberman, CT)

No  0

A couple of points here.  First, the huge party difference in voting shows, as if we didn’t know already, the huge political polarization in this country. The Republicans, like the Dixiecrats of yore, are opposed to civil rights—this time for gays. This position is untenable, either strategically (in the military) or morally.  And kudos to the eight Republicans who crossed party lines and did what was right. (I was surprised by Scott Brown’s vote, though I haven’t followed his views on the issue.)  Not a single Democrat voted against the repeal, though Democrat Joe Manchin joined three Republicans in the cowardly act of refusing to vote.

Second, this vote represents the increasing moral arc of society—an arc that increasingly recognizes all humans, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation, as deserving the same basic liberties.  And this increasing morality has nothing to do with religion; in fact, much of the opposition to this bill, and to gay rights in general, comes from churches. Of course, some churches have been supporters of gay rights, but I maintain that they are following rather than leading the Zeitgeist.  Moral improvements have nearly always come from secular considerations, and drag the churches along in their wake.

Finally, it’s always baffled me why gays serving in the military is an issue.  Why would a unit that included gay soldiers fight less effectively?  Maybe a few people would be made temporarily uncomfortable by having same-sex gays in their unit, but I’m convinced that that would go away with a bit of experience.  After all, the same reasons were adduced for keeping black and white troops separate during much of the last century (including WWII), yet now we see that policy as not only wrongheaded but immoral.  It is experience with those of other persuasions that leads to acceptance.  And that’s the reason why the world is becoming more moral (see Peter Singer’s The Expanding Circle).

___

UPDATE: The Party of No is set to oppose the new arms treaty with Russia.

The Gaskell affair

December 19, 2010 • 8:18 am

You may have heard of the Martin Gaskell case (P. Z. Myers posted a summary of the situation last week).  Gaskell, an astronomer at the University of Texas, applied for a job running the observatory at The University of Kentucky.  Questions arose about whether his evangelical Christianity, and apparent embrace of creationism, would render him unsuitable for the job.  He didn’t get it, and is suing in federal court for unlawful denial of employment based on his religious beliefs and expression thereof.  The case goes to trial in February.

An article in yesterday’s New York Times (and one in Friday’s Washington Post) summarizes the situation.  The National Center for Science Education has posted many of the legal documents, including the original complaint, depositions, and intra-department emails at Kentucky. As the NYT reports:

For the plaintiff, the smoking gun is an e-mail dated Sept. 21, 2007, from a department staff member, Sally A. Shafer, to Dr. Cavagnero and another colleague. Ms. Shafer wrote that she did an Internet search on Dr. Gaskell and found links to his notes for a lecture that explores, among other topics, how the Bible could relate to contemporary astronomy. [The email is on p. 104 of the deposition of Sally Shafer at the NCSE website].

“Clearly this man is complex and likely fascinating to talk with,” Ms. Shafer wrote, “but potentially evangelical. If we hire him, we should expect similar content to be posted on or directly linked from the department Web site.”

Shafer refers here to a summary of Gaskell’s views at one of his websites, a lecture called “Modern Astronomy, the Bible and Creation”.  It turns out that Gaskell is an old-earth creationist with significant doubts about evolution and some admiration for intelligent design, which he considers a nonreligious hypothesis.  Here’s an excerpt:

The main controversy has been between people at the two extremes (young earth creationists and humanistic evolutionists).  “Creationists” attack the science of “evolutionists”.  I believe that this sort of attack is very bad both scientifically and theologically.  The “scientific” explanations offered by “creationists” are mostly very poor science and I believe this sort of thing actually hinders some (many?) scientists becoming Christians.  It is true that there are significant scientific problems in evolutionary theory (a good thing or else many biologists and geologists would be out of a job) and that these problems are bigger than is usually made out in introductory geology/biology courses, but the real problem with humanistic evolution is in the unwarranted atheistic assumptions and extrapolations.  It is the latter that “creationists” should really be attacking (many books do, in fact, attack these unwarranted assumptions and extrapolations).

While discussing controversies and interpretations of Genesis I should mention something that has been much debated in recent years but is not an interpretation of Genesis: what is called “Intelligent Design”.  This movement, which is often erroneously confused with young-earth creationism, is just exploring the question of what evidence there is in the universe for design by an intelligence.  This is really a general, non-religious question (although with obvious religious implications), and there is no opinion on the interpretation of Genesis.

Also worth mentioning under different viewpoints is the Islamic creationist movement in the Muslim world.  The leading spokesman of this is the Turkish writer, Harun Yahya, whose work is widely read in the Moslem world.  Yahya is non-committal about the age of the earth. . .

Yet he’s not a raving “God-poofed-us-into-being” creationist, either. In fact, he suggests that although God may have created the first organism, he used evolution as his method for creating other species:

It is worth noting that Genesis does not always say “God created”.  In the case of “cattle and creeping things”, God says “Let the earth bring forth…”.  To me this implies that life has been brought forth out from the material of the earth.  Mankind is no exception to this, as in Genesis 2:7 we are explicitly told that we are formed “of the dust from the ground”.  Although this is getting outside the realm of astronomy, it should be realized that, despite some popular claims to the contrary, science has no satisfactory explanation of the origins of life yet.  Note that the question of the origin of life is a separate problem from the question of the validity of some theories of evolution.  The evidence is very good (and gets stronger every year) that all life on earth descended (i.e., evolved from) from a common origin.  There is still a problem of the ultimate origin of life.  A discussion of the current controversies over evolutionary theory and how Christians view these controversies, is beyond the scope of this handout, but the now extensive literature discussing and reviewing books such as those of Phillip E. Johnson (“Darwin on Trial”) and of biochemist Michael J. Behe (“Darwin’s Black Box”) will give you some of the flavor of the diversity of opinion of Christian biologists (and geologists).Although I’m sidestepping biology issues, I do want to give one quote.  It’s by the Nobel prize winning neuro-biologist and author of several noted books in the body-mind problem, Sir John Eccles:  “We come to exist through a divine act.  That divine guidance is a theme throughout our life; at our death the brain goes, but that divine guidance and love continues.  Each of us is a unique, conscious being, a divine creation.  It is the religious view.  It is the only view consistent with all the evidence.” [“The Intellectuals Speak Out About God”, p.  50].  This is probably a good place to state that I personally have no theological problem with the idea of God doing things in the ways described in modern theories of evolution (i.e., “theistic evolution”). [My emphasis].

I don‘t think this issue is as clear cut as P.Z.—and the NCSE, as expressed in an email from Eugenie Scott—seem to think.  Yes, doubts about the theory of evolution may reflect on Gaskell’s scientific acumen, and thus his fitness for the job as a scientist (particularly an “outreach” scientist, as the job at Kentucky would have been), but do Gaskell’s views, as expressed above, really put him way out of the mainstream of scientists as a whole? He seems to be a theistic evolutionist, not that far removed from, say, scientists like Kenneth Miller (who believes in divine intercession in the creation of humans), many of the writers of the Clergy Letter Project, or, indeed, the Catholic Church, which accepts evolution but believes that God interceded at least once, inserting a soul in the human lineage.  Is he so different from Owen Gingerich, an astronomer at Harvard who is also a theistic evolutionist and thinks that some mutations may have been “inspired” by God?

It’s one thing to have a university biologist espousing creationism, another to have a university astronomer espousing theistic evolution.  It’s yet a third to have a man denied a job not because his scientific views are unsound, but because those scientific views arise from his faith.  And, unfortunately, the internal documents at the U of K (I haven’t read them all) are not clear on this distinction. If Gaskell were hired, is it proper to worry about what he would say about biology on his own time? Doesn’t that violate freedom of speech?  Would it be okay if he simply kept his views on evolution as non-official, personal opinions?

After all, Gaskell would have been hired as an astronomer, not a biologist.  Would these issues have arisen if he was considered for a position in economics, sociology, or archaeology? After all, worries about scientific acumen would apply to all fields that rely on empirical research, not just science.

I tend to think that Gaskell’s scientific views should be considered when he’s being hired as a scientist, but I am not as vehement about this as, say, P.Z.  And, knowing the religious climate of Kentucky, I’d be surprised if Gaskell wasn’t hired simply because he was religious—instead of not being hired because he accepts bad science.  Still, the documents and depositions, which are what the court has to go on before trial, don’t seem clear on the point.

So I throw this open for debate:  is Gaskell’s form of theistic evolutionism sufficient to disquality him from a job as an astronomer? How seriously should his views have been considered?

Wines for the week

December 18, 2010 • 12:04 pm

A man (or at least I) need some alcohol to get through the coming week of enforced jollity and endless broadcasts of Christmas carols, Miracle on 34th Street, and It’s a Wonderful Life (granted, a fantastic movie, but how many times can you see Clarence get his wings?).  Here’s my partial selection for Christmas week, none of which I’ve tried:

My usual psychological price barrier for everyday wine (I drink roughly half a bottle per day) is about $10/bottle, but hell, it’s the holidays, and one is entitled to splurge.

Finca Torremilanos “Brut Nature” Cava de Duero NV ($13.79).  This is actually a vintage cava (all grapes from 2005) but is not thus labelled.  I like champagne okay, though it’s far from my favorite wine. But to get the really good stuff—the stuff that has that rich, creamy, and toasty flavor, you have to fork out big bucks, which I’m not willing to do.  In fact, I think the quality/price ratio for decent-to-good French champagne is among of the lowest of all wines.  But, thanks to a gift from a Spanish postdoc whose family makes cava, I discovered the delights of Spanish sparkling wine. Cava, most of which is made in Catalonia, is made from grapes different from those used to make French champagne (the latter are mostly pinot noir and chardonnay), but is often made in precisely the same way as the French stuff.  And good cava can be really tasty, not to mention significantly cheaper than champagne.  My choice is the Finica Torremilanos at only $14/bottle, aged on the lees for 25 months and recommended by my never-failing wine merchant as dry—my first requirement for all sparkling wine save a good Moscato d’Asti—toasty, and fruity. If you have a merchant you trust, and want something festive that won’t break the bank, ask for a good cava. It will never approach the quality of the $100-a-pop French stuff, but who can afford that?

Chateau Puech-Haut Coteaux de Languedoc Prestige 2009 ($15.99).  I can’t remember who said “the first duty of a wine is to be red,” but I disagree, since many of my favorites (including the world’s best wine: good Sauternes) are white.  But a man needs a red for those holiday viands.  My choice is a grenache/syrah blend from southern France. Wine guru Robert Parker, whose taste in reds is very similar to mine, gives this wine an astoundingly high rating of 93/100, a score rarely attained by such an inexpensive red.  Here’s his take:

“I’m infringing on David Schildknecht’s territory, but he has not yet tasted this wine. From a bio-dynamically farmed estate, this 2009 is a blend of 55% Grenache (from 60- to 75-year-old vines) and 45% Syrah  (from 40-year-old vines), all planted in limestone soils, and aged completely in concrete tanks. I have followed Chateau Puech Haut for a number of years, and met proprietor Gerald Bru over a decade ago. Bru has employed some extraordinarily talented winemakers, beginning with Michel Rolland, followed by Claude Gros (of Chateau Negly). His current consultant is Philippe Cambie. This remarkable offering is a naked expression of the vivid terroir and excellent fruit found in this region. The incredible aromatics consist of forest floor, spring flowers, sweet black currants, raspberries, licorice, and incense. With a pure, velvety, seamless, full-bodied texture and a finish that lasts 30+ seconds, this wine possesses a stunning integration of acidity, tannin, and alcohol, suggesting this 2009 will age nicely for 3-5 years, possibly as long as a decade. However, it will be hard to resist given its current performance. Bravo!”

Finally, my ringer: Seppeltsfield Para Grand 10 year old Barossa Tawny ($29.99, but only $15 with a Groupon I had).  Port ranks with Sauternes as one of my favorite wines: I think that sweet wines, including sherries like Pedro Ximenez, are some of the most undervalued wines in the market, mostly because Americans have little taste for them.  I have a stock of real vintage port going back to 1977, but can no longer afford the stuff when it’s first released, since it’s now approaching $80 per bottle for good brands like Graham’s.  Further, you have to age them for about 15 years, and I have to keep my mind on the actuarial tables!  To tide me over between old bottles of vintage, I’m trying this Aussie tawny for the holidays.  Australia makes some of the world’s greatest sweet wines (they call them “stickies”): if you want a world-class wine at about $15 per half bottle, try a Seppelt, Yalumba, Campbell’s or Chambers Reserve Muscat or Tokay—these have perhaps the highest quality/price ratio of any wine I’ve tried.  This tawny, from Australia’s renowned Barossa Valley, comes highly recommended by both my merchant and the internet; and although I might not have bought it at the $30 sticker price, $15 is a bargain.  I’ll be sipping this over the holidays with my postprandial book.

And a holiday tip to readers: if you want to show up at somebody’s house with something you know will be good—and appreciated, bring a good German riesling.  Although rieslings are no longer the fantastic bargain they were when I was buying the ’71 and ’76 vintages, they’re still greatly undervalued in the American market. I think this is because German wine labels are simply confusing to Americans, what with all their classifications, names of the maker, region, and vineyard (all of which are important), and so on.  But a good riesling is one of the world’s best wines, and goes with nearly everything except, perhaps, very red meat.  You want a “Qualitätswein mit Prädikat” (QmP), which comes in grades of (generally) increasing sweetness, from Kabinett (dry) through Spätlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, and (the very sweetest and most expensive), Trockenbeerenauslese.  I’d recommend a good Kabinett from the Rheingau region (brown bottles); Mosels (green bottles) can also be great.  Alternatively, a good Alsatian riesling or gewürztraminer from a good maker (say Hugel, Trimbach, or Zind-Humbrecht) will go down a treat.

Don’t bring a sweet wine—great as they can be—unless you know your host likes them!

Caturday felids: puss ‘n’ Buddhists

December 18, 2010 • 6:54 am

On the shores of Inle Lake in Myanmar sits the Nga Hpe monastery, renowed, among other things, for its troupe of acrobatic cats.  The monks have trained these cats to jump through hoops.  Their story is recounted in the L. A. Times piece “Catapulting to fame at a quiet lake monastery.”

The legend of the first jumping cat of Nga Phe Kyung was born about 22 years ago when a young monk was meditating and a cat came to curl up in his crossed legs. The monk tried to remain focused on his breathing, but his concentration was broken.

He opened his eyes and tried to make the cat move. No sooner did he do that than the cat jumped high in the air. The monk was taken aback, because he had never seen a cat jump as high.

The same thing happened the next day, and so it came to be that each time the monk meditated the cat would come and jump. As time passed, the monk and the cat became friends, and the monk began to encourage the cat to jump as high as it could, at first over his hands, then over bamboo sticks and, finally, through hoops.

See them in action:

The monastery:

More LOLzy photos here.

Barnes and Noble: best nonfiction of 2010

December 17, 2010 • 7:11 pm

I’m a sucker for “best book” lists, but Barnes and Noble usually has pretty good judgement with theirs.  Here’s their list and summary of the ten best nonfiction books of the year, and for sure I’ll be reading most of these.

I’m especially keen on Isabel Wilkerson’s book on the great migration of American blacks to the north beginning around 1910,  The Warmth of Other Suns, which I highlighted here in September and will soon be getting from the U of C library (I’ve run out of shelf space for my own books). From the buzz, I predict that Wilkerson will nab this year’s Pulitzer for nonfiction.

Bomber Country, by Daniel Swift, also looks intriguing; Anthony Grayling commended it with “Of all the books about war that I have read—all war, not just the bombing war—this is among the most moving and telling.”

I’ve read part of Travels in Siberia, by Ian Frazier, which was semi-serialized in The New Yorker, and was very good; and I was interested to see that Lauren Hillebrand, who came out of nowhere with her super-best-seller Seabiscuit, has a new book, Unbroken, about two GIs surviving on a raft during WWII.

If you’ve read any of these, weigh in (or recommend your own single best book of 2010).  Of the nonfiction I’ve read this year, I guess I’d recommend The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. I reviewed it for B&N last February. It’s a fantastic interweaving of science and the history of a poor black family, one of whose members was the source of HeLa cells.

Their ten top fiction choices are here.

“Rock star of science” hurts science

December 17, 2010 • 8:24 am

Dr. Mehmet Oz is a cardiac surgeon and science/medicine popularizer who, with the backing of Oprah, got his own syndicated television program, The Dr. Oz Show.   He’s also a bestselling author and was named by Esquire as one of the 75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century.

He’s also one of the Rock Stars of Science, an ill-conceived campaign designed to improve science communication by having scientists stand next to real rock stars, hoping that the cool will osmose between them.  Here’s Dr. Oz (right) with Keri Hilson (center):

Fig. 1:  I can haz cool too?

Sadly, Dr. Oz seems to have dropped the ball when teaching the public about genetically modified foods.  Abbie Smith (erv) called my attention to a segment of the Dr. Oz show in which he invited Dr. Pamela Ronald, UC Davis plant pathologist, GM food expert, and coauthor (with Raoul Adamchak) of Tomorrow’s Table, to debate the safety of GM foods with two other panelists, including the GM food wacko alarmist Jeffrey Smith.   Ronald tried repeatedly to make the point that there’s no evidence that GM foods endanger human health, and to refer the viewer to university websites so that they can judge the evidence, but to no avail.  Dr. Oz chimed in with the two other panelists to cast strong and unwarranted aspersions on GM foods.

Here are the three videos (15 minutes total); see in particular the segment from 4:25 to 5:00 in video 2 and 3:45 in video 3, where Dr. Oz basically claims that the data are irrelevant and we have to make judgments on GM foods more or less based on our superstititions.

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

The show is precisely equivalent to one in which a scientist armed with data on human-caused global warming is opposed by two denialists with no data but a lot of sand to throw in the viewers’ eyes.

Over at her website, Tomorrow’s Table, Pam Ronald laments the disaster that was this episode of Dr. Oz:

Can the audience glean that from the information presented on the show? I am afraid not.

What we do know is that after 14 years of consumption there has been not a single instance of harm to human health or the environment (and many indisputable benefits).

I did my best to refute the worst “woo woo pseudoscience” but it was difficult. I asked the producers (who were very nice by the way) to remove the scary graphics and bullet points but no luck. I argued that showing that stuff would tarnish Dr. Oz’s reputation and harm his viewers (who are now probably terrified- I can just imagine my mother-in-law taking note on all the “points” made).

I had a chance to plug some great science-based, academic, non-profit sites (bioforitifed,org, ucbiotech.org and academicsreview.org) but all of my case specific examples (reduced insecticide use in GE cotton fields, enhanced biodiversity, disease resistant papaya, Golden rice) were cut from the TV version. I guess the producers did not want to mix too much scientific evidence in there with the fantastical stuff.

Boo to Dr. Oz.  I wonder if Chris Mooney, who’s been so vociferous in promoting Rock Stars of Science as a way to communicate good science to the public, will disclaim this show?  After all, he’d surely do that if one of his “rock stars” hosted a show that denied global warming.

h/t: erv (go read her take).