Last October, during a visit to the Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala City, I did a videotaping with university folks as part of the program.  I’ve just been told that this is online.  Sadly, I can’t remember the name of the nice guy who interviewed me, but I’m sure someone will remind me.

If I look tired, it’s because I was—two talks, a discussion lunch, a television program, and this interview, as well as many meetings, all in two days.  But, as the link above attests, it was a swell visit.

The International Institute for Species Exploration, an organization new to me, has named the Top 10 Species of the Year (the full list, with photos and desriptions, is here).  These were all discovered in 2009, and are pretty cool.  They include the Attenborough’s Pitcher from the Philippines, an “udderly weird” yam, a fanged minnow, a penis-shaped mushroom from São Tomé, the island where we work, and, of course, the fantastically colored frogfish. We’ve met Histiophryne psychedelica before, but there’s a new video that shows its weird “hopping” behavior.

And here is Phallus drewesii, a new stinkhorn mushroom from São Tomé.  Named after Robert Drewes, curator of herpetology at the Cal Academy, this species was the subject of a segment on NPR’s “Wait wait, don’t tell me.”

Just for perspective,  in 2008—the last year for which data are available—18,225 new living species were described, along with 2,140 fossil ones.  What a bounty!  Let’s not blow it.

Michael Zimmerman is a biologist at Butler University.  He’s also the founder of the Clergy Letter Project, a project that rounds up clergy to sign a letter asserting that science and faith are compatible.  Here’s part of that letter:

While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible – the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark – convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts. . .

We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist.

Well, I still don’t know what the “timeless truths” of the Bible are, or how they differ from the conflicting but equally timeless truths of Islam, Hinduism, or Scientology.  What, for example, are the “timeless truths” of Noah or the Adam-and-Eve story? That all animal species went through a bottleneck of two individuals? That all humans were all born in a state of sin?

But never mind.  The Clergy Letter Project seems harmless at worst, though it’s predicated on the dubious assumption that if the shepherds assert the compatibility of faith and evolution, creationists will rush to join the Darwinian fold. Still, Zimmerman extols the virtues of accommodationism in a post in Thursday’s HuffPo, where he asks us to not only recognize the differences between science and faith, but respect them.

It’s straight-up NOMA-ism.  Zimmerman defines science thusly:

Scientific investigation is a process that depends upon hypothesis testing and demands that scientific claims be offered in a manner that permits them to be falsified. Simply put, if you can’t phrase your hypothesis in a falsifiable manner, it falls outside the bounds of science.

And then tells us that religious claims are outside these bounds— except, of course, for creationism!:

Where does that leave religion? Well, it depends what you mean by religion. When religion (or more likely its fundamentalist adherents) begins to make claims in the complete absence of evidence and in a manner that is not falsifiable, and when those claims are passed off as scientific, the record must be set straight. Creationism, in all of its guises, including intelligent design, regularly makes claims of exactly this sort. Rather than addressing evidence, creationists simply make faith statements and expect that those faith statements be taught in science classes.

While none of us should hesitate to attack such activities, it’s well worth pointing out that most mainstream religions don’t do this. Consider, for example, the resolution overwhelmingly adopted by the United Methodist Church at its quadrennial conference in 2008: “Be it resolved that the General Conference of the United Methodist Church go on record as opposing the introduction of any faith-based theories such as Creationism or Intelligent Design into the science curriculum of our public schools.”

What? Most mainstream religions don’t make empirical claims that are in principle testable? That’s just wrong. In April I gave a list of empirical claims made by religious people.  These claims are either testable and have already been disproven  (prayer works) or testable in principle (an itinerant rabbi was raised from the dead two millennia ago).  And they’re all empirical claims.  The only kind of religion that doesn’t make those claims is deism.

Zimmerman isn’t describing the real world, but the world of left-wing theologians.  As I wrote a while back in The New Republic:

The reason that many liberal theologians see religion and evolution as harmonious is that they espouse a theology not only alien but unrecognizable as religion to most Americans.

If you turn on your television on Sunday morning, as I did today, you’ll see that real world.  You’ll see oodles of preachers testifying to the literal truth of God’s creation, the Fall of Man, and the power of prayer. What’s more, some of these preachers promise salvation, wealth, happiness, or health if you’ll just forward a few bucks to their ministries.  Aren’t those empirical claims?  Apparently not, because, you know, those people are deluded: religion isn’t really about whether God fiddles with the world:

Many, many religious leaders understand that religion is not dependent upon a single interpretation of any text. Instead, the overwhelming majority of the religious leaders with whom I interact regularly believe that religion is about morality and spirituality rather than science.

Maybe Dr. Zimmerman should get out more.

In the end, Zimmerman wears his accommodationism proudly:

I have no problem being labeled an “accommodationist” for taking such a stand. I also have no problem arguing vehemently when anyone, religious or otherwise, crosses the line from science to nonsense.

Right.  I look forward to Dr. Zimmerman’s vehement arguments against the nonsensical and pseudoscientific claim that prayer works.

Yesterday the Texas School Board passed its new, conservatized social studies curriculum by a vote of 10-5.  These changes have ramifications for the entire U.S., for textbook companies don’t like to make special editions for just one state.

Here are a few of the curriculum revisions:

The United States will not longer be characterized as a “democracy,” but as a “constitutional republic.”

Students will be encouraged to “question the doctrine of church-state separation.”

The students will get to learn about the great achievements of the conservative movement, including the leadership of Phyllis Schafly and the Moral Majority.

“Students should study ‘the unintended consequences’ of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation. He [David Bradley] also won approval for an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.”

Students still get to study President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but now supplement that with Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address as president of the Confederacy.

Thomas Jefferson, the main author of the Declaration of Independence has been removed from the list of “great thinkers.”   After all, what great thinker could advocate the separation of church and state?

Martin Luther King’s “Letters from a Birmingham Jail” has been removed from the suggested readings.

But not every amendment passed.  Here’s one that was voted down. According to The New York Times:

Mavis B. Knight, a Democrat from Dallas, introduced an amendment requiring that students study the reasons “the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.”

It was defeated on a party-line vote.

See Colbert’s take here.

A special Friday kitteh in honor of Venter’s artificial bacterium.  Here we see clearly how natural selection has favored the installation of a loud mew in a kitten in trouble, as well as a response to that call in its mother.  One kitten mews, the other doesn’t.

As my father used to say, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

Elaine Howard Ecklund has a new book out, Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think.  It’s been touted in certain dark corners of the blogosphere as showing that scientists aren’t nearly as atheistic as everyone thinks.  Over at EvolutionBlog, Jason Rosenhouse, who’s read the book, takes issue with this claim:

Asked about their beliefs in God, 34% chose “I don’t believe in God,” while 30% chose, “I do not know if there is a God, and there is no way to find out.” That’s 64% who are atheist or agnostic, as compared to just 6% of the general public.

An additional 8% opted for, “I believe in a higher power, but it is not God.” That makes 72% of scientists who are explicitly non-theistic in their religious views (compared to 16% of the public generally.) Pretty stark.

From the other side, it is just 9% of scientists (compared to 63% of the public), who chose, “I have no doubts about God’s existence.” An additional 14% of scientists chose, “I have some doubts, but I believe in God.” Thus, it is just 25% of scientists who will confidently assert their belief in God (80% of the general public.)

For completeness, the final option was “I believe in God sometimes.” That was chosen by 5% of scientists and 4% of the public. Make of it what you will.

Now explain to me, please, how anyone can look at that data and write this:

As we journey from the personal to the public religious lives of scientists, we will meet the nearly 50 percent of elite scientists like Margaret who are religious in a traditional sense…. (p. 6)

This claim, that fifty percent of scientists are traditionally religious, is repeated in the jacket copy. The expression, “religious in a traditional sense” is never precisely defined, but I would have thought that a belief in God is a minimal requirement. With 72% of scientists explicitly nontheistic, and an additional five percent professing to believe in God only sometimes, it looks to me like 23% would be the most generous figure for the fraction of scientists who are traditionally religious.

I’ve ordered the book and will read it and report back.  But already I smell trouble. If you look at the book on Amazon, you can read part of Chapter 1, which has a “A Message to Scientists” starting on page 8.  What is it?  That we scientists at “elite universities” must bear the burden of overcoming, through public outreach, the “indifference or outright hostility” that Americans bear toward science.  And to do that, we need to learn a lot more about religion so we can more effectively engage the faithful.  I’ll be curious to see if Ecklund’s data say anything about the effectiveness of this strategy.

It was funded by Templeton, of course.

Cake found in a store in New Orleans: