Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I’ve made no bones about my jealousy of Steve Pinker: his fluid ability to write, his awesome work ethic and productivity, his eloquence on the dais, and his ability to not just retain everything he’s ever read, but also bring it up when it’s appropriate. Oh, and he also lacks any arrogance—unusual in one of his renown.
And now I find the man does photography, too, and it’s good. He has a webpage just for his photographs (arranged by region and subject), and there are some from a recent trip to Vermont and New Hampshire when the leaves were turning. (If you’re not American or Canadian, fall in New England is one of the great sights of North America.) Here are a couple of those, and a few other shots from the site:
Knowing that the readers would want to know what kind of equipment Steve uses, I asked him, and he responded, “The New Hampshire and Vermont ones were taken with the Leica M (Type 240). The metadata for each shot (including camera and lens) are available on the site by clicking the circle with the little ‘i’ in it.”
Some more from the site:
New Mexico:
India:
Cape Cod, where he and Rebecca have a place (there are lots of photos):
And the theater at Delphi, one of my favorite places:
Well, at least I can contribute one thing to his personal development: I can (and will) advise him on which cowboy boots to buy—the one area where my expertise exceeds his!
Surprise! Atheists are discriminated against—legally. Well, we probably knew that about countries like Bangladesh, but it’s been documented by an official survey, reported in Sunday’s New York Times, “Atheists face death in 13 countries, global discrimination: study.” The survey is by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), and you can find their own summary here. And you can find the entire 244-page IHEU report, “Freedom of thought 2013” free at the link. The bulk of the report is a country-by-country survey of how much freedom of belief (and nonbelief) there is, but there’s also a 19-page preface that you should read.
First the bad news from the full report (in fact, it’s all bad news):
Our results show that the overwhelming majority of countries fail to respect the rights of atheists and freethinkers. There are laws that deny atheists’ right to exist, revoke their right to citizenship,restrict their right to marry, obstruct their access to public education, prohibit them from holding public office, prevent them from working for the state, criminalize their criticism of religion, and execute them for leaving the religion of their parents. In the worst cases, the state denies the rightsof atheists to exist, or seeks total control over their beliefs and actions.
The most striking data show that 13 countries mandate the death penalty for people who “either openly espouse atheism or reject the official state religion.”
Guess what that religion is?
Yep, it’s Islam—in all 13 countries. But it’s not the result of religion! No, it’s due to colonial oppression; it’s all political. In fact, I’d like to see someone pin this obvious violation of freedom of thought or speech on something other than religion itself, especially because it occurs only in Islamic countries. I’ve put the country names below in bold.
This is from the report:
In some countries, it is illegal to be an atheist. For example, every citizen of the Maldives is required to be a Muslim and the penalty for leaving Islam is death. Many other countries, while not outlawing people of different religions, or no religion, forbid leaving the state religion. And in these countries the punishment for apostasy—leaving the faith—is often death. In fact, 19 countries punish their citizens for apostasy, and in 12 of those countries it is punishable by death. Pakistan doesn’t have a death sentence for apostasy but it does for blasphemy, and the threshold for ‘blasphemy’ can very low; so in effect you can be put to death for expressing atheism in 13 countries.
More common than crimes relating to simply being an atheist, are the criminal measures against expressing atheist beliefs. Many countries have blasphemy laws that outlaw
criticism of protected religions or religious figures and institutions. For example, Pakistan has prosecuted more than a thousand people for blasphemy since introducing its current anti-blasphemy laws in 1988. And in the month of publication of this report, December 2013, the highest Islamic court in Pakistan declared that life imprisonment was no longer an acceptable punishment for blasphemy: only death would fit the crime of insulting Islam and its prophet.
The crime of criticizing a religion is not always called blasphemy; sometimes it is categorized as hate speech (even when it falls well below any sensible standard of actually inciting hatred or violence) because it supposedly insults the followers of a religion. These crimes—of expressing ‘blasphemy’ or offending religious feelings—are still a crime in 55 countries, can mean prison in 39 of those countries, and are punishable by death in six countries. In addition, most of the twelve countries which punish apostasy with death also sometimes treat ‘blasphemy’ as evidence of apostasy.
And from the IHEU summary:
In line with their words, several possibly unexpected nations come out rather badly on the scale of five classifications — which range upward in severity from “Free and Equal”, through “Mostly Satisfactory”, “Systemic Discrimination”, “Severe Discrimination”, to “Grave Violations”.
Four western countries are rated “Severe” because they can jail people for breaking laws prohibiting ‘blasphemy’ and other free speech on religion.
Those countries are Iceland (a sentence of jail for up to 3 months), Denmark (up to 4 months), New Zealand (up to a year), Poland (up to two years), Germany (up to three years) and Greece (up to three years). Jail time could be handed to someone who simply “blasphemes God” in the case of Greece, or “insults the content of other’s religious faith” in the case of Germany.
The apostasy laws violate article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”
And anti-religious “hate speech” (or nearly all “hate speech”) violates freedom of expression. There is no justification for outlawing the criticism of religion, and it’s unconscionable that countries like Denmark, Iceland, Poland, Germany, New Zealand, and Greece, can jail you for “blaspheming God.” If you thought places like Iceland and Denmark were progressive, think again. And Germany, really—three years for “insulting someone’s religious faith? I’d much rather live in a country where I can be called a “dirty Jew” (as I have been) than one in which you can’t offend anyone’s tender sentiments.
As for the U.S. (pp. 105-109 in the report), we get a “mostly satisfactory” rating, but it’s not perfect because of religious exemptions from laws (not just medical, either), and repeated violations of the Constitutional requirement for separation of church and state.
You’ve certainly heard of the documentary movie “The Unbelievers,” which follows Larry Krauss and Richard Dawkins around as they travel from place to place, giving talks and having public conversations. It will be in theaters in two days. You can find the movie’s website here, which has a bunch of information and photos like this one:
(Memo to Krauss: lose the red sneakers!)
And here’s the official trailer for the movie. They even had Woody Allen there, right behind that sign:
Finally, Monday’s New York Times has a description/review by science writer Dennis Overbye, which is surprisingly positive given the soft-on-faith slant of NYT science writers (except for Natalie Angier, an out atheist, and Carl Zimmer, who keeps quiet about what he believes). Overbye’s piece, “Intellectuals on a mission,” includes some laudatory remarks like these:
[Dawkins and Krauss] make an engaging, if contrasting, couple. Dr. Dawkins, perhaps the world’s best-known atheist after the success of his books “The Selfish Gene” and “The God Delusion,” cuts a dapper figure, often in a suit and flowery tie, a shock of silver hair falling across his forehead. “Science is wonderful; science is beautiful,” he says in that irresistible English accent. “Religion is not wonderful; it is not beautiful. It gets in the way.”
Dr. Krauss, the author of “A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing,” is more rumpled, peppery and casual; his wardrobe often features red sneakers. He comes across as a tireless fount of ideas and quips, with a puppy-dog enthusiasm for science and the spotlight, dancing on the stage in one affecting moment and eager to provoke. At one point, Dr. Krauss asks his companion which he would prefer: “a chance to explain science or destroy religion?”
He is blessed with a professional’s sense of comedic timing.
. . . You don’t need to know much about biology or physics to follow what amounts to highlight reels of the speeches the scientists gave, although an explanation by Dr. Dawkins about why there was no “first man” or “first rabbit” could be worth the price of your ticket.
Evolutionary change is simply too slow and imperceptible for humans to notice, he says, adding, “Nobody ever goes to bed middle-aged and wakes up and says, oh no I’m old.”
(In fact, I have a deep fear that this will happen to me!)
Overbye notes, though, that the movie doesn’t present arguments from The Other Side (the side that claims that New Atheist are strident!), and that there was criticism of Krauss’s book for not telling us where the laws of physics came from (well, we don’t know, though Krauss’s book did ignore the question of where a quantum vacuum comes from). Overby also allows that that Krauss and Dawkins are “preaching to the choir” on their tour. Those are all fair statements. But one is not: Overbye throws in a totally gratuitious remark by an unfortunately-named Vatican astronomer:
George V. Coyne — an astronomer, Jesuit priest and former director of the Vatican Observatory, now a professor of religion at Le Moyne College in Syracuse — wrote in a 2000 book on religion and the evolution of life, for example, that the success of modern science has trapped many of us into thinking of God as explanation, thus the notion of finding the “mind of God” as the ultimate goal.
But he wrote, “We know from Scripture and from tradition that God revealed himself as one who pours out himself in love and not as one who explains things.” God, he goes on, is primarily love: “Even if we discover the ‘Mind of God,’ we will not have necessarily found God.”
This has virtually nothing to do with Overbye’s piece. The “mind of God” trope came from Hawking, not Krauss, and Krauss doesn’t mention it in the article. Further, Father (gulp) Coyne’s blatherings are the usual metaphorizing of Sophisticated Theologian™. He’s simply wrong that God doesn’t explain stuff, for the Big Man does it all the time in His revealed word. He explains how to behave, he explains why he kills people, he explains where life came from (wrongly, of course), and he explains through his son (who is also Him) why Jesus had to come to earth and get crucified. What Father (gulp) Coyne is trying to do here is immunize God against the need for evidence. And what is this pablum about “we know from Scripture and from tradition“? Tradition doesn’t tell us anything: it’s just authority without evidence. Since when did “tradition” become “evidence”? In fact it’s not, for different people’s traditions tell them different things about God (a Baptist, for instance, will surely argue that God explains things). This inter-faith dissent about what God is and does is a sure sign that scripture and “tradition” tell us nothing.
Mostly, the movie is an enjoyably high-minded love fest between two deeply committed intellectuals and the scads of atheists, secularists, free-thinkers, skeptics and activists who make up their rock star-like fan base.
Overbye at the NYT also uses the simile of “rock stars”. I can’t help but think that that demeans the serious intellectual and social purpose of Krauss’s and Dawkins’s travels. Perhaps someone should have said something about the crowds turning out for love of science, and, especially, for love of public atheism. It takes Dawkins to note that the impressive success of Krauss’s and Dawkins’s tour reflects the thirst of closeted atheists for public affirmation of their disbelief.
Juno is the name of a NASA spacecraft which is heading for Jupiter, where it will arrive on 4 July 2016. To get there it performed a gravity-aided swing through the solar system, including a fly-past Earth two months ago, on 9 October. NASA have now released two fantastic videos of the fly-past. The first shows Juno’s view of the Earth and the moon as it approaches us and our natural satellite. The celestial ballet is exquisite. The second video is quite eerie. NASA arranged for hundreds of radio hams to send the message “Hi” in Morse Code to Juno as she whizzed by, and Juno recorded the result. The outcome is what First Contact would sound like were one of our probes to go past an inhabited radio-using planet, or what it would sound like to aliens, were they to come mooching around. Quite amazing. To see how they did it, watch the third video.
Does it really matter? It matters as little to me as whether Einstein was a theist (which he almost certainly wasn’t). As Steve Weinberg has noted, with or without religion, good people will do good things, and Mandela was a good person.
Over at Reality Report, Gregory Paul, the paleontologist, artist, and freelance sociologist (who previously showed that religion correlates negatively with measures of societal health) considers whether Nelson Mandela was an atheist. His post was inspired by a question posted to an atheist on a talk show: has there ever been a moral leader who was an atheist? (The atheist queried was stumped.). Paul argues that one is Andrei Sakharov, and the other Nelson Mandela. In his pieee, “The Great Atheist—Nelson Mandela,” Paul, however, adduces no evidence for this claim. There are only two statements offered in support.
1. “And the other great moral atheist leader of the 20th century was Nelson Mandela. He too was an nontheist of the left (as most are, in the US 3/4s of the nonreligious are progressives, the rest Randian libertarians.)”
That’s not evidence; it’s an assertion.
2. “Of course we will hear and read little, or more likely nothing, about Mandela’s irreligiosity from the supposedly secular bent mainstream, or even progressive, news media in the wake of the great atheist’s death. Just as there will be little mention of the deep religiosity of the operators of apartheid. But next time a theist deploys the old there-are-no-great-atheists-charge in your presence, toss Mandela – and Sakharov – back into their laps.”
That’s just an assertion, too. Nowhere will you find a statement by Mandela that he was an atheist, an agnostic, or any sort of unbeliever. Or, at least, an internet search fails to reveal any evidence.
But who cares? Are we that desperate for atheist moral leaders that we must make such unevidenced claims? Perhaps Mandela was an atheist, and perhaps he just kept quiet about it, as world leaders are wont to do, particularly in religious countries. The fact is that, until recently, it was simply not on to admit nonbelief.
Nevertheless, if you must have people that I think are moral leaders, in the sense of setting moral examples, one could cite Jawaharlal Nehru, Clarence Darrow, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Peter Singer, Thomas Jefferson (he might have professed deism, but I suspect today he’d be an out atheist), and Margaret Sanger.
But we needn’t engage in this “who’s an atheist” game? After all, we have most of the scientists and philosophers! And of course the problem is that if you’re an atheist who leads morally while criticizing religion, or even professing nonbelief (and I’d put Richard Dawkins in the class of “moral leaders”), you’re automatically excluded from “moral leadership.” There’s a bit of circularity in the definition—at least in how it’s seen by the public, which equates “moral” with “religious.”
Hili: The snow is gone. Now do something so it will be warmer.
A: Hili, sometimes you just have to accept reality.
Hili: Ask Uncle Jerry if it is so cold in Chicago as well.
Yes, Hili it is wicked cold in Chicago—colder than Dobrzyn. And we have lots of snow. You wouldn’t like it here.
In Polish:
Hili: Śnieg stopniał, zrób coś jeszcze, żeby było cieplej.
Ja: Hili, czasem trzeba zaakceptować rzeczywistość.
Hili: Spytaj Jerrego, czy u niego też tak zimno?
I have a few more posts to go for Fox Week, and this is a good one.
“A fox looks like a dog, but purrs like a cat. But in fact, it’s neither . . . They have the nicest nature of animal I’ve ever met.”
Those are the words of Mike Trowler of Kent. LOOK AT THIS ADORABLE PHOTO! Even I want to cuddle a fox after seeing this:
Mike and Cropper the Fox, sharing some quality down time
As recounted by D*gheirs, Mike rescued Cropper the fox and gave him a loving home.
Cropper was found on the side of a road and rescued by The Fox Project in Turnbridge Wells. Seriously injured and ill (toxoplasmosis), he could not be returned to the wild. There were only two choices: euthanize Cropper or find him a home.
Mike Trowler gave Cropper a home. A retired engineer, Mike is fascinated by fox behavior and spends a great deal of time with them. In addition to nursing injured foxes back to health, he also takes in orphaned fox cubs and raises them until they can be released back into the wild. He does this by releasing them into his nine acre garden. A few remain to be fed each night, some stay in the area for several years, while others take off to establish their own territories further afield.
When Cropper was nursed back to health by Mike’s patience, love and determination, Cropper became a member of Mike’s family. Cropper would eat food from the dog’s dish and curl up with the cats, but mostly, he would spend time with Mike. The two would even go for walks together and Mike would roll him over and give him belly rubs.
Below you can see a video of Mike and Cropper:
After six happy years with Mike, Cropper passed away in 2007. However, another fox, Jack, who had been suffering similar ailments, has moved in with Mike. Jack enjoys watching TV with Mike and even reluctantly tolerates a bath in the sink.
Don’t miss this video of Mike and Jack. Mike is quite passionate about foxes, and here is very eloquent in describing their appeal:
And a final amazing fact about Trowler:
In addition to foxes, Mike is also friends with a couple of badgers. One of the badgers, a female he named Benji, eats from a bowl while he holds it and allow him to pet her.
