Alex’s Heresies - embracing a physical reality

Sense About Science website is promoting their Celebrities and Science Review 2008 listing ridiculous unscientific claims made by celebrities and politicians. The Independent newspaper highlights some amusing findings, such as:

Mr Obama and John McCain blundered into the MMR vaccine row during their presidential campaigns. “We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate,” said President-elect Obama. “Some people are suspicious that it’s connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it,” he said.

His words were echoed by Mr McCain. “It’s indisputable that [autism] is on the rise among children, the question is what’s causing it,” he said. “There’s strong evidence that indicates it’s got to do with a preservative in the vaccines.”

Exhaustive research has failed to substantiate any link to vaccines or any preservatives. The rise in autism is thought to be due to an increased awareness of the condition.

or…

Sarah Palin, Mr McCain’s running mate, waded into the mire with her dismissal of some government research projects. “Sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not,” Ms Palin said. But the geneticist Ellen Solomon takes Ms Palin to task for not understanding the importance of studies into fruit flies, which share roughly half their genes with humans. “They have been used for more than a century to understand how genes work, which has implications in, for example, understanding the ageing process,” she said.

or…

Kate Moss, Oprah Winfrey and Demi Moore all espoused the idea that you can detoxify your body with either diet (scientifically unsupportable) or, in the case of Moore, products such as “highly trained medical leeches” which make you bleed. Scientists point out that diet alone cannot remove toxins and that blood itself is not a toxin, and even if it did contain toxins, removing a little bit of it is not going to help.

and finally…

But top prize went to the lifestyle guru Carole Caplin for denouncing a study showing that vitamin supplements offer little or no health benefits as “rubbish” – it is the third year on the run that she has been mentioned in the review. Science author and GP Ben Goldacre pointed out that the study Ms Caplin referred to was the most authoritative yet published. “Carole should understand that research can often produce results which challenge our preconceptions: that is why science is more interesting than just following your nose,” Dr Goldacre said. (full article from The Independent)

Alex McCullie

Christian bookshops are keen to sell the Expelled DVD that is supposed to highlight the unfair favouring of evolution over the overtly religious creationism, now neatly re badged as Intelligent Design avoiding US Constitutional problems. The smart ideas of design are being expelled from the classroom by scientists and educators. Here’s an introduction by Christian Cinema.

Intelligent Design (ID), the ultimate oxymoron, keeps raising its ugly head. Instead of pontification about unsupported religious origin-beliefs, let’s see some real evidential support from the design supporters who want to be treated seriously. Evolution is one of most supported scientific theories of all time with numerous academic papers yearly in the most world’s most-respected scientific journals. Let the supporters of the ID achieve something similar and earn the right to be treated as scientific instead of being simply shouting about thinly disguised religious beliefs.

Mainstream scientists would welcome an alternate theory to evolution if it has stronger evidential support. There is nothing religious in science’s backing of evolution - it’s simply the best supported by a considerable margin. However we are yet to see the supporters of the various design beliefs present any sort of broad-based evidential support

Here’s an Expelled debunking site - Expelled Exposed.

Alex McCullie

Here’s another video demonstrating Sarah Palin’s fitness to be the next US Vice President - perhaps not.

http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/countdown-palin-wants-help-special-ne

Alex McCullie

200 years after Darwin’s birth and 150 years after the publication of On Origin of the the Species we expected press articles, new books and television shows on evolution. And, guess what, they have started and, of course, the vexed question of its relationship with religion arises.

The Church of England posted an article by Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, Director of Mission and Public Affairs entitled Good religion needs good science where Brown admits some church people may have been mistaken in attacking Darwin’s ideas in the mid 19th century. However he spends most of the article attacking Social Darwinism which he implies is a natural outcome of scientific atheism through the misuse evolutionary theory to promote moral improvement through social engineering. I’ll discuss his article more below.

Also the Roman Catholic Church again acknowledges the validity of a religious version of evolution, theistic evolution, and denies the literal truth of the Genesis creation stories (articles: Roman Catholic response (via Reuters), Comment on apologies). However BBC News has an article about creationism in the UK - it may be more widespread than generally thought (British creationists - BBC News).

Back to Rev Brown’s article about good religion and good science. He equates evolution offering some sort of implicit moral progress. This is one of the great myths about evolution perpetuated by allies and opponents alike. There is no sense of progress in the evolutionary theory - all living things including humans develop through chance and adaption to the environments. As environments change, then successions of living things adapt in different ways. Chance comes from environmental changes, reproduction and mutations. Evolution unlike religious practices has no sense of intentionality - no overall purposes or goals. It is a combination of blind processes that acts like a “blind watchmaker” to use Richard Dawkin’s word play on William Paley. So there is no moral dimension to evolutionary processes nor is there any sense of progress to higher life forms nor is there any superiority of one species over any other. On the other hand I would argue that Christianity has traditionally promoted all of these ideas. Despite Brown’s claims about the easy misuse of science, most religious supporters have had no problems applying social engineering on others for the “greater good”. But, of course, this was justified as doing God’s work.

He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned
(Mark 16:15-16)

Alex McCullie

Video from the Center of Inquiry promotes the use of science and reason to better humankind rather than traditional religious beliefs and dogma. (YouTube video)

Alex McCullie

The Christian religious explanations for the creation of the universe, Earth and, more particularly, humans have always seemed incredible to me.

Let us take the approach of the traditional Christian who is on the softer end of bible interpretation. I am using Marcus Borg’s description of a traditional Christian from his book The Heart of Christianity. Essentially the traditional Christian believer sees the Holy Bible as the true Word of God and Jesus as the son of God and part of the Trinity. Being on the softer end, though, some of the Bible may be interpreted metaphorically such as the story of Genesis to incorporate the developments of science.

So here’s my guess of the modernised Christian story.

15 billion years ago (that’s 15,000,000,000 years) God created the universe - all known time and space - in the same way as hypothesised by scientists as the “Big Bang” theory. However the scientific explanations do not involve God. Now, you should remember at this point that God’s overall objective is to create us some 15 billion years as the only living creatures with both physical and non-physical (”soul”) forms. As you know souls can join Him upon death for people obeying God’s laws. Back to the story. Then about 10.5 billion years later God created Earth (consistent with the latest scientific theories) and some 500,000 years later created simple life forms. It’s important to remember that God created the rules of the universe that gives us the apparent order we find and, as part of that, evolution. But God intervenes, presumably,  to ensure that He gets the outcome He wants. So even though Evolutionary theory suggests that all living things, including humans, got here by a combination of chance and selection, the chance may be illusionary as God needs to manipulate the processes to achieve His outcomes - human beings. So through a relatively meandering process of evolution and appearing as if driven by purely selection and chance, humans appear some 150 000 years ago - 15 billions after the start of the universe - according to God’s design.

Let’s fast forward to some 2 500 years ago when God decided the time was right to directly influence humans by appearing. He chose a small wandering tribe in the Middle East to start His work. It was a good start but more was needed so some 500 years later God placed his embodiment into this Middle Eastern tribe in the form of Jesus. For over 30 years Jesus preached around the Middle East, gathered followers and performed miracles for before dying, resurrecting and returning to God (even though in some sense he is God). This cleansed our original sin as described in the metaphorical story of Adam and Eve though it isn’t clear how we have the same original sin in the more scientifically-aware version of Christian creation. From that point his teachings spread throughout the Roman Empire and beyond through disciples like Paul (Saul of Tarsus).

So we have a couple of major choices. We can believe the scientific explanations as they stand without God. Or, we can except those explanations but believe God developed the rules and intervened selectively to produce us. Surprisingly there appears to be no verifiable physical evidence of God intervening contrary to the scientific explanations. I should mention that our lack of knowledge about beginning of life and universe should be no justification for hypothesising a god. In fairness though adding a god does make many people feel special and have something better to look forward upon death so perhaps that isn’t a completely unhealthy delusion. I guess Richard Dawkins would disagree.

Alex McCullie

An amusing article appeared in the on-line news website, The Onion, : Evolutionists Flock to Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain (5-Sep-2008). Now religious apologists will be saying that secularists do believe in a god after all - just the wrong one.

Alex McCullie

Discover magazine article How To Teach Science to the Pope 18-Aug-2008 describes the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the testy (at times) relationship between the Academy’s independence and church doctrine. One example was over the need for population control promoted by the Academy that was contrary to the church’s opposition to birth control and contraception. (See article 16-Jun-1994) From the 1994 article Cardinal Clancy makes a particularly instructive remark showing how religious leaders react to being challenged.

Edward Cardinal Clancy of Sydney, Australia, said that in cases of perceived conflict between the church and scientists, “the question mark must rather be raised over what’s being said in the name of science.”

The Discover article highlights some interesting aspects of science and religion.

First, I think science is often misrepresented as conducted by robot-like white coated scientists who are devoid of feelings and concerns about people. Nothing could be further from the truth. Often they are very passsionate about their work and the potential benefits for humanity. However the important aspect, though, is that they work in accordance with accepted methods that have proved very successful at generating reliable information. Speculation - reasoned and superstitious - can be very much part of religion and philosophy. On the other hand science attempts to minimised speculation and human wishful thinking by making hypotheses, conclusions and research data in some way empirically-based.

Second, “scientism” is an easy catch-call when scientific research and discoveries threaten firmly-held religious beliefs and dogmas. Heliocentic view of Earth, Theory of Evolution and Neuroscience are providing convincing support for a physicalist view of humans and our world. Religious leaders often react in two different ways. Some deny all scientific achievements that contradict their sacred texts. The Earth was created 6000 years ago and evolution is the work of Satan. While others dramatically re-interpret scriptures to be more science-friendly and evolution-friendly. However “scientism” still comes out of the cupboard whenever the religious feel threatened. Our society has an almost automatic assumption that religious people, who are often just purveyors of their particular religious beliefs and dogma, are somehow more qualified to talk about human well-being than anyone else. Thoughtful scientists, philosophers, religious leaders, politicians and others should all be assessed on the merits of their comments and expertise regardless of whether they are the Dali Lama or the Pope or the local priest or a Nobel prize winning biologist.

Third, a common retort to critics of religious belief is that they attacked an old-fashion version of God. Typically these religious thinkers present a very attenuated version of God that seems devoid of the classic theist properties - all powerful, ever present, all loving, interested in humans and interventionist. That is until we talk specifics. Most religious leaders still believe miracles happen - temporary suspension of all natural laws by a divine being to use Hume’s definition. Some though place an upper limit of numbers otherwise our lives would be unpredictable. Thank you for small mercies.

The Discover article quotes Father Rafael Martínez, the STOQ program director at Holy Cross.

Martínez explains that while rare, miracles are still plausible. “Our world is a very complex world in which chaos and uncertainty have a big part… but the odds are one in many terabillions,” he says. “That would be not a problem in my point of view because this event would be guided in a way without contradicting natural laws.”

It doesn’t get fluffier than that - if not contradicting natural laws so why is it a miracle? It is hard to know what to make of miracles from scientifically aware believers. They need miracles to demonstrate the validity of their religion. But claiming too many exposes them to being shown to have natural causes or worse not even happening at all. To a critic it is also interesting that most “real” miracles seem to have occurred in more primitive times prior to the advent of modern science. A cynic might suppose that God is shier today than 2000 years ago or, perhaps, He does not exist at all.

Finally, religious thinkers on one hand use a very nebulous, non-invasive, loving version of God to defend His existence and to criticise atheists as attacking a “straw man”. Then in the next breath many firm up supporting very restrictive religious rules on human behaviour such as a prohibition of contraception even if demonstrated to help reduce HIV infection.

Alex McCullie

Evolution (DVD) is an excellent introduction to Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolution (in 7 parts for 8 hours). The topics include Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, The Evolutionary Arms Race, Why Sex?, The Mind’s Big Bang and What About God?

Mostly the DVD is classic documentary style even though the first part includes a drama recreating Darwin’s life.

I found the last episode about the conflict between beliefs in God and theory of evolution the most interesting episode. The documentary follows US teenage students from strong Christian backgrounds attempting to reconcile first introductions to biological science including evolution. Most of these young people had been told since birth the Genesis explanation from the people that mattered - parents, immediate and extended families, faith school teachers and church elders. Not surprisingly they accepted without questions, especially as their parents and friends described evolution as the work of Satan.

The DVD is available in Australia encoded as region 4. It’s also available from Amazon (region 1).

Corresponding website with video extracts: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/

Alex McCullie

The short answer is no, just an uneasy truce. Scientists agree to not declare the “resurrection” and other miracles as highly improbable, unsupported by evidence and contradictory to all other known physical principles. Similarly many religionists accept scientific theories (partially) and not engage in war against science, while still maintaining traditional creeds of god created all things and gave human beings everlasting souls. This is my very sceptical view of the broad “understanding”.

Science and religion seek to explain our existence and the world about us. Science uses empirically-based evidence to provide physical explanations for our world. Religions use ancient texts and interpretations by religious leaders and intellectuals to impart their vision of god’s will for us and our world. Given changes in scientific knowledge, religions may re-interpret their sacred texts to be more acceptable or simply deny science and retain their ancient explanations.

Science assumes a strictly physical reality that displays a non-designed regularity that can be understood. Science investigates the world with a bottom-up approach so it examines the parts to understand the whole - so-called reductionism. Moreover science encourages skeptical thinking by seeing all knowledge as provisional. Over the last 500 years science has proved amazingly successful at explaining our world by using this empirically-based research, disciplined testing and regular peer reviews. Many superstitions have been replaced by scientific explanations.

Religions assume that all existence has a purpose and that we, as humans, have special significance. Typically an all powerful entity exists in the non-physical reality but created all things in our physical one. Humans, unlike all other living things, exist in both worlds with non-physical souls and a physical body. Most religions use ancient texts and later interpretations to describe the world, its origins and as well as human purposes. Believers are expected to have faith - belief without evidence - that these words were written by people and inspired by god. Even though many people see some of the religious stories as metaphorical or naive inventions of earlier civilisations, conservative believers still take these stories as literal truth.

When religions talk about god and even souls there is probably no clashing with science. However when religions make pronouncements about the physical world - as they must to have any relevance - then they are on science’s patch. Scientific methods can be used to check the likelihood of religious physical claims. Not surprisingly this creates flash-points of dispute. Some obvious examples come to mind. Firstly, there is no independent physical evidence that any miracles - violations of natural laws - have occurred. Also, secondly, Evolution presents enormous metaphysical problems for most religions. All life evolved naturally; our existence came by chance; and humans are like other living things and therefore unlikely to have non-physical aspects such as souls are some of the obvious implications. Everyday, finally, neuroscience is chipping away at the sanctity of a separate mind with physical descriptions of our mental processes.

Technically religions and science could exist in parallel if religions never talked about the physical world and science continues to ignore any non-physical existence. Unfortunately, as even the religious leaders know, the physical reality affects our everyday concerns. Talking about gods, ghosts and spirits without mentioning our actual physical world is of little practical interest to anyone.

Alex McCullie