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Knowledge and Doubt
Saturday, June 20th, 2009 | Author: Moody
The following material, in this and related posts upcoming, draws extensively upon the writing of philosopher Walter A. Kaufmann, whose 1958 book, Critique of Religion and Philosophy, I have lately been re-reading. I have attempted to provide my own take on the material, putting it into my own words, with the idea of saying what I think, of expressing what I understand, while also promoting his work to those who may not have read it. I also wrote this post as a way for me to test my own understanding of the material discussed and to put it out there for public scrutiny and comment.

Part 1: What do you know?

I.

When it comes to religion, I think it is fair to say that there are difficulties with regard to the definition of “truth” and “knowledge”. Many (if not most) religious people will tell you that they “know God exists”. The immediate question arising from this is, How do they know? Perhaps a better first question would be, What do they mean by “know”? And but so, of course, we need to have a firm idea about what “to know” means to us.

If I say to a friend that “I know my car is in the garage”, I am stating that it is true that the car is in the garage, and I am peremptorily and implicitly stating that my assertion is true (or correct). I am also making a falsifiable statement; someone can check to see if it is true or false that my car is in the garage. But what does it mean to the statement if the car is, in fact, in the garage? Is it certain then that I actually knew? Is “I know my car is in the garage” (S1) equivalent to a statement like, “I know my name is James” (S2)?

Let’s look at S1 and S2 in a bit more detail.

Assume that the friend I am talking to recognizes which car is mine. Does it affect any quality of my stating S1 if I make the statement over the phone to my friend, who is not there, while standing in the garage with my car, vs. making the statement while standing, say, in the living room of my friend’s house with my friend, both of us unable to see my car? In either case the statement remains falsifiable. If the car is right there with me when I state S1, then, barring delusion or insanity, one could grant that I certainly do know, even if no-one else is with me at that moment. The same goes for if my friend is there with me when I state S1, only one might add that this latter situation would grant an immediate empirical quality to my statement. But does any of this make a significant difference to our understanding of knowledge itself?

Can there be empirical knowledge of S2? Yes, of course. Is it then the same kind of knowledge as indicated by S1? Yes. Empirical knowledge of the stars gained through the use of telescopes does not differ from empirical knowledge of various mathematical proofs gained from studying mathematics. That is, S2 is just as falsifiable and evidence-based as S1. In the case of S2, I have a birth certificate, a drivers license with my picture on it, a Social Security card, and other forms of identifying material. I have the testimony of my parents who named me. In a room full of people, I honestly respond to the name “James” and not to others. Although “James” is not a physical thing that one can touch or sense directly like a car in a garage, there are nonetheless multiple ways of obtaining empirical (real world) evidence to support my assertion that “I know my name is James” is a true statement.

This is not to say that I may not, in fact, be mistaken in either case. Although it is unlikely that I am wrong about either one, there is the possibility, however remote, that I don’t actually know, even though my stating S1 or S2 was done in good faith. But I think that it should be fairly obvious to the reader that S1 stated out of sight of the car, would sooner fall into doubt than S2 stated at nearly any time.

II.

True knowledge may always be falsified. If a statement is made that asserts knowledge that cannot be falsified, there is no way to determine if it is in fact knowledge, and reason to doubt that it is in any way knowable. Statements that depend on (or are somehow meant to be justified by) unfalsifiable knowledge—rather than providing a way toward falsifying the asserted knowledge—are doubly suspect. Thus, if one states that “I know faeries are good because they keep trolls out of my garden”, then all one has done is begged the question. Were one to state that “I know faeries are good because they keep slugs off my tomatoes”, that could be tested a number of ways. But here it is very important to note that an absence of slugs on the tomatoes would not in itself constitute any proof that faeries were responsible. There would have to be tests that could actually address the statement. Nor would it do the statement any good if it turned out that your kindly next door neighbor had sprayed the tomatoes for you and you then said the faeries compelled her to do so.

On the other hand, even if something seems difficult to apprehend or test, if it is falsifiable and it passes tests of falsifiability, then it may be said to be known or knowable. Famously, this would apply to Einstein’s formula, E=mc2. It also applies to the theory of evolution, which requires a fairly robust level of education to really grok. One may doubt that something is true (as formulated or presented) or knowable, but it becomes less and less rational to do so as it passes test after test and is not proven false. At this point, for instance, no educated person in her or his right mind (no rational person) would doubt that the earth is a fairly oblate spheroid object orbiting the sun. Again, the same goes for E=mc2 and the theory of evolution.

III.

One thing that should be gleaned from the above paragraphs is that there is no room for “subjective” truth where knowledge is concerned. Although one can make a good faith assertion that something is known or true (S1 and S2) and be mistaken, this is a far cry from a statement like, “It’s true for me that stars are actually plugged in to a cosmic electrical grid”. The fact of the matter is that there is no “true for me” in that sense, regardless of whether you actually believe it or not. If you were to tell me that it was true for you that you could fly by strenuously flapping your arms, I would have every right to doubt your assertion and ask you to prove it. If you then began to strenuously flap your arms and said, “Look! I’m flying!”, I would have every reason to think that something was wrong with you or that you were trying to have one over on me. If you then said to me, in all sincerity, “You didn’t see me flying because you don’t believe, but I [know that I] did fly, and whatever you say it is still true to me”, I would have to say, if only to myself, “You poor, deluded bugger”.

Sincerity and feelings cannot establish the fact or truth of something beyond themselves. One may sincerely believe in faeries, and feel their presence all around, but this in no way proves that there are faeries; it is simply evidence of your sincerity and feelings. Appealing to the number of people who also believe in faeries (though some of them spell it f-a-i-r-i-e-s) does not lend itself as any kind of proof of faeries, either. You must provide something falsifiable. I shall remain a non-faerieist until such time as some real evidence comes my way. But really, I’ve never seen a single shred of falsifiable evidence for faeries that wasn’t in the end a failure for the faerieists. So, truth be told, I’m an afaerieist; I deny the existence of faeries due to lack of supporting evidence; I have no faith in faeries.

But, all kidding aside, is there no empirical evidence for “God”?

…

Stay tuned for Part 2: What do you believe? Suggestions, criticisms and comments are welcomed and encouraged.

Category: Atheism, Philosophy, Religion/Spirituality, Science  | Comments
Tree of Æons
Sunday, April 12th, 2009 | Author: Moody

Living Tree of Evolution

Living Tree of Evolution

From so humble a beginning as the blind dance of chemicals may represent, from out of the depths of unconscious ages in life’s Ultima Thule, the Tree of Life arose from the primordial chaos, sui generis, to grow through countless ages, to diversify its fruits, to send tendrils of spiral DNA, winding and raveling, into every niche, every nook and cranny of exploitable space, to thrive even in the face of massive threats to its very existence, to return from setbacks on scales that in their enormity beggar the imagination, to reach in its endless adaptations this age, this milestone, where we—but a part of its neverending, ever wending growth—may gaze upon it and perceive, however dimly, the ground from whence it rose up, while still not finished, and as yet remaining all but blind to the future of its existence.

Let us contemplate today the beauty of the natural world that we have the privilege of experiencing. Let us meditate upon it and consider the experience of living.

I recently read Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the book that transformed the life sciences for all time, and was struck by the beautiful simplicity of the work. Although we have moved well beyond Darwin’s understanding, in doing so we have in fact only refined what he envisioned; he saw truly and incontrovertibly the unshakable basis of how life evolves on our planet. In our refining we have expanded our knowledge of the Tree of Life, and in expanding our knowledge we have deepened our understanding of life itself. The mysteries of life yield, but in their yielding they teach us to love life even more. The science of evolution, and the fruit of the life sciences generally, has only become sweeter and more nourishing since Darwin’s time. We have learned that we are part of a whole undergoing a process that seems inherent in the fabric of existence. It is a process with no ultimate, crowning achievement.

Certainly though, among the particulars of its myriad manifestations, consciousness may be seen as a crowning glory. For without consciousness there is nothing.

So, let us today contemplate and meditate upon what it means to be conscious of the Tree of Life as it grows here on earth within the effectively immeasurable space of the universe. I went outside and sat in a lawn chair and gazed out at the blue sky with its diffuse clouds, and I imagined that my sight could penetrate the veil of the visible sky and see into the universe beyond it. I recalled in my imagination that in the tiniest patch of that sky there exist thousands of galaxies, each with billions of stars, and that amongst those stars there are countless planets. Some percentage of those planets will be suited to life, and it is certain that that life will also be evolving in some unique yet ultimately comprehensible manner. Such life as exists in the universe will forever be closed to me, but this is not a loss. What life I know is ample and rich, nearly endless in its expressions. Like infinity in an inch, there is more than enough to take my mind off the miles. So today I think about how the life right here on our little world has come to be.

Today I reclaim the most robust and enduring story: ours, the world’s, life’s story; grounded in real history, truly epic and mind-blowing, yet accessible to us in our conscious grasp of existence. I know of nothing greater or more wonderful.

Recommended viewing: Evolution is REAL Science #1.

Category: Evolution, Musings, Science  | Tags: ,  | Comments off
Happy Birthday to Charles Darwin!
Thursday, February 12th, 2009 | Author: Moody

Charles Darwin, photographed by Margaret Cameron

Charles Darwin in 1868, photographed by Margaret Cameron

In 1868, on the Isle of Wight (renowned for its dinosaur fossils), the talented photographer Julia Margaret Cameron took the picture of Charles Darwin you see here. Today is his birthday. Were he alive today, he’d be 200 years old. One can imagine that his beard would be all the longer and whiter and his head all the balder, but there would certainly still be that intense light of inquisitiveness in his eyes.

It is amazing to think of all that has come from Darwin’s seminal work, On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. (N.B.: “Races” here does not refer to anything even remotely racist. Darwin was, in fact, a passionate abolitionist who detested slavery. In the book’s context, ‘races’ refers to “variations within species” [T.O.].) Darwin kick-started a revolution in science that led, and continues to lead, to an ever-broadening knowledge of life. He was tireless in his pursuit of understanding, and his works reflect his immense intelligence and insight. The life sciences owe him an eternal debt and, by extension, we all do. As Theodosius Dobzhansky said: “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”. Modern medicine relies heavily on the theory of evolution. Our understanding of viruses would be impoverished were it not for the leads provided by the theory of evolution.

Yet, Darwin would be astonished to learn about genes and genetic drift. He had no real way of knowing about genetics in his own day, though the necessary technical developments were not too far in the future. He would probably smile mirthfully to see how his theory had evolved, and I’ve no doubt that the modern synthesis would have greatly intrigued him.

Happy Birthday to you, Charles Darwin! I salute you and honor you this day and all this year.

As for you, dear reader, be sure to check out Darwin Day Celebration, Origins, and Darwin 200. And if those aren’t enough to leave you sated, I’m sure there’s plenty more you can find to read.

Category: Evolution, Personal, Science  | Tags: , , ,  | Comments
Time and Distance
Sunday, February 01st, 2009 | Author: Moody

Now is the time to break out that copy of Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxygène or maybe your Stars of the Lid and Their Refinement of the Decline CD. Did you get it? O.K. Good. Put it on, and let’s take a trip…

Out into the big, lonely universe.

The next time it’s dark and clear out, go outside and take a look at the sky. What can you see? If you’re fortunate, you can see quite a few sparkling stars, maybe a placid planet or two. If you’re very, very fortunate, and away from any interfering source of light, you can see the ghostly, blurred, cloudlike swath that is the Milky Way as we know it with the naked eye. If you are fortunate enough to have a telescope, you may well see wonders that stagger the mind with their beauty and strangeness. You may even see whole other galaxies. Just imagine that. When you see a galaxy you are looking at tens of hundreds of millions of stars, or, actually, the light they are emitting into the void. You can’t generally make out the individual stars when viewing a galaxy through a backyard telescope. And to think, there are billions of galaxies. The Hubble Deep Field image showed us a piece of sky “only about the width of a dime 75 feet away” and revealed over 1,500 galaxies.

Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Given an estimated size of 156 billion light years wide, it is extremely unlikely any member of our species will ever see more than the tiniest fraction of it in person. It’s been around for 13.7 ± 0.13 billion years, and in that time it has been busy expanding. During its life so far, it has managed to produce effectively countless galaxies comprising unimaginably vast clouds of gases, quasars, proplyds, stellar nurseries, countless stars—including pulsars (which are rapidly spinning neutron stars) and magnetars (neutron stars with a powerful magnetic field), brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, red dwarfs, red giants, etc.—asteroids of metal and rock and ice, gas giants, rocky planets, life and, well, thereby us. And, quite possibly, not just us.

Our Milky Way galaxy is made up of some 200 to 400 billion stars, and we now know that a great many of them have planets in orbit around them. We do not yet have the technical knowledge needed to identify planets like ours, but we have advanced to the point where we can get actual images of some of these extrasolar planets, so it’s likely only a matter of time, effort, and increased technological prowess before we finally glimpse some planet of generally the same mass and in generally the same sort of orbit as our earth. That day will be a Red Letter Day, and certainly a Scarlet Day.

Of course, neither you nor I will ever visit such places in person, and even if we were among the first crew of ape-descended bipeds to set a spacecraft down on Pluto—which is so remote in our solar system that our own sun looks like a particularly bright star among many others—those galaxies would be, relatively speaking, not a bit closer. In fact there would be little appreciable difference in the appearance of the constellations we know here on earth. Stars other than our own beloved Sol are simply too far away. Even if you wanted to go visit the red dwarf Proxima Centauri, the next closest star to us, you would have to travel a distance of 4.28 light years. It may not seem like much, but consider that in just one hour light travels around 7.2 times farther (or 671 million miles or 1,080,030,758 km farther) than the distance between the earth and the sun, which distance is just about 93 million miles or 149.6 million kilometers (a distance referred to as an Astronomical Unit, or AU). Now, keep in mind that there are about 8,766 hours in a year. It takes the light from our sun more than five and a half hours to reach Pluto (at its mean distance from the sun, 5,913,520,000 km, or a bit over 3.67 billion miles), compared to the comparatively brief eight and a half minutes it takes to reach earth. But that is only five and a half hours out of that year. It’s strange to think that it is both a long and a short time, isn’t it? But really it’s a long time versus a far, far longer time.

At present the Voyager 1 spacecraft is around 108.75 AU from the sun, over 10 billion miles (16.2 billion km) away, and it takes over a day for round-trip lightspeed communication. That certainly sounds like a long way, sure, and yet the Voyager 1 spacecraft would have to travel over 587 times as far just to reach a light year in distance. It took Voyager 1 over thirty years to get to its current location. So, traveling at its recent speed of 37,800 mph., it would take approximately 17,580 more years to reach the distance light travels in one, and over 75,370 years to reach Proxima Centauri. Traveling to our neighbor at the top speed of the Apollo 11 spacecraft—the fastest manned spacecraft to date—would take 110,000 years (source). Clearly, we’ll have to fly faster than that if we want to get anywhere in space. But even the spacecraft envisioned in Project Longshot, utilizing a technically feasible nuclear pulse propulsion system, would take a century to arrive at the red dwarf.

Let’s say we decided to take that trip. Imagine that in the near future our technology has overcome the problems of radiation and our spacecraft spins to create gravity on board almost as strong as earth’s. We leave in our spacecraft in the summer of 2050, say, and head on our way. Utilizing some sort of deep hibernation that effectively stops the aging process (currently not feasible), we travel for a hundred years to see the red dwarf from up close. Our research lasts the better part of two years while we are there. Then we return home, again in hibernation, again traveling for a hundred years. We arrive home in the year 2252.

What might have changed? Looking back from today’s year, 2009, what can we say was different back in 1807? Well, the 28th of January was the anniversary of London’s Pall Mall being the first street to be lit with gaslight (the first electric light would not be invented for another two years, and the first true light bulb would not come along until 1854). Meanwhile, Napoleon’s Grande Armée had only recently in the month fought a horrific and indecisive battle with the Russian army. The slave trade was abolished in the British Empire. The Tokugawa Ienari shogunate of Japan continued the longstanding effort to keep the nation secluded from the rest of the world. Thomas Jefferson was president of the United States. Lewis and Clark had returned but the year before from their most historic journey, and William Clark would soon be headed out again, at President Jefferson’s bidding, to look for mammoth bones in Big Bone Lick, KY. Charles Darwin had not yet been born. Charles Babbage was 15 years old. Human flight was still over ninety years away.

I list these diverse examples to illustrate a simple point: a lot changes in the course of two centuries. Our intrepid crew of astronauts (or, perhaps, taikonauts or cosmonauts) would be returning to a very different world than the one they departed. It becomes even more pointed an issue when you start talking about traveling to more remote locations. Just to get to Alpha Centauri AB, to which Proxima Centauri is nominally the third partner, one would have to travel an additional 12,000 AU or more. That’s over 337 times as far as Pluto is from the sun. Travel to Sirius and its companion white dwarf in our proposed NPPS spacecraft would take approximately twice as long as our trip to Proxima. We would be gone for over four centuries, there and back.

Hubble Picture of Sirius AB

Hubble Picture of Sirius AB

Assuming we were gone for 402 years and our launch date was 2050, we’d get home in 2452.

Run the timeline backwards from 2009 and we get 1607: Jamestown was founded in 1607, and John Smith met Pocahontas; flooding along the Bristol Channel killed over 2000 people; Pieter Bruegel the Younger painted “The Wedding Dance”; Johannes Kepler had not yet published his Laws of Planetary Motion and Galileo Galilei had not yet seen the moons of Jupiter with his telescope; Shakespeare was writing plays as usual, and one of the first ‘modern’ novels was becoming very popular: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s Don Quixote (published in 1605); the Ch’ing Dynasty was established in China; Muslim empires in what is now known as the Middle-East were, at the time, at the height of their power. In 1607 there were no trains, no planes, no automobiles; no computers or phones or televisions; no refrigerators, washing machines, or air conditioners. Less than 600 million people lived on earth. The population has grown over 11 times larger since then.

Bruegels The Wedding Dance

Bruegel's ''The Wedding Dance''

These voyages are all “short jumps” on the cosmic scale. Even with our very fast NPPS spacecraft, longer trips begin to look ridiculous.

Let’s assume a trip (with all the previous parameters) from our solar system to HD 189733b, an extrasolar planet orbiting its star some 63 light years away. Our round trip would take our heroic crew almost 3000 years to make. Following rough calculations, the equivalent time in the past for us now would be 935 BCE.

HD189733 and Dumbell Nebula

HD 189733 and Dumbbell Nebula

That’s around the time King Solomon supposedly died. The long-lived Zhou Dynasty was still going strong in China. The Lapita, the common ancestors of the cultures of Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island, were burying their dead in Vanuatu. Nothing remotely like the world you know was extant. Can you imagine if a spacecraft were to arrive one day carrying people from some 3000 years ago?

What about a trip of just 1/10 the length of the Milky Way galaxy, 1000 light years, and back? That would equate to a journey lasting over 46,700 years. Our ancestors were busy wiping out megafauna on the continent of Australia back then. Neanderthals and humans were still sharing what would one day become Europe long, long after the Neanderthals had been pushed to extinction. The famous paintings in Lascaux were thousands of years off. Early on in the Upper Paleolithic or Upper Stone Age, humans were just beginning to create art of a sort. Dogs had not yet been domesticated. Society and culture as we know them were utterly non-existent and ages away.

Paleolithic Ornamental Shells

Paleolithic Ornamental Shells

In our hypothetical journeys we have come fact to face with a rather stark fact. Travel between the stars is, at this stage of our technological development, purely speculative. Space is too big, too spread out, and we are hindered in our ability to get anywhere by a great many factors that will remain insurmountable unless we discover hitherto unknown means of circumventing them. And yet, we must one day figure out how to leave our home planet and spread out into the vastness of our galaxy. We literally cannot stay here forever. In the long run the odds are stacked against us. The sun will one day die, and before then we are a sitting duck just waiting for that cosmic killer to fall out of the sky on us.

As we struggle to survive and thrive in the universe, we must tangle with our limitations at every turn. We live for such short spans of time, any one of us, and as a whole we have not been around for so long a time. We are very aggressive in our grasp for control, but in a way we are like adolescents who have real trouble thinking beyond ourselves and considering long-term needs. We are still living out our creation story. We are still living in the cradle of our human civilization. The impact we have had on our home planet is not a positive one, and we have yet to comprehend the results of our misunderstandings and reckless folly. But we are also industrious and clever, and we can move forward with care, leave behind our mistakes, having learned from them, and envision a greater realm where we belong.

It may be that one day a fleet of so-called generational spacecrafts will leave from our solar system traveling at four times the speed of our antiquated NPPS ships. In our super fast ships we will travel past Proxima in a mere 25 years, pass HD 189733b in less than four centuries. Our local region of space will feel more local. Still, were we to leave our own galaxy and attempt to reach the Andromeda galaxy, which is 2.5 million light years away, our spacecraft would have to travel for 14,602,805 years. Were we to travel back in time for the length of just the one way trip, the equivalent age of the earth would be the Miocene Epoch. Human beings did not exist yet. That fleet would be leaving everything behind forever to make that trip. Nothing would be the same were it to return some 29,205,610 years later.

The Andromeda Galaxy

Our future as a species will, in all probability, be contained in our portion of the Milky Way galaxy. What we may become over the trackless ocean of time ahead of us is unknowable to us now. Yet it feels like a profound comfort to me that this is so. The possibilities will never really end, and the ways we deal with those possibilities will further mold us, change us, and possibly renew us in perpetuity. We may well become different species as we spread out from our original home. Evolution may lead to wholly new forms over the course of time, favoring those who survive better in interstellar space. It’s amazing to think about. All the history of humankind that we have been able to put together is the smallest blink of time compared to the deep time of the future. And the future, as always, is coming inevitably. However much this post has been filled with speculation and projection, it points to a future that will arrive as surely as the death of the sun. You and I will not be here to see it when it gets here, but we live in the age when the dream is gaining a structure in the waking world. Our descendants will look back on us as… what? What are we, now? Children just learning our real place in the universe? Young gods learning our powers? Herd animals in need of a shepherd from the stars? Responsible ancestors to our star-faring progeny? Who are we? Who do we want to be?

Category: Astronomy, Geek Stuff, Musings  | Tags: , ,  | Comments off
The real process of science
Saturday, January 03rd, 2009 | Author: Moody

The Process of Science Diagram

The Process of Science Diagram

Excellent: The real process of science

Tip of the hat goes to science writer Carl Zimmer for pointing folks to this simple, interactive (Flash), nicely comprehensive diagram of how science works. For those of us who respond well to visual representations of things (like processes), this is perfect.

Of course, the diagram is just one part of Berkeley’s truly comprehensive educational site (just coming out of its beta phase and scheduled to officially launch this month): Understanding Science: how science really works. This is a site all parents should bookmark for regular consultation as they help their children develop a proper understanding of science. It is certainly one my partner and I will be utilizing as our fifth grade boy finds himself needing to know more and more about how science works.

The site is also, of course, going to be a comprehensive teacher resource, addressing the needs of K-16 children. As such, the site will be invaluable for anyone wanting to either learn or teach science, and its developers and host should be highly commended for working to bring it to the public.

.

Note: For those who do not have or wish not to use Flash, there is also a static version of the diagram.

Category: Science  | Tags: ,  | Comments off
Comment I made on StumbleUpon
Saturday, July 19th, 2008 | Author: Moody

How I wish I could claim to be surprised by the number of ignorant and stupid comments I see on “teh intarnets”–but I can’t. The ridiculously virulent form of foolishness that can reduce otherwise decent people to a manic and bellicose condition of trollishness is so widespread around here that I am more surprised when I run across an actually thoughtful, calm, intelligent (and intelligible) comment. It makes me frakkin’ sad and a wee bit pissed.

Lately, I have almost despaired over the miasma gathered about the issues of climate change and evolution. If it isn’t flat out ignorance of the facts of either subject (or both), it’s a pathetically malnourished capacity for understanding that conjures something very like it. Or it’s a pissy form of apathy. In any case, when it is not some form of apathy, there seems to be a rather fundamental dislike of genuine science on the one side, and an Ann Coulter-like support for the usual dissentient pundits on the other. Not suprisingly, those who automatically scoff at evolution or climate change typically accuse people like me of being the real fanatics, resorting to all manner of hyperbolic descriptions to describe us as, essentially, sickeningly insane and steeped in our own stratagems. They then go on, typically, to portray us as terrorists or amoral freaks whose agenda includes destroying the world that decent, moral, god-fearing, country-loving folks made or whatever. Or they simply say that we are obviously stupid. Not that both sides don’t have their low points; there’s plenty of pots and kettles, stones and glass houses, motes and planks, etc.; all the usual wanker stuff. But seriously, there are a number of strong distinctions between sides here, readily and accurately characterized by the presence of qualities such as insightfulness, integrity, honesty and forthrightness on the side of those who support the sciences, and an absence of one or more of these on the other. Take a look at the freepers and people like Michael Crichton if you’re not sure what I’m going on about. From one end of the spectrum to the other, their voices add up to a deafening, mind numbing wall of sound. It gets so that it’s very difficult for the lay person to get any idea at all of what’s simply true and what’s merely truthy.

This is a tactic of theirs, just so you know. If they can get you to stop before you start poking about, reading up, learning the facts, then they win. This is why their arguments usually devolve into ad hominem attacks or pulp fiction conspiracy theories. If they can get you to believe that what people like me are saying is equivalent to what people like them are saying–if they can so level the playing field–then they’ve all but won. They have the goal in sight once you stop looking for the truth beyond the post or comment. They have only a few steps to go in their endeavor if they can get you to think that in the end it’s all just arguments, smoke and mirrors, trivial or pointless. If you buy their shtick, you’ll walk away thinking that it’s all just a matter of opinion or, in some cases, that it’s a matter of shady politics or villainous social engineering that you should distrust out of hand.

It would appear that their shtick is potent. The sad thing is, I see a lot of people parroting the disinformation back like it’s a weaponized retort aimed at killing the bothersome dissidents who would overthrow a righteous America or patriotic “God” or some such thing.

But if you want the truth, here it is. Two issues (that are really kind of just one issue) here addressed in one rambling paragraph. OK? Listen…

First off, I don’t hate America or “God” (I am simply opposed to nationalism and theocracy as I am delusion and fanaticism). I am not a member of some occult cabal, and there is no camarilla speaking in Al Gore’s, Barack Obama’s or Henry Waxman’s ear. Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Sam Harris and the like do not want to eat your children or destroy morality. Secondly, that being said, a) please understand now that the world is in fact already beginning to feel the effects of global warming, a phenomenon that a great deal of evidence points to as having a man-made driver as its primary source, and know, too, that b) the theory of evolution is a robust, well-tested and open-ended attempt to explain the mechanisms of evolution–which is a real phenomenon in the world and not something that Darwin, Wallace, Huxley and many, many more esteemed scientists invented in order to supplant “God”. As for atheism (or secular humanism): it is not a religion, it is a philosophical viewpoint. Similarly, there is no “Church of Global Warming”. Finally, the scientific method is beautiful and trustworthy, and the dividends of scientific exploration are fruitful and exceedingly valuable to you, me, and everyone.

Category: Science, Society and Culture, Things on the Web  | Comments
Apx. 99.9% sure I’m right about this…
Sunday, March 02nd, 2008 | Author: Moody

Let’s try to put it as simply as possible and see if everyone can understand it, shall we?

Science has nothing to do with “God”. Science deals solely with the empirical universe as it may be observed, recorded, studied, tested, etc., utilizing whatever tools may be created to do so, as well as our innate human abilities (though educated, certainly, honed and refined). Science does not deal with anything that lies outside its purview, nor does it make statements—let alone judgments—about any such thing. Scientists, whatever their personal feelings or beliefs, whatever they might choose to express as a personal opinion, do not interject religion or philosophy into their actual work because doing so would taint the science.

The theory of evolution says nothing about whether or not “God” exists, and therefore makes no claims regarding the qualities, characteristics, or modi operandi of “God”. Should a scientist express her or his opinion regarding “God”, her or his opinion is still incapable of reflecting on her or his actual scientific research. That is because science does not deal with unfalsifiable matters (matters which cannot be tested for empirical validity), and as the existence of “God” can neither be proved nor disproved then “God” must be considered an unfalsifiable matter. This is not a shortcoming of science or the scientific method; it is a remarkable strength. Whereas endless speculation and typically unresolvable arguments over hypotheticals belong to philosophy and theology, to the realm of science belongs only that which may bear the strictly vetted tools and critically maintained rules of science.

Naturally, the tools and rules of science may be brought to bear on any subject presented as empirical, falsifiable, and subject to tests of its veracity. Even when it is resistant to change, science does not turn away from a valid avenue of discovery because it may realize a fault in some long-standing theory. If one is capable of providing some real-world credentials and a compelling outline, and if one’s presentation includes a thorough grounding in current scientific understanding, then scientists will very likely pay attention to a new idea or theory. With a few sad exceptions, only the ignorant, the crackpots, the cranks and the trolls get short shrift from the community of scientists. And where the scientific community has originally failed to recognize a valid offering, time has—thanks to members of that same community—often vindicated the one who brought that offering. But never has science found something to be a fact or valid theory that at its base was unscientific, unfalsifiable. This is not because of some conspiracy against those who don’t know the secret handshake and password, it is simply and only because science has nothing to do with that which cannot bear the application of science’s tools and rules.

Science simply means “to know”, and knowledge is subject to revision as new, empirical, falsifiable data dictates it. Certainty is measured in percentages reaching ever closer to 100%—with ever-mounting evidence, the successful passing of tests after tests, more and more data, etc.—without ever attaining it. Science ends at 100%, for there is nothing to do after that, nothing more to know. So when someone asks a scientist trained in physics specific questions about this or that facet of, say, the theory of special relativity, she or he may shrug and say, “We just don’t know yet. Isn’t it exciting!”, exhibiting in the response the main trait found in scientists everywhere: undying curiosity yoked to the perpetual drive to discover, hindered only by the frailties of the human organism.

So why is it of late that some scientists are seen to be attacking religion, and why is it that some religious people are calling the theory of evolution inherently atheistic? What’s going on? If science has nothing to say about matters outside its purview (and religion is demonstrably outside its purview), and the theories of science cannot in themselves address religion due to the unfalsifiable nature of x religion’s primary assertions (its metaphysical tropes), then how is it we are in the middle of a culture war with a sampling of scientists on one side and a bunch of very religious people on the other? Who threw the first stone?

I do not have enough time or energy to devote to writing such a history. However, A.D. White, the founder and first president of Cornell, a professor of history, did have the wherewithal to write about the subject in the last decade of the 1800s. His work, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, is relevant today. By simply recounting history, White explodes the idea that somehow it was Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution that initiated the charge for some sort of godless revolution hitherto unimaginable. After discussing the early concepts of evolution “among the Chaldeans, the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans”, White notes some of the theological issues that arose in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, and concludes the second part of Chapter 1 by saying that

By the middle of the nineteenth century the whole theological theory of creation – though still preached everywhere as a matter of form – was clearly seen by all thinking men to be hopelessly lost: such strong men as Cardinal Wiseman in the Roman Church, Dean Buckland in the Anglican, and Hugh Miller in the Scottish Church, made heroic efforts to save something from it, but all to no purpose. That sturdy Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon honesty, which is the best legacy of the Middle Ages to Christendom, asserted itself in the old strongholds of theological thought, the universities. Neither the powerful logic of Bishop Butler nor the nimble reasoning of Archdeacon Paley availed. Just as the line of astronomical thinkers from Copernicus to Newton had destroyed the old astronomy, in which the earth was the centre, and the Almighty sitting above the firmament the agent in moving the heavenly bodies about it with his own hands, so now a race of biological thinkers had destroyed the old idea of a Creator minutely contriving and fashioning all animals to suit the needs and purposes of man. They had developed a system of a very different sort….

But A.D. White also believed that

In welding together into noble form, whether in the book of Genesis, or in the Psalms, or in the book of Job, or elsewhere, the great conceptions of men acting under earlier inspiration, whether in Egypt, or Chaldea, or India, or Persia, the compilers of our sacred books have given to humanity a possession ever becoming more and more precious; and modern science, in substituting a new heaven and a new earth for the old – the reign of law for the reign of caprice, and the idea of evolution for that of creation – has added and is steadily adding a new revelation divinely inspired.

As an educated and science-minded person, White believed that theology and science could be, and should be, reconciled. But he knew, too, that there could be no turning back from what science was learning of the world, that to turn back would be to turn against the flow of our better nature. To interpret scripture literally could never be more than a failure, both of the mind and—should you be so inclined—the spirit.

Those who would turn back (think of those in Florida and Kansas and elsewhere) are always the ones to throw the first stone. Scientists would rather not have to muck about in the fantasy world of creationists, but creationists won’t leave science alone. Theologians and religious leaders, religious adherents who shudder when fundamentalists cry out in public, have not truly risen to the challenge, doubtless because they fear that to do so would make their own faith look bad or sully it by proximity. This is a shame. Science, having nothing to do with religion by nature, has been made a religious issue that apparently only scientists, atheists, and a very few religious people see fit to deal with. Naturally, the scientists are accused of having an ungodly agenda, the atheists are used as proof of science’s ungodliness, and the religious people who side with science are seen as damnable liberals who are, themselves, lacking in genuine faith.

But it is in fact the creationists (and the promoters of so-called “intelligent design”) who are the problem, who create the problem, who sustain and add fuel to the problem. They do not seem to grasp that to teach someone the facts is not to indoctrinate her or him into godlessness or evil, whereas to indoctrinate someone into a religion that denies the facts is certainly a bad thing. Fundamentalism and other nonsense is not righteously religious, it’s thoroughly foolish. It may seem unfortunate to some religious people, but the onus is in fact on them to adapt to the facts or perish. The world is not the fantasy land that our ancestors often believed it was, it is something much greater and more amazing. You do not have to be godless or satanic in order to accept the facts of the world. (Cherished psalms, for instance, are not made less poetically beautiful or meaningful.) But what you have to do is give up on absurd literal interpretations of so-called sacred texts, you have to give up on certain naïve conceptions of “God”. If there is a “God”, she/he/it (or they) is much further from our oversimplified understanding than we’ve realized, and those who came before us were misled by their (understandable) ignorance. Even a hundred years ago (and, actually, quite a great many more years than that) there were people who understood that much. Science continues, in its non-theistic fashion, to prove the point. So the question is, why are so many people afraid to embrace that fact today? What is really so terrifying about an even greater universe than religions have made?

Category: Evolution, Religion/Spirituality, Science, Society and Culture  | Comments
Evolving, A Mind
Friday, January 18th, 2008 | Author: Moody
“You can’t be a rational person six days a week … and on one day of the week, go to a building, and think you’re drinking the blood of a two thousand year old space god.”—Bill Maher

Let’s make one thing clear from the outset: Whatever I might prefer, I shall have no say in whether our boy chooses of his own free will to be an atheist, a monotheist, a polytheist, a pantheist, an animist or a panpsychist. He shall become what he will. What I care about is that he is well-educated and is able to understand the difference between a scientific theory and an unscientific or non-scientific belief. That said, it follows that I want for him, regardless of his chosen belief system or lack thereof, to understand that life evolved and continues to evolve on this little blue-green planet. I want for him to understand that the theory of evolution—as set forth by Charles Darwin and others, and thence, with the gleaning of ever more data, modified by countless scientists over the next hundred-plus years—represents the ongoing efforts of a great many scientists to explain, elucidate, explicate, clarify and interpret how evolution works, and that the theory is not “just an idea” or “belief” maintained by a few dogmatic scientists as they stew in a fancifully conjured but non-existent hotbed of righteous controversy. Put another way, I do not want our boy’s developing mind to be waylaid by the twaddle, bunkum, poppycock, bullshit and ultimate drivel espoused by some very vocal ignorant twits who believe literally, like half-witted naïfs, in what the Bible (or any other so-called sacred text) says. I want the boy to have uncommon sense, the kind that comes with much education taken to heart.

When a child, not yet 10 years old, attempts to tell an “anti-evolutionist” joke but is confused when you state that the theory of evolution does not say that we “came from monkeys”, one can be fairly positive that some irresponsible adult is behind the effort. When that same child then states that “evolution isn’t real” and claims to know this because he is “a Christian”, there can be no doubt whatsoever that some ignorant and twittish adult is behind it. In the case of our boy, it is his ham-fisted biological father who is attempting, with the guidance of a domineering white trash wife, to warp his mind. It’s the sort of thing that can make you throw up a little in your mouth. I mean, his bio-dad and step-mom are the kind who have a giant “Jesus Freak” sticker (in scratchy ‘agitpop’ lettering) on the rear window of their car.

I stand firmly with Dawkins and others who state simply that the religious indoctrination of a child is child abuse. A child, however precocious, is highly unlikely to understand that there is a significant difference between what is called a scientific theory and what is called “God’s revealed [or 'living'] truth”. When a parent says that something is true, a child is likely to believe it, especially when the parent attributes that truth to an even greater parental figure in the sky who the parent worships. Children are naturally gullible and credulous. They must rely on the experienced comprehension, the seasoned understanding, of their parents. This is not a bad thing, because trust in what a parent tells you may save your life or will at least make your life easier. But for a parent to selfishly mislead a child in the name of a highly questionable fantasy is… wrong, abusive, sick. I expect, of course, to be told that raising a child as a de facto member of this or that religion is normal, natural and good; that it introduces morality, otherwise presumed absent or somehow immanently inferior without it; that it may very well save the child from eternal damnation at the hands of an all-merciful, all-forgiving, all-loving “God”. Personally, I call that supreme, unadulterated, 100% bullshit. I say that that’s exactly the kind of drivel that makes a person puke even through the angry laughter of disbelief.

You may call the process of brainwashing indoctrination normal, but you should remember that it was once considered quite “normal” to beat children (–which, I know, you “spare the rod and spoil the child” types still think it should be so considered), and to keep slaves, and to treat women like chattel and indigenous peoples like plague (often while violently forcing their religious conversion, no less). “Natural and good” are, taken together or apart, suspect from the get-go. When you define nature in creationist terms, positing a supernatural agent as the author of all nature’s laws (which said agent may break on a whim), then I must look askance at anything you might call “natural”. The same goes for your idea of what’s “good” when, according to your beliefs, “good” is whatever “God” says it is. When you can read about “God” ordering the slaughter of men, women, children, babies (born and unborn), and say that it’s “good”, for whatever reason, then I must hold your concept of “good” in contempt.

As for morality, “God” is neither required nor suggested; the word’s Latin root, mor-, simply means ‘custom’. The morality of the Bible is preserved as an historic religious record of a relatively small number of people who lived over 2000 years ago. As a book it is biased toward promoting the view of certain sects of the time while denigrating others, and has a subtle pro-Roman stance. The historicity of many of its books is dubious (where the book in question is not already utterly beyond such consideration; e.g. Genesis), and the preposterous claims liberally sprinkled throughout the pages of the books it comprises are completely undermining of any respectable assertion of Biblical authority a reasonable person might make. I would dare go so far as to say that this is true of most so-called “Holy Books” the world over.

It is, frankly, horrifically despicable to inflict upon a child the notion of damnation, to fill his or her head with images of an all-powerful “God” condemning unbelievers and failed persons to eternal torment. When you consider that one of the people threatened with this endless wailing and gnashing of teeth is one of the child’s parents…. Well, it’s sickening. How could that not be damaging to a child’s developing mind? What a din of cognitive dissonance! How could that not create an unbearable helplessness and thus necessitate a split from the parent ostracized by “God”? How could that not succeed at being isolating in terms of the child’s sense of place in the greater world? A scarring shame should be visited upon any adult so selfishly motivated (by delusion or stratagem) as to poison the healthy development of a mind. And yet it is that a great many people around this country would consider me to be in the wrong.

Some would suggest that they would only teach “God’s love”, charity and kindness, honesty and good will. They would say that those other people are simply misled. But I say bollocks to that! It’s a cop out. Unless you’ve revised your own Bible (or Koran or whatever) or otherwise bowdlerized it–which, so far as I am aware, would make you a heretic or blasphemer–then you are copping out when it comes to a) the truth of what’s in your so-called “Holy Book” and b) dealing with what it is your fellow adherents believe that book to mean. If those other people are wrong, then isn’t it up to you to prove it to them, to enlighten them, to shun them if they will not see reason? If you allow fanatics to scream their misunderstanding as if it represented your religion, as if it were the “gospel truth”, then are you not tacitly allowing that they are merely more vociferous members of your congregation who say what you will not? Are you afraid of schism? Are you afraid of drawing attention? Are you afraid… or just indolent or cowardly? If your “Holy Book” says some rotten things, shouldn’t you deal with that? If the banner of your religion stretches over twisted trolls whose sickness you deplore, shouldn’t you expel them rather than accept the degradation of your fine beliefs? Shouldn’t you be most vocal about it?

As for me, I see no saving grace in religion. I don’t care what goodness it supposedly inspires, because goodness does not come from it; from what I’ve seen, real goodness comes despite it. Real goodness may sometimes ride on the back of religion, as one might ride a mule, but it is more honorable when it walks on its own two feet, under its own power. In the case of our boy’s bio-dad and step-mom, they’d let the mule of religion trample him while they waved to “God” and whispered surreptitiously to each other about how pleasing it would be to watch their enemies burn forever. Sick delusions often have real consequences.

In the boy’s name I will fight their influence, and I will do so with my love for him.

Listening to: Leonard Bernstein & London Symphony Orchestra – The Rite of Spring: V. Games of the Rival Tribes via FoxyTunes

Category: Atheism, Evolution, Personal, Religion/Spirituality, Science  | Comments
Astronomy Domain
Friday, July 07th, 2006 | Author: Moody

[image]Occasionally, you run across a useful, powerful, fun and educational application that just wows you with its strengths, with all the thought that went into it, and with its ease of use. The good feelings are increased even further when you get to download and use it for free, with no restrictions. It’s enough to make you feel a little better about human beings. Stellarium is just such a program, virtually guaranteed to put stars in your eyes… along with galaxies, planets, and more. As per the official wiki,

Stellarium is an open source desktop planetarium for Linux/Unix, Windows and MacOSX. It renders the skies in realtime using OpenGL, which means the skies will look exactly like what you see with your eyes, binoculars, or a small telescope. Stellarium is very simple to use, which is one of its biggest advantages: it can easily be used by beginners. The Stellarium project was started by Fabien Chéreau during the summer of 2001 and uses Sourceforge intensively.

[image]It’s a lot of fun to use, too. I spent some time playing with the numerous configuration options, available through a toolbar at the bottom-left of the screen. I changed the background scene, toggled equatorial and azimuthal grids, looked at constellations with background illustrations, and went forward faster and faster in time (which, by the way, will quickly show you, in a few seconds, how the sky changes seasonally, even daily).

If, however, you are not interested in downloading this excellent program for your computer, there is a nice option for you. The online Neave Planetarium, although simpler in appearance and with less features generally, will still satisfactorily allow you to explore and identify the stars above.

Both applications allow you to input your latitude and longitude (with some limitations). If you are, like I was, ignorant of your latitudinal and longitudinal coördinates, then you can remedy that by inputting your zip code at the U.S. Census page here. Once you have, and you begin to look around at all those stars, you might want to get even more perspective.

Hakan’s Space Balls will give you a strong visual idea of the difference in size between, say, our own star (Sol, with it’s diameter of 1,390,000 km/864,000 miles) and Sirius (with a diameter almost twice that of the sun). As a side note, Antares, a massive red giant, is about 700 times larger than our sun. That really is bigger than one can readily imagine (it would, in place of our sun, swallow the inner four planets).

Scale is an interesting thing. Size and distance, space and time, tell us a lot. One of the best illustrations of such scales is the famous Powers of 10 (official Website). Another, interactive, version is here. The Powers of 10 movie was even parodied on The Simpsons.

Category: Astronomy, Science  | Comments off
Al Gore’s Message
Sunday, April 30th, 2006 | Author: Moody

If you base it on the plurality, Al Gore should have won the election and become our next president, and G.W. Bush should have gone on his failure’s way without harming the nation. Instead, of course, we have been mistreated by more than a term’s worth of the Texas playboy’s non-stop foolishness, his social and linguistic gaffes, his simpleton’s peevishness and pseudo-messianic chutzpah. Science has been all but blacklisted, the so-called Christian religion has been held up as a governmental foundation, and we’ve found ourselves plunged into a war with Iraq on grounds that, even if you believe that the president and his administration are sincere, are faulted and shaky. As we near 2,500 U.S. dead in Iraq, as religious zealots continue to attempt to gain control of the government, as scientists continue to struggle against a nation largely ignorant of and often hostile to science’s findings, you have to ask yourself: what would it have been like if Al Gore had, based on the plurality and not upon the Electoral College (I will not here discuss the racial issues surrounding the Electoral College, but you might want to know that they’re there), — what if, I ask, Al Gore had won?

Ponder that for a bit.

And now turn your attention to what Gore has done since the election. In particular, turn your attention to his movie, An Inconvenient Truth (see the trailer here), opening in select theaters on May 24th. It is a movie about global warming, about what we as a society are doing to the environment, and about the very real, long-term consequences of our short-sighted behavior. Kottke has a lot to say about the movie, and I recommend reading his post. At the risk of looking like a copycat, I have to say that I, too, could not improve upon the words of David Remnick of the New Yorker, who said:

It is, to be perfectly honest (and there is no way of getting around this), a documentary film about a possibly retired politician giving a slide show about the dangers of melting ice sheets and rising sea levels. It has a few lapses of mise en scène. Sometimes we see Gore gravely talking on his cell phone—or gravely staring out an airplane window, or gravely tapping away on his laptop in a lonely hotel room—for a little longer than is absolutely necessary. And yet, as a means of education, “An Inconvenient Truth” is a brilliantly lucid, often riveting attempt to warn Americans off our hellbent path to global suicide. “An Inconvenient Truth” is not the most entertaining film of the year. But it might be the most important.

There are plenty of attacks on both Al Gore’s position on global warming and climatologists’ findings (witness the stark divide in opinions summoned by a relevant Google search). Indeed, it appears that our fearless leader may well have given his personal blessing to Michael Crichton’s crackpot point of view (see Crichton’s wingnut potboiler State of Fear). However, it’s Al Gore’s position that is backed by legitimate science and real findings. The questions that are still on the table are being assiduously researched, but the basic findings regarding global warming are not in doubt any more than the basic fact of evolution is. That is to say, only naïve, uneducated, or genuinely foolish people think that these are in question as basic premises upon which current theories are being debated by the highly educated scientific community.

Thus Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth arrives on the scene ready to both stir and confront a controversy that is, in reality, a controversy formed of spin and misunderstanding and not a genuine controversy. And so, too, it arrives on the scene in need of a supportive audience. It needs an audience who will talk about it, recommend it, share what they’ve learned from it and promote it’s message to a general American public for whom such movies are usually eschewed in favor of more “entertaining” fare, such as The Day After Tomorrow, the danger of which lies in the commonly faulty hyperbole and slipshod treatments such fare offers an audience. Realistically, a Crichton film, however faulty and politically motivated, will draw a larger audience so long as the general public is unsure of the truth, because a Crichton film will be more “exciting” for a general audience soaked in and blinded by so-called “fair and balanced” reporting that fails to shut out misleading, ill-informed or genuinely deceptive “points of view”. Al Gore’s movie deserves all the help it can get. I hope that you will consider lending your support to it. I hope you will help it reach the eyes and ears of those who, in large enough numbers, could change the world for the better.

Category: Politics, Science  | Comments
The Pernicious Persecution of Dr. Pianka
Saturday, April 08th, 2006 | Author: Moody

You may or may not have heard about Eric Pianka, he’s an apparently eccentric (self-described hermit and “desert rat”) professor of zoology (U of T, Austin) currently under attack for allegedly making some distressing statements about disease and the uncertain future of humanity. Specifically, at a lecture he gave before the Texas Academy of Sciences, he basically said that humans have overbred and are, as a consequence, inexorably sliding toward a global epidemic. He also indicated that, for a variety of reasons, an airborn strain of the ebola virus would be very effective at killing us humans… which is, of course, a long way from advocating that someone release just such a virus, or saying that it would make him happy. He has publicly stated that he meant no such thing, and would never advocate mass murder.

Yet, that is just what a number of people are saying Pianka said or meant. Forrest M. Mims III, editor of The Citizen Scientist and a creationist and the man who started the attack against Pianka, unsurprisingly goes so far as to spout the most abominable hyperbole, suggesting that we might “worry that a Pianka-worshipping former student might someday become a professional biologist or physician with access to the most deadly strains of viruses and bacteria” and attempt to let some super-disease loose on humanity. He has stirred up quite a few reactionaries, like fellow pompous blowhard Shawn Carlson, executive director at The Citizen Scientist. But fellow creationist William Dembski actually went so far as to call the Department of Homeland Security to report Pianka. It has been reported that Pianka is scheduled to be interviewed by the FBI.

Pianka, meanwhile, has been receiving a great deal of bad press, hate mail, even a death threat, despite the fact that he did not say what he was accused of saying. Defense for Pianka may be found over at Pharyngula, The Panda’s Thumb, The Anthropik Network, and numerous other places on the Web. But the damage has been done.

Such are the times we are living through, sadly.

The fact is, because of our large numbers, we human beings have put ourselves at enormous risk for a particularly virulent pandemic to sweep through our midst. We are also seeing the first fruits of global warming, a phenomenon that will see massive upheavals in our way of life within a very few generations. Pianka may be considered to be an alarmist, but I’d like to point out that alarms are what you want to have go off before the big bad takes you by surprise. Pianka is not spouting nonsense any more than scientists concerned with global warming are. There is a solid scientific basis for such concerns. Yet there are many other voices attempting to shout down people like Pianka. The answer to “Why?” is as complex and simple as human nature is. But voices like Mims’, Carlson’s and Dembski’s are easily identified for what they are: they are the voices of petty, myopic trolls with a political agenda and an axe to grind.

Category: Politics, Science  | Comments off
With time on my hands, I read. (Pt. 2)
Thursday, January 12th, 2006 | Author: Moody

Current and imminent reading:

[image]The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, by Richard Dawkins

Thanks to 3 Quarks Daily for pointing me in the direction of this work. I sincerely hope you’ll take a look at Dawkins’s 2004 “Notable Book of the Year” (and, yes, I know it’s 2006, now, thank you – but I was freakin’ busy, okay?), because right about now – with all the stupid things going on out there with regard to the ludicrous attacks on the theory of evolution by ignorant/backward people – it’s a very good time to bone up on your scientific knowledge and understanding.

[image]The Moon of Hoa Binh, by Cong Huyen Ton Nu Nha Trang and William L. Pensinger

This is what I am currently attempting to read, and, let me tell you, it is no small undertaking, this one. It is a 1704 page challenge, called “the Vietnam War’s War & Peace” by one reviewer. Here is the official synopsis-in-a-nutshell:

Set in the intelligence underworld of Saigon in 1968 and at a scientific conference in Kyoto nine years later, the novel involves a murder mystery, a scientific exegesis, a metaphysical treatise, a psychological diatribe, through which aspects of the Vietnamese and Japanese cultures and their contemporary histories are explored.

Yeah; it’s so like that. I recommend, if you are so inclined, that you visit the site dedicated to this obscure, fascinating work. The site offers a longer synopsis, information about the authors (who are married), bonus materials and “Genealogical Mosaics of [the main character's] Identity Transparency”.

[image]Scientific American (Special Edition)

“The Frontiers of Physics” is the title, and the issue covers everything from surpassing the standard model and the future of string theory to violations of relativity and the mysteries of mass. None of which I am especially knowledgeable about, but all of which I am interested in.

Category: Evolution, Literature, Magazines, Novels, Science  | Comments off
Dover, PA, Will Evolve
Monday, January 02nd, 2006 | Author: Moody

It seems a shame to me that so much of our time as a nation should be wasted on activities so patently contrary to those envisioned by its founders when they spoke of individuals’ liberties and the “pursuit of happiness”. We were never, as a nation of people as varied as autumn leaves, intended to beset one another with litigious conflicts over matters of personal persuasion. The yearly Butter Battles would, in light of their modern extents, confound the senses and pain the hearts of more than a few of our nation’s founders, I’m quite sure. Although there are certainly issues worthy of intense, extensive and ongoing conversation in the hallowed halls of our government’s branches – universal healthcare, say, or abortion, or dismantling institutionalized racism – we seem all too easily tied up in lesser issues that more than border on the absurd. Perhaps the situation is indicative of slippage in the quality of education in our schools and, causally related, in our homes.

Case in point: Evolution v. “Intelligent Design”. more…

Category: Politics, Religion/Spirituality, Science  | Comments off