Atheists experience transcendent wonder and awe at the magnificence of the universe and the fact that we’re part of it. We just don’t think these experiences have anything to do with God, the soul, or any sort of immaterial entities or forces. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

–

One moment, if you will, to allow me to share with you one of the many things that makes my heart speed up with excitement and provides me with a sense of true and sincere awe and wonder that no religious idea, story, or thought has ever quite matched:

(This is a photo of a distant galaxy, edge-on. Click the image to read more about it.)

“Can science provide a morality to change the world?

NO.”

This is from a recent blog post by biologist and outspoken atheist, PZ Myers in the posting: A priest, a scientist, and a Communist discuss morality. It’s a really interesting post about a talk he spoke at (with the aforementioned priest and Communist) on the topic of morality, at the University of Chicago. This position that Myers has, that science is not the provider of a system of morality, is actually a very common approach by most scientists and is probably a surprise to many religious people.

“As I’ve said repeatedly, science doesn’t provide a morality. What it does provide, and what I optimistically and subjectively think will motivate people, is that it provides rigor and a path to the truth of the world.”

I’ve encountered many people (often religious, but not always! Many are people who believe strongly in the supernatural like ghosts and ESP, and/or pseudoscience like homeopathy and vaccine denialism) who are of the opinion that science is just another religion, or at least a philosophy. This utter misunderstanding of what science is is quite frustrating — mainly because they will pound the table with absolute certainty decrying science as being something it’s absolutely not, due to their own complete misunderstanding of science.

Science is not a philosophy, it’s a tool. Like a hammer, one uses the processes and the methods of science to try to discover answers about the natural world. A Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, an atheist, a Wiccan, anyone can learn to use the method of science without giving up their own personal belief systems exactly as a person can use a hammer (properly) and still go to church/mosque/synagogue/coven/”skeptically drinking”, whatever.

Of course, the reason why the fundamentalist religious and the woo believers despise the big bad evil science, is because this tool is used to test claims of reality without prejudice, without emotion, without compassion, and render verdict on whether a claim of a miracle, a psychic ability, an alien visitation, are rational and reasonable and, where possible, fact or fiction. People with pet beliefs that run counter to known reality tend to find this appropriate use of science as insulting and threatening, and so will attack it however possible — and try to use it (often horrifically flawed) to prove their own belief instead of accepting whatever evidence the science delivers.

Back to the subject of morality, or ethics: Science doesn’t provide these things, nor is it meant to, any more than a hammer is meant to or looked to to provide a reason for the use of the nail. The hammer hammers, science investigates. A hammer can be used to build a home for the homeless when used properly, it can crush a hand when used improperly. Science has cured polio, extended life expectancy by more than double, fed billions; but it’s also delivered us atomic weapons and bio-weapons.

That said, is it possible to use science, the revealer of is, to help us reach oughts? Some people, like Sam Harris as explained in this TED speech he gave, believe that yes, a naturalist approach, a scientific method, can help reveal ways we ought to behave — which is morality.

I’m not sure I can go that far. He makes some very interesting points; but, in the time he has in that video at least, he doesn’t go in much detail to prove his point. Regardless, even if we accept what he has to say, science is still a tool he claims can be used to reveal morality, it itself is not the morality or system of thought.

PZ Myers goes the direction of Harris to similarly suggest that science can point us to a system of moral philosophy that is appropriately beneficial to the individual, humanity in general, and sufficiently “natural” enough as to not require the external participation from a supernatural source.

“However, I would suggest that science would also concede that we as a species ought to support a particular moral philosophy, not because it is objectively superior, but because it is subjectively the proper emphasis of humanity…and that philosophy is humanism. In the same way, of course, we’d also suggest that cephalopods would ideally follow the precepts of cephalopodism.”

So, what is humanism? According to Random House, it’s “a variety of ethical theory and practice that emphasizes reason, scientific inquiry, and human fulfillment in the natural world.” Actually, it continues. That definition includes the final bit: “and often rejects the importance of belief in god.” That first part of the definition is such a compelling concept, and potentially beneficial in the minds of many, that such a thing as “religious humanism” has come from it. But what Myers and probably Harris and many other non-theists embrace, is some form of “secular humanism.” According to many, myself included, secular humanism is the only rational philosophy, system of ethics and morality, which supports a naturalist approach to reality and benefits the species as a whole — as well as the individual.

Secular humanism is not interchangeable with “atheism.” Atheism is simply a label for the absence of a belief in gods. There is nothing, no system of thought, no behavior, no code, no philosophy which can be derived from atheism. A person can be an atheist and a Buddhist, or a Scientologist, a believer in woo, a nihilist, whatever. The only thing that can be said about atheists as a group, is that they share a lack of belief in something — exactly the same way as all the people in the world who don’t collect stamps share the same ethics and philosophy and moral behavior, right?

Also, secular humanism has no strict, dogmatic belief. Unlike most religions which requires one to adhere to and profess a belief in a particular set of faith-based beliefs if you are to call yourself one of them, secular humanism requires only two things: a focus on the integrity and dignity of humanity, and a rejection of a supernatural source as the provider of positive ethics. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell if you want to be called a “secular humanist.” No rituals, no call to convert people.

But OK, it doesn’t end there. Because we humans like to investigate, catalog, label, and organize things, some people have gotten together under the banner of The Council for Secular Humanism, and have come up with an extensive and detailed list of general principles which secular humanism could very easily be said to promote. No one is required to follow these principles, no one suggests this list is all-inclusive of what people could identify with secular humanism. As Captain Barbossa said when dismissing the binding rigidity of the Pirate Code, it’s “more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.”

Here’re “The Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles” as suggested by the The Council for Secular Humanism:

• We are committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems.
• We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation.
• We believe that scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life.
• We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities.
• We are committed to the principle of the separation of church and state.
• We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding.
• We are concerned with securing justice and fairness in society and with eliminating discrimination and intolerance.
• We believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the handicapped so that they will be able to help themselves.
• We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.
• We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.
• We believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing our creative talents to their fullest.
• We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence.
• We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to have access to comprehensive and informed health-care, and to die with dignity.
• We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences.
• We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion.
• We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences.
• We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the cosmos.
• We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and we are open to novel ideas and seek new departures in our thinking.
• We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a source of rich personal significance and genuine satisfaction in the service to others.
• We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.
• We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings.

You know, I pretty much agree with all of it. And, most important to me, these are principles which I had come to on my own, (during my years of self-reflection and deconversion from Christianity), which I felt were right and appropriate ethics for living on this planet with other humans.

So, what do these principles mean to me? Hey, it’s my blog, after all! You wouldn’t be reading it if you didn’t want to know all about me, right? *eg* In the coming days, maybe weeks, I will be going through each principle and discussing what it means in my life, how I try to apply it to my life, how I’d like to see it applied in the future or on a wider scale and scope. Hope it may be interesting. I’m curious to see.

(Facebook readers: If you don’t see any images, videos, or formatting, this post was originally posted on my blog here: http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/2010/04/22/humanism-what-both-atheism-and-science-are-not)

Over the couple frigid weeks I’ve seen more than a few comments on the Intertubes mocking “global warming” because of the unusually cold weather. A few on Facebook, some on Twitter, a few blogs, and even a Web comic I follow made a snarky global warming mock.

If the mockery is meant as an ironic joke, I tee-hee right along with it. But I suspect that most, if not maybe all, of the comments I’ve seen have been meant as a sincere dig at the idea of global warming. (Interestingly, nearly every one has been by someone who appears to hold a “conservative” worldview. I have suspicions why, but for this post I’m only going to focus on science, not socio-politics.) And, naturally, when you have a concept called “global warming” and yet you’re in weather that freezes skin within minutes, it’s only natural to play with the apparent contradiction. But I think it’s important to understand why this is not a contradiction at all.

The most important thing to remember, (whether it’s in this case or other topics that involve complex trends, theories, or processes), is to not confuse a data point with the trend. That is: the particular weather in a particular area on a particular day, with the overall average climate for the entire planet over the course of decades. See the huge difference in these two things? The weather for, say, southwest Missouri, or even the entire middle America, for two weeks in 2010 is just one tiny data point in a trend for an entire planet over the course of 100 years. An extremely cold patch of weather does not disprove the concept of “global warming” (which is a subset of “global climate change”) any more than a very hot patch proves global warming! An unusually hot summer is also just a data point in the trend and should not be examined independently when a much larger trend is being investigated.

They Might Be Giants - Science Is Real

A few days ago, Rebecca over at Skepchicks posted a post featuring some videos of songs from They Might Be Giant’s new album: Here Comes Science. It’s a kid’s album (that can be thoroughly enjoyed by adults!) extolling the many and varied benefits of science.

The first YouTube video she posted is for the album’s opening song: “Science is Real”. My initial feeling is of delight as I’ve always loved They Might Be Giants, and their wonderful nerdiness. I love that they want to pass their own love for science on to kids. While all the songs on the album appear to be fun tunes about some aspect of science, upon giving the opening song, “Science is Real,” a second thought, I find it extremely sad that they have to actually put a song on the album that has to purport the reality of science. That we live in a culture that has to constantly be explained to that science is reality. It’s very depressing.

Reminds of how I found out, just today, that there’s a compelling and critically better-than-average film being released this month that dramatizes a bit of Charles Darwin’s life, his marriage, his family, at the time of his writing On the Origin of Species. It has big name actors, and is a major film, not an indie flick (nothing wrong with indie flicks! But there’s a point here…), but no one in the U.S. wants to distribute it to theaters here. Because of the “controversial nature” of Darwin and evolution. (::face palm::)

Here’s a movie that’s all set to be released and enjoyed around the world, but here in this “modern” country where we just barely beat Turkey and have a ways to go before we reach Latvia for the number of people to accept the reality of evolution, we can’t see it because the subject is Charles Darwin. It’s not even a documentary, it’s not made to be “challenging” or controversial, it’s not written or filmed to be a polemic…it’s just a drama about a famous man and his personal life during the time he did something to make him famous. But Ooohh NOooo! It has to do with an aspect of science which has stood the test of time and testing for 150+ years, but the conservative evangelicals in our country have such a loud, strident, and pernicious voice (which has made us a laughing-stock for the rest of the world that’s not controlled by an Islamic regime) that film distributors are leery of releasing an otherwise completely non-controversial film here.

Embarrassing.

*sigh* Time to go back and watch some of those light-hearted, fun, toe-tapping songs by They Might Be Giants and get myself back in a good mood.

Anyway, he writes SF so brilliantly because he understands the notion that for the future, or alternate-tech, to be believable, it needs to be acceptable, normal to those who live in it. Here’s a very brief but wonderfully rich article where he discusses the nascent science (and thus SF) concepts that are gee-whiz-bang! now, and how they will look when they’re part of the culture:

• Words for Webstock – Bruce Sterling

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4169

The best part of the whole thing, though, is at the end when he summarizes thus:

“That’s what I think is the biggest tragedy of those who accept the supernatural: They’re missing out on the wonder of science. When you look at a 30-ton block of coral and conclude that magic must be the only way a single small man could have moved it, you have stopped trying to learn, and you miss out on a truly delightful and creative application of mechanics.

When you dismiss medical science because of its imperfections and turn instead to magic-based therapies, you abandon any meaningful understanding of how your own body actually works.

When you settle on a conspiracy theory as the explanation for what happens in world news, you effectively stop searching for other sources, and you miss out on the real causes and motivations that drive what happens in politics and economics.

The answer is to be more skeptical, and to require a higher standard for what you believe. Keep on thinking, keep on questioning….”

KSR is an award winning Utopian author (with a PhD) who’s written, among many other critically acclaimed works, the Mars trilogy and the “Science in the Capital” trilogy. The former is about terraforming Mars and “Utopian” society that develops there, and the latter is about the effects of global warming. In his regular life, KSR is an “American-leftist” and works for social change and climate change awareness. (He made interesting comment that when he started writing, “utopian fiction” meant writing about perfect society, nowadays it means simply society surviving. Kind of indicative of some significant social change.) His talk was in dedication to Dr. Bill Burling who he collaborated with and edited a book of critical essays about KSR. (Dr. Burling was my professor and mentor who I recently mentioned passed away.)

Alright, so, what he said:

(Yikes, I got pretty busy and sick the last week, so this has been delayed; sorry. Hope my notes still make sense to me….)

So, KSR started off by telling us he comes from an American-leftist perspective, and that he sees the world though a particular ideology. But, the point is, we all experience the world through various ideologies–and it’s not something to be avoided, even if you could. He remarked that when people use the term “ideology” it’s usually as a negative: “I see things the way they are, but he sees things through ideology!” It is through ideology that we translate our experiences and make sense of the world we live in, whether it’s a leftist or conservative, humanist or religious, or any other ideology. The point it so identity the ways in which we make sense of the world, find the overlaps with other people and cooperate where we can to make things better.

He then talked about something that has always intrigued me about we as people and society: he observed that at each stage of our cultural development we as a culture believe we’re at the top of the ladder, the best we can be. After all, if there’s more we can do to be better and more advanced as a people, wouldn’t we be doing it already? Yet every ten or twenty years we look back and are amazed at how ridiculous we were as a culture–whether it’s something like clothing and music trends or the way we act in general. We must always strive to “become more sophisticated than your own cultural moment.” If we know that in a couple of decades we’re going to look back on what we are today, what we’re doing and how we’re behaving, and be amused or aghast or ashamed–let’s go ahead and start moving toward that better moment around the corner.

Our brains as hominids have grown larger and more capable over time. Our brains, as homo sapiens, are about as big as they can be and still more often than not pass through the birth canal; evolution caused our brains to advance faster than the rest of our bodies. Why? What was going on in our relatively stable environment millennia ago to cause our brains to advance so drastically? (Uhm, I don’t remember the exact point he got to from there, but he went on to say) we used to live in a world in which we experienced what we call the sublime on rare, amazing instances….

The sublime is the combination of  natural beauty and terror. It’s a kind of experience that fundamentally shakes our sense of reality. To the paleolithic human, the sublime was experienced when a lightning strike would explode yards away. Or when you run for your life from a wildcat and make it to the tribe alive. These are experiences of the sublime. Amazing and wonderful and terrifying.

But in our modern world, we still have the brains we maxed out on as paleolithic humans, but experience what our brains interpret as sublime on a constant basis! Riding in a car at amazing speeds whizzing past other zooming hunks of metal–that’s fundamentally sublime. Flying, easy to get food, ability to stay warm or cool without effort, constant shelter, these are mundane modern experiences that our brains evolved to find as unusual and awesome, but we’ve sublimated the experiences into white noise, and so our still in many ways anciently-wired minds strive to experience that heart-racing and hormone pumping reaction to the sublime experience that we should be having to this constant “technological sublime.” With the help of computers, games, drugs, television, we perform virtual rock throwing to strike down a charging enemy–in the form of watching sports or playing a first-person shooter game. Virtual travel, virtual sex, we use our cultural production to try to fulfill the experiences our brains evolved to experience, and feel the sense of accomplishment and success they were wired to feel–and we don’t quite get it. We earn 100,000 points at Game X, yea, yippie…but it’s an empty accomplishment. Hmm, maybe if I earn 200,000 points I’ll fill fulfilled. Easy food, no accomplishment. Maybe if I eat more I’ll feel like I caught my hunt. Easy clothing, comfort, everything. But we don’t feel truly happy much less the results of experiencing the sublime–so we consume more and more and more in constant search for fulfillment and happiness. And of course, a billion and a half corporations are more than happy to take advantage of our spiraling and recursive need/non-fulfillment by producing and selling us more and more and more.

The result: addiction to consumption.
The result: Global ecological impact = appetite x population x technology.

KSR then talked about the GINI figures and wealth distribution. During feudal period, power came from land ownership. In capitalism, power comes from money ownership. However, between the two periods, the power structure didn’t really change all that much. The powerful land owners became rich land owners.

What we have in capitalism wealth distribution is a pyramid where at the very top is 1% of the world’s population owning 99% of the world’s wealth. (In the US, the top 5% own 95% of the nation’s wealth. Go us.) The most damage to the ecosystem actually comes from the top and th bottoms of the pyramid. The top engages in hyper-consumerism. The bottom (and population-wise, the largest world group) is poverty stricken, they have to feed their children tonight, so the thought of sustainable natural resources don’t (can’t) factor in what they need to do to earn enough to feed their family.

The best wealth-to-population “shape” that we can have would be a flattened oval, where the majority of the population have the majority of the wealth reasonably equally distributed. This paradigm would be best not just because it’d be “nice,” but because it’s vital for the survival of our species.

Social justice, just like language and law, is a technology. It’s a development that changes and improves over time and to social conditions. We can change our concepts of social justice for the better for more people. Interestingly, the places on the world where women enjoy full legal rights and social justice, the “replacement rates” (childbirth rates) is low and sustainable. Where childbirth rates are high (and potentially socially and ecologically damaging) are where social justice is rare. (On a personal note, I find it interesting in the middle of the US where in general social justice is moderate (not near as good as many northern European countries) there are pockets of social injustice and high birth rates among the evangelical religious Christians. For example, “Quiverfull Families,” where women are expected to be baby-making machines and are considered second-class and second-rate people. “Helpmeets” at best!)

Back to consumption without happiness, by every statistical measurement of happiness over the last 50 years, we in the US aren’t any happier than people in other countries despite our increased ability to consume and 5x the consumption rate as [notes illegible here. I believe compared to comparable Western nations].

We as individuals conform to the norms of our culture. If we truly want to be happier people and/or less consuming people, we need to make big group decisions to change culture what equals happiness. In a manner of speaking, the impending climate change, though dangerous, is an opportunity to make massive social change across the board, including improvements to social justice and global living conditions!

(KSR advocated a resurgence of awareness for Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.)

At this point KSR started taking questions from the audience. In response to a question regarding his view on healthcare, he very much believes healthcare is a right for all. As was the saying among Italian workers: “health is not for sale!”

Something we have to remember as we desire change, is the government is us. He’s always found it amazing when people curse the government because the government if “for the people, of the people, and by the people.” When you curse the government, simply replace the word “government” with “us” and see what kind of sense that makes.

(Here’s where I diverge from KSR’s opinions, and when I had a moment with him I asked him about how I, and many of us, do not see the government any longer as by, of, and for us. The government is a corporatocracy, run by, for, and of corporations. People may still have some influence over government at local levels, which is vital and often ignored! People forget that change can start at home as all focus is on state and federal levels. But it’s at those levels where corporate interests hold sway. KSR’s response was basically that we still have the right of the vote, who we vote for. Yeah, well, that’s a great symbolism but it’s pretty much meaningless as the only people that are allowed by the corporate run campaign and election machines are corporate lackey X and a nearly identical corporate lackey Y. Their only differences are in superficial “wedge issue” topics that create a conflict between the voters that cause them to ignore the more important, fundamental issues rotting the core of society.)

He mentioned the site http://www.350.org and the data than can be found on it regarding how to sustain human and most current life on the planet, the CO2 in the atmosphere can’t be (on a long-term level) more than 350 parts per million. We’re currently at 389 and climbing rapidly.

There are a lot of great ideas that are floating around about geoengineering, but the bottom line is we need to get CO2 out of the atmosphere (and not into the oceans where it’s currently being soaked up and screwing up the food chain.) The best option is reforestation. And it’s possible that just a little effort and improvement can result in huge chain-reaction of thriving greenery. We can’t assume the problem is too big and out of control to deal with–then crisis is assured. We can’t stand around paralyzed, waiting for the next gee-whiz technology to get invented that will save us all. It might not come in time.

We need to promote “mindful consumption,” increase wind-powered technology, and absolutely 100% not burn coal. And “clean coal” is non-existent. It’s a marketing term that’s essentially meaningless.

Smart consumption. Interestingly, junking your current car for a hybrid may be more ecologically damaging as the increase in hybrid car production causes more of a carbon footprint than what’s saved by the hybrid cars.

“Sustainable development,” one of the buzzwords found on the printed materials for this day’s events and printed on a 50-foot wall banner in the theater, is also a marketing term that’s simply code for “capitalism”. We need to become post-capitalists. One thing we have to get past is this idea that capitalism is the end-all be-all of socio-political developments. There are better alternatives, and it doesn’t mean embracing Ludditeism. Low tech is not necessary to become post-capitalist.

We have to face that because of our ability to affect the world, we have stewardship over it. It’s a scary thought because we’re pretty ignorant as a species when it comes to world-building. We don’t even know how to make soil–we have to grow soil. We have to realize as we make change to save the eco-system (and human society) that we’re not giving up comfortable lifestyle, we have to give up a neurotic lifestyle!

(For the Facebook users: This is a post from my blog getting auto-noted to Facebook, which cuts off any images or videos in the transfer and removes much text formatting like bold and italics.)

Hooray for CNN.com! Usually I tear my metaphorical hair (it’s the only hair I have left) at CNN.com for their almost consistently credulous “reporting” of “unexplained” events. UFO sightings, ghosts caught on film, angels, psychics to the CEOs….all met with not just an open mind but heads with brains that have fallen out. If in an entire article about crying statues or blurry ghosts walking around a gas station, there is any skepticism, it’s usually some token (partial) sentence like: “some say the oddly moving indistinct shape is a bug on the security camera’s lens, but most people around here, like Susie L., believe it’s an angel…Joe S. tells us ‘this used to be an Indian burial ground after all’….”

And then, some days ago, CNN.com posted an article on the whole 2012 brouhaha:

• Apocalypse in 2012? Date spawns theories

The article discusses the whole origin of why some people are freaking out over 2012, and then takes a skeptical look at why, and more importantly, why it’s ridiculous (my editorialization) and baseless. The article is cogent, succinct, interesting, grounded, and completely reasonable. I’m shocked and aghast! Pleasantly so.

For an even more in-depth examination of the 2012 scare-mongering, the various reasons why some Chicken Littles are claiming doomsday (by, among other things, retrofitting both complete pseudoscience and contorted real science to coincide around the end of the Mayan calendar), and a rational debunking of it with a lot more respect than I’m willing to give it–check out:

• Skeptoid #93: Apocalypse 2012

• Creationist Comeuppance on YouTube

I started watching the video apology the creationist is “forced” to give for unethically and possibly illegally invoking DMCA to try to extort a critic of his to remove his critical videos. I got bored and stopped watching it. While I’m glad justice prevails and no slimy lawyers had to get involved (no offense to my friend* who’s a lawyer; he’s a public defender and not a civil suit lawyer anyway *grin*) I get no pleasure fr0m the schadenfreude inherent in celebrating his (just) public apology.

I watched a couple of the Thunderf00t YouTube videos in which he categorically refutes the creationist VFX’s video claims, and they’re extremely well-informed, researched, reasoned, evidenced-based, etc etc yadda yadda. I don’t mean to imply the videos refuting the creationist are boring or uninspired in any way–they’re quite good (if a bit rough in the audio quality) and I would absolutely recommend them to anyone interested in the debate between empirical reality and Biblical literalism…

Thing is, it’s getting tiring to me. I’ve spent nearly eight years now actively following and reading and watching all I could get my “hands” on regarding the fight between evolution and creationism, and I feel like, not that I’ve seen it all (although I am seeing the same old creationist misunderstandings/fallacies/mistakes/lies and the same old empirical evidence/logical reasoning/evidentiary refutation fr0m the evolutionist side over and over), it’s more like I’m tired of the existence of the debate itself. It’s become obvious this will never end. It’s like digging a hole in water.

No matter how much factual evidence is out there, completely open and available to anyone and everyone who wants to bother looking for it, there’s still armies of people who are quite happy living in worlds of cognitive dissonance (I used to freak out but now I just sigh when people, like this VFX does, decry science as all ideological and full of fantasy and imagination and lies, and then use (a misapplication of) whatever scientific laws and processes is convenient for them to try to prove their creationist argument) and mythological fantasy as far as the eye can see. Change needs to be made and humanity needs to finally enter the 21st century, but the fight is wearying.

In any case, I skipped to the most recent video by Thunderf00t, and the first two-thirds and a refutation of one of VFX’s latest videos using terrible reasoning to accept micro-evolution but claim macro-evolution is “evil.” And the last third of Thunderf00t’s video, though, becomes a philosophical criticism of the concept of “eternal life” as a creation of greedy humans, as the idea of eternal life is not only horrific to sentient beings, but removes all value fr0m life! The fact that we are finite sparks of life in a vast universe gives the ultimate meaning and the greatest importance possible to life. It was a very inspiring closing and for that reason alone I highly recommend viewing it!

*Update, 11 Nov, 08: I had written there all this time, until today, “non-friend”. I have no idea how that typo happened, and I do hope if the friend in question saw that, he realizes that was a mistake. I dunno, maybe I intended to type “non-slimy friend”.

.

Phil Plait comments on it in his Bad Astronomer blog:

• Space X makes it to space!

It’s kind of funny, when you go to the company’s Web site, the illustrations of the craft look so sci-fi, or like a page from a role-playing game book.

It took twelve years to get from Russia’s first satellite, Sputnik, to the first moon landing. We have the information, knowledge, and experience from the past to help as well as better technology–they better be able to put a person on the Moon in under ten years or something is seriously wrong. I think private enterprise will be able to get a Moon-walk before NASA’s projected return to Moon goal.

With developments like this, so long as the state of the middle class improves from this current slide toward disenfranchisement and being an even seriously more have-not class, I would like to be optimistic that my daughter will have the opportunity in her lifetime to be able to ride into space. It would be a dream of mine to be able to view our delicate, blue-green home from the inky black of space. *sigh*

Bottom line, we have to be able to get off this planet, and develop the ability soon if there’s going to be any hope for the human race (assuming one wants the human race to be able to survive. I suppose I can accept the academic argument that we should remain on Earth and thrive or perish as a species just like any animal on the planet. Personally, bollocks to that!) Whether it’s because we’ve frakked up our habitable biosphere, or a killer comet, or pandemic disease, whatever the reason–humans are ultimately doomed. It’s just a matter of when: tomorrow; 100,000 years from now. If we can start to colonize space (and arguably spread our locust-like expansion to as yet innocent and unsuspecting planets and moons) we can increase the chance that our species will be around long enough to evolve into more hardy, space-resilient creatures.

Speaking of hardy resilience, our own planet so wants to kill us! Check out this video, also supplied by Phil Plait, on some pesky weather found in Antarctica:

http://view.break.com/487339 – Watch more free videos

But what I most wanted to mention was the discussion on the brain and dreams. Prompted by a question from the audience to discuss lucid dreaming, Steven Novella (a neurologist as well as a podcast host) described how a dreamer is in a literally altered state of consciousness (sounds like a “no duh!” statement, but it’s deeper than just the obvious) which is in essence an entirely different you than when you’re awake.

Part of that fundamental difference is the turning “off” of the parts of the brain that compare experience and stimuli to what we understand as “reality”. Thus, when we dream, everything makes sense to our dreaming selves, nothing seems unusual or odd no matter how unusual or odd it is. Unless you can manage to switch that filter “on” while dreaming in which even you then are “lucid dreaming,” knowledgeable that you’re dreaming–although that state tends to last very briefly.

I remember an NPR news article a few years ago where researcher is schizophrenia developed a VR goggles and headphones that allowed people to experience a small taste of what it’s like to suffer from schizophrenia. They described the brain as always running in a sort of dream state at the base of consciousness. But that the “normal” person has these filters, like what Steve discusses in the podcast, which filters out the surreal and abnormal from our reality. But people with schizophrenia don’t have these filters. So any bizarre and unusual idea or image or sensory misfire or thought that their brain comes up with in this constant stream of dream-like processing, their conscious brain thinks is totally believable and acceptable.

On the panel was also a co-host of Skepticality, Derek, who suffered a stroke a few years ago. (Young guy, in his 30s, who one day after dinner just dropped and if not for the immediate reaction from present friends and family he’d likely be dead. As it was, he was in a coma for weeks and had to “climb” back into a recognizable form of conscious wakefulness. Then spend months in therapy and had to reconstruct his speech ability–and even now, a few years later, alive and well, he doesn’t quite sound like the person he was before the stroke.

They mention on this panel how his stroke affected his language center, which is intimately tied to our thought-process in that we think in words and language. When that ability of having language is stripped, reality and thinking becomes surreal and untethered and difficult to make sense of. Derek mentions how it took him a year to even make sense of the idea that he was in a coma at one time.

Something else interesting they discuss, is that the impressions he had while “in” the coma, the impressions of people and words and singing, similar experiences many people who had been in comas report as having, he actually did not experience while in the coma but rather as he was waking up–but he had at the time attibuted to from inside the coma.

Anyway, cool stuff.

And is it likely that yet another high-quality, indipendent study on the supposed link between Autism and vaccines has come back with a resounding result of “no connection” will make any difference to these people? I seriously doubt it.

Here’s the point of why I’m finally commenting on the subject: Phil Plait just posted his thoughts on the dangers of uncritical thinking in general, and why we cannot with any human conscience sit idly by while superstition and unreason and uncritical thinking can have real, tangible, harmful effects:

• Uncritical thinking kills

… I’m a parent. I sometimes think the most important thing I can do for my daughter is love her, keep her healthy, protect her. But in all of those, there is an overarching responsibility for me to teach her how to live in the real world. And that means showing her how to think. Not what to think, but how. …

His post is sparked by a death as the result of fear around the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which came online this week. Yes, the absurd fear surrounding the LHC, not the LHC itself, resulted in a death. A couple of days ago two classmates walked into class talking about the LHC and in only half-joking tones were asking each other what they thought of the possible results of the LHC–including Earth destroying black holes and reality destroying chain reactions. Two supposedly educated people who have allowed themselves to be duped by a sensationalism spewing mass media which cares only for gaining readership/viewers and nothing for actual facts and truth and real news, who are comfortable with accepting what they’re told and not checking things out for themselves. It would… should, only take a couple of minutes for a person to think:

“Hmmm, the LHC sounds like a massive endeavor involving a lot of scientists, researchers, and technicians to come up with and build it. Something on that kind of scale would surely have been so thoroughly studied that any possible negative effects (especially the destruction of the universe which presumably would include the death of all the scientists, researchers, and technicians and everyone they love and care about) must either be negligible or non-existent.
Although, people have been on large scales wrong before or have been willing to take huge deadly risks–but usually on subjects involving religion, politics, and/or war–not cold and calculating science.
I doubt there’s anything potentially seriously dangerous about this, but I could be wrong. I should check this out by using critical sources that don’t have as their primary agenda to spread entertainment, fear, sensationalism, yellow journalism as “news”….”

Uncritical thinking has nothing to do with intelligence or education, but everything to do with, as Phil emphasizes, how to think. The human brain has evolved awesomely (in the true sense of the word) to be capable of such incredible ability and reason. We’re amazing pattern recognizers. We can deduce and we predict outcomes. But we’re also still incredibly primitive in the amazing capacity we have for logical fallacy and cognitive bias. Because each and every one of us have our own darlings, our own one or ten superstitions we believe in, or mystical/mythical beliefs, we really want to be able to say out of rationalization for our own peccadilloes “Oh, what’s the harm of letting people believe what they want, live and let live.”

The problem is that people die, people harm other people, over uncritical beliefs and thinking. Uncritical thinking has more at risk than a “harmless” $2 /minute call to an astrologer: uncritical thinking can kill. The most important thing we can do is not go around telling people “what you believe is wrong,” but telling people “this is how you examine and test what you believe” and then have the courage to apply that critical reasoning to your own beliefs as you desire to have other people do unto their own.

Here’s a great and even amusing post by Harry McCall in which he uses his experience with guitar salesmen, vacuum tubes, and personal biases to explain how people see “truth” as relative and its criticism often off-limits to those “not a part of it”

• Truth: Absolute or Relative?

I’ve had some heated discussions in the past with a fervent Christian educated in apologetics, both on here and his site, regarding objectivity and relativism. The funny thing is while he and most religious people argue tooth and nail for the concept of objective moral truth, they themselves are some of the biggest practitioners of relativism. Logic tends to escape them in favor of cognitive biases and fallacies.

A great post by Steven Novella on understanding logic and whether the “universe is logical”:

• Is the Universe Logical?

It alternates between the heady and the easy to understand, but it’s a fantastic foundation in understanding the concept of logic as it exists outside the ideas of human perception and awareness–which should aid people in critically thinking about issues of supernatural belief.

In one of the latest examples of a lost laptop compromising the identities of thousands, (see my post “Welcome to Amerika, please give us all your most private information” for more examples of governmental error and incompetence resulting in risk to thousands, even millions in some cases), a private company seeing an opportunity to make millions off the chaos and bad will the TSA has created with their ridiculous, worthless, ineffectual, and draconian airport security checkpoints, created a program that would allow people to use the infallible power of money (which the terrahists must not have) to skip the long TSA lines for an express lane.

• Laptop with data about 33,000 Clear card applicants lost at SFO

It seems a company laptop…an unencrypted company laptop (see that “On the issue…” post for info on how inexcusable it is to not have active encryption considering how easy and important it is) has gone missing putting at risk private information of tens of thousands of program applicants.

So, an ineffectual government security group (the TSA) does such a piss-poor job that it opens up a business opportunity for a security company to charge for the pleasure of not having to deal with the TSA. This company evidently has no concept of data security and puts its potential customers at risk of having their lives turned upside down. There’s irony in there somewhere I’m sure.

When discussing and criticizing New Age, New Thought, pseudoscience beliefs (like The Secret, crystals, homeopathy, chiropractic, ESP, psychics, Tarot, astrology, chi, feng shui, ghosts, reflexology, etc. ad nauseum) people often say “Oh, what’s the big deal? It’s harmless; let people believe what they want,” it’s often because they themselves have some belief or three that they know fall into the category of superstition and credulity. Subconsciously they think, “Hmm, I better not be too harsh on people who believe in The Secret because I know some know-it-all busybody would have problems with my belief in alien visitation.”

But there is a harm to non-critical thinking and it can be as “small” as spending good money on bunk to as significant as death:

• Teen’s death blamed on faith healing

(_Another Child Dies from Faith Healing_.) A cousin of his also recently died due to lack of medical care thanks to religious beliefs. There’s a woman I work with who also believes in faith healing, and has ignored ever-increasing symptoms until she passed out at a chiropractor and was sent to the hospital. Seems she has a brain tumor. (No word yet if it’s malignant or benign.)

There’s no reason for this. I want to try hard not to disparage faith or spirituality, but let’s be realistic here: medical science over the last 200 years has literally turned the worldview of illness in the west completely upside down. What was once thought to be caused by demons and curses we know to be viruses, bacteria, and chemical disorders. No amount of praying has ever repaired anything visibly irreparable and known to be medically incurable or able to go into remission such as amputations or visible horrific burn damage. A recent massive double-blind study showed that of the three groups of heart surgery patients, (one prayed for by large amounts of cross denominational Christians and not told about it, one prayed for and told about it, and one not prayed for) the group not prayed for and the one prayed for and not told had no difference in post-surgery recovery or complications. In fact, the one prayed for and who knew about it fared statistically worse. (Hypothesis is that some of the patients felt increased stress and concern which lead to complications.)

Recently a girl with serious Autism had a teaching assistant who visited a psychic. The psychic told her a student of hers was being molested. She went to the school with her “evidence” and they turned it to the Canadian version of Family Services:

• The Mother, The Child, The School Board And The Psychic

(_Psychics and gullible people do REAL harm_.) Long story short, it was proven without a doubt that the girl was not being molested–the psychic was full of crap (surprise!) The result of her “for entertainment purposes only” seering was to throw a family into upheaval and cost them a great deal of money and emotional distress.

Neurologist Steven Novella has an excellent commentary on this story: _Psychic Alleges Sexual Abuse_:

Any reasonable assessment of the evidence, in my opinion, clearly shows that alleged psychics are frauds – yes, all of them. Some may be self-deluded, while others (by the techniques they use) must be con artists. But they are all frauds – they pretend to do something they cannot do. Spreading false beliefs about reality is harmful in and of itself. But this harm is greatly magnified by great mischief ensues when alleged psychics make serious allegations based upon their intuitions. This elevates fraud to negligence, and perhaps even depraved indifference.

My wife is often a voice of reason to me. When I go off on something, criticizing what I think is irrational thought, she usually has a point of view that pulls me back down to civility. On this issue she suggested that people should be allowed to believe whatever bogus ideas they want, but should be held accountable should negative results arise. Well, of course that makes sense–I don’t think we should outlaw gullibility or non-critical beliefs, that’s fascist and would actually be counter-productive. But there’s a problem: people AREN’T being held accountable because people are scared to death to publicly criticize religion, pseudoscience, superstitions, or other credulous beliefs. From that CNN article on the boy’s death:

After earlier deaths involving children of Followers of Christ believers, a 1999 Oregon law struck down religious shields for parents who treat their children solely with prayer. No one had been prosecuted under it until the Worthingtons’ case [last March].

We have reached a point in our culture where criticizing, examining, demanding evidence for people’s beliefs is verboten. That kind of Christian fundamentalism which eschews modern medicine and science and puts their children in harm damn well deserves to be criticized at its very foundation. All psychics are frauds, period, and should be treated as such by the legal system and society at large. Beliefs which can and often do lead to harm should not be tip-toed around and given a pass because of some misguided desire to give all beliefs respect and tolerance. Some don’t deserve it.

There’s a CNN article yesterday:

• Should I Vaccinate My baby?

It floored me. Because of vaccinations we’ve eradicated polio, a disease which used to kill or paralyze or cripple literally hundreds of thousands of people a year. Measles? Silly measles, we can risk it–why vaccinate. Because measles is a highly contagious disease with a 10-30% fatality rate and killed half a million unvaccinated people in 2003. There’s a reason we vaccinate children–it saves countless lives from many easily preventable diseases. And because of completely non-critical thinking, this process is thrown into question. Because of three converging conditions, this life-saving science is questioned and debated and needlessly avoided by many:

• Symptoms of Autism reveal themselves at the same age range in which we vaccinate kids–regardless of vaccination. We’ve known this for decades, we see this in places where vaccinations aren’t done. It is coincidence which confuses correlation with causation.
• We’re diagnosing more cases of Autism because of changes in methodology. It used to be that only the most severe cases of Autism were recognized as such–non-functional, “Rainman” style Autism. Now an extremely expansive continuum of symptom severity is being diagnosed. People with Ausperger’s Syndrome, a form of high-functioning Autism was virtually undiagnosed a couple of decades ago…now doctors are more readily recognizing and diagnosing cases. It’s always existed–we’re just diagnosing it more and it has nothing to do with vaccines.
• Parents understandably want to blame something. No one, parents, anyone, likes hearing “sometimes things just happen.” People want reasons, they want answers, they want something to blame. It’s completely understandable, perfectly human. It’s why people turn to ideas of “luck” and fortune, ESP, ghosts, aliens, what have you, for explanations to coincidence, accident, unexplained (in their mind) occurrences.

But the bottom line, is test after test, study after study, research after research, prove that there is no link between Autism and vaccines. In fact, one of the most vocal proponents of the connection was invited to help design what was one of the largest and most comprehensive studies examining the possible link. When the data was analyzed and it was becoming obvious that once again there was no link, she took her name off the study and started a propaganda campaign to distance her involvement and try to discredit the study.

Sometimes people want to believe something despite all evidence to the contrary. That’s delusion.

We should hold people accountable for the effects of their beliefs, absolutely. But what happens when those responsible for holding people accountable themselves rely on magical-thinking, superstition, and other woo? People get a pass. Children are being killed by medieval religious beliefs? Well, we have to be tolerant of religion (especially in this country if it in any way involves the words “Christian” or “…of Christ”.) “Psychics” like _Sylvia Browne_ crassly lie to grieving families, feeding on their pain and grief for their own fame and money? Well, it’s for “entertainment purposes” so they’re covered. (Or, hey, in Sylvia’s case it’s a “religious belief”! Two passes in one!) Besides, cultural leaders and gurus like Oprah advocate mysticism, New Age and New Thought, psychic beliefs, and pseudoscience–so, there must be something to it.

And so we continue to support and encourage un-critical thinking and credulous belief in woo as a culture in general, and that affects our legal system, politics, media.

The other day I heard a commercial for some “all natural” prostate health herbal supplement. “And it’s all natural, so you don’t have to worry about those annoying side effects that come with pharmaceutical products.” Got a message for you: poison ivy is “all natural.” Hemlock, toadstools, heroin, arsenic, Ebola, hepatitis, cancer, cyanide, anthrax…all natural, my friends! And here’s another clue: if something, like an herb, is capable of any kind of “positive” biochemical effect on your body, it’s capable of producing unwanted and negative side effects. The only difference, FDA regulated pharmaceuticals go through rigorous testing to find all or most of those side effects, their severity, cross medication reactions. Herbal remedies get none of that testing. St. John’s Wort? All natural, and promotes liver disease. Ginko biloba? All natural, and contributes to heart disease and strokes. (True) homeopathic “medicine” is the safest, being pretty much complete water, so what’s the harm? A lot if people trust water and sugar tablets instead of seeking needed medical advice for symptoms that may indicate something water and sugar don’t affect!

A culture that believes in woo won’t and can’t hold people who harm others or themselves, based on woo, accountable in any significant degree.

• Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
• James Randi’s Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions.
• Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time.
• Madeleine L. Van Hecke’s Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things.
• Thomas E. Kida’s Don’t Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking.
• Robert Burton’s On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not.
• Podcast: Point of Inquiry
• Podcast: Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe
• Blog: Memoirs of a Skepchick
• Blog: NeuroLogica
• Blog/podcast: Skeptoid
• Common logical fallacies
• Comprehensive list of logical fallacies
• Cognitive bias

♦ Wear Science- Teach the Controversy

(Thanks BoingBoing!)

♦ Skepticast #150: 6/4/2008

It starts with a wonderful criticism of the anti-vaccine/autism movement versus reasoned thinking. For example, one of the main tactics of the anti-vaccine movement is to claim vaccines contain known dangerous chemicals. But to do this, they scan ingredient lists and pick out “bad sounding” chemical partial names and hold those up as being a significant and viable ingredient.

It’s like saying: “Salt is dangerous because it contains chlorine!” because they found that salt is sodium chloride. These people paid no attention in high school chemistry when you learned that a chemical when bonded with another creates entirely new properties. And this is just a small sample of the lack of critical thinking among this group. And the media is just furthering this erroneous pseudo-science by giving them all the support they need without offering any kind of skeptical scientific counterpoint.

Also in the show is a great interview with Walter Isaacson, author of the biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe. The fact that he was a relatively uneducated patent clerk may have helped allow him to become the genius on the level of Issac Newton and Aristotle that he was.

And in their weekly game, (spoiler warning!) they discuss the counter-intuitive findings that talking about (read: reliving) a public trauma, like 9/11, is actually potentially more psychologically harmful than keeping it inside!

Good show, I highly recommend it!

♦ When galaxies collide

This is one of my favorites:

These are pictures of galaxies colliding. Galaxies. GALAXIES! Not billiard balls, not smoke rings, not anything you can hold in your hand… things that contain BILLIONS of stars and hundreds of billions of planets! Zooming through space at inconceivable speeds and tearing each other up.

The universe is so frakkin’ awesome!!

Well of course, as an atheist and a naturalist (no, NOT nudist!) I’m also a secular humanist, so I take great offense at the idea that you have to be either a religious believer (Christian specifically) or a nihilist. There is something in between that is perfectly complimentary to the idea that morality exists (because it does) without the need for any god (because there aren’t (–even so, why specifically Yahweh and not one of the other 2400 gods?)

But better than any response I’ve given, I just listened to the latest Point of Inquiry podcast with an interview with naturalism philosopher and Vice President for Research and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Inquiry:

♦ John Shook – Naturalism and the Scientific Outlook

It’s not a very long episode, only 25 minutes, and I think the way he discuses the argument for naturalism as a philosophy and a worldview is pretty much the final word in my book. He also discusses the role of science in society and the way science is not a study of scientists (which is what creationists and anti-scientists want to make it out to be), but an examination purely of nature and the evidence from the examination of nature regardless of the people involved.

Here are some nice bits:

Naturalism is a worldview, a philosophy of you like, that understand reality through experience, reason and science. And I break it down into these three more simpler elements but it’s necessary to understand: they work together. …

You cannot have naturalism without science. But, we have to understand, science itself is based upon our experience of the world, and, reasoning about the world. We draw inferences, we test hypotheses, we draw tentative conclusions about what reality is like. Sometimes, opponents of naturalism, love to appeal to experience independently of science, or to reason (let’s say some rational arguments for the existence of god), again–completely unhinged from science. …

The diversity of human experience is incredible! Of course religious experience is part of this. What naturalism simply demands is that… experience is not enough. Experience has to be tested by rational standards of coherence and common sense, and also it has to be consistent with science. …

Strictly speaking, science itself as a list of cutting-edge theories, that are best tested by experiments, you can’t directly infer moral conclusions about how human beings ought to live. You can’t read them off…. You can’t detect values with a microscope. There have been some objectionable philosophies that have attempted this. For example Social Darwinism once proliferated: ‘Rich people ought to survive because obviously they’re more fit,’ this sort of bogus, junk science really is a logical dead end. … Humorously, this junk science, this propaganda of Social Darwinism, was actually playing a card played by theologians played by time immemorial. ‘If it’s natural, it’s right.’ This presumption being by theologians: God set up nature so God must have deemed it right. That principle just have to be thrown out as completely illogical and unsupportable, so scientists shouldn’t do it either.

What I would suggest is that instead we remind ourselves that as naturalists we rely on experience, reason, and science–it’s the unity of the three of them that really allows naturalism to tell us real information about how human beings ought to live. Especially the experience. Sometimes naturalists think by discarding supernaturalism they have to completely discard the religious cultural heritages of humanity too. And we don’t have to do that. What we can do is we can distinguish between what doesn’t work anymore in religion and what still may work. For example: moral wisdom, about how human beings ought to live. Now of course it’s couched too often in mythological language… and it is horribly outmoded.

So, naturalism would recommend, not that we start from scratch, some blank slate, some a priori principles of pure reason to deduce how we ought to live; instead what we ought to do is we ought to critically examine and test this cumulative body of moral wisdom that comes from the world’s cultures. After all, there’s sort of an evolutionary wisdom here. Most of these cultures have lasted for hundreds if not thousands of years, human beings have to a certain extent, successfully flourished, why discard this body of wisdom? So a naturalist would say: ‘We could build a new non-religious, secular culture–not in some a priori fashion or by consulting intuitions or anything like that, but simply by taking from the best of the other world cultures. …

And from there they discuss value of life, the meaning of life, and cosmic ego versus personal ego and what may be in between when defining meaning and passing values on.
It’s a good listen!