Sam Harris & Richard Dawkins: Who Says Science has Nothing to Say About Morality?

On Dinosaurs and Lice

An interesting article published in Biology Letters suggests that dinosaurs may have had lice. The article was covered by the ever-understated Daily Mail as: So that's why dinosaurs were bad-tempered... scientists reveal they were plagued by lice.


One of the comments made on this article:

"Dr Vincent Smith, from the Natural History Museum, London, said: 'Lice are like living fossils. The record of our past is written in these parasites." No. The record of our past is written in the bible. "Study of insect DNA shows that lice evolved more than 65million years ago." Study of the bible shows that lice were created perfect much less than 65 million years ago and then became imperfect. And this isn't guesswork; the day they and everything else became imperfect and started decaying was written by an eyewitness - the man from whom we are all descended - whom we know as Adam. The 65 million-years-ago history is false. It never happened. This scientist started with a pre-conceived world-view and interpreted his finding through this. But he has ignored the written account preserved in the bible and has subscribed to an imagined history. Adam has put his name at the end of the account in thre first book of the bible, and it's his 'written record.'"

Yet again it seems that the science is more interesting and fascinating the Bible. Oh, and it's a lot more likely to be right.

Carl Sagan Day: November 6th

Carl Sagan has done some great things for humanity. I have met many people who first became interested in astrophysics and astronomy thanks to his TV shows.

He suggested taking what is perhaps the most iconic photograph ever taken, Pale Blue Dot.

He was also an influential proponent of atheism (Carl Sagan quotes on religion).

In his honour there is a(nother) Carl Sagan Day on the 6th November - an idea I fully support.

O'Reilly vs Dawkins

Dawkins sometimes get accused of being an evangelical atheist. In this interview however he just comes across as the voice of reason. Science classrooms should be full of science. Period.

The interview was meant to be about RD's latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, a topic deftly missed by O'Reilly. Indeed O'Reilly winds himself up into such a state that he shouts and calls Dawkins a fascist for saying Jesus should stay out of science lessons.

At least we don't get this nonsense in the UK!

Units

I have, over the years, developed something bordering obsessive when it comes to units. They have to be be right, and it's better if they're in some way metric. So this graph made me smile.



Good to see us physicists and biologists at the top!
more music charts

Teachers and Creationism in the UK

A selection of links from Teachers' TV and The Guardian relating to a survey in which 29% of teachers said creationism should be taught as science. As a statistic this is truly appalling. James Randerson dives a little bit further into the statistics here.

Perhaps the best bit is this video, a must for all those teachers who are apparently unable to teach evolution well!

Royal Society soft on god?

Following some rather poor appointments (at least on a religious basis) Robin McKie ponders the place of the oldest scientific institution, the Royal Society, in the battle to keep religion out of science teaching.

"We badly need our premier scientific society to stand firm and present a clear vision of how our planet, our species, and the cosmos came into existence. It needs to be unequivocal about the wonders of nature as revealed through rational, scientific investigation. As Douglas Adams put it: 'Isn't enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe there are fairies at the bottom of it too?'"

Jeremy Kyle and the Lie Detector Test

I would like to make it perfectly clear that I hate, with a passion, talk shows. Why these people need to use television as a medium to air their laundry is beyond me. I know lots of people want to be on the TV, but I wouldn't want to share anything that personal, and generally anything that embarrassing/pathetic, with the world at large.

But that's not the aim of today's rant. No, today we focus on that Jeremy Kyle staple, the lie-detector (aka polygraph) test. There is much argument on the reliability of these tests, generally somewhere between 60% and 97% is quoted (however a great deal of this evidence is unreliable).

The physiological effects recorded by the polygraph are not unique to deception. Surely this should set off alarm bells?

Well no, these people on what seems to be a daily basis put major decisions in the hands of a machine which is at best 97% accurate. Kyle is guilty, as others are, of making this seem almost infallible.

What I do in a situation like this is turn the statistics around. 97% accurate means 3% inaccurate. For every 100 tests done, 3 (on average) will give the incorrect result (remember that this is the best case scenario!).

If you were a jury member would that be accurate enough for you to convict? If you were a judge would you accept that if the average accuracy of the evidence before you was 97% then for every 100 people you convicted 3 would have been denied their freedom for no reason at all. I hope not.

Innocent people will unfortunately be imprisoned under any system of law and order we have, as a species, yet envisioned. But for me the number of innocents convicted would have to be, as a minimum, somewhere around 1 in 10,000 (99.99% accuracy). If the evidence was any less convincing than that I would, personally, have to call that reasonable doubt.

But Kyle commits a worse sin. An inconclusive test is just that, it is impossible to draw a conclusion from it. Yet the daytime demigod, facing four possible thieves who had undergone the polygraph, three of which got an all clear and one of whom got an 'inconclusive', picked on that 'inconclusive' person as the culprit. An inconclusive result, even given the fact that the others pass the truth test, does not mean that person has failed to tell the truth, it means that the test has failed to discriminate.

Of course this would require Kyle, the juror/judge, the people on the show, etc. to have a sound basic knowledge of mathematics and scientific reasoning. Which given the fact we live in the Jeremy Kyle generation is sadly unlikely.

A ramble on the scientific method

Scientific ideas are out there to be attacked by scientists. If a theory survives an attack it lives to fight another day, if not it is either thrown onto the pile of rejected ideas (phlogiston) or it is used although it is kown to be incomplete (Newtonian mechanics is known to be wrong, however it agrees with relativistic mechanics so closely for 'everyday' situations that it used regularly as the mathematics is simpler). It is also possible to alter the theory so that it survives the attack.

These attacks need to be scientific attacks (i.e. they require empirical evidence). Attacks from revealed sources such as the bible are totally unacceptable. The process of attacking an idea is to develop an experiment that will either prove the theory wrong, or let it survive to be attacked by another experiment.

It is not possible to prove a scientific idea, but scientists have a lot of confidence in ideas that have withstood a large number of attacks.

Ben Stein's ramblings

"When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you," - Ben Stein.

This originally came from here. Thankfully it seems that Stein's film hasn't made it to this side of the Atlantic, we're generally not quite as extremist as the United States. It's not relly a good opinion, science leads to vacuum cleaners, computers, medicines, and a whole lot of other things too. Extremist opinions lead to events such as the Holocaust, and I for one would rather trust in science than trust in Stein.

Arthur C Clarke dies

"Science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke has died in Sri Lanka at the age of 90, an aide to the best-selling British author said.

Rohan De Silva said that Clarke died after suffering from breathing problems.

Clarke is the author of more than 100 books, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, collaborating with director Stanley Kubrick on the film of the same name."

From BBC Teletext

Misses what I would call his greatest contribution, a paper on the principle of geo-stationary satellites, now widely used for telecommunications, and also the 'space elevator' concept, a scientist as well as a science fiction author.

Alternative History

Article in The Times 2nd April 2007

"Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.

The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history 'as a vehicle for promoting political correctness'.

The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, looked into 'emotive and controversial' history teaching in primary and secondary schools.

It found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class.

The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.

The report said teachers feared confronting 'anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils'.

It added: "In another department, the Holocaust was taught despite anti-Semitic sentiment among some pupils.

"But the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques."

A third school found itself 'strongly challenged by some Christian parents for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict-and the history of the state of Israel that did not accord with the teachings of their denomination'.

The report concluded: "In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship."

But Chris McGovern, history education adviser to the former Tory government, said: "History is not a vehicle for promoting political correctness. Children must have access to knowledge of these controversial subjects, whether palatable or unpalatable."

The researchers also warned that a lack of subject knowledge among teachers - particularly at primary level - was leading to history being taught in a 'shallow way leading to routine and superficial learning'.

Lessons in difficult topics were too often 'bland, simplistic and unproblematic' and bored pupils."

This is what happens when people have their views misguided by religion. The job of a balanced education is to present evidence and teach people how to form conclusions fom it. The Holocaust is unique not only in the magnitude of it atrocity, but the magnitude of evidence that we have showing what happened. Everybody who studies this period of world history needs to be presented with the evidence, without it i's impossible to fully understand some of the major conflicts in the present day.

Personally I would like the events of the Crusades to be discussed more often. There can only be one true version of events, and the process of deducing this sequence from the evidence is a worthwhile study for any school child.

If history disagrees with religion, one of them is wrong.
If science disagrees with religion, one of them is wrong.

I think I'll stick with my science and history.

Confused by Reality?

I am amazed by the number of people I have seen posting on the internet about things such as creationism vs evolution who get the science totally wrong. I was reminded of this by the same podcast as I mentioned yesterday, which I downloaded again to check a few things out.

The most striking thing said was that it may take a scientist hours, or even days to properly explain why the pseudo-science spouted by a preacher is incorrect. The incorrect use of scientific language in these speeches lends an unwarranted authority to the words of these preachers, and makes them more believable to the lay religious citizen.


I wish I could say that I thought these preachers were just misguided. But I think it is more sinister. Backed up with authoritatively delivered, despite incorrect, words and concepts bastardised from the world of science these preachers set out to deceive their congregations and get them to believe in their own world view. Whether is this is morally justified by religion or not is another matter.

Arguments Against Creationism

Here are a few arguments made against creationism a while ago now on the Infidel Guy podcast, when he was talking to Frank Zindler.

Zindler made a huge attack on creationism as it is told in Genesis. Two points that I found particularly interesting (although I'd heard them before) were the fact that a literal interpretation of Genesis requires a flat Earth, and an argument made on that favourite science topic of creationists - the fossil record.

The 'flat Earth' requirement comes from the six days it supposedly takes to make the Earth. Well, if we take this literally it is nonsense, at any time half of the Earth is in day, the other half in night. At the poles day and night are 6 months each! If on the other hand we take 'day' to be a significant length of time, then the order of creation is ridiculous.

My favourite argument is however based on the fossil record. Creationists often use this as a trump card in disproving evolution, even though there are so many intermediary forms in the record that to claim it doesn't support evolution is wrong. But anyway, surely if, as many creationists believe, we lived at the same time as the dinosaurs (who in some cases could breathe fire in order to explain dragons), then there should be fossil records of people ad dinosaurs in the same strata. None has been found. There are also other glaring inconsistencies that support evolution, there is a cut off point for pollen from angiosperms, even though there are other plant fossils before this date.

I just love the fact that one of the creationists trump cards has been turned on them!

Elton John: "Ban Religion"

This post was originally going to be called "Leviticus: 2000 years of suppression in a nutshell" but then I saw this article where Elton John calls for organised religion to be banned. So I have sort of merged the two.

The focus is now on the Bible's teaching on homosexuality, and the suppression of women and other such horrors will come along in future posts.

Well, I took a look at Leviticus in the Good News (unless your homosexual) translation of the Bible. It appears that god "hates" it when a man has sex with another man. The punishment for this "disgusting thing" is death.

So why are we having debates about gay priests? Surely this will disgust god?

It's time to face facts. The apocalypse is coming, but not as it is told in Revelations. The horsemen of this apocalypse are reason, truth, science and acceptance.

Religion Has A Place In School Science

If we go back in time to the first concept of creation we would find that it would today be put into the category of spiritual or religious.

However the title for most accurate description is not dished out on a first come first served basis. Since that time our knowledge of science has grown from a simple curiosity about the world around us to broad, wide-reaching theories governing not only our everyday lives, but also the behaviour of the very large, the very small, the very slow and the very fast (on scales that are often almost, if not totally, impossible to grasp).

As we have learned more by observing what actually happens, we lessen our need to 'fill the gaps' of our knowledge with tales that if told often enough and believed strongly enough provide some sort of spiritual comfort.

Are these first attempts at explanation truly scientific? Well they could be. A scientific theory has to describe the relevant criteria already discovered, and from it we can make predictions that we can test to see if this theory really does describe the phenomena concerned. In a world with very little knowledge of science a story, however much like a fairytale, could be a scientific theory. Admittedly one incapable of running the gauntlet of experimental evidence to the present day, but a theory nevertheless.

Should this be taught in schools. I would say so, and in science lessons too. Anything that elucidates the application of the scientific method to a given problem has merit. Would the students have the inclination (or perhaps, in many religious countries, the bravery) to extend the application of the idea to modern day religious doctrines? I can only hope so.