1. Storm

Comment #307966 by beeline on December 29, 2008 at 7:13 am

STORM by Tim Minchin, 2008

In a North London top floor flat,
All white walls, white carpet, white cat.
Rice paper partition, Modern art And Ambition

The host's a physician,
Lovely bloke,
Has his own practice,
His girlfriend's an actress -
An old mate of ours from home,
And they're always great fun,
So to dinner we've come -

The fifth guest is an unknown,
The hosts have just thrown us
together for a favour.
The girl's just arrived from Australia,
And she's moved to North London,
And she's a sister of someone.
Or has - some connection.

As we make introductions,
I'm struck by her beauty,
She's irrefutably fair,
With dark eyes and dark hair.
But as she sits, I admit:
I'm a little bit wary,
As I notice the tip,
Of the wing of a fairy,
Tattooed on that popular area,
Just above the derrière,
And when she says "I'm Sagittarius!"

I confess, a pigeonhole starts to form,
And is immediately filled with pigeon,
When she says her name is *Storm*

Conversation is initially bright and light-hearted,
But it's not long before Storm gets started.

"You can't know anything.
Knowledge is merely opinion."

She opines over her Cabernet Sauvignon
Vis-à-vis,
Some unhappily empirical comment made by me.
Not a good start I think,
We're only on pre-dinner drinks,
And across the room my wife widens her eyes,
Silently begging me "Be nice!"

A matrimonial warning,
Not worth ignoring.
So,

I resist the urge to ask Storm,
Whether knowledge is so loose weave,
Of a morning, when deciding whether to leave,
Her apartment by the front door,
Or the window on the second floor.

The food is delicious,
And Storm whilst avoiding all meat,
Happily sits and eats,
As the good doctor slightly pissedly holds court on some anachronistic aspect of medical history.

When Storm suddenly insists:
"But the human body is a mystery
Science just falls in a hole
When it tries to explain the nature of the soul."

My hostess throws me a glance,
She, like my wife, knows there's a chance,
I'll be off on one of my rare, but fun, rants.
But I shan't, My lips are sealed,
I just want to enjoy the meal.

And although Storm is starting to get my goat,
I have no intention of rocking the boat,
Although it's becoming a bit of a wrestle,
Because, like her meteorological namesake,
Storm has no such concerns for our vessel.

Pharmaceutical companies is an enemy,
They promote drug dependency,
At the cost of the natural remedies,
That are all our bodies need,
They're immoral and driven by greed,
Why take drugs when herbs can solve it?
Why do chemicals when
Homeopathic solvents can resolve it?
I think it's time we all return to live,
With natural medical alternatives.

And try as I like,
A small crack appears in my diplomacy dyke.

By definition, (I begin)
Alternative medicine, (I continue)
Is either not been proved to work,
Or been proved, not to work.
Do you know what they call
'Alternative Medicine'
That's been proved to work?

-- Medicine


So you don't believe in any natural remedies?
On the contrary, Storm, actually,
Before we came to tea,
I took a natural remedy,
Derived from the bark of a willow tree.
It's a painkiller, virtually side-effect free.
It's got a, a weird name,
Darling, what was it again?
Maspirin?
Baspirin? Oh, yeah -
Aspirin!
Which I paid about a buck for,
Down at the local drugstore.

The debate briefly abates,
As my hosts collect plates.
But as they return with dessert,
Storm pertly asserts,
Shakespeare said it first:
There are more things in
Heaven and Earth,
Than exist in your philosophy
Science is just how we're trained, to look at reality,
It doesn't explain, Love or spirituality.
How does Science explain
Psychics, auras, the afterlife,
The power of prayer?

I'm becoming aware,
That I'm staring,
I'm like a rabbit suddenly trapped,
In the blinding headlights of vacuous crap.
Maybe it's the Hamlet,
She just misquothed,
Or the fifth glass of wine I just quaffed.
But my diplomacy dyke groans,
And the arsehole held back by its stones.
Could be held back no more.

Look up, Storm, So I don't need to bore ya,
But there's no such thing as an aura,
Reading auras is like reading minds,
Or tea leaves, or star-signs,
Or meridian lines.
These people aren't plying a skill,
They're either lying, or mentally ill.
Same goes for people who claim
To hear God's demands,
Spiritual healers who think
They've got magic hands.
By the way, why do we think it's okay,
For people to pretend they can talk to the dead?
Isn't that totally fucked in the head?
Lying to some crying woman whose child has died,
And telling me you're in touch with the other side?
I think that's fundamentally sick.
Do I need to clairify here,
That there's no such thing as a psychic?

What are we - fucking two?
Do we actually think that
Horton heard a Who?
Do we still believe that Santa brings us gifts,
That Michael Jackson didn't have facelifts?
Or are you still so stunned
by circus tricks,
That we think the dead would,
Wanna talk to pricks like John Edward?

Storm, to her credit,
Despite my derision
Keeps firing off cliches
With startling precision
Like a sniper using
Bollocks for ammunition.

You're so sure of your position,
But you're just close-minded,
I think you'll find tat
Your FAITH in science and tests,
Is just as blind as the
faith of any fundamentalists,

Wow, that's a good point,
Let me think for a bit.
Oh wait, my mistake,
That's absolute bullshit.
Science adjusts its views
Based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation,
so that belief can be preserved.

If you show me that, say,
Homeopathy works,
I will change my mind,
I will spin on a fucking dime.
I'll be as embarassed as hell,
Yet I will run through the streets yelling,
It's a MIRACLE!
Take pysics and bin it!
Water has memory!
And whilst its memory
Of a long lost drop of onion juice is infinite,
It somehow forgets all the poo it's had in it.

You show me that it works,
And how it works,
and when I've recovered,
from the shock,
I will take a compass and carve
'Fancy That',
On the side of my cock.

Everyone's just staring now,
But I'm pretty pissed and I've dug this far down.
So I figure.. In for a penny, in for a pound!

Life is full of mystery, yeah,
but,
there are answers out there.
And they won't be found,
By people sitting around,
Looking serious,
And saying: Isn't life mysterious,
Let's sit here and hope,
Let's call up the fucking Pope,
Let's go on Oprah,
And Interview Deepak Chopra.

If you must watch telly,
you should watch Scooby-Doo,
That show was so cool!
Because every time
There was a church with a ghoul,
Or a ghost in a school,
They looked beneath the mask.
And what was inside?
The fucking janitor,
or the dude who ran the water slide!
Because,
throughout history,
every mystery
ever solved,
Has turned out to be -
Not Magic!

Does the idea that
there might be knowledge frighten you?
Does the idea that
one afternoon on Wiki-fucking-pedia
Might enlighten you,
Frighten you?
Does the notion that there might not be a supernatural,
so blow your hippy noodle,
that you'd rather just stand in the fog of your
Inability to google?

Isn't this enough?
Just,
this world?

Just,
Beautiful,
Complex,
Wonderfully Unfathomable,
Natural World?

How does it so fail to hold our attention
That we have to diminish it
with the invention
of cheap man-made
myths and monsters?
If you're so into your Shakespeare,
Lend me your ear
To gild refined gold,
To paint the lily,
To throw perfume on the violet,
Is just fucking silly
Or something like that.
Or what about Satchmo?
I see trees of green,
Red roses too...

And fine, if you wish to,
Glorify Krishna and Vishnu,
In a post-colonial,
Condescending,
Bottled-up-and-labeled
kind of way,
Whatever, That's okay.

But, here's what gives me a hard-on,
I'm a tiny, insignificant
Ignorant bit of carbon.
I have one life,
And it is short and unimportant,
But thanks to recent scientific advances...

I get to live twice as long,
As my great-great-great-great
uncleses and auntses.

Twice as long!
To live this life of mine,
Twice as long,
To love this wife of mine.
Twice as many years,
Of friends, of wine,
Of sharing curries and getting shitty,
At good looking hippies,
With fairies on their spines,
And butterflies on their titties.

And if perchance, I have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,

We'd as well be ten minutes back in time
For all the chance you'll change your mind.

2. How to stop creationism gaining a hold in Islam

Comment #300694 by beeline on December 12, 2008 at 9:23 am

Raldo,

So it was critical thinking that led you to become an atheist, really. I think this is what does it for most people. I expect there are very few people indeed who have got all the way into their teens who still believe, and whose discovery of evolution has then pushed them over the edge into atheism.

To summarise: if you can think rationally enough to understand evolution, you will have tremendous difficulty suppressing that rationality enough to continue believing in God.

3. How to stop creationism gaining a hold in Islam

Comment #300510 by beeline on December 12, 2008 at 2:04 am

Comment #300483 by Phil451,

I think the biggest problem is that it's very common for people to 'say why' they came to such-and-such a conclusion when they were young, but they're quite often mistaken. They're very often post-rationalising from their adult position.

It's just as likely, despite what he claims, that Richard's education, which encouraged him to think rationally, led him towards both science (and evolution) and the dismissal of a deity.

Correllation doesn't always imply causation, and people's articulation of their youthful motivations should always be treated with a fair degree of skepticism, especially by themselves.

In the end, we have something even more powerful - something more fundamental than 'evolution' to hang our coats on: Rational Thought leads to and understanding of science, and history, and an ability to see myths for what they are.

Rational thought is 'to blame', and atheism is just an attractive symptom.

4. Richard Dawkins and Aubrey Manning

Comment #296038 by beeline on December 3, 2008 at 5:56 am

Some religions do force people to believe in gods. And kill them if they don't, or at least exclude them from society. But in any case, I wouldn't argue that they do force people generally - the point I was making is that once people have beliefs (afterlife, animals, etc - as you mention) it is then very easy for political organisations to exploit those people's beliefs to further their own ends, at considerable expense to the individuals (both financially and in terms of their lifestyle). In this way many religions that were once 'private' have become horribly corrupted. Christianity is one such religion.

Those emotions that kick and make us believe in religion no matter what evidence comes forward, I believe is a human predisposition that has been breed into us by natural selection for 100,000's of years since we became aware of our own mortality.

You may be right, but for that to have been the case, 'being religious' must have generated some advantage to those genes' hosts within their society, and in the environment of other genes. It's not clear what those genes are, and it's certainly not clear what the advantages are either, separate from those that any community should be able to give to an individual.

If the only tangible benefit to an individual is supposed to happen after death, then that is rather outside the remit of natural selection, which only passes on genes during reproduction.

5. Richard Dawkins and Aubrey Manning

Comment #295851 by beeline on December 3, 2008 at 2:35 am

Comment #16 by howardb

If religion was a misfire of something else then why doesnt the misfire happen with Santa Claus? Most of us grow out of that one and accept it as myth.

This is a good question, but I think the answer is something that Daniel Dennett has talked a lot about a lot in 'Breaking the Spell' - the answer being that certain organisations have used 'belief in the supernatural' as a vehicle for their authoritarian attempts to gain political power.

As religion is extremely old and very widespread, and has a long association with culture and morals, these organisations - what we would now know as 'organised religion' - have 'stewarded' the religion to serve their own agenda.

This hasn't happened with Santa Claus because belief in him is not powerful enough amongst a wide enough variety of races or cultures, and he's only thought about for a few weeks a year (or months if you're in retail).

Father Christmas just doesn't present enough of a 'hook' in people for organisations to be able to leverage it for political ends. But you will have noticed that other organisations (the retail kind mentioned above) have very much used his image as a vehicle for financial power: to get you to shop shop shop!

6. Richard Dawkins and Aubrey Manning

Comment #295656 by beeline on December 2, 2008 at 4:37 pm

Aubrey Manning has made a very watchable DVD called 'Earth Story' about geology and the beginnings of life. Real passion, and no expense spared. Very much recommended.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Earth-Story/dp/B000FS9SGE

7. Richard Dawkins and Aubrey Manning

Comment #295648 by beeline on December 2, 2008 at 4:23 pm

Perhaps the more successfully received of Tinbergen's papers were the ones in which statistics didn't play so large a part. I should imagine all his papers are still available to read, so you could do a comparison.

Of course, if mistakes had been made, they are visible for all to see today (an even better reason for everyone to check them out: I'm sure all undergraduates do so every year). Therefore, even if they are flawed (which all theories are, to some degree) these flaws will be made public by whoever spots them, and the theories rejected or updated to more accurate versions.

Science progresses, even when mistakes are made.

8. A New Picture of the Early Earth

Comment #295644 by beeline on December 2, 2008 at 4:10 pm

So you're saying that the gravitational effects of planets don't attract more matter to them? I would imagine that a great deal gets slowed down by atmospheres and spirals in, especially so for Jupiter, whose atmosphere stretches a very long way out, stealing energy off whatever comes by...

As I say, references please.

9. A New Picture of the Early Earth

Comment #295618 by beeline on December 2, 2008 at 2:52 pm

Hmmm. I understand what everyone is saying about Solar system formation, and I'm still fairly familiar - although admittedly a little rusty - with gravitation (my degree had quite a bit of astrophysics in it).

But I'm still unsure why you think that asteroids wouldn't fall into Jupiter. There are two pieces of evidence that suggest that they have done. The most obvious one is the lack of asteroids near its orbit, and the second point is that all the non-gaseous planets are utterly covered with crater impacts, which does rather rule out your explanation that impacts are 'unlikely'.

Truly, the Sun is the biggest 'vacuum cleaner', followed by Jupiter, then Saturn, etc. I just thought that 'Jupiter doesn't suck in asteroids' was... surprising, given that everything else evidently has. I mean the Earth still gets millions of hits a day - around 100 tonnes, IIRC. Would Jupiter not attract many orders of magnitude more?

Some references would be appreciated - I intend to scrape off my rust!

10. A New Picture of the Early Earth

Comment #295545 by beeline on December 2, 2008 at 11:33 am

Why wouldn't you say that Jupiter sucks in asteroids? It's absolutely huge, gravitationally speaking, and it certainly sucked in a pretty large comet recently (S-M 9 in 1994). And it does have the nickname 'the Solar System's vacuum cleaner' for a reason, surely.

There's a good reason why the asteroid belt stops short of Jupiter's orbit - it's 'hoovered them up', hasn't it? Apart from those that found a safe haven at its Legrange points - the 'Trojans'...

11. A New Picture of the Early Earth

Comment #295526 by beeline on December 2, 2008 at 10:07 am

And let's face it, Jupiter does suck in a LOT of asteroids towards it, and its moons.

12. A New Picture of the Early Earth

Comment #295511 by beeline on December 2, 2008 at 9:11 am

Well, for those of you outside Region 2, there's always the excellent (and free) VLC application, which can defeat any DVD region encoding. I believe, however, that its use is illegal in some countries, so you might want to, I dunno, pull the curtains.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

You never seen me, right?

13. A New Picture of the Early Earth

Comment #295466 by beeline on December 2, 2008 at 8:07 am

It's a superlatively good series. And the music is just incredible - very modern, like Poulenc, Fauré or Stravinsky. The theme tune, at the end (and so abruptly cut off) haunts my every memory of learning to love science.

Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czgc56Vfz4w

14. A New Picture of the Early Earth

Comment #295385 by beeline on December 2, 2008 at 6:13 am

I went to a lecture by physicist Paul Davies some years ago during which he pushed his new book, The Goldilocks Enigma. This book explores the classic paradox of why the Earth is 'just right for us' and, using the Anthropic principle, it helped to set him up for some Templeton Prize fishing.

Anyway, some 7-year old kid from the audience asked him, during the question time allotted afterwards, why he thought that life would never have evolved otherwise. "Surely," he said, "evolution, being cleverer than we can possibly imagine, would have just made creatures that adapted to whatever situation currently pertained. Complexity like ours can't possibly be predicted based on a few physical factors." (Okay, he was a smart 7 year old, and got a round of applause.)

I think he's right, too. You can't put this world's parameters into any simulation and come up with Elvis Presley, or Watford. Therefore you can't know that some other parameters wouldn't also come up with something at least as complex. Not us, obviously (unless bilaterally symmetric humanoids are some kind of evo-devo 'strange attractor') but almost certainly something.

Evolution and natural selection just need variety, competition and hereditary, and complexity is, I suspect, utterly inevitable.

15. A New Picture of the Early Earth

Comment #295254 by beeline on December 2, 2008 at 2:30 am

At the very beginning of Attenborough's 'Life on Earth' he talks about the stromatolite and jellyfish fossils that we can now understand from the very earliest rocks - something like 3 billion years back. But it looks as if there's evidence slowly trickling in that there were some lifeforms even earlier, leaving their subtle chemical traces in the rocks.

I've stood on the edge of Meteor Crater, in Arizona, and had the same kind of awe: imagine just how loud and devastating it would have been to witness that thing coming down, considering the pretty vast crater that's there - around 3/4 of a mile in diameter. And that was only a single meteorite about 50m across - tiny. You can still see little bubbles of molten 'glass' rock and sand on the ground up to 7 miles away.

It's just impossible to imagine something 100 miles wide hitting. That really must have spoiled the weather for a while.

16. How to sell science to the Big Brother generation

Comment #294399 by beeline on December 1, 2008 at 3:30 am

Marcus du Sautoy writes:

We have to make decisions about important scientific issues, and unless members of society are informed about them they'll be unable to get involved in that debate.

I applaud this approach, although it is early days, and therefore optimism still reigns. However, what's the number one cause (alright, number two after apathy) of people being led astray and abandoning rationalism and critical thinking of the kind that works in debate? Which organisations encourage you to turn your back on empirical evidence and try to undermine your political establishments so that they can usher in the Big Brother theocracy that they so dearly want?

I think it's unavoidable that Marcus will have to address religion at some point fairly soon. But very good luck to him!

17. God No!

Comment #294389 by beeline on December 1, 2008 at 3:23 am

I think "I'm normal" should help to capture the sensible, default position of us non-believers. It has a suitably propagandist hijacking of language that the religious might recognise as well. :-)

18. Research sheds light on benefits of multiple mates

Comment #288081 by beeline on November 21, 2008 at 6:18 am

Heh - I'm still not sure I can do it in conversation either, without stumbling and pausing for thought a great deal, during which attention invariably wanders.

I'm constantly amazed and frustrated at how hard it is to explain things clearly 'on my feet', especially when there is a barrage of questions coming the other way at the same time. I'd make a hopeless teacher, I expect. I'm beginning to realise why, therefore, the internet is such a useful medium for debate and conversation: people have longer to articulate themselves properly, and what they do end up saying is there for everyone to see (including themselves).

All it requires is that people use it cooperatively and maturely, which is the major stumbling block, of course, when egos are at stake.

19. Research sheds light on benefits of multiple mates

Comment #287957 by beeline on November 21, 2008 at 3:33 am

This article would have been made considerably clearer if the word 'selfish' had been left out entirely. Yes, this genetic trait does exemplify the process very well (and in a fascinatingly counter-intuitive manner), and you can easily see why Richard used the word 'selfish' in his title, but the way it's used here doesn't actually help explain anything.

As nickthelight says above, misinterpretation is very likely as the two different contexts of our understanding of 'selfish' are conflated: 'genetic selfishness' concerns genes whose frequency in the gene pool increases, irrespective of the benefit to their host individuals, whereas 'individual selfishness' is a psychological trait that maximises the benefit to an individual.

Still fascinating, though, and a great experiment.

20. The battle rages on in Texas

Comment #287649 by beeline on November 20, 2008 at 1:02 pm

I thought Sastra's comment was - as ever - very insightful:

The creationists think they are being clever, and using the liberal's own tactics against them, like in judo. You're in favor of critical thinking? We'll redefine the Argument from Ignorance as critical thinking. You're in favor of democracy and the peer review process? We'll reframe the concept of scientific peers into "we the people," and act as if science is determined by popular vote. You believe that Christian fundamentalism is narrow and dogmatic? We'll promote creationism as its own world view and "way of knowing" -- one which deserves just as much respect as other world views.

This is nothing new to them. How else can they insist that believing in God is a matter of "accepting that there are things out there you don't know" and deciding to believe something because you want it to be true is a way of "telling yourself that you're not the center of the universe." They've been living in Opposite Land for a while.

21. Educated Catholics have sown dissent and confusion in the Church, claims bishop

Comment #285299 by beeline on November 17, 2008 at 1:51 am

Tragicomical article. So (ahahahahah) sad to read about religion's declining power and privilege. Who'd have thought that university would educate people enough to see through the flimsy charade.

In other news, bears have a predilection for defecating rurally.

22. Church Preaches The Music Of Beethoven

Comment #284603 by beeline on November 15, 2008 at 1:35 pm

Very nice idea - what we've always needed is a regular meeting where we can marvel at 'stuff' and not have to be poked around by religious folk. Once you have that, then you have a community, and then the need for religious services will wane.

Mind you,

Wurman adds that, unlike Bach, Beethoven didn't write that much church music. In fact, he rarely, if ever, went to church.

I'm not convinced this is a reason for passing Bach over as a selection. He knew which side his bread was buttered, and certainly wrote spectacularly beautiful music. The church was set up to provide his instrument - the venue, the singers and the instrumentalists - so he would have been stupid to turn down their considerable patronage, even if he wasn't religious (which he certainly appears to have been, although you never can tell).

The church was a bit like his synthesizer manufacturer: they provided the 'technology' to make his notes sound out, and he fed that giant machine his MIDI signals, in the form of sheet music and arm-waving. It doesn't matter who provides the instrument, really.

23. Richard Dawkins: An Exclusive Profile

Comment #283197 by beeline on November 13, 2008 at 9:03 am

Hurrah!

Science provides what I believe to be a closer approximation to the correct answers.

I'm glad Richard seems to be steering away from that faith-soaked word 'Truth' at last. Now we just need to do away with 'believe', and science will look - to the public - the way it's supposed to, i.e. a completely different creature to faith or opinion; one that is open to attack, and corrects itself accordingly.

As he says, science is our 'best shot', and that's a humble and honest description of its endeavours, which is more than can be said for any arrogant, dogmatic stance. Science should never, ever claim to represent The Truth. That's a static, stagnant, dead-end faith position.

24. Teaching hate in UK schools

Comment #275340 by beeline on October 31, 2008 at 4:59 am

JAMCAM87 said:

Are you saying that we should just let faith schools bee and hope that children emerge as atheists.'

Where did you get that idea? I am merely describing the position that we are all in, and how it got to be that way, and why it persists. I am not justifying it, or even endorsing it. Description is not proscription. Unless you have some analysis or evidence of exactly what kind of people these faith schools are turning out, and whether they are, as you fear, religious fundamentalists of the worst kind, there's hardly much point in assuming the worst without looking at the situation from all sides. In the first case, as I've pointed out, the benefits of these schools to individuals are being ignored, which is hardly a sound basis for analysing their effects on society. Look at all the evidence, or you risk becoming like them.

Now I don't have that analysis either, which is why I'm not so quick to condemn them straight away. This may strike you as 'apologetic', but I have to face the fact that where I live has the worst public secondary education in the country, and faith schools are an alternative. So I need to know the facts as much as anybody. Hysteria doesn't help.

Why don't we let the BNP fund a school then since we just live in a "capatilist democracy"

I'd personally have a lot to say against that, as would any clear-thinking person, but if the BNP were remotely well enough organised to set one up, what could this democracy do to stop them? The law applies to all, annoyingly. That's what living in a democracy is like, which is why democratic politics is all about compromise. I don't like it any more than you do, I expect, but unless you can suggest an alternative, that's what we're stuck with.

There is just no such thing as a compromise when it comes to faith schools I'm afraid.

The current situation seems to belie this assertion: there clearly has been a compromise, and, where money is concerned, it seems horribly inevitable. What I think you meant is that it's a dreadful compromise, with some appalling consequences, as Richard points out, and with which I agree.

But the way to deal with it is, first of all, to try to understand why and how the situation got to be this way, not to simply repeat hysterical prophecies of how we're all doomed.

I'm encouraging some sensible thought about what to do. Changing the saw seems to be one way, but it's hard to know how to do it without restricting the freedom of people to make stacks of lovely money for themselves, whether they're private individuals cashing in on this country's dreadful record on education spending, or the government cashing in on private investment from abroad.

It's not as simple as we'd all love to believe it is.

25. Teaching hate in UK schools

Comment #275297 by beeline on October 31, 2008 at 4:03 am

It's inevitable that faith schools will succeed - and they do: they consistently have among the best exam results in the country, and that, after all, is how money is allocated to these places: on a short-term 'success' basis.

Why do they have such good results? Because they have all the best children, whose parents don't want their kids going to (often, though not necessarily) useless secondary schools in their area. They feign religious interest, get a local priest to sign a form, and then get their kids in there with other 'nice middle-class children' and get them good GCSEs and A levels.

They know that their kids won't swallow the religious message (for Christian schools, at any rate), and the good education is worth it.

Sure, this leaves the door wide open to abuse from those extremist schools that want to make little soldiers out of their charges, which is terrible, so where's the compromise? Where is the political solution?

Who the hell knows? You can't just stop private religious funding of schools, because we live in a capitalist democracy where education is a business as well. And there are a lot of rich, worried middle-class parents who are prepared to pay through the nose for a 'decent', if slightly religious, education for their kids.

I went to a C-of-E school, and came out of it a shining atheist, as did practically everyone, thanks to our mandatory comparative religion lessons.

I guess we need to open school activities to harsher public scrutiny, starting with the inevitable panicky and sensationalist media response (which in this case seems quite justified, I have to say).

26. Countdown: Palin Wants To Help Special Needs Kids By Doing Away With Science

Comment #271373 by beeline on October 25, 2008 at 2:35 pm

Here are some words from the Bob Altemeyer book which are rather relevant here.

A 'High RWA' is someone who scores highly on Altemeyer's Right-wing Authoritarian scale, i.e. someone who will readily follow a dominant leader who asks them to exercise their prejudice on their behalf.

A 'Double High' is someone who has a high score in the RWA scale, and also a high score in a similar test for social dominance, i.e. people who want power at any cost, who understand how to manipulate and lead people, especially High RWAs, and know how to play the 'religious' card.

If being prejudiced makes it easier to commit atrocities, high RWAs rank among the most prejudiced people in the country. If obedience to malevolent authority makes one more likely to persecute others--hey, authoritarian followers can chant “We’re Number One, We’re Number One!" If wanting to belong, and loyalty to your group, and a tendency to conform play a role in attacks on others, high RWAs lead the league in those things too. If inclination to persecute any group the government selects counts for something, we know from the “posse” studies that right-wing authoritarians head up that line as well.

If illogical thinking, highly compartmentalized ideas, double standards, and hypocrisy help one to be brutally unfair to others, high RWAs have extra helpings in all those respects. If being fearful makes one likely to aggress in the name of authority, high RWAs are scared up one side and down the other. If being self-righteous permits one to think that attacks against helpless victims are justified, authoritarian followers have their self-righteousness super-sized, thank you. If being able to forgive oneself and forget the evil one has done make it easier to attack over and over again in the future, right-wing authoritarians know all about that kind of forgiving and forgetting. If being defensive, blind to oneself and highly dogmatic make it unlikely one will ever come to grips with one’s failings, authoritarian followers get voted “Least Likely to Change.”

...

You’re not likely to get anywhere arguing with authoritarians. If you won every round of a 15 round heavyweight debate with a Double High leader over history, logic, scientific evidence, the Constitution, you name it, in an auditorium filled with high RWAs, the audience probably would not change its beliefs one tiny bit.

Authoritarian followers might even cling to their beliefs more tightly, the wronger they turned out to be. Trying to change highly dogmatic, evidence-immune, group- gripping people in such a setting is like pissing into the wind.

I leave you to read Page 238 onwards to see how we can all stop the effect that authoritarianism is having on democracy...

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

27. Countdown: Palin Wants To Help Special Needs Kids By Doing Away With Science

Comment #271350 by beeline on October 25, 2008 at 2:10 pm

Frankus1122 wrote:

This has been driving me nuts lately. Why are the religious and apparently right-wing Republicans ... so immune to reason? I suppose I will have to educate myself and read the book to find out. I would like to know if there is a solution for the problem.

The book is very readable - it's very amusingly and plainly written.

The reason why Right-Wing Authoritarians don't use rational dialogue is that they don't need it, and have never nurtured it in themselves. In fact it would hinder their solidarity if they did reason. It's not encouraged by their leaders, either: "Don't ask questions - do as I say."

They're brought up in tight-knit, neo-con religious circles, learn to hate 'outsiders' and are encouraged to do so, and are simply aching to follow a social dominator type who will just feed them what they want to hear, to make them feel even more part of a community.

The dominating leaders, who are plenty smart enough to fake 'being religious' if needs be, feed them fear - fear of homosexuals, war, foreigners: you name it - and whip up their paranoia. The only way for them to feel safe is to back the dominator and do his/her every bidding, including voting and sending in money. They become a posse and act unthinkingly.

The Milgram experiments from the 60s show exactly how many 'normal people' will blindly follow authority, and those that are already prejudiced and bigoted, and not too smart, will leap up to follow and exercise their repressed hatred. There's no shortage of them...

It's not at all clear how to stop this, though. Social dominators and their organisations easily exploit and enlarge fear and prejudice in people, and use them to rise to the levels of power they so crave.

Understanding their psychology, and that of their authoritarian followers ("...less like sheep, more like a marching column of ants...") is a terrific way to understand how to stop the cycle, so I'd thoroughly recommend reading the book. It'll only take a day or so.

28. Countdown: Palin Wants To Help Special Needs Kids By Doing Away With Science

Comment #271218 by beeline on October 25, 2008 at 12:03 pm

There's a more important point to realise here. Palin is just as 'smart' as she needs to be. She's a social dominator, and knows full well that millions - tens of millions - of authoritarian followers will support her in everything she says.

Intelligence doesn't come into it - in fact, she's relying on the fact that her target audience are unschooled in the ravages of rational thought.

If you want to understand why American politics is like this, just read this, by Bob Altemeyer, the Professor of Psychology at Manitoba U:

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

The studies explain so much about these people. Yes, the research shows they are very aggressive, but why are they so hostile? Yes, experiments show they are almost totally uninfluenced by reasoning and evidence, but why are they so dogmatic? Yes, studies show the Religious Right has more than its fair share of hypocrites, from top to bottom; but why are they two-faced, and how come one face never notices the other? Yes, their leaders can give the flimsiest of excuses and even outright lies about things they’ve done wrong, but why do the rank-and-file believe them? What happens when authoritarian followers find the authoritarian leaders they crave and start marching together?

It's all perfectly clear, and ranting about how stupid she is just misses the point entirely. Right-wing, power-hungry politicians like her aren't interested in 'facts', and they don't need to be either.

Seriously, read the book. Nobody alive in the Western world right now should be ignorant of these findings...

29. Death for apostasy?

Comment #266454 by beeline on October 19, 2008 at 2:19 am

...in reality there are differences of opinion among Muslim scholars (ostensibly the hard core of the religion) regarding the death penalty for apostates.

Exactly. We'd like there to be no difference of opinion, thanks. The Thought Police should be left in the world of fiction.

30. Why Evolution is True

Comment #264255 by beeline on October 14, 2008 at 1:46 am

It's a dreadful title because it ineluctably leads any viewer of it to think 'Maybe it's not'.

And then they walk past and pick up the latest Andy McNab.

Worse than that, I think that to the kind of person it's trying to convince - i.e. someone who's no doubt heard religious evangelists using the word 'truth' - it sounds like just another opinion or (dare I say) 'world view' and they'll just not be interested.

Quite apart from the very clear philosophical reasons for steering clear of those terms, it is, IMO, a confusing mistake to use the words 'true' or 'believe' anywhere near science because it just reeks of dogma, high-priests and the whole flaky 'anything goes' nature of relativist opinion - a huge turn-off for most people who might otherwise be interested in science, and who don't understand how it's different from all other 'received opinions'.

Until it's clearly communicated that science is a completely different way to understand the world from all that have come before (and all others that currently exist), lots of confused people will just stick it next to religion and new ageness and astrology and all the other nonsense that's out there. They won't be able to distinguish them.

I think that needs to be cleared up in people's minds well before they would consider buying a book, especially one that has the seductive 'T word' on the front cover.

31. Scientists confirm shark's 'virgin birth'

Comment #263064 by beeline on October 10, 2008 at 7:29 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis#Automictic_parthenogenesis

This is defined as a reproduction resulting when the set of chromosomes acquired from the mother, pairs with an exact copy of itself, which can be described as "half a clone". The animal still is unique and not a clone of her mother. In typical parthenogenesis the individual offspring differ from one another and their mother.

32. Engineer, Entrepreneur and Philanthropist Hansjorg Wyss Gives $125 Million to Harvard to Create Hansjorg Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering

Comment #262178 by beeline on October 8, 2008 at 4:47 am

What an absolutely awesome human being. Making a lot of money is quite commonplace these days, but to give it away to an institution that will use it to help the human race survive... well, it's hard to imagine anything more excellent happening.

Despite this species containing a large number of very selfish, greedy and stupid individuals, I maintain that at its best moments it can't be equalled. Kudos to Wyss.

33. A Tortoise May Be Bred Back Into Being

Comment #253990 by beeline on September 25, 2008 at 5:24 am

An orgnanism belongs to a species when it can and does mate with members of that species. Sure, they're shifting around all the time, but it still leaves plenty of time for procreation.

The still-extant tortoises may well have been able to breed with the extinct one, but they couldn't because they were on a different island. This is enough to give them a different species label.

If you bred a certain species of dog for long enough, so that it could no longer breed successfully (i.e. have fertile offspring) with other dogs, it wouldn't take long to be able to breed them 'back towards' other dogs until they could breed with them again. You just have to know which genetic direction to steer them.

34. A Tortoise May Be Bred Back Into Being

Comment #253864 by beeline on September 25, 2008 at 1:38 am

And where's the foetus going to gestate? In a box?

The only reason we can bring back one of these tortoises is that the closely related species still in existence give the embryo somewhere to develop, without which the whole thing would be impossible. You can't grow an organism 'from scratch' - it always has to be nursed into existence from a parent.

There's nothing like a Velociraptor around today, so it would be a bit tricky, even if we did have its complete DNA. Mind you, I expect someone will try it one day with an ostrich cloaca, or something...

35. Creationist Britain (would you Adam and Eve it?)

Comment #250179 by beeline on September 19, 2008 at 3:11 am

Let's not forget, folks, that this is the naively-formed opinion of a 12-year-old. She is unaware of rational argument, logic, evidence, understanding science, epistemology, etc etc etc.

She has what one might call 'a different world view'. :-D

Of course that doesn't stop lots of adults who should know better thinking (or rather, not thinking) in the same way.

36. Eoin Colfer to write sixth Hitchhiker's Guide book

Comment #250145 by beeline on September 19, 2008 at 2:04 am

Cartomancer said @ 28:

It seems to me that the impulse to limit and restrict a mythos to what is "canonical" and exclude or suppress the "apocryphal" is suspiciously religious in character. It places an arbitrary halter on the creative mind of man and circumscribes him within restrictive limits - it judges what is to be considered culture and what is not.

I can't see how this works. Adams wrote the original radio/books, and now someone is going to carry on using his characters. Why? Surely anyone else has their own ability to use their imagination and characters for their purposes, most of all Colfer. That's what's so odd - he doesn't need to do this, and Adams certainly doesn't need it. The only people who need it actually need the money.

We're not saying whether it's culture or not, or whether it should be censored or anything that restrictive - just throwing up our hands and saying 'why?' What's the point?

No 'creative halter' is being imposed here, least of all an 'arbitrary' one, and comparing it to religious texts is just odd. We all know who wrote Adams's works - Adams - but nobody knows who wrote the Bible texts. And it's not as if Adams's texts are being used for worship or cultural indoctrination. They're works of humour.

I think the mark of great literature is precisely that it sparks such interest and devotion that writers are inspired to carry on its legacy...

Completely agree, except that you can't 'carry on a legacy'. A legacy is what's left after someone dies, and is static. Sure, it can inspire others to copy style and ideas, but to want to 'carry on' a particular storyline is actually a limiting act in itself: restricting another author - Colfer in this case - to thinking only in that universe, and not putting out something of his own. Again, Why?

...and when this living creative impulse is strangled it can only result in the corpus of works becoming ossified as mere antiquarian curiosities.

Eh? Ossified things are useless as living bones. Texts are eternal, and speak for themselves. Whether we continue to promote their worth to the next generation is what determines their activity in the future, not watering them down until they're bland and 'suitable for all'.

Don't carry on Adams's work, Colfer. Be your own writer, with your own style, content, characters and ideas, like you always have been. The only way that he or Adams can benefit from this is financially, which is the real killer of creativity and originality.

37. Eoin Colfer to write sixth Hitchhiker's Guide book

Comment #249551 by beeline on September 18, 2008 at 9:17 am

It was dreadful enough releasing The Salmon of Doubt containing, as it did, work that he had not polished up to the point of acceptable release ("Up over the picture rails", as Wodehouse put it). But of course the publishers had unfulfilled advances to recoup, or so we're led to believe.

"It's always a challenge when we haven't got Douglas any more?" how can we introduce his writing to the next generation?"

Er, word of mouth seems to work quite well. It's like saying "How can we introduce the idea of shoes to the next generation?"

"There's a huge fan base out there, but this is a really exciting way of creating a new legacy."

Pff - legacy my arse. It's a way for other people to make some more money out of his name. He's already left a legacy, in case you haven't noticed: it's all the books he did write, and I hardly think anyone's going to miss the entire shelf of editions that can be found in any bookshop, and referenced in most of western culture.

38. Eoin Colfer to write sixth Hitchhiker's Guide book

Comment #249531 by beeline on September 18, 2008 at 8:48 am

Any outlet that accepts Ningis will provide you with one.

39. Eoin Colfer to write sixth Hitchhiker's Guide book

Comment #249507 by beeline on September 18, 2008 at 8:11 am

WTF? Why on earth would this even be allowed? Is Ed Victor or Jane Belsen short of cash?

And even if it's good, what difference does it make? An impression of Douglas is not Douglas.

Ridiculous.

40. Royal Society's Michael Reiss resigns over creationism row

Comment #249378 by beeline on September 18, 2008 at 4:20 am

Interestingly, on Pharyngula:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/09/nice_example_of_using_creation.php

41. Royal Society's Michael Reiss resigns over creationism row

Comment #249376 by beeline on September 18, 2008 at 4:16 am

ljirving @99 said:

Should a teacher sneak around the subject when a child comes with the worldview that the earth is flat, or that aliens routinely visit the earth?

That just won't ever come up though, for reasons I've already outlined: practically nobody takes those theories as 'gospel', and there are no political pressure groups inculcating children to believe them for any reason, or foist challenges based on them onto teachers or school-boards.

Religion is unique in this respect. Flat Earth Theory, or Stork Birth Theory or whatever just aren't used as political/sociological weapons in the way that religions are, and therefore there are no cunningly-crafted baskets of pre-prepared questions that a teacher must answer.

In summary, you can't decide not to face religiously-inspired questions just because there are lots of even more extreme hypotheses out there as well. Those hypotheses aren't remotely as widely represented in culture as those of religion.

42. Royal Society's Michael Reiss resigns over creationism row

Comment #248964 by beeline on September 17, 2008 at 9:11 am

Peter Hearty @ 62

I completely agree with your interpretation of Reiss's remarks. What we're dealing with is children whose minds have not yet grasped the power that rationalism and evidence can lend to an argument.

Their worldview is different because their ability to reason is different, and while we might not want to 'respect that' we should certainly be aware of it and cater for it appropriately.

Presenting evidence to people to whom evidence means nothing is completely ineffective. Explain what evidence is first of all, and then their world-view will change, and then their beliefs will fall.

I was once religious, and this is how my transition to a rationalist happened - I was taught to understand for myself, not told what to think.

I guess all we can hope for is that science teachers address scientific questions, and not address overtly religious ones. How they'll be expected to tell the difference is beyond me, however.

43. Royal Society's Michael Reiss resigns over creationism row

Comment #248915 by beeline on September 17, 2008 at 6:38 am

Agreed, but it's the pupils, especially the ones from religious families, who will be asking the questions and giving the examples.

It's certainly the right direction to teach critical thinking to start with - as a part of the scientific teaching - but teachers have no control over what their pupils ask.

If a pupils asked a religiously-motivated question in an attempt to oppose evolution, then it's hardly reasonable for the teacher to say "Well, I'm not going to answer that question, but I will answer another one that is similar, but non-religious'. They just sound like a politician who's trying to control the situation by ducking the probing questions.

It's the same problem: science has to demonstrate a willingness to address questions in order to demonstrate that it really is science, and not dogma. The problem is that there is so little time to do this. Science teaching - or at the very least lessons in critical thinking - needs more time on the curriculum.

My mother, with whom I have the most frequent clashes about science and religion, always complains that she was never taught to think at school - that she was just filled with seemingly useless facts. And now she knows she's paying for it because she doesn't have the intellectual tools to distinguish between things that are possible and thinks that are false - i.e. critical thinking ability of the sort that is central to the scientific method.

44. Royal Society's Michael Reiss resigns over creationism row

Comment #248902 by beeline on September 17, 2008 at 6:09 am

Look, we all know that creationism isn't a "world view", or a scientific theory, or anything of the sort (and for that mistake, Reiss is paying justly).

But the children in class don't know that and don't understand it. And the only way to get them to understand it is to explain it to them. Only by allowing them to ask questions, and answer them straight, can we show them that creationism is a misconception.

And no, we don't have to teach all the other nonsense theories, because none of those are being used to make a claim for space in the classroom (because none of them can be harnessed for political or financial motives), so it's no use bringing that up.

I believe that in order to teach what science is, you have to spend at least a small amount of time teaching what it is not. Otherwise your pupils will simply not get the difference between it and other things that they might, however naively, hold as 'world views'.

Remember: we're talking about what children think, not what we think.

45. Royal Society's Michael Reiss resigns over creationism row

Comment #248849 by beeline on September 17, 2008 at 4:19 am

Maths teachers don't make special allowances for a child who has a worldview that 2 2=5. It's flat wrong.

While amusing, this isn't really a fair analogy, for the following reasons:

1. Nobody is claiming, with political intent, that 2 plus 2 does equal five, so no opposition will ever be raised accordingly.

2. Pupils can see for themselves, right there in the class that 2 beans plus two beans makes four beans. The evidence is before them. This is not so with evolution, where the evidence must generally be perceived second hand (unless your class is on the beach) and interpreted in a very complex manner, which takes a lot of time.

3. It doesn't address the central question of whether you allow pupils to ask questions, especially if a countervailing theory (however ridiculous it may seem to us adults) is commonly encountered.

Pink unicorn theory is not encountered in our culture, neither is 2 2=5, neither is Orbiting Teapot theory - none of these have political, cultural, historical, traditional, sociological issues associated with them.

Religion does, and therefore needs to be at least addressed, even if it is a cursory refutation or redirection. But you simply cannot ignore it. It's like ignoring cancer, and entails the kind of 'wishful thinking attitude that we deplore so much in creationists.

Here's the problem: The sheer number of questions available to creationists outweighs the time available to address them in science class.

Every way out of that problem - that I can see - introduces other ones, so where do we put the compromise? Where is the conciliatory ground? What Do You Do?

There's no point in blowing and roaring dogmatically about it, taking an extreme view and refusing to budge - that's what they do. We have to solve the problem rationally, balancing the pros and cons very carefully. That's what we rationalists are supposed to be good at...

[Edit: weirdly, the plus sign doesn't come out in the HTML. Josh?]

46. Royal Society's Michael Reiss resigns over creationism row

Comment #248828 by beeline on September 17, 2008 at 3:26 am

I agree, but you have to admit that there's a line being drawn in the sand at some point: ID-inculcated children have hours of these nonsense questions, and if a teacher's steps to silence the questions are indistinguishable from just 'not talking about it' (which is what we accuse ID people of, quite rightly) then how is a science teacher to demonstrate to the kids that they're not holding 'just another dogmatic position'?

It's tricky. I think, as has been mentioned before, that before the evolution lessons begin, the teacher has to say "Right, we're going to devote one lesson to your questions, right at the end, after you've all understood the science".

Unfortunately, the teaching schedule rarely gives enough time for this to happen, and so the teacher appears to be 'just another dogmatist', and the ID-inculcated pupils can remain unconvinced.

The only way to 'win' is to devote more time to teaching evolution - and the scientific method generally - and leave room for their opposition at the end. This way pupils can see that they're not just being silenced, and that their possibly legitimate questions will be addressed.

They will be able to see how science is different to religion, simply because it allows questions to be asked. Without this distinction, science can all too easily be seen as 'just some other belief system' which is what the ID people want, and which would allow them to claim that ID is on the same level, and should therefore be taught at the same level.

To show it's science, you MUST allow questions, and you MUST answer them. It's a hell of a job, but someone's GOT to do it. Ideally with a well-structured website like:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

or better, that will allow pupils to do it in their own time.

47. Royal Society's Michael Reiss resigns over creationism row

Comment #248821 by beeline on September 17, 2008 at 3:00 am

Let's cut to the important issue here, and use the ever-useful Keanu Reeves scenario to explore it:

You are a teacher.

You: So, that's how evolution works, and that's a summary of the evidence that we have for it.

Pupil: But hang on, sir, if evolution has really happened, where are all the transitional fossils?

You: [give a clear explanation involving the rarity of fossilisation, the speed of evolutionary change with respect to geological record, etc.]

Pupil: But hang on, sir, what about the bacterial flagellum - isn't that 'irreducibly complex', indicating that it must have been designed?

You: Well...

------- repeat 'til fade -------

As you can see, all the pupil's questions 'against evolution' here are brought straight out of the creationist trashcan, but they're all scientific questions about evidence.

Do you say 'stop asking questions'? Do you spend time answering them? Are you 'letting creationism into the classroom', or are you dealing with the questions responsibly?

What do you say? WHAT DO YOU DO?

Let's not waste any more time talking about whether we 'teach the controversy', or whether creationism is science (because we all agree it isn't).

Let's talk about what you actually do in the classroom when faced with questions of this nature. Because that's where it's all really happening, and that's where the fight should be: in children's minds, helping to rid them of superstition and belief, when so many more enlightened alternatives, such as rationality and logic, are available.

This is, in my opinion, the issue that Reiss was addressing, albeit rather naively and clumsily.

48. How 'Secondary' Sex Characters Can Drive The Origin Of Species

Comment #242063 by beeline on September 3, 2008 at 11:03 am

A similar kind of process has been talked about in bird song, but I can't remember where I heard it.

It only takes a minute change in a bird's song for certain females to be 'turned off' by it, and therefore prevent them mating. And if those songs - or the physical equipment for rendering them - changes sufficiently, you have a group of birds that only mates with 'its own kind'. A new species.

Doesn't really matter whether it can breed with the others; if it doesn't then that's where speciation occurs right there.

49. Monogamy gene found in people

Comment #241207 by beeline on September 2, 2008 at 2:10 am

Monogamy gene...

Uh-oh.

...help to determine whether men are serial commitment-phobes or devoted husbands.

Hello, I thought, here comes a carefully considered and balanced article. Obviously there can be no men who sit in the middle of that continuum. No, that wouldn't be quite so exciting a news story, would it.

In prairie voles and marmosets, receptors for the two systems sit on adjacent cells, so social activity is highly rewarding, leading to monogamy.

This is a ridiculous simplification, surely? What about the cost analysis of raising offspring, food availability, predator-prey ratios, and all those other factors that affect mating system.

And there's plenty of evidence that both individuals in lots of relationships that are traditionally considered 'monogamous' have a bit on the side: swans and gibbons certainly do. Hence it's a bit odd to call the behaviour (of men) a 'problem'. Likewise, it's annoying to see it constantly and lazily labelled as a 'phobia' indicating some irrational tendency subject only to fear. There are other reasons for avoiding long-term relationships. (I am married, by the way :-D )

Although it's interesting that this gene seems to correlate with various (although rather vague) measurements of monogamy, there are too many simplistic holes in this bit of journalism to be able to understand it properly.

I dunno, maybe I've got the wrong genetic make-up, and I'm afraid to comprehend.

50. A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash

Comment #238456 by beeline on August 28, 2008 at 7:27 am

I applaud Coyne's message, but it's assuming that there are well-observed dividing lines between what constitutes science and what doesn't.

For example, suppose, in a class on evolutionary biology, someone says "hey, wait a minute, I've heard that there are no transitional fossils, so how can evolution be true?"

Of course, you have to answer and say "there are transitional fossils." But how about the other 500 fallacies and misunderstandings that are pushed forward in creationists' Gish Gallops, that seek to undermine science? All those questions can be asked in class, and they're all scientific questions, even though, underneath, they're motivated by religious beliefs.

I just can't see that it's practical to teach science in this way without at least addressing contrary religious views which will inevitably appear.

Obviously, if someone says "Well, I think God did it, and that's that" then that shouldn't be pursued any further, but that's right at the extreme end of a large continuum of questions and comments that pose a challenge to a science teacher.

Where does a teacher say "I'm not addressing that", and how soon will that constitute what appears to be a dogmatic stance? The huge gap between theory and practice, idealism and realism, make this area much more difficult that it appears on paper.