Because the universe is beautiful enough without having to lie about it

A new presentation is ready!

August 24th, 2011 Posted in Biology, Creationism | No Comments »

Hi,

I’ve finished the next presentation – this one is on the subject of Anatomy. I cover some of the usual topics – irreducible complexity, the eye, Haeckel’s embryos. Check it out on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NAF0ahaBcI

Presentation 15

July 20th, 2011 Posted in Creationism, Education, General Science | No Comments »

One more video up, on the subject of Botany

Get it on YouTube here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7c2rHgjSGI

ElevatorGate

July 13th, 2011 Posted in General, Psychology | No Comments »

I was going to post this a while ago, but I thought the topic had died away. However, seeing as it’s back, here’s my thoughts. For those of you who haven’t heard, check out the original thread on Skepchick here, and the offending posts on Pharyngula here:

If I understand this correctly (and I’m willing to accept I may have completely missed the point – I am unfortunately one X Chromosome short of the optimal number) an analogous situation might go something like this. Imagine I’m off on holiday, so I get the train to the airport with my backpack, and wander into the arrivals lounge. I’m feeling a bit hungry, so I drop my bag down, and wander off to the nearest shop to pick up a pack of crisps and a Mars bar. After queuing up for them, and picking up a PC magazine that I’ll read five pages of then immediately regret buying, I return to my previous place out in the airport terminal, and I notice that there’s a ring of security officers around my bag. In my absence, several members of the public freaked out because they saw my bag lying around unattended, presumed the worst, called security, and they came over to fence off the article and were about to evacuate the airport.

So what did I actually do wrong? I think this is why it’s been so difficult for some people to accept the other side in this issue, because in this situation I’ve obviously done nothing wrong whatsoever. I don’t think that I would be worried to let my children play with the children next door if someone told me that their daddy was “the kind of guy who occasionally left his backpack lying around to go and buy some confectionery.” In fact, I’d rather like to share the world with people so trusting that they don’t assume that those around them will steal or damage their stuff. But the issue here is that a person’s actions need to be interpreted inside the greater social context in which they were committed – in this case, that context includes an irrational paranoia of terrorism and hence a seemingly abandoned bag in a major public area could (perhaps justifiably) cause panic and chaos on the off-chance that it might imminently go boom.

So we should be interpreting our actions not just as isolated decisions that can be evaluated on their own merits, but in the social context in which they will be interpreted by a reasonable human being experiencing them. Hence, making overly forward propositions to single girls in lifts is probably a no-no, quite aside from the obvious mild creepiness of it. But that’s not to say that, in any pure moral sense of the word, the anonymous proposer did anything wrong – I’m sure his intentions were entirely above-board. Maybe he was a star-struck admirer who just happened to grasp what he believed might genuinely be the only chance he would ever have to spend some quality time with a woman adores? Maybe he wanted sex and nothing else? Either way, once he heard “No”, that was the end of it.  But obviously there’s a social context that most men (including myself, up to a few days ago) probably don’t fully appreciate: being overly forward to women can appear menacing or threatening, even when you’ve not been outwardly threatening in your actions or words – the confrontational nature can be entirely situational.

Of course it’s not just women who feel threatened sometimes, though of course men don’t suffer anywhere near the same level of harassment that women do. For example, if I’m walking alone down a street late at night and a bunch of boisterous, drunken skinheads start walking towards me, I (perhaps justifiably) will start to feel scared, despite the fact that I’ve never had any problems in such a situation. But does that mean that it’s immoral for men of a certain physical appearance to walk around in groups late at night?

Or let’s take the hypothetical case of a bearded middle-eastern gentleman who innocently boards a plane and takes a seat next to a terrified passenger who has been watching too many Fox News specials on Islamic terrorism. Is it wrong for this man to fly, just because it puts a few people in genuine (though unjustified) fear of their lives? One might argue that this isn’t a rational response, but based on statistics, are any of these responses I’ve mentioned rational? What fraction of backpackers travelling through our airports are actually carrying bombs? What fraction of men are rapists? I don’t think that rationality is really what we’re talking about today – what we’re discussing is emotional response to the actions of another human being, and emotional responses are rarely rational.

So I don’t think that this issue is as clear-cut as some people have been saying (in either direction). Once you start claiming that we need to take into account all the interpretations of our actions when we perform them, and that an otherwise harmless action can become harmful when one considers the social environment in which it occurs, you’re placing an extraordinary burden on the actor not just to be aware of all these implicit interpretations, but to be able to consider them all before acting, and (where necessary) to match them off against each other. Also, there’s a danger if one takes this argument too far, of implying that perfectly harmless, caring, kind, law-abiding citizens should behave in a certain way because of the subconscious associations that others may rightly or wrongly make about them. I hate the fact that, if I walk back from the station late at night and there’s a lady on her own in front of me, I feel morally obliged to slow down and let her pull away in case she thinks that I’m stalking her. And the fear is natural, of course – after all, I feel it too when I’m walking back alone and I hear footsteps behind me – but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a moral obligation for me to go out of my way to avoid other people leaping to unjustified associations.

So yes, we should definitely consider whether our actions are making other people feel uncomfortable. Of course we should!  But that’s not really the whole story, because there’s a limit to how much you can reasonably expect people to go out of their way to make you feel comfortable.  It is definitely not a simple question. The one thing that has surprised me most is the rather horrifying selection of sexist abuse suffered by some prominent skeptics.  I’m certainly grateful to Ms Watson for describing the harassment that she suffers, which I can genuinely say is a complete shock to me. It’s deeply distressing to me to hear that a community of which I proudly consider myself a member can behave so terribly to one of their own. And it’s clearly not just the skeptic community – there’s still a surprising level of discrimination and oppression towards women of which I was almost entirely ignorant. So that’s a genuine benefit of this whole debate, that it’s raised the awareness of this ongoing issue.

But to me, one deeply disappointing aspect of this whole discussion has been the reaction of the skeptic community to Richard Dawkins’ comments on this issue, which has been bizarrely irrational. Maybe Dawkins missed the point on this one, or maybe he’s just not able to put himself in the shoes of another human being and hence he’s reacted without the empathy that he should have shown. Certainly his comments seemed rather ill-judged. But either way, the rational response is to calmly show him where he’s wrong, and to accept that sometimes people don’t see eye to eye.  The irrational response is to fly off on a raging rant and vilify someone who has selflessly served this community for decades and has arguably had a more positive effect on the topics about which we most strongly care than any other human being alive. What I saw from a minority of people was a combination of the tired-old “resentment  of the rich and intelligent” mixed with a bizarre frenzy of iconoclasticism. It was just a minority though, so I guess it’s another case of how a vocal few can sometimes colour the impression of the majority. I think we need to be ultra-careful about that kind of thing because image is incredibly important.

Anyway, as I said, maybe I’m missing the point again. Feel free to prove me right or wrong, depending on how you feel.

Another video!

July 13th, 2011 Posted in Creationism, Education, General Science | No Comments »

I’ve posted video number 14 in my series on science and creationism. This one is about genetics. Get it while it’s hot, on YouTube now.

More videos!

July 3rd, 2011 Posted in Creationism, Education, General Science | No Comments »

Sorry for the lengthy delay, but I have just finished not one, but two new videos for the science & creationism series. The first is on the subject of geology, and is the longest one yet. The second is the shortest one yet, on physics. Why is the physics presentation the shortest yet? Well, almost all the topics I wanted to cover are so large that they have their own presentations, so I just put a couple of extra bits in here (on entropy and atomic decay).

I’ll see if I can get back on track in July – I’m still planning to get all 26 done well before the end of the year. I don’t think there are any more lengthy ones coming up, so I should be able to catch up.

Presentation 12 : Geology

Presentation 13 : Physics

Skeptical Heresies #10

May 30th, 2011 Posted in General Science | No Comments »

I just realised that I never finished off my series on skeptical heresies. Well, I guess I left one of the most controversial ones until last:

10. Science is not Scientific

In an earlier post, I think I decided that perhaps I used the wrong term for most of these posts, as the issues I’ve been introducing were really just talking points within the skeptical community rather than topics that the community actively avoids mentioning. But this one is different – this is a real issue that cuts to the heart of skeptical thought and the scientific establishment.

Science relies on the absolute impartiality, scrupulous rigour and honesty of its practitioners. Without these core principles, there’s very little separating scientific progress and the confirmation bias that so often appears in pseudo-scientific fields. If all we’re doing is seeking evidence that confirms our already strongly-held suspicions then we’re not much better than creationists (we have the advantage of being much closer to the truth, and the honesty to admit our failings, but that’s about it).

Max Planck, the massively influential physicist who practically spawned the science of quantum theory, once said “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” His claim is that science is nowhere near as innovative as one might imagine – that sufficiently powerful scientists force their beliefs on the generation in which they work, and that the powers that be within the scientific community do their best to stifle research in any other areas.

Planck was writing in 1948, and a lot has changed since then, but the same underlying truth exists to this assumption. Several prominent theoretical physicists, for example, bemoan how difficult it is to get funding to study anything that isn’t string theory, simply because this esoteric mathematical subject is extremely trendy at the moment and a great number of prominent scientists seem to think that it will provide the answers that they are seeking. All of this is remarkably stifling for scientific progress, of course.

I think there are two questions here – firstly, is science itself flawed? And secondly, what can we do about it? Well, firstly I’d think that the answer is obviously “No”: science itself – science as a process – is clearly not flawed; what might be flawed is our implementation of it. The fact that humans let emotions get in the way of truth is not a condemnation of that search for truth. Nor does it give us any better process for pursuing that truth.

As for the second question – what should we do about it? Well there are already improvements in the works. I think the single greatest tool in the search for truth is the freedom of information that is granted by the Internet – it’s very difficult to prevent free distribution of information when it can spread so quickly across the globe, between different regions and across geographical and linguistic barriers.

So I think that the scientific method is not just our best option to discover the truth of the Universe, but it’s our only option – it’s not just a way to search for the truth, or even the best way, it’s the only way that works, either in theory or practice. And the fruits of the scientific method more than validate its claims as the best hope for the future of humankind. Dogma and blind faith have never given us anything of any value – they have never cured a single disease; they have never enabled transportation or communication over long distances; they have never kept a baby and a young mother alive, nor have they powered a ventilator or a defibrillator.

Science is in constant flux – it has its weaknesses, of course, but it also has one core strength, which is that it is adaptive – science can change to fit the data, rather than the other way round, which means that even if it sometimes goes wrong, it can recover from its flaws and continue in its search for truth.

Another video presentation

May 26th, 2011 Posted in Creationism, Education | No Comments »

I’ve just released video 11 in my series on Science and Creationism – all about Archaeology.

Get it on YouTube here!

Enjoy!

More videos

May 18th, 2011 Posted in Creationism, Education | No Comments »

I’ve just uploaded part 10 of my lecture series on science versus creationism to YouTube. This one is on the evolution of Hominids. Let me know what you think.

Part 1 – Here
Part 2 – Here

New Videos

May 5th, 2011 Posted in Creationism, Education | No Comments »

Presentation 9 : Dinosaurs and Man – this has now been released on YouTube. Get it while it’s hot! 🙂

Part 1 – Here
Part 2 – Here

Enjoy!

Skeptical Heresies #9

May 4th, 2011 Posted in Climate Change, Conspiracy Theories, General Science, Health | No Comments »

9. Skepticism is abused by conspiracy theories

I’m beginning to wonder why I called this series “Skeptical Heresies”, instead of something more descriptive like “Major Challenges Within Skepticism”. Anyway…

This post is about the fact that Skepticism has been kidnapped and forced against its will to become part of the labels for all sorts of conspiracy theories and unscientific belief systems, such as “climate skepticism” and “holocaust skepticism”. People are jumping on the bandwagon, and using the term Skeptic to mean something like “Someone who doubts something”. This partly goes back to my first post in this series, in which I stated that Skeptic is a very bad word to use to describe what we do, for many reasons. Some reasons are aesthetic and some are practical.

Well, here’s another argument that we should change our tactic – the word “Skeptic” does not really fully encompass what we do. Is it wrong for a climate change denier to call themself a “skeptic”? Maybe. But how about we choose a different term to describe ourselves that doesn’t leave us open to that weakness?

In medicine, there’s the field of “Complimentary and Alternative Medicine” (CAM), which basically is an umbrella term for all kinds of stupid. The medical community is often labelled as “Traditional Medicine”, perhaps conjuring upthe image of an organisation resistant to novelty and change. Scientists started using the term “Evidence-Based Medicine” to describe mainstream medicine, but this left them open to an obvious exploit – the CAM crowd started gathering “evidence” for their point of view. OK, so their “evidence” is usually very dubious, and at best marginal – but it’s definitely evidence of a sort.

So, in order to get round this problem, a number of prominent skeptical medical experts have recently started pushing for a new term – “Science-Based Medicine”, which is far more descriptive. You see, Science is based on two things – the evidence collected to prove or disprove a theory, and also a series of processes by which that evidence is critically evaluated to assess not only its own reliability, but also how it meshes with prior evidence also collected in support or opposition to the claim being investigated. And the difference is huge – evidence might say, for example, that you just witnessed a magician sawing a lady in half, but science tells you that your perceptual impression is probably wrong, and that such a process is impossible based on prior medical knowledge, so it dismisses the magical claim immediately.

So, what could we call ourselves instead of skeptics? Well, what we’re doing is basically applying the scientific method to evaluate the world around us. I’m not suggesting we go for “Scientific Methodists”, as that has obvious connotations, but I think we really need to start focusing more on the science side of what we do.

Though, having said that, there was always “scientific creationism”. Maybe the first task we need to conquer is to educate the public about what science actually is.