Seeing and Believing

Just in time for his new book "Why Evolution is True" Jerry Coyne has written an excellent article which examines attempts to forge a link between the scientific worldview and the religious worldview. With every point Coyne hits the nail on the head. The scientific way of thinking and the religious way of thinking could never be reconciled precisiely because science allows for the possibility of being in error and bases its understanding of the world on observation. Religion, however, is not open to change and does not base its understanding of the world in reason or evidence. These two ways of thinking can never be reconciled. Even if science proved that God exists, it would never be dogmatic about its assertion, and its discovery of God would be based on honest and objective observation. This is obviously nothing like the "faith" espoused by believers, or "the personal relationship with Jesus" espoused by the more lovey-dovey Christians.

The only way that any religion could avoid overlap with science is by making absolutely no claims about the observable world. And as we have seen, the religions of Abraham, as well as the vast majority of religions, do not abstain from making claims about the world we live in.

I also found Coyne's explanation of contingency in evolution to be superb. He points out that current evidence indicates that the human race was a fluke. If everything but one celled organisms were wiped out in atomic bomb, it is grossly unlikely that anything even resembling our species would evolve a second time. This poses a problem for the Abrahamic faiths because it shows that we were nothing special. We were not the intended outcome of the evolutionary process, as some theistic scientists like to think.

The only way out of this conclusion is for theists to turn to hardcore determinism: that everything around us inevitably followed from the Big Bang. This way theists could claim that God set everything up to lead to us, but this suggestion comes at a very steep cost. In Finding Darwin's God, Kenneth Miller discusses why such a deterministic universe would undermine theism. His answer? It is very hard to see how a deterministic universe could allow for free will, a concept very near and dear to believers. To resolve this problem he turns to quantum randomness, which only undermines his position: If things are random at the quantum level, they are somewhat random at the atomic level, and fairly random at the molecular level, which means so many mutations really are purely random, meaning that contingency comes back into evolution and we no longer have a loving God that predetermined us as the outcome.

I suppose one could argue that the universe was purely deterministic until humans came on the scene and God gave man free will. But this only serves, once again, to undermine the theistic position. If human beings are truly distinct from animals in having a soul, then this means that the choices animals seem to make, and the consciousness they seem to have, is nothing but an illusion. If this is true then it raises some troubling questions for the theist: If he can say that animals are not conscious and don't have free will (despite the appearance that they do), how does he know that other minds exist? If animals are conscious, then this means that God left the possibility of human evolution in the hands of animals (our ancestors) who could have cared less about whether humans evolved, and certainly did not have our evolution in mind. If animals are not conscious, then God was not only deceptive in creating them to seem like they are, but the entire explanation is just ad-hoc and not truly representative of reality. If you think animals are not conscious, they only seem like it, you are inventing this explanation to keep God in the picture. This, as most of us know, is utterly unscientific.

Obama is my Homeboy

I voted for Obama, and it looks like I'm getting my money's worth:

Obama has halted all of President Bush's sneaky last minute changes and set them up for review:
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE50J88L20090121

Obama is allowing stem cell research much fewer restrictions:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/23/stem.cell/index.html

I think the time has come for cautious optimism regarding America's future.

The Greatest Show on Earth

I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Richard Dawkins is planning to release another book, this one called "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution". It's even available for pre-order on Amazon. The bad news is that it won't be out until September 2009 (He says so himself in an interview).

It shouldn't be too hard to wait for the book though, since Jerry Coyne's new book "Why Evolution is True" is set for release today. Expect a review of it in a few weeks.

Lizards evolving in response to fire ants

Read all about it at NatGeo. Here's an excerpt:

When studying infant lizard populations, Langkilde noticed that longer hind limbs are more prevalent at birth in lizards from fire-ant exposed populations, indicating an evolutionary adaptation—not a response to habitat as seen in some lizard species, she noted.


Longer leg length was likely genetically selected because it gives the lizards more leverage to shake off the ants and flee more quickly, said Langkilde, whose study appears in the January issue of the journal Ecology.

Langkilde also tried to determine whether the skittish behavior is a learned or evolved response.
If the twitch-and-flee behaviors were learned, she figured lizard young would not respond at fire-ant-free sites. If the behaviors were evolved, then only babies from the invaded sites would respond.

"Of course, science being science, you never find what you expect and we found all the babies responded all the time," Langkilde said.

It may be that all juvenile lizards respond to the ants because any ants pose a threat to them.

For example, lizards in non-affected sites appear to stop the skittish response once they mature because their adult scales provide sufficient protection.

In addition, twitching and fleeing could alert the otherwise well-camouflaged brown lizards to other predators.

Where fire ants have moved in, however, only the lizards that maintain the twitch-and-flee behavior into adulthood have survived, and thus passed on their genes, Langkilde speculates.

Creationists caught misrepresenting again

The Institute for Creation Research was once again caught misrepresenting and downright lying about a real scientist's research. Read about it here.

Blog Response: Jesus Mythicism

Hambydammit from the rational response squad and John Loftus from debunking christianity have gotten into it over Jesus mythicism. You see, Loftus has continued believing in and defending the theory that there was a real man named Jesus who began the Christian faith, while others, such as Richard Carrier, have gradually been persuaded to believe that Jesus was a spiritual being, like an angel, and was to the earliest Christians what Hercules was to the Greeks: A poetic allegory. A fiction. Anyway, here is something Loftus said which I found intriguing:

"I fear my friend Carrier could become marginalized as a scholar if he doesn't make a strong case [for Jesus mythicism]... His scholarship is too good for that and for our cause. If he becomes marginalized people will write him off and his credibility will be in need or repair."

This got me wondering: Why are the people who study Christianity so dogmatic as to write some one off permanently for having an idea they disagree with? Sure, maybe its wrong. Sure, maybe its stupid. But why would Carrier's support of a bad theory permanently ruin his reputation? I'll tell you why: Most of the people who study Christianity are Christians, and if Jesus is a myth then their cherished religion is over. Well, call me a fool but I don't think trying to break this dogma would be a bad thing if it came at the cost of "losing respect" amongst the likes of Gary Habermas or even the Jesus Seminar (They just have a liberal theological agenda, they want to bring Jesus into the 21st century, but that is a subject for another time).

Now, I can agree with Loftus that atheists may be better off accepting the historicity of Jesus for the sake of argument, whether one believes in Jesus or not. But Loftus seems to think that this issue shouldn't be brought up in academia so that we gain street cred with moderate christians and then, before they know what hit 'em, nail 'em within the acceptable parameters of debate they've chosen. They may write off Jesus mythicism, so let's steer clear of that, and instead portray Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet. That's something intellectual that the moderates could at least hear, so let's go that route.

I don't agree with that. Sure, in a debate you can accept the historicity of Jesus as a given and show that the arguments still don't hold up, but as a historian should you pretend like Jesus exists if you suspect he didn't? No, and not even to win over the moderate christians.

This is where Loftus has gone wrong. From what he has written elsewhere, it seems that he thinks the Jesus mythicist position is some kind of gargantuan effort to once and for all destroy Christian apologetics. But it isn't: Neither Carrier, nor Robert Price, nor any of the other academic mythicists use it as an end-all argument against Christianity. The intellectual, philosophical, scientific and historical arguments for Christianity are dead in the water, and have been for a long time.

What historians like Carrier are seeking is to understand more about the man, or myth, who has affected so much of civilization. And they came up with a different answer about Jesus than the modern day admirers. Go figure.

Blogging the Origin

Have you guys seen this blog yet? It is a biologist who had never before read Origin of Species, but is now doing so and posting his comments on each chapter. Pretty good stuff. Grab a copy of the Origin and follow along!!