Science & God: Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins on "Fresh Air"

16:17:00 0 comments
Last week National Public Radio's Terry Gross had back-to-back interviews with Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins on the issue of science and religion. In specific, her question was: can one be a scientist and a believer? Here is the link to Dawkins interview:

Richard Dawkins explains "The God Delusion"
In his most recent book, British scientist Richard Dawkins writes about the irrationality of a belief in God, examines God in all his forms and sets down his arguments for atheism. The book is The God Delusion.

Dawkins is a professor of "the public understanding of science" at Oxford University.

The New York Times Book Review has hailed him as a writer who "understands the issues so clearly that he forces his reader to understand them too."


An interesting part of the interview is when Dawkins is talking about the meaning of life (about 16 minutes into the interview)

And here is the link to Francis Collins interview:

Francis Collins on "The Language of God"

Geneticist Francis Collins is director of the National Human Genome Research Project. He is also an evangelical Christian, and author of the book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.

He is quite clear about religious belief and evolution (about 16 minutes into the interview) and about the debate regarding stem cells research (32 minutes in). Unfortunately, he also brings in the old "fine tuning" argument (that the laws of universe are so finely tuned for the existence of humans, that it must have been done by a higher power) and issues of morals as evidence for God, while at the same time claiming that there cannot be any evidence that can show the existence of God (9 minutes into the interview).


Dawkins and Collins provide an interesting contrast. If you want to see a more head-to-head debate between the two, check out this Time magazine article from last year, that let them address each other more directly:
God vs Science

At many places Francis Collins appears reasonable, but on some issues his views are quite incompatible with science. Here is his response to a question about miracles:

TIME: Dr. Collins, the Resurrection is an essential argument of Christian faith, but doesn't it, along with the virgin birth and lesser miracles, fatally undermine the scientific method, which depends on the constancy of natural laws?

COLLINS: If you're willing to answer yes to a God outside of nature, then there's nothing inconsistent with God on rare occasions choosing to invade the natural world in a way that appears miraculous. If God made the natural laws, why could he not violate them when it was a particularly significant moment for him to do so? And if you accept the idea that Christ was also divine, which I do, then his Resurrection is not in itself a great logical leap.

TIME: Doesn't the very notion of miracles throw off science?

COLLINS: Not at all. If you are in the camp I am, one place where science and faith could touch each other is in the investigation of supposedly miraculous events.

DAWKINS: If ever there was a slamming of the door in the face of constructive investigation, it is the word miracle. To a medieval peasant, a radio would have seemed like a miracle. All kinds of things may happen which we by the lights of today's science would classify as a miracle just as medieval science might a Boeing 747. Francis keeps saying things like "From the perspective of a believer." Once you buy into the position of faith, then suddenly you find yourself losing all of your natural skepticism and your scientific--really scientific--credibility. I'm sorry to be so blunt.

COLLINS: Richard, I actually agree with the first part of what you said. But I would challenge the statement that my scientific instincts are any less rigorous than yours. The difference is that my presumption of the possibility of God and therefore the supernatural is not zero, and yours is.

So how do you decide: Is there something that we don't understand just as yet, or is it a result of true supernatural intervention? May be this is a good place to recall Hippocrates from fourth century B.C., "Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end of divine things."

And to conclude, here is an appropriate cartoon:
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

Why did Darwin wait 20 years to publish "On the Origin of Species"?

21:28:00 0 comments
From Nature (March 29, 2007):
Did Darwin delay publishing his theory of evolution by natural selection because he feared an outcry from the establishment? This has been a popular belief, and has been stoked by the fact that although Darwin began formulating the theory in 1837, he did not publish On the Origin of Species until 1859.

Now John van Wyhe, a science historian at the University of Cambridge, UK, says that after a painstaking trawl through the letters, notes and books written by, to or about Darwin, he can rule out the idea once and for all. But van Wyhe's work has irritated several prominent historians, who argue that he has gone too far in downplaying ideas about Darwin's reluctance to publish. "Portraying Darwin as having no feelings or reactions to the outside world warps the biographical picture," says David Kohn, editor of the Darwin Digital Library of Evolution.

This is all well and good. The problem is how van Wyhe established that there was no delay:

To carry out his study, Van Wyhe searched for the word "delay" in primary and secondary sources covering the period in which Darwin was working on Origin of Species. He says Darwin and those who knew him never unambiguously referred to a delay in publishing, or gave any explanation for the 20-year 'gap'. Indeed, in all the texts on Darwin, he says, the earliest reference to a delay appears in the 1940s. Only in a 1948 popular book, Darwin: Before and After, in which Robert Clark describes how Darwin was made ill by "an uncertainty that he allowed to haunt him for twenty years", do you see all the elements of the modern story, says van Wyhe.

According to van Whye, Darwin just didn't get to writing Origin of Species (hmm...the problem of not being under any tenure clock)

By documenting exactly what he was doing during the 'gap years', van Wyhe makes the case that Darwin just didn't get down to writing Origin of Species until he had completed other work in hand, including an eight-year study of barnacles. He was determined to build a formidable mass of documentation supporting his theory and to solve major stumbling blocks, such as that posed by non-reproductive castes of social insects. This, together with a busy personal life but poor health, filled the years. In other words, Darwin did not postpone publication; he just didn't publish until he was ready. "In my view, this settles the question once and for all," says van Wyhe.

The last statement notwithstanding, the "delay" analysis is not going to solve this issue easily:

But several Darwin scholars are not convinced. Kohn and others agree that the way in which cultural and social pressures influenced Darwin's decisions may have been overplayed, particularly in the public arena, with less attention being paid to the involved process of scientific discovery. But the consensus in the field is likely to remain that a multitude of factors underpinned Darwin's delay.

Kohn points out that searching for explicit references to a "delay" is a simplistic approach to the problem, and that other factors should be considered. For example, Darwin often criticized religion in his notebooks, which suggests that he would have been aware of the probable implications of his theory for religion.

This work of John van Wyhe is published in Notes and Records of the Royal Society (doi:10.1098/rsnr.2006.0171;2007)
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

Biological origins of morality

22:08:00 0 comments
From New York Times (3/20):
Scientist finds the beginnings of morality in primate behavior

The scientist here is Frans de Waal. He is a fantastic writer and here the article is talking about his new book Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved in which he argues that morality in humans has evolved through natural selection and we can learn about its origins through the behavior of non-human primates.

Dr. de Waal, who is director of the Living Links Center at Emory University, argues that all social animals have had to constrain or alter their behavior in various ways for group living to be worthwhile. These constraints, evident in monkeys and even more so in chimpanzees, are part of human inheritance, too, and in his view form the set of behaviors from which human morality has been shaped.

Many philosophers find it hard to think of animals as moral beings, and indeed Dr. de Waal does not contend that even chimpanzees possess morality. But he argues that human morality would be impossible without certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey societies.

Dr. de Waal’s views are based on years of observing nonhuman primates, starting with work on aggression in the 1960s. He noticed then that after fights between two combatants, other chimpanzees would console the loser. But he was waylaid in battles with psychologists over imputing emotional states to animals, and it took him 20 years to come back to the subject.

He found that consolation was universal among the great apes but generally absent from monkeys — among macaques, mothers will not even reassure an injured infant. To console another, Dr. de Waal argues, requires empathy and a level of self-awareness that only apes and humans seem to possess. And consideration of empathy quickly led him to explore the conditions for morality.

Though human morality may end in notions of rights and justice and fine ethical distinctions, it begins, Dr. de Waal says, in concern for others and the understanding of social rules as to how they should be treated. At this lower level, primatologists have shown, there is what they consider to be a sizable overlap between the behavior of people and other social primates.

Social living requires empathy, which is especially evident in chimpanzees, as well as ways of bringing internal hostilities to an end. Every species of ape and monkey has its own protocol for reconciliation after fights, Dr. de Waal has found. If two males fail to make up, female chimpanzees will often bring the rivals together, as if sensing that discord makes their community worse off and more vulnerable to attack by neighbors. Or they will head off a fight by taking stones out of the males’ hands.

Dr. de Waal believes that these actions are undertaken for the greater good of the community, as distinct from person-to-person relationships, and are a significant precursor of morality in human societies.

Of course, this automatically leads to the question of origin(s) of religion:

Dr. de Waal sees human morality as having grown out of primate sociality, but with two extra levels of sophistication. People enforce their society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. They also apply a degree of judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals.

Religion can be seen as another special ingredient of human societies, though one that emerged thousands of years after morality, in Dr. de Waal’s view. There are clear precursors of morality in nonhuman primates, but no precursors of religion. So it seems reasonable to assume that as humans evolved away from chimps, morality emerged first, followed by religion. “I look at religions as recent additions,” he said. “Their function may have to do with social life, and enforcement of rules and giving a narrative to them, which is what religions really do.

Also check out Frans de Waal's Chimapanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes and The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural reflections of a Primatologist


Read More »
Posted by Shaid

Creationism and Intelligent Design history in under 4-minutes

00:59:00 0 comments

Here is an excellent description of Creation science and ID by British comedian Robin Ince (from the show "Comedy Cuts").
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

"Monkey Girl": A new book about the Dover Intelligent Design Trial

18:13:00 0 comments
Here is Washington Post review of a new book about the 2005 Dover trial over the teaching of Intelligent Design in public schools:
Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and The Battle for America's Soul
In 2004, when the Dover, Penn., school board voted to require biology classes to use a supplemental textbook that promoted the theory of intelligent design rather than evolution, the conflict that erupted was about far more than semantics. As Edward Humes describes in this lively and thoughtful book, Dover -- like Dayton, Tenn., during the 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial" -- became a proving ground for clashing beliefs about the origins of life and constitutional questions about the separation of church and state.

"The scientific community sees the creationist critics of evolution as yahoos, religious zealots, and scientifically suspect charlatans," writes Humes. "The creationists see the evolutionists as immoral and dishonest purveyors of a pseudoreligion called Darwinism that makes God superfluous." Each side is guilty of misrepresenting the other. In Dover, the people on each side believed those on the other were attempting to indoctrinate their children. And everyone soon realized that this local controversy had national implications.

Humes takes the title of his book, Monkey Girl, from the taunt leveled at a child whose mother objected to the new policy. Some parents, including teachers in the school district, viewed intelligent design as a stealth form of creation science. Although many of these parents were Christians (two even taught Sunday school), they felt that teaching ID in a public school classroom improperly injected religion into education. They brought their case, Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District, with the aid of the ACLU, the National Center for Science Education and lawyers from the Philadelphia firm Pepper Hamilton.

You can download the official judgement at the ACLU site (its 14o pages - but its fantastically written and nicely demonstrates why ID should not be taught in science classrooms):

Judge John E. Jones III, a Republican, emerges as the hero in Humes's tale. In his eloquent ruling for the plaintiffs, which should be read by every student of law, he noted, "This case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy." Even before Jones issued his ruling, the citizens of Dover reached their own verdict: In the next school board election, "every one of the eight incumbents who favored intelligent design was ousted," Humes writes.
Read the full review here
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

Intelligent Design Conference in Turkey

21:17:00 0 comments
It seems that Turkey will be the conduit for anti-evolutionary ideas to the Islamic world. On the one hand there is Harun Yahya (see SRN: Feb 3, 2007), who aligns his organization with Creationist scientists in the US (promoting the idea that all species were created as is), and on the other hand there is Mustafa Akyol, who wants to promote the idea of Intelligent Design (ID) of the variety supported by the Discovery Institute also in the US (promoting the idea that evolutionary theory cannot explain certain biological features and that the best explanation is that these have been designed by some intelligence). So on February 24th, there was an ID conference in Istanbul that was apparently attended by 500 people.

The conference was titled "The Origin of Life On Earth" (you can find talk abstracts at thewhitepath.com)
First, Mustafa Akyol made an opening speech in which he criticized the mindset of Turkish intellectuals who equate science with materialism without question. In the speeches given by David Berlinski and Paul Nelson, a brief but comprehensive criticism of Darwinism and naturalism was introduced along with a summary of basic Intelligent Design arguments. John Lennox made a broader criticism of scientific materialism and reductionism. The last speaker, Alpaslan Açıkgenç, explained how Islam looks at science, nature and life. The presentations were followed by questions and answers.
Aah...so the basic goal was to attack naturalism. It doesn't appear that these talks were really addressing the issue of the origin of life on Earth - unless we include the last talk that was relying directly on the Quran for evidence. After all evolutionary theory explains the diversity of life on Earth but doesn't really address the issue of origin of life nor does ID. (Check here for What is the theory of evolution?)

It will be interesting to see how ID does in Muslim countries. It sounds vaguely scientific and it talks about 'design' which resonates well with several passages in the Quran. The ID proponents in the US go to extreme lengths to not specify the "Designer" as God. This way they can make an attempt to sneak ID in the school system without violating the Church & State separation. However, this issue doesn't exist in most Muslim countries and there is a real danger of such a theory being brought into schools (and colleges). Ironically, Turkey may be one of the few Muslim countries where ID with explicit religious connections will have a hard time getting into the education system.
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

Islamic tiles and modern mathematics

16:05:00 0 comments
Islamic art has always had a relation with complex mathematical patterns. Now two researchers have found that some of these patterns from medieval times reflect mathematical relations discovered by mathematician Roger Penrose in the 1970's. One the interesting features of the pattern is that it appears regular, but never repeats itself.
Islamic tiling patterns were put together not with a compass and ruler, as previously assumed, but by tessellating a small number of different tiles with complex shapes, say Peter J. Lu of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University in New Jersey.

The researchers think that this technique was developed around the start of the thirteenth century. By the fifteenth century, it was sophisticated enough to make complex patterns now described as quasi-periodic.

These patterns were 'discovered' in 1973 by the British mathematical physicist Roger Penrose. In 1984, they were found in metal alloys called quasi-crystals that seemed to break the geometric rules of atomic packing
Read the full story here
And here is the abstract of the paper published in Science (Feb 23, 2007; vol 315, no. 5815, p 1106):

Decagonal and Quasi-Crystalline Tilings in Medieval Islamic Architecture
Peter J. Lu & Paul J. Steinhradt

The conventional view holds that girih (geometric star-and-polygon, or strapwork) patterns in medieval Islamic architecture were conceived by their designers as a network of zigzagging lines, where the lines were drafted directly with a straightedge and a compass. We show that by 1200 C.E. a conceptual breakthrough occurred in which girih patterns were reconceived as tessellations of a special set of equilateral polygons ("girih tiles") decorated with lines. These tiles enabled the creation of increasingly complex periodic girih patterns, and by the 15th century, the tessellation approach was combined with self-similar transformations to construct nearly perfect quasi-crystalline Penrose patterns,five centuries before their discovery in the West.

The tile work on Darb-i Imam shrine in Isfahan, Iran (1453 C.E.) has patterns that reflect quasi-crystalline structure worked out by mathematician Roger Penrose in 1973

It appears that the artisans didn't know the mathematical theory behind their creation, but they indeed had an intuitive sense regarding the design. It reminds me of the mathematical analysis of Jackson Pollock's work, which shows that he was working with fractal patterns before the actual development of the fractal theory. Both the tile works and Pollack's paintings are amazing even without any mathematical theories...but this just adds some extra oomph!
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

"Infidel Vaccine": Polio vaccination controversy in Pakistan

03:00:00 0 comments
Some clerics in conservative northern Pakistan have declared polio vaccine to be "infidel vaccine" aimed at sterilizing Muslims (see "Polio Cases Jump in Pakistan"):
The parents of 24,000 children in northern Pakistan refused to allow health workers to administer polio vaccinations last month, mostly due to rumours that the harmless vaccine was an American plot to sterilise innocent Muslim children.

The disinformation - spread by extremist clerics using mosque loudspeakers and illegal radio stations, and by word of mouth - has caused a sharp jump in polio cases in Pakistan and hit global efforts to eradicate the debilitating disease.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recorded 39 cases of polio in Pakistan in 2006, up from 28 in 2005. The disease is concentrated in North-West Frontier Province, where 60% of the refusals were attributed to "religious reasons".
This follows a similar controversy in Nigeria in 2004 and in India last year. Just this past January, a leading Muslim doctor was urging British Muslims not vaccinate their children as most vaccines contain some "haram" substances. The good thing is that these fanatics are still in very small numbers, and mainstream religious leaders have no problem with vaccinations. Indeed, some counter-fatwas by top clerics in Pakistan has improved the situation somewhat (lets hope there are no serious counter-counter-fatwas):
The North-West Frontier Province government made strenuous efforts to counter talk of an "infidel vaccine". Health workers fanning across the province last month were equipped with copies of a fatwa, or religious order, endorsing the vaccinations and signed by Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leaders of Pakistan's most powerful religious parties.

The move reassured many doubters. More than 5.7 million children were vaccinated in January, with another 3 million targeted in a second round due to start next Tuesday.

Read More »
Posted by Shaid

Success of AskANinja.com

02:26:00 0 comments
This article talks about AskANinja.com:Ninja's game is elusionThe article says: "The simple videos last several minutes each and appear to cost almost nothing to make. The series, one of the most popular on the Web, launched in earnest at the beginning of 2006 and coincided with the rise of YouTube and video blogging. As the site's creators, Sarine and his buddy, Kent Nichols, recently signed a
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

Carl Sagan - Still the most effective spokesperson regarding science & religion

15:43:00 0 comments

Science Times had a nice article (A Familiar and Prescient Voice, Brought to Life) yesterday on Carl Sagan and his book, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God.
Now, however, Dr. Sagan has rejoined the cosmic debate from the grave. The occasion is the publication last month of “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God” (Penguin). The book is based on a series of lectures exploring the boundary between science and religion that Dr. Sagan gave in Glasgow in 1985, and it was edited by Ann Druyan, his widow and collaborator.
While there have been many books on the topic of science & religion recently, the one thing that stands out about Sagan is his tone that nicely balances a respect for believers with his skeptical approach to religion.

Near the end of his book, Dr. Sagan parses the difference between belief and science this way: “I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed.”

The search for who we are does not lead to complacency or arrogance, he explains. “It goes with a courageous intent to greet the universe as it really is, not to foist our emotional predispositions on it but to courageously accept what our explorations tell us.”

Another review of his book was published in Washington Post a few books back. Here his views on God are addressed more directly:

Sagan does not deny the existence of God. Nor does he affirm it. As he quips in the lively Q&A section appended to the lectures, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." What Sagan does do is insist on the primacy of scientific method and scientific evidence, and he holds the many and various "proofs" of God's existence up to these scientific standards. Most are found wanting. But Sagan is not harsh in his critiques of religious thought; he is more perplexed by theology's narrow and unimaginative vision.

Why would an all-powerful God work only on a local (and recent) project like the Earth when there is a vast, 15-billion-year-old universe out there, with countless galaxies containing countless stars and the possibility of countless worlds? Why didn't God let us know about quantum mechanics and natural selection and cosmology from the get-go? And why would theologians insist on such a provincial version of the creation and God's imagination?

Sagan is not being flip or heretical, though he is intellectually playful and obviously likes the fray. Sagan took his own spirituality seriously -- indeed, he defined science as "informed worship." The closest he comes to articulating his own view of God is to describe admiringly the philosophies of Spinoza and Einstein, who basically considered God the sum total of all the laws of physics. These laws, he emphasizes again and again, govern not just the Earth and humanity but every solar system and every star and every galaxy. They are not local ordinances.
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

Turkana Boy vs Evangelicals (in Kenya)

17:22:00 0 comments

Despite dying 1.6 million years ago, a 12 year old ancestor of modern humans is causing problems for evangelicals in Kenya. Known as Turkana boy, this is the most complete skeleton of a prehuman ancestor ever found. And now Kenya's national museum is putting it on display along with 160,000 other fossils. But as CNN has reported, Kenya's evangelical movement is upset about it:
"I did not evolve from Turkana Boy or anything like it," says Bishop Boniface Adoyo, head of Kenya's 35 evangelical denominations, which he claims have 10 million followers. "These sorts of silly views are killing our faith."

He's calling on his flock to boycott the exhibition and has demanded the museum relegate the fossil collection to a back room -- along with some kind of notice saying evolution is not a fact but merely one of a number of theories.
And here is Richard Leakey's straight forward response to the Bishop:
"Whether the bishop likes it or not, Turkana Boy is a distant relation of his," Leakey, who founded the museum's prehistory department, told The Associated Press. "The bishop is descended from the apes and these fossils tell how he evolved."
Its like a family feud. Well like it or not, you belong to this family - and you can't choose to opt out of it.

The positive thing here is that Bishop Adoyo's evangelical coalition, which also believes in a 12,000 year old Earth, is the only religious group concerned about the exhibit. Hope it stays that way.
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

Learning about religion from chimpanzees and gorillas

02:40:00 0 comments
Several new books have come out on the topic of origin of religious beliefs in the past few months. The latest is by an anthropologist, Barbara King, and its called Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion. Her theory is based on the studies of social behaviour of apes and monkeys.

Here is a long Salon.com interview with Barbara King.

The Salon article does a good job of summarizing some major ideas on origin of religious beliefs in one paragraph:
Take Daniel Dannett, the philosopher who has proposed that religion is a meme -- an idea that evolved like a virus -- that infected our ancestors and continued to spread throughout cultures. By contrast, anthropologist Pascal Boyer argues that religious belief is a quirky byproduct of a brain that evolved to detect predators and other survival needs. In this view, the brain developed a hair-trigger detection system to believe the world is full of "agents" that affect our lives. And British biologist Lewis Wolpert, with yet another theory, posits that religion developed once hominids understood cause and effect, which allowed them to make complex tools. Once they started to make causal connections, they felt compelled to explain life's mysteries. Their brains, in essence, turned into "belief engines."
King's basic idea regarding religion is also summarized in the article (there is obviously more detail in the interview and in her book):
For the last two decades, King has studied ape and monkey behavior in Gabon and Kenya, and at the Smithsonian's National Zoo. In her new book, "Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion," King argues that religion is rooted in our social and emotional connections with each other. What's more, we can trace back the origins of our religious impulse not just to early cave paintings and burial sites 20,000 to 40,000 years ago, but much earlier -- back to our ancient ancestors millions of years ago. And today, King says, we can see the foundations of religious behavior in chimpanzees and gorillas; watching our distant cousins can do much to explain the foundations of our own beliefs.
But more relevant here is her response regarding science & religion compatibility:
I'm part of the camp of people who thinks it's perfectly possible to see religion and science as compatible areas of thought and inquiry. In my book, I lay out three choices. You can say you've got to choose one. You can believe in science or you can have faith in God -- the Richard Dawkins school of thought. Or you can say there are "non-overlapping magisteria" -- the famous Stephen Jay Gould answer that religion will help us with meaning, and science will tell us about other things. I'm actually in a third place. If you can avoid being a biblical literalist, and if you can avoid being an arrogant scientist who tells everyone else what to think, you can think on multiple levels at once. There's a lot of beauty in seeing that religion and science are really about the same things. They can be perfectly compatible.
She describes herself as spiritual - which is quite a vague category. Her view on the compatibility of science & religion is equally vague. Of course, they can be compatible if you consider the feeling of awe provided by science as a religious experience - and that is indeed a good way of thinking about religion and science. But I'm not sure if this is what she is saying. Otherwise, its quite hard to make science & religion compatible/tolerable without resorting to Gould's non-overlapping magestaria (which has its own problems).
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

Islamic Creationism book swamps French schools & universities

16:11:00 0 comments

Just to add variety to evolution/creationism debates, we have Turkish author Harun Yahya (this is his pen-name) who has made Islamic Creationism quite popular in the Islamic world. He has a very slick website, documentaries, and a collection of over 100 books attributed to him (yes, and most of these were written in the last 2-3 years). Now his latest book, Atlas of Creation (770 pages), has been sent to tens of thousands of French schools and universities. Its not clear who is funding this campaign, but Harun Yahya's group appears to be doing quite well. Apart from the usual creationist diatribe against evolution, it describes Darwin's theory of evolution as the "true source of terrorism".
The book features a photograph of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center with the caption: "Those who perpetuate terror in the world are in fact Darwinists. Darwinism is the only philosophy that values and incites conflict."
Here is the news article regarding this.

While there is no danger of French schools and universities suddenly adopting Atlas of Creation, this type of campaign can certainly have an impact in Muslim countries. I have had a chance to read through some of his books, and they are a hodge-podge of 'spontaneous creation" and some Intelligent design. And of course, the usual proclamation that theory of evolution is a hoax:
This book will provide you with not only such information as what fossils are and where and how they are found, but also a closer examination of a variety of fossil specimens, millions of years old, that are still able to declare, "We never underwent evolution; we were created." The fossils discussed and illustrated in this book are just a few examples of the hundreds of millions of specimens that prove the fact of creation. And even these few are enough to prove that the theory of evolution is a major hoax and deception in the history of science.
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

Origins talk on the Daily Show: Neil deGrasse Tyson

00:37:00 0 comments

A walk through the history of the universe with the director of the Hayden planetarium, Neil deGrasse Tyson - any excuse to put a clip from the Daily Show on the blog. Actually Neil does a great job of conveying the excitement and enthusiasm of discovering the workings of our universe. For a contrast, see the Creationist video posted here couple of weeks back.
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

Magical thinking and religion

20:04:00 0 comments
Science Times from last week (1/23/07) had an interesting article on why all of us are susceptible to superstitious thinking ("Magical Thinking: Why do people cling to odd rituals" by Benedict Carey"). There are two comments in the article that are somewhat related to science & religion:
Psychologists and anthropologists have typically turned to faith healers, tribal cultures or New Age spiritualists to study the underpinnings of belief in superstition or magical powers. Yet they could just as well have examined their own neighbors, lab assistants or even some fellow scientists. New research demonstrates that habits of so-called magical thinking — the belief, for instance, that wishing harm on a loathed colleague or relative might make him sick — are far more common than people acknowledge.

These habits have little to do with religious faith, which is much more complex because it involves large questions of morality, community and history. But magical thinking underlies a vast, often unseen universe of small rituals that accompany people through every waking hour of a day.
But religions certainly exploit many of these tendencies and mix them up with larger moral questions. One example is "Insha-Allah" (by the will of God). Growing up in Pakistan, we were told that we always have to say Insha-Allah for a future event. For example, I will be going to a conference next month - Insha-Allah. The point here is that everything is run by God and so by stating your own plans and not acknowledging God can be perceived as a challenge to God's omnipotence. In some odd ways Insha-Allah can be thought of as an equivalent to "knock on wood" - you have your plans but you want to add this extra bit without much cost. So when superstition is tied-in to larger issues then the line between religion and superstition gets quite blurry.

The article also talked about the development of religious beliefs amongst children:
Children exhibit a form of magical thinking by about 18 months, when they begin to create imaginary worlds while playing. By age 3, most know the difference between fantasy and reality, though they usually still believe (with adult encouragement) in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. By age 8, and sometimes earlier, they have mostly pruned away these beliefs, and the line between magic and reality is about as clear to them as it is for adults.

It is no coincidence, some social scientists believe, that youngsters begin learning about faith around the time they begin to give up on wishing. "The point at which the culture withdraws support for belief in Santa and the Tooth Fairy is about the same time it introduces children to prayer," said Jacqueline Woolley, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas. "The mechanism is already there, kids have already spent time believing that wishing can make things come true, and they're just losing faith in the efficacy of that."
From this it appears that we impede the development of rational thinking in kids by replacing one set of magical thinking with another. On a related note, Paul Bloom gave a lecture at Hampshire College last October as part of our Science & Religion lecture series, and he talked about how young kids have a dualist view of the world that later then transforms into religion. Check out his excellent article Is God an Accident? from the Atlantic Monthly (Dec 2005).
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

Intelligent Design and Dawkins in UK schools

14:23:00 0 comments
The Guardian has reported that Intelligent Design (ID) will be taught in UK schools in religious education classes, but students will also get a chance to read excerpts from Richard Dawkins. Read the full story here.

On the one hand this is good thing as it clearly marks ID as a religious idea (or at least not as science), on the other hand it does give ID a foothold in schools. The focus will not be Intelligent Design, but rather on the relationship between science & religion:
The teaching of ID and creationism should prove less contentious in this part of the curriculum (although the scientists who argue that ID is a science may be disconcerted), as pupils will investigate and role-play disputes between religion and science, such as Galileo, Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins.

Overall its an interesting move, but we'll have to see how things turn out. The UK guidelines are for their stage 3 that covers 11-14 year olds and it will depend a lot on how they design the curriculum around these issues.
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

First Tech College for Women in Jeddah

17:53:00 0 comments
A positive step regarding women in Saudi Arabia. Jeddah is going to have a technical college for women with a capacity of 1000 students. Here is the full story from Arab News. The demand for technical colleges is a good sign and can open up opportunities for women in Saudi Arabia.
The overwhelming majority of the Kingdom’s female university graduates, who account for 55 percent of the total, remain at home as most Saudi families do not like to send their girls to work places. But the trend has changed in recent years. Many young women have of late taken up jobs as journalists, medical editors, executive secretaries and receptionists.
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

$27 million creation museum near Cincinnati

08:32:00 0 comments

One would have guessed that at least Creation science, the literal six day creation of the world 6000 years ago, would be completely out of the picture by now. But apparently even that has some serious following. There are plans for a $27 million creation science museum in the greater Cincinnati area - and its stated to open on May 28th (wait a minute...shouldn't it be Oct 22nd - following Bishop Ussher's creation date of Oct 22, 4004BC? Shame on them for choosing a different date). To get a first hand flavor, here is a video of a seminar by Ken Ham, the person behind the museum. Here is the full story on the museum. Also check out the website for Creation Museum.

Towards the end of the Ken Ham video, note how he uses quotes by biologists to link evolution with anti-Christianity - and this is exactly the fear that is feeding this type of nonsense. Creation science, ironically, is equally critical of Intelligent Design, because ID shys away from saying that the Creator is a Christian God (even though it believes it is). Islamic creation movements, like that of Harun Yahya in Turkey, also have sentiments similar to Creation science - though they don't have a problem with an old Earth. Can't these groups fight amongst themselves and leave science and evolution alone?
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

One strategy - copy a successful site

01:00:00 0 comments
Everyone knows about the success of YouTube.com. When I look at it today, it has an Alexa rank of 5. It was possible to detect YouTube's rate of ascent fairly early in its rise. So what should an aspiring entrepreneur try to do? Copy it.Thus we have LiveVideo.com, which has been making a very credible run in Alexa and is today ranked at 1,450. It will be interesting to see where LiveVideo is in 3
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

Belief in evolution and political views

00:28:00 0 comments
This week's issue of Science (Jan 12) has published a letter by Allan Mazur of Syracuse University that shows that belief in evolution in US is higher amongst political liberals than political conservatives after controlling for education and religious denominations. This is based on a survey of 3673 American respondents, of which a majority (53%), in any case, considered this statement, "Human beings evolved from earlier species of animals" to be definitely or probably not true. Here is the figure showing survey results:

The percentage of respondents believing in human evolution is plotted simultaneously against political view (conservative, moderate, liberal), education (high school or less, some college, graduate school), and respondent’s religious denomination (fundamentalist or not). Belief in evolution rises along with political liberalism, independently of control variables.

At least education is still doing some good - belief in evolution is correlated positively with the level of education (with the exception of high school and college educated fundamentalists). I'm not sure what to make of the political result - perhaps a social scientists can shed more light on it and we defintely need more data. It will also be interesting to see if this political view correlation also exists in UK and other western European countries.
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

'Faith and Reason' at Universities

21:03:00 0 comments
Lawrence Krauss on Pope Benedict's controversial speech and Harvard's (failed) attempt to make a course on 'faith and reason' a requirement for all students:
Reason, Unfettered by Faith (from the Chronicle - 1/12/07)
Read More »
Posted by Shaid

Ancient toilet may hold clues about the Dead Sea Scrolls

22:30:00 0 comments
The mystery of who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls may get solved by the analysis of some 2000 year old poop (yes, this is official scientific lingo) in Qumran on the West Bank. Quite apporpriately, there is also a moral to the story: you die if you slack off regarding hygiene even while providing cool data to future archeologists. Here is the story from Science:
Evidence for an ancient latrine in Qumran, a settlement on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in Israel, has bolstered the idea that Qumran was occupied by the Essenes, a strict, all-male Jewish sect linked to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Some years ago James Tabor, a scholar of early Christianity at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, spotted what appeared to be the remains of ancient toilet stalls behind a bluff about 1000 meters northwest of the Qumran camp. Recent soil samples turned up intestinal parasites specific to humans.

The find supports the notion that the Essenes did in fact inhabit Qumran from around 150 B.C.E. to 70 C.E., Tabor reports in the forthcoming issue of the journal Revue de Qumran. The men apparently followed toiletry practices prescribed in the scrolls, which included placement of latrines out of sight of camp and burial of feces.

The latrine may also help explain why more than 90% of the men interred in a Qumran graveyard died before age 40. Burial of feces meant that intestinal parasites survived rather than being dried up in the sun, says Tabor. The men evidently tracked the pathogens into a pool they were required to immerse themselves in on returning to camp. "In effect, the pool becomes a toxic waste pool," he says.

"There is a great deal of debate among scholars about how [Qumran] functioned and who lived there," says historian Joan Branham of Providence College in Rhode Island. "The discovery of a possible latrine could be an important piece of the overall puzzle."

Alleged laterine is behind rocks at upper left.

Read More »
Posted by Shaid
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
Copyright © 2013 ARTEFACTKU