I've been too harsh...

Robert Wright destroys my worldview in an essay in Sunday's NYT. What else could possibly come of such a well written opinion piece that so greatly differs from the views of a "new atheist". Wright states in his gospel:

I bring good news! These two warring groups have more in common than they realize. And, no, it isn’t just that they’re both wrong. It’s that they’re wrong for the same reason. Oddly, an underestimation of natural selection’s creative power clouds the vision not just of the intensely religious but also of the militantly atheistic.

Eureka! I have underestimated the creative power of natural selection! Why, if Wright hadn't pointed it out, I might never have considered that God could have begun the universe, and then stepped back to let it all run through the process that we can detect. When I was a strident, militant, neo-Atheist, I would have simply examined the evidence for natural selection, abiogenesis, and the Big Bang , and posited that they can work without a designer of any sort. In my hasty militaristic scientism, I'd have put down the teleological appearances of evolution as nothing but that: appearances. Yet Wright, by citing that wonderful scientist William Paley, points out that the apparent design is there because life, the universe and everything must have been designed! That's right, Paley was a wonderful scientist, as Wright notes:

There are two morals to the story. One is that it is indeed legitimate, and not at all unscientific, to do what Paley did: inspect a physical system for evidence that it was given some purpose by some higher-order creative process. If scientifically minded theologians want to apply that inspection to the entire system of evolution, they’re free to do so.

What a poor scientist I am, blinded so by my strident, militant, evangelical fundamentalist Atheism as I've caught it from the likes of Dawkins and Dennett! Proof of a designer was there all the time, all I had to do was examine the evidence with the intent of finding evidence of a designer. This, of course, is science at its purest: rifling through all the available evidence to find that which supports your hypothesis and discarding that which does not. Why, any common citizen could tell me as much.

Wright does an even more thorough job with his other salvo: that of destroying my (our, to include other fundagelical militant atheists) strident pretensions that I'm subscribing to pure logic in failing to attribute a designer:

They could acknowledge, first of all, that any god whose creative role ends with the beginning of natural selection is, strictly speaking, logically compatible with Darwinism. (Darwin himself, though not a believer, said as much.) And they might even grant that natural selection’s intrinsic creative power — something they’ve been known to stress in other contexts — adds at least an iota of plausibility to this remotely creative god.

. In my slanted materialistic worldview, coloured as it is by staunch atheism and an unjust tendency to root my tenets in evidence, I've overlooked an important fact; The evidence from evolution and the natural world doesn't entirely rule out the possibility of a deistic, non-interventionist deity. How stridently narrow-minded of me (and all other neo-militant, scientific thinking atheists) to act as if there isn't a behind-the-scenes designer, who obviously could have set all this in motion and is now completely apathetic and non-interventionist towards his/her/its creation.
Wright's dismantling of the evangelical militant mantras of the New Atheists continues:

And, god-talk aside, these atheist biologists could try to appreciate something they still seem not to get: talk of “higher purpose” is not just compatible with science, but engrained [sic] in it.

Why yes, Robert, we've been far too close-minded to see the concept of "higher purpose" embedded in in biology. It's clear, when looking at parasites, predation, and how a population can be culled through simple starvation, that there is a grand design: a power greater than simple selection of the best adapted is in play. How else could such a wonderful array of life come to be on our planet? How could life come to be at all, without a designer? After all, our best and most recent lab experiments are only able to create self-replicating molecules that consist of a simple nucleic acids surrounded by proteins, nothing at all like early life might have been. We can only hope that the others who are so trapped by their narrow beliefs in neo-fundamentalist atheistic science can be freed from their intellectual chains by Wright's sparkling logic and fair open-mindedness towards the possibilities inherent in the evidence.

RESPONSE TO COMMENT 1:
Here I was about to remark that there must be some sort of law about committing grammatical errors when snarking about the errors of others, and I find that my usage matches OED. (Really, go look).

Nice reponse to the article... the (deliberate?) misunderstanding of the more common "there's no evidence so who really gives a fuck" atheist position is irritating, Wright should know better... And you're right... ruling out the possibility of deities would destroy our favourite hobby of arguing with creationists and such.

Interesting study...

Richard Dawkins tweeted about this, and I found it interesting, so it's discussion time... A key to analysing this may simply be

funded by the John Templeton Foundation,

but I'll attempt to be fair and reserve judgement.

The study concludes that a) majors in social sciences and humanities become less religious, b) majors in the natural and physical sciences maintain their level of religiosity, and c) education majors tend to harbour the religious and strengthen their convictions. I haven't the data to argue with it, so let's simply examine that of the study.

Source: University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, 2009

Firstly, they've separated the measures for importance and attendance, and consider them of equal value in measuring religiosity. I'm not certain I buy into that... If one considers religion to be of less importance, it follows that one is less religious. Attending services of some form or another occurs for a number of reasons, many of them social (data to back this up might help, I know).

The education numbers frighten me a bit. Clearly, there is an upswing in religiosity, by both measures, after completion of college for those in education majors. The article also states

"Education majors are clearly safe havens for the religious," said U-M economist Miles Kimball, who co-authored the study. "Highly religious people seem to prefer education majors, tend to stay in that major, and tend to become more religious by the time they graduate."

I'd love to see the data that spawned that particular conclusion, as it isn't provided and doesn't seem evident from the methods used in the study. I don't deny the possibility that it's true, but something concrete would be helpful. Religion does tend to have a regrettable tendency to make people want to pass it on, however.

The final conclusion is the one I truly take issue with:

"Our results suggest that it is Postmodernism, not Science, that is the bête noir of religiosity. One reason may be that the key ideas of Postmodernism are newer than the key scientific ideas that challenge religion. For example, religions have had 150 years to develop resistance or tolerance for the late 19th century idea of Evolution, but much less time to develop resistance or tolerance for the key ideas of Postmodernism, which gained great strength over the course of the 20th century."

There's nothing at all to suggest that this is true, other than the numbers they demonstrate. Is it possible that courses in sociology, philosophy, and comparative religion simply tend to teach rational thinking and, more importantly, demonstrate the cross-cultural tendencies of the religious to attempt to explain/deal with certain life events? Perhaps the ideas of Postmodernism are more difficult for the religious to confront than those of science; After all, Postmodernist thinking doesn't use empiricism as a standard for doctrine either.

Original paper here.

Accomodationist Drivel

The NCSE has a point... their role is to promote the teaching of evolution/natural selection in public schools in the U.S., and it is therefore detrimental to their goals to estrange theistic evolution supporters. The validity of their argument ends there, however. It is not ethical, much less feasible, to deny reality in the hopes that some theistic evolutionist will then support their attempts to keep creationism out of the classroom. Kevin Padian, of NCSE, states that

Creationists—people who deny evolution because it conflicts with their religious precepts—often tell us that whether we accept a naturalistic or a supernatural explanation of the world around us is a philosophical choice: a belief. They're not wrong. That first decision—what kind of “knowledge” is going to be privileged in your mind—is ultimately a question of belief, a leap of faith, a decision about truth, if you care to use the term at all.

Well, Kevin, you have some serious flaws in your underlying assumptions that you have neglected to examine, or even state. A naturalistic world view is not based on faith or belief, but more accurately disbelief. I, and others who adopt that world view, choose to accept the evidence of our own senses (extended by scientific instruments) rather than one that includes supernatural sources as causes for natural phenomena. This isn't a belief, it's pure rationality. There is no reason to assume a supernatural cause for anything that can be explained by natural causes. Only poor logic or underlying assumptions based on faith would cause someone to make such a leap, and neither of those constitute anything resembling evidence. Likewise, the failure of naturalistic explanations doesn't imply that supernatural explanations are valid, it means that the naturalistic explanations currently available aren't valid. It's a bit sad that someone who deals in science, a study founded purely in reality, feels the need to lend credibility to unreal concepts.

Padian continues

And that brings us to the students who never learned much about science, but were brought up with conservative religious views. Will it make sense to them to tell them that “evolution is true,” even if you give them a lot of examples of evolution at work? Will they listen in the first place, particularly if they think that your teaching is going to be hostile to their beliefs?

Well, perhaps it isn't enough to tell someone who hasn't been exposed to the science that evolution is "true" and then simply guide them through the evidence. It is quite likely, from anecdotal experience at least, that they will simply shut their mind if not their ears to the evidence as it is presented, or that they will co-opt it to fit their beliefs where appropriate. Does that mean we shouldn't present the evidence? Some people will refuse to accept evidence of a number of things, even if it is painfully obvious, if said evidence conflicts with dearly held beliefs. Yet, there are those that it may eventually reach. Are we to abandon that attempt because people choose to be willfully ignorant?
Addressing the last point, I would have to say no. There are people who will cling to their beliefs in the teeth of the prevailing evidence, and there may be no reaching them. So be it. A course in logic and reasoning might be a better way of beginning that discussion than the evidence for evolution, but fundies demonstrate a profound inability to identify their own logical fallacies whilst attempting to point out those of other people. Pretending that there is a way to reconcile (insert creation story here) with the science is doing a disservice to those people who might actually want to learn something. I'm not saying we demand that they abandon their belief systems all at once, but I don't agree with the need to coddle them: educational curricula aren't determined democratically.
Then again, what should I have expected from an article/book review that begins thus"

John is the only one of the four evangelists who recounts Jesus' (possibly apocryphal) statement to Pilate that he was in fact a king whose role was “to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.” Pilate is said to have replied to this, “What is truth?”

.

What is truth Kevin Padian? Something which you aren't interested in promoting...

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000077

Cybernetics? Well, not quite...

... but it's still pretty cool. Cognitive Science and computer researchers at UC Berkeley have managed to teacher monkey to manipulate a computer cursor and a robotic arm. Not so smoothly at first, but smoothly and through the desired path after practice.

As also evident in Figure 2A, there was a similar monotonic decrease in the mean time to reach targets. Whereas the initial cursor trajectories meandered, they became more direct with practice (Figure 2D, comparison of representative trajectories from day 3 and day 13 for Monkey P). It is important to note that the subjects were not required to follow a straight path from the center to each target. Interestingly, the mean trajectory to each target became increasingly stereotyped over time, suggesting that a relatively stable solution emerged for the path to each target. We quantified the similarity between each set of daily mean trajectories by performing pairwise correlations (see Materials and Methods). As illustrated by the color map in Figure 2D, the correlation between the mean paths for each day initially increased and then stabilized. Similar results were obtained for Monkey R (see Figure S3)

Basically, they get better at moving the exoskeleton and/or cursor over time, they way a human does when learning a new physical skill. The possible extensions of this technology are somewhat apparent to anyone who had an interest in science fiction as a kid: once approved for human use, this same technology can be used to control artificial limbs, or to operate a computer (or other computer driven object) without having to use your hands. You can read the original article here for free.

Obligatory MJ post.

Fuck Michael Jackson, and all the overblown media coverage of a the demise of a mentally-deranged pederast. Yes, his dad abused him and it caused him all sorts of troubles, I'm not downplaying that.. but enough already

Satire as only the British can do it

The Case for God by Karen Armstrong

by John Crace - The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/07/karen-armstrong-case-for-god

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart make Dawkins and Hitchens burn in Hell, O Lord my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.

Much of what we say about God these days is facile. The concept of God is meant to be hard. Too often we get lost in what Greeks called logos (reason) rather than interpreting him through mythoi - those things we know to be eternally true but can't prove. Like Santa Claus. Religion is not about belief or faith; it is a skill. Self-deceit does not always come easily, so we have to work at it.

Our ancestors, who were obviously right, would have been surprised by the crude empiricism that reduces faith to fundamentalism or atheism. I have no intention of rubbishing anyone's beliefs, so help me God, but Dawkins's critique of God is unbelievably shallow. God is transcendent, clever clogs. So we obviously can't understand him. Duh!

I'm going to spend the next 250 pages on a quick trawl of comparative religion from the pre-modern to the present day. It won't help make the case for God, but it will make me look clever and keep the publishers happy, so let's hope no one notices!
...
Continue reading and to audio
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/07/karen-armstrong-case-for-god

Taken from RDnet... Hilarious book review.

At least they figured something out...

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1595404.html

WCPSS isn't going to cough up 6 grand a day for the consultant from Canada I talked about in earlier posts, although they declined to comment on why. O'Connor claims that it's due to budget constraints, which is understandable. I'm hoping it's because they realised that he's a complete and utter fraud, but we'll see about that.