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January, 2010:

Why Evolution is True in paperback

Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution is True came out recently in paperback, so if you were waiting to purchase it because of the hardcover price, you’ve got a green light. If you’ve already got the hardcover, consider purchasing the paperback and donating it to your local library. I just picked up a copy today for $16.00 at Borders to donate (I already have a signed hardback edition), but you can get it from Amazon for $10.88 (at the time of this writing).

It’s a terrific book.

Note: Jerry Coyne also has a blog where he discusses evolution in addition to a number of other issues. Definitely worth following.

Scott Roeder convicted of 1st-degree murder

Scott Roeder, the man who murdered Dr. George Tiller on May 31st, has been convicted of first degree murder and faces a life sentence with the possibility of parole after twenty-five years. According to the article, Roeder’s attorneys wanted him to receive a lesser conviction of voluntary manslaughter, but the judge wouldn’t allow it.

I think, in this case, the judge was right in doing so. The murder was pre-meditated, evidently to the point of obsession. From the article…

In his testimony, Roeder told jurors he had considered elaborate schemes to stop the doctor, including chopping off his hands, crashing a car into him or sneaking into his home to kill him.

[…]

But in the end, Roeder told the jury, the easiest way was to walk into Tiller’s church, put a gun to the man’s forehead and pull the trigger.

Testifying as the lone defense witness at his trial, Roeder calmly explained what he admitted publicly months ago — that he killed Tiller to save the lives of unborn children.

Roeder is a psychopath and deserves his sentence.

Consistency is irrelevant to denialism

I follow the Skeptical Science blog and I took special interest to today’s post by John Cook about a debate featuring Ian Plimer and Christopher Monckton versus Barry Brooks and Graham Readfern. I’ve only heard Monckton speak before and he has shown himself to be mostly full of schlock conspiracy theories, smoothly twisting (or fabricating) facts to make his climate change denialist points.

However, aside from the debate summary, what I found interesting was one of the statements in Cook’s conclusion, which fits the denial-o-sphere so exceptionally well. Cook was explaining that, though Plimer and Monckton were both deniers, they reached their conclusions through contradictory points, one basing his conclusion (basically) on the idea that our climate is sensitive and the other basing his conclusion on the idea that it’s not sensitive. Both speakers got applause from the deniers in the audience when presenting their contradictory arguments.

Cook says:

In a sense, their combined approach perfectly encapsulates the way skeptic arguments are used to mislead. Layering argument upon argument, regardless of whether they display any internal consistency, isn’t about furthering scientific understanding but proving the preconceived notion that humans can’t be causing global warming. Two skeptic arguments can contradict each other, even on the same debating stage, so long as the common enemy of man-made global warming is refuted

Replace the topic of “global warming” with the topic of “evolution” and his conclusion is just as valid. To the deniers, consistency… or scientific evidence… or reality… isn’t important. What is important to them is to mislead… to twist the argument any way they can… to repeatedly bring up claims, regardless of whether the claims have long since been refuted… to use emotional or political arguments that have nothing to do with the science… to distort, cherry pick, and fabricate evidence in whatever way possible in their attempts to inject unwarranted doubt into the issue.

Why? Because they so want reality to conform to their pre-conceived political, ideological, or religious notions that they’re willing to use virtually any means at their disposal to keep their fortresses of self-delusion from tumbling down. I’ve seen that in action. I’ve heard deniers admit as much. What makes it worse is that they vigorously spread their misinformation, drag others down with them, and hobble any notion of having an intellectually honest discourse.

…because honesty… like consistency… like truth… is irrelevant to them.

International Darwin Day Petition

I’m not a big fan of web-based petitions. They’re generally pretty worthless when it comes to actually getting things done, but they also make participation really, really easy. So, in the spirit of supporting the federal recognition of Darwin Day in the United States, I signed this petition put forth by the International Darwin Day Foundation.

In part, it says…

Dear President Obama,

As an American who values scientific inquiry and integrity, I urge you to issue a presidential proclamation recognizing Darwin Day on February 12. Darwin Day is celebrated every year on the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birthday in 1809, and is a day in which people gather together to commemorate his life and work. Charles Darwin was the first to propose the groundbreaking scientific theory of evolution by natural selection—a theory that has done more to unify and bring understanding to the life sciences than any other—and Darwin Day is a celebration of this discovery and of scientific progress.

I believe that issuing this proclamation will send a powerful message that scientific discovery and integrity in our society are top priorities—priorities that are needed now more than ever as extremists with narrow ideological agendas are attempting to undermine science in our schools.

Please stand with me and countless others who value science and discovery by issuing the following or a similar proclamation on Darwin Day.

Feel free to jump on that bandwagon.

If it’s cold, it’s evidence!

I find it noteworthy that the global warming deniers, many of whom were touting the recent cold snap in the USA as evidence against global warming, are strangely silent about the recent warm temperatures we’ve been having. In Pennsylvania, it was about 60 degrees this morning, which is pretty high for this time of year… not unheard of, but definitely high. The entire past week has been warmer than usual, actually.

Now, those who understand anything about climate change understand that local temperature variances really say nothing about global climate change (hence the word "global"), but the deniers latch onto this sort of thing and wave it around as if it somehow validates their conspiracy theories. The caveat is that they only do it when it suits their purposes. If there is contradicting "evidence," it is ignored.

Evolution deniers do the same thing… tout irrelevant things as evidence in support of their delusion, but ignore (or deny) evidence that refutes it. Anti-vaxxers do it, too… as do moon hoaxers, flat earthers, 9/11 truthers, and Obama birthers. It’s a common theme among conspiracy theorists.

And all that is fine… unless they have any political clout.

Sadly, that seems to be the case in some instances.

Those stupid scientists!

Calamities of Nature - Hot Debate From Calamities of Nature comes this comic (the image here is just the first panel). I don’t want to spoil it for you, but I’ve heard a similar argument made by Sam Harris concerning the word “elite” in a Newsweek essay about Sarah Palin and politics last year. Not exactly the same argument, but related.

The comic brings up a valid point (though highly simplified to fit into three panels) and I’ve commented on it before… with no small amount of disdain. The point is relevant to more than the topic addressed and I’ve encountered the same seeming inconsistency-of-thought regarding evolution, the age of the Earth, cosmology, and a few other science-related topics.

It’s an attitude that science is great… unless it conflicts with your political or religious ideology… that it’s better, in that case, to trust someone who’s not too educated, not too intelligent, not too well informed, not too “elite”… rather than someone who is highly trained in the related field.

Here’s the excerpt from Sam Harris’s article (to save you the time of searching the Newsweek article for it):

Ask yourself: how has “elitism” become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn’t seem too intelligent or well educated.

It’s a huge problem in this country today.

Reality, Death, and Family Cats

There’s a great post on Unreasonable Faith by guest blogger Vincent Skolny (of Avangelism.com) about kids, their understanding of death, and the nature of reality.

He writes about his three-year-old daughter’s understanding of death as it relates to a recently-deceased family cat… and herself.

A small excerpt from the conclusion:

Death isn’t confusing at all: We’re gone and won’t be seen anymore. What makes death confusing and confuses children is pretending that dead people (or cats) are really somehow still alive. Or anything other than what they are: dead and gone.

Reality is seldom as confusing as lying about it.

Religion seems to be an extremely complex avoidance of the simplicity of reality. Sure, if you get down into the details of biology, astronomy, geology, paleontology, and other sciences, there are some pretty tricky details but, in general, reality is pretty straightforward. Obscuring it with unnecessary supernatural explanations seems a bit silly.

Vincent’s daughter’s understanding of death fits Occam’s Razor perfectly.

(Just trivial FYI: The cat pictured in the index icon for this post… you won’t see it in the RSS feed, just on the site homepage… is my recently deceased cat Pokey, who lived for about 18 years old and was a wonderful, wonderful companion.)

Oh, it’s a beautiful graph!

From SMBC (via Friendly Atheist):

smbc01

So, so perfect.

I love xkcd

xkcd is such a great web comic, not just for the humor, but for the insights. It’s also wonderfully techie and appeals to the geek part of me.

Today’s comic is one of the funny and insightful ones (reproduced with the original title text for your hovering enjoyment).

I believe the truth always lies halfway between the most extreme claims.

What I love about it is the mocking of the idea that the truth is always somewhere in the middle of two opposing positions. It’s not. Sometimes, one side is right and the other is just wrong.

Flat Earth versus spherical Earth… faked moon landing versus actual moon landing… evolution versus creationism… germ theory versus spontaneous generation… etc. There are myriads of examples of issues where the truth does not lie somewhere in the middle.

Of special interest to me, of course, is the evolution versus creationism issue… where creationism and intelligent design have no basis in scientific fact while evolution holds all the evidential cards. Saying something like, “Evolution happens, but man is God’s special creation and was made in his present form” is not only incorrect, but there’s no valid reason to even suggest it. Some might say it fills a spiritual need in people. Perhaps that’s true, but so do many other things… like pizza.

I don’t mean to be smarmy (much), but the issue is that people fill their lives with meaning in thousands of different ways, some mundane and some grandiose. Isn’t it better to create meaning and purpose in your life based on something that is real? Family and friends come instantly to mind and I can say that they provide a huge amount of purpose in my life. Charity, kindness, curiosity, nature, and many other things (Yes. Pizza, too) all bring some meaning and purpose to my life. Why would I need to add something make-believe to all the joy and wonder that already exists in the real world?

I have plenty of meaning and purpose now… without a compromise.

Mississippi targeted by creationists

Mississippi can now lay claim to hosting the first anti-evolution bill of 2010, according to the National Center for Science Education. Gary Chism (R-District 37), who last year introduced a bill that would have required biology textbooks to include a classic creationist disclaimer about evolution, has sponsored this new bill, HB 586.

From the NCSE article:

[The bill] would, if enacted, require local school boards to include a lesson on human evolution at the beginning of their high school biology classes. The catch: "The lesson provided to students … shall have proportionately equal instruction from educational materials that present scientifically sound arguments by protagonists and antagonists of the theory of evolution."

Chism seems to be a classic creationist… meaning that he has no business poking his nose into the science education of our children. This is from the NCSE article referring to his 2009 bill…

Speaking to the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal (January 24, 2009), Chism was candid about his motivations for the bill [HB 25 from 2009], explaining, "Either you believe in the Genesis story, or you believe that a fish walked on the ground," and adding, "All these molecules didn’t come into existence by themselves." HB 25 died in committee on February 3, 2009.

Chism is obviously ignorant about evolution.

The (sort of) bright side is that the newly proposed bill also says…

The lesson provided to students shall not evidence bias through selective instruction on the theory of evolution, but rather, shall have proportionately equal instruction from educational materials that present scientifically sound arguments by protagonists and antagonists of the theory of evolution.

I’m amused by the phrase "selective instruction," but the good part is the phrase "educational materials that present scientifically sound arguments." As anyone who’s honestly studied evolution knows, there are no scientifically sound arguments against evolution… so Mississippi could be safe. I doubt Chism sees it that way, however, so perhaps we should still be worried.

Let’s hope HB 586 suffers the same fate as HB 25.

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