Tonight the Large Hadron Collider had a beam all the way around for the first time. Some nutjobs are apparently afraid that this might destroy the world. But someone has conveniently put up a web site to let you check: http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
Read More »

Factually maybe, but philosophically no.

For fundamentalists, religion and science are just plain incompatible on all levels.  The findings of geology, geometry, astronomy & history directly conflict things in the Bible, and fundamentalists believe the Bible to be literally true and inerrant.  Since they believe a bronze age manuscript to be the ultimate source of knowledge, they reject the findings of science.

Most non-fundamentalists would probably say that religion and science are perfectly compatible.    There is no problem reconciling (say) liberal or mainline Christianity or Islam with our knowledge of chemistry, physics, biology or pretty much any branch of the physical and social sciences.  The knowledge base of science, the facts of science, are not in conflict with an allegorical reading of the Bible.

However, I think there is an enormous conflict between the philosophies of science and religion.

Science involves a mix of creativity and skepticism.  Ideas and hypotheses about reality can come from anywhere – dreams, hallucinations, insights, plucked from someone’s ass or even from ancient manuscripts.  But the skeptical half of science requires thoroughly testing those ideas against reality.  Ideas that don’t fit with what we observe are ruthlessly discarded.  In this way the gold is separated from the muck and we can find nuggets of truth about the universe.  No individual scientist is perfect, nobody is correct all the time, but Science as a whole is an error-correcting, evidence-based process for finding out what is really going on.  So far, this is the only reliable method humanity has figured out for discovering truth.

Religion is based on faith.  Faith is belief without evidence (or even in spite of the evidence).  While it may happen that the proposition believed is in fact true, this is accidental.  Religion has no method to find out which of its beliefs are true and which aren’t.  If there happens to be evidence, religous people will use it, but if not, the need for evidence is dismissed.    Doubting Thomas is not held up as a role model of honest intellectual inquiry, but as an example of what not to do.  It is better to not doubt or require evidence, as Jesus makes clear: "Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed" (John 20:29)

In science, evidence is everything.  Ideas that aren’t supported by evidence, that don’t match up with reality are rejected, however elegant or desirable they are.  The ideas that survive give us useful knowledge about the world. In religion, evidence is nothing.  Ideas that aren’t supported by evidence are proclaimed as truth, and belief in them regardless of evidence is deemed a virtue.  The ideas that survive give us nothing of any use.

Religion and Science couldn’t be more opposed.

Present both sides of the argument and let people make up their own minds.  That sounds like a very fair and rational thing to say, doesn’t it?

Present the evidence for both evolution and creationism, oh excuse me, intelligent design.   After all they are both just theories, right?  Let people make up their own minds.

Well, how about we change the school syllabus to make sure we give equal time to these alternative "theories" of science?

Chemistry – elements

1. There are four types of atoms: earth, air, fire & water.   Fire hurts because its atoms are sharp and jagged.   Water flows because its atoms are smooth and slippery.  Everything is made up of a blend of the four types of atoms.

2. All matter consists of atoms, which have a positively charged nucleus made up of protons and neutrons, surrounded by an orbiting  cloud of electrons.  Each type of atom has a different number of protons in the nucleus.

Physics

1. Light travels through the luminiferous aether (a massless, rigid, transparent, non-viscous fluid) and the speed you measure depends on your own speed.

2. Light is both a wave and a particle and is its own medium.  Its speed is constant for all observers.

Chemistry – combustion

1. Some things contain phogiston, a colourless, odourless, tasteless, weightless element, which can be released explosively to cause combustion, leaving behind the dephlogisticated material

2. Combustion occurs when oxygen explosively reacts with other molecules

Geography

1. The earth is flat 

2. The earth is almost spherical

Medicine

1. Sicknesses like cholera or the plague are caused by bad air and can be cured by making the air smell nicer

2. Sicknesses like cholera or the plague are caused by germs and can be cured with good hygiene and antibiotics

Astronomy

1. The Earth stays still at the centre of the universe, with the moon, planets, Sun and stars (suspended in a fixed firmament) rotating around us in perfect circles.

2. The Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun, which is a star like billions of others in this galaxy.

I could imagine these other "sides" being presented as a historical curiousity, and they might make an interesting teaching vehicle for explaining how we know they are not true.   But would you want your kids to learn these things as equal-status competing theories?

You see, the catch with this idea that we should present both sides is that sometimes there really aren’t two sides to the argument.

Actually, rather than write more about evolution, I thought I’d just take a cop out path instead.

After the power cut, I came across this site:
http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/evolution.html.  This guy has a more comprehensive version of my arguments, plus extra material (the evolution of the eye) and some great links. 

I wrote in a previous post about how many creationists dismiss the theory of evolution because they don’t understand what a scientific theory means.  Many of the other creationist criticisms that I have seen or heard seem to be based on a misunderstanding of the theory.  (It’s easier to knock down a straw man).  Just because I felt like it, here is my explanation of the current theory of evolution in a nutshell.

Individual members of a species end up having a fewer or greater number of descendents depending on how good they are at (a) surviving and (b) fucking.  Because every member of a species is different, over time the average characteristics of a population will shift in favour of traits that help them survive and fuck.

What those traits are depends on the current environment.  The current environment includes both the physical environment (climate, geography, water and food supply) and other species (both higher and lower on the food chain or in competition).  

What usually happens is that two (or more) groups of the same species end up in slightly different environments.  What makes for the best survival and most fucking in one environment might be different from in the other environment.  So, gradually (over thousands or millions of years), the traits of each group change over a period of time, until members of the two groups no longer recognise each other as the same species.

It can sometimes happen a bit faster too.  Because the entire planet is an interlinked ecosystem, changes in one species affect others, rippling throughout the web of life.  Changes in the environment (natural distasters, climate change, arrival of predators, dearth of prey) change the playing field.  This can sometimes cause large number of individuals that were previously doing pretty well to suddenly cark it, while only those with some particular characteristic survive, resulting in a quite sudden change of the average characteristics of the population.

Although often called ‘Darwin’s theory of evoluation’, Darwin himself didn’t actually know why there was variation between individuals in a species, he only knew that there was, and worked out through careful observations of lots of species (but especially birds on the Galapagos islands) that this was what allowed the average characteristics of a population to shift over time.  The modern theory includes the sudden changes (punctuated equilibrium) and explains (due to gene theory) how the individual variation happens – mutation, recombination and gene duplication, as well as interactions between different genes determining how the genes are exhibited.

Evolution does not say that man is "descended from" apes.  Or monkeys.   It says that both apes and humans have a common ancestor.  We split into two groups that changed in different ways, probably because we were living in different immediate environments, making different characteristics more useful for surviving and fucking.  The small cumulative changes can end up very large given enough time.  Apes are not would-be humans that didn’t "evolve far enough".

Evolution has no goal.  There is no concept of a species "evolving towards" some final state, or devolving away from it.  And specifically, humans are not "the goal", with apes representing a "lesser evolved" state.  There is no such thing as a more or lesser evolved state.  Evolution only appears to have cumulated in modern humans because we are here now, and we can’t see into the future.   It is equally true that an ape, or a fire ant, or an orange roughy are the ‘final product’ of these billions of years of evoluion.

Evolution creates new species.  Some creationists will concede that micro-evolution is possible, with bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics and all that. (Some actually deny it, despite current observable evidence).  But they argue there’s no evidence for macro-evolution, their term for when a some members of a species evolves so far away from others that they become a new species.
Actually, there is heaps of evidence for it.  DNA evidence for one, fossil evidence for another, but it has actually been observed several times just in the last few decades, with fruit flies and several species of fish.

Evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics.  The second law generally says that entropy always increases, that is, things become more disordered over time until equilibrium is reached.  Evolution (so far) seems to have created things that are more complex over time.  The misconception is because the second law only applies to an isolated system, which earth is most decidedly not. Earth is in fact a complex self-organising system on the edge of chaos – where spectacular complexity can and (usually) does arise from very simple rules and building blocks (I might write more about this in future).  So long as overall entropy in the universe increases, local areas of a system are free to have decreasing entropy.

Evolution is not random. Natural selection is not random. Creationists say ‘it was either god or it was pure chance and something this complex can’t have been just chance’.  This really misinterprets the whole situation.  It’s not like you throw a whole bunch of amoebas in a pot and shake it, and then the first time you look you see a mess of amoebas, and the second time, just by "pure chance", out pops a fully formed human.  It’s just not like that.  Rolling dice is random.  Always picking the higher number on two rolled dice is not random.  Evolution is pretty non-random.  

Evolution does not explain abiogenesis.  Darwin called his book The Origin of Species, not the origin of life.  Evolution explains how, given living cells and time, you can account for the vast number of plant and animal species we observe.  It does not explain how you get from non-living chemicals to living cells.  That’s the domain of abiogenesis.  Criticising the theory of evolution for not explaining abiogenesis is like criticising the theory of gravity for not explaining why magnets are attracted to each other.

On a side note, many creationists seem to think that scientists view theories the way conservative christians view the bible.  They believe in biblical inerrancy, so if any error can be found in the bible, it means that the bible isn’t inerrant, and so can’t have been written by god, and they basically have to throw out the whole thing. They force themselves to choose between either ignoring any contradictory new information gained since the bible was written, or accepting that the bible isn’t inerrant.  This essentially freezes scientific knowledge at two thousand years ago.

So they jump on tiny little things related to evolution (for instance):
Ha! They said that Neanderthals were a primitive ancestor of man. Now they say they weren’t, it was a separate branch. That means they got it wrong, so that means the theory of evolution is wrong, so that means god created everything.

Sorry folks, but science just doesn’t work like that.  Science is more flexible that conservative christianity.  Scientists just update their knowledge to incorporate the new information.  This could just mean acknowledging that a conclusion was wrong and changing it based on the new info, or can in some cases mean realising that a theory is wrong, and either improving it or replacing it.  The world would be a lot better place if all religions were open to a similar evolution.

Steve dobbed me in to a friend of his the other night, telling him I was interested in things like evolution.  Asked about whether he believed in creationism, the friend said, ‘what people seem to forget is that evolution is just a theory’.   I was largely saved from having to argue this by the phone ringing, but it echoes things I have heard christian creationists say on various websites and blogs.

Just a theory, say say, waving their hands dismissively. It must be very nice and convenient for them to be able to dismiss evolution this way.

However, all it shows is that they don’t understand science.  A scientific theory is not the same as when we say ‘I’ve got this theory on why my socks go missing in the wash.’   Colloquially, we say theory when we mean speculation, guess or opinion.   Scientists say hypothesis whey they mean speculation and theory when they mean a model, explanation or description of something that has been observed.

Hence we have the theory of plate tectonics, atomic theory, and the theory of relativity.  We have the theory of gravity.  We don’t just wave our hands and say, ‘but gravity is just a theory’, as though next time we drop something, it might not fall to the ground.

No, gravity is a fact.  A hard solid fact, with absolutely indisputable evidence to prove it.  The theory of gravity explains it, models it, and allows us to understand how things behave in gravity.
Evolution is also a fact.  A hard solid fact, with absolutely indisputable evidence to prove it.  Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection explains it, models it, and allows us to understand how things evolve over time.

So all that happens when creationists trot out this ‘evolution is just a theory’ nonsense is prove how utterly ignorant they are about the basic principles of science.

I’ve been learning a bit more about Christianity recently.  This is the first of a set of posts on and around the topic.

Disclaimer:  I am an atheist.  My views on Christianity may not be flattering. If you may be offended by it, don’t read it.

Most Christians I know are Christian because their parents were.  They have been told that god exists and that the bible is the word of god since they can remember.  They believed what their parents told them, just the same way they believed in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.  Although their parents eventually confessed that they really were leading them up the garden path with the last three, most people still believe that their parents were telling the truth about god.  

Questioning the beliefs and values you receive from your parents and deciding for yourself what to believe and value is part of the transition to adulthood.  However, many people I’ve met have never actually questioned their belief in god/Christianity.  (I suspect this is partly because the god idea double entrenches itself by discouraging questioning and making a virtue of irrational belief, aka faith.)

When you ask some people why they believe in god, they will often include ‘because the bible tells me about him’ in their justification.  When you ask them why they believe in the bible, they will say ‘because it is the word of god’.  It seems that religion is so effective at discouraging logical, rational thought that many people don’t even seem to notice the circular argument.   (Or maybe the lack of logic and rationality is what causes people to be religious.)

Obviously, the god belief and the bible belief go together and mutually reinforce each other.  If you have the two planted in your mind, then I guess the whole thing makes some kind of internal sense. If not, then you’re screwed, because it’s just not possible for a sane rational person to believe either thing.  Unless you believe one of them, the other makes no sense.

The strongest argument (I think) that can be put forward for believing in christianity is the resurrection of Jesus.  This is the bible basher’s best chance of coverting people, and is the evidence that some of the more logical christians cling to to try to reassure themselves that they aren’t deluded.

If some guy really did die, and really did come back to life again before eventually floating up to heaven, then a supernatural god is probably the best theory that could explain it.  And since the event was documented in the bible, it lends credibility to that as well, making it possible to swallow the two together.

Now, obviously Christians realise this too.  Just google ‘proof of resurrection’ or ‘evidence for resurrection’.  You’ll find millions of hits.  But almost all these proofs assume you already believe the bible is true (and hence already believe in god).  They use the bible to try and ‘prove’ the resurrection.  Obviously, if you already believe the bible, you’ll probably find this argument compelling.  Otherwise, you just have to wonder what has happened to their brains that they consider this proof or evidence.

You can’t use Corinthians to prove the gospels.  You can’t use John to prove Matthew, Mark and Luke. You can’t use the bible to prove the truth of the bible.  It just doesn’t work like that.  The only way to prove that the events of the bible (say, the resurrection) actually occurrred, is to have them independently verified by non-biblical sources.   Does religion so damage people’s ability for logic and reason that this simple fact is not blindingly obvious?