Naturalism

Even icon Carl Sagan doesn’t get a pass these days. From Cara Giaimo at Atlas Obscura: Throughout human history, people have struggled with two competing impulses: the desire to make a mark for future generations, and a deep confusion about what, exactly, that mark should be. The Golden Records, though probably the most extreme manifestation of this impulse, are far from the first. “There have been time-capsule type experiences ever since humans have measured time,” writes librarian William Jarvis in Time Capsules: A Cultural History. It’s easy to make fun of time capsules, but, as Jarvis details, it’s much harder to fill them with the kind of material that will actually stand the test of time. Often, the things we Read More ›

The philosopher Plato wrote in his work, Phaedrus, that successful theories should “carve nature at its joints.” Scientists have a special obligation to abide by this maxim, since the stated aim of science is to systematically describe Nature, as she really is. The worst kind of intellectual crime I can conceive of would be the imposition on the populace of a conceptual system which fails to carve Nature at its joints. When people are deceived into believing a false proposition, their error can be corrected by simply pointing out the truth; but when people are forced to adopt a totally wrong way of slicing and dicing reality, the very fabric of their thinking is warped, and intellectual progress is retarded. Read More ›

Readers may recall that unusually thoughtful science writer John Horgan recently told “Skeptics” Scientific American to do something useful with their lives. (Bash Bigfoot less, pop science more.) The Skeptics, of course, protested that soft targets are fun. (The multiverse can be science even if unfalsifiable…) The exchange identified the issue clearly. The Skeptical science communicators are mainly looking for confirmation of their theories from science; Horgan wants them to report on actual science. In Nature (which owns Scientific American), Chris Woolston writes, Horgan wrote that for sceptics to really have an impact, they need to tackle the “dubious and even harmful claims promoted by major scientists and institutions”. For example, Horgan argues that sceptics should expose the harm that Read More ›

From Wesley J. Smith at First Things: Most people understand the word “death” to mean the end of biological life or, as Merriam-Webster defines it, “a permanent cessation of all vital functions.” But now an influential cadre of utilitarian bioethicists wants to redefine it to include a subjective and sociologically based meaning. Their purpose isn’t greater scientific accuracy. Rather, by making “death” malleable, they hope to open the door further to treating indisputably living human beings as if they were cadavers. Legally, human death is declared when medical testing discerns the irreversible cessation of one of two biological functions that must work for a human being to be considered an integrated functioning organism. The first is the cardio/pulmonary function, the Read More ›

Yes, we know. It’s complicated. Science writer John Horgan might have expected some pushback from his advice to Skeptics: Bash Bigfoot less, pop science more, and he got his wish (!) via Steven Novella at Neurologica blog: Horgan gives a very superficial analysis, in my opinion to the point of being wrong. He claims they [multiverse, string theory] are not falsifiable, therefore they are pseudoscientific, “Like astrology.” For those of you playing logical fallacy bingo, that is a false analogy. There are many problems with astrology that do not apply to string theory. Indeed. Astrology eventually became testable* and flunked. It’s not clear that the multiverse or the computer sim universe will ever become testable. The “non-falsifiable” criticism has been Read More ›

In my law practice I often represent charter school applicants appealing local districts’ denial of their charter applications to the Colorado State Board of Education.  Some years ago in one of these appeals a local district decided to support their case for denial by hiring an infamous advocacy firm masquerading as experts in education economics to produce a report demonstrating the terrible economic threat charter schools represent to school districts.  The firm produced the report and I proceeded to explode it by pointing out the tendentious assumptions upon which it was based. The district’s decision to use the firm backfired, because their obvious bad faith probably helped me win that appeal.  I was particularly pleased with one line from my Read More ›

You’ve probably heard vaguely somewhere about oxytocin (the love drug). = Oxytocin explains why we care. Of course, that turned out not to be so years ago, We thought the hype was already dead but New Scientist seems to want to drive a stake through the heart: The “cuddle chemical”. The “moral molecule”. Oxytocin has quite a reputation – but much of what we thought about the so-called “love hormone” may be wrong. Oxytocin is made by the hypothalamus and acts on the brain, playing a role in bonding, sex and pregnancy. But findings that a sniff of the hormone is enough to make people trust each other more are being called into question after a string of studies failed to Read More ›

Or, we are warned, they will be “swamped by the ever-increasing volume of poor work.” Imagine, on the virtual heels of: Authors: There is a worrying amount of outright fraud in psychology (But, they say, it may be no more common than in other disciplines), we get this: From science policy analyst Daniel Sarewitz at Nature, Mainstream scientific leaders increasingly accept that large bodies of published research are unreliable. But what seems to have escaped general notice is a destructive feedback between the production of poor-quality science, the responsibility to cite previous work and the compulsion to publish. … More than 50 years ago, Price predicted that the scientific enterprise would soon have to go through a transition from exponential Read More ›

If humans are just meat robots, can we be rational creatures? Tim Stratton argues the case that libertarian free will is required in order to consider ourselves in any way rational – that if our decisions are solely the result of physics and chemistry, then we cannot then trust them to be rational in any significant sense. Even if naturalism were true, its being true would undercut our ability to justify the belief that it was true. Read Article

From The Scientist: Harvard Medical School’s George Church and his collaborators invited some 130 scientists, lawyers, entrepreneurs, and government officials to Boston last week (May 10) to discuss the feasibility and implementation of a project to synthesize entire large genomes in vitro. … Church told STAT News that the original intention was to make the meeting open, but in anticipation of an imminent, high-profile publication on this project, he and his collaborators had to respect the journal’s embargo. However, Endy tweeted a photo of what appeared to be a message from the meeting organizers stating that they chose not to invite media “because we want everyone to speak freely and candidly without concerns about being misquoted or misinterpreted.” If genomes Read More ›

Learned scholars shout into the wind frequently re science writer myths about how stupid people were in the Middle Ages, etc. Such myths would include the odd claim that mediaeval Europeans believed that Earth is flat. Hint: They could not have believed that, due to other things they believed. Tales of an ignorant past give people today, who pay billions for bunk nutrition science and whole foods, several free virtue points for “science”without any need to think clearly. It’s no help but they feel much better. Just recently, I (O’Leary for News) dredged up something I’d written (2007) on a different myth, worth recapping in the religion story deck: Your local new atheist Twitter feed may tell you that traditional theologians Read More ›

From Nicholas Kristof: WE progressives believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren’t conservatives. Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us. O.K., that’s a little harsh. But consider George Yancey, a sociologist who is black and evangelical. “Outside of academia I faced more problems as a black,” he told me. “But inside academia I face more problems as a Christian, and it is not even close.”More. Reality check: First, progressives are not liberals. They are totalitarians sapping Read More ›

That post, by WJM, asks: Does a man have the right to identify himself as a woman and enter their locker rooms and bathrooms, demanding equal rights for their self-identification? Comment of the week has just got to be an excerpt from Ziggy Lorenc at 25, who writes, quoting News at 20: News — “Very few women want to use washrooms also used by men, whether they claim to be transgender or not, or whatever is the story.” It must be great to be rich enough for you and your husband to have seperate bathrooms. My husband and I must share the same one. News replies at 31 Ziggy Lorenc at 25: You must be very proud of yourself thinking Read More ›

UDEditors:  WJM’s devastating rebuttal to Aleta’s materialism deserves its own post.  Everything that follows is WJM’s: Aleta said: William, I know that your view is that unless morality is somehow grounded (purportedly) in some objective reality to which we have access, then it is merely subjective, and that then people have no reason not to to do anything they want: it’s not just a slippery slope, but rather a black-and-white precipice to nihilism.So actually discussing this with you, which we did at length one other time, is not worth my time. It’s odd that you say that it is not worth your time apparently because you already know my position. If the only thing that makes a discussion “worth your Read More ›

From a review of Richard Weikart’s The Death of Humanity by Mike Keas at Christian Post: Many things are striking about Weikart’s powerful treatment of his subject, but I noted, in particular, his discussion of some statements from atheist biologist Richard Dawkins. These statements have a curious, persistent, and revealing inconsistency to them. Here is Weikart, for example, on a 2007 interview with Dawkins: [C]onsider how Richard Dawkins responded when Larry Taunton asked in an interview if his rejection of external moral standards meant that Islamic extremists might not be wrong. Dawkins replied, “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question.” Taunton admitted that he was stupefied by Dawkins’s answer — Read More ›