Appeasers, Spaghetti Monsters, and NCSE

 
John West, one of the IDiots at the Discovery Institute, has posted an interesting article [Why Does National Center for Science Education (NCSE) Spokesman Think "Mocking Traditional Religion" is OK?].

West is referring to a newspaper article published in last Sunday's Toronto Star (see Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Makes Front Page of The Toronto Star). In that newspaper article, Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) defended the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. West asks, why does NCSE think it's okay to mock religion in this case and yet go out of their way to defend religion in other cases?

We've heard for years from Branch's boss Eugenie Scott that evolution and religion are perfectly harmonious (indeed, the NCSE has helped use our tax dollars to promote the message that true theology endorses evolution, and its director Eugenie Scott has recommended that students study theological statements endorsing evolution during biology class). But now it turns out that mocking religion in the name of science is "probably healthy" and that it is illegitimate for proponents of ID even to question such anti-religious diatribes.

Good point. Does anyone know the answer? The people over at NCSE (and their allies like Ed Brayton) go apoplectic whenever some atheists criticize the silly superstitions of Ken Miller and Frances Collins. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster mocks all superstitious beliefs, including those of theistic evolutionists. Why is one so bad but not the other?

As far as I'm concerned, it's just as much fun to mock theistic evolution directly as it is to do it through the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Phases of the Moon

 
I've added the phases of the moon to the bottom of the left sidebar. This is in response to a request from somone who is really interested in astronomy and really interested in knowing whether my mood is affected by the phases of the moon. (It isn't, by the way. )

Some examples of the phases of the moon are shown below for viewing from Canada or Chile. Can you tell which is which? Do you know why they're different?

CURRENT MOON

lunar phases

CURRENT MOON

lunar phases

Compact Fluorescent Bulbs

 
Steve Reuland at Sunbeams from Cucumbers writes On the Wonders of Compact Fluorescent Bulbs. He makes a compelling case. I'm going to switch 10 light bulbs tonight.

Are Science Blogs Really About Science?

 
Greg Laden has posted a summary of the number of comments on articles put up on Pharyngula [Where's the beef(ing)?"]. As you might have guessed, there are way more comments on articles about creationism and religion than on articles about science.

This confirms my observation as well. I've also noted that straight reporting about, and praise for, the latest "breakthrough" seems to go down better than critical analysis and skepticism. In general, articles that challenge pre-conceived notions don't get as much attention as those that reinforce current dogma.

This raises the obvious question: are science blogs really about science?

Sometimes they are. Here's a list of the 50 best science posts as determined by an expert panel of judges [Science Blogging Anthology - The Council Has Spoken!]. Congratulations to the winners!

Why Are So Many Engineers and Physicians IDiots?

 
Stephen Meyer on Engineers and ID is an answer the the question of why are there so many engineers who believe in intelligent design, and why are there so few scientists. Meyer says it's because engineers are better able to recognize design. That's only part of the answer. The other, more important, part is that they don't know how to recognize good science because they're not scientists. They can't tell the difference between engineering and science.

The Cost of Mistakes address the observation that a higher percentage of doctors fall for ID compared to scientists. DaveScot explains that it's because doctors recognize the cost of mistakes. They know that an error will most likely have bad consequences so they see through the modern concept of evolution and recognize that errors can't lead to improvement. That's only part of the answer—and not a very important part. The real reason is that Doctors aren't scientists so they don't understand science even though they think they do because they passed biochemistry in medical school. That's why so many of them are IDiots.

Engineers and doctors play with science but they are not trained to be scientists. They are not biologists. They are not geneticists. They are not experts in evolution. It's about time we recognized that the vast majority of people who believe in intelligent design don't understand the first thing about science and how it's supposed to be done. That's why a higher proportion of non-scientists (doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, politicians) are IDiots.

If the Horse Is Dead, Why Keep Kicking It?

 
Bill Dembski notes the publication of two new book that demolish the arguments for intelligent design (Living with Darwin by Philip Kitcher and Darwin and Intelligent Design by Francisco Ayala). Dembski then asks If the horse is dead, why keep kicking it?.

I'm reminded of a quotation from a 1965 paper by Emil Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling. They were publishing the first sequence based phylogenetic trees. When commenting on why we need more evidence for evolution they said ...

Some beating of dead horses may be ethical, where here and there they display unexpected twitches that look like life.

Zuckerkandl, E. and Pauling, L. (1965) in EVOLVING GENES AND PROTEINS, V. Bryson and H.J. Vogel eds. Academic Press, New York NY USA

Science Teaches Skepticism: That's a Good Thing

Monday's Molecule #8

 
Name this molecule. You must be specific. We need the exact chemical name and the common name. The chemical name isn't that hard but finding the common name and the function of the molecule is a lot more difficult. Comments will be blocked for 24 hours.

Comments are now open. Since I don't expect anyone to get the correct answer, I'll be posting the explanation in a separate article.

Most Important Medical Advance

 
Here's a poll that will make you think. The medical journal BMJ asks you to identify the single most important contribution to medicine since 1840 [Medical Milestones Poll].

It's a tough choice. I think I'll have to choose "sanitation."

[Hat Tip: Hsien Hsien Lei who wants you to vote for DNA.]

Opening Tomorrow

 
This is a picture of the Tim Horton's in my building on the university campus.

Timmy's has been closed for three weeks but it opens tomorrow when the students return. I can hardly wait (for Timmy's to open).

15 Questions for "Militant" Atheists

 
Oh, goody. A quiz. I love quizzes. This one comes from R.J. Eskow over at The Huffington Post [15 Questions Militant Atheists Should Ask Before Trying to "Destroy Religion"].

Here are my answers (yes, I know he didn't request answers, but what the heck; and, no, I'm not admitting to being a militant atheist, I just like quizzes) ....

1. somewhere in between
2. other forces
3. no
4. considerable
5. no
6. additional action
7. neither
8. no
9. both
10. not all and not just fundamentalists
11. yes
12. yes, no
13. both are needed
14. the latter
15. eradication of religion will improve mental health

[Hat Tip: PZ Myers, who only got 1 out of 15 correct]

Questionable Mission

 
Questionable Mission is the title of an editorial in the Washington Post. Here's an excerpt.

"THERE ARE over 25,000 Department of Defense leaders working in the rings and corridors of the Pentagon. Through Bible study, discipleship, prayer breakfasts, and outreach events, Christian Embassy is mustering these men and women into an intentional relationship with Jesus Christ," a narrator explains toward the start of a promotional video for Christian Embassy, an offshoot of Campus Crusade for Christ that focuses on diplomats, government leaders and military officers. As a uniformed Air Force Maj. Gen. Jack J. Catton Jr. explains, "I found a wonderful opportunity as a director on the joint staff, as I meet the people that come into my directorate, and I tell them right up front who Jack Catton is . . . and my first priority is my faith in God, then my family and then country. I share my faith because it describes who I am."

This is really scary. It's one of the reasons why we need to speak out against religion before it's too late.

[Hat Tip: Richard Dawkins]

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Makes Front Page of The Toronto Star

 
Well, not exactly the "front"-front page. It's on the front page of the IDEAS section (Section B) of today's paper [In praise of an alternate creation theory: The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster gains infamy and faith.

Leslie Scrivener does a pretty good job of explaining what it's all about. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was set up to make fun of some of the arguments for the existence of God. If your argument for God also applies to the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (as most do), then how good is it?

The Toronto Star even has the picture (above) of the famous Michelangelo painting that's on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

I wonder what the appeasers have to say about the Flying Spaghetti Monster? I wonder if the agnostics are sincerely undecided about His existence?

Blogging

 
I'm still getting used to blogging. There are lots of tools available to help figure out what's going on. (Thanks to PZ, and others for helping me get established.)

One of the tools reveals where readers are located. This is pretty amazing. Each dot stands for someone who looked at my blog in the last few hours.

Have Humans Stopped Evolving?

Yesterday's Quirks & Quarks radio show had a segment on human evolution. Here's the description from their website:

January 6, 2007: Are Humans Still Evolving?

Evolution has made us what we are today, and we're increasingly learning what made modern humans different from our ancestors. But many scientists think that we have now removed nature's control over our genetic legacy. Our technology allows us to control our environment and survival to the degree that we may have stopped human evolution altogether. Is our growth and development as a species at a standstill? If not, what will we become in the future? Find out this week on Quirks & Quarks.

Listen to the podcast. The segment on human evolution starts about one third of the way through the show.

The idea that humans have stopped evolving is ridiculous. It reflects a deep and fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary theory.

Fortunately, the blurb on the website doesn't reflect what was broadcast. The host, Bob McDonald actually does a very good job of sorting through the rhetoric and the show is an excellent summary of current scientific thinking. It's by far the best thing about the rate of human evolution that I've ever heard on public radio.

One of the people interviewed on the show is Steve Jones from University College, London. Jones claims that almost everyone is reproducing these days so natural selection isn't affecting humans any more. He contrasts the situation today with that in Shakespeare's time when 2 out of 3 babies didn't survive to adulthood.

This is one of the weaker parts of the show. The claim that natural selection isn't working on humans is false. It is refuted by Jones himself later on in the broadcast, and by Noell Boaz from Ross University in Dominica.

Let's deal with the increase in longevity that we've seen in some societies over the past 500 years. We'll dismiss the obvious bias in equating what happens in Caucasian societies with evolution of the entire species. What about the fact that people in London live longer today that they did in 1600? Does this have anything to do with evolution?

Jones thinks so. He says,

Now a lot of those deaths in the old days were due to genetic differences but if everybody stays alive, everybody gets through, no more natural selection.

I don't think so. It isn't obvious to me that people were surviving in 1600 because they had better genes. People died for all kinds of reasons that had nothing to do with genes. A famous example from the nineteenth century was the London cholera outbreak. In that case, you died if you were close to the contaminated Broad Street Pump and not because you had bad genes.

If you died of infection or malnutrition in 1600 it was probably due to bad luck and not bad genes. As living conditions improved, everyone benefited equally, not just those who might have been genetically susceptible. Thus, natural selection wasn't all that important back then and most of the improvements in health in developed countries have affected evolution directly. (The quibblers are waiting to pounce, so let me address two objections to that statement. First, there are other, more modern, medical advances that do affect selection—wait for them. Second, there are some examples of genetic effects on whether you survive disease. Some people might have been more resistant to the Black Plague, for example. Such examples are exceptions to the rule. The common assumption that most deaths in the past had something to do with natural selection is what I'm addressing here.)

So, let's be skeptical about the specific argument that Jones is making, namely that increased longevity, per se, is proof that the effect of natural selection is diminished in modern societies. A lot of negative selection—selection against less fit individuals—is still taking place in utero just as it always has. Lethal mutations result in spontaneous abortion or failure to produce viable sperm and eggs. This form of natural selection hasn't changed significantly. Also, even though severely handicapped children born today may survive longer, they probably won't reproduce.

On the other hand, there are medical advances that do affect natural selection. The most obvious one is the invention of eyeglasses. As Jones points out in the show, people with a genetic disposition for bad eyesight can now survive whereas back in the hunter-gatherer days it might have been much more difficult. Thus, natural selection in favor of good eyesight has been relaxed because of eyeglasses.

What does that mean for human evolution? To its credit, the Quirks & Quarks show doesn't jump to the false conclusion so common among the general public. Evolution hasn't stopped, it has increased! The removal of negative selection causes previously detrimental alleles to survive in the population; therefore, their frequency increases. Thus, evolution is happening today but was blocked by negative selection in the past.

The same argument applies to all medical advances that allow for previously handicapped individuals to survive in modern society. Human evolution is being accelerated. This is a point worth emphasizing because the opposite conclusion is so common. Most people think that removing strong negative selection means that evolution has stopped when, in fact, the exact opposite is true! The misconception arises because the general public thinks of evolution as a progressive improvement in the gene pool. Modern medicine is allowing "defective" individuals to survive. This can't be evolution according to that false understanding of evolution. (There are other things wrong with that false argument; namely, the concept that people with myopia or diabetes are somehow lesser citizens. This isn't the place to get into that discussion.)

Strong negative selection acts as a brake on evolution. It slows evolution down. Remove the brake, and evolution speeds up.

There's more to evolution than natural selection. Bob McDonald interviews Katherine Pollard from the University of California, Davis. She points out that much of evolution is due to random genetic drift. Drift has nothing to do with natural selection, so whether or not selection has decreased will play only a minor role in whether humans are evolving. You can't stop drift and you can't stop mutations. You can't stop human evolution. As McDonald puts it, "we still will evolve ... it's not the kind of evolution we imagine."

Evolution is not just the result of survival of the fittest. Furthermore, it is not progressive in spite of the fact that this misconception is widespread. As McDonald says in closing, "... this is an illusion about the way that evolution works. Evolution has never guaranteed improvement or progress, just change."

Change is good. It's good that humans are evolving. Things can only get better, right?