#23782: Covington — 05/03  at  08:57 AM
Why should we expect anything different? We're saying the emporer has no clothes... of course the tailors are going to hush us for rudeness.

#23784: Milo Johnson — 05/03  at  09:30 AM
There is no such thing as religious music. There is music that has religious lyric, there is music that has been appropriated by religions for their own purposes, but music in and of itself is as secular as science.

#23785: — 05/03  at  09:38 AM
"But I do think there is one respect in which religion is more truthful than science - in its depiction of the longing for transcendent meaning that lies in man's heart. "

What a blathering idiot. Religion has never specified that its main function is to depict the "longing for transcendent meaning". Instead, it has done a fine job of making patently false assertions and declaring them true no matter the evidence against them. It may unintendedly show how we humans long for transcendence, by falsely claiming that it is transcendent, but no more. Note the smarmily inadequate use of the word "truthful" in the paragraph quoted above. Not more "soothing" or more "emotionally satisfying" but more "truthful", immediately validating religion in a factual level.

Fucking imbecile....

#23790: — 05/03  at  10:09 AM
"Atheists can appreciate ... the quality of some of the books of the Bible—I even have a favorite book ..."

Ooh! Let's start a pool! I bet his favorite book is ... Ecclesiastes. Anyone else for a guess?

#23791: — 05/03  at  10:18 AM
Let's see if we can be rational about this. PZ has shown some interest in odd creatures. Has he shown any interest in amphibians such as frogs? If so, his favorite book of the bible must be Jeremiah. Why? Well, obviously because Jeremiah was a bullfrog.

#23792: — 05/03  at  10:34 AM
It's screeds like the latest from PZ and much from Dawkins that keep the idea that "atheist" means "anti-God, anti-spiritual, anti-human" alive. Non-contextual potshots, boilerplate, and the whole dreary village atheist litany are flung out in response to what appears to have been an actually balanced article.

Religion is human life and history. It is culture, it is music, art, and the beginnings of science. Only recently has non-religion become really quite viable, in part due to "Darwinian" evolution. Religion is crude, violent, and dangerous, and it is sublime, beautiful, and the embodiment of the "best" of what is human. That is to say, it is as much human as anything, prone to lies, truths, viciousness, kindness, whatever it is that makes us human.

Today it has become more relic and at least a willful ignorance of what follows from what we now know, if not a rejection of human possibilities. As such, an argument can be made that it would be best if it faded away. But that's one thing. Pretending that it is somehow nothing other than "a collection of dogmatic lies, old superstitions, and muddled legends" and "Dishonest representations of the human mind as the product of a divine father-figure in the sky" is an insult to what I know about philosophy, religion, and also the best tactics for wholly undermining the entire framework of religious thought.

Europe is increasingly not "atheist". Why? It's partly because philosophy there has relentlessly attacked metaphysical/religious thought in the latter's control of language itself. Many Europeans are thus "post atheist", and unwilling to credit either theism or its privative, atheism. Religion disappears when its statements and conceptions are no longer written into the language, and it does not disappear when atheists screech non-contextual nonsense about religion in their obviously reactionary position against the religionists.

This is why the article mentioned is almost certainly correct that Dawkins is helpful to reactionary religionists and harmful to any fade-out of religion itself. Dawkins seemingly has no concept of the linguistic and conceptual bases in our culture that keep religion alive, and thus must attack religion in an ineffectual manner.

He is right about one thing, certainly, which is that evolution is corrosive to religion. But it isn't for the reasons that Dawkins tells us. It is because evolution undermines the typological, logocentric ideas written into our language. IDists are fighting as much for their use of words as they are against the specifics of biology. When creationists/IDists say that they can't imagine humans evolving "out of the slime", believe them, they do lack the imagination needed to understand biology. They think that words have fixed meanings guaranteed by God, and this isn't even a part of their written theology--it is simply a part of the metaphysical beliefs underwriting the absolutism of language.

Evolution tells us that "human" is an arbitrary designation. Science already knew that (well, not that precisely, but had run into the problems that typology brings--even Linnaeus mentioned this in relation to classifying humans) prior to coming up with evolution, but now the problem is written as if it were nothing other than a matter of "evolution". IDists fight "evolution" because they think that evolution itself brought the problem of dividing ourselves from the rest of the world, again showing their gross ignorance of science.

We really ought to be fighting religious conceptions of the world by pointing (in the proper venues) to the difficulties posed by the ID worldview for all of science. Evolution didn't make God superfluous, the scientific method itself did, which is why intelligent thinkers like Marx and Nietzsche didn't have to wait for Darwin to give them permission to be "intellectually fulfilled atheists. Science and its unwillingness to accept the impositions of ontotheological language undermines religion all on its own, by showing that empiricism is superior to metaphysical rationalism in satisfying human desires and needs.

No doubt Dawkins has science largely to thank for his lack of religion. Yet he thinks that religion falls because science shows what really is true about the world, which is hardly the case philosophically (in the common sense view, yes, it tells us the truth of "reality"). He wants to pound on religion to make way for science, when in fact those stuck in the religious worldview have no capacity for understanding science, and thus cannot forsake their metaphysics and religion in lieu of an empirical worldview that they simply do not understand.

If Dawkins really wants to fight religion, and not simply feel superior to religionists, he'd be promoting science and its possibilities rather than attacking the only worldview that religionists know. Promote science, without deference to religion, and people will learn how to think without resort to the simple tricks humans (not just religious ones) use to ties up loose ends in their models. Good thinking drives out bad thinking for many (sadly, hardly all), while the insistence of Dawkins that he does good thinking, while religionists think badly, only promotes reaction.

It is not likely that someone as apparently reactionary as Dawkins is ever likely to understand how psychologically bankrupt his approach is, however. Thus those of us who do understand must try to undo the damage that he causes.

#23793: — 05/03  at  10:34 AM
Dang, I was also going to say Ecclesiastes.

#23796: — 05/03  at  11:18 AM
I'm voting for Song of Songs just to break away from the crowd. (While I was looking up the books of Bible on google it never occured to me that I could just reach over to the book shelf. Hmmm...)

#23798: — 05/03  at  11:31 AM
Mr Myers, I know it's tiresome, but do you mind doing a number on these 10 questions at some stage?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/03/tech/main692524.shtml

thx, e.

#23799: — 05/03  at  11:34 AM
There's soft hearted (like me) and then there's soft headed (like Evans). See I really like the core of religion and I DO think it speaks to some deep and very real human needs. But here I really need to draw a stark line between the common practice of religion and the religion itself. Sort of like the difference between good science and pop/pseudo/junk science (or good psychotherapy and therapy cults). I see faith as a positive force on average, but also a very powerful one that can lead to horrific abuses.

And I also get some of the yearning that makes faith so appealling to people. I don't think faith is a sign of ignorance or fear or anything else. It can sure be those things, but, again, in the main I don't think it is. I'm all in favor of people having faith and living in their faith. I hope that they don't adopt the more anti-rational aspects of faith (the active supernatural, absolutism, etc), but I think that faith can (and very often is) a healthy part of a person's life. It's not for me, but I don't feel right telling other people not to have it.

I can understand Evans' search for a reproachment with religion. Heck, I try to live in that zone of trying to create mutual respect. Further he needs to draw a clearer distinction between mature faith that deals with the modern world and regressive ones that rage against it. Clearly someone like Kenneth Miller is in the first camp and the IDCs are in the latter. Miller's faith has little problems co-existing with the modern world, the regressive faiths demand that the modern world bend to their superstitions.

Either way, these discussions will always devolve into semantics where "atheist" and "religion" become shorthand for our personal ideas. If everytime I thought "religion" I pictured Jerry Falwell I'd be pretty solidly anti-religion. If everytime someone of faith thinks "atheist" the picture Madelyn O'Hair they'll likely not have too charitible an opinion of atheists. But if we realize that religion covers a huge gamut and at least use "fundamentalist" or "conservative" or something we don't antagonize the middle of the road Christians whose faith has no problem with modernity.

Ok, enough of an essay in comments. I could go on with my idea that religion is more like poetry than art, but that's another topic for another comment.

#23800: PZ Myers — 05/03  at  11:43 AM
CBS is running those stupid questions? They're straight from that wretched book by Wells, and have long been answered. This page from the NCSE should do it for you.

#23801: PZ Myers — 05/03  at  11:45 AM
I'm so obvious. Yes, Ecclesiastes is my favorite book.

#23802: — 05/03  at  12:09 PM
"The only mature attitude to religion is to see it for what it is - a kind of art, which only a child could mistake for reality, and which only a child would reject for being false."

I love that. It's like he's performing a magic trick. You can tell he's just really satisfied with the sound of his own contrarian reasoning. TA-DA!

I think the appeal of writing this sort of thing lies less in the fact that these people think religion is important to defend and more in the fact that it's one of the last subjects on which you can philosophise without looking like a complete moron (although...). Forget looking at different religious traditions to see whether "longing for transcendence" makes sense outside the Christian tradition, or investigating whether "longing for transcendence" is a product of theological speculation rather than actual practise. Here's a subject on which we can write out any thought that happens to sound good. Or if we're being really professional about it: cite some guy who did the same thing hundreds of years ago.

#23804: — 05/03  at  12:11 PM
Oh darn. I was hoping it was Jermiah. After all, he was a ... never mind.

As to religion: the deep yearning religion seems to appeal to in some people is the desire for life to have some meaning. Humans are, as far as we know, the only animals here that can understand what it means to die. It's hard to accept that someone you have known and loved for many years has ceased to exist. It's appealing to think that that person exists in some form in some place where we might see them again. To put it less generously, it's an inability to come to terms with the real world. In bumpersticker terms, life's a bitch, and then you die. Religion is just a refusal to accept those harsh terms.

#23805: — 05/03  at  12:15 PM
Only a defender of religion could misrepresent Dawkins so baldfacedly. He is really not that hard to understand. Here he his, at the very end of his magnificent The Ancestor's Tale:

"My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world. They represent a narrowing-down from reality, an impoverishment of what the real world has to offer." -- Dawkins

#23806: — 05/03  at  12:18 PM
I hope Dr. Myers will address the questions, but I'll supply the answers that I have time to give now:

1. The origins of life. Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on Earth - when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing like those used in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a mystery.

Simple answer: College texts (at least the ones I used) do not state that, but indeed bring up the question of whether or not the Miller-Urey experiments mimic ancient earth conditions. The IDiots who ask this simplistic question ignore the fact that a variety of experimental conditions have produced at least some of life's building blocks, and meteorites have yielded chirally-biased amino acids.

Perhaps some texts do not mention all of this, just as many facts are left out of all science books. The dolts will always fault necessary simplifications, and then resort to their simplistic attacks (like ignoring all of the evidence discovered since Urey-Miller).

2. Darwin's tree of life. Why don't textbooks discuss the "Cambrian explosion," in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor - thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?

I have biology texts and geology texts that mention the Cambrian explosion, minus the tendentious rendering given above.

Some texts probably do leave out the Cambrian explosion, since it is not well understood as yet. What we do know is that genetic evidence indicates a divergence of the phyla that branches from well before the "Cambrian explosion". It would perhaps be too much in some texts to properly discuss the Cambrian issue, but then, the IDiots don't want a proper discussion.

3. Vertebrate embryos. Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos as evidence for common ancestry - even though biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked?

This is dishonest. All one has to do is to look at accurate drawings and pictures to notice that indeed, the bare resemblance of embryos is striking. This is the sort of evidence that even neophytes should be able to understand, and the creationists and other liars want simply to deny what is in plain sight.

Evo-devo is hot now, and it happens to relate to the developmental processes shared among vertebrates--and other phyla. Nothing is further from the truth than "point 3", which I suppose is why it is said as truth.

4. The archaeopteryx. Why do textbooks portray this fossil as the missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds - even though modern birds are probably not descended from it, and its supposed ancestors do not appear until millions of years after it?

Textbooks probably should do better at pointing out that true ancestors are unlikely to be found in the fossil record. Again, though, one has to ask how many caveats should exist in texts for those who have not progressed very far.

Studies of archaeopteryx indicate that it is quite a close relative of the ancestor of modern birds, perhaps two branchings off of the modern bird lineage, perhaps only one. It is crucial evidence about bird evolution, particularly since there are no actual "fossil ancestors" known for archaeopteryx.

This statement, its supposed ancestors do not appear until millions of years after it is blatantly false. Just as descendents retaining some unretained ancestral features of humans exist (apes) and can be studied in order to understand the common ancestor of humans and apes, so we can understand something about the shared ancestor of archaeopteryx and other early birds by studying the "primitive characteristics" in fossils appearing later than archaeopteryx.

I don't know if these creationist statements are lies or just blithering ignorance, but they point up the danger posed by the power of morons.

5. Peppered moths. Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection - when biologists have known since the 1980s that the moths don't normally rest on tree trunks, and all the pictures have been staged?

It is an illustrative example of what is highly likely to have been an actual evolutionary change wrought by environmental pressures. I probably wouldn't use it, as it happens, because other less disputed examples are known and show the same sorts of natural selection, but I'm not sure if I'd fault someone who kept it and put in the proper caveats.

Still, the original studies were not done properly. That's a shame, though it has almost nothing to do with the evidence in favor of evolution.

6. Darwin's finches. Why do textbooks claim that beak changes in Galapagos finches during a severe drought can explain the origin of species by natural selection - even though the changes were reversed after the drought ended, and no net evolution occurred?

This is an excellent example both of natural selection acting, and of the stupidity of the creationist spin. "Net evolution" is virtually meaningless. There is something to the fact that larger changes are probably not reversible, while beak size is, yet either way it's all just genes being selected. It hardly matters that Galapagos finches hadn't lost the genes to make bills smaller, since gene loss is quite another matter entirely from natural selection per se.

The peppered moths are turning white again. What else would be expected from natural selection but adaptation to the latest conditions?

7. Mutant fruit flies. Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra pair of wings as evidence that DNA mutations can supply raw materials for evolution - even though the extra wings have no muscles and these disabled mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory?

I agree with the creationists about this. While gross mutations in Drosophila tell us important things about evo-devo, they do not tell us much about macro-evolutionary changes (if we use that term). I do not think that the textbooks use such developmental mistakes well in the main.

8. Human origins. Why are artists' drawings of apelike humans used to justify materialistic claims that we are just animals and our existence is a mere accident - when fossil experts cannot even agree on who our supposed ancestors were or what they looked like?

Oh no, do we have too much evidence about hominid evolution to produce simple undisputable evolutionary branches on the tree of life?

Anyhow, there is a good deal of agreement about much of human evolution, especially more recent evolution from H. erectus and probably from H. habilis, and many pictures of "apelike humans" are meant to depict these well-known ancestors (or extremely close relatives of our ancestors). It becomes more conjectural earlier, but there is nothing wrong with attempting to render what almost certainly happened into didactic illustrations.

Or are they going to start caviling that we don't "really know" what a supernova explosion looks like up close, or a neutron star, or extra-solar planets? Students need to be told that illustrations are only attempts at depicting what is known and guessed, but they should continue to be used.

9. Evolution as a fact. Why are students told that Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific fact - even though many of its claims are based on misrepresentations of the facts?

It is a fact that evolution occurred. The lies of the Discovery Institute notwithstanding, evolutionary theory is based upon solid evidence. This even brings back the Cambrian issue: One reason we don't refer to the Cambrian explosion overmuch is that we dare not base evolutionary theory on something so poorly understood in its details. I realize that IDists prefer to use the poorly understood in order to ignore crucial details, but this is not how science works.

I don't know why I find only 9 questions here.

I think it's great that the DI is showing its anti-evolutionary stance in attacking not only "Darwinistic evolution", but all of the evidences of evolution. And in such a devastatingly stupid manner to boot.

#23807: coturnix — 05/03  at  12:22 PM
Mark, I spit my Coke. I just heard the song a few minutes ago and it was still running in my head when I read your post....Jeremiah...yup!

I looked around the house. I am a pack-rat (and so is Mrs. Coturnix) and one thing we are incapable of doing is let go of a book. We have amassed about 5000. The house is sinking. But I just found out we've never had a Bible. Did not even bother stealing a Gideon one from a hotel...so, I guess I cannot have a favourite book if I have never read the thing in the first place.

#23808: craig — 05/03  at  12:26 PM
Religion is just art? Hmmmm. Numerous people have told me I'm going to burn in hell for eternity for not liking the art they like.

I wish I could convince people to think that way about my copper work, I'd be rich.

#23809: Covington — 05/03  at  12:31 PM
What I'd really like to see from those who keep arguing that we're been counterproductive meanies by picking on "believers" are some links to the posts they've put on religious boards pleading for moderates to take religion in America back from fundamentalists.

After all, it isn't atheists who are going to rescue religion from dominionists. IF it happens, it's going to have to be religious moderates who take responsibility for it.

As an atheist, of course I think religion is a ridiculous charade. There's no point in pretending that I respect it - I find it ludicrous, and I don't believe that religion can coexist with science. It's up to the religious to prove me wrong by modifying their religion to adapt facts, not me to cooperate in their delusions by giving lip service to belief in magic and ghosts.

#23810: PZ Myers — 05/03  at  12:34 PM
And if we minorities don't speak out against the believers in ghosts, the sheep will assume that everyone believes in the ol' hairy thunderer, giving the extremists yet more power. I don't expect atheists to 'win' any battles with the confirmed theists, but the continual insistence that atheism is so disreputable that its proponents must shut up is damned irritating.

#23813: — 05/03  at  12:36 PM
OK, I need to backtrack a little on my earlier comment. Note to me: Always read source first!

I don't think Evans is that soft headed. In fact I like a couple of his ideas (like the religion == art that parallels some ideas I've played with before). Maybe part of it is a pond divide. Atheism I interact with (in the US/internet) hardly seems to me a single cereal choice. I think Evans is making the mistake of thinking that atheism must parallel religion in offering some prepackaged "belief system". And that's just wrong. My metaphysical naturalism is just as atheistic as a friend's paranormal believing humanism or whatever. Neither comes pre-packaged and they can share few internal aspects EXCEPT the "no belief in gods' existence" one. So maybe this simplistic "old" atheism model is something more common in the UK.

But I do feel I need to defend Evans on some points. Sure, it's probably because we share the (perhaps naive) "can't we all get along" meme. He expressing a couple points REALLY badly ("Atheists who attack religions for painting a false picture of the world are as unsophisticated and immature as religious believers...", and the idea of "old atheism"), but I like some of his ideas. The consideration of religion as more art than anything else is one that has always appealed to me and I think he expresses it well. I may be in the minority, but I rather liked his analogy.

Anyway, I think the question is can people get the positive "meaning" parts of faith without the supermatural (and sometimes dangerous) baggage. I don't have any illusions that faith will fade away or die off. It's just too useful for people dealing with a world beyond their control/understanding. Evans seems to argue for this idea, where faith is part of life, but in the mystical, not the literal forms. More (again, guessing here) in a pyschoanalytic form than a magical way.

Going a little further on this topic. Harmful faith often comes as a defense against modernity. YEC and other strains of creationism are particularly good examples of this. They twist and lie to allow people to avoid the cognitive dissonace od a literal reading of the Bible with the advances of the modern (is 200 years ago modern?) sciecne. Ditto other junk science that tries to support regressive religious doctrine ("gays==bad", "abortion==bad", "religion==good" etc). People clinging to these are more likely to become agressive in their defense. They have to. Their entire identity is often rooted in that literalism. Thus a threat to this junk is a threat to their sense of self. That's why I don't like to go the Dawkins route. It's direct and often accurate, but it's just not going to get people to listen. The idea is not (on average) to shout down the other side (alhtough I have to admit it's needed in some cases), but the get them closer to a balanced view. Removing the need to cling to junk belief to support their faith. At least that's my soft hearted thoughts.

#23815: — 05/03  at  12:45 PM
I guessed Ecclesiastes too. Also my favorite. In some ways, I find it surprising that Ecclesiastes wasn't tossed out of the Bible at some point, because it's so obviously just hard-won worldly wisdom, with the bits about God tacked on as an afterthought at the end. Reminds me of Hume's devastating savaging of the Argument from Design in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, only to cave in at the end (or pretend to cave in) and say he can't think of any other answer after all, so God exists.

#23817: craig — 05/03  at  12:51 PM
I don't have a favorite, I haven't read the thing. I like hard sci-fi, but could never stomach the fantasy genre.

#23820: — 05/03  at  12:59 PM
And if we minorities don't speak out against the believers in ghosts, the sheep will assume that everyone believes in the ol' hairy thunderer, giving the extremists yet more power. I don't expect atheists to 'win' any battles with the confirmed theists, but the continual insistence that atheism is so disreputable that its proponents must shut up is damned irritating.

You know where I most agree with the above? When I see all of the sucking-up done to (on?) religion in areas like cosmology, string theory, "the wonder of our universe". I wrote a bit more about that here (#53):

http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/the_soulless_horror_of_science/#comments

Mostly, the media care nothing at all for creationism, with barely more tolerance for IDists. But mention the "magic" of quantum mechanics, the Big Bang, or our supposed privileged place in the universe, and they're accommodating as hell.

Science can be wonderful and spiritual, but in science these have nothing to do with the assumptions and beliefs that are actually embodied in religion. Physics gives us no more God than does biology or engineering.

We probably should speak up more when the media swoon over imagined convergences between physics and theology. That's when one realizes that this is quite a religious nation, never mind the lack of much clarity to by far the most of this religion (one reason why they struggle so hard for absolutes, in biology and elsewhere).

But if they can claim cosmology for theology in the public realm, we're probably in for trouble in the biological realm as well. Let them suppose that God is the "ultimate cause" in any scientific sense, and they're going to realize that we might analogously claim God as the ultimate cause in biology. Note that this scenario has already played out among many members of DI, as they have been allowed to think that "cause"="ultimate cause"=God. Yet we know nothing at all of ultimate causes.

#23822: PZ Myers — 05/03  at  01:10 PM
Good point, Craig. I was a victim: I not only attended church and sunday school as a child, I was also an acolyte, regular member of the choir, and went through about 3/4 of my required confirmation classes before I came to my senses.

And before anyone leaps to the assumption that my atheism is a reaction to a horrible trauma, I actually liked the pastor, who was a very nice fellow, and respected the choir and sunday school instructor. As a personal and social experience, I found church wholly pleasant.

It's just that none of it made any sense.

I'm afraid I left the church amicably, but on entirely intellectual grounds.